In this column, I interview the co-founders of start-ups to have recently come out of the University of Waterloo. In the last couple of years, there have been multiple stories of entrepreneurial success from the region, including companies like BufferBox, Thalmic Labs and Pebble. In this issue, I interview Alroy Almeida (Mechatronics 2013), one of the co-founders of Voltera, a start-up located at the Velocity Foundry in Kitchener. They recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of their product, the Voltera V-One, a circuit board prototyping machine. As of last Friday, the campaign has raised over $400,000, with their initial goal of $70,000 having been funded in about 35 minutes.
Alroy welcomes me into the Velocity Foundry, where I am immediately blown away by the atmosphere and level of activity. The Foundry seems to be an ideal environment for entrepreneurs, with an open floor concept facilitating interaction and collaboration. We decide to conduct the interview in one of the many meeting rooms at the back of the Foundry. Alroy seems a bit worn out after the hectic last couple of weeks, but is still eager and enthusiastic when talking about his company’s history and evolution.
As with a lot of other Waterloo start-ups, Voltera had humble beginnings as a Fourth Year Design Project idea. Co-founders Alroy, James Pickard and Jesus Zozaya, having had experience in electronics and hardware in the past, wanted to create something they were passionate about. Around the end of 2012, James came up with the idea of creating a rapid prototyping tool for electronics. 3D printing was big then, and gave a great boost to mechanical prototyping, but electronics needed similar attention. “Looking back, our FYDP was very simple compared to what we have now”, says Alroy. While it’s true that they have come a long way since then, at the time their idea created a stir, and won them the first place in their class. A week after their design symposium, they won the Velocity Fund Finals, and received prize money as a reward.
The feedback they received along with the money they won inspired them to form a company. “We finished our exams, and two days later we moved into the Velocity Garage” – and Voltera was born. That summer they also welcomed a new member, Katarina Ilic, a graduate of the Nanotechnology Engineering program. “She was actually on her way to do her PhD in Switzerland at the end of the summer, but the more she got involved the more she realized she wanted to stay, and decided to tell them she didn’t want to do the PhD anymore. It was a pretty crazy beginning.”
As time progressed, senior companies such as Thalmic Labs and MappedIn graduated from Velocity, and Voltera found itself becoming one of the senior companies, with new entrepreneurs coming to them for advice and borrowing their tools. However, the development of their technology seemed to have reached a dead end. Initially, they relied on inkjet printing for deposition, which posed several problems: “Inkjet uses a very thin ink… It shoots out picolitres at a time, but that wasn’t working.” The conductivity was poor due to the minimal amounts of ink used, and reliability was terrible since the conductive inks could not stick to FR-4 (the industry standard material for circuit boards). As a result, they decided to search for a different technology. After some research, they discovered more viscous inks (usually used for screen-printing), and decided to incorporate them into their design. “We started using this viscous ink technology, and realized that it was working! We still had a long way to go, but we were on the right track. The ink formulation, the electromechanical design and the software all had to be developed together for the product to work.”
Alroy sees the V-One as a two application tool: one is very early stage prototyping and the other is small batch production. Prototyping can be used for quick testing by hobbyists or company professionals that do not have two weeks to wait for a PCB to be made. “We will be the first to admit that the boards we create do not match the ones you get at a factory. The dip in functionality is justified by the time and cost saved.” The V-One is also capable of printing two-layer boards, through the use of an insulating ink that separates overlapping conductive layers; this makes circuit designs more compact. Components are subsequently hand-soldered. In addition, once you have a fixed design that you wish to replicate, the V-One can also be used to dispense solder paste bake the boards to attach the functional components. Also, the company is also offering template dev boards (Arduino Uno and Mega) to further speed up the prototyping/manufacturing process.
In the summer of 2014, Alroy attended the Bay Area Maker Fair, where he was introduced to an organizer of HAXLR8R, a hardware accelerator program based in Shenzhen, China. At the time, they had no plans to move out of Waterloo, much less move to China. However, after submitting an application and getting accepted, they had a decision to make. “That was a really weird point for our company. We had all these plans laid out, and now we were faced with going back to zero. We had to ask ourselves, ‘Are we okay with that? Are we okay with going to a country where we don’t know the language or the people?’” After talking to people and learning about previous success stories, they decided to take the plunge.
“In order to start a company, you got to be sort of crazy. In order to start a hardware company, you got to be even crazier. The people you meet at HAXLR8R are really strange and magnificent. The people at Velocity are young, naïve and happy. In contrast, the people at HAX came from diverse backgrounds and had various levels of experience.” After receiving a ton of mentorship and wisdom, as well as forming friendships that last a lifetime, the team returned to Canada in November 2014, with a renewed energy to take on the tasks in front of them.
In January earlier this year, the team attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where they participated in a hardware competition hosted by TechCrunch. Spirits were high after they passed the first round and entered the finals. With Jenny Lawton, the former of CEO of MakerBot as one of the judges, they had someone with the knowledge and experience to know where they were coming from. As luck would have it, the team ended up winning, and gained a ton of publicity as a result (their mailing list more than quadrupled); this immensely helped in publicizing their Kickstarter campaign. In addition, the feedback they received at CES was very positive. “There were a couple of people who came up to our booth and were like, ‘So somebody finally did it’. People with 30-40 years of experience, grey hair and a tired look on their face would stop and question us, and their eyes would just light up. CES was one of the greatest moments for our company.”
A couple of weeks after returning from CES, the company’s Kickstarter campaign went live. “We had a goal of $70,000; we blew past that in 35 minutes, tripled it in 24 hours, and now we’re at $400,000. Up on the TV in our meeting room we had the Kickstarter page open, and we were watching the number go up and up, and we were like, ‘Is this real life?’” The success of their campaign has been quite heady, however they now have to get to work in order to fulfill their promises and meet the demand. It is hoped that their subsequent manufacturing and distribution process is a big success.
Voltera’s Kickstarter is open until March 12, 2015. Visit voltera.io for further information, and back them to receive one of several perks offered!
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