On this week’s show we chat to our mates at Espresso Displays. Will, Scott and Gary are part of an Aussie start up that have recently raised almost $500,000 on Kickstarter to produce the worlds thinnest portable touch screen for your laptop, Mac, phone or portable media devices.

We chat with them about creating a product from scratch, dealing with overseas production remotely, their Kickstarter experience and all that goes into bringing your first product to market.

You can find out more about Espresso displays at au.espres.so or buy them at Indiegogo

You can learn more about Mate internet and mobile plans at www.LetsBeMates.com.au.

Subscribe to hear the latest episode each week on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast player.

 

 

 

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Transcript:

Faz: Welcome Australia. It’s that time again for another podcast, from the Mate team where we try and get into your head with stuff that makes us sound smart. Sit back and relax. It’s time for us

to be

Mates.

welcome to Australia to another let’s be mate podcast with your team at mate. Bosco Dom, how are you guys going this week? Good FAZ yourself. Good, good. Another week, another dollar as they say, in the, in the mate business. so today’s a pretty interesting story. We’re going to talk to a, a business, and get some insight from an Aussie startup business, who have initially, had a lot of success raising about roundabout 400K on Kickstarter who really cool story.

And I think it really resonates to the Mate business and how we started. How we developed as well.

Dom:  I think,

you know, the product is something that’s really relevant at the moment. Not only these people working from home, but I think we’re going to see, you know, this speed up of people working remotely, more and more.

And I think, you know, some of those projections

around

50% by 2025 or 2030, you know, it’s gonna be more like 70 or 80% of people that will be out of work remotely at some point. either even if it’s not 24 seven, but, remotely at some point during the week. So, like how many we’re talking to today is Espresso Displays.

we’ve got Scott and Will, who are the founders and Gary, who’s one of their, advisors. So I welcome guys who maybe, give us a bit of an introduction of who you all are and what your

roles are

Espresso Displays: so great to be here. Thanks for having us. so I I’m will, and Scott and Scott’s here as well as Scott and I first, started the company back in 2018.

and it was. It was a little different back then. It was us sitting at a table. wondering how the, how the hell do we, how do I, how, how the hell do we work, but are sitting at this table. And instead of doing our assignment, as uni students, should be doing, we started brainstorming ways of, making another display.

So we could take that with us. And we thought, you know, when you’re at home or at the office, you have two displays, you have two monitors. And we wanted to have that same productivity, that same feeling anywhere. And so we jumped right into it, but I’ll let them introduce themselves.

Yeah. So I’m Scott one of the other co-founders and it was ultimately a simple that we noticed that at our desks, we did have a full set up multi screens, but we’ll never there because that’s what work is work is, you know, where you need to be when you need to be there.

And we wanted to kind of create a versatile kind of workspace and have the tools that work could be easy, where it could be fun and ultimately be productive. And I’m Gary, thanks for having us guys, advising. And working together with these two young gentlemen and their team, it’s been a hell of a ride so far, and it’s really just the beginning.

So yeah, really excited to be here, talking to you guys.

Faz: It’s cool. You mentioned a lot of stuff there about, Work and sorry, first of all, great to have you guys on board, but, you spoke about, you know, where your work is, right? And so my background before working at mate is working for Microsoft and they focused heavily on hot seating and working from home and things like that.

And in one of our previous podcasts where we spoke about, working from home safely, one of the things that, Microsoft did was when you  when you work remotely, the whole idea is that the freedom to work wherever you want. Right. But what happened with that is that your ergonomics, all those things that are, may hurt you in that environment aren’t factored in.

And so one of the big things I faced was. Not having a second screen, not, and sometimes not being productive when you’re portable. Right. And I think that’s the story that your product delivers and, sorry, I’ll probably jump ahead here.

Bosco: So yeah. So guys, where did your

initial idea come from? and can you tell us a bit more about your journey and some of the initial reviews and feedback that you did receive?

particularly, I believe you guys got some feedback

from cult of Mac

and guy Kawasaki.

Espresso Displays: Yeah. That’s so that’s, that’s all good to hear now. And we really, really happy with the feedback we’re getting, but to take us back right to the beginning, it was, it was Scott and I at a table at uni saying how, yeah.

