#305 – An Interview With Dave Young

Dave Young: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded June 29th, 2016. Episode 305. An interview with Dave Young.

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. And I'm Dave Young of Young Circuit Designs and Blue Stamp Engineering.

Dave Young: My old friend, Dave Young. Saving my bacon once again. Not only did Dave Young give me a job when I came back to Cleveland, he's also saving me when I, you know, had a couple scheduling snafus and Dave was willing to come on. So, hey Dave. Yeah, happy to help. So, well, we should talk about our history first. We've got a long and storied history, sort of.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it starts way back when I was working, well, not working for you, but you were basically training me as a co-op at an engineering firm. Yeah. That was our first gig, right? And I had to learn everything from you. Yeah, our first gig. 2004.

Dave Young: That was 12 years ago?

Chris Gammell: That's unbelievable. Yeah. That was that long ago.

Dave Young: I had a friend I was hanging out with last weekend, and she's like, you know, we met 15 years ago. I'm like, oh, God. That's nutty. Anyways. Welcome to your 30s. Yeah, right? All right. Yeah. So, we were classmates. We didn't really know each other before AudioPack, I don't think, though. Even though we were...

Chris Gammell: Not really. Yeah. We had the same school, but I don't remember hanging out, or at least not much, until we went to AudioPack and ended up, you know...

Dave Young: And AudioPack is no more, too. That's another sad thing. I mean, I've talked about it, I think, a little bit on here. But what was AudioPack? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, AudioPack, they switched to Ultra Electronics. They were sold to Ultra Electronics, which seemed like a good deal at first. Just like with every acquisition, the small company is always like, this is going to be so great. We're going to be this autonomous entity, but we're going to have access to more capital. Because after I co-opped there, I worked there part-time while I was finishing my degree, and then I worked full-time as an engineer after I graduated. Yep. And, yeah, they're like, this is going to be great. We've got the power of a big company with the nibble aspect of a small company. This is going to be perfect. And then, you know, the things didn't go so well, and they didn't see the growth they were expecting or whatever happened in the corner office. It's hard to keep track of as an engineer. But then, yeah, then they're like, we're going to actually merge with our operation in Fort Worth, Indiana.

Dave Young: Right. And that was one of the nice things about it was that there was all the manufacturing here still in Cleveland. Yeah. I think the boards weren't in-house, right? The SMT line and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Before they were done, they had an SMT line. Oh, yeah. And they had a guy running it. Yeah, they didn't do their own board fab. You know, they still bought them from board houses. But, yeah, they had their own SMT line, and they had a lot of cool stuff. Because, you know, AudioPack did electronics for audio in demanding environments for, like, firefighters and military. So they had to, like, conformal code a bunch of stuff, and they had to pod a bunch of stuff, and they had to pass all this intrinsic safety stuff. So there's all this cool manufacturing equipment they had. And, you know, all gone. It was unfortunate. It was neat to work there for a while, though.

Dave Young: Man, that was great, too. I mean, like, especially when, you know, so you and I started there. And having, like, a manufacturing floor. Well, first off, we started in repair, which was killer. It sucked at the time.

Chris Gammell: I forgot about that. Yeah, it sucked at the time.

Dave Young: But, like, that is totally the place to start. You know, working on troubleshooting and replacing components. Yeah. You know, when I remember distinctly.

Chris Gammell: It's good for a young man in college to learn how to eat shit right off the bat. Exactly.

Dave Young: Right. Yeah, exactly. And that was a nice thing, too. It was like, oh, you got this board coming back. And, you know, I basically almost burned through it with a soldering iron. But, you know, who cares? It was already halfway dead anyway. So we just marked it as dead and moved on and replaced the board.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I remember talking. I talk to my students all the time about the first job I had as a co-op. And it was like, do you remember testing microphones there? It was, they set me in this room that was soundproofed. Sort of. Yeah, sort of. Soundproofed like a small company would soundproof it, which is basically like. Like eggshells in the hall. You start at Home Depot and get a staple gun and eggshells and put it up. Yeah. And so we had this soundproof room and then there's these little electric microphones that you have to place just right into the little pogo pin test setup, which is six feet away from the speaker. And so you place the thing in there and you walk over to the speaker and you hit start. Oh, God, I remember that. Yeah.

Dave Young: It was characterizing microphones. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, I was in there with Joe, who is my boss for, you know, many years. And he's awesome work with. And so he's like, this is how you do it. And then you characterize it and you put it in its specific bin so it'll match a specific thing or whatever. And so I watched him do it once. He was like, you got it? And I was like, yeah. He's like, show me how you do it. And so I did it once to follow. He was like, great. Here's like 500 microphones. I'll see you after lunch. Yeah. See you at the end of the day kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, oh, my God. I went to bed that night with that sound in my head.

Dave Young: See, when you said, man, this is just going to turn into me and you straight. We'll get to other stuff, too, I promise. But the other one that we still make jokes about is the intelligibility testing. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, man.

Dave Young: Which is basically you put on a gas mask with an amplifier on it. And then you read off these words. And it's circle the word cat. Circle the word bat. And then your cohorts of interns and co-ops across from you just go and circle it and see if they can understand you.

Chris Gammell: And they're wearing masks, too, or hoods sometimes. And there's also that 80 dB of white noise going on. Oh, yeah.

Dave Young: That, too. Yeah. All up in your ear.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Oh, man. Talk about perfect intern jobs.

Dave Young: Yeah. Well, I was thinking about that. So, I think about that with – so, last week we were chatting with Alexa, basically. Yeah. You know, the stupid Amazon Echo thing. But, like, you know, they have to do it, too. And someone has probably figured out some kind of programmatic way to do that in the meantime. It's not like – you have to – at some point you have to get away from human perception and actually measure it and stuff. But, yeah, we never did.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But still, I guarantee you at the end they did intelligibility testing. I don't care how many models they have. I guarantee you they sat down with a bunch of people in a room. And they're like, okay, read what this – tell me what this person is saying.

Dave Young: Well, but at that point it's the computer on the other end. That's what it really needs to understand, not a human. So, human – Right. That's true. Yeah, human hearing. It's crazy. But, yeah. So, you are – well, let's see. So, we met each other there and we hung out there. And then when I moved back to – I was down in Austin. I moved back up to go to Keithley. That was VAU. So, when we talk – people talk about, you know, networking gets you your jobs. I mean, like, I'm talking to them right now, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And when it's more early jobs, that's like the high value ones, the hard ones to get the first couple jobs.

Dave Young: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: They're not really sure if you're legit yet or not.

Dave Young: Right. Well, and especially with that because I was coming back from not having done electronics for two years effectively in the fab. And, you know, so you guys took a chance. I mean, that was great. So, it was awesome. And that's why we're here today.

Speaker ?: That's why we're here.

Dave Young: Yeah. So, that's another four years of Keithley then too. Well, I guess you left sooner. And so, well, I don't know if you want to talk about Keithley at all, but maybe we should just skip to what you do now.

Chris Gammell: No, let's talk about Keithley because I so love the time at Keithley. I talk to people all the time about it because they're always like, hey, do you want to ever go back and work for somebody else? And usually people are like, hell no. Right. But sometimes like, you know, right now that doesn't sound too bad.

Dave Young: Yeah. Right. Being out on your own, like ready to have some people to bounce ideas off of that kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And like the camaraderie after work, you always have somebody to go get beer with. And we always used to like, we'd play basketball after work sometimes. Or we'd go like before we'd go home for Thanksgiving. Everybody gets together and play football. Yeah. I was more of just a beer kind of guy personally. Yeah. That's fine. That's fine. We have plenty of beer outings. But the thing is like the camaraderie, and I think that might be unique. So Keithley started as this family-owned business and it remained a family-owned business. Long time. Two generations. And I think when you have those like long-time culture built into the system, it makes for a much nicer place to work. Contrast that to other people who are like, I will never work at another corporate place again. I bet you they're working at like GE or some faceless corporation.

Dave Young: Well, I mean, it's just, yeah, scale definitely matters there too. I think, you know, like having, I mean, Keithley was what? I mean, it was like maybe a total of 120 people in that building, but probably 40 of them were engineers, which is pretty rare too. No, it was more than that, wasn't it?

Chris Gammell: They had nationwide, they had worldwide like 600 people working for them.

