March 12, 2024 • 32 mins
Majenta Strongheart sits down with Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, the co-founder and CEO of Instrumental. Instrumental is focused on one of the most important aspects of the manufacturing world today. Creating a more efficient quality tracking system in the production process that so many hardware companies rely on. From the beginning Anna and the whole team at Instrumental asked the question, how do we increase yield, decrease wasted product, downtime in production, and critical mistakes in the products and electronics that you’re probably listening to this podcast on.
The views and opinions expressed within this content are solely the speaker's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Supplyframe or its affiliates.
The views and opinions expressed within this content are solely the speaker's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Supplyframe or its affiliates.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I interviewed there, and I reallyfell in love with this idea of building
perfect products, and that's what kindof got me excited about Apple. From
the outside, I just assumed,like, oh, wow, like when
you build a million phones a day, you have to have perfection in how
you do it because they're otherwise,like even you know, one percent fallout
(00:21):
would be way too many units,There's no way. And I was just
really curious and wanted to learn thesecrets of building perfect products. In this
episode of The Bomb, Engineering aPath Forward, we take a hard look
at what it means to pivot,pivot in startups, pivot in mission statements,
and even pivoting in what a fairlychosen career path might look like.
(00:42):
I'm your host, Magenta Strongheart,and I'm beyond excited to sit down with
Anna Katrina Shadletski, the co founderand CEO of Instrumental. If you haven't
heard of Instrumental yet, don't worryyou will soon. Instrumental is focused on
one of the most important aspects ofthe manufacturing world today, creating a more
efficient quality tracking system in the productionprocess that so many hardware companies rely on.
(01:03):
From the beginning, Anna and thewhole team at Instrumental ask the question
how do we increase yield, decreasewasted product, downtime in production and critical
mistakes in the products and electronics thatyou're probably listening to this podcast on.
This is my conversation with Anna KatrinaShadletski and this is the Bomb. We
(01:26):
live in a time where design andtechnology touch every aspect of our lives.
But where did it all come from? Who designed it, how is it
built and brought to market? Whatwill look like in a year, two
years, one hundred years. Fromthe phones and smartwatches that help us in
our day to day to the cuttingedge spaceships and three D printers that are
leading us into the future. Moderndesign is constantly shaping the way we work,
(01:47):
communicate, problem solve and play.And every new design, bigger,
small, starts with an idea anda bill of materials. I'm agenta strongheart
and this is the Bomb where wetalk to leading innovators in the tech world
and celebrate the transformational power of design. Hi, Anna, Welcome to the
(02:08):
Bomb. Thank you so much forthe time today. I'm really excited to
be here at Instrumental in Palo Altoand learn all about what you do and
what instrumentals up to. Great,Thanks for having me. Yeah, So
I'd love to just start with alittle bit of your kind of background and
origin story. I am always interestedwhen folks go from engineering to founding their
(02:30):
own company, and I think that'ssomething that a lot of our audience can
relate to. So I'd love tojust hear what first got you interested in
engineering and kind of your pathway fromstudying that to doing it in the field
to now being a founder for anumber of years a decent amount of time.
Now, yeah, wow, that'sa big p a lot you can
learn back do I go whatever youthink is relevant to your kind of growth
(02:53):
journey. Yeah. So when Igraduated from college, it was during the
two thousand and eight that's a ninerecession, which is a bad time to
come into the job market, andI was really having a hard time finding
a job. But I went andI asked professor about like, oh,
well, like you know, wherecould I look or what types of companies
(03:15):
might be interested in someone like me? And he was like, oh,
well, you should go interview atApple, And at the time, like
super naive, and I didn't eventhink that Apple, like made physical things.
I think now like it's maybe maybepeople are always aware and I was
just very naive and in a bubble. But you know, back in two
thousand and eight, it was alittle less. They were only on like
iPhone three at that point or iPhonetwo. But I also loved it.
(03:38):
Pretty professor was just like Apple,you know, like we had connections of
Apple. So I interviewed there andI really fell in love with this idea
of building perfect products. And that'swhat kind of got me excited about Apple.
From the outside, I just assumed, like, oh wow, like
when you build a million phones aday, you have to have perfection in
(04:01):
how you do it because they're otherwiselike even you know, one percent fallout
would be way too many units.There's no way. And I was just
really curious and wanted to learn thesecrets of building perfect products. And so
I started Apple, and on daytwo I realized they did not ship in
ninety nine percent yields, and there'sit's actually very difficult to build perfect products.
(04:23):
And I think Apple is like,you know, up there with the
best in class around execution and quality, and it's even a problem for them,
and I over the six years thatI was there, I led a
handful of programs, including iPad programs, the first generation Apple Watch, and
really got to see firsthand how difficultit is to build perfect products. But
I also felt like we could doa lot better than we were doing,
(04:44):
and so decided to start a companyto build technology to selfishly make my job
as a product design engineer like alot easier, to help engineers like me
find and fix issues on the manufacturingline. And so my co founder and
I we both worked together at Applethis company back in twenty fifteen to do
just that. And so, whatat that time when you were at Apple,
(05:05):
what was being used for kind ofmanufacturing efficiency and for some of the
challenges that you're now addressing with yourtool with instrumentals products. Yeah, so
it's actually one of my favorite partsof the job was traveling to China and
standing on the line and being partof the manufacturing process and being in the
factories and working with the engineers andthe factories. But being in the right
(05:29):
place at the right time was kindof the method for finding and fixing issues
during development during the NPI new productintroduction process. And luck is not a
strategy. Yeah, chance, Andso that just seems like, you know,
really it really was dissonant with thisidea of like, well, I'm
an engineer, we should be ableto create a solution here for how to
(05:49):
solve this problem. So certainly,like world class, world class producers of
complex electronics products have lots of testingon their lines and lots of reallyf ability
validation they do. But anybody who'sworked in this industry for even a short
period of time can tell you that, like that net is not a perfect
it's a net. There's many holeswhere things can get through, and it
(06:12):
can be very difficult to actually findthose problems in the first place, because
you really have to be in theright place at the right time. So
what are we replacing luck, Like, can we can we create more certainty
around the ability to actually discover andfix problems. And that's relevant not just
for development, which was you know, that was the soup that I was
living in and Apple is very developmentfocused, but also in production because things
(06:35):
as much as our operations friends liketo you know, think that nothing changes
in production. It's solid, it'sset. Things change in production all the
time. Operators turn over, supplierschange. You're actually trying to roll out
improvements, so you are making changesto the design. So it's kind of
an interesting interplay between the universal needto find and fix issues on a manufacturing
(06:57):
line, regardless of what part ofthe product life cycle you're in. And
I think a huge part of thatthat I've heard discussed before as well,
that I'm pretty sure you know youguys are really focused on is kind of
capturing that data too. Like it'snot only about discovery necessarily or kind of,
but it's the tracking and like centralizingall of these kind of like field
notes maybe or the anything that peopleare observing that's really maybe less kind of
(07:24):
quantifiable throughout the process, right,Yeah, it's a find and fix,
yes, And like what was beingused when you were again kind of inspired
to address this problem, It's likespreadsheets, it was people's notebooks, like
I imagine, it was all kindsof things. There's a lot of units
that just go through the line thatno one ever sees. Actually at Apple
(07:46):
and probably other companies, one ofthe things that I was really inspired by
is end of line check PD checkis what it was called Product design engineering.
