Starting a business is no more difficult than determining that you have the risk-tolerance and temperament for such an endeavor, and deciding to just take your idea and go for it.
There's no single recipe for starting a company.
Despite the catchy title, this Instructable is more personal story than authoritative how-to: It chronicles how and why Squid Labs, Instructables, and our sister companies were started, and what we've learned along the way. Squid Labs is a research and design firm that did innovation consulting, and built prototypes for services and products, many of which have since spun-off into separate companies: Instructables, this project-sharing website; Potenco, which is making a hand-held generator for cell phones and laptops; Howtoons, comics showing kids of all ages how to do things; Makani, an energy company seeking to harness high-altitude wind; OptiOpia, a vision-correction business developing low-cost portable vision-testing and lens-fabricating devices; and MonkeyLectric, which makes LED lighting systems for bicycles.
I hope to inspire the creation of more businesses and companies like Squid Labs by telling you how we did it. Take all the information in this Instructable for free; there's no franchise fee! The world needs more people dedicated to having a positive impact.
There's no single recipe for starting a company.
Despite the catchy title, this Instructable is more personal story than authoritative how-to: It chronicles how and why Squid Labs, Instructables, and our sister companies were started, and what we've learned along the way. Squid Labs is a research and design firm that did innovation consulting, and built prototypes for services and products, many of which have since spun-off into separate companies: Instructables, this project-sharing website; Potenco, which is making a hand-held generator for cell phones and laptops; Howtoons, comics showing kids of all ages how to do things; Makani, an energy company seeking to harness high-altitude wind; OptiOpia, a vision-correction business developing low-cost portable vision-testing and lens-fabricating devices; and MonkeyLectric, which makes LED lighting systems for bicycles.
I hope to inspire the creation of more businesses and companies like Squid Labs by telling you how we did it. Take all the information in this Instructable for free; there's no franchise fee! The world needs more people dedicated to having a positive impact.
Step 1Motivation For Writing This (Now)
Squid Labs has spun off several companies from technologies developed in the lab, and those companies are still in their early stages. My definition of business success for Squid Labs would be any (hopefully all!) of the spin-off companies positively impacting both their customers and employees, and through that, becoming wildly profitable, going public, or being acquired and successfully integrated into a larger entity to enable the company to grow faster than it could on its own.
Squid Labs is still an ongoing experiment, though we've made it through the first stage (achieving spin-offs), and all signs point to success.
So, why have I chosen to write about Squid Labs now?
First, since Squid Labs is an experiment, it will undoubtedly need to be repeated multiple times, and hopefully improved upon. There are people even more risk-tolerant than the Squid Labs founders out there -- I hope they can learn from the Squid example, and start sooner than they otherwise would. So, this Instructable is primarily written for technical and creative people, early in their careers, but I've tried to make it accessible to anyone. I'd be flattered if it inspired just a few people to take their ideas to the next level!
Second, Instructables, the first of the Squid Labs spin-offs, has reached a small internal metric of success: over a couple of months, it has brought in enough revenue through advertising and related sources to cover its expenses during that same time period.
Even if cash neutrality is all that Instructables ever achieves, and it never actually provides a meaningful return to its investors, I would still be proud of my company. Instructables by its very nature has, and will continue to have, a net positive impact on the world. It's a valuable tool for anyone with a project or idea to share, and we're building a fantastic community. However, don't let me be too humble: Instructables is at the center of a very big trend, we're growing fast, and we have unmatchable authenticity. So, as a member of the inside team, I assure you things are going really well and you can definitely bet on us.
Squid Labs is still an ongoing experiment, though we've made it through the first stage (achieving spin-offs), and all signs point to success.
So, why have I chosen to write about Squid Labs now?
First, since Squid Labs is an experiment, it will undoubtedly need to be repeated multiple times, and hopefully improved upon. There are people even more risk-tolerant than the Squid Labs founders out there -- I hope they can learn from the Squid example, and start sooner than they otherwise would. So, this Instructable is primarily written for technical and creative people, early in their careers, but I've tried to make it accessible to anyone. I'd be flattered if it inspired just a few people to take their ideas to the next level!
Second, Instructables, the first of the Squid Labs spin-offs, has reached a small internal metric of success: over a couple of months, it has brought in enough revenue through advertising and related sources to cover its expenses during that same time period.