Dave Young: Yeah, yeah. I meant just in that building though. Like that was, but I mean like just having that concentration of, you know, like, I mean, especially, so again, I should emphasize Dave does, me and Dave both do analog stuff. Dave still does analog stuff. I'm doing a lot less of it. But like just having that kind of camaraderie around that kind of stuff, I think that matters too. You know, like you said, I mean, that culture is really important no matter where you go. I mean, it could be an advertising company or it could be a, you know, a car sales company. It doesn't really matter. You know, the culture matters no matter where you're working in order to want to go back there, I think. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And the other thing is pair that like we're all together working together on this product, but pair that with the stuff they were doing was, I don't want to say it was research based, but it was definitely far beyond integration of electronic components. Like they were trying to do weird stuff with electronics to really edge out every last bit of performance. Yeah. And so there was a more patient, I want to say more patient management structure or whatever. They knew that what we were doing hasn't been done before and they maybe, it's more than just reading data sheets and slapping together parts. So that, I don't know, made it seem like a bygone era almost working. Yeah.

Dave Young: No, I feel that. I mean, it's, it's definitely, it was definitely far removed from commercial or like a commercial electronics or what's it called? Not commercial. Consumer, sorry. Consumer, it definitely was not consumer electronics, which is, you know, six month timeline type stuff. It was more like three to four year product cycle type thing. Yeah, exactly. There's downsides to that as well, but the nice thing is digging in and really doing some research. Yeah. I mean, that's, that is different, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And there's nasty parts that too. You remember doing air budgets?

Dave Young: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure I've talked about it on here too. Like how many pages and pages and pages of spreadsheets were we doing with all those calculations, modern carcass calculations? Like that was the downside is like you got to do all that really deep stuff.

Dave Young: Yeah, but that's good. I mean, that's especially good for, I think, you know, like a first engineering job because you start to realize that at least my, my subsequent jobs is more like, nope, just get it done. You know? Yeah, that's for sure.

Chris Gammell: And plus the other thing that was really great about it that I totally appreciate now that I didn't at the time was, I understood how to know if your thing works or not way better after air budget. As opposed to like the attitude of like, let's just throw it together and see if it works. And if the first one works, we'll assume the thousandth one will work. Oh, yeah. Which is like not good for design for manufacturing. No, it was like, I need to know for sure this is good. So let's get an air budget going and let's get a power budget going. And we're going to make sure that over all parts, we'll still be able to need our specs. And that's such a great attitude to have when, when trying to design stuff that will eventually. Right.

Dave Young: It's like up front. It's like investing up front in the, in the design piece. And you usually, not usually, but you can lean on that a little more heavily in the testing phase. Whereas if it was just kind of like slapped together, see if it works in the temperature oven, you know, you might be doing a whole iteration versus just some tweaking kind of thing. Exactly. Exactly. A lot of value. Yeah. Are you doing temperature testing these days? Are you doing like, I mean, do you do that on your, your consulting work?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I was going to say, contrast that to what I do now, which is I usually work with small companies and startups where they're, instead of focusing on like, we need to get, we need to make sure that we can make 10,000 of these for the next 10 years. They're focusing on like, we got to make sure this can work because we're not totally sure this is going to happen. So they don't care at all about air budgets and power budgets. So I have to, so oftentimes I have to like tone it down and like, well, I can do an air budget for you. I can do a power budget for you and it'll give you this confidence, but I'm not sure if that's the biggest risk that this company is facing right now. Right, right, right, right. So it's, it's a different mentality, but having that tool and recognize, I guess the big thing is recognizing when it makes sense to go through the engineering effort to, to do all that stuff. It's hugely valuable.

Dave Young: Yeah. Well, and I think that, I mean, so you mentioned the things that you're doing now too, like you're, you're also kind of now into the whole manufacturing space of can this thing be built? Well, can the first ones, first 10 be built? And then if that works, can the next hundred, can the next thousand, stuff like that? Right. You know, again, another contrast would be the Keithley stuff. We had production on site as well. I mean, like that, I feel like it just can't, you can't displace that, not displace, discount that enough. You can't, you shouldn't discount that rather because it's, it's, you know, that's such a huge learning opportunity of having people on site that are actually making the thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and even better for the job we were in, so we were in the manufacturing design engineering team or whatever it was. Yeah. Which, which basically meant like we were doing design work, but if something broke on the line, we were the engineer that they called. So it was like, Hey, so this DMM, we can't ship this DMM. And were you there when we, when like they shut down the whole fricking floor because of a resistor, a precision resistor was not built correctly. So like, yeah, that was crazy. So basically like everything was starting to fail, um, final calibration or final verification.

Dave Young: And by everything, I have to stop you for a second, Dave. I had this, this twinge of like, Oh shit, Oh shit. Can we say this stuff? And then I'm like, neither of us work there. QF doesn't really exist anymore. QF doesn't exist anymore.

Chris Gammell: Neither does that manufacturing for, sadly.

Dave Young: I mean, like this is actually, I think, uh, this usually these kinds of stories are a testament to quality, I think anyways, but it's like, Oh, I still have that. You know, I still have that fear of like, Oh, cause I was started the empire when I was there too. So I, I was always very careful. Anyways, go ahead. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Uh, no, you're right. And, but this story, there's nothing but good that comes out of this story. So like, of course they figure out, um, they're like, Oh, we can't ship 2400s. Oh, we can't ship 2001s. Oh, we can't ship model 2000s. Oh, we can't, we can't ship any, shut it down. Just shut it down. Yeah. Shut everything down. We're going to lose a whole bunch of money, but at least we're going to ship. We're going to know when we turn back on shipping. Um, but anyways, that we were the ones that they would call when that would happen. And could you imagine all of your products not being able to ship and you being in Cleveland and your manufacturing floor being in China and trying to troubleshoot that problem? Is like, here's your problem. Everything's broken.

Dave Young: Yeah. Step one, buy a plane ticket immediately. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Step two, sit on a plane.

Chris Gammell: As opposed to somebody calling you back, Hey, come out here and check this out. Cause this is weird. Yeah. You need to get out here. And then like 45 seconds later, you're in front of the problem, looking at it and talking to the guy. The best thing is talking to the guy who's been like, this is the 10th one I've seen today fail. And you can ask him questions and almost interview him. Oh, the text too. Totally.

Dave Young: Cause they had really good texts as well. Yeah. Which is another one. Yeah. They're stellar. It's like, damn, you, you don't like basically they, they, they carried me when I was getting started too. Cause they were like, yeah, let me teach you about the product. They're young. And, you know, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. I know you got an idea, but let me tell you why that's not going to work.

Dave Young: How about we try not being an idiot and we fix the problem here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's a shame the whole, that whole, that whole, um, ecosystem. Cause both audio pack and Keith Lee had the manufacturing floor steps away. Attached. Yep. Uh, and it was, uh, just such a nice way to work and so much more fun. Uh, and you have a lot more confidence.

Dave Young: This still happens. I mean, like when people talk about like, I mean, like people talk about the being in Shenzhen and like, Oh, I love being right on site. It's like, that is what we had. Right. I mean, it's just that we experienced it right before it all left. Not all of it. There's still some of this around, but it's, it is much reduced. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's definitely not expected.

Dave Young: Yeah. I mean, the other interesting thing with that too, is that like, you know, it's like some like small things like improvements, tweaks, stuff like that. You know, it's usually, it was usually a joint thing anyways of like, Oh, well, you know, next drive, which really have this resistor, if it could move a little bit, it would make assemblies or, or the cap wouldn't pop off or, you know, there's crack, it's like cracking, cracking if we had to deal with stuff like that. Like you would never, I don't know, like you might have reports you'd compile if you had remote manufacturing, but a CM just wouldn't be as invested in that kind of thing. I think, you know, or EMS, it's just, it's not, it's not as much of a thing. So I don't know. I like that. Uh, at least the, you know, we, me and, me and Aussie Dave, uh, cause obviously you're American Dave, uh, me and Aussie Dave talk about people, the troubles of starting up an SMT line and you know, like how people shouldn't do that. But I think the flip side is man, having hands on for this kind of stuff. It is, it's really important. You know, if you can put engineering next to a line.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's just so much more pleasant. It was, it was my favorite to go into work and to know that like, or to leave work and feel like, Oh, I can just come back tomorrow and work on this problem and talk to the same people. And it's not like, it's another night I have to spend away from my family. Like, that's not something that you think about. It's like, well, this is, this is just the way we do work. Right.

Dave Young: Right. Well, and leaving work there too. I mean, who wants to leave when there's six feet of snow on the ground, right?