PEDD stands for product design and essentiallyevery day during a development build the
units at the end of the linewould get collected up and there would be
you know, at the end ofthe shift, a PD engineer would come
by and would look at every singleunit that had been built that day.
(08:07):
Now it was a finish good.So we were looking We're pressing all the
buttons, turning the crowns, lookingat the flatness of the glass, and
it was really looking at a largenumber of units all at the same time.
Compare contrast where everything's very fresh inyour mind that you're able to see,
like what is the general quality ofwhat we're producing. Do we have
like a proudness issue with the coverglass on, like you know, twenty
(08:30):
percent of these units, you getlike a sense of how bad the problem
is, how frequent, how didthe buttons feel. Sometimes you've built multiple
configurations, so you're actually able toevaluate them with these kind of more softer,
harder to measure kind of feedback aboutwhat's going on because you're not doing
well in those days. We're notdoing one hundred percent measurements of every single
unit for every single dimension. You'rejust getting a general feel and so really
(08:54):
found that as an inspiring way towhen you have all of that data.
When you have a collection that youcan look at all together, you need
a really good sense of kind ofwhere your qualities at. So okay,
I'm going to rewind a little bit. So you guys, a big part
of your offering is the cameras inthe facilities, right, so you capture
(09:16):
the data, but are you installingthose cameras that are helping with that or
that's do factories tend to just havethese already because I'm like, you're covering
so much ground as far as thatgoes. Yeah, Well, when you're
building a company in the industrial space, my perspective is you have to be
vertically integrated and offer a full endto end solution because your customers you're going
in, you don't know what they'regoing to have, and so you shouldn't
(09:37):
assume that they're going to have things. You should be able to put something
in to be able to provide valuereally quickly and generally. I al would
say companies are working with a tonof cms. I mean they're not just
going to have one that they careabout tracking exactly. And then we also
are modular, so if our customershave something like there's a billion dollars of
industrial cameras sold every year. That'sfine, we can plug that data in.
(09:58):
We're really for company. You cansee in the background here though we
have physical hardware and these are dropin. That's what I didn't realize actually
when I was first looking into whatyou guys do. So that's really interesting.
This is a lubricant to be ableto get to value very quickly.
Our goals with customers is that theycan get value within the ninety days of
(10:18):
having instrumental on their line. Sometimesthey get value in like negative twelve hours
of when we actually start. Becausethe first test image that comes through at
a customer is looking at literally oneimage from the line, it was wait,
that's wrong. Wow. Yeah.And so even just having much better
access to this data, not everybodycan stand on the line all day.
(10:39):
And frankly, that's a pretty anefficient way to spend time. Still good
every once in a while to understandhow things get made, but it's much
more efficient to be able to lookthrough that data set very rapidly and find
those issues to focus. And alsowith more and more folks being remote and
distributed and spread out and this sortof thing, it's not I think as
common anymore for people to be inperson at these places, I would imagine
(11:01):
with how things have evolved over thelast couple of years. And so,
do you guys have like a sweetspot as far as the volume that you're
the best company that fits for instrumentalfor who you're trying to work with.
Is it based on volume? Isit based on what exactly they're focused on
tripping a specific industry vertical or whoare you guys trying to address, or
(11:22):
who do you think the solution isbest for. So it's based on value.
Okay, in terms of value tothe company our customers in again,
that's super modular. You probably areable to address so many there's nothing about
the technology that restricts it to likeonly work for electronics. However, most
of our customers building electronics, sowe kind of have two segments we work
(11:43):
in. There's a high volume electronicmarket, so thin consumer electronics, headphones,
et cetera. Bose is a customeras an example. We also work
in the mission critical electronics space,which is a made up term that is
a catch all for telecommunications, electrificationequipment, all sorts of stuff that gets
(12:03):
either like is more industrial or getssold to other businesses. Because that stuff
needs to work. So we workon radios for firefighters, for example,
like the buttons that say like callversus turn off need to be the right
oney these things to not fail.We want them to work because lives could
be on the line. So thoseare kind of the two spaces that we
(12:24):
work. We also, as partof that mission critical space, we work
in the aerospace and defense as well, And so when we discuss with customers,
it's usually about the value and thecost of failure. And sometimes that
cost of failure is very prescient.They know exactly what it is because they
are currently having those failures. Andthen development it's about the value of speed
(12:45):
to market and how quickly can theybring this product to market at what level
of quality to reduce returns and alsohave great Amazon reviews right when they announce
the product. Key definitely, Key, Absolutely, Okay, Well, thank
you so much. I feel likeyou've painted a really in depth picture of
the solution, what you guys do, how you provide value. I want
to rewind again a little bit tooback to like your experience transitioning into a
(13:09):
founder. I think we have alot of people that would be interested,
you know, kind of on whatwhat was that process like going from Okay,
I've identified this challenge in my dayto day and I see that,
like you know, my peers aswell at other companies, this is an
issue. And what gave you kindof the push to sit, I'm going
to address this and start a companyto solve this. Yeah. So I
(13:33):
did not think that I was kindof be an entrepreneur a very risk a
verse and this is not like aline of business unit in too risk averse.
I was really passionate about the problem. And also, you know,
I think so I've shared this story, but I had a personal tragedy happen
in my life that made me kindof reevaluate how I was spending my time
(13:54):
and I felt that, you know, while I was working on This happened
while I was working on Apple Watchbefore it was announced, and I was
like, this is great. I'mso glad I had this experience working in
Apple, but like, there's gotto be something bigger out there for me
to work on have a bigger impact. And you know, what do I
know? Like what could I influence? And it's like, well, I
know how to build millions of thingsat very high levels of quality. After
(14:18):
doing four programs at Apple, Ifelt like I'd learned that and was passionate
about that, but I also knewwhy it was hard, and so I
was essentially inspired to go try tosolve the big problem. And both myself
and my co founder Sam, whois our CTO, we're both inspired by
the problem. And you could saythere's like a selfish bit in there of
like, if we fail, wehave to go back to being mechanical teaers
(14:41):
without this solution. So there's abit of that good drive, but it's
like this should exist. And whenwe talk to customers and other engineers about
like, oh we do this thing, and they're like, oh, I
had that idea, just like yes, yes, and we're doing it.
So it's not necessary that the ideais so novel. It's the actual execution
of like how we make this work, and so it's it's been really great.
(15:03):
I'm really glad that I took theleap. I think when you know
something, the kind of the wayI would put it is when the worst
day of your life has already happened, like you have no fear for a
period of time, and you justgo take a leap and do something completely
different that is very meaningful to you. Absolutely, and so I love that
you focused on like the falling inlove with the problem versus a solution.
