#314 – An Interview with Josh Lifton

Josh Lifton: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, recorded September 7th, 2016. Episode 314, an interview with Josh Lifton.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Josh Lifton: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. And I'm Josh Lifton from CrowdSupply.

Chris Gammell: Welcome, Josh. Where are you calling in from? I'm sitting in a small windowless room filled with... Are you tied up right now? No, no, I am in a chair. And I did drag the chair menacingly across the floor to sit in it.

Josh Lifton: Be an entrepreneur, they said. It's so glamorous, they said.

Chris Gammell: And now I'm surrounded by cardboard boxes. I'm in the warehouse portion of the CrowdSupply headquarters office in Portland, Oregon. Nice. That's great.

Dave Jones: Tell us all about CrowdSupply, because that's your main thing, right? We'll get into some other stuff you do, but that's your day job.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. So CrowdSupply is a product launch platform for open hardware, mostly. We've been around for about three and a half years. At its core is a crowdfunding piece of it. It's very similar to Kickstarter, Indiegogo, but we only do products. And I'd say 90% of what we do is open in some way or another. And we do all these services around it. So it's very curated, and we help the projects along once we decide to work with them. So we do fulfillment. That's why I'm sitting in a warehouse. We do marketing. We actually sell the products afterward. The warehouse I'm sitting in right now is actually products that we've bought and continue to sell because they succeeded, as opposed to the ones that we ship for creators for crowdfunding.

Josh Lifton: Oh, so it goes past the event horizon of delivery, huh? Yes. Delivery is the beginning for us. Okay. I didn't actually realize that. That's really great. And does everybody choose to do that, or how does that work? Because I'm sure Dave's going to talk about his experience with this stuff, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, almost everyone does. We essentially become their first reseller. Right. And almost everyone chooses to have us fulfill their pledges as well because we have all the order information. We don't need to ask anybody anything. We just send it out. There's shipping confirmations, order confirmations, et cetera. And then there's customer support all around that. So returns and things like that we deal with as well. Oh, wow.

Dave Jones: See, I wouldn't have realized that looking at your crowd supplier website, it's like you go on there and yeah, it looks like Kickstarter. It looks like Indiegogo. It doesn't, even if I go into browse, it still looks like it's, you're not kind of selling the product. It's right. Is that something deliberate or?

Chris Gammell: Somewhat. When we launched, Kickstarter and Indiegogo were already well known among most of the crowd that we're interested in. So we had to follow suit in some ways. And honestly, they did a lot of things right. We launched not because we were bringing anything new to the user experience on the website necessarily, although there is some of that. But really because, you know, we're product designers and engineers ourselves and we saw this looming disaster of non-delivery. No.

Josh Lifton: No, we've never. We've never seen this. I don't know. We'll go back to the archives. We'll get our intern on it.

Chris Gammell: So, you know, the thing we're most proud of and most sticklers about is, you know, creators shipping product to their customers. And so far, 100% of our creators have or they're on track to do so.

Dave Jones: 100%? Every one of them?

Chris Gammell: Yep. Every single one.

Dave Jones: So you haven't had a single failure?

Chris Gammell: Nope. Well, you know, people fail to raise money. Oh, right. Of course.

Dave Jones: Once they raise the money, they've all delivered. Is that because you vet them better or because you help them out afterwards or a combination of both?

Chris Gammell: It's exactly those two things. Right. There's a two-sided coin, right? There's the selection process, which is very much like a mini, you know, mini investor or angel sort of vetting process. In fact, I think we do more vetting than a lot of angels do. Oh, that's a bold claim, huh? So how do you do that?

Dave Jones: How do you go through the process? Well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So that's kind of part of our secret sauce. Happy to talk about it, of course. But, you know, there's vetting on one side. And, you know, we say no to a whole lot of people. That's over 90%.

Dave Jones: 90%?

Chris Gammell: Probably.

Dave Jones: Wow. Okay.

Chris Gammell: And that's actually going down now, thankfully, because I think creators are realizing what they need to come to us with. But it's still a huge, huge, you know, vast majority.

Dave Jones: So would you have people that got rejected and then went away and then came back and got their act together? Yep. Yeah?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, absolutely. And when we say no, we say no, we give reasons, right? And we give suggestions like, this won't work because of this and you should try this instead. And if you do want to do that, come back to us and we can talk about it.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: And there are people who do come back and we'd love to see that. I mean, that shows a lot of gumption and, you know, we like working with people like that.

Dave Jones: Why don't you advertise this stuff on your website or if I just not found it? It's like I would plaster 100%, you know, completion rate. Ah, take that, Kickstarter.

Chris Gammell: You know, like I'd be... You and my board have a lot in common. Oh, right.

Josh Lifton: Okay. For a site about promotion, your self-promotion might need a little work, I got to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.

Chris Gammell: So, we do try to do that. You know, we like to keep it focused on the actual projects. And honestly, projects, it's a social network, right? You see a project that was successful, you respect that project or that creator. And then when it's time for you to have your turn being the creator, you'll come to us. And that's mostly where we get... Okay. It's a lot of word in mouth. So, actual advertising.

Josh Lifton: You do put it on the site, though, too. I just... We do. Dave, you got to go to the launch page. That's what it really is. Oh, launch page. So, it's there. It's just not the front page.

Chris Gammell: Well, on the front page, I think it compares us directly to Kickstarter. Yeah, but that's about funding. That's about funding.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because from the front page, I would not notice anything different. I'd just go, oh, yawn. It's another crowdfunding site. You know, like...

Chris Gammell: Well, I will take that to heart. Yeah. Expect it to be changed soon.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Josh Lifton: All right. Feedback. Nice. Yeah. User testing on the NBR. I was looking for it. Yeah. So, what are the nature of the projects? I mean, so, some of the people, I'm guessing, will know, like, Bunny's project was on there. But is it just the big stuff like that? Or what's... Give us kind of like an idea. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, we've done everything from a couple hundred dollars, right, of funds raised to, you know, close to a million dollars. And we'll probably break the million dollar mark, you know, hopefully sometime soon. We have a couple projects in the pipe that might do that. But, you know, we're thrilled to, you know, sell things that are just like $15. But we also sell things that are $5,000. So, it's really a pretty broad spectrum. I think that the commonalities are that there's a community behind it, right? That it's some sort of... You're enabling that community in some way. And that it's actually a new cutting edge thing, right? And you could say that about a lot of different products. What you won't see is, you know, repackaged knockoffs and things like that. Oh, I see. Right. Someone just like doing a drop ship type. Yeah. Yeah. We're not that interested in that.

Josh Lifton: Wait, does this mean that you catch all of the bogus stuff too? Like you catch all the stuff that Dave likes ranting about?

Dave Jones: Oh, you should see my email box. The free energy campaigns and the... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've actually... Yeah, I've had a free energy guy. I've had several conversations with him.

Dave Jones: Which is unwinnable. Which is completely unwinnable.

Chris Gammell: It is, but I love talking to them. Oh, yeah, they're fun.

Josh Lifton: Where do you come from? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What happened to you? Why are you like this? So we see that a lot. I mean, I was joking today that we should start a question of the week or question of the month sort of feature where we post the most outlandish question that our creators get from the general populace. This month is about... I was going to say, do you have samples for us? Yeah. This month, I don't have the exact wording, but it was clearly somebody who kind of strung some words to it. English wasn't their first language, but they still had... It was coherent. It was talking about how do you bump electrons out of the inner shell of an app. It had nothing to do with this project. It was for the Novena campaign, actually. Wow.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Josh Lifton: Like, they had just gotten out of, like, high school chemistry class and they were like... I have no idea. I know this, man. Right. It's a Unix system. I know this. Right. Oh, goodness. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, going back to what you were asking about earlier, though, there's the two sides. There's the vetting and then there's what we do to actually help you once we do work with you. And most people we work with, it's their... They've not launched more than a handful of products. And this is usually their first campaign, actually, a crowdfunding campaign. And so, ideally, and usually, they're experts, deep domain experts in whatever it is that they're making. But most likely, they don't have the expertise of the logistics side of things or the marketing side of things or the sales side. The other pieces you need to actually launch a product, no matter what it is.