Chris Gammell: I really like this. Now, some of my favorite nights were working really late at Keithley cause something was probably not shipping and stopping off at that Kirtland trail where you can go night snow shoeing or cross country skiing. Oh yeah, that's true. That was great. Take a headlamp, go to the, to the back of it where there's no lights and just cruise and see like the moon rise and everything. Oh, Cleveland's great. Nobody gets Cleveland's great. And I'm not just saying that cause the cab's winning. I've been saying that for years and people are just now realizing it.

Dave Young: Dave's always been a booster. That's true. That's true. So where are you now? I don't know if we've said that. Where are you based out of?

Chris Gammell: Denver, Colorado is where I'm based, which is another wonderful place to live. It hasn't got any water, but otherwise it's really wonderful.

Dave Young: There's some up in the mountains. It's just white still. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. You can hold it.

Dave Young: Yeah. And actually, so yeah, the Denver meetup, Dave was there. I was out there for that. Yeah. When did that? That was a lot of fun. That was a really good meetup.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I like how everybody always brings stuff to your events, Chris.

Dave Young: Hey man, that's any meetup should definitely have hard. I mean, if you're going to go to a hardware meetup, how can you not, not bring stuff? Yeah. I mean, come on.

Chris Gammell: It makes it way more interesting. It's like the difference between a networking event and an animal meetup event is you actually have something you want to talk about.

Dave Young: Well, I mean, that's any networking event, any good networking event, I think is, you know, it has people that actually give a crap about what they're doing in the first place and no better way to figure out who gives a crap about their stuff rather than to have them like in hand and talking about it kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. Yeah. Another reason hardware is just the best. Yes.

Dave Young: Right. Well, you know, good company here, right? We're all, we're all kind of on the same page for this one. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So, okay. So you, you left me behind. I was still at Keithley. You left me behind. You moved away. What, what, what happened then?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, well, I left Keithley. So I left Keithley because, um, I was, you know, you're in your twenties and I was looking at Keithley and I was like, wow, this is a really happy life. How fun would it be to, how nice would it be to stay here, raise family? I can do like the whole, uh, I called it the happy life, the happy, easy life. Like they take care of all of your real problems. Uh, they put money in your bank account every month. And if you get sick, you're taken care of. If your kid gets sick, they're taken care of. So if anything bad happens in your life, like they'll, they'll help you out. Yeah.

Dave Young: Um, and also we had, we had some, you know, some of the other analog engineers were there for 20, 30 years. I mean, like, those are some of the best people there where they're the veterans. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So it was like, it was like, this could be a really happy life. But then, uh, you know, I got, I got my, I got all excited about the whole startup world and like, oh, you get to do. Yeah. I got the itch. And it's like, I could do all this cool stuff as opposed to having like a Keithley have to pick up one thing. Like do you want to do management? Do you want to do design work? Do you want to do marketing? Do you want to do manufacturing engineering? Like you got to pick one and get really good at it.

Dave Young: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Um, and, uh, I was just all spun up on this idea of going out and doing something. So I went and joined a startup that, uh, was doing some hardware stuff and, and developing it. And, uh, they ran out of money like four months later. Uh, so they were, they were, they were toast like four months later. And, but I, and I stayed on afterwards, you know, accruing shares, um, instead of money. How much are the shares worth, Dave?

Dave Jones: I don't know. You want to buy them?

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Young: I'll even talk about the company itself, but I know the company I would, I would not buy. So.

Chris Gammell: No, I'll let you name the price. Yeah.

Dave Young: Um, so how about this though? So, okay. So making that decision, would you have made that same decision again?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, for sure. And the reason was like in, so I worked for an extra couple of months basically for free, um, or for stock or whatever. But, um, I, I was committed to finishing the project and getting it to the point where it could be manufactured. Um, at least like in theory manufactured, even if there wasn't the money to, to manufacture it, it would be, it was ready to go to the contract manufacturer. And so I finished it, which was great because, um, at the end of that, I was like, wow, I got something ready to go pretty quick. Um, this is easy. I bet. I wouldn't say that, but I was sitting there. I was like, I bet, I bet this is a valuable service that other companies might want. Uh, and so that's why I started my consulting business. I was like, well, I could take anybody from like an idea to production related to electronics. Um, and I, if I work for multiple companies, I get to diversify my risk. If there's like one that goes bust, that's okay. I've got like two or three others. So that's, that was the idea with young circuit designs. It was like, let's take somebody who has an idea and funding. Cause you know, I got to get paid, right? Yeah. There's the, there's the one. Yeah. Yeah. So let's take somebody who's got an idea and funding, um, and work with them so that they can speak and normal people talk. And like, I can communicate with them on like requirements and also talk to them about, okay, I see what you're asking for. I think you might want this or given the technology that's available today, this is almost what you want, but one 10th of the cost.

Dave Young: Right. Right. If you can give up on spec a and B, then spec C will be really great. And that's what you really want in the whole time. Right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Or I can make it way cheaper, faster, whatever, smaller, uh, lower power. So basically kind of offering, you know, giving them a menu as to what the current technology exists today and then designing it, prototyping it, testing it and setting them up with the contract manufacturer. Yeah. And that's proven to be super helpful.

Dave Young: Well, let's talk about the, so you, you went from this fully integrated thing straight into, you know, needing to find and use a CM. Did you, did you walk into having a CM or did you have to pick one out yourself too?

Chris Gammell: No, every place I've been, I've had to, I've had to search one out, but, um, they're not usually that hard to vet, uh, especially for like any, most startups, um, don't need crazy manufacturing stuff. Right. Cause like if you look at everything today, um, you don't need insane. You need a Bluetooth sensor.

Dave Young: You need a battery and you need a sensor. Yeah. You need a Bluetooth module rather than a sensor. Yeah. Yeah. Charge circuit and you're set.

Chris Gammell: So, uh, you know, you're not, you're not, you're not going down crazy paths with that. So it's, it's, uh, it's possible to find a contract manufacturer pretty easily. And the other thing is, um, since it's a startup, low volumes, you don't, nobody wants to go offshore immediately. Right.

Dave Young: Um, yeah. The harder thing is probably just dealing with the low volume and with someone who wants more business in the first place. Right.

Chris Gammell: And I found, you know, at first I was like, people aren't going to want this, but then I just started telling people like, guys, I don't know how this is going to turn out. Like, I know that I'm going to buy 10 boards from you. I'm hoping we'll buy a hundred and a thousand and then 10,000. But, uh, and I, I just want you to know, like this, this can go a lot of ways. Oh, yeah. And so, yeah.

Dave Young: Were they interested in, did it stratify pretty quickly then? It was like, oh, well, some are in, some are out pretty fast.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They, and they, that's the other thing is you don't waste time trying to convince the contract manufacturer to do something they don't want to do. Right. Right. Cause that's absolutely happened where a contract manufacturer is like, yeah, if you're not doing a million bucks this year, we probably shouldn't be talking. I mean, I'd be happy to talk to you once you're bigger, but, uh, we're not. And I've had people say that to me and that's, that's great. Like, oh, look, everybody's being honest up front and it saves everybody a whole bunch of time.

Dave Young: Yeah. Yeah. No, that is good. That is good. So yeah, that's, that's, um, that's, this is kind of edging into the territory of what I'm doing now, trying to figure out how people find CM. So yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. To be honest, I just looked online to find who was close. Cause that was the other thing is remember all my training is with like audio pack and Keithley where I could walk down and see the place. So, um, I always prefer. And the other thing that's great that I didn't realize is, you know, startups, everything always is late when you like, as soon as they sign the PO, they're like, okay, where's our design? I'm like, well, I gotta go make it. Um, so there's always, it's always like this. It's faster, faster, faster. Guys, come on. Yeah. Make those guys do it instantly.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh, so you get, you get to, you get to like drive down because you were late or perceived as late. So you can drive down on Friday night and pick up the boards yourself and then you can work all weekend and have it done Monday morning, uh, so that they can, or Monday afternoon. So I can ship out relative to, you know, getting the boards from UPS at eight or 10 AM on Monday morning.

Dave Young: Oh, I see what you're saying. It has saved me many, many times. I was like, what is the good point in here?

Chris Gammell: No, it's great. Cause you can just go pick them up. Same deal with like advanced circuits. Cause I'm in Colorado. I just drive up and get them and it saves me one business day. But in the startup world, one business day could very easily mean three real days.

Dave Young: Right. Or, I mean, you could always tack that on if you wanted to get slightly slower shipping on your, you know, if you're shipping out to someone else as well. Right. I mean like just, yeah, time is very important in those kinds of scenarios. Yeah. So yeah. Especially if it doesn't work. Actually, it doesn't work. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All of a sudden those three days are real valuable when you're like, Oh, I made a mistake.

