Umbo

The Best Interface is No Interface

I saw the future with the "Launch" of Google Glass. I envisioned a future where content was seamlessly displayed in our lifes but I could not see the need to add an extra interface in my life.

¿Glasses that I don't usually wear? ¿A VR Helmet? No.

The smart home of the future will display the information organically in the walls of our homes without the need for a physical interface.
At least that's what I thought.

After thining of these concepts and dreaming of an "Iron Man Like" holographic experience, an idea started to become reality.

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From Idea to Action

This is a consumer electronic product. Hardware, not software. The capital needed to start the early prototyping stages was not small, and with no validation to fundraise we had to get smart.

We launched a landing-page with renders, images and others that would seem that this was an actual company to start pre-selling a product we haven't started built yet.
We needed a cool name for this right? We came up with "Umbo" as it was short and sweet, but also had some related meaning to projections.

With name and website up we started pre-selling the product, reaching +USD$50.000 in preorders the first week.
This allowed us to secure ~USD$150.000 in angel funding to get things going.

We opened up Operations in San Francisco in May 2016 as Umbo, Inc.

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Early Prototypes

Early prototyping stages required putting together a Computer, Sensors, Camera, Projector so we can orchestrate the User Experience we dreamed of.
It was hard to build something so complex with such little resources and Hardware experience.

We were working with Computer Vision algorithms to recognize hands and allow gesture control of Umbo.

Shape and size was not important at this stage. We needed to validate if, putting the components together, could allow us to deliver a prototype of the UX.

We used:

• Raspberry PI
• Texas Instrument DLP Projector

At this point we had no gesture control and we built and Android App to deliver the UX.
By now, our estimated COGS were under USD$250/device, giving us room to sell something for profit.

After validating the User Experience with this "Frankenstein" we moved into production-like mode.

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Late Prototyping Stages

Creating a Consumer Electronic Product requires going through 3 different stages of validation:

• Engineering Validation Tests: This phase serves as the initial test that fulfills all of the requirements laid out in the Product Requirements Document (PRD). This phase can also be looked at as the transition from a theoretical design to something physical.
• Design Validaation Tests: Now that you know each component has acceptable quality, you can shift your energy to combining the EVT with the cosmetic requirements. DVT can be looked at as the bridge that connects the parts validated during EVT with a fully functional system.
• Production Validation Tests: The PVT tests serve as the final line of defense before a product enters the market. The goal of these tests is not just to ensure that the product is functional and made to the correct specifications, but that the product can also be manufactured at scale. PVT are tests on the product that is in production and usually, these tests are made during the pilot run.

In the early prototyping stages we were playing around with off the shelf products, but now, we had to start building our own solution.

I came from making Apps and Software, where a "bug" could be fixed by deleting and fixing a line of code, but this is Hardware, one fuck-up and you have to start again.

Building our own PCBs, our own schematics and Electronics was just something we did not have the experience to do.
Endless broken Hardware iterations started to take a toll on our numbers as everytime we needed to make another board, we'd need to pay from $5k to $7.5k

We spent too much time and too much money trying to do something that we simply did not have the experience to do. We should have hired a Product Development firm in the early stages to save all this hassle.

By this stage we were using components with much higher quality and complexity than the early prototyping stages:

• Microvision Laser Projection Engine
• Nvidia Jetson TX1 Processor
• Young Vision 1080p Opticals
• PIR Sensors
• And more shit that you can imagine.

Don't forget we still needed to out all this components in a device the size of a baseball... It was just simply too late. We were running out of funds and I was too stubborn to face the reailty of failure.
So what you do when you're too much of a pussy to shut down? You put more money in, extend the life of the company waiting for a miracle.

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Reality Check

At this point, we had everything we needed to know regarding the process to make our first production run of 10.000 units.
We worked with Alloy Product Development to develop a comprehensive production timeline with all the stages to move from prototyping to having Umbo in stores.

We were not able to deliver the User Experience we dreamed of with the initial Hardware Architecture and by now, the COGS of the production-like product were 3x higher than our original selling price.

We had over 2000 customers on our waitlist and we tried "Pre-Selling" Umbo at the propper price point based on the new COGS but it was too late. No one would buy a +$3.000 product that was not a real need.

In Silicon Valley, investors ask ¿Is this Vitamin or Aspirin?...
If you've never heard of this before, people know that Vitamins are good for your health but ¿When was the last time you bought Vitamins?.
Now, when you have a headache, you stop what you're doing and get Aspirin.

¿Is this a must-have or a nice-to-have?

We realized, too late, we were no more than Vitamin. Nice to have but not a must. The market tought us after pre-selling 0 devices at the new price.

We shut down in April 2019 with an operative loss of ~$500.000USD‍