PedalBrain‘s Matt Bauer and I talk about the challenges, capital requirements, and multi-year timelines inherent in bringing a retail hardware product to market. He talks about the recent epiphany he had with PedalBrain and how that enlightenment has helped him through these challenges. Listen to Hardware Startups with Matt Bauer. [31 min]
Category Archives: Interviews
First Crack #125. Open Font Licensing with David Crossland
David Crossland (Cantarell font family, Open Font Library) and I dive into font licensing – specifically open font licensing – and the cultural benefits of open licensing. Links and topics we mention: Open Clip Art Library Creative Commons and the CC0 License GNU Public License with Font Exception SIL International SIL Open Font License MIT …
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Cold Start #4 – How to Start Your Startup with Dan Grigsby
Dan Grigsby from MobileOrchard, discusses how he’s building a comfortable life for himself with a combination of projects, what’s lacking in the Minnesota tech startup community, and why that isn’t a problem. [55 minutes]
Cold Start #3 – Changing Your Startup with Ben Moore
Ben Moore from WorkSimple, discusses how, after almost 3 years into his funded startup, his company changed direction, branding, and almost everything else. [41 minutes]
First Crack #124. Open Web Fonts with Ben Weiner
Ben Weiner‘s been doing great work on giving greater visibility for open fonts – and has written a book proposal for web fonts. I called him up to discuss this work and my notion that web fonts are a brant new species of fonts. Links and topics we mention: Open Font Library EEULAA.org SIL Open …
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First Crack #123. Building CitizenWausau.com with Dino and Andy
CitizenWausau is one of the coolest, homegrown citizen journalism projects I’ve seen since I’ve been looking for them. I called up Dino Corvino and Andy Laub, the editor and technologist respectively, to discuss the project, how it’s grown, and it’s relationship with more established media in a smaller city market.
First Crack 122. John Hoffoss on Usability and Network Security
John Hoffoss, a network security engineer at one of Minnesota’s larger institutions, and I dive into computer security, security versus usability, the insecurity of URL shorteners, and some of the reasons Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer are more often targets of security exploits than other platforms. Stay til the end for a discussion of the …
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First Crack 120. Wonderlick’s Tim Quirk on Truth Through Music
I’ve been a fan of Tim Quirk’s music for 20 years – easy. The playful melancholy in throughout his songwriting continually resonates with me. When he announced the new Wonderlick album was in the works and available for ‘name-your-price’ pre-order – I jumped on the opportunity. When I started hearing about how successful the campaign …
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First Crack 119. Justin Grammens on Mobile VOIP
I have a hypothesis that mobile VOIP over WiFi will replace mobile carriers for the majority of phone conversations within 5 years. For a reality check, I called up Justin Grammens of Localtone Interactive and Mobile Twin Cities. From the picture he paints, I think we’ll see this well within 5 years. Maybe 2. Projects …
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First Crack #118 – Shef Turns the Tables on Garrick
Shef Otis grabs the mic from Garrick and asks him about podcasting, Cullect, coffee roasting, and parenting. [43 min].