Dave Young: Right. Right. How many bodge wires do I need? One per board. There's only 50 boards. Yeah. Time to turn on the amp hour. Right, Dave?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's exactly right. I do that oftentimes. I turn on the amp hour to sit there and solder and pick those things. Solder. Yeah.

Dave Young: That's a good one. Yeah. Solder. Yeah. All the people that hate me for saying that.

Chris Gammell: From Chicago.

Dave Young: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's good.

Dave Young: So it wasn't too big of a struggle to get away from vertical manufacturing into CM type stuff, huh?

Chris Gammell: No, no. It wasn't tough. I mean you got to put some work into it but that's okay. You find the right guy. Like right now I've got, there's a company in gold and tracer. They have won and I bid out to a few different places usually and they have won every bid that I've sent out and they've done great work. So like eventually you settle out with one guy and he ends up being a partner where like I was talking to him earlier today. I was like, hey, I've got this weird thing that I'm thinking about doing with a client. Is this something you'd want to quote or what? And it works out great. He's built up like, I've asked him, I was like, hey, I ran out of time and I was going to build these boards myself. Can you have one of your guys do it? And so he just does it. That's really important. Like those kind of relationships. Yeah. You get that connection and you find somebody that does what you want to do. And like it works out. So after a while you make those connections.

Dave Young: Well, it's kind of like the upfront thing you mentioned too. It's like at the end of the day, as long as you have trust of that person and they say, yeah, we don't really, we, you, we could do that, but you don't want us to. Like that is, that is like gold to have that kind of, that kind of trust and just being like upfront with everything. So that's good. Good. So how about on a personal front? Cause I'm guessing some people listening are like, I want to quit my job and go become a consultant. So should people do that? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You need some cash. Right. Uh, yeah, I had, when I left Keithley, I had like two years of cash saved up and two years, two years of not like peanut butter and ramen. I'm talking two years of like, I'm still taking a vacation a year and it's going to be awesome. Um, so yeah, uh, that, that's the first thing is you always want to have that money sitting around in case you need it. Cause I ended up needed, I didn't need all of it, but I needed some of it. Yeah.

Dave Young: A year's worth or what?

Chris Gammell: Like, uh, it's hard to, it's hard to say because like you get, you get like some jobs and then it goes away for a while and you get other jobs and it goes away for a while. Cause when you're starting, like you spend so much time trying to find work, um, and, and get your name out there and figure out what value you can bring to people and what kinds of people want what you're offering. So, um, and then that's the other thing is, um, if you're not ready to do sales, stay in your cubicle. Yeah. Stay in the cubicle. It's so much nicer there when people come to you and be like, can you do this for me? Because that stops real quick. Right. Uh, when you, when you're starting a new consulting firm, um, I suppose you could always just like figure out a way to take a client or take somebody that you've worked with in the past and have them become your first client. And that'd be awesome too, but I didn't have that.

Dave Young: Yeah. I tried doing that and that did not work when I left my last job.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, it sometimes works out great for some people, but others otherwise not. But yeah, the consulting is, it's interesting because you, it's just you. Like, yeah.

Dave Young: Well, you get to choose whatever, whatever 16 hours a day you want to work, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, there's that. Um, but if you have a problem, um, like I am confident that I'm way better of an engineer now than I was when I was working in the corporate world, because it's really, really hard for me to get advice from somebody. Like there's people I can call and I have called, um, some of them from Keithley, some of them I'm talking to right now. Yeah. Seriously. Hey, what is going on with this? I, I, let me bounce some ideas off. Like you can do that, but you can't do that every day for a week while you're figuring out this problem. Right. So, um, yeah, I'm, I'm way better at being an engineer in terms of like, figure it out. Like you got to understand it. So you're going to sit here until you do. Right.

Dave Young: Right. And sometimes that doesn't, you don't get to charge those hours either. Right.

Chris Gammell: Usually not. Like almost never. Right. Right.

Dave Young: So four hours spent reading the art of electronics. Yeah. I'm not paying you for that day. Yeah, exactly. Go back to school.

Chris Gammell: Case didn't educate you well enough. So read it again.

Dave Young: Yeah. Uh, yeah. Is it, is, is that the scary? Cause I, I, I don't think I've ever done what you did. I don't think I ever was in that same boat. So, I mean, was there a, was there an urge to jump back or?

Chris Gammell: Um, I don't know. Everything seemed to kind of work out well enough. And the other thing was it comes out, it comes down to your personality and your personal situation. So when I started the consulting firm, I had just moved from Cleveland to Ithaca cause cause my wife was getting her PhD and I was like, well, if I don't even have a job that's paying me, I might as well move to Ithaca. But she was like a year away from finishing. So I'm not going to go find a corporate job for six months or a year and then bail on them. Like that, that doesn't sound very nice to them.

Dave Young: Um, usually you don't, you don't say that in the interview either though. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: I would feel like I would have to tell him that be like, just so you know, this is going to be basically like a contract work cause I gotta, I gotta, we're going to leave in a year guaranteed. So, and then when we went to Denver, she's doing her postdoc and, uh, in Denver. So max three years planned there. It just so happened that she ended up getting hired as a, as a professor there. So we stay, we're still there, but, um, we didn't know that when we were there. So again, it was like, plus at the same time I was making enough money with the consulting business and, uh, to, to continue and to try it out and grow it. Uh, so I, I never really felt like I had to go back, but it was always something in my back pocket. Like when it was really frustrating cause I wasn't making any money or because I couldn't figure out projects or because like I was sitting there fiddling with a website or accounting problem or some other bullshit that I don't want to work with. Uh, it was, it was always like in my back pocket. It was like, well, I could go back and work at a, at a normal company, but, um, health insurance, health insurance. Yeah. Well, 401k. Yeah. Yeah. There's the solo, the solo 401k now that's a pretty good deal.

Dave Young: So is that the one that's like, uh, or no, that's the self-employed IRA.

Chris Gammell: Self-employed one. Yeah. So there's, you know, there's a good retirement options. I guess nobody's matching my money, but. Yeah, that's true.

Dave Young: Well, you are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm doing a lot of matching.

Dave Young: Right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Young: That's good. Okay. So, uh, uh, we still need to get to another big thing that you talked about, but one last thing about, you mentioned finding clients. So then how did you, how did you find clients?

Chris Gammell: So I, I would find clients. I started finding clients by just going to, I knew I wanted to do like startup stuff, but, um, so I just started going to startup meetups, like entrepreneurship meetups. So people were getting together with their companies and people were doing stuff that, um, they wanted to, in order to talk with other people. And it ended up being like, Oh, we get to hang out and drink beer together. And that sounds like fun anyways. So yeah, yeah, that's good. I'm going to go do that. And I was in a new city, so I want to meet new people anyways. Um, so it was, it was fun to, to go out and talk to people and just like hear what they're trying to do, see if there's something I can do to help or, or talk to them in terms of like what I do and what I'm trying to do with, uh, young circuit designs.

Dave Young: I feel like I should throw a caveat in here too, is that Dave, Dave has always been pretty good at this kind of networking stuff.

Chris Gammell: Like you drinking beer.

Dave Young: Yes, I've been quite drinking beer, but I mean, bringing people together too. Like you've always been very, uh, social and yada, yada, yada.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, it's something that I enjoy doing to start with. So it wasn't a big stretch. Like there's a lot of people who'd be like, Oh my God, if I have to talk to one more person about this stupid, right? Right. Yeah. So I'm not that person. If you're that person, you might want to think about staying in the cubicle and not.

Dave Young: Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I think that sometimes people, again, if you bring, like we mentioned with the heart of the, the meetup suit, like if you bring hardware with you, that actually helps a lot of people to come out of their shell. That's true. Let me show you this thing, um, at least that's been my experience of people that I know that normally wouldn't be super, super outgoing. Like talking about their projects is always a good start. Yeah. But you, so you're saying you need to do that no matter what. That's the idea is like, you have to, you at least have to talk to some people. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They're not going to come find you. Right.

Dave Young: At least not at first.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Young: What about the whole specialization thing? So, I mean, uh, were you able to kind of, you said you, you know, you, you knew you wanted to do startups. Did you care that it was analog? I mean, did you want it to be just analog or did you? Did you get pulled into doing some of the, uh, embedded type stuff as well?