(15:26):
And this is something actually that it'sinteresting that just was coming up. I
was at like a VC small likeVC conference and founders were saying that,
you know, like that's really important. If you fall in love with the
solution, of course you're going tobe chasing maybe the wrong the wrong issues
and get too far away from theproblem. So I'm kind of curious,
was there any early iterations of thingsthat you'd be willing to share that were
(15:48):
you know, just you learned thatthat wasn't the right route to go down,
but you knew this was still theproblem you're trying to address, and
you know you've gotten to where youare today, which is amazing, and
you guys are really addressing you know, the challenge with the right kind of
tools. I'm curious, what werethose throwaway concepts early on? Yeah,
I absolutely can share. So whenwe started the company, we thought we
(16:10):
were going to be a robot company. So Sam and I are mechanical engineers,
right, and you like, youknow, you bring what you know
and at the time, so liketwenty fifteen. Going back then, industrial
robots, they were less of athing than they are now, and there
is this idea that you could buildlike omni robots that could essentially replace people
(16:30):
human operators. And we're like,we're not going to do that. That's
too hard, Omni omni task istoo hard. We'll just do like a
four function robot can do these fourthings, and then we'll use the robot
as a trojan horse for data.We'll take pictures and we'll like do analysis
and then that'll be our data setto build the software product that ultimately instrumental
became Yeah, and we uh so, we actually raised our first dollars on
(16:52):
that concept, and literally we incorporatedthe company to take investor dollars and customer
dollars. So we've had a customersince day two. And we went to
China to support an early build forthat product. And while I was there,
I was also interviewing a bunch offactories because I was trying to figure
out like, Okay, we're gonnabuild robots, We're gonna have to solo.
(17:15):
That's gonna worry how it's going towork. And essentially I realized after
talking literally one week trip to Chinatalking to a bunch of factories. There's
no way they're gonna buy robots fromus ever. Ever, and the reason
is because they feel very confident buildingtheir own robots. Why would they they
can build their own automation, whywould they work with a third party to
build these kind of this kind ofautomation seemed like it was going to be
(17:37):
an uphill battle. And then soSam and I got together and we were
like, well, it seems likethis would be really hard. What if
we just like scrap the robot part, reduced the complexity of this company and
focus on software. And so thatwas the thread that we pulled on,
and we essentially two weeks after weraised money, we pivoted our not the
problem but the solution space away fromcomplex robotics to let's be a software company,
(18:03):
and our hardware that we build isgoing to just be what we need
to lubricate our process into our customersto be able to integrate easily into what
they're doing, and to keep asmuch technology as possible out of the hardware
and have all the technology as muchas possible in the software that we provide.
We're going to take a quick breakfor a few words from our incredible
(18:26):
sponsors. When we come back,we dive headfirst into the lessons Anda learned
the process of raising money in thevolatile world of startups venture capitalists, and
how to maintain that drive to craftfundraising pitches. Welcome back to the Bomb
(18:48):
Engineering a path Forward. I'm yourhost, Madenta Strongheart. And when we
left off, we were talking aboutthe Vital Pivot CEO and a Katrina made
with Instrumental within a week of gettingher initial funding from robots to software.
Okay, I'm going to also goback to something you were talking about.
Obviously, raising money is a bigpart of this part of having a startup,
(19:11):
being a founder. And you've actually, you guys just completed Series C.
Is that right, Yeah, we'veraised eighty million dollars total. Congratulations.
That's incredible. Could you speak alittle bit to some of the challenges
or things that you just like learnedin the first round versus now? You
know, how different is it raisingmoney? How many years in are we
now? If you start in twentyfifty nine years yeah, you know,
(19:34):
eight or nine years later, howdoes that evolve over time? I actually
very much enjoy the fundraising process.I love talking about the problem and our
space and the industry, what ourteam is accomplishing. So that's great.
I think one of the things that'sreally interesting about venture, and it has
(19:55):
always been the case, but nowthat I've had a company and so been
like in aware of kind of what'shappening a little bit more, is the
market dramatically changes. What is in, what is out, what is hot,
what is not, what the metricsyou need, and it's constantly changing.
So if I was to try tonuggetize that advice for future founders or
(20:17):
current founders, I think it's justfind a cohort of founders who are at
or ideally like eighteen months ahead ofwhere you're at, and use them as
kind of like a circle of notonly support but also advice and understanding of
where the market is, like whatwas their latest experience when they went out.
(20:38):
And I found that to be incrediblyimpactful throughout all the rounds. I
have good folks in my network thatI've like call up and I'll, you
know, I'll either run my deckby them and they'll get feedback, or
they can give me some insights intohow different investors are kind of valuing different
metrics or what they care about,so you can really tailor those pitches.
(20:59):
I think another thing that I learned, and this comes from sales in general,
Like it's just CEOs do a lotof selling. You sell candidates to
come work at your company, yousell your product because you're often like one
of the first salespeople, and yousell shares in your company to investors.
So you're mostly just doing selling allof the time. Nice. No,
that makes a lot of sense,and like you said, kind of learning
(21:19):
the right ways to frame it todifferent folks and also depending on kind of
the season and the bigger picture contextthat you guys are going into. And
so you've mentioned your co founder Sama couple of times. I'd love to
hear a little bit about what youthink the value of having a co founder
is. I think maybe in someways it seems obvious to folks, but
I think it's always interesting to heardifferent stories and also what you think people
(21:41):
should look for to know who acompatible co founder might be. Yeah,
trust and respect is probably like thefirst one. So I met Seam actually
he was an intern at Apple whenI started full time, and I starting
full time, I felt more likean intern than like a full time it's
just like fresh out of school,just like them. And so we actually
(22:03):
share a first patent. During hislike summer internship, we worked on a
project together and patented this switch thatwill never go into production, but there
is a patent on it. Andso that's kind of when we met back
in actually in two thousand and nine. And then we got the opportunity to
work together on Apple Watch. AndI had traveled with Sam, like to
(22:23):
vendors to solve problems. We've beenon the line like late together, like
not with with not enough sleep,trying to solve real hard problems, and
so it was this great opportunity tokind of pressure test the relationship, and
there's a lot of mutual respect thereand so it was kind of a no
brainer actually when I had to convincehim to leave Apple to like come on
(22:45):
this journey. Sam and I areactually very similar, and so maybe one
of the downsides of our partnership,Well we're different. We have similar backgrounds,
but like we are both mechanical engineerswith similar experience set. He's better
at certain things and I'm better atother things, and so that's complimentary.
I think It's great when co foundershave like very different skills because it adds
(23:07):
to the diversity of background and opinionthat you can have in the company.
That being said, like Instrumental,it's very engineer focused organization. We build
technology for engineers by engineers, andso there's a benefit to having someone who
innately understands our customers the problem,has experienced it firsthand as a partner.
