The Hardtech Podcast

Roxie Alsruhe had never done anything in hardware or manufacturing when she came home from the hospital with her first born and ran straight into a problem that a lot of families quietly deal with, which is knowing when a bottle of breast milk expires without having to decode a CDC chart while you are exhausted. That problem became HoopDee, a set of NFC-enabled silicone rings that stretch onto any bottle and sync to an app with a tap, so everyone in the house can see what is in each bottle, where it has been sitting, and when it expires. In this episode Grant Chapman and Drew Westrick talk with Roxie about a founder journey that ran backwards from the usual hardware story. She started with an ugly PowerPoint instead of a prototype and shared it with friends until she knew the problem was real, then tested the tap-to-sync experience with stretchy bottle bands and NFC tags bought off Amazon, and released the app months before the hardware existed so she could iron out workflows and collect feedback while manufacturing caught up. They get into the reality of hardware once it arrived, including longer timelines and higher tooling costs, simplifying the design down to a single over-molded piece of silicone with a laser-etched secondary process, and the test rig her dad built to stretch samples a thousand times to find the right formula. The back half is go to market, which Roxie is candid about being the hardest part, because her core audience is first-time parents who have not experienced the problem yet. She talks about why the conversion rate at in-person expos is so much higher than anything online, how grandmothers and sisters at her booth end up selling the product better than she can, and why TikTok Shop and affiliates are the closest digital version of that moment. She closes with advice for new hardware founders, which is that everything takes longer, keep reserves, and keep asking for feedback even when it stings.Special Guest: Roxie Alsruhe.

A vision system can see a car enter a work zone in milliseconds. Getting that warning to a worker standing two miles down the highway, wearing a helmet and running a jackhammer, is a completely different problem. Derek Bleyle, VP of Product at ClearObject, and Tim Hagan, Principal Data Scientist at ClearObject, join host Grant Chapman and guest host Elijah Clarke, hardware engineer at Glassboard, to tell the story of Clear Work Zone, from a design thinking workshop with the New York State Thruway Authority to a production system protecting crews today. ClearObject spent eight years building software for connected products before this, and the episode is an unusually honest look at what that team had to learn. They started with commercial off the shelf everything, discovered that phones and smartwatches could not deliver the range, battery life, or control they needed, and ran a six week proof of concept that ended with one of their developers soldering a wearable together in a hotel room the night before the demo. That demo was enough to earn buy in from the customer and from their own leadership, which is the real lesson for anyone trying to get a hardware idea moving. From there the conversation gets into the engineering. Why they alert when a vehicle actually enters the zone rather than trying to predict it, because alert fatigue kills a safety product on day one. Why Wi-Fi HaLow was the only wireless option that could cover a two and a half mile closure with low latency when Bluetooth is too short and cell service does not exist. How they budgeted two and a half seconds from event to a worker getting clear, and drove the end to end system down to four tenths of a second. What it takes to build a device that survives sunlight, dust, rain, vibration, and being thrown in the back of a truck with a helmet on top of it. Derek and Tim also talk about the shift in mindset that happens when a product moves from convenience to safety critical, the difference between the buyers who run safety organizations and the workers actually wearing the device, and the value of building in the hundreds instead of the thousands so real users can live with a product long enough to tell you what is actually wrong with it. If you are building a connected hardware product, this is a clear look at the path from idea to something people trust with their lives, and a reminder that the last 20% of the functionality is where 90% of the effort lives.Special Guest: Derek Bleyle.