Even if cash neutrality is all that Instructables ever achieves, and it never actually provides a meaningful return to its investors, I would still be proud of my company. Instructables by its very nature has, and will continue to have, a net positive impact on the world. It's a valuable tool for anyone with a project or idea to share, and we're building a fantastic community. However, don't let me be too humble: Instructables is at the center of a very big trend, we're growing fast, and we have unmatchable authenticity. So, as a member of the inside team, I assure you things are going really well and you can definitely bet on us.
Step 2Know Your Team Beforehand
The founders of Squid Labs -- Colin, Dan, Saul, and I -- worked together on various projects around MIT for a number of years. Colin, Saul, and I were all graduate students in what was known at the time as the Molecular Machines group, headed by Joseph Jacobson, at the MIT Media Lab. Dan, Saul, and I all built kite-powered vehicles at our MITERS clubhouse and went on kitesurfing and ice-kiting adventures as often as possible. While working as a researcher in the Physics and Media lab across the hall, Dan was instrumental in helping Saul build the hardware for his thesis. Saul and I taught a number of bicycle and kite design and build classes over MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP - a month-long period every January between the official school terms).
Working and playing together -- and sometimes even saving each others lives when kiting experiments went awry or someone (me, actually) fell through the ice -- meant that we knew each others' strengths and abilities, and could trust each other to work towards a common goal.
If you want to start a company that requires a highly motivated and tight-knit team, you should already be working with that team. If there's no one in your research group, club, current job, or social circle that you're already doing cool projects with, branch out and find the people who are. In my experience, it doesn't take long before you know, or are connected to by a mutual friend, everyone in town who is building cool stuff. While it may be fashionable to say innovation can come from anywhere, great teams are easiest to put together in the intellectual hubs. If you're serious, it's worth moving to one of those hubs.
True story: Tim Anderson, a role-model and mentor-of-sorts for Squid Labs in general, showed up and started wandering the hallways of MIT begging for free robots that he could teach to paint. Before long, he'd founded the successful company Z Corp., and was later running MITERS when we showed up.
Working and playing together -- and sometimes even saving each others lives when kiting experiments went awry or someone (me, actually) fell through the ice -- meant that we knew each others' strengths and abilities, and could trust each other to work towards a common goal.
If you want to start a company that requires a highly motivated and tight-knit team, you should already be working with that team. If there's no one in your research group, club, current job, or social circle that you're already doing cool projects with, branch out and find the people who are. In my experience, it doesn't take long before you know, or are connected to by a mutual friend, everyone in town who is building cool stuff. While it may be fashionable to say innovation can come from anywhere, great teams are easiest to put together in the intellectual hubs. If you're serious, it's worth moving to one of those hubs.
True story: Tim Anderson, a role-model and mentor-of-sorts for Squid Labs in general, showed up and started wandering the hallways of MIT begging for free robots that he could teach to paint. Before long, he'd founded the successful company Z Corp., and was later running MITERS when we showed up.
Step 3It Started with a Phone Call
For years, I had set my sights on an academic career based on the fact that the professors at MIT were some of the happiest and most engaged people I had ever met, and seemed to have very long, active careers (and lives!). Being around energetic smart young people must just rub off on you in some way. While in graduate school, I attended every so-you-want-to-be-a-professor career-type lecture and seminar that was given, and I noted with some apprehension that the professors older than about 40 were all smiles and told stories about being hired that -- almost without exception -- went "so, I was sitting in my graduate student office thinking I might go into consulting after graduation when the department head walked in and offered me a job," while everyone younger looked ill. All the younger folks had applied to dozens of schools, been asked to interview at less than 5, and received only one offer as part of a full-time 18-month long job-search process; many no longer had any hobbies besides drinking.
Not yet dissuaded in the fall of 2003, I was closing in on what were planned to be the final 6 months of my doctoral work in mechanical engineering at MIT. My research was progressing quite nicely, and I felt on target and in control, when I met with one of my mentors and role models. He insisted that I develop a much more extensive model for the nanoparticle-based printing process I had invented and was researching, and pointed out that all the different branches that I wouldn't be able to address and study now would make excellent projects for grant applications and work for when I was "professor Eric."
I had a moment of clarity and realized my project was truly academic in nature, that its primary goal was to teach me and let me practice a research methodology, and my printing process's real-world impact was probably limited. Further, I didn't want to spend the next 18 months competing for an academic position whose availability was based more on an over-abundance of applicants than on my personal merits, and where I would eventually end up yelling at some poor grad student to finish a project faster so I could get tenured.
Basically, I wanted to continue kitesurfing on windy afternoons, and I wanted to actually have some direct impact on the world.