(23:27):
So that's a major pro And it'sawesome to hear that, you know,
eight or nine years later, likethat's huge. I think there's often I've
definitely seen in the different startups andthings I've seen over the years, of
course, like founders bringing apart,finding new co founders, whatnot. You
know. So to be in itfor so long and still feel that way
about your co founder is huge,and I think speaks to some of the
(23:49):
like you said, the early thingsthat were the important values early on in
the relationship, the risk that tress. One of the other things that Sam
and I discussed very early on ishow we make decisions, which I think
is a really important thing to talkabout, and also like what success looks
like for that person and kind ofhow this fits into their story. And
narrative and making sure those are allaligned some like pro tip or kind of
(24:14):
inside. I feel like that's hugeto kind of outline how are we going
to go through things. Then youjust have this roadmap every time to go
back to and then it's almost likehaving that med eat or something. So
it's not a you think this way, I think this way, but let's
just follow these steps that we bothagreed on early on. That's an amazing
tactic. I love that, ButI'm gonna kind of want to go off
on this tangent. Just something youmentioned about. I know it is more
(24:37):
related to your work at Apple,but patenting something which I think is an
interesting topic, especially with how quicklytechnology is moving. Of course, and
we've had some of these conversations atevents at Design Lab and also with other
guests on the pod. I'd loveto just hear your perspective on kind of
where you think that's going as faras the kind of politics around it,
(24:59):
and do you I think it's worthit for certain companies like to focus on
kind of the proprietary knowledge and patentingthings or making sure you know they're protecting
that versus just moving quickly iterating focusingon the technology or is it really worth
it. In some cases, obviouslyApple they have all the lawyers and the
backing to make things happen quickly likethat. But in the startup world sometimes
(25:21):
it can feel overwhelming or you haveto prioritize what you're focused on. Yeah,
so it's all about what your strategyis. So I would say it's
supportant to have a strategy. Thereason that Apple and Zamsung and Google and
all these huge companies incentivize so highlytheir employees to invent and patent their inventions,
like they often pay bonuses to inventorsfor this, is because it's actually
(25:47):
it's not necessarily offense, it's actuallydefense. So when they get sued by
a competitor for violating a patent,they can countersue for like, well,
here's ten other patents you're violating ofours, well, right, and so
it's a it's in this plays outin public, so you can find these
examples, and so that's why largecompanies do that. Does that make sense
for startups, I personally don't thinkso. Maybe there are certain startup like
(26:11):
you know, strategies where that makessense. Maybe you're trying to be acquired
and so your patent portfolo is reallyimportant to the value of the technology versus
trying to be a big standalone businesson your own instrumentals perspective is a little
bit more nuanced. We have technologythat goes into countries in the world that
do not necessarily respect patents and intellectualproperty, and you can't change reality,
(26:34):
so you have to adapt to reality. And so our general kind of patent
strategy has been, well, ifit goes, you know, if it's
going to be deployed to all thesevarious places, we should have as little
technology as possible in there, andwe're not going to try to protect our
patent that stuff. So well,you know, we'll trademark our logo and
our brand, et cetera, butwe're not going to patent stuff in our
(26:56):
physical station because if there's no wayto protect that ip. In order to
make a patent make sense, youhas to be protectable, defendable, you
have to be able to like provethat someone is violating your patent. So
I guess another pro tip maybe forthe entrepreneurs out there who are thinking about,
you know, wanting to patent apiece of their core technology, like
(27:17):
try to figure out how you candefend, you know, from the sides
and behind and in front with youknow, an initial first patent is to
find a patent agent versus using highcost patent council from like your corporate council,
will significantly reduce your costs to actuallyfile patents. Pants are expensive.
It's like twenty five k or soto get through the whole process on the
(27:41):
low ngth. So it's a biginvestment and so you should use it very
tactfully to make sure that you candefend core pieces of your product so that
they're not rapidly copied. That's awesome. I love that. And next up
we have what is on your personalbill of materials, which you can intern
however you like personal bill of materials, you know, I think that it's
(28:06):
time to do something for myself,and so there's a couple of things that
I really enjoy doing. I likecooking, and I like sewing and making
making things in a different kind ofrealm of making. And that time I
find is very useful for just creatingspace in my brain. Absolutely just having
(28:29):
some of those other outlets to feedcreativity and and just like probably getting back
to more hands on stuff because maybeyou don't do as much. But I
didn't realize when I first was learningabout instrumental that you guys do have the
hardware component. So you are probablygetting a little bit still of the hardware
prototyping, you know, excitement.But when we get the excitement of all
the customers we support and that's reallyexciting, you can get like you don't
(28:53):
have to own all the problems totally. You're like, actually, it's kind
of nice to like address them,deal with that and then not own them
all the time, not have totake them home every time, and then
last but not least, just wantto give you the opportunity to tell us
what you're excited about nextpert instrumental andanything else you wanted to mention about what
you guys are focused on. Yeah, so I guess one of the area.
(29:15):
There's maybe two things. So onethat's maybe very relevant to this audience
is we recently launched the Build BetterHandbook, which is essentially writing a book
in public about how to be greatat design, new product, introduction,
production, operations, quality. Allof that. We have interviews with great
(29:41):
leaders in the quality space, operations, engineering leadership and how to do those
jobs well and that's been really excitingfor the company, and it's out there.
You can find it on our websiteInstrumental dot com to build better handbook,
check it out. There's tons there. So that's something we're really excited
about. And the interview us thatwe're doing with these amazing leaders that have
(30:02):
been in our networks or that we'vegotten introduced to, we've learned a lot
from and it's been even really influencinghow I lead as a leader, So
that's awesome. And then the otherkind of exciting thing for us is that
we are launching into the airspace anddefense spaces new market for us that we're
learning a lot about. So that'skind of an up and coming thing for
the company that hopefully there'll be moreto talk about. So yeah, absolutely,
(30:26):
And I was already going to say, I hope I can invite you
and maybe we can bring Sam,your co founder, anyone else from the
team for a part two, becauseI really don't feel like we got to
everything. There were so many likestarts of ideas. I was like,
we could go down this rabbit holeand have this conversation. Thank you so
much for sharing your experience with ustoday, and just the range of what
(30:47):
we covered. We covered a lotof ground from going from engineering to founder,
to patent strategy to you know,just being up to Series C startup
and what that looks like evolving overthe years. Thank you so much,
Anna, it was a pleasure andI hope we can invite you guys back
for more in the future. Thankyou. It's great to be here.
(31:11):
That was Anna. Katrina Shadletski andher amazing journey from Apple product design engineer
to CEO of Instrumental. Her insighton how to protect your invention, knowing
when to pivot in your company's path, and how to fall in love with
problems rather than solutions should easily lighta fire in the hearts and minds of
any emerging engineer. This has beenthe Bomb, engineering a path forward.