Dave Jones: I didn't hear manufacturing there, by the way.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We'll talk about that later, though, because that is a very big question. Right. Yes, that is a separate topic. So, we bring our experience to bear on those. We launched several hundred campaigns and we have witnessed many others. And so, that experience is, I think, added to the success of our creators.

Josh Lifton: That's good. So, how many partake in that? I mean, are a lot of people asking for help with the marketing or are they kind of doing it themselves? And then do you turn around and say, eh, we should really have that picture? I don't know. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, we do – we can do the whole gamut. We prefer to do just the bits and pieces that you need help with. And so, there are people who come and really all they want is the fulfillment. Like, that's their biggest worry. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Then there are people who their biggest worry is just the marketing. And then there are people who their biggest worry is making the video or the photography or the text. Right. And so, those are the big three. And we always glance over all of those things as well as the manufacturing plan. A lot of people come to us with manufacturing concerns. And in that case, we don't do manufacturing and we'd stay out of that for a reason. Because it sucks. Well, it's hard, right? Exactly. And if you go into manufacturing, you can only manufacture a very tiny sliver of the products that are out there. Yeah. Right. You're not going to manufacture everything under the sun. And we want to keep our range of products diverse enough, as diverse as it is now.

Dave Jones: You mentioned photography in there. I'm just having a look at your site. Sorry for the aside. Yeah. All of it looks very consistent. All these different projects, the photos are very consistent quality and look and feel.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That is deliberate, I'm assuming. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Hannah and Scott do a lot of work. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Oh, so you would ship them a prototype and you guys will photograph it? Yep. Oh, okay. That's how you get it looking. Consistent. Got it. That's nice.

Chris Gammell: And we'll just push back. We have a style guide, right? And it's there for a reason. And if you send us really crummy pictures, we're going to say this isn't good enough. Shot on your cell phone, yeah. Right, right. Why is your grandmother holding that? It's weird. Right. Yeah. And you're right. That really does matter. The visual aspect of it. You can't hold it and feel it typically, so you have to look at it.

Josh Lifton: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Does everyone have a video on there or can you do without it?

Chris Gammell: We always require a video. Right. And even if it's, you know, just essentially an animated slideshow, right? I mean, that can be really effective.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: If it's a good one, you wouldn't ever think of it as that. Right. But it might just be that.

Dave Jones: So will you guys shoot the, like, do a voiceover type thing to keep that consistent too? Or?

Chris Gammell: We will make videos. And we've gotten it down to an art. I mean, we've gone from concept to completely done and published in five hours.

Dave Jones: Nice.

Chris Gammell: Or less even. Yep. And the way we do that, you have to, voiceovers aren't part of that, first of all, because that's hard. As you know, audio equipment is hard and the right voice actor and you don't want the same actor for all the products. And so.

Josh Lifton: People can, like, rent our voices for, like, a thousand bucks an hour. It's super simple. It's just not cheap, you know? Right.

Dave Jones: People rent my voice. I'd have to charge them to take it. Yeah. That's a good point. Yep. Why?

Chris Gammell: So, you know, we have a formula that works pretty well and it's always around just showing the product. Right? There's no, none of this fluff about. Story. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Lifton: I mean, the story is important, but it should be about the product. If it's unique. I mean, if it's a unique story, that's good. Right. Like, Shapers. Did you see the Shaper release that happened a couple weeks ago? No, I didn't. Okay. So, like, that's, like, a tool that was released. But it was really nicely done. It was a very professionally done video. But, like, that probably cost them thousands and thousands of dollars. Right? Yeah. And that was, like, pro, like, there was people involved and there was actual storytelling there. Yeah. Versus breakout board or whatever's being sold. You know, like, yeah, it's just a scale difference. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: And, anyway, honestly, the story you're trying to tell and who you're telling it to matters, right? So, technical products to technical people have different requirements in the video than something else.

Dave Jones: Hang on. I've got a complaint. I've got a complaint.

Chris Gammell: Oh, good. No. I'm looking through the website. Dave Jones?

Dave Jones: I'm looking through the snickerdoodle. Actually, I just happened to pick a random project. The snickerdoodle. And you've got one of my thing I hate. As featured in. And then you plaster. Make. PC World. Hackaday. Electro. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. No, it just bugs me. Mainly because it, we've discussed this on this show before. That's what it's. Actually, he is on there.

Chris Gammell: Am I? Maybe? Not in that particular one, maybe. Oh, you in general. Oh, I am. Okay.

Dave Jones: Well, no, because it often, especially on Indiegogo, where they have these scam campaigns that, or, you know, campaigns that'll never work. That's one of the big things they plaster as featured in PC World or something. And it's like, oh, it's almost a hallmark of scammers. You know, it's like a, yep. Sorry. I couldn't agree with you more. I can't help associate that with scam projects because I've debunked so many scam projects. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, I completely agree with you. And I wish.

Dave Jones: But it works though, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, it, I actually don't think it has much of an effect on consumers. Right. I think that consumers, most people are like, I don't care. You know, I just want to see what it is. Right. You know? Right. Or they came from that site and they're like, yeah, I know. Right. Right. What it really has an effect on is the creator side. Right. And, and, and, you know, to be honest that most creators are not savvy marketers. And, and part of that is, you know, one of the, one of the, uh, corollaries of that is, is just that there's this very simplistic belief that, uh, about how marketing works and that, that it's, it's magic and it doesn't require a lot of hard work. Um, when in fact, none of those things are true. I mean, marketing is the same as it's been for thousands of years. Because crowdfunding is not new marketing. It's new way. It's a new way to mitigate risk. Um, yep. Yep. The marketing is the same, right? Like you have to tell a story to the right people at the right time.

Josh Lifton: And the way I say it is, uh, there's nothing harder than getting people to give a crap on the internet. Exactly. Yeah. As my, as my job dictates sometimes, uh, yeah, it sucks.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Josh Lifton: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I wish that people came from a more informed position. And frankly, I don't, I didn't know about this until I learned the hard way through crowd supply. So I'm not surprised that people don't know about it.

Josh Lifton: So circling back to the manufacturing real quick. Um, so, I mean, you have a hundred percent success rate aside from the, I mean, vetting, I mean, like how is it success rate or is it on time delivery as well? How does, how does that play out? Right.

Chris Gammell: So, so on time delivery, there are three kind of stages, right? Or, or quantum leaps in what makes a successful project or maybe four even there's, did you get the money? Right. Yep. Um, which is kind of what everyone's used to thinking and is not success by any means whatsoever. I think, uh, then there's, did you deliver the product when that's the, that's what we're talking about. The a hundred percent success rate. Did you ship a product to the people who bought it from you? And then there's the more nuanced version of that, which you just mentioned. And that on time delivery and not all of our products are on time. Right. And that's, that's just how manufacturing new products goes. I will say that they're, they're much more on time than, than other projects. Um, uh, but by no means are they all on time. And you haven't had any like flat out, we couldn't do this. No, no. Right.

Dave Jones: Which is what I'm surprised about because, you know, people still have to, A, get it manufactured. So there's all the manufacturing problems that there could be a hangup in manufacturing, but also the fact that, you know, it can physically deliver what they, a hundred percent of what they claim.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Now, there, there are, there's a small portion of some projects that end up giving a refund and it's to a very small number of backers. Right. And usually that's because a skew was cut. Yep. Um, because it, you know, it just didn't make sense to make one or two of these things. Right. Oh, okay. But still, that's not like, we couldn't do anything.