So, I immediately called up Colin, who had just left his previous company, Kovio, and said, "Whatever you're doing next, we're doing it together. Plus, I'm sure we can rope Saul in; he's pretty much in the same boat as me, but is 6 months further out from graduating." A few days later, Saul was involved, and we then recruited Dan.
So, Squid Labs literally started with a single phone call.
Not yet dissuaded in the fall of 2003, I was closing in on what were planned to be the final 6 months of my doctoral work in mechanical engineering at MIT. My research was progressing quite nicely, and I felt on target and in control, when I met with one of my mentors and role models. He insisted that I develop a much more extensive model for the nanoparticle-based printing process I had invented and was researching, and pointed out that all the different branches that I wouldn't be able to address and study now would make excellent projects for grant applications and work for when I was "professor Eric."
I had a moment of clarity and realized my project was truly academic in nature, that its primary goal was to teach me and let me practice a research methodology, and my printing process's real-world impact was probably limited. Further, I didn't want to spend the next 18 months competing for an academic position whose availability was based more on an over-abundance of applicants than on my personal merits, and where I would eventually end up yelling at some poor grad student to finish a project faster so I could get tenured.
Basically, I wanted to continue kitesurfing on windy afternoons, and I wanted to actually have some direct impact on the world.
So, I immediately called up Colin, who had just left his previous company, Kovio, and said, "Whatever you're doing next, we're doing it together. Plus, I'm sure we can rope Saul in; he's pretty much in the same boat as me, but is 6 months further out from graduating." A few days later, Saul was involved, and we then recruited Dan.
So, Squid Labs literally started with a single phone call.
Step 4Once It Was Decided, Things Moved Fast
I'm the type of person that collects data over a long period of time, and when opportunities arise, acts quickly. To friends and family, it seemed like this was a complete change in direction, but from my perspective, it was acting on an opportunity: The time was right to start something, and the team was already together.
First things first, we argued over the name of the company. I was partial to "Vimana Design" because it had a good story and meaning -- Vimanas are mythical flying machines, and at the time most of our projects involved things that fly. Eventually, Squid Labs emerged as a contender, but I was still unconvinced because there was no story behind the name. So, Saul fabricated a story about kitesurfing at our favorite spot, Pleasure Bay, and finding a squid with big eyes, a big brain, and lots of tentacles to juggle multiple projects. The story climaxed with "and it made Eric expel his own ink." Once my friend Seppo drew a squid logo, we were off and going.
Colin and Dan started doing electronics consulting work for a small aerospace company, while Saul and I wrote an application for a small business innovation research (SBIR) grant when we should have been writing our dissertations.
Seeing the world as our oyster, I put together a huge matrix of locations and weighted benefits of those locations for things the Squid team found important: proximity to a world-class university, presence of tropical birds, average wind speed for kitesurfing, and a lack of ex-girlfriends among many others. I wanted to make the decision using an analytical process, but in the end it came down to Boston vs. the San Francisco Bay Area and we literally got snowed in to my house in Somerville, MA the night of the vote!
First things first, we argued over the name of the company. I was partial to "Vimana Design" because it had a good story and meaning -- Vimanas are mythical flying machines, and at the time most of our projects involved things that fly. Eventually, Squid Labs emerged as a contender, but I was still unconvinced because there was no story behind the name. So, Saul fabricated a story about kitesurfing at our favorite spot, Pleasure Bay, and finding a squid with big eyes, a big brain, and lots of tentacles to juggle multiple projects. The story climaxed with "and it made Eric expel his own ink." Once my friend Seppo drew a squid logo, we were off and going.
Colin and Dan started doing electronics consulting work for a small aerospace company, while Saul and I wrote an application for a small business innovation research (SBIR) grant when we should have been writing our dissertations.
Seeing the world as our oyster, I put together a huge matrix of locations and weighted benefits of those locations for things the Squid team found important: proximity to a world-class university, presence of tropical birds, average wind speed for kitesurfing, and a lack of ex-girlfriends among many others. I wanted to make the decision using an analytical process, but in the end it came down to Boston vs. the San Francisco Bay Area and we literally got snowed in to my house in Somerville, MA the night of the vote!
Step 5We Need a Warehouse to Store Our Junk! - Find a Location
Having decided that the Bay Area was for us, we needed a slightly more specific location. At first, we checked Craigslist and drove around in neighborhoods with warehouses, calling the numbers on "for lease" signs. That wasn't particularly effective, but it did result in meeting commercial real estate agents who could show us buildings before they had signs on them.