(31:32):
We'll see you next time. Ifyou like the Bomb, don't forget to
subscribe, rate and share the showwherever you get your podcasts. You can
follow supply Frame and Hackaday on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn YouTube, and design
Lab at supply Frame Design Lab onInstagram and Twitter. The Bomb is a
supply Frame podcast produced by me MagentaStrongheart and Ryan Tillotson. Written by Maggie
(31:57):
Bowles and edited by Daniel Ferrara.Theme music is by Anna Hogben. Show
art by Thomas Schneider. Special thanksto Giovanni Selinas, Bruce Diminguez, Thomas
Woodward, Jin Kumar, Jordan Clark, the entire supply from Team and you
are wonderful listeners. I'm your host, Magenta Strongheart. See you next week. What
I interviewed there, and I reallyfell in love with this idea of building
perfect products, and that's what kindof got me excited about Apple. From
the outside, I just assumed,like, oh, wow, like when
you build a million phones a day, you have to have perfection in how
you do it because they're otherwise,like even you know, one percent fallout
(00:21):
would be way too many units,There's no way. And I was just
really curious and wanted to learn thesecrets of building perfect products. In this
episode of The Bomb, Engineering aPath Forward, we take a hard look
at what it means to pivot,pivot in startups, pivot in mission statements,
and even pivoting in what a fairlychosen career path might look like.
(00:42):
I'm your host, Magenta Strongheart,and I'm beyond excited to sit down with
Anna Katrina Shadletski, the co founderand CEO of Instrumental. If you haven't
heard of Instrumental yet, don't worryyou will soon. Instrumental is focused on
one of the most important aspects ofthe manufacturing world today, creating a more
efficient quality tracking system in the productionprocess that so many hardware companies rely on.
(01:03):
From the beginning, Anna and thewhole team at Instrumental ask the question
how do we increase yield, decreasewasted product, downtime in production and critical
mistakes in the products and electronics thatyou're probably listening to this podcast on.
This is my conversation with Anna KatrinaShadletski and this is the Bomb. We
(01:26):
live in a time where design andtechnology touch every aspect of our lives.
But where did it all come from? Who designed it, how is it
built and brought to market? Whatwill look like in a year, two
years, one hundred years. Fromthe phones and smartwatches that help us in
our day to day to the cuttingedge spaceships and three D printers that are
leading us into the future. Moderndesign is constantly shaping the way we work,
(01:47):
communicate, problem solve and play.And every new design, bigger,
small, starts with an idea anda bill of materials. I'm agenta strongheart
and this is the Bomb where wetalk to leading innovators in the tech world
and celebrate the transformational power of design. Hi, Anna, Welcome to the
(02:08):
Bomb. Thank you so much forthe time today. I'm really excited to
be here at Instrumental in Palo Altoand learn all about what you do and
what instrumentals up to. Great,Thanks for having me. Yeah, So
I'd love to just start with alittle bit of your kind of background and
origin story. I am always interestedwhen folks go from engineering to founding their
(02:30):
own company, and I think that'ssomething that a lot of our audience can
relate to. So I'd love tojust hear what first got you interested in
engineering and kind of your pathway fromstudying that to doing it in the field
to now being a founder for anumber of years a decent amount of time.
Now, yeah, wow, that'sa big p a lot you can
learn back do I go whatever youthink is relevant to your kind of growth
(02:53):
journey. Yeah. So when Igraduated from college, it was during the
two thousand and eight that's a ninerecession, which is a bad time to
come into the job market, andI was really having a hard time finding
a job. But I went andI asked professor about like, oh,
well, like you know, wherecould I look or what types of companies
(03:15):
might be interested in someone like me? And he was like, oh,
well, you should go interview atApple, And at the time, like
super naive, and I didn't eventhink that Apple, like made physical things.
I think now like it's maybe maybepeople are always aware and I was
just very naive and in a bubble. But you know, back in two
thousand and eight, it was alittle less. They were only on like
iPhone three at that point or iPhonetwo. But I also loved it.
(03:38):
Pretty professor was just like Apple,you know, like we had connections of
Apple. So I interviewed there andI really fell in love with this idea
of building perfect products. And that'swhat kind of got me excited about Apple.
From the outside, I just assumed, like, oh wow, like
when you build a million phones aday, you have to have perfection in
(04:01):
how you do it because they're otherwiselike even you know, one percent fallout
would be way too many units.There's no way. And I was just
really curious and wanted to learn thesecrets of building perfect products. And so
I started Apple, and on daytwo I realized they did not ship in
ninety nine percent yields, and there'sit's actually very difficult to build perfect products.
(04:23):
And I think Apple is like,you know, up there with the
best in class around execution and quality, and it's even a problem for them,
and I over the six years thatI was there, I led a
handful of programs, including iPad programs, the first generation Apple Watch, and
really got to see firsthand how difficultit is to build perfect products. But
I also felt like we could doa lot better than we were doing,
(04:44):
and so decided to start a companyto build technology to selfishly make my job
as a product design engineer like alot easier, to help engineers like me
find and fix issues on the manufacturingline. And so my co founder and
I we both worked together at Applethis company back in twenty fifteen to do
just that. And so, whatat that time when you were at Apple,
(05:05):
what was being used for kind ofmanufacturing efficiency and for some of the
challenges that you're now addressing with yourtool with instrumentals products. Yeah, so
it's actually one of my favorite partsof the job was traveling to China and
standing on the line and being partof the manufacturing process and being in the
factories and working with the engineers andthe factories. But being in the right
(05:29):
place at the right time was kindof the method for finding and fixing issues
during development during the NPI new productintroduction process. And luck is not a
strategy. Yeah, chance, Andso that just seems like, you know,
really it really was dissonant with thisidea of like, well, I'm
an engineer, we should be ableto create a solution here for how to
(05:49):
solve this problem. So certainly,like world class, world class producers of
complex electronics products have lots of testingon their lines and lots of reallyf ability
validation they do. But anybody who'sworked in this industry for even a short
period of time can tell you that, like that net is not a perfect
it's a net. There's many holeswhere things can get through, and it
(06:12):
can be very difficult to actually findthose problems in the first place, because
you really have to be in theright place at the right time. So
what are we replacing luck, Like, can we can we create more certainty
around the ability to actually discover andfix problems. And that's relevant not just
for development, which was you know, that was the soup that I was
living in and Apple is very developmentfocused, but also in production because things
(06:35):
as much as our operations friends liketo you know, think that nothing changes
in production. It's solid, it'sset. Things change in production all the
time. Operators turn over, supplierschange. You're actually trying to roll out
improvements, so you are making changesto the design. So it's kind of
an interesting interplay between the universal needto find and fix issues on a manufacturing
(06:57):
line, regardless of what part ofthe product life cycle you're in. And
I think a huge part of thatthat I've heard discussed before as well,
that I'm pretty sure you know youguys are really focused on is kind of
capturing that data too. Like it'snot only about discovery necessarily or kind of,
but it's the tracking and like centralizingall of these kind of like field
notes maybe or the anything that peopleare observing that's really maybe less kind of
(07:24):
quantifiable throughout the process, right,Yeah, it's a find and fix,
yes, And like what was beingused when you were again kind of inspired
to address this problem, It's likespreadsheets, it was people's notebooks, like
I imagine, it was all kindsof things. There's a lot of units
that just go through the line thatno one ever sees. Actually at Apple
(07:46):
and probably other companies, one ofthe things that I was really inspired by
is end of line check PD checkis what it was called Product design engineering.