Josh Lifton: So here's all your money back. Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: That is a genuine fire. That's genuine. Not. Yeah. If all the money went back, you mean? Right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah. And I feel, I feel like that's, I consider that to be part of delivery. Like you just have to give everyone either their money back or, or their product, preferably their product. And if it's, you know, below like 95% or something of people getting their product, then that maybe that wouldn't be good. Um, but, but, and you'd be surprised. I mean, we've had, you know, a couple of projects had horrendous delays and I was really worried about it. And, you know, there's only so much we can do. Uh, but honestly, just talking to them, talking to the creators and telling, you know, reassuring them, like just telling them, listen, just talk to your audience, talk to the people who are backing you and explain what's happening and be surprised what comes out of the woodwork. And sure enough, a lot of times the solution doesn't come from the creator, it's him or herself, but from, from one of their backers. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Which is interesting. Um, so, so there's that, there's that level of success. And then there's ultimately what I think a lot of entrepreneurs, not all of them, uh, but a lot of them consider success is how much money did I actually walk away with at the end of the day? Once everything is said and done. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So do you have any data on that? Do people, do you do the creators feedback saying, Oh, look, I made 30% profit. Did they?

Chris Gammell: We don't, I mean, we don't have, uh, I don't have data to that specificity, but you know, there are people who are still making their products, you know, years later.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So they must be like companies. And they're at least breaking even, right? Yeah. They're certainly making money and, and we're still buying them and other people are still buying them. And, you know, they've, they've, they've used CrowdSupply as a stepping stone successfully to go off and, and become a bigger company. And that's, that's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Now I'm interested in the logistics side of things.

Josh Lifton: Um, as we talked about last time, Dave is in the throes of this right now. Yes.

Dave Jones: I mean, yes, I'm just setting up Amazon and international Amazon accounts and fulfillment by Amazon. And it's, um, it's kind of sort of working anyway. We should talk. Yeah. Um, now you do mention like, I presume the majority of customers are in the U S for you and you do sort of mention like international as like an, an aside, but for me, someone who's been, uh, shipping stuff for 20, I've been selling kits and stuff for 20 years. I sell into a hundred and I think it's 160 different countries. Wow. That's amazing. And that, and that is normal. That is, that seems normal. And have you found that's normal for your backers? Cause I'd be surprised if it's not.

Chris Gammell: Right. So we, I have to run the numbers, but we might actually have more international backers now than U S backers per project. And certainly for some projects it is more right. So for example, uh, the line SDR, which, which funded earlier this summer, um, has a couple thousand backers, uh, and only like 43%, I think we're from the U S.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Um, and that, that distribution is pretty predictable and pretty consistent along those types of projects. Um, similarly, I think that this year, um, it's either, it's right around half of our creators who've launched projects are from outside the United States.

Josh Lifton: Right. Oh, wow. Okay. That's great. That's great.

Chris Gammell: So we, we, the international audience is really important to us and, uh, you know, we, we try our best to, you know, we have a, a pretty smooth, uh, customs mitigation process. You know, we put the triplicate invoice on the outside and know which countries to do different things for and whatnot.

Dave Jones: So which, uh, shipping carriers are you using? Sorry, I'm getting very specific now. I'm nerding out over fulfillment. Sure, sure.

Chris Gammell: We use, um, regularly we use UPS and USPS. Um, now as, as you may remember now, a USPS to international is a whole can of worms. Yeah. For certain products, you know, UPS is okay, but really DHL is the only way to do certain things to certain countries. Yeah. Um, and then FedEx is, is something we, we also use.

Josh Lifton: Um, but I'd say the, the bulk of what we ship is USPS. Hmm. And this is all, yeah, I think I got my, uh, so I ordered Bunny's book, the, uh, guide to Shenzhen. Yeah. And, uh, that was USPS, I believe. And it showed up fine. It was in good shape and really fast too. It was like that day it said, it was like a day before it said it was going to get there or something. So yeah, that was nice. Yeah. So those were shipped to media mail within the U S. Oh, nice. So it saved even money then too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's that reduced rate. Yeah. Cool. That's great. Well, Dave will continue to geek out if we don't switch topics.

Chris Gammell: So, uh, yeah, there's tons of stuff to geek out on, on fulfillment and logistics.

Dave Jones: It's a crazy, dark world. You said before that majority of your, uh, majority of the, the creators probably want the fulfillment.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Cause they, they do, they deem that cause manufacturing is pretty relatively easy. Don't you dare say easy. Hey, when I was a boy. Son of a gun.

Josh Lifton: Don't you dare say easy. Mr.

Dave Jones: When can I say easier?

Josh Lifton: Nope. I'm just, why? I think you can say they both suck a lot, but I don't think you should compare them at all.

Dave Jones: One, one sucks less than the other. Okay. No, one does not suck less than the other.

Josh Lifton: I think it's just, they have their own unique challenges. They're both delicate, stinky flowers. How about that?

Dave Jones: So how does it work? Some, some creator gets their project approved. They go on there. It gets funding. They organize the manufacturer and then they bulk ship it to you guys in the U S and then. Yep. So what happens if you're, you know, they're obviously most 95%, I'm sure will be getting made in China probably. Right. So they're going to ship it from, no.

Chris Gammell: That's not true. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We, um, and it's, it's, that's, we're not, it's not something we're pushing necessarily, but, but we found that for the first batch, right? And you got to remember, this is, this is the first batch of a brand new product. It's not something that you've done 10 times before. Uh, but for the first batch, it's almost always better to, you know, do it somewhere where you can just walk down the street and see it. Right. Cause there are going to be problems, like you said. Um, now that said, we've had creators in India for, for example, the snap VCC, uh, product I love. Um, that's that one that goes like on top of a nine volt battery. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And outputs 3.3 and five volts, uh, really nicely designed. Um, you know, uh, the creators in India, he actually went to, um, Hong Kong and, and, uh, Shenzhen and visited, uh, seed studio and was on site for the, for the manufacturing. And he didn't have to do that, but he wanted to, it was like a vacation for him. Right. Right. And, uh, tourism sort of. Um, but there are other, you know, many other cases where people have come to us, uh, they've wanted our help in finding manufacturers close to us so that it could be all efficient and, you know, our shipping centers right here. And, um, in the end, you know, they do it locally and then just ship to us so they can over oversee the manufacturing. And I think that's probably the better way to go. Totally.

Josh Lifton: Cause I mean, the low volume stuff's always such a shit show of like costs and everything anyways. Like you're probably going to, like, you need to put that into your price in the first place to make sure that you're making enough money based on those low volume quotes. Yeah. And, um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Usually like, like it, it, it makes a lot of sense to basically break even on your first batch, do it the expensive way to validate the market and then use, you know, the, the, the expense that you didn't, or, you know, the efficiencies that you didn't take. And that's your margin once you go to volume. Right.

Dave Jones: Although it depends on the product. If you can make money, you'd certainly should shoot for that. Cause people will probably pay more than you think, especially if it's a niche. Yes. Product that nothing else is available. If it's just yet another, uh, uh, Arduino shield, you know, it's like your, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, we give the same exact advice. Like, uh, if you're, if you're competitive on price, then crowdfunding is not for you. Yes. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. So that'd almost be like an instant. Turn down. If you, if that would be a big, it would be a red flag. It'd be a red flag.