Chris Gammell: No, I, I, I do. See, the thing is, is when you're doing startup stuff, oftentimes it's not big enough to bring another person on. But the benefit to that is, um, it's probably not that big of a deal for me to just take it on and do it. So, um, and still to this day, many projects I take on, I do some embedded stuff with it. Um, just because it makes sense to have one person doing everything. It's so much faster and it's all integrated and like, you can turn a knob over here and be like, well, I just have to change the code and you just go change the code and do it, which is far simpler. So, um.

Dave Young: Especially if you're doing like a example code to start with that kind of thing, right? Right. Right. You know, getting a, getting a prototype or an idea out there, a proof of concept type of thing. That, yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Do you like this? Is it something that you want? And you can, you can always optimize later once you're talking seriously about, uh, higher volume manufacturing. Um, and you bring somebody in that like really knows how to dial down the code to be as efficient and as well run as possible. So, um, yeah, but I'll do it all. Um, as long as it's not too crazy. And once it gets, once it gets to be involved to the point of bringing somebody else in, then I, I encourage the client to just bring somebody else in.

Dave Young: Yeah, of course. Right. That's another thing where it's like a trust thing. It's like, if you, you should be able to recommend other people's services and not be like, oh, I only me can, only I can do it. Right. So like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And that's really a mentality that is, um, unique among good consultants is they're always thinking about, they're never thinking about how this could be best for them. Like when you work for a company, you'd be like, well, I really want to get into this technology. So I'm going to try and get on that project and do that for that project. Like that, that's, um, not really a concern. It's always, how can I best serve the client and get them what they need to get so they can get off the ground.

Dave Young: So, okay. One last consulting question. How are you, how are you keeping sharp and learning new things these days then? Because that's another one where I think I've talked to Alicia about that before. We're just like, you know, like, it's not like you can have, you know, mentors, especially as you move up in your career too. It's like, you can't really have mentors, but like, that's especially true when you're out on your own. So how, how are you improving as a, you know, as a solo?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, um, the, as, as the client, like I said, usually the project grows to the point of needing to bring other people in. Um, and at that point you get to learn from that new person just by the fact that you have to integrate your electronics with their mechanical system or code or whatever. Uh, yep. So I would say I'm far more, I'm far more capable in a broad sense, but, uh, I wouldn't say I'm any better at analog than I was three years ago or five years ago or 10 years ago. Well, definitely 10 years ago, but I'm not like, I'm not able to do, you know, electrometer type circuits any better than I was when I left Keithley because I just haven't been doing them often. Right.

Dave Young: Um, that's like a practice thing.

Chris Gammell: And yeah. And it's an opportunity to work on different things. So I'd say the pace of learning that I've, I've had is just as good as it was when I worked in a big company, but it's not, um, it's, I have, I have basically no control over what I learned. I'll say that.

Dave Young: So Keithley was like just doing bicep curls, right? So you're just building that one muscle and now you're doing like those kettlebell swings. Again, I'm out of my own when I start talking about that stuff, but it's just working different muscles, right? Cause now you have accounting muscles and you have advertising muscles and you have whatever else you need.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And plus like, you know, I'm, I'm way better at, at firmware than I ever was at Keithley. I don't think I wrote a single line of code at Keithley. Yeah. Um, whereas now it's something that if it makes sense for the client, then I'll just, I'll write it and make it work. So, uh, yeah, it's, I'm, I guess I'm fortunate enough to have the opportunities come across that are quite educational, sometimes very frustratingly so.

Dave Young: Hey man, education is pain. Education is pain. You learn a lot from bad situations, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Sometimes my wife comes down and like, she comes down and she turns right back around cause I'm swearing up a storm or playing some like awful music or, uh, or still in my pajamas at like 6, 6 PM at night. Yes. Uh, and she knows something bad happened and she better just go do something else. Yeah.

Dave Young: Yes. Uh, okay. So what are you, uh, what are you doing? Uh, I I'm breaking my promise again. We are going to talk about BSC in a little bit here, but, uh, what about, what are some issues you're running into these days? So you have clients right now. So you had mentioned, you had mentioned one thing we might be able to talk about with a client. Um, did you get a text about that? Are you allowed to talk about it? Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. So there's, I did get a text saying I could talk about different clients stuff. Um, I'm not sure what you're fishing for here in terms of your question, but, uh, yeah.

Dave Young: But you had mentioned hoverboards, right? So we were talking about the consumer level electronics versus other stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So these, this, this latest client that I had, it's so neat. They're, they're looking around at all these hoverboards and they're like hoverboards with these idiot teenagers catching themselves on fire or whatever.

Dave Young: Those are the two wire. Like it's basically a, you lean forward and it's got a balance. I don't think it's actually an accelerometer in there.

Chris Gammell: No, it's just a switch, but it's a segue without a stick and a way easier control system. So, uh, they're looking at those and like, this is crazy that those are $400 and an electric wheelchair is 10 grand.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh, what is going on? And, um, so what they're, what they're doing is they're basically making something so you can clip a manual wheelchair into, um, a motor drive system. And so basically you clamp it in, you plug in your, your joystick interface or whatever. And then you can drive away. Um, which is great. I mean, like that's a ton of money, right? Yeah. Yeah. So they got this big Google grants to do it because they're not only doing, they're not only just making this product, but they're trying to, they're trying to incorporate. Um, so they're going to log data so that you can monitor how they're using the wheelchair so that you can help with their, um, rehabilitation or with their, uh, with their motor control development or whatever. And they're doing, um, the other, like the things that you would never think of is if you have an electric wheelchair, you basically have to have a $40,000 minivan to wheel it into. Whereas with this thing, you can just pop off it and fold up the wheelchair and fold up the wheelchair and then throw the, throw the motor system in your car. I mean, it's going to be heavy, but it's not going to be, you don't need a different vehicle to get it around. Yeah.

Dave Young: Uh, I did see it maker fair. I saw someone actually, it was just, it was a manual wheelchair, but then it was actually someone in the back was on one of those mono wheels and they were pushing someone around. It was great. I mean, it was same idea.

Chris Gammell: Mine makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think this is going to be, this is going to be a big deal for a lot of people, not just for the accessibility of being able to get one, but, um, for people interacting with them and trying to teach them how to, how to, uh, move around the world in a better way. Uh, it's, it's going to be, I think it's going to be a really good thing.

Dave Young: So I'm really excited about that project. So, so what, what are the challenges then? Cause I mean, we, we shouldn't be like, uh, you know, we, we know why they're $10,000, right? One reason is, is insurance. And another reason though is regulations, right? So what, I mean.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And volume, I think volume is another big problem and customization. Like how many of those very customized systems are you going to build in a year? Probably not that many. You think that motorized wheelchairs are super customized? Like, uh, well it's, um, one application and everything's designed just for that one thing. Uh-huh. I see. So, um, you know, all the brackets, all everything on there. Um, and there's multiple different models. So you might have variation, but you're not going to get, not going to get like the, the great volume that you would hope for.

Dave Young: Right. Well, I guess that's another industry too, where you're not going to have a lot of new entrants in the industry. So there's not going to be a ton of competition, right? Because it, like, who's going to start from scratch and be like, oh, we'll build an exactly, you know, a new entrant to the motorized wheelchair market is probably very low. So they can keep prices high.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you have people starting to get on it. Like China, you can buy a wheelchair online and it's way cheaper and it ships to you. But, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's probably one of those old industries that hasn't yet, um, realized the benefits of low cost products. Right.

Dave Young: So probably another thing too, though, is like, I think about the, I mean, motorized wheelchairs have been around for a long time, but they sure as heck didn't have lithium batteries to start with. Right. They probably had lead acid. Yeah, for sure. You needed the infrastructure to actually hold those huge batteries that actually existed, especially in ready quantity. And now, I mean, lithium's dropping through the floor, right? Well, not the element, but the batteries.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Right. And the other thing is it makes it, you can all, you can also have like way smaller, way lighter. Everything gets, everything gets better when you start designing something from scratch like that. And I think they're going to, they're going to benefit a lot from those benefits.

Dave Young: Yeah. So you get to do control system stuff too, huh?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Um, although we'll see, we're still kind of framing up the project and it's right now it's in like how we're going to develop it and stuff like that. Uh, so there's, there's not a lot that we have like exactly defined with the product development. Um, so I can't really talk too much about that, but, uh, that's okay.

Dave Young: Yeah. Basically, I mean, I assume anything with wheels these days pretty much has a control system. You're definitely going to have a control system.

Chris Gammell: You're definitely going to have a motor controller. You're definitely going to have a joystick. Yeah. So it'll be neat. But I bet you, you know, I bet you it'll be, um, if you rip this thing apart and you rip, uh, a hoverboard apart, I bet they would look very similar, at least electronics wise. Yeah. Hopefully the fire is not the thing. Yeah. No fires, way bigger battery, um, better range, slower speeds, but more torque, stuff like that.

