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#163 – Interview with the Upverter Founders – Ramiform Reciprocity Raconteurs

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The_Upverter_Founders-TAH

Welcome, Upverter!

  • Upverter was started by Zak, Steve and Mike, formerly roommates at the University of Waterloo. They are making a “multplayer” online CAD tool built on HTML5 and JavaScript.
  • They really want to be the Git for hardware.
  • They started by looking at gEDA and trying to pull it into the browser.
  • An alternate business plan was to create radar for pirate ships (?)
  • Their initial funding gave them 4 months of runway. Then they joined yCombinator in December of 2010. Help was given by Yuri Milner’s Start Fund.
  • They announced their official seed round…on The Amp Hour!
  • Dave asked the difference between Angels vs Venture Capitalists as investors.
  • They released the first rev in the Fall of 2011 to some good reception…but no users. It was deemed a good response for half baked product.
  • Backend part processing is done with Octopart.
  • The biggest designs and most interesting designs are private on Upverter…and some are done by large corporate clients (a recent change).
  • Collaboration is Upverter’s strength, Chris enjoys the design review tool. Dave is maybe willing to try it (maybe). 
  • In the BOM section, you can hook into BOM/PCB ordering.
  • Offering a PCB layout service (with engineers in India) was an experiment to see who the customers were.
  • Competition abounds! There are 25 competitors that Zak tracks and that has increased from 2 competitors in the last 18 months!
  • Chris points out his new acronym: YASTOTW…Yet Another Schematic Tool On The Web…in this case he was talking about iSchematics.
  • Upverter compares their eventual acceptance to how Google Docs is now commonplace.
  • If you’re developing OSHW on Upverter, you can use any license you want.
  • Eventually, they will look at hardware libraries/Reuseable hardware blocks, mostly for large vertical companies, such as ones that have a bunch of reference designs with their own internal parts.
  • Upverter thinks having a money based marketplace for these hardware libraries kills collaboration because it incentivizes not sharing.
  • This is also the reason that they don’t have a marketplace for kits…money disincentivizes open source.
  • If people are interested, they can develop on Upverter and sell kits on Tindie. Collaborations with them might be possible in the future.
  • Mike talks about Sparkfun’s stories about open source, like the ones told by the engineering team when they were on the show.
  • Version control (GitHub) vs source control (Upverter)
  • Upverter stores each move/change, down to the point where you can go playback the entire design creation.
  • The Stats:
    • 10s of forks per week
    • 18000 designs or so
    • 12000 users so far
  • Don’t need to log in in order to play around with the interface. They want people to be able to get a feel for it without giving info.
  • Where is their competition?
    • Collaboration: GitHub, NFS, SVN
    • EDA/Simulation: Altium, CircuitLab, Web based tools
    • Data repositories: Octopart, Digikey
  • Upverter is expanding! They just hired a 12th employee, an EE whose title is a “Customer Success” engineer.
  • Want to be lucky #13? There are currently 1 sw and 1 hw job open. Email jobs@upverter.com with your info.

Thanks to Zak and Steve and Mike for being on the show. It was really awesome hearing about the tools that they’re working on developing and the focus on sharing. It’s going to be a great tool for Open Hardware and sharing in the future (or today!). Be sure to try out their service and let us know what you think in the comments!

Thanks to good ol’ Wikipedia for the image of the Upverter Founders (Don’t forget to donate!)

Comments

  2. Pretty soon you will have to change the name of the show – Hour?
    I enjoyed the show. I seem to keep agreeing with Dave. I myself have used Altium/Protel/Tango for a number of years (as well as others) and just want schematic capture with pcb design. Forget autoplace/autoroute, forget simulation. I would like BOM generation with ability to use inhouse part numbers. I use KiCAD, LTspice, and Parts&Vendors. I also use EZCad for mechanical design and usually import dxf of my board outlines into pcb package as some of my board outlines are quite complex and the CAD functions in pcb packages are terrible. I am a little leery of losing control of my design in web-based tools and prefer to have something installed on my desktop.

    • I totally agree with Dave and you David. I use Altium as well as Kicad and I cannot be convinced, no matter how good the tools may be on upvertor, to trust them to look after the integrity and storage of my data….that may change, but for now its not for me.

  3. Chris and Dave

    Love you show and you guys do a great job. I never miss a week.

    I myself have done the hardware/software start up thing so thought I would chime in here.

    1). Angels are great VC is great so long as you understand that they all want to make money. Yes you take money but you sure work hard and rewarded as such.

    2). Attorneys take 1/2 the money plus some stock options.

    3). Never feel bad about raising money to make product (Dave). If you are honest about your deliverables and you raise money, then fair enough. Capital allows you to realize a product at a volume which magnifies your sweat equity return and the investor profit.

    4). Be strong about work effort on the tech side. You will be constantly asked to add a feature which is a small part of the value of your product. Focus on a simple core that has broad appeal and solid foundation is what make a successful product. That is not to say to not make product open to flexibility and change.

    5). Politics can consume all of your time. Your choice.

    6) Founders are disposable so be ready when the venture is in the black.

    I lucked out to have the opportunity to do a start up and will never regret it successful or not. This is not to say it was without hardship, betrayal or intrigue. I would do one again in a heartbeat provided I believed in the product and is one of the most wonderful experiences I have had in my life. I recommend it for everyone.