Chris Gammell: And we would address that right away. We, we, we would tell them. And a lot of people are very happy to hear that. They're like, Oh, right. I didn't know. Thank God. Yeah. I, I, I'm, I'm so glad I can, you know, and then they start thinking about the luxury market. And we love that we'd love to see a nice spectrum of, of, or a nice distribution of pricing from, you know, five bucks or whatever it is to, you know, several hundred or several thousand dollars. And, and if you're actually providing value in that, then, uh, chances are people are, somebody is going to buy each one of those.

Josh Lifton: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And we've seen that.

Josh Lifton: That's good. Do you, uh, do you vet them based on their price? So like, do you have like a guide, a guideline on price or? No. Okay. So.

Chris Gammell: I mean, there, there are all these like market. Yeah. You know, there are endless marketing tutorials about crowdfunding that tell you that, Oh, $36 and is the right price. Right. And like, what does that mean? Right.

Dave Jones: Surely you would have some sort of sniff test going like, Oh, this is, you know, we're going to charge a thousand dollars for it. And you'd go, Oh yeah. Come on. You know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And absolutely. I mean, if it's, uh, it doesn't, we have a lot of experience built up for that sniff test. Exactly. Right. Yeah. What is, what's the value here? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Would you find that the majority of your products are like, just like bare board, like kind of things, or are they highly, what percentage would be like highly product and polished in beautiful custom cases?

Josh Lifton: And closed and stuff. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of people who come to us with, um, with assembled PCBs, uh, and they just lack the, the experience or knowledge of how to make a nice enclosure. And that's one of the places where we're, we're pretty good at, at connecting people with, with custom enclosure people.

Dave Jones: Um, and that'd be much lower risk too. In terms of, no, in terms of actually delivering the product because the electronics works, the firmware works, everything's like, all it just needs is a spunky case. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Josh Lifton: Manufacturing's easy, right, Dave? That's right. Especially in plastic injection molding. I'm sure it's super easy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we've had stuff in plastic injection molded, but it's the, it's the, the small minority. Right. Usually it's, it's a CNC thing or something else.

Dave Jones: Because it's low volume and CNC makes sense at low volume and you charge you the premium price because it's niche and.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Right. It's probably, you know, it might be a nice material. The classic example of this is the Novena heirloom, right? The heirloom, Bunny wasn't planning on doing that, uh, originally. And we were worried, we hadn't seen his final enclosure yet. I mean, I think it turned out really, really well. Um, but we wanted a really nice enclosure. And so connected Bunny with, uh, Kurt Montweiler who, who did that. And yeah, he did, he made each one by hand, but like, that's a, an extreme version. And, but an example I point to a lot. People are willing to.

Josh Lifton: Josh, why is everything on your site in wooden enclosures? That's weird. Now you know. That's right.

Dave Jones: So people don't know that's Bunny's, uh, open source laptop. Yes. Yeah. Yep.

Josh Lifton: And that is shipped or no, it's already out. Yes. No, it's completely shipped. Yeah. I have not seen, I've seen Bunny's version. I never saw, I haven't seen the, uh, the produced ones in the wild though yet.

Dave Jones: Have, so do you know if that's still selling afterwards or has, has, or has the hype died down and.

Chris Gammell: Well, we, so we, we actually took over that product line. Um, right. Yeah. Uh, we, we bought him out of a bunch of inventory. Um, and we're selling, we're not selling the assembled, uh, desktop and laptop kits anymore, but we're selling almost everything you need to, to make your own. Right. From piecemeal.

Josh Lifton: Um, cool. Kind of like how like a drone sites kind of work, right? Where it's like, you can buy the propellers and whatever. Yeah. Piece it together yourself.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. So if you need the EDP cable or, or the LCD screen or whatever. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. The bezel. Um, yeah. So that's good.

Dave Jones: Sorry. Uh, no, continue. Cause I want to switch back.

Chris Gammell: Well, so yeah. So, and there's a couple other examples of that where, where a product was successful, you know, it delivered, uh, people were happy with it. And, but the creators, you know, didn't have the time, uh, or, or the motivation to continue the product. And so we've taken it on and, you know, it's still their product, but we're, we're basically running the supply chain now.

Josh Lifton: Oh, and how's that going?

Chris Gammell: It's going well. I mean, we only do that for products for which it makes sense, you know, and it's usually really obvious which ones those are. So, you know, if you know, there's one, uh, the snap VCC is a good example.

Josh Lifton: Um, and so when you say managing supply chain, are you guys actually doing all the, like the part swaps and stuff like that as, as things go obsolete or how does that work? Or is it just like cashflow? Like we pay the POs and they ship it directly to us. It's mostly a cashflow, right?

Chris Gammell: It's like, yes, we ordered another batch of 500 from seed or from whoever else. Yeah. And then do you, do you give the creators a cut after that fact?

Josh Lifton: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We usually enter an, enter an agreement, um, where it's like, we'll pay, you know, for every one of these that that's, uh, made, we'll, we'll give you a flat cut and we'll manage everything else.

Josh Lifton: No, that's, that's, that's a good deal. Cause I mean, like you said, a lot of the creators that are doing that are kind of onto the next thing or whatever. Right. Right. So that's, that's good for the market.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Back to logistics. You wanted to switch back to something? Oh yeah. Back to logistics.

Josh Lifton: Okay. Here we go. So hard.

Dave Jones: Um, uh, units that don't make it there units that are returned. Um, what's your rate on that? What's your percentage rate of returns? Do you factor that into the, your pricing and all that sort of jazz?

Chris Gammell: Um, you know, I don't have that number. Uh, Hannah might, she's our warehouse manager. Um, but we go to pretty extreme lengths to try to get things to people. Um, you know, we've reshipped things several times and. Wow.

Dave Jones: I was going to ask, what is your policy there? If somebody complains, I didn't get it. And the tracking says that they did get it. Do you just go, I'll bugger it. It's part of our cost. We'll just ship another one. Is that? No. No. Okay.

Chris Gammell: We make them pay for the shipping. Another laptop. Yeah. Um, so oftentimes we get it back and then they just have to pay for the shipping. Right. Right. Okay. And, and a lot of times, you know, a lot of times it's just, they didn't check. It was held in customs or something. They didn't check. That's common.

Dave Jones: Especially in Germany and, and other European. Exactly. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Exactly. Got it.

Josh Lifton: Um, so you had mentioned, uh, hype before, right? So you said the hype had died down on these parts or on these, uh, some of these things, but they're still, you know, viable as, as, um, cashflow producing things. Yep. What about the hype on crowdfunding in general? I mean, how, how are you seeing the whole marketplace change? Because it's been going for a while now. So what's your thing?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, totally. Um, well, I think, I hope that the word crowdfunding just disappears. I think it's a misnomer, right? There is no crowd out there waiting to give you money. Uh, okay.

Josh Lifton: What would you call it instead then? We can start it right now. We can name the episode, whatever you call it. Right. All right. Brainstorm session. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, it's kind of in your name though. It is.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that's, it's not kind of, it's very much in our name. Um, so, so yeah, I, I think for good reason, people have become disillusioned with, with crowdfunding in general. You know, there's, uh, if you follow the podcast, oh, the media hype cycle that it was, oh, this is so great. And look at all these awesome products and innovation. And you don't have to take VC money. Anybody can do this. It's very democratizing. And now it's just like, oh, look, look who stole your money.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Which is good.