PEDD stands for product design and essentiallyevery day during a development build the
units at the end of the linewould get collected up and there would be
you know, at the end ofthe shift, a PD engineer would come
by and would look at every singleunit that had been built that day.
(08:07):
Now it was a finish good.So we were looking We're pressing all the
buttons, turning the crowns, lookingat the flatness of the glass, and
it was really looking at a largenumber of units all at the same time.
Compare contrast where everything's very fresh inyour mind that you're able to see,
like what is the general quality ofwhat we're producing. Do we have
like a proudness issue with the coverglass on, like you know, twenty
(08:30):
percent of these units, you getlike a sense of how bad the problem
is, how frequent, how didthe buttons feel. Sometimes you've built multiple
configurations, so you're actually able toevaluate them with these kind of more softer,
harder to measure kind of feedback aboutwhat's going on because you're not doing
well in those days. We're notdoing one hundred percent measurements of every single
unit for every single dimension. You'rejust getting a general feel and so really
(08:54):
found that as an inspiring way towhen you have all of that data.
When you have a collection that youcan look at all together, you need
a really good sense of kind ofwhere your qualities at. So okay,
I'm going to rewind a little bit. So you guys, a big part
of your offering is the cameras inthe facilities, right, so you capture
(09:16):
the data, but are you installingthose cameras that are helping with that or
that's do factories tend to just havethese already because I'm like, you're covering
so much ground as far as thatgoes. Yeah, Well, when you're
building a company in the industrial space, my perspective is you have to be
vertically integrated and offer a full endto end solution because your customers you're going
in, you don't know what they'regoing to have, and so you shouldn't
(09:37):
assume that they're going to have things. You should be able to put something
in to be able to provide valuereally quickly and generally. I al would
say companies are working with a tonof cms. I mean they're not just
going to have one that they careabout tracking exactly. And then we also
are modular, so if our customershave something like there's a billion dollars of
industrial cameras sold every year. That'sfine, we can plug that data in.
(09:58):
We're really for company. You cansee in the background here though we
have physical hardware and these are dropin. That's what I didn't realize actually
when I was first looking into whatyou guys do. So that's really interesting.
This is a lubricant to be ableto get to value very quickly.
Our goals with customers is that theycan get value within the ninety days of
(10:18):
having instrumental on their line. Sometimesthey get value in like negative twelve hours
of when we actually start. Becausethe first test image that comes through at
a customer is looking at literally oneimage from the line, it was wait,
that's wrong. Wow. Yeah.And so even just having much better
access to this data, not everybodycan stand on the line all day.
(10:39):
And frankly, that's a pretty anefficient way to spend time. Still good
every once in a while to understandhow things get made, but it's much
more efficient to be able to lookthrough that data set very rapidly and find
those issues to focus. And alsowith more and more folks being remote and
distributed and spread out and this sortof thing, it's not I think as
common anymore for people to be inperson at these places, I would imagine
(11:01):
with how things have evolved over thelast couple of years. And so,
do you guys have like a sweetspot as far as the volume that you're
the best company that fits for instrumentalfor who you're trying to work with.
Is it based on volume? Isit based on what exactly they're focused on
tripping a specific industry vertical or whoare you guys trying to address, or
(11:22):
who do you think the solution isbest for. So it's based on value.
Okay, in terms of value tothe company our customers in again,
that's super modular. You probably areable to address so many there's nothing about
the technology that restricts it to likeonly work for electronics. However, most
of our customers building electronics, sowe kind of have two segments we work
(11:43):
in. There's a high volume electronicmarket, so thin consumer electronics, headphones,
et cetera. Bose is a customeras an example. We also work
in the mission critical electronics space,which is a made up term that is
a catch all for telecommunications, electrificationequipment, all sorts of stuff that gets
(12:03):
either like is more industrial or getssold to other businesses. Because that stuff
needs to work. So we workon radios for firefighters, for example,
like the buttons that say like callversus turn off need to be the right
oney these things to not fail.We want them to work because lives could
be on the line. So thoseare kind of the two spaces that we
(12:24):
work. We also, as partof that mission critical space, we work
in the aerospace and defense as well, And so when we discuss with customers,
it's usually about the value and thecost of failure. And sometimes that
cost of failure is very prescient.They know exactly what it is because they
are currently having those failures. Andthen development it's about the value of speed
(12:45):
to market and how quickly can theybring this product to market at what level
of quality to reduce returns and alsohave great Amazon reviews right when they announce
the product. Key definitely, Key, Absolutely, Okay, Well, thank
you so much. I feel likeyou've painted a really in depth picture of
the solution, what you guys do, how you provide value. I want
to rewind again a little bit tooback to like your experience transitioning into a
(13:09):
founder. I think we have alot of people that would be interested,
you know, kind of on whatwhat was that process like going from Okay,
I've identified this challenge in my dayto day and I see that,
like you know, my peers aswell at other companies, this is an
issue. And what gave you kindof the push to sit, I'm going
to address this and start a companyto solve this. Yeah. So I
(13:33):
did not think that I was kindof be an entrepreneur a very risk a
verse and this is not like aline of business unit in too risk averse.
I was really passionate about the problem. And also, you know,
I think so I've shared this story, but I had a personal tragedy happen
in my life that made me kindof reevaluate how I was spending my time
(13:54):
and I felt that, you know, while I was working on This happened
while I was working on Apple Watchbefore it was announced, and I was
like, this is great. I'mso glad I had this experience working in
Apple, but like, there's gotto be something bigger out there for me
to work on have a bigger impact. And you know, what do I
know? Like what could I influence? And it's like, well, I
know how to build millions of thingsat very high levels of quality. After
(14:18):
doing four programs at Apple, Ifelt like I'd learned that and was passionate
about that, but I also knewwhy it was hard, and so I
was essentially inspired to go try tosolve the big problem. And both myself
and my co founder Sam, whois our CTO, we're both inspired by
the problem. And you could saythere's like a selfish bit in there of
like, if we fail, wehave to go back to being mechanical teaers
(14:41):
without this solution. So there's abit of that good drive, but it's
like this should exist. And whenwe talk to customers and other engineers about
like, oh we do this thing, and they're like, oh, I
had that idea, just like yes, yes, and we're doing it.
So it's not necessary that the ideais so novel. It's the actual execution
of like how we make this work, and so it's it's been really great.
(15:03):
I'm really glad that I took theleap. I think when you know
something, the kind of the wayI would put it is when the worst
day of your life has already happened, like you have no fear for a
period of time, and you justgo take a leap and do something completely
different that is very meaningful to you. Absolutely, and so I love that
you focused on like the falling inlove with the problem versus a solution.
