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How to Work with Community and Come Out with a Product That’s Better, Not Worse

Steve Jobs once said, “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” Apple makes beautifully functional—and functionally beautiful—products that people are passionate about and cannot seem to live without. The company would famously keep all of […]

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5 Essential Tips for User Testing Your Hardware Project

Most hardware-focused startups have only one chance to build a product that users will value, enjoy using, and adopt into their lives. If a user has difficulty using a new device or isn’t able to seamlessly integrate it into her life, chances are it will end up in the home ‘electronics graveyard’, banished to the closet or basement to […]

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Gest: Redesigning Human-Computer Interaction

It’s one thing to design a product that improves the way something works, makes things fun, or helps you explore new ways of doing things. It’s quite another to change routine, daily behavior, like typing or using a keyboard. That’s the challenge Gest is taking on. Gest is, in the company’s own words, a digital […]

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3 Steps to Go From Digital to Physical

We talk a lot about iteration here at Fictiv because it’s the foundation for lean hardware development and lean hardware development is the key to bringing successful hardware products to market. Iteration refers to the cyclic process of refining a design until you’ve achieved the established product requirements, outlined in your PRD (product requirements document). […]

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Accelerating Through Success: Start Local, Scale Global

Every startup knows about accelerators, but not every startup knows how to read between the lines of an accelerator experience to transform those golden nuggets of expertise, resources, and connections that these organizations offer into a viable new brand. In this week’s Spotlight we share the story of Peeple, the smart caller ID for your front […]

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Part Incubator, Consulting Firm & Makerspace: Radicand is a Radical New Collaboratory for Hardware Startups

We’ve all heard of the digital divide. But in Silicon Valley, there’s another kind of gap—the chasm between software and hardware. Hardware developers have watched for years as their software dev friends pulled down free pieces of code from GitHub, spun off app after app from their dorm rooms and garages, and wooed millions of […]

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3 Most Common Product Development Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Every day, we work with young hardware startups to help them bring new products to market. While there is no deficit of passion and motivation in these zealous hardware entrepreneurs, we do see them make mistakes from time to time. Here are the 3 most common mistakes we see and strategies to avoid them so […]

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How Aeon is Elevating GoPro Videos Everywhere with Its Sleek Camera Gimbal

You know those hypnotic GoPro videos of skateboarders flying down flights of stairs as if they had wings, surfers gliding along massive waves, and James Stewart killing it out on the dirt? You can’t just get a GoPro camera and expect to get that kind of quality right out of the box. You need a […]

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Rolling with the Punches: Jabber on Designing Toys for Kids

Here in the Bay Area we probably have the greatest concentration of electronic gadgets, and the people who make them, this side of the planet. That can be a problem when it comes to parenting—even if you hide all your devices under your sofa, your kids will still come home raving about their best friend’s […]

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Brave New Breathable World: The Story Behind a Smarter, Sleeker Air Quality Sensor

Remember the clunky, brick-sized, beige-colored cell phones the 1980’s used to carry around? That’s what today’s environmental sensors remind Will Hubbard of. Will is the COO and co-founder of ChemiSense, a new player in the environmental sensor space that’s working on an air quality sensor that’s smarter, sleeker, and cheaper. And definitely not beige. It all started in […]