Dave Jones: Why? You need to take my advice and advertise this on the front page of your website that we're different because blah. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yes. And that's, that's something, you know, honestly, a lot of creators come to us, uh, exactly for that reason. They're like, I don't want to be associated with, with all these scams and like low quality projects and, and, you know, frauds and things like that. Um, and I wouldn't have considered crowdfunding otherwise. Um, so I, I think that creators especially have, you know, consumers, unfortunately, there will always be another round of consumers that will just buy whatever you put in front of them. Right. Um, creators though, remember, and, and they, uh, they're very particular about protecting their brand or they should be any way. The good ones are, um, you're protecting their brand and making sure that they're associating with other products and brands that, that, you know, are of the same caliber. Um, and, and that I definitely have seen a change in the last couple of years in that, um, you know, on, on the marketing side, there are plenty of journalists who just burned burned so many times, you know, writing about a project and it, it, you know, making them look foolish. Right. Yeah. Um, and therefore they just either won't cover crowdfunding at all or, uh, they have pretty stringent requirements about, um, you have to be funded before I'll write about you or you have to actually deliver before I write about you. Uh, and so it's, it's, you know, it's tightened up a lot, which is good, I think.

Josh Lifton: Hmm. Okay. Yeah. That is a good challenge. Even though it's like your business is, uh, kind of dependent on bigger numbers, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, our, our business is built on our reputation and that's, that's true. Yeah.

Josh Lifton: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So the more people care about that, the better for us.

Josh Lifton: I'm going to come up with a name for your, whatever this is. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It'll probably just be, you know, I had, I had a banking friend, um, uh, I was talking with him and he pointed out very astutely, I think that banking is the original crowdfunding, right? Like everyone's putting their money into a single building. Right. And then they're loaning it out to people.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And so.

Josh Lifton: Yeah. But then they have the final say though, right? Yes.

Dave Jones: But then it's one person giving you the money. It's the bank giving you the money instead of the millions of people who put money in don't get a say in it. So.

Chris Gammell: Correct.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Um, so, so we look at ourselves more as a product launch platform, right? And crowdfunding is an important piece of that.

Dave Jones: Did you, uh, write all of the, uh, crowdfunding backend yourself or did you use some? Yes. That's the answer. Yes.

Chris Gammell: So, so the, the backstory here is, yeah, my co-founders and I got together. Um.

Dave Jones: We need to hear the founding story. Yeah. Yeah. The founding story real quick.

Chris Gammell: Uh, you know, I, I was at the MIT media lab, um, did doing my graduate, uh, degree there and I was steeped in, you know, prototyping and, and, um, uh, you know, making things just really quickly. And, and before that was, um, commonplace, I, I left, I went off and did startup things. I did a bunch of different, uh, uh, things in the meantime. And then I start seeing these projects on, on Kickstarter, this thing called Kickstarter. Right. And, and, uh, and one of them caught my eye. I was like, wait a second, these guys are from the MIT media lab, first of all. And I know exactly what they did. Right. They, they cast some acrylic and they told a story around it. Right. Which is a classic media lab, uh, lore. And there were, there were no electronics inside. There were no, there was no firmware written. There was no software. Ah, so it was vaporware.

Dave Jones: It was just, it was.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, it, it, it was, it wasn't, it wasn't. Right. I mean, uh.

Dave Jones: They had the idea and they had something that looked good, but it didn't do anything.

Chris Gammell: Well, they probably had like a benchtop version that worked and you could show a demo of. Right. But the thing they showed in the video, of course, was this really nice, shiny, translucent acrylic thing. And, uh, and so, you know, then, you know, a week later after they, you know, it, it was a, for the time, a runaway success. I don't remember exactly how much, but, um, uh, you know, and a week later on the, on the media lab mailing list, I see, hey, we're looking for a firmware developer. And then, and then like another week later, it's like, hey, we're looking for a, you know, internet of things, backend developer. And, you know, wait a second, I know what's going on. Um, and at first I was kind of angry and then I was like, wait a second, this is, you know, assuming you can actually pull off what you're, what you're promising, then great. Um, but the way it was presented and, and everything is just, it just blew me away. I was like, this is not.

Dave Jones: Cause it was so high risk. Is that why it, you know, it was sort of all done backwards. It was. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: In a, in a way. Um, and then, uh, and then Kickstarter had it had for us, it's seminal blog posts of, you know, Kickstarter is not a store. They were reacting publicly to all of these claims about, well, Hey, you know, where's my thing? I don't, I didn't get it. And what happens now? And they're like, well, tough luck. Um, and so that was really the catalyst, right. For, for my co-founders and I, and we looked at each other like, okay, well, we, we know how this works under the hood and we've, we've made products. And, and, and our engineers. And, uh, one of my other co-founders has been running an e-commerce company for quite a while and had built that up from scratch, including the backend. And so we founded CrowdSupply. We used the backend he'd already written, um, and licensed that from his other company, uh, to get it launched. And we could, and for that reason, we, we launched on March 20th after we basically started working on it, you know, January 20th. Nice. Um, and, and, you know, since then we, you know, we've learned a ton. E-commerce, crowdfunding and e-commerce are not the same thing. There are a lot of things that you want for crowdfunding and educations and things like that. So we burned that down, rebuilt it from scratch about a year and a half ago, and it's been working great for us. It's very slim, very lean. We can add things pretty easily.

Dave Jones: What payment system are you using? How do people pay?

Chris Gammell: Um, pigeon. Oh, what's pigeon? Gold, it's just birds. Ah. They fly to your house, they grab the coins. Yeah, no, we, we, we accept pretty much any, any sort of payment that the creator wants to accept. Oh, okay. Now, so it's like an aggregator of all the different payment methods, basically. Right.

Dave Jones: So Amazon payment, PayPal, credit card direct, how does it?

Chris Gammell: So the only one that's, that's actually integrated into our system that we don't have to do manually is, uh, credit cards. Right. Um, so we stripe for that. Yep. Uh, you know, we use Coinbase for, for Bitcoin, um, payments. We have PayPal, of course. Um.

Josh Lifton: API's everywhere. That's right. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Uh, and, and we do a lot of actual international wire transfers. Um, we've done ACH, we've done check, we've done cash. You know, people walk in with cash, actually.

Dave Jones: See, I don't know this. It's not on the website. Like, that, that sets you apart. Yeah. Like, all the others are like a single payment, do it our way or the highway.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Um, no, it's, granted, it's, it's more work to do it manually for all these other things, but it's totally worth it, I think. Right. And, and, and yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, eventually we'll integrate some of those into our system as well.

Dave Jones: Cool. Which is the cheapest payment method from your point of view? Which is the cheapest and best? That works the best.

Chris Gammell: Um, well, it depends what you mean by that.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, the cheapest. Let's just go for the, what is, what is the one that you pay the least margin on? are you counting labor or not no let's exclude labor okay um well in that case it's pretty

Chris Gammell: simple you know cash right uh but then also ach is is great you know ach is automated clearinghouse it's here in the united states only that's like a check like when you put your checking account oh okay yeah that's a us thing i don't get that yeah yeah so us only um when we do uh uh international wires um we usually charge whatever fee our bank is going to charge us to get it right um to the creator um you know all of these have benefits and problems so it really does come down to the labor

Josh Lifton: that's that's more important to us yep got it yeah okay well i came up with a name i just noticed i went quiet there for a second no one's gonna like it though collective venture huh hey yeah i i like that collective venture no no all one word collective venture ah collect a venture collective venture collective venture like collective yeah venture together it's a uh portamante yes it's already taken the dot com is not available i knew david asked it's a wiki page you need a this is this is a category dave all right anyways we might call we might call the show that just so we can there we go top of google right there um so uh okay so this is yeah that i mean like this sounds like very practical like all of this stuff's not like yes we got vc funding and we wanted to just slam the slam as much profit as we could out of this like

Dave Jones: okay so yeah this is what i uh this is refreshing story of your founding is that you thought you were sick of seeing projects that weren't vetted is that basically the yeah i mean this was early this