Dave Young: Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yep. Just customized for the application. That makes a lot of sense. That's great. No, that's, that's a really great project. Uh, okay. So let's get to the other thing that we should definitely be talking about. But you, uh, let's see. So you have a course where you teach people how to build electronics. Hmm. Where did you come up with that idea, Dave?

Chris Gammell: I bet you're burning. I think, uh, I think contextual electronics came out after Blue Stamp Engineering. It totally did, actually. Uh, yeah. So Blue Stamp Engineering is a program I started with, uh, another college buddy, Robin. Um, and we each have our own independent motivations for it. But in, in short, I was like, this is crazy that I've interviewed. Cause when I work with startups, oftentimes they're like, Hey, great. Thanks. Can you help us hire a full-time electrical engineer? And so I help them hire this guy and I interview all these people and I'm like, how many people get an engineering degree and haven't built a single thing? Yeah. How is this, how is this like reasonable? So, um, and it's not, in my opinion, it's not the college is doing a bad job. I think it's the students in college don't know how to allocate their time and make sure they have availability to actually build stuff, whether it be for themselves. I might contest you on that, buddy. Really? I don't know. I mean, there's, like, there's so many resources, even me going to college. There's so many resources, so many clubs I could have joined, so many projects, so many labs I could have taken advantage of. Maybe. Uh, but instead I decided to do my homework and, well, I took a bunch of lab courses and I got to build stuff in there, but still, like, I could have spent less time at the bar and more time in the lab.

Dave Young: Well, yes, college. Right. No, I think, though, but, uh, but you and I both did co-ops, too. I mean, that is, I mean, honestly, that's the reason I chose Case. Yeah. That is exactly what I targeted. Yeah. I didn't care about anything else, really. I mean, the money was nice, but that was not the final determinant. I mean, it was, it was the co-op thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but there's so many people that, there's that, like, that exists as an opportunity for students and for some reason they don't take the school up on it. So.

Dave Young: Oh, yeah, that's, that was one that always bugged me. It was just like, what?

Chris Gammell: So, it's not like the, the college curriculum I don't think needs to be disrupted or anything. The college experience doesn't need to be changed. I mean, the students need to know they need to take those extra opportunities. So, we started to think, like, well, let's do this in high school when so many high school students are like engineers. They just do math and physics problems. And it's like, well, I do sometimes. But that's not, that's not what I do all day. Like, I don't sit in math class the same way you do and solve problems. So, like, let's show high school students basically the light at the end of the tunnel, which is the joy of creating something new. Let's figure out a way so they can get, like, the, oh, my God, this works. And I made it. Like, that experience. If we can get them signed up to that experience, that'll, that'll drastically change what they define as what they want to do with their free time. Yep. So, yeah, we started this program where basically they, they applied again. You got to apply because we give them a lot of independence. But they apply, they get in, and then we help them find a project that fits for them. And we have, like, a bunch of projects, like 130 projects they can pick from or they can design their own. And basically, they, they pick a project. They decide what parts they, they think they need. We kind of help them figure out what those are. We order them all. And then the first day, all we do, we, we just build. Like, within an hour of them showing up, they're in front of a solder and working. And for the remainder of the six weeks, they're coming in, and they're doing whatever they have to do in order to get their project to work. That's awesome.

Dave Young: Yeah. Yeah. So, you said the, the, so the first day kind of thing, like, they start with a kit, too, right? Just to get that hands-on kind of stuff?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. There's, like, there's, like, tiers, I guess, that they go up. So, we give them a starter, we call them a starter project, which is basically like a SparkFun kit. So, they can understand, like, okay, this is a resistor. This is how I solder. I'm using this tool safely. I'm taking a video. I'm going to post it on my, every, every one of our students get a webpage. So, we get them posting on the web immediately. So, they get kind of in tune with what we do at BlueStamp when it's not really a technical challenge. And then they move on to their main project. And oftentimes, their main project is something from Instructables or Hackster.io or whatever. Something that exists already and is at least somewhat documented. And so, they build that. And we try and target so that, like, after three weeks, they've finished creating, recreating what somebody else has already done. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's a challenge for a high school student just to get to that point.

Dave Young: So, not just high school students. Hey, man. Yeah, anybody, right? To recreate something complicated.

Chris Gammell: It's a big deal. So, and then after they get that, the real magic happens. And we're saying, okay, you built that. Now, what do you want to do with it? So, they've got under their belt the experience of how to build this thing. And they know the ins and outs of whatever platform it's using, whether it be Arduino or Particle or MSP430, whatever. They know the ins and outs. And they kind of have thought about it for a few weeks on, like, if I was doing this, I would change it in this way. Yeah. And then they get to go and innovate on the project and make it new or do something that's totally never been done before. Mm-hmm. And that's... That's got some unique flavor. Yeah, exactly. Make it their own kind of thing. And that's where they get, you know, that's where they get the depth of their project. Because you can build something on Instructables. And if it's, like, a well-documented Instructable, it's not super hard. It's like a lab. Yeah. It's like a lab. It's like following a lab in school. Yeah. So, we instead have them change it. And so, you can get away with not understanding a bit of code after building an Instructable. And it involves code because they publish it. Yeah. But you cannot modify that system without learning stuff about the firmware. Right. So, they get this chance. And the other really neat thing about Blue Stamp is we hire... We have a three-to-one student-to-staff ratio. Yeah. Because each student has, like, a customized project. So, we need a lot of experienced people. And we get these staff members who have built really cool stuff in the past. And they're excited about electronics. And they're excited about mechanics. And they're excited about teaching kids. Yeah.

Dave Young: You're sourcing mostly... These are, like, college students, like, on break kind of thing? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Usually, like, graduate students. Sometimes, undergraduate students. But people who are... Anybody who's built cool stuff, we want them on staff. And excited about it. So... Yeah.

Dave Young: People like... So, Jeremy was an instructor at one point. Yeah. Jeremy Blum.

Chris Gammell: Jeremy Blum. I was just hanging out with him the other night. He actually came to Blue Stamp to speak. We have speakers come in and talk about their careers so that students can kind of see what's going on. Yeah. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Yeah. Yeah. But anyways, Jeremy came in. And I was chatting with him. And he's exactly the type of person we like to hire. Because he's just so excited. You can tell. You watch one video of Jeremy's. And you're like, wow, this guy not only really likes electronics, he really likes to teach people about it.

Dave Young: Right. Exactly. Yeah. And that's a big piece, too. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, we get guys like that. And then... And they've never built anything our students have built. Ever. Right.

Dave Young: So, they're starting from the same footing, but maybe a little bit more background.

Chris Gammell: And it's amazing what happens when a student says, hey, I don't understand what's going on. This thing's not working and I don't get it. Can you tell me what's happening here? And the staff member says, man, I don't know. But I'll show you what I would do if I were you. Yeah. Like the confidence that builds in the student when they're like, wow, this guy's been building like 10 things and he doesn't even know what's going on. And he seems comfortable with the fact that he doesn't know what's going on. Yeah. That's a good point. That's okay. I can do it. And then the student gets to learn like alongside the staff members. Like, well, you could try looking here, here, here. And the student goes off and does that. And they understand what works, what doesn't work. And they learn like the general troubleshooting technique. Yeah. As opposed to somebody being like, oh, just flip this bit and you're good.

Dave Young: Right. Right. Because then it's just another, you know, chunking through instruction. Right. Yeah. Versus figuring stuff out. Yeah. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about it like that. Because that's, I mean, that's like if you ever have an intern working with your co-op as well. That's like a lot of times they ask me something. I don't know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's really important. I found it's really important as an engineer to tell people straight up, I don't know. Yeah. I have no idea. And I'd be comfortable with that. It's okay. We're doing something new. So I don't know what we should do about that.

Dave Young: Yeah. Ego is a big problem.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Young: Great for sales though. Great for sales. Right. Engineers are, I don't know how to do that. Yeah. Sales is, you may not know how to do that, but I can sell you services to help you do that. Right.

Chris Gammell: Or they sit there and they're like, oh, it's too bad. I just told somebody last week that you've already done it three years ago. Yeah. That's very true.

Dave Young: So people can see some of these things that they're actually doing too. So like, so what are the, what are the projects that some of these kids are doing?

