The Positive Rail is about my experience designing and building small but sophisticated electronic systems and bringing them to market. I am starting from scratch, teaching myself microcontroller programming, circuit board and hardware design, as well as marketing, supply chain, sales and distribution.
I am a scientist at heart. My specialization was the neurophysiology and computational biology of the retina. In the laboratory I learned observation, experimentation and analysis. I also learned that data is king, that reality is much more interesting than anything we can dream up, and that Mother Nature always has the last word. It was a wild, open world. I taught myself how to record from individual neurons, how to wire up an amplifier, align microscope optics, write code and complete sophisticated calculations. I strove for elegance, originality and beauty in my work and in nature. I found it. Academia, I discovered, however, is more concerned with publication, and in the sciences, getting grants.
After some thought, I left. I was fortunate enough to land a position at a premier management consulting firm. This was a deliberate trade of my time and energy for business experience. I helped prepare executives for board meetings, sorted through hundreds of projects in an R&D portfolio, studied huge and tiny markets for pharmaceuticals, power electronics and medical devices. I watched org-charts shuffle on post-it notes and 'C-suite' executives cajole, persuade and threaten their subordinate, but powerful colleagues. I began to think about what large corporations are good at, what they are terrible at, and how smaller companies or individuals fit into the scheme of things.
I began to understand that, with the advances in of computer aided design tools and modern supply, distribution and marketing infrastructure, individuals or small teams can quickly design and distribute hardware products with little of the overhead of traditional manufacturing, distribution, marketing and sales. I became interested in the idea that products designed this way can create significant value (and I mean value in the ethical, moral, holistic economic sense, not just as a slippery code-word for profit) in niche markets that no self-interested corporate manager should touch. I hypothesized that these products, once in market, might also throw off enough cash to sustain an individual or small team, freeing them to continue pursuing interesting, risky, creative projects. That this is a different model than even the 'entrepreneurial startup' model, which in the worst cases, seems to trade the self-interested corporate manager for the self-interested and often greedy venture capitalist.
After I had learned enough, I left consulting, and began the long journey that you see here. I have chosen a few small projects to shepherd all the way to market. I expect it will take some time and that I will make mistakes. But my direction is clear. I want to understand how to create and design products for mass production, how to test markets quickly, and to scale production quickly and efficiently. And I want to have fun doing it. So, welcome to the world of The Positive Rail, and happy reading.
I am a scientist at heart. My specialization was the neurophysiology and computational biology of the retina. In the laboratory I learned observation, experimentation and analysis. I also learned that data is king, that reality is much more interesting than anything we can dream up, and that Mother Nature always has the last word. It was a wild, open world. I taught myself how to record from individual neurons, how to wire up an amplifier, align microscope optics, write code and complete sophisticated calculations. I strove for elegance, originality and beauty in my work and in nature. I found it. Academia, I discovered, however, is more concerned with publication, and in the sciences, getting grants.
After some thought, I left. I was fortunate enough to land a position at a premier management consulting firm. This was a deliberate trade of my time and energy for business experience. I helped prepare executives for board meetings, sorted through hundreds of projects in an R&D portfolio, studied huge and tiny markets for pharmaceuticals, power electronics and medical devices. I watched org-charts shuffle on post-it notes and 'C-suite' executives cajole, persuade and threaten their subordinate, but powerful colleagues. I began to think about what large corporations are good at, what they are terrible at, and how smaller companies or individuals fit into the scheme of things.
I began to understand that, with the advances in of computer aided design tools and modern supply, distribution and marketing infrastructure, individuals or small teams can quickly design and distribute hardware products with little of the overhead of traditional manufacturing, distribution, marketing and sales. I became interested in the idea that products designed this way can create significant value (and I mean value in the ethical, moral, holistic economic sense, not just as a slippery code-word for profit) in niche markets that no self-interested corporate manager should touch. I hypothesized that these products, once in market, might also throw off enough cash to sustain an individual or small team, freeing them to continue pursuing interesting, risky, creative projects. That this is a different model than even the 'entrepreneurial startup' model, which in the worst cases, seems to trade the self-interested corporate manager for the self-interested and often greedy venture capitalist.
After I had learned enough, I left consulting, and began the long journey that you see here. I have chosen a few small projects to shepherd all the way to market. I expect it will take some time and that I will make mistakes. But my direction is clear. I want to understand how to create and design products for mass production, how to test markets quickly, and to scale production quickly and efficiently. And I want to have fun doing it. So, welcome to the world of The Positive Rail, and happy reading.