Chris Gammell: was like late 2012 right we launched in early 2013 it we saw the storm coming right and sure enough you know a year later that's what everyone was writing about is like oh where's my stuff and

Josh Lifton: yeah and all these disasters and that's because you had manufacturing experience you said right

Chris Gammell: right right and and just and just basic engineering right yeah basically i know it's like a lot to look at a bomb and say that's not going to work right um right so yeah um yeah to your point about you know venture backing and and kind of standard silicon valley startup experience uh yeah it's definitely not that now we are we are a venture-backed company modestly so um but we've had revenue since the first month uh that we launched i was going to ask was it

Dave Jones: are you were you making money from day one was it actually did it pay the rent and pizza boxes

Chris Gammell: well so we've had revenue since we launched the site um we were we've had profitable months and even quarters uh and i think we're you know we're on track to just become more that way um uh

Dave Jones: well you have to become more that way unprofitable otherwise you go down the toilet yeah yeah so so

Chris Gammell: i'm i'm i'm all this to say i'm very happy with with how this has progressed it's been very organic too right and and hard one and i think it'll also very sticky i think as well so have you ever thought about

Dave Jones: that you might get bought by somebody uh is that a plan is it a fear is it a fear come on man i i have no tack whatsoever we haven't even kissed yet i know right um no that so our plan is is not

Chris Gammell: to we we don't have a plan to get bought uh right if that happens then that's something else right but our plan is to make a great business doing something that we love and helping people do what they love and i think if we stick to that then the good things will happen and that's what's been the case so far um you know certainly we've talked to companies that that have flirted with that that idea um there's you know there are companies i'd be really excited about that happening with and ones that i would just not want at all that to happen yeah indiegogo so i'm not gonna name any names oh goodness but yeah i wouldn't say that we have a we have our heart set on any particular direction except for just let's keep making awesome stuff

Josh Lifton: right and helping people do that yep yep thumbs up um i wanted to ask about your previous experience and also some of your side projects too so i mean you'd mentioned some hardware before this some startups like what what were what were some of the things that led up to this with your with

Chris Gammell: your experience i mean how did you get yeah yeah um you know i i spent most of my life in school uh and so part of that the last bit of that was was uh making things and that's very different than making products um but like one of things is that kind of yeah like one of things or like the one amazing thing that works this one time right uh ah yes the season the thesis defense yes yes exactly um so so there was that and that was more about uh engineering and and just you know cobbling things together um and then i went uh you know one project that i i did which which was kind of a hybrid um um there's a a company called pixmob uh now they're called pixmob it was a friend of mine that started this company um in montreal and and it was all about leds and just they were they're kind of an agency they were trying to make um this was 10 years ago before leds were were just everywhere and and before kanye had them all over everything is that the yes uh and so actually i think that's exactly what i'm about to talk about uh all right uh so so pixmob you know they had this this idea uh vincent leclerc had this idea about using people as pixels um in a huge audience oh yeah that is who i'm thinking

Josh Lifton: about like at concerts and stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah didn't flaming lips do that a lunch a lot too yep

Chris Gammell: yep yep and so this was back in 2010 i think maybe 2009 2010 um uh he called me up and he's like hey i i you did a bunch of sensor network stuff uh and one of the projects was called pushpin computing um which was just blinky leds with processors on them and there's a bunch of them and i you remembered i i did a thing where i i made them into a display kind of ad hoc display he's like can we do that with people and i was like that would be awesome so i spent you know several months working with him and his team kind of architecting uh that technology it ended up launching um you know the first show the one that i worked on was for the reveal of of the microsoft connect um oh cool microsoft had had hired cirque de soleil um who'd hired my friend's company who'd hired me to and you know obviously there was a huge show and i this is just one small part of it um it was a full cirque de soleil show in a huge arena with i think three thousand four thousand people in it um and so yeah we we had them wear these tunics with leds embedded in them and we lit them up so if you're standing from above it was like a display and it was tons of fun um one story that that i remember from that experience that really drew of home the point that everything matters is um each of these i think there were 21 000 uh um batteries like coin cell batteries that needed to be loaded into into oh my god 7 000 things right i feel like i'm getting a carpal tunnel syndrome just thinking about that yeah and so in l in la though you can hire like because of the people yeah yeah you can just hire 30 people to load batteries for 48 hours right uh and there are companies that will just do that um but some so we had the even shipping that now it's like a huge pallet of batteries and uh shipping it in was it was a problem and somewhere along the line somebody had decided they were going to save one cent per battery oh no yeah supply chain yeah and uh and so they got like all of them oh my god and so what we discovered was that the specs while they were on paper the same um the at the current draw we were we were at it failed after the first use yeah right yeah and so so it worked one time and but we had to you know we had to do testing and then there were a couple shows and so with 24 hours to to go we discovered this and uh or maybe it was maybe it's 48 but uh it was hard to swap out all those batteries we had to order new ones have them loaded in and thankfully it worked out but wow but like man it was close wow yeah um so yeah that that company pixamob uh it spun out from the original company called esky um and is now its own company vincent is still leading that and yeah like you said they've done all these great shows you know with that technology and other technology they developed um uh all these concerts all these live events um so that was one one fun really fun thing that i i did uh on the product side they like blast

Josh Lifton: infrared in the audience right isn't that how they actually program the oh yeah i was wondering how it

Chris Gammell: yeah how it works yeah i can't tell you how many i'm looking at the website right now oh yeah i can't tell you how many times i went over the calculation of how much ir it would take to do damage to your eyes yeah um because there's a lot of ir coming out of that and what what is the number um thankfully it's been long enough i don't remember but but well it's a lot though we're well below yeah oh good

Josh Lifton: yeah no it's great i mean like that's that's really good you checked into that because some people would be like you know we'll see what happens i mean it was on my desk for a number of weeks and i was

Chris Gammell: staring right into it so i wanted to be sure as well right that's good too yeah yeah that's really cool yeah are you still doing any work with them or no no no no um but i you know i follow them and and they seem to be doing well uh so there's that um i worked at uh what's now called puppet what was puppet labs for a while um that was most you know software enterprise open source software um and learned a lot from you know about about startups and about uh companies of that size uh there's another project i was kind of a late third co-founder on a a company that uh called storm pulse which was tracking um uh hurricanes and that didn't make it i was hoping that would make it to the point where we're putting our own hardware out there um but by the time i left it was yeah i'd only done the software side of things um and then there's a you know all a bunch of side projects uh that that were product like um if not if if mostly just one-off production runs of those

Josh Lifton: things yeah but you have a new pet project that's bigger and yes and kind of game-changing too for a

Chris Gammell: very for a very niche audience it's very important though so what is this so this is the opens dinner project uh and this has a long history um going back oh man uh at least seven or more years um but so stenography is is what court reporters use to to transcribe english text right if you see somebody typing madly in a courtroom it's probably a stenographer they're transcribing everything that's said it's it's called real-time captioning it also which is kind of a different use case for the same things if you're if you're a um hard of hearing uh student at a university um the university is required to provide you with somebody to do real real-time captioning i was going to say why why does

Dave Jones: it need to be real-time in a courtroom why can't they just record it and then somebody listens to it

Chris Gammell: later and transcribes that does happen sometimes um but but uh it's somewhat historical they didn't have recording media of course before so um but for for there are plenty of instances where you actually need real time right and in in the in a live situation where voice recognition wouldn't cut it for whatever reason and some of those reasons wouldn't ozzy maybe that's why right well and and even even if voice recognition becomes perfect there are still cases where you want you don't want to talk right you're in a library or you're in a quiet area or whatever it is or or you're just typing an essay like i don't want to speak the essay i want to type it um so so mirabai knight is a stenographer she and i uh uh became collaborators through a circuitous path um uh and she was really into this idea of open source stenography software um by the time i learned what that was i was so into it also that that you know we collaborated i wrote the their first uh open source stenography software which actually was kind of game-changing for for a very small niche people like you were saying uh stenographers there there are only professional stenographers and and there are no amateur stenographers which is kind of strange right think about this it takes roughly the same you know training or you know there's the same virtuosity as say guitar playing right but i can go to a thrift store and buy a guitar and kind of teach myself some chords and call it a day right right well maybe you should give a scale