Some founders chase a new idea every few years. Dan Evans did the opposite: he got world-class at one genuinely hard technology and rode it across an entire career. In this episode, Dan, the CEO and founder of Babba, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman for a conversation that is equal parts engineering deep dive and founder's playbook. Babba makes a portable baby bottle cooler and warmer built on thermoelectric (Peltier) cooling, the same notoriously nonlinear, power-hungry technology Dan first mastered at his previous startup, RecoverX, in the sports and wellness recovery space. RecoverX was acquired by Hyperice just months after launch, and Dan turned that hard-won expertise toward a new problem: warming and cooling breast milk safely, quickly, and on the go. The engineering half of the conversation is a genuine masterclass. Dan and the Glassboard team get into why thermoelectric cooling is so hard to control that being off by an inch means being off by a mile, how he whiteboarded the physics during the pandemic and proved the doubters wrong, and why balancing mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, fluid dynamics, and food science (you cannot cook or denature the milk) made this one of the hardest products any of them has worked on. The other half is about everything that happens after the engineering works. Dan talks through hearing past the noise of a rough prototype to what customers actually care about, why hardware's go-to-market is as brutal as the build, and why the capital moat around hardware survives even as AI speeds up design. Then he gets refreshingly honest about fundraising: 700 personalized investor outreaches, the second and third-order networks that actually lead to a check, building to be acquired, and the strange transition from venture-startup craziness to running a healthy small business. What we get into: Getting great at a "party trick" almost nobody can do, then finding every nail that needs the hammer The RecoverX story: four years of R&D, a launch, and an acquisition by Hyperice just months later Why thermoelectric cooling is so nonlinear that you have to nail the math and the engineering together The ugly alpha prototype vs the pretty 3D print, and why bridging the two is the hard part Not cooking the milk: balancing mechanical, electrical, and fluid engineering with food science The six-month roadblock, and selling into high-consideration baby purchases vs the athletic market Hearing through the noise of a prototype to what customers truly care about, and asking for the brutal feedback Why hardware's go-to-market is as hard as the build, and why the capital moat stays even as AI accelerates design The three pillars of fundraising and sales, 700 personalized outreaches, and second and third-order networks Building to be acquired, and the leadership shift from startup to small business A few lines that stuck with us: "Get really good at a party trick that almost nobody else knows, then find all the nails that need the hammer." "With thermoelectric cooling, when you're off by an inch, you're off by a mile." "The people you message might not be the people who invest in you. They might be the bridge to the person who does." "If you can find joy in the journey and not just the destination, you'll make a really good entrepreneur." About the guest: Dan Evans is the CEO and founder of Babba, which makes a portable baby bottle cooler and warmer built on thermoelectric cooling. He previously founded RecoverX, a thermal-control company in the sports and wellness recovery space that was acquired by Hyperice, and he has built his career around mastering one hard technology and applying it across multiple products. The Hardtech Podcast is hosted by DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman of Glassboard.Special Guest: Dan Evans.

The walker is one of the most common and least reimagined products in healthcare. Matt Cumella set out to change that. A doctor of physical therapy with a board certification in geriatrics, Matt spent years in post-acute and aging care, and in this episode he joins Grant Chapman and Drew Westrick to trace the whole arc, from a formative burn-trauma ICU rotation to building Nuvio. He makes a simple but overlooked point: for the people he treated, the hardest moment often was not walking, it was standing up. Nuvio's first walker was reengineered around that, with an H-frame you step inside of (rather than shuffling behind), and ergonomic handles set at the right height to help someone rise out of a deep couch or chair. From there, Matt and the team pushed further, adding sensors to put a physical therapist's eye into the device and turn every session into meaningful, reimbursable data. What we get into: Matt's path from sports-med dreams to a burn-trauma ICU rotation that reset his whole view of the field Why daily independence, not peak performance, became the goal, and why a small loss of mobility can cascade into a house of cards in older age The walker everyone settles for, four posts and tennis balls, and why the real problem is sit-to-stand, not walking The H-frame design: stepping inside a ring of stability, the kitchen-sink demo, and a walker that folds and stands on its own Designing for three stakeholders at once: the patient, the home environment, and the caregiver who loads it into the car The pivot from the analog "acoustic" walker to a smart one, and the goal of putting a physical therapist in your walker Why the data matters: reimbursement, evidence, and moving from "how far did you walk" to the next 10 to 20 metrics The art of a properly constrained product, working through prototype to production, and continuity of care from hospital to home A few lines that stuck with us: "It's less about the top 5% of performance. It's getting 85% of your points back." "How do we put a physical therapist in your walker?" "We built a device that, even if you didn't know it was smart, would still win." "Product can be for anybody." About the guest: Matt Cumella is the founder and CEO of Nuvio and a doctor of physical therapy with a board certification in geriatrics. He spent years in post-acute and aging care before building Nuvio, a reimagined walker and, increasingly, a sensor-driven care platform for people working to regain their mobility and independence. This episode of The Hardtech Podcast was hosted by Grant Chapman and Drew Westrick of Glassboard.Special Guest: Matt Cumella.