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. That's the best part. And right now the electronics and mechatronics and robotics and all that, that field is so dynamic right now. It's crazy that every year we have to add projects to keep up with all the neat stuff that's coming out. So like a new project, a new favorite project of mine, which I'm still not sure how it's going to turn out. It was on Hackster, but basically they take a particle photon and the Google VR glasses, the cardboard box. Oh yeah. Yeah. Google. And an accelerometer that I think is integrated in the particle. And you wear the glasses and you have a VR lightsaber. Oh, that's fun. Right. So you, you hold, you hold this, which is basically like a lipstick battery charger for your phone, which is a power source for the photon. Oh, nice. So you, that's like your base of your lightsaber and you've got that thing. And you know, what would be really neat is if you can get two of them. Yeah. Force feedback kind of thing. And yeah. And they would, it would, it would, yeah, there's, there's so much cool stuff. I cannot wait for that project to come to fruition.

Dave Young: That sounds really cool. I mean like, yeah. VR is obviously a huge, huge new area and that's, that's a great one too, because it's pretty accessible. I mean, I mean, probably the phone is probably the most expensive part of that, but to be honest, a lot of kids have that these things.

Chris Gammell: Well, first they always want to use their own because they have great phones, but you can get the Android, Android phone for like 40 or 50 bucks at Best Buy, like a pay as you go Android phone and you don't have to get service or anything. You just give me the phone. Nice. Yeah. Everything is so cheap. It's, it's, it's bizarre.

Dave Young: So we should mention that too. So speaking of money, this is actually a paid course. So how does, how does that all work out?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So when we started it, we were like, how can we make the most awesome thing ever? And so we designed it. And then the question was how, how much do we have to charge in order to make sure that this doesn't turn into, um, us losing our shirt every time we want to offer it. So it's, um, yeah, there's tuition. It ranges from 3,500 bucks to four grand to come. Um, but with that you get to buy, we buy all the tools and parts. And what's really neat is the students that finished stuff early. We just keep buying parts for them until the program ends. So if you, if you find something that's like, Hey, I figured this out that my whole main project can be completed in three days. Uh, it's like, awesome. That sounds great. Let's, let's figure out some modifications and buy you more parts. What do you want to do? You want to put GPS on that or something? Uh, so, um, we, we, we have the ability to do that and make sure. The other thing is we treat all of the students like they work in an engineering department. So if they break apart or whatever, it's not like, well, that was your part time to go home. It's like, all right, we'll get you a new one. And if it's at the end of the program, we'll ship it next day because you need that part like right now. Yeah, that's good. So in order to, in order to treat them like, uh, they're in an engineering department in a real R and D setting, uh, yeah, you need a lot of support. You need a lot of parts. You need a lot of tools and all that stuff gets, gets pretty crazy.

Dave Young: Yeah. I, I, I kind of, I, I remember when you first told me about this too, and this started what 2011? 2011 was our first year. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I kind of balked at that. Like who would even pay for that? But then when you start comparing it to like, you know, summer camps, I mean, like summer camps are not cheap. Uh, you are going to, uh, you know, some more affluent areas, but you also have scholarships and stuff like that so that there are, you know, it's accessible to, to just about anyone. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. We have, we have a scholarship program and we, it's our goal. We haven't hit it, not by any stretch of the imagination because our scholarship fund isn't that great. But, um, our scholarship fund would target nobody not being able to come for reasons of, for financial reasons. Um, but we do, we spend a lot of money helping people out that can't pay for it. Uh, we do have a policy where they, everybody's got to pay something. Um, right. So it's getting in the game kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. We, we've noticed that the students in some circumstances, students have come and not have to pay anything and we notice it's very common for them to take a different attitude. Yeah. Uh, and actually the students that do their own financial aid, they all oftentimes fundraise or get a job or do something else to advocate for themselves. Uh. And they get a way better experience than the ones that can just write a check. Uh, because in like two years, they're going to have to go to college and they're going to have to raise way more than four grand. Uh, and to get that experience and understand that like people really do want to help you, but you have to show them certain things to make sure they don't feel like they're just throwing their money away. Right.

Dave Young: And I think, I mean, just the whole skin in the game thing too. Like if you, you know, you'll just get, you will get more out of it. I mean, it's like I said, it's the money stuff. People are going to balk at that. And I did too, you know, like, but I think it's, man, it's when you realize the value of what you're getting and why it's important and all that other stuff, like it, there's, there's something there. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's, it's, it's tough because it's like a mental block when people hear 3,500 bucks. I think that's a lot of money. Um, it is a lot of money. Uh, but when you like, it's a long program. So we're four and a half hours a day for six weeks. I think that works out to like 135 hours. And you're, you're talking about paying, uh, like 35 or 40 bucks an hour, which is far cheaper than tutoring. We include parts and it's still a three to one student to staff ratio. Right. Uh, so, you know, to me it seems like it's a deal. And a lot of people come up to me and they're like, you can offer this. This kind of program at this price. Uh, and yeah, we're, we're, we're still quite efficient. Like this is not a fat cat operation by any stretch of the imagination. It's a very lean, it's a very lean run organization. So, um, yeah, it's, I think we're doing a good job, but, uh, it's, it's still a struggle to, to have parents like sign on to this idea of this, this price tag.

Dave Young: Right. Well, the other tough thing is that like, I mean, so you, people could say, oh, can we do it shorter? Right. It's like, man, at a certain point. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So we have a two week program that we offer, which is a shorter version. Um, it's not usually the people that, that have financial issues, although sometimes it is, but it's usually the people that have other stuff going on. Cause the type of student that is doing what we do, they're usually like really motivated. Like, yeah, I want to do that. And I want to do music camp and I want to do space camp and I want to do like, right. They want to do all this cool stuff, which is great to have them in the interest. But, uh, we have this two week program, but I like to tell people it's like an exponential curve. Um, day one is a great day to learn a lot of things. Day 29 is way, way better for learning because you're already into the tool sets. You already understand how your project kind of works and you can tinker around and invent and innovate in ways that you can't in those first two weeks. So it's, it's, it's a great program for the first couple of weeks. But, uh, the six week program is designed to be that long for a reason. Like it's, you get a lot done in six weeks.

Dave Young: Yeah, no, that's, I mean like what's almost sounds like three, three separate projects. You know, if you count the second iteration as like a, another project because you can add, add on to stuff, add their own flavor. Yeah. Things like that.

Chris Gammell: And we're doing a lot of that work ahead of time too. So like the parts are there on day one. So like all your planning's already done. So it's really, it's a really pretty intense program. It's focused. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Young: Um, so 2011. So now, okay. So first off again, let's go back and what are the, what are the ages of like, what is the youngest and the oldest that you usually have people in the program?

Chris Gammell: Uh, so we take any high school age. Sometimes we take, uh, some middle school students, but we like to tell them that our admissions requirements aren't relaxed because they're younger. Uh, and we can deal with like the, the people we take, uh, any high school age, but really what we're looking for is, um, that they want to be there first. Yep. That they have some plan or at least they put some idea into what they want to do when they're older. Um, it could be anything, but we want to make, see that they're actually thinking that way. Uh, and we also ask them about times in the past where they've had to exhibit perseverance. Like our application is pretty long, but it basically boils down to those three questions. Yeah. Um, and it's interesting because we get these students, like obviously we get these very strong students who get A's and everything and they've done all this cool stuff. We, like we get a lot of those high aptitude students, but we get some students who come in with like a 2.0 GPA, uh, and they talk about all the stuff that they've tried before and they talk about being persistent. They get in and they come in and they do an awesome job. Like they just want to build cool stuff. Right.

Dave Young: Cause they might not be great at testing or anything like that.

Chris Gammell: Or sitting in a classroom and being talked to or doing homework. Like all that stuff doesn't speak to them, but sitting in front of projects does. And we've had multiple parents be like, send us emails, be like, he totally gets it now. He'll actually pay attention to class. He understands why he needs good grades. Uh, he's, he's doing much better this year. Uh, this is great. Like it really has shown him what it means to build that foundation. So we, we like to, we like to accept people that are a little more textured for lack of a better word. Uh, textured. Yeah. They've, they've got a little, they've got a little flavor to them. That's, they're not just like, you know, Ivy league material or whatever. Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. We like, we like to accept a bunch of, a wide variety of people. The only thing we can't put up with is when a student's like, I don't even care anymore. I don't want to do it.

Dave Young: Right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Young: You know, that's any, any, any kind of, uh, activity, I suppose. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, you can send a kid like that to like sports camp and they'll just come back the next day and they'll probably be okay. But when they come back the next day to blue stamp and their project still doesn't work and they're like, I still hate this. Right. Yeah. I don't want to do this anymore. Uh, so that, that, that's really what we're trying to filter out.