How the hell do we be more productive right here right now? And then we literally just jumped on Google instead of doing our assignment, we found a few. Solutions one had a projector, one had a plastic display, but there was nothing really out there at the time. And us as university students, you know, we didn’t have much experience business experience at the time we wanted to get in, get involved, get excited and start doing something about it.

But then, we, we, we, we soon found that we’re consumed by other things and we kind of forgot about it. But then one day at home, I’m just, I just thought, well, remember that idea we had about making a second screen, as I was saying. Okay, 3D printer at home. So I printed a couple of brackets. I said, it’ll all just take it in.

I’ll take it to uni, not I’ll show Scott and see if he see if he remembers those conversations we had and let’s see what he thinks of it. And I pulled it out of my bag and he loved it straight away and looking back at it now, it looks a bit silly, but it really got us kicking forward. So, from, from that day, I just, I started rocking up at Scott’s house every day and I told him.

Right on. I’m going to, I’m going to be here every day until this becomes something i made sure i did that. I think the very first day,

I was a bit sick and I remember Will was kind of like, okay, I’m coming over at 8:00 PM. I worked the whole day. And, and then I was like, I’m feeling a bit sick. I just been overseas in Nepal for six weeks.

I was like, yeah, how about tomorrow? And it was like, come on mate, if you’re going to try and delay just today. And then, you know, I was like, okay, so Will came over. And then from there he came over like every day. and our initial prototypes and that’s kind of what that got that initial momentum rolling.

And I think that’s ultimately in starting anything, it’s just that getting that momentum early on, so will did an excellent job giving me that push, but even our early out early prototypes was actually an attachment to your laptop that can kind of. Swing or maneuver out from that laptop itself. And we kind of made a few, maybe four or five prototypes with that kind of design, but ran into a whole bunch of complications.

Like, like when you go to a surface pro, there has a hinge at the back. So it wouldn’t work with that. You know, you don’t want to put too much weight and pressure on the hinge itself, so it would fall off. And, and ultimately that the display itself is beyond just a laptop or just a tablet or a phone that, that really seemed like the most value we could provide in that.

we were always looking for something that we wanted to use immediately, and that was it. It wasn’t just an attachment. It was the whole end to end solution of, you know, an office you can take anywhere.

so us being, us being engineers, we, yeah, we jumped straight into how do, how do we make these, how do we make this better?

but then we, we soon, we soon realized that this is also, it can become a business and we need to work out. How do you actually sell these things? As we soon found out selling. Probably a little harder than even making. So we had to jump into that world, but, but to get there, we will, we will, we’re sitting down together and we’re, we’re working on this.

And then a very similar product came out and it raised a half a million. Another one came out, raised another half a million. We said, Oh, I think we’re onto something here. I think there are actually people out there that really want to work from anywhere. So we realized this is kind of, it was becoming a big deal and looking at the other major players in this space, there was not many.

Maybe one or two that actually had a similar, unrelated product that in that space, most of them haven’t touched it. And we thought that was a little strange, but then again, they focus on the big, they focus on corporations and providing tech fit outs would be a corporations instead of the consumer that works independently.

So we thought, we thought we had something and we kept working on it. We decided to move out together. So us two and a friend of ours all moved out into a share house in North Sydney. we, we started using our nights to work to our days to earn money and now nights to work on the project. And, and yeah, that was, that was our, we were there for what, 12 months, I think

just over 13.

Yeah.

But a lot happened in there. And then that’s, I think when we arrived there, we decided to, to launch a Kickstarter campaign and you want to go into the Kickstarter campaign and how we decided Kickstarter not Indiegogo.

So, What we needed to do is you can go and make a product, but you don’t know how many do I want to buy?

What’s the cost, how am I going to get the cash? And, there’s a lot that actually goes into making a product that we’re now at the other end of. And, you know, Gary’s been incredible in helping us get there so far. And. So we’ll kind of actually starting with engineers with zero marketing and sales experience Googling how to do a Kickstarter because that’s where we were looking for products ourselves and be like, I guess we can kind of do that.

And

Faz: that’s how everybody starts, don’t worry.

Espresso Displays: And then from there, you know, I found every single Kickstarter that raised over $200,000 in Australia, you know, go through LinkedIn, get on the phone, email them friend of a friend. we spoke to them kind of figured out kind of. the framework for what that was. and then from that, we kind of found, you know, agencies that kind of specialized just in that.