This is a special one. Grant Chapman flies solo (a Hardtech Podcast "after dark" on a Friday) with Ben Wrightsman, founding board member of AMVIC, the Advanced Machine and Vehicle Innovation Center. Ben is a Hoosier lifer who has spent 30 years at the center of Indiana's hard-tech story, and he is exactly the kind of guest who can connect electric race cars, battery chemistry, contract manufacturing, and the coming wave of humanoids into one throughline. The conversation traces his arc from teenage electrician to Purdue, to Delphi's electric race car program and the EnerDel battery pedigree that quietly runs through nearly every EV today, to a decade building the Battery Innovation Center from fewer than six clients into a 600-plus-client powerhouse. That story becomes the blueprint for AMVIC: a nonprofit built to accelerate the entire machine, not just one subsystem, and the organization behind the upcoming AMVIC AIM IN Summit. What we get into: Ben's 30-year arc: electrician, Purdue, electric race cars, and the Delphi and EnerDel battery pedigree behind modern EVs How a scrappy battery lab on a landlocked naval base grew from fewer than six clients to more than 600, and pivoted from government dependence to a thriving private-market model Why hardware has to crawl, walk, run, always in that order, and why you should rent a manufacturing line before you ever build your own "Small fingerprints on very cool big things," and the quiet power of being the connective tissue in an ecosystem From the Battery Innovation Center to AMVIC: going from one subsystem to the whole machine, and why it is structured as a nonprofit Why the real AI story is a manufacturing renaissance: power, fiber, high voltage, and the data-center buildout nobody sees Humanoids, the dangerous jobs nobody wants, and why the robots are not coming for your job (with a Y2K and internet reality check) The origin of the AMVIC AIM IN Summit: how a 25-person dinner with a crazy idea became a sold-out summit built on demos, not sales pitches A few lines that stuck with us: "We have small fingerprints on very cool big things." "Hardware has to crawl, walk, run, and you have to do it in that order." "The renaissance in AI and data centers is really about manufacturing." "Compound interest is a hell of a drug." About the guest: Ben Wrightsman is a founding board member of AMVIC, the Advanced Machine and Vehicle Innovation Center, a nonprofit accelerating advanced machine and vehicle innovation. Over 30 years he has worked across electric racing, batteries (Delphi and EnerDel), contract manufacturing, and the Battery Innovation Center, and he is one of the driving forces behind the AMVIC AIM IN Summit. Join us at the event: The AMVIC AIM IN Summit is September 23rd in downtown Indianapolis, starting at 8:00 AM, with a Critical Energy panel, an OEM and innovation panel, a humanoid showcase, and Ben speaking. Register here: [event registration link] This special episode of The Hardtech Podcast was hosted solo by Grant Chapman of Glassboard.Special Guest: Ben Wrightsman.

In this episode of The Hardtech Podcast, hosts DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman sit down with Dr. David Albert; serial founder, inventor with 100+ patents, former chief scientist of GE Healthcare Cardiology, and the mind behind AliveCor's KardiaMobile, the world's first smartphone-connected FDA-cleared EKG. Dr. Albert shares how a viral YouTube video in 2010 accidentally launched AliveCor into the spotlight, attracting investors like Vinod Khosla, Qualcomm Ventures, Mayo Clinic, and GE Healthcare. He details the first-principles engineering that went into bypassing Apple's locked-down Bluetooth by transmitting EKG data ultrasonically through the iPhone's microphone, a workaround that still powers products today. The conversation covers the full spectrum of building regulated hardware at scale: bootstrapping $1M in first-year revenue by selling to veterinarians before FDA clearance, designing custom automated test equipment for overseas factories, navigating ISO 13485 and international regulatory frameworks, diversifying supply chains across Asia, and balancing two very different customer bases, direct-to-consumer wellness buyers and clinical cardiology teams. Whether you're a first-time hardware founder or deep in the regulated device world, this episode is packed with hard-won lessons on resilience, quality systems, and why the root word of hardware is hard. Topics covered: The origin story of AliveCore and the accidental viral video that started it all First-principles engineering: ultrasonic data transmission, Mophie case prototypes, and RadioShack components Guerrilla go-to-market: selling to veterinarians before FDA 510(k) clearance Scaling regulated hardware manufacturing under ISO 13485 Custom automated test equipment and supply chain diversification Navigating FDA, European MDR, cybersecurity, and AI regulations Balancing DTC consumer electronics with B2B clinical healthcare Advice for first-time founders entering regulated device spaces Special Guest: David Albert.