(15:26):
And this is something actually that it'sinteresting that just was coming up. I
was at like a VC small likeVC conference and founders were saying that,
you know, like that's really important. If you fall in love with the
solution, of course you're going tobe chasing maybe the wrong the wrong issues
and get too far away from theproblem. So I'm kind of curious,
was there any early iterations of thingsthat you'd be willing to share that were
(15:48):
you know, just you learned thatthat wasn't the right route to go down,
but you knew this was still theproblem you're trying to address, and
you know you've gotten to where youare today, which is amazing, and
you guys are really addressing you know, the challenge with the right kind of
tools. I'm curious, what werethose throwaway concepts early on? Yeah,
I absolutely can share. So whenwe started the company, we thought we
(16:10):
were going to be a robot company. So Sam and I are mechanical engineers,
right, and you like, youknow, you bring what you know
and at the time, so liketwenty fifteen. Going back then, industrial
robots, they were less of athing than they are now, and there
is this idea that you could buildlike omni robots that could essentially replace people
(16:30):
human operators. And we're like,we're not going to do that. That's
too hard, Omni omni task istoo hard. We'll just do like a
four function robot can do these fourthings, and then we'll use the robot
as a trojan horse for data.We'll take pictures and we'll like do analysis
and then that'll be our data setto build the software product that ultimately instrumental
became Yeah, and we uh so, we actually raised our first dollars on
(16:52):
that concept, and literally we incorporatedthe company to take investor dollars and customer
dollars. So we've had a customersince day two. And we went to
China to support an early build forthat product. And while I was there,
I was also interviewing a bunch offactories because I was trying to figure
out like, Okay, we're gonnabuild robots, We're gonna have to solo.
(17:15):
That's gonna worry how it's going towork. And essentially I realized after
talking literally one week trip to Chinatalking to a bunch of factories. There's
no way they're gonna buy robots fromus ever. Ever, and the reason
is because they feel very confident buildingtheir own robots. Why would they they
can build their own automation, whywould they work with a third party to
build these kind of this kind ofautomation seemed like it was going to be
(17:37):
an uphill battle. And then soSam and I got together and we were
like, well, it seems likethis would be really hard. What if
we just like scrap the robot part, reduced the complexity of this company and
focus on software. And so thatwas the thread that we pulled on,
and we essentially two weeks after weraised money, we pivoted our not the
problem but the solution space away fromcomplex robotics to let's be a software company,
(18:03):
and our hardware that we build isgoing to just be what we need
to lubricate our process into our customersto be able to integrate easily into what
they're doing, and to keep asmuch technology as possible out of the hardware
and have all the technology as muchas possible in the software that we provide.
We're going to take a quick breakfor a few words from our incredible
(18:26):
sponsors. When we come back,we dive headfirst into the lessons Anda learned
the process of raising money in thevolatile world of startups venture capitalists, and
how to maintain that drive to craftfundraising pitches. Welcome back to the Bomb
(18:48):
Engineering a path Forward. I'm yourhost, Madenta Strongheart. And when we
left off, we were talking aboutthe Vital Pivot CEO and a Katrina made
with Instrumental within a week of gettingher initial funding from robots to software.
Okay, I'm going to also goback to something you were talking about.
Obviously, raising money is a bigpart of this part of having a startup,
(19:11):
being a founder. And you've actually, you guys just completed Series C.
Is that right, Yeah, we'veraised eighty million dollars total. Congratulations.
That's incredible. Could you speak alittle bit to some of the challenges
or things that you just like learnedin the first round versus now? You
know, how different is it raisingmoney? How many years in are we
now? If you start in twentyfifty nine years yeah, you know,
(19:34):
eight or nine years later, howdoes that evolve over time? I actually
very much enjoy the fundraising process.I love talking about the problem and our
space and the industry, what ourteam is accomplishing. So that's great.
I think one of the things that'sreally interesting about venture, and it has
(19:55):
always been the case, but nowthat I've had a company and so been
like in aware of kind of what'shappening a little bit more, is the
market dramatically changes. What is in, what is out, what is hot,
what is not, what the metricsyou need, and it's constantly changing.
So if I was to try tonuggetize that advice for future founders or
(20:17):
current founders, I think it's justfind a cohort of founders who are at
or ideally like eighteen months ahead ofwhere you're at, and use them as
kind of like a circle of notonly support but also advice and understanding of
where the market is, like whatwas their latest experience when they went out.
(20:38):
And I found that to be incrediblyimpactful throughout all the rounds. I
have good folks in my network thatI've like call up and I'll, you
know, I'll either run my deckby them and they'll get feedback, or
they can give me some insights intohow different investors are kind of valuing different
metrics or what they care about,so you can really tailor those pitches.
(20:59):
I think another thing that I learned, and this comes from sales in general,
Like it's just CEOs do a lotof selling. You sell candidates to
come work at your company, yousell your product because you're often like one
of the first salespeople, and yousell shares in your company to investors.
So you're mostly just doing selling allof the time. Nice. No,
that makes a lot of sense,and like you said, kind of learning
(21:19):
the right ways to frame it todifferent folks and also depending on kind of
the season and the bigger picture contextthat you guys are going into. And
so you've mentioned your co founder Sama couple of times. I'd love to
hear a little bit about what youthink the value of having a co founder
is. I think maybe in someways it seems obvious to folks, but
I think it's always interesting to heardifferent stories and also what you think people
(21:41):
should look for to know who acompatible co founder might be. Yeah,
trust and respect is probably like thefirst one. So I met Seam actually
he was an intern at Apple whenI started full time, and I starting
full time, I felt more likean intern than like a full time it's
just like fresh out of school,just like them. And so we actually
(22:03):
share a first patent. During hislike summer internship, we worked on a
project together and patented this switch thatwill never go into production, but there
is a patent on it. Andso that's kind of when we met back
in actually in two thousand and nine. And then we got the opportunity to
work together on Apple Watch. AndI had traveled with Sam, like to
(22:23):
vendors to solve problems. We've beenon the line like late together, like
not with with not enough sleep,trying to solve real hard problems, and
so it was this great opportunity tokind of pressure test the relationship, and
there's a lot of mutual respect thereand so it was kind of a no
brainer actually when I had to convincehim to leave Apple to like come on
(22:45):
this journey. Sam and I areactually very similar, and so maybe one
of the downsides of our partnership,Well we're different. We have similar backgrounds,
but like we are both mechanical engineerswith similar experience set. He's better
at certain things and I'm better atother things, and so that's complimentary.
I think It's great when co foundershave like very different skills because it adds
(23:07):
to the diversity of background and opinionthat you can have in the company.
That being said, like Instrumental,it's very engineer focused organization. We build
technology for engineers by engineers, andso there's a benefit to having someone who
innately understands our customers the problem,has experienced it firsthand as a partner.