Dave Young: You know, what you should do is you should have a program where you, you teach them that when, when that happens in engineering, what you do is you go chug some coffee and then everything is okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I was just having this conversation with a staff member of mine about Red Bull. Yeah. Everything's the same, but faster. Yeah. So you'll get through the nasty parts much quicker, or at least it'll seem that way. Yeah.

Dave Young: You won't remember any of it. Yeah. You'll just be racing through life. Uh, that's great. So, okay. So, uh, 2011 is when it started, have you heard from, do you still hear from them? I mean, like the, the kids that are, I mean, so some of them must be in college, midway through college. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So we hear from a bunch of our students first, because we always tell them since we get to know them so well, uh, we can write really great recommendations. Like, it's not like he did this, he did a good job. We like to get into specifics. We write recommendations. Like I saw this student legitimately struggle when he was trying to implement this one thing. And I was really impressed with how he responded with in this way. Um, because that's what college admissions counselors really want to hear is they want to know, like they want to get to know a student and will they be able to deal with the rigor? Uh, so we hear back from them when they're looking for college admission stuff. Uh, we have, they have their websites and they inevitably they come back in when they're trying to apply to colleges and they spruce it up a little bit. Uh, uh, and then we, we send out a survey like every year being like, Hey, where are you? Where are you in life? Is there anything cool going on? Let us know. Um, yeah. And then we have, we have a LinkedIn group for our alumni where they can connect with other people. So like we have a bunch of kids going to MIT. So whenever, really? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So whenever we have a student that's looking at MIT, we're like, Oh, log on a LinkedIn group and see who's there. Maybe they can meet you for coffee. Uh, and they can, you know, they can bond over like the, the blue stamp struggles, the blue

Dave Young: stamp mafia.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's exactly right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Young: That's great, man. Yeah. Yeah. That's so like, so like 2011, let's see. So if they were juniors or seniors that year, they're probably pushing towards graduation, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Pretty soon. I think we're going to get this year. I think we're going to get our first student leaving college.

Dave Young: That's awesome.

Chris Gammell: In 2011.

Dave Young: And have any of them come back as instructors?

Chris Gammell: Many, um, many people come back as instructors and we really like to hire, uh, past students cause it's, it's the way we teach is very different from normal, uh, education. So when we have students that have already performed well as a student, like they understand how it goes and they, they can, they kind of visualize it. Yeah. We love, we love bringing our past students back in.

Dave Young: Yeah. I should, I guess a little bit more about your past, right? You, you grew up as a, as a camp counselor. This is like a perfect merging of your, of your skills as well, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's funny cause so much, uh, there are so many parallels between aquatic camp where, uh, I worked. Yeah. It was so great. It was like all boats all the time. Everything on the lake. Boats, boats, boats. Yeah. It was the best camp ever.

Dave Young: Nah. Also noticed Dave is very tan individual after summer, every summer. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That was great. Man, nothing better than playing with boats all day.

Dave Young: And well, maybe electronics, but, uh, why not electronic boats, electricity, water, man. It goes great together. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We've got a hovercraft project that.

Dave Young: Oh, nice. That's great. Is it the one where like they, uh, they have like a lawn chair and like the, uh, just an RC.

Dave Jones: That'd be cool to do a lawn chair operation. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I wonder how big the motor would have to be.

Dave Young: No, you can use a, you can use a, I've seen it where you use a leaf blower and basically you make a wood platform, you make like a plastic skirt. Oh yeah. And then, and then you blow the leaf blower down and then that blows up the, the, that'd

Chris Gammell: be awesome. Do you remember looking at like, it's really hard to steer. There's a bunch of YouTube videos. Do you remember looking at like popular signs where they had that build your own hovercraft kit where it was like a three platform thing? This is when I was like eight and I used to think that was the coolest thing ever. And everybody I tried to get to help me buy one, they're like, that's never going to work.

Dave Young: Yeah. That's probably because of where it was advertised. It was like the last page. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: The black and white pages by build your own hovercraft. I was like, I want my own hovercraft. Yeah.

Dave Young: That's, that's because it also, that right next to it was the ad for build your own lightsaber. You do remember those two, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The hat and the x-ray glasses. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Young: So they weren't wrong in telling you that it's never going to work. Yeah, that's true. They should have said, now go design your own. Yeah. Right. Right. Go figure it out.

Chris Gammell: Here's a leaf blower. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Young: Be safe. So how big do you want this to get? I mean, like, so you're in four cities now. You've been some more cities. You've tried out other cities, but now you're in what, what cities are you? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So it's New York, Denver, San Francisco, and Palo Alto. Okay. I'm actually in our Palo Alto location today. Okay. Yeah. So we're trying to grow it. The thing is, is it's, it's tough to, we're looking at ways that we can bring somebody in, maybe full time, maybe half time or something to help us run the, like help us run the New York operation and basically be a high level person. But if we're having a hard time finding candidates, it would be a good fit. And I understand it's like, I think the real problem is we don't exactly know. There's so many things that could work. It's hard to write a job posting.

Dave Young: Right. Well, not to mention it's, I mean, it's, there's a lot of the year that's not super active, right? Right. So there's like a summer thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. So it would almost be like a lifestyle job where you would work not at all in the fall or maybe light in the fall and then you'd work pretty hard from January through the program finishing in August. So, and then the other question is like, how many students do we need to get in order to support a full time staff member or even a half time staff memory? But I think that's our next step is to bring somebody else in because Robin and I run it and like, we're the ones that bounce around all over the place, making sure everything's going just right. Even though our staff is like really great, many of them haven't done it before. So there's guidance and everything. So yeah, I think, I think the next step is that.

Dave Young: You're creating that work culture you talked about before too, right? That's kind of an important thing here, right? Yeah. You're an employer, you know? I know.

Chris Gammell: I know. It's crazy. So we want to make sure that we're, you know, the quality is more important than the quantity. And so we're, we're kind of trying to figure out, you know, if we can find a really, so if anybody listening wants to get involved with Blue Stamp, especially in like the New York City area or the, the Bay area, uh, we, we love to have you come out and chat and, and, uh, even see the program. We, we have people coming in to visit the program all the time because what we're doing is pretty weird.

Dave Young: Right. So we should, that, that is the thing I said to be back to too. So you have people, I've actually come and given a talk, but I know lots of people who've come in basically kind of talk about what they're doing, what they're working on, that kind of stuff. So what should people do if they want to, if they're interested in doing that kind of thing in these four locations? Yeah. So we can still do it this summer, right? I mean, you're still looking for that?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, absolutely. So we're, we're, um, we, we bring in guest speakers. So like Chris has come in and Sophie's coming. A lot of your, a lot of your guests have come in. I got Mike Osmond coming in in a couple of weeks.

Dave Young: Oh, nice. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So we get a bunch of people that are, that are signed up, come in and basically what we're trying to do is find engineers who, um, have a neat path that they followed to explain to the students all the many things you can do with an engineering or a technical background. Uh, yeah. So we've got, uh, we've got these guest speakers coming in to kind of inspire students to see all the cool stuff that they can do when they're, um, when they're looking at a career in engineering. And so we're looking for people now that would be like good at talking to people. And really it's pretty, it's pretty laid back. You just have to come in and basically inspire them for 15 minutes about like, this is the coolest stuff I do. And then the students ask them questions for 15 minutes. Cause inevitably when they show like demos or whatever, uh, the students want to talk more about them.

Dave Young: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Young: All right, man. Well, Hey, uh, this has been great talking to you. Of course you and I talk a lot, but, uh, I'm glad that we finally got you on the amp hour and got to hear about your program and your consulting stuff. And then where can people find more of you?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, you know, I got the two sides. I've got, um, youngcircuitdesigns.com. If you want to check out the consulting stuff and then bluestampengineering.com. And there's like the projects and all that kind of cool stuff available on there. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Young: And you can actually see some of the student, uh, documentation, which is really cool to

Chris Gammell: see. You click on the students stuff. You can see all of our students from the past and they have videos and documentation. It's really great. Um, and then you can, I suppose you can tweet at me cause I know Twitter is a favorite of yours, Chris. Uh, you can catch me Dave young EE or a blue stamp eng is the blue stamp engineering one. Uh, yeah. So find me anytime. I always love to talk about both projects and education. So I love it all.

Dave Young: Awesome. Well, thanks for being on buddy and, uh, we'll talk soon.

Chris Gammell: Sounds great.