And we got their help. and then kind of build up, you know, the email list started to build our own community and we were doing a few presentation, doing some presentations around, kind of telling people about what we did and then. I think on the day on day one, we will, we’ll up until late the night before.

And it was, it was almost like at the time of actually launching this big campaign, it was like, we’re just looking at each other saying, I guess this is it. Like, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. but ultimately it was, it went really well. We. we got, or the 10, like 10 grand in the first hour or two, we got over 50 grand in the first day and over a hundred grand in the first three days, I really had that great, organic push, you know, I think we’ll, we were tweeted over 50 times.

We’ll post it in every Facebook group. really had that great community around us, who really liked the product and really saw the value for it because. Exactly is what we’re seeing played out right now is that like work can be done anywhere. It really can. That it’s more about how do you have the tools to fit work into your life rather than you go to a particular place, because that’s where work’s done.

And I think that’s a shift that really throughout everything that’s happening with. With Coby that that’s the real transformation that’s happening in the workplace now. And it’s not going back. We’re only going to be saying flexibility and remote work and working in more locations. you know, over the years to come

I’ll link Gary into this because just before we had launched a few weeks before he had launched the company, my first grad job, Oh, I had a, I got a, I got a job at, it turns out Gary worked there.

Now, the reason we, we knew about each other was because, my sister’s kids go to school with Gary’s kids. And then, so, one, I get to work the first day and I have an email, my first email sitting in my inbox at work. And it’s from Gary saying, Hey, have you started yet? Let’s go have a coffee. And I’d only been at work for about six hours.

but I thought, okay, why not? I looked at my boss. He said, yeah, go down. So I went to meet with Gary and I ran him through what we’re up to at the time we had come up, we went to Shenzhen, for our first time, just going to Shenzhen. Cause we thought that’s the best way to learn about how things are made is just go over there and see what happens.

and so it get talked to Gary and I kind of got caught up and he was, he was really excited. I remember he didn’t ask, he asked me a million questions and I didn’t get a chance to ask him one question about him. He was so excited in what we were doing and it was really great. So Gary, speak to speak to that.

Thanks. Well, yeah, it is a great origin story and it doesn’t matter. It could start from anyway and it started through, Will’s niece and my daughter, which is absolutely awesome. I think what really drew me is the opportunity and the vision that Will and Scott. I met Scott at Outback steakhouse. several months after, and just the, the, the, the passion that they had for the  is really what drew me, and then leveraging my 15 years of product development experience.

I could see where there were some gaps that I could help and actually add some value. And so I’ve persisted in offering my, my help until they said, well, yeah, let’s do it. And became an advisor to help out. I just love helping. I want to give back I’ve had the . The luck or the opportunity to work with four great Australian companies.

And again, just want to give back to little startups and try to help as much as we can. And Australian manufacturing, an engineer.

Faz: That’s awesome. Right. Listening to your story. And if I take it back to our story and you don’t, you don’t progress. Unless we, we always say, partnering is a big part of success, right?

And in some times when you have an idea or concept and you feel like you can, you know, win with it, You need this, you always can’t do everything yourself. Right? there’s, you know, you specialize in your part and there’s other people that you need to bring into your world that help you expand, to do, to achieve what you want to achieve.

And, and trust becomes for us. Trust is big as in our business, right? And we, we thought about, well, who do you, who do you talk to? he knows when we think about who’s going to steal it and run with it and who’s going to take advantage of us. Right. But I think in, in a startup phase, especially what we’ve, we’ve achieved, you have to go out there and trust people with your story and what you’re trying to achieve and hope and put trust in humanity or those people that you talk to are going to help you and support you doing what you want to do.

And I don’t know, how has your experience with that? I mean, obviously. You only knew Gary with, you know, very lightly if you put it that way. Right. But I mean, I think about that. I mean, what, I mean, that’s probably one of the first outsiders. Would you say that you’ve trusted to support your business?

I’d love to hear how you thought about that and how it made you feel because it’s your baby, right? It’s you know, this is your baby. So how, how did you think about bringing somebody on the

outside, in.

Espresso Displays:  Yeah, well, it really helped that, Gary, you a little bit more than us about how to get something made.

