#475 – An Interview with Christina Cyr

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Welcome Christina Cyr, CEO of dToor and the Cyrcle Phone

• This was their 5th year at CES. Mostly hanging out at Eureka Park, which is the startup area
• 2 years ago saw companies doing encryption for voice data because of creepy speakers, now they have gone mainstream.
• Startups are only allowed to be there for 2 years.
• This year dToor got coverage on BBC, CNET, The Daily Mail
• Enclosure company didn’t finish, so Christina 3D printed
• CTA is Consumer Technology Association. $97 to join and worth it.
• Wyze cameras, selling for $19.99
• Random connections from having a booth
• Christina works out of WeWork. Previously she was at Extra Slice in Bellevue, wanted a landline (LAN connection) for older builds of linux
• Metrix Create, Sodo also shut down
• Volunteers at their booth:
  • Aileen McGraw, WeWork Labs Manager
  • Xuny Haley, CoMotion Labs Manager
  • Nalin Chuapetcharasopon, Crowdfunding Expert
  • Anna Chuapetcharasopon, EdTech Consultant
• Former guest Scotty Allen dropped by.
• How did this phone get started?
• Phone wasn’t fitting in a pocket in 2014
• People wouldn’t take cardboard prototypes seriously
• Decided to use Seeed Studio’s phone kit with a different “skin”
• Presented as a phone for women, that was a mistake
• Featured in the telegraph out of context
• Demographics were 50/50
• Marketing tech products to women
• Apple Watch is taking the place of similar kind of role
• Joel Telling (3D printing nerd) goes to the hospital, after his watch alerted him to tachycardia
• Unity (software)
• The 4G version of the phone has
  • Dual SIM
  • Two headphone jacks
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon
  • Transitioning from micro-b to USB-C
• Working with vendors
• 4 vendors that have the snapdragon
• Tier 1 and Tier 2 companies
• Vendors want to hear 100K units
• Navigating working with vendors
• Looking at doing testing in China for FCC
• Dealing with Tariffs, as batteries and LCDs are coming directly from suppliers
• CES Tech Talk – Caught in the Crossfire: How Tariffs Impact Tech with Austere Sage Chandler, Vice President—International Trade, Consumer Technology Association (CTA)
• Harmonized Tariff Code 
• Different goods have different Tariffs
• Should have been an LLC instead of an S Corp or C Corp
• NRE for a completely custom display is $6M!
• Circular display is off the shelf, with 800×800 outer dimensions
• The 4G LTE phone will have a “tangential foot” (see image below)
• Module comes with Android 9
• Christina put together a document for hardware startups in Seattle, might be useful to listeners even if not in Seattle
• Cyrclephone.com
• @CyrChristina