#012 - Feel the beat - creating the world’s first wearable device for musicians, with Florian Simmendinger of Soundbrenner, Germany - Hong Kong

The Hardware Entrepreneur

In this episode my guest is Florian Simmendinger, co-founder and CEO of Soundbrenner.

Soundbrenner is maker of the world’s first wearable smart device for musicians. Their product is called Soundbrenner Pulse and their ambitious goal is to help every single musician on the planet to achieve rhythmic perfection. Their Indiegogo campaign on their first device, a smart vibrating metronome, was very successful with pre-orders in total of around $250 000. This market validation of their product then allowed them to receive a seed funding of of $0.5 million and most recently an additional $1.5 million USD of financing.

I met Florian’s company at Global Source faire in Hong Kong where they exhibited their exciting product. In this episode their fascinating story will be presented. We will touch on many topics, on their motivation for founding, their journey so far, including details on successful crowd-funding, manufacturing, elements of his personality, etc.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• What was your motivation for founding the company, and your story briefly so far? - [3:24]
• What music and music instrument do you play? - [7:28]
• What other mobile platforms do you cover besides iPhone? - [9:09]
• How did you find this idea, identified the problem? - [10:28]
• Could you elaborate on your setup of being in Berlin and Hong Kong? - [11:37]
• Pros and cons of having a startup in Berlin - [12:03]
• At which phase did you move to Hong Kong? - [13:27]
• How was your funding during crowd-funding and afterwards? - [14:16]
• When to follow the crowd-funding route and when not to? - [16:14]
• What are the essential elements of a successful crowd-funding campaign and why did you choose Indigogo versus Kickstarter? - [18:15]
• Do you still get orders because Indiegogo would allow you to do that? - [21:14]
• Where do you manufacture and where are the other steps of product development done? - [21:57]
• What is your biggest strength and your team’s? - [22:59]
• The notes he would you give to his twenty something self and the key to being unstoppable - [25:56]
• If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your career? - [27:48]
• Do you have some routine in your life, morning, evening and so on routine? - [28:31]
• Cultural differences when working, especially during their participation during the accelerator program - [30:58]
• What is the best way to reach you? - [32:58]