Josh Lifton: difference too so like what how what's the difference between stenography and just typing in terms of uh

Chris Gammell: yes uh oh so so the world record in stenography is 360 words a minute um which is nuts yeah it's

Josh Lifton: crazy uh now we're at what like 80 or 90 just talking in a conversation right now right i think i think

Chris Gammell: speech is around 180 oh really okay um and to to become a certified stenographer you have to do 225 or better um i think mirabai is up at like 250 ish or something um for a comparison the average typist is

Dave Jones: 40 words per minute yes and the top person is 120 on a qwerty that's right and you'll get a crazy carpal

Chris Gammell: tunnel doing that probably yes and devorak is devorak is only like 10 higher yeah right yeah it's not much you're not getting so so this is this is the big value of stenography is i'm proposing that that using the open steno projects uh resources namely the software the educational materials the community that we've built up and now the hardware um and i'm going to be adding to that hardware soon uh you can for the same investment of of switching to devorak get up to speed in stenography but not have that ceiling right like you're just not going to top out really and there's also there's a hidden

Josh Lifton: benefit too which is when you start using a stenography cording whatever it's called you're not like thinking that it's a regular keyboard and then someone turned on devorak and you're like what

Chris Gammell: the hell right right right yeah and there's a lot of ergonomic benefit and and go to the open steno project.org and mirabai has written a number of extensive and well thought out articles um about exactly why you'd want to do this but but the reason i'm really interested in about it about this is is bringing stenography to an amateur audience and yes some of them will become professionals and that's fine and they can go to the schools and they can get the the nicer machines that cost thousands of dollars and they can get the the software that has all the bells and whistles um but for people like us who i imagine you you guys are similar to me and that you spend a lot of time in front of a keyboard uh we would just get the added benefit of first of all learning something awesome and new but then actually reducing physical strain and and getting your work done way faster yeah yeah it's crazy now granted you know my coding uh bottleneck is not how fast i can type right that's right uh and that's that's clear but i think that if you as you remove barriers right that that pathway from brain and thought to implementation becomes much more smooth well what if it made documentation easier

Josh Lifton: right i mean that's like one of the worst parts but if you could make that faster and easier then maybe things get documented better right yeah yeah totally yeah there there are there are definite benefits yeah

Chris Gammell: and and synography is super interesting because it's customized to you right so yeah you start with a base theory that that is shared among a lot of people but half of synography is is the the phonetic theory and learning how to translate that but then the other half is is purely mnemonic and you build that up as you become more experienced and so your dictionary your personal dictionary changes over time and becomes you know more efficient for you to use and you may even branch off and have multiple dictionaries one for coding say in java and one for legal depositions and one for like um you know uh video games or whatever right that that's topic topical okay cool yeah so that's really cool yeah so that's that's that's overall what stenography is the open center project my specific side project right now is the stenosaurus and that is a great great name great name i do like that yeah yeah you know i i had the idea for stenosaurus for years before i actually started and the thing that convinced me to start it was i was in the shower one day because that's where all great ideas happen that's right uh and i thought of the word stenosaurus i was like

Dave Jones: oh and now that that exists i have to how many projects have started because you thought of a cool name for it

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah um so we're pretty close to that being done and i've been saying that for a long time but uh but we have a nice prototype my my uh collaborator on that other than mirabai is kurt montweiler who did the novena heirloom that we've talked about previously i was going to say the

Josh Lifton: uh the wood paneling on the yes it's bamboo right it's it is so for people who don't know it's a like a

Dave Jones: customized keyboard specifically for stenography yeah so it is a stenotype machine and you can use it

Chris Gammell: with as a regular standard machine um what does that mean that means that you have to have some software installed so a professional stenographer could take this and it would be a plug-in replacement um if they were using plover which is the software that that we wrote uh for steno machines in general

Dave Jones: how does a regular steno machine work does it hook up your pc and it converts so it's got a specific key layout is there like a universal steno key layout sound layout day dave sorry it's a sound

Chris Gammell: layout everything's based on sound yeah so so it's it's all phonetic the keyboard is there is there a

Dave Jones: standard yeah there's a standard there is there's a standard layout for that okay um it's the same across all steno theories and all steno machines right so it's the quality it's a steno version of the

Chris Gammell: qwerty key correct okay that's right um and you are either running the open source software that we wrote as part of the open center project or you're running some you know case catalyst or any of the proprietary things and this is just a plug-in replacement for a standard steno machine but it's it's about you know five to ten times cheaper depending on what you're comparing against

Dave Jones: is that because it's such a niche market that they're so expensive yeah that's a large that's mostly what

Chris Gammell: it is yeah um we are we are cutting some corners so so for example the keys and the actual switches in the keys are standard well actually they're not standard they're they're custom uh keyboard switches but they're not for example levers which are much more expensive right right and that's how

Josh Lifton: the you're saying that's how the pro ones are made it's basically the pro ones yeah they usually

Chris Gammell: have that very customized they don't use key switches right so they have a certain feel is it like

Dave Jones: like like like like the old hp calculators they're like oh you must have the tactile feedback right

Chris Gammell: right right so so that's a big part of it um we had custom and this is actually a a a press apply project um to fund this this one special kind of key switch that had the right kind of feel and the right kind of non-clickiness and and all that and and that you know uh you can buy this

Dave Jones: non-clickiness so how do you know it's registered how can you guarantee if there's no tactile feedback

Chris Gammell: um your eyeballs well yeah so you're not looking at your keyboard you're you're just looking at the screen and what's coming out and having oh right of course yeah a click clickiness is is totally anathema to to stenographers they want to be quiet and they don't want to to strain their muscles um um so so that's that's one of the ways we reduce cost um and you could use it just as a normal steno machine like i said the the super cool thing though that that is special and i think only exists in the in stenosaurus is that you can also use it or you will be able to use it as a plug-in replacement for a keyboard a standard keyboard a usb keyboard yeah so that emulates a an actual output yeah and and and what's happening there is all the software is actually embedded in in this in the stenosaurus and it's just sending out keystrokes right and yeah granted it's doing it quickly but computers don't care about that so yeah yeah that's interesting and actually so uh there's actually

Josh Lifton: an interesting tool that people can use too uh that's called steno night that you guys created yep and you can actually try it with like a mapping to a keyboard like a to a regular qwerty keyboard and yep it's trippy as hell yeah yeah it's like whoa okay yeah so so the the poor man's version of a

Chris Gammell: of a steno machine is an nk uh uh rollover um keyboard like a gaming keyboard essentially one where you you are an n key rollover uh you can match all the keys at once and they all register and if you can do that then you can emulate um by laying over it like pat laying over the keyboard pads that look like a steno machine um and mapping it accordingly that's cool yeah so what is your speed yeah well uh zero um because i i although i know folks he's too deep yeah i know exactly how these things work but i have not trained myself on it yet uh i i can imagine it would be so frustrating because people are

Dave Jones: born you know they've grown up with the qwerty keyboard yeah and that's the only interface they

Josh Lifton: know you know and yeah well when you were explaining this to me in person too you said that it's it's one of the biggest skills is like recognizing the sound and then just kind of translating that to fingers versus when i hear somebody if someone was if i was transcribing what dave is saying i'm going to be like you know hi my name is dave i'm going to think hi okay h i right right yeah yeah right you know we bundle words together that's why that that um yeah i think we're like they jumble words up and you can still kind of figure it out what it is right the brain kind of puts it into chunks