We looked at dozens of buildings, and seriously looked at 10. In one building in Emeryville, a high-end home-building shop had just gone bankrupt and cleared out, leaving all of their tools (these were going to be auctioned off) and built-in furniture. There were four beautiful desks with a conference room in the front, and a warehouse with skylights in the back. It had a definite fate-like feel: 4 desks and 4 partners; an air-compressor with plumbing, regulators, and fittings already installed; lots of built-in cabinets, drawers, and work-areas; and an upstairs break-room area that could easily be converted to living quarters. We could move in and get to work immediately.
Since Squid Labs had no assets nor any history of making money, I took the lease on our building personally. I had just sold a house in Massachusetts, and my wife, Christy, would soon have a job in biotech, so I was able to convince the landlord that I could (probably) handle the financial burden if Squid Labs never took off. I figured you can only go to zero, and that my partners wouldn't let it get to that point. However, we negotiated a break-lease clause that cost 3 months of rent plus the realtor's fees. The thinking was this: Either we're going to fail and need to get out of the lease before 3 years us up, or we're going to be successful and need much more space before 3 years is up.
Renting 5000 sqft of commercial real estate may not sound like the best way to live and start your business cheaply, but I think it's important to have a space whose primary purpose is work. For the first few months before we got our warehouse, each of us was consulting from our houses or apartments. Work certainly got done, but the positive change in attitude and emotion around the business when we started working from "Squid Labs" was simply amazing. If you're just starting something and won't be able to take an entire building, I would highly recommend finding some office or lab space to share.
We looked at dozens of buildings, and seriously looked at 10. In one building in Emeryville, a high-end home-building shop had just gone bankrupt and cleared out, leaving all of their tools (these were going to be auctioned off) and built-in furniture. There were four beautiful desks with a conference room in the front, and a warehouse with skylights in the back. It had a definite fate-like feel: 4 desks and 4 partners; an air-compressor with plumbing, regulators, and fittings already installed; lots of built-in cabinets, drawers, and work-areas; and an upstairs break-room area that could easily be converted to living quarters. We could move in and get to work immediately.
Since Squid Labs had no assets nor any history of making money, I took the lease on our building personally. I had just sold a house in Massachusetts, and my wife, Christy, would soon have a job in biotech, so I was able to convince the landlord that I could (probably) handle the financial burden if Squid Labs never took off. I figured you can only go to zero, and that my partners wouldn't let it get to that point. However, we negotiated a break-lease clause that cost 3 months of rent plus the realtor's fees. The thinking was this: Either we're going to fail and need to get out of the lease before 3 years us up, or we're going to be successful and need much more space before 3 years is up.
Renting 5000 sqft of commercial real estate may not sound like the best way to live and start your business cheaply, but I think it's important to have a space whose primary purpose is work. For the first few months before we got our warehouse, each of us was consulting from our houses or apartments. Work certainly got done, but the positive change in attitude and emotion around the business when we started working from "Squid Labs" was simply amazing. If you're just starting something and won't be able to take an entire building, I would highly recommend finding some office or lab space to share.
Step 6Bring in Revenue; Pay Yourself
When we started, roughly two-thirds of our revenue came from consulting projects and one-third from an SBIR grant from the NIH. As time went on, the consulting projects came to provide nearly all of the money. When Instructables was spinning-off and first had cash, we went through a weird transitional period where it was paying Squid Labs for my services as CEO. This lasted until some of the other companies spun-off, at which point everyone had transitioned out and no one was officially working at Squid Labs.
Unlike our relative ownership of the company, which changed over time (see Step 10 Bring On New People), the amount we paid ourselves was always equal. Paychecks were erratic and were often predicated on when a client paid. None of us are particularly motivated by money, and this system was the easiest to implement because it required very little discussion or thinking. Besides, we were all used to living cheaply on graduate student stipends.
Dan did all the bookkeeping and found a service to do payroll and keep track of taxes. We were all grateful that he managed the finances because it seemed like a crappy job; but in the end, it would have been worth paying $1-2 K per month to get a bookkeeper or consulting-CFO involved. As an aside, if you are located in one of the intellectual hubs, local contractors and consultants (lawyers, bookkeepers, etc.) will be expensive; consider finding a firm not on a coast/not in a major city, as they'll be just as good for most of your work and much cheaper.
