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#437 – An Interview with Chrissy Meyer
Welcome Chrissy Meyer, partner at Root Ventures!
- We previously had talked to Avidan Ross, the founder and partner at Root Ventures.
- 0h 0m 30s
- They try to target talented founders and not the company
- 0h 3m 21s
- Rose Hulman
- 0h 8m 10s
- Lincoln Labs
- 0h 8m 49s
- Went back to school at Stanford for an EE MS/PhD
- 0h 10m 42s
- She started at Apple and the iPhone launched the first week on internship
- 0h 11m 27s
- Started as a PM
- 0h 12m 55s
- Anti-GANTT charts
- 0h 13m 29s
- Baijiu
- 0h 15m 10s
- Chrissy helped ship 3 generations of iPod touch, one nano and the beginning of the Apple Watch.
- 0h 16m 38s
- Apple makes scaling look easy
- 0h 17m 5s
- They have developed the formula over decades
- 0h 17m 28s
- Walking into Foxconn
- 0h 18m 37s
- Dealing with the different layers of manufacturing
- 0h 21m 5s
- Final assembly and PCBA is normally the same location
- 0h 21m 20s
- Vertical integration is more competitive at scale
- 0h 22m 22s
- DJI is a good example
- 0h 22m 30s
- Early stage startups have access to higher levels of integration…but it doesn’t always make sense
- 0h 23m 37s
- “Think really long and hard about who you’re choosing, make sure [the manufacturer is] a good fit for your size and complexity”
- 0h 24m 41s
- 1 in a million problems are actual problems for high volume production.
- 0h 26m 17s
- Tiger team
- 0h 26m 45s
- The problem is getting a line moving
- 0h 28m 8s
- Glue machines
- 0h 28m 56s
- HDDG talk
- 0h 30m 1s
- DfM
- 0h 33m 25s
- Mechanical parts seem to have less consistency
- 0h 37m 38s
- Electrical is a bit more cut and dried
- 0h 38m 43s
- Big companies are talking to suppliers from day one
- 0h 41m 43s
- With companies like Apple, these discussions are shrouded in secrecy
- 0h 42m 33s
- “You have to be high touch if you want to be fast”
- 0h 43m 47s
- Joined Square with 300 people
- 0h 46m 9s
- Cost was everything
- 0h 46m 46s
- Developing hardware for businesses was different
- 0h 47m 15s
- Sales cycles can take a while
- 0h 48m 24s
- It requires the perfect spacing between iterations
- 0h 49m 24s
- Was a founding member of the startup Pearl Automation
- 0h 50m 41s
- They made wifi based backup camera for users
- 0h 51m 42s
- So much of startup success is timing
- 0h 52m 28s
- Learned about how to be a startup, which was useful for her time now at Root.vc
- 0h 54m 30s
- Different for VCs that write lots of checks
- 0h 56m 41s
- Root invests in 6-8 companies per year
- 0h 57m 25s
- Instrumental.ai
- 0h 59m 18s
- They do final inspection that can automatically flag anomalies
- 1h 1m 0s
- What are you Interested in the hardware space now?
- 1h 3m 24s
- Chrissy is interested in tools for manufacturing, like supplier discovery
- 1h 4m 7s
- We’re far away from the promised “dark factories” in the world of automation
- 1h 4m 53s
- Reach out about opportunities, either on LinkedIn or via their site.
- 1h 6m 30s
- The next step is to come in to brainstorm!
- 1h 7m 47s