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah i mean i think our current way of typing is actually much more laborious mentally than what stenography will be right because because stenography is really you don't have to know how to spell it you don't need to know i mean there's so much you you don't need that you already know just by listening it's all about the the sound of it right um and so and shortcuts um so how does it how does

Josh Lifton: it rectify like there there and there like the the homonyms or whatever the yeah so you can you can do

Chris Gammell: that in in a bunch of different ways um those particular ones probably have a standard for each type of theory and there's a handful of theories that people use and you kind of just choose one okay um um but uh there are also ways of there's also kind of like auto correction right um no problems with that at least right well it's it's it's smart auto correction so for example uh if i have the the word catalog the the that word might translate into the same thing as cat and log and i'm not putting any spaces i'm not like telling it about about line breaks or anything like that um and so it would as default to the longest uh translation and backtrack and correct itself if it if it so you will output cat first and then it sees like right log and then it will backtrack and write catalog instead

Josh Lifton: of just cat hmm that's interesting would this work really well with like chinese since it's such like a weird phonetic like ups and downs and stuff does does it exist outside english i mean how does

Chris Gammell: that work um yeah that's a good question so stenography is a specifically for english but there are um stenography like systems for other languages for example uh italian the the italian um senate has its own version of stenography um that's been it's been used for a long time i'm not sure if it's hundreds of years but it's a long time and there's only like a few people who know it and that's how they record their their minutes um that's how much dough they make you're right uh i know there is um there is something for chinese and i think vietnamese maybe uh or people have been asking about it there have been ports and and new theories have come up i know somebody was working on one for polish um but you could i think you could adapt it for any human language uh you know chinese you're what you're what you're talking about is the tones right um because that actual phonemes in chinese there are many fewer phonemes right uh but then they're imposed with with tonal up tonal down right whatever yeah yeah um but a lot of it's just context too um so uh say that there are there are people working on it and and actually that's one of the benefits of the open center project because it's open source people just ask questions and i think we've seen a proliferation of of systems in other languages

Josh Lifton: um because of that cool yeah that's that's a really positive sign i mean and i think the nice thing about all this stuff is that at the end of the day it's going to make things more accessible to hard of hearing and and just you know make things better in general so that's really good yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah i i think it's if things go well uh more and more people will be using it um here's a funny story uh i went to the national court reporters association uh annual meeting

Josh Lifton: oh what a bunch of that alone is hilarious yes yes it was amazing there was no you must have

Chris Gammell: sticked out stuck out like a sore thumb right yeah a bit uh it's a particular crowd they were all super friendly oh of course yeah and and really really um encouraging of us you know i mean ostensibly we're we're taking away some market share perhaps right from either schools or from vendors or uh what have you but but they were all so excited because they all recognized that their profession was dying and they needed fresh blood they needed people coming in as amateurs and then and then moving up um so they were really excited about it uh anyway when i was there um i got to meet some of the people that had been corresponding with uh over the forums and email and they type so much faster than you oh my gosh it's not even funny uh uh but you know one guy met stan sakai um he is he he was born out of out of this project kind of or his what he's doing now was he was a pharmacist uh student a pharmacy student and decided that he wanted to learn some stenography he found the open center project he taught himself using the software um he never went to steno school uh which is unheard of it's you know it's like a two-year program is this like a

Dave Jones: university thing what is it dude it's like a certificate right it's is it well it's a professional

Chris Gammell: it's a vocational school right but it costs just as much or more actually than really than

Josh Lifton: a university and probably because it's like 100 placement too right i mean like because well

Chris Gammell: it's in demand um the attrition rate is 90 right yeah oh wow really right 90 and because it's hard right yeah yeah uh and so people are paying 20 000 30 000 a year to to drop out wow and and uh it's crazy so anyway stan um taught himself uh using our software he he passed the test you know got certified and is now a professional stenographer in new york city i i was uh at a booth at our booth with him in in at the convention in new york he's like oh yeah i gotta go um i've got to go to my one of my clients and my main client is uh is kickstarter and uh nice so it's it's all it all comes full circle that's good that's great oh that's great man yeah

Josh Lifton: that's uh so uh are you guys looking for like help on the project at all or how do people get involved

Chris Gammell: if they want to yeah so go to go to opencenterproject.org um join a mailing list you know you can try it with just your keyboard on your laptop right it it's probably not n key rollover but um if you decide you like it then you can go out and buy like a 50 you know sidewinder or whatever you know any sort of gaming keyboard um and you know there's a book out there already uh there's there are multiple games um that are that have been made or in progress and so there's a pretty big community now and a lot of resources for teaching yourself how to do this and you get really serious about it you can either buy a machine you know used or new you can support one of the one of the open source machines that that um have been done through the project and there's a couple out there already before stenosaurus um and then hopefully the stenosaurus will will launch imminently as i

Josh Lifton: always say it's been imminently for a while yes it has um well you've got the perfect platform to right yeah it turns out i do yes oh my god if you were the only one that didn't deliver though oh yeah 99.99 i'm gonna be the only one that doesn't launch yes exactly right yeah don't let

Chris Gammell: that happen that'd be right yeah so so yeah and of course we have a pre-launch page on on crowd supply

Josh Lifton: cool yeah we'll link all that stuff in for sure cool yeah yeah um it would be really interesting too because you know like you think about things like vr kind of coming up and like all these new you know like programming as a paradigm is like obviously everything kind of conforms to that because that's the only choice but you start thinking about like vr like how do you program vr you know you start thinking about well maybe it could map to something like this or whatever you know like these alternate mappings of of reality to to digital interpretation and it's like yeah it just it is kind of interesting and exciting especially if you can get that speed benefit so yeah yeah i mean the the

Chris Gammell: one of the things i know mirabai is excited about and i am too is just a wearable version of of a steno machine right where oh that's interesting you're just drumming on your on your knees

Dave Jones: you can have it on like a big gold chain hanging around your neck and then you can just use it as

Josh Lifton: you you know right there is a keyboard out there that does that it's a five-fingered keyboard where like the combinations were enough to get yeah i feel what those called but it's a chordite chordite okay yeah it's it's it was very odd and it's like it was the same thing where you had to learn it but you know then basically when you are walking around you know when you're using your google glass of course you could type to people uh yeah so that kind of thing yeah that that it's you know i know some

Chris Gammell: people who use that um it's a one-handed chorded uh keyboard um i think the person i know the person i'm thinking of got up to like 60 words a minute and that was just blazing for for a one-handed keyboard you know this where we would hope to have the same functionality but just

Josh Lifton: wearable somehow yeah that'd be cool portable yeah yeah that is a great project i love it where where do people find you online you personally because we've got we're gonna have links to

Chris Gammell: everything else yeah um are you a twitter i am not a fishinado i i i am not a on social media oh i'm one of those

Dave Jones: stay and live and off the grid and he's really exactly i'm really roughing it

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah i'm not on social media uh you can you can contact me through crowd supply um you know i get most of the i see most of the traffic um uh or through the the open steno forums um

Josh Lifton: yeah those are the best yes ways to get it and like it applies on a lot of social stuff too

Dave Jones: yeah it applies on social media um and we always ask uh uh crowd supply uh hiring

Chris Gammell: um not right now but uh we might be soonish um so yeah nice all right well keep an eye out for that

Josh Lifton: too well josh thanks so much man this has been uh this has been a whirlwind a lot of a lot of

Chris Gammell: good stuff here no i really appreciate it great talking to you guys all right talk to you soon catch you next time take care bye