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It’s all part of the game
Springboard - a very cool program for startups in the UK. I finally have some time to share our experience with it!
First, I’ve been recently working on an Internet of Things project called Hutgrip. In one sentence hutgrip is about having total control over every device you own! Springboard was a perfect fit in my mind and for the first time in Europe they announced that they’re going to do an IoT Accelerator!
(Take a deep breath!) Only IoT Projects! That’s amazing! It truly shows that there is a lot of interest in the field these days. The guys at Springboard totally did a great job at creating this program. They have amazing partners and mentors that are already doing great work in the field. We can all learn a lot from companies like Cosm, Evrythng, Bosch, Raspberry Pi and many others. This is actually the best part of the program - the mentors.
How did it go?
As I said above hutgrip was one of the finalists in the selectrion process. The final interviews were in London, a few weeks ago - among the top 20 companies from all the applicants. The program itself starts in Cambridge this March. Before the final meeting with their partners and investors we had 3 online calls with their team. We talked a lot about:
- Where we are in the development process?
- How are we going to take the product to the market?
- What do we expect to get from the program after the acceleration period?
- What the user experience would be?
So make sure to figure these out before applying and putting a lot of time in applications and calls and meetings, etc.
Wait, you know what the best part was?
We submitted our application by the end of 2012 and by the time we got to the interviews we kind of tweaked our business model. One does not simply change the idea after starting to talk to investors about it! You can only get them confused and … it’s over with you. Well after all we decided to be honest to ourselves and do what’s best for the project.
During that first month of 2013 we were actively working on validating what works and what doesn’t. Then more or less, it became clear to us that maybe going after mass market right from the start would be not only hard but maybe even the end for a small startup company. Surely there is no easy way to compete with the giants in the market today - companies like Bosch, Philips, etc. So we figured out that there is a much better opportunity in working with small and medium businesses that can use our platform to improve their workflows.
So hutgrip switched a little bit to building the platform that would help people by bringing smart connectivity to their old devices. We did this project with a small factory, where the people are producing machines used for melting metals. So using our platform we can help them automatically get remote control and monitoring of their machines. as well was notifications - like alerts that the worker would get in his or hers email when something happens with the machine or when an event is scheduled to happen.
This is very very different from the way we started when we were targeting the residential market. So lesson learned - before you rush into any accelerator program, be honest with yourself that you have truely researched all the options, all the possibilities and you are absolutely sure in every sentence you put in that application!
We’re still going to make this project open for the DIY community and everybody who has access to a controller like the Raspberry Pi would soon be able to try out the platform just from the website.
So that’s from hutgrip - imagine IFTTT for the hardware devices around you, or LEGO for your gadgets and online services…. that’s what makes us get up in the morning!
Just made it to GIGTANK!!!
Well, HUTGRIP made it to the awesome GigTank! I’m Bobi and I just arrived yesterday here in Chattanooga, TN. The place looks amazing, the Co.Lab is a very exciting and creative open space.
Well, I made it, but my bag didn’t, so I’m waiting for it now. The people are great and very welcoming. Everybody is excited about the summer long program, which starts officially on Monday.
So… wait, what is GIGTANK?
GigTank is the world’s only accelerator on a living fiber network. It’s based in the Gig City - Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is absolutely living in the future. The city’s 170,000 businesses and homes are connected to one another by a $300 million, one-gigabit fiber infrastructure. It’s the smartest and fastest grid in the Western Hemisphere.
HUTGRIP is one of the startups that got selected to participate in the program. Other than the actual startups there are many amazing specialists and mentors coming here for the Summer.
The place is great for HutGrip as we’re very much depending on the super-fast and reliable internet infrastructure. Well, the whole Internet Of Things domain heavily relies on the Internet and of course on a bunch of other stuff. There has been a lot lately on the MQTT messaging protocol. Here is a nice piece telling the story of how it came to be: “REST is for sleeping. MQTT is for mobile”. Other than this we have all these hardware components that are doing very good on Kickstarter. Hopefully they will streamline the adoption of all these new technologies and protocols. Check out for example the Arduino compatible Spark Core, they’ve made about $250 000 and they have just started their campaign. In HutGrip we’re looking more into the Software that would help people deal with all the data that is soon going to be available. The onegigabit fiber infrastructure is already setting the scene for so many new applications of these kind! Check out what’s coming next week:
If you’re around, do come and say Hi!
Thank you for finding this page(it is so very old)! My current personal page, projects and ways to connect is through - http://bobirakova.com/
Hackidemia 1st of June!
Announcing our latest event in Sofia:
Hackidemia Sofia is excited to come again and load kids with some electrifying hacks for the biggest holiday - the 1st of June - Children’s Day. Together with the Smart Fab Lab - the first FabLab in Sofia and great support fromTransformatori and Sofia Tech Park, we are happy to officially announce the event.
As much as we all love soldering, the Paper Electronics workshop will guide the children to create complex circuits without using any soldering but instead by playing with circuit stickers! These are peel-and-stick electronics for crafting circuits - multicolored LEDs, alight sensor, a microphone sensor for detecting sound, a timer circuit that turns on your circuit for five seconds at a time. Also complex sensors like the touch sensor - a Microcontroller Sticker that comes set up to work as a touch sensor, but advanced participants will learn how to program the onboard ATTiny85 microcontroller to do anything they want.
We will also play with bio sensors in the DIY Bio Hacking workshop done by Georgi Chipov fromChipoLabs. Georgi is a great part of our local community and will show us how to sense our heartbeat, muscle activity and others.
How do computers learn new things? This will be part of the topic in a Machine Learning workshop designed to show children the basic concepts behind an Image Recognition algorithm.
The Fabrication Tools Exploration workshop will show the kids how to use different machinery and what can be made with it. We will also explore the unexpected world of wearable devices and design new and creative ways to embed sensors to turn any surface into an interactive experience.
During the event we will develop two City Sensor stations that would measure air quality in specific part of the city. With this workshops we hope to inspire children and adults to be aware of the environment we live in and do as much as they can to preserve it.