(23:27):
So that's a major pro And it'sawesome to hear that, you know,
eight or nine years later, likethat's huge. I think there's often I've
definitely seen in the different startups andthings I've seen over the years, of
course, like founders bringing apart,finding new co founders, whatnot. You
know. So to be in itfor so long and still feel that way
about your co founder is huge,and I think speaks to some of the
(23:49):
like you said, the early thingsthat were the important values early on in
the relationship, the risk that tress. One of the other things that Sam
and I discussed very early on ishow we make decisions, which I think
is a really important thing to talkabout, and also like what success looks
like for that person and kind ofhow this fits into their story. And
narrative and making sure those are allaligned some like pro tip or kind of
(24:14):
inside. I feel like that's hugeto kind of outline how are we going
to go through things. Then youjust have this roadmap every time to go
back to and then it's almost likehaving that med eat or something. So
it's not a you think this way, I think this way, but let's
just follow these steps that we bothagreed on early on. That's an amazing
tactic. I love that, ButI'm gonna kind of want to go off
on this tangent. Just something youmentioned about. I know it is more
(24:37):
related to your work at Apple,but patenting something which I think is an
interesting topic, especially with how quicklytechnology is moving. Of course, and
we've had some of these conversations atevents at Design Lab and also with other
guests on the pod. I'd loveto just hear your perspective on kind of
where you think that's going as faras the kind of politics around it,
(24:59):
and do you I think it's worthit for certain companies like to focus on
kind of the proprietary knowledge and patentingthings or making sure you know they're protecting
that versus just moving quickly iterating focusingon the technology or is it really worth
it. In some cases, obviouslyApple they have all the lawyers and the
backing to make things happen quickly likethat. But in the startup world sometimes
(25:21):
it can feel overwhelming or you haveto prioritize what you're focused on. Yeah,
so it's all about what your strategyis. So I would say it's
supportant to have a strategy. Thereason that Apple and Zamsung and Google and
all these huge companies incentivize so highlytheir employees to invent and patent their inventions,
like they often pay bonuses to inventorsfor this, is because it's actually
(25:47):
it's not necessarily offense, it's actuallydefense. So when they get sued by
a competitor for violating a patent,they can countersue for like, well,
here's ten other patents you're violating ofours, well, right, and so
it's a it's in this plays outin public, so you can find these
examples, and so that's why largecompanies do that. Does that make sense
for startups, I personally don't thinkso. Maybe there are certain startup like
(26:11):
you know, strategies where that makessense. Maybe you're trying to be acquired
and so your patent portfolo is reallyimportant to the value of the technology versus
trying to be a big standalone businesson your own instrumentals perspective is a little
bit more nuanced. We have technologythat goes into countries in the world that
do not necessarily respect patents and intellectualproperty, and you can't change reality,
(26:34):
so you have to adapt to reality. And so our general kind of patent
strategy has been, well, ifit goes, you know, if it's
going to be deployed to all thesevarious places, we should have as little
technology as possible in there, andwe're not going to try to protect our
patent that stuff. So well,you know, we'll trademark our logo and
our brand, et cetera, butwe're not going to patent stuff in our
(26:56):
physical station because if there's no wayto protect that ip. In order to
make a patent make sense, youhas to be protectable, defendable, you
have to be able to like provethat someone is violating your patent. So
I guess another pro tip maybe forthe entrepreneurs out there who are thinking about,
you know, wanting to patent apiece of their core technology, like
(27:17):
try to figure out how you candefend, you know, from the sides
and behind and in front with youknow, an initial first patent is to
find a patent agent versus using highcost patent council from like your corporate council,
will significantly reduce your costs to actuallyfile patents. Pants are expensive.
It's like twenty five k or soto get through the whole process on the
(27:41):
low ngth. So it's a biginvestment and so you should use it very
tactfully to make sure that you candefend core pieces of your product so that
they're not rapidly copied. That's awesome. I love that. And next up
we have what is on your personalbill of materials, which you can intern
however you like personal bill of materials, you know, I think that it's
(28:06):
time to do something for myself,and so there's a couple of things that
I really enjoy doing. I likecooking, and I like sewing and making
making things in a different kind ofrealm of making. And that time I
find is very useful for just creatingspace in my brain. Absolutely just having
(28:29):
some of those other outlets to feedcreativity and and just like probably getting back
to more hands on stuff because maybeyou don't do as much. But I
didn't realize when I first was learningabout instrumental that you guys do have the
hardware component. So you are probablygetting a little bit still of the hardware
prototyping, you know, excitement.But when we get the excitement of all
the customers we support and that's reallyexciting, you can get like you don't
(28:53):
have to own all the problems totally. You're like, actually, it's kind
of nice to like address them,deal with that and then not own them
all the time, not have totake them home every time, and then
last but not least, just wantto give you the opportunity to tell us
what you're excited about nextpert instrumental andanything else you wanted to mention about what
you guys are focused on. Yeah, so I guess one of the area.
(29:15):
There's maybe two things. So onethat's maybe very relevant to this audience
is we recently launched the Build BetterHandbook, which is essentially writing a book
in public about how to be greatat design, new product, introduction,
production, operations, quality. Allof that. We have interviews with great
(29:41):
leaders in the quality space, operations, engineering leadership and how to do those
jobs well and that's been really excitingfor the company, and it's out there.
You can find it on our websiteInstrumental dot com to build better handbook,
check it out. There's tons there. So that's something we're really excited
about. And the interview us thatwe're doing with these amazing leaders that have
(30:02):
been in our networks or that we'vegotten introduced to, we've learned a lot
from and it's been even really influencinghow I lead as a leader, So
that's awesome. And then the otherkind of exciting thing for us is that
we are launching into the airspace anddefense spaces new market for us that we're
learning a lot about. So that'skind of an up and coming thing for
the company that hopefully there'll be moreto talk about. So yeah, absolutely,
(30:26):
And I was already going to say, I hope I can invite you
and maybe we can bring Sam,your co founder, anyone else from the
team for a part two, becauseI really don't feel like we got to
everything. There were so many likestarts of ideas. I was like,
we could go down this rabbit holeand have this conversation. Thank you so
much for sharing your experience with ustoday, and just the range of what
(30:47):
we covered. We covered a lotof ground from going from engineering to founder,
to patent strategy to you know,just being up to Series C startup
and what that looks like evolving overthe years. Thank you so much,
Anna, it was a pleasure andI hope we can invite you guys back
for more in the future. Thankyou. It's great to be here.
(31:11):
That was Anna. Katrina Shadletski andher amazing journey from Apple product design engineer
to CEO of Instrumental. Her insighton how to protect your invention, knowing
when to pivot in your company's path, and how to fall in love with
problems rather than solutions should easily lighta fire in the hearts and minds of
any emerging engineer. This has beenthe Bomb, engineering a path forward.
(31:32):
We'll see you next time. Ifyou like the Bomb, don't forget to
subscribe, rate and share the showwherever you get your podcasts. You can
follow supply Frame and Hackaday on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn YouTube, and design
Lab at supply Frame Design Lab onInstagram and Twitter. The Bomb is a
supply Frame podcast produced by me MagentaStrongheart and Ryan Tillotson. Written by Maggie
(31:57):
Bowles and edited by Daniel Ferrara.Theme music is by Anna Hogben. Show
art by Thomas Schneider. Special thanksto Giovanni Selinas, Bruce Diminguez, Thomas
Woodward, Jin Kumar, Jordan Clark, the entire supply from Team and you
are wonderful listeners. I'm your host, Magenta Strongheart. See you next week. What
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