Once we got our NIH SBIR grant, the money was consistent and allowed us to explore technologies around an interesting area; but it took a full year from writing the application to actually getting the first check, and in the interim we had little insight as to whether we would get it at all. For us, this delay was ok because we had already filed provisional patents around the technology and needed to actually work on graduating from school. If you have an idea that can be fleshed out into "yes, this can be a company" or "no, this won't work" for less than $100 K (approximate average you might expect from a phase-1 SBIR), I'd recommend consulting by day, and working on your own idea at night -- you'll have a year head-start, and won't be tempted to write more grant applications hoping to up your hit percentage just because the topics sound kind of interesting. Within Squid, we wrote, or jointly wrote with other companies, around 10 additional governmental grant applications on a variety of things ranging from highly interesting problems to "let's repurpose this old idea and see what happens." While none were granted and I would be hesitant to recommend the SBIR process, I am specifically not putting SBIR grants into Step 11 Dumb Ideas. If their timing works for your business, and it won't cause you to miss out on other opportunities, SBIR grants are risk and equity-free sources of capital.
Consulting made much more sense. After just a few months, we were getting inbound interest in our research/design/build consulting services. For $1-5 K we'd do a "Feasibility Study," which included evaluating a client's technology or brainstorming with them about ideas, determining milestones for research or prototyping, and establishing a budget and timeline for a larger project. Projects were often several months long and ranged in cost from $20 K to several hundred thousand dollars. The client owned all deliverables, which might be physical prototypes, code, schematics, or circuit-board layouts, and could patent or protect as they saw fit. Normally, one partner was the lead on a project, and on a typical day in the first year of Squid Labs, everyone would be focused on their project doing design, CAD, simulations, layout, or prototyping in the shop, and pulling other partners in as needed. Most of the work we did for clients was confidential, so I won't include many specific details here.
The Feasibility Studies were lots of fun to do, and were probably an amazing value for the clients. Since all the Squids love thinking about new problems and brainstorming solutions, a nominal one-day one-partner study costing $1 K would often get everyone in the company thinking about the subject for the whole day. Further, telling potential clients we had a process involving a paid feasibility study was a great way to determine who was serious about working with us. For example, at least once a week, we'd get an email or phone call similar to this classic one:
I have heard that there is a tremendous amount of energy in each bolt of lightning. Imagine building power plants powered by thunder storms! ... I ask you to help me develop the underlying technology to enable these power plants. Because I have done the hard thinking to come up with this idea, we will split ownership of the patents, and both be rich!!!
So yes, I highly recommend feasibility studies.
Unlike our relative ownership of the company, which changed over time (see Step 10 Bring On New People), the amount we paid ourselves was always equal. Paychecks were erratic and were often predicated on when a client paid. None of us are particularly motivated by money, and this system was the easiest to implement because it required very little discussion or thinking. Besides, we were all used to living cheaply on graduate student stipends.
Dan did all the bookkeeping and found a service to do payroll and keep track of taxes. We were all grateful that he managed the finances because it seemed like a crappy job; but in the end, it would have been worth paying $1-2 K per month to get a bookkeeper or consulting-CFO involved. As an aside, if you are located in one of the intellectual hubs, local contractors and consultants (lawyers, bookkeepers, etc.) will be expensive; consider finding a firm not on a coast/not in a major city, as they'll be just as good for most of your work and much cheaper.
Once we got our NIH SBIR grant, the money was consistent and allowed us to explore technologies around an interesting area; but it took a full year from writing the application to actually getting the first check, and in the interim we had little insight as to whether we would get it at all. For us, this delay was ok because we had already filed provisional patents around the technology and needed to actually work on graduating from school. If you have an idea that can be fleshed out into "yes, this can be a company" or "no, this won't work" for less than $100 K (approximate average you might expect from a phase-1 SBIR), I'd recommend consulting by day, and working on your own idea at night -- you'll have a year head-start, and won't be tempted to write more grant applications hoping to up your hit percentage just because the topics sound kind of interesting. Within Squid, we wrote, or jointly wrote with other companies, around 10 additional governmental grant applications on a variety of things ranging from highly interesting problems to "let's repurpose this old idea and see what happens." While none were granted and I would be hesitant to recommend the SBIR process, I am specifically not putting SBIR grants into Step 11 Dumb Ideas. If their timing works for your business, and it won't cause you to miss out on other opportunities, SBIR grants are risk and equity-free sources of capital.
