The Next New Product

For the last four and a half years, I have been incredibly lucky to work on the commercialization of my graduate research topic in surface haptics at Tanvas. Starting at Northwestern, this completes a decade of working on surface haptics for me. It’s been a one-of-a-kind apprenticeship to follow along with a new technology all the way through. It’s gone from the basic research, to the invention of the core technologies, from user research of the basic use cases to the refinement of the product, from selling investors to selling customers. The technology and the company have evolved so much- sometimes slowly, sometimes lightning fast. I was just a small slice of all this, but I’ve been a first-hand witness to all of it, and for that I am extremely grateful. 

Surface haptics has been special to me because it touches (forgive the pun) so many areas. It is fundamentally a two-way communication channel between a person and a computer, which makes enabling it a uniquely creative and and complex technical exercise. It is a creative medium, for which we’ve had to decide how to represent and program the sensation, and how to build tools for creators. We’ve built haptic finger-painting palettes, haptic image filters, parameter driven models, and haptic texture libraries. We've constantly faced challenges in materials science, mechanics, electronics, software, user interface design, rendering, sensing, actuation, manufacturing, finding product/market fit, and most complex of all - the perception, preferences, and behavior of human beings. While I’m not skilled enough to be expert in all of these areas, (or any one of them, really :) the constant variation forces the discipline to learn what you need to know, and to find, work with, and trust those who have the unique skills that you need to conquer the challenge of the day. I’m thankful to have worked with so many of those special-skilled people both in and outside of Tanvas over the years. 

Thank you most of all to Ed Colgate and Michael Peshkin, the best inventors I know, who were both my PhD advisors and the founders of Tanvas. Without you, nothing. Thank you to Craig Shultz, a technical and creative thoroughbred, who has been my close friend and haptics comrade-in-arms from the day he walked into the lab and I convinced him to help me build the first surface haptics device that you didn’t need an engineer to operate (photo above). How far we’ve come together. Thank you to all of my teammates that I’ve been able to work with and learn from over the years. Thank you to all of the investors, customers, partners, and Tanvas fans who have believed in what we’re doing. I appreciate that it’s rare to be able to work on a technology that regularly blows people’s minds when they first encounter it. That magical moment is what hooked me from the start, and seeing it in others is what made it such a rewarding technology and product to work on. I’m thankful to have had the opportunity. 

Next for me is something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. I will work full-time for a business that I founded, selling a product that I invented. On nights and weekends over that last few years, I’ve bootstrapped two of my own products, and today they are both in production. 

The first, Coin Curling, is a board game for people who like sports. I’ve been bringing prototypes to parties and making improvements to the design since the 2018 Olympics. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it has a message of character and togetherness in a vicious time, and for all my science and engineering colleagues, the interesting physics are what make it fun to watch and play. www.coincurling.com @coin_curling (It makes a great gift.) 

The second, the Ahh Towel, is an instant cooling wet towel. When you’re hot, sweaty, or just need to relax and cool off, you squeeze the Ahh Towel to activate it and it drops 20 degrees instantly. Together with my fantastic business partner, we’ve built it up from an idea in a sketch book to a product that is in stock at www.ahhtowel.com @ahhtowel. The Ahh Towel will be my full-time focus as CEO. My big tasks in the upcoming months will be 1. making sales to places like golf courses, outdoor retailers, beach shops, and lumberyards, and 2. finding, pitching, and signing angel investors. These are things where making connections are key, so if you know someone who might be able to help, please make the connection. Even if it’s a friend of a friend, this is how new companies make it. Thank you to the many of you who have helped already. :D

On to the next chapter! 

#invention, #innovation, #startup, #fundraising, #entrepreneurship, #angelinvesting