Seeed Studio on magzine
Few days ago we received this magzine from Mr.Shigeru in Japan, and we were quite happy to see our picture printed on this nice magzine. This feeling is something like we saw ourself on TV when we were kids. lol
Mr Shigeru introduced the Electronic brick in his article, with lots of picture and sample codes. And there’s even more, a interview with Eric.Pan- The founder of Seeed Studio.
Below is the content of the interview
Q1: What were original motivations to start, and what are current motivations to run Seeed Studio?
I started Seeed Studio last year, simply wanted to independently create an self sustaining company and enjoy the process. After 15 month hard working, we are now proud of being a part of the open source hardware industry, serving global users with confident projects. It’s most exciting to make our studio growing with inspirations.
Q2: How did you find the original members to start your company?
I started with my friend Albert, who is seriously gifted in engineering and did very considerable designs from the very beginning. The team is enlarged over time. Members come from various channels: referring, online hiring ads, friends, classmates. Background or experience is not critical, attitude is everything.
Q3: What was your background when you started Seeed Studio?
I was luckily caught in the first large computer invasion to China back in 1994. Beside waiting exciting new products from computer magazines every month, it was endless fun to tear electronic devices apart just to see what’s inside. After I enter University as an EE student, tedious lessons and examinations didn’t turned me on much. Instead I participated many electronic and robotic contests, the motto of national electronic contest inspired me till today: “Dare to create and enjoy!”
My first job is a Product Engineer in Intel, which lasts for 13 months before I got tired of big organizations. I took a 3 month cycling across China, just want to peek the real world. After the journey, I moved to Beijing, joined a very small trading as general manager. This job taught me a lot about corporation management and international trading. Lastly I move to Shenzhen by getting back to my original enthusiasm in electronics and started Seeed.
Q4: Why you (or your team) named your company “Seeed Studio”?
It’s from “seed”, with a spare “e” to shift the brand from a agriculture company like to a little electronic…
Q5: How was Seeed Studio at initial stage and is at current moment
(e.g. the number of employees, SF of your office, circumstances surrounding etc.)?
We have 11 very young and inspiring people now, and the team is keeping growing. The office is located in the secondary commercial center of Shenzhen, which give us great business convenience but compressed room for high rent. The size is about 1300 square foot, rather crowded already. Coincidently, a lot of Japanese restaurants and bars are around us, it is a Japanese and Korean region too. : )
Q6: What makes Seeed Studio unique compared to “traditional” electronics components/kits seller companies?
It’s more interesting to create something different for us, so we provide more pre-made middleware and services especially around Arduino. We try to do electronic engineering like art, not just functional but well designed.
Also it’s convenient to access massive resources here in Shenzhen, the frontier of electronic manufacturing.
Q7: How do you develop original items such as DSO nano (from planning to sales)?
The development are carried on as internal projects, we brain-storm each candidates, evaluate the market, cost and period, then finalize to modular tasks.
In the first stage, we wire something out, just to validate critical parts and get a preliminary image. Also check the availability of BOM.The next stage is prototyping a PCB, working on the software in the mean time. After the alpha version is ready, we move with faith. Beta version might be released for products like DSO nano, but for simpler boards we just go with small batch production.
Generally it’s a spiral development, we benefit from last design for new ones, or from existing to our creation. It’s much faster basing on open source hardware.
Q8: Do you find any difficulties about dealing with open source hardware?
The major difficulties is to fight with MPQ (minimal purchase quantity). It’s not so easy for small batches as popular ones like Seeeduino. We have to work long time with suppliers to get sample batch of components, or stock extra to share with other projects. If it’s some fresh components, we usually got some negotiation to do.
Another difficulties is language. We always don’t have enough staff who are both engineering experienced with proper English skill.
Q9: I feel many possibilities in Propaganda PCB. Why did you start the service? Do you have anything “unexpected” so far regarding the service?
We built good relationship with PCB suppliers while making our own prototype PCBs, and feel it’s a helpful resource to be shared. So we decided to make it non-profit, on the business side, PCB is just one service of our depot content, we are more considered about the overal output as a whole.
People usually create their own work with passion and care, and of course grant some value into it. There should be someone on the planet has similar interests, no matter for a whole PCB or just make use of a partial circuit. We are glad to faciliate the collaborative pattern to eliminate duplicate jobs. Glad to say that people are enjoying the service well, no big issue met so far, and we are having more propaganda services like kits.
Q10: What are missions of Seeed Studio?
Seeed fuels ubiquitous electronic innovation with fast prototyping modules, development platform and customizable solutions.
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