Consulting made much more sense. After just a few months, we were getting inbound interest in our research/design/build consulting services. For $1-5 K we'd do a "Feasibility Study," which included evaluating a client's technology or brainstorming with them about ideas, determining milestones for research or prototyping, and establishing a budget and timeline for a larger project. Projects were often several months long and ranged in cost from $20 K to several hundred thousand dollars. The client owned all deliverables, which might be physical prototypes, code, schematics, or circuit-board layouts, and could patent or protect as they saw fit. Normally, one partner was the lead on a project, and on a typical day in the first year of Squid Labs, everyone would be focused on their project doing design, CAD, simulations, layout, or prototyping in the shop, and pulling other partners in as needed. Most of the work we did for clients was confidential, so I won't include many specific details here.
The Feasibility Studies were lots of fun to do, and were probably an amazing value for the clients. Since all the Squids love thinking about new problems and brainstorming solutions, a nominal one-day one-partner study costing $1 K would often get everyone in the company thinking about the subject for the whole day. Further, telling potential clients we had a process involving a paid feasibility study was a great way to determine who was serious about working with us. For example, at least once a week, we'd get an email or phone call similar to this classic one:
I have heard that there is a tremendous amount of energy in each bolt of lightning. Imagine building power plants powered by thunder storms! ... I ask you to help me develop the underlying technology to enable these power plants. Because I have done the hard thinking to come up with this idea, we will split ownership of the patents, and both be rich!!!
So yes, I highly recommend feasibility studies.
Step 7What to Work On
With more marketing and outreach to bring in new clients, the Squid Labs consulting practice could have been quite lucrative. However, as consultants, we were only making money/doing good for the world (hopefully!) when we were actively working -- I wanted this to happen while we were asleep, or even better, while kitesurfing. So, instead of developing more external-facing activities, we spent our free time working on our own projects.
The general theory for Squid Labs was that we'd take consulting and prototype-building projects, and funnel that money into a series of internal project ideas. If any of the internal projects met with success, we'd license the technology or spin the technology out into a separate company and find people to run that company while we stayed focused on early-stage innovations.
The consulting and prototyping projects initially came through our various contacts from the Media Lab. The Media Lab is unique among graduate programs at MIT, and probably even more generally unique, in that the lab is sponsored by various corporations and governmental agencies and the graduate students are expected to demonstrate and show off their group's work to the sponsors on a very regular basis. On average, I gave one half-hour demo per week to a wide variety of people ranging from Hallmark to DARPA. With that much practice, it's hard not to get really good at telling a compelling story and thinking on your feet. And, the sponsors aren't dumb: good students typically received a job offer of some sort at least every month. It was these opportunities and contacts that we converted into our initial consulting work.
Some how-to advice amidst a self-indulgent story: To successfully start a company or market yourself to attract clients, you'll need to practice telling your story. If you don't already have multiple opportunities to practice, create some by joining a local group that holds public events (like dorkbot or Maker Faire) or putting a sign on your door that says "come in for a tour of my really sweet projects." Local museums, colleges, and universities may have interesting clubs you can join or visit. Put projects up on Instructables. Practice telling your story to both experts and the general public -- these are two very different skills, and you should learn both.
In my experience, people who are good at making stuff (by machining, coding, CAD, designing circuit boards, etc...) are always in demand, because there are fewer of us than people who can't make stuff. Once others know you can make stuff and that you're looking for side-projects or consulting work, opportunities should follow -- even without a Media Lab network to leverage.
The internal Squid Labs projects came from various ideas we'd been thinking about and working on outside of our official graduate research projects. These included battery vending machines, electro-spinning of nanoparticle fibers, ThinkCycle (a precursor to Instructables), tons of carbon nanotube ideas, flexible membrane molding for eye-glasses, Howtoons, kites and kiteboards of all descriptions, modular bikes, and strain-sensing rope. To give credit where credit is due: Saul is a total master of taking the first steps on a project and getting people excited; most of the above list started with him. We use to joke that Saul would start projects, and I would finish them. (Keep this in mind when choosing partners, as complementary traits are a bonus.)
There were a few things we specifically choose not to work on, despite existing opportunities. Chief among them were any technology that MIT had rights to. Colin, Saul, and I had all been a part of licensing technology that we had developed within MIT to a company that Colin and some others from our lab were founding. MIT's technology licensing office and the Media Lab itself both did some things that were counterproductive to the success of the young company and the happiness of the people involved. They made the process so painful that we vowed to avoid licensing technology from MIT in the future.
As an engineer, I feel that my strength is "problem solving" rather than deep knowledge of a specific technique or technology. There are pluses and minuses, but this is definitely the right attitude for attacking problems I've never thought about, and it helps when projects that aren't gaining ground need to be dropped.
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