So I remember one day, we’re about to, I think we already had launched our campaign. and we, we, we kind of re we’ve launched that campaign. Cause you gotta remember. Cause before, before the campaign launch, we didn’t, we didn’t know, there was no guarantee that we’re going to hit the certain amount.

There was no guarantee that this project was gonna gonna do well enough for us to actually turn this into our main gig. Right. So when it did, when it did that, I caught them in my mind, like, Oh, Okay, so this, this has happened. So, so now this is, this is a bit different to anything I’ve done before. And I guess we’ve got a product to make because there’s 1500 people around the world expecting something from us.

And so. I went to Gary and he said, you know, if you got, if you got this done, if you got your SOP down, if you got this design done, if you’ve got all these files and I’m like, no. And he says, well, it’s not good. It’s not a good mate. So don’t worry because we can get there. We can get there. And I kind of, I guess I had no choice, but to trust him, but he made it really, really, really easy to trust him.

Cause he’s, you could see straightaway in the way he speaks and the way he acts, he is trustworthy. And you can put all your, your faith in. And value inside that and get it. And it is, it is a bit, it is a bit difficult, but, the only way to know is, is through time and through repeated, exercises with someone and they, then they are true.

Their true colors will come out. And so you have to give that onboarding time for everyone. And. For Gary, it’s the same. I’d say his energy. If anything has grown, it’s only, it’s certainly got more and more bigger and bigger since then every day. And I liked what you said before. I do believe that, you need other people just so that I think the only asset you got, anyone has is energy.

And when you give out energy, that that really helps someone do their best work, but then when they do their best work, they give you energy. And you kind of just feed off each other. And I think that’s, if I didn’t have these guys, there’s no way I would have done this because I’ve got no one to do it for other than myself.

And I think definitely for me, I feed off their energy and I’d hope they feed off of mine too.

And I think will really touch upon a good point about having that. Like, as you start working together, that you firstly have the values of kind of what you’re looking to create for who, for how, and, and what’s your approach in the same way that.

we spoke about what’s mate’s approach and that’s really important. And then, I had a conversation with Gary a couple of weeks ago about how naturally it just, we all kind of blended together because I think we kind of with the vision, I think Gary saw the vision. Exactly. Like he, he lived it, he knows it.

And he’s known him even before espressos existed and before he’s kind of started working alongside us. So it was one of those things really upon, you know, ongoing, I guess, time and getting to know each other, but also it’s like, if you see it and you believe in that same goal and same vision, it just becomes that much.

Easier and more natural. And that’s, you know, it goes into all famous business books and stuff. So, you know, it’s the culture and the values that drives everything else. Yes. You’ve got to have the right technical capabilities, but in the same thing, it’s the values and culture of, of any vision. That is what that’s, you know, how are you going to decide?

And yeah. And I think, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a pleasure working alongside with Gary and. It’s it’s makes it, makes it all much more enjoyable.

Faz: And for our listeners that are business-minded and entrepreneurs, I would like to say a statement that I think if one of the big, biggest things you can do is know very early on what you’re not good at.

And what you’re not where you’re not what you don’t know what to do. And if you know that, I think you’ll be successful because you’ll always be looking for that skill in a thing, or, you know, a process in a, in a software solution or in a person as you go along. So I think that’s one of the big things people thinking about starting a business, or who’s got the entrepreneurial flare or ideas, make sure you’re very clear about what you don’t know.

And then I think that then you’re easily. Fond the solution to get around it. Whereas if you think, you know, everything, you’ll get lost along the way and you’ll do things badly. And that’s, that’s sort of an, everybody makes mistakes, but we giving the opportunity for people not to make mistakes today.

Dom: So Gary helped you round out some of those gaps that you had around the production process, but.

Working

remotely and producing a product overseas.

What are some being some of the challenges you’ve seen around that, especially, I guess COVID even exacerbated that further be not being able to physically be there.

Espresso Displays: Maybe I could, I could start here just giving the example of how challenging it actually is.

And then you could give the story about how you actually lived in China. Having done it for about 15 years now, the best way to develop something is to be on the ground. and it is extraordinarily difficult to do something remotely and I’ve done it. Time and Time, again, with when you’re developing something, you’ve got to sit next to the person, doing it, help them out, get it done and then move on.

So moving from that model to our remote model has been extraordinarily difficult, especially when, where you’re working has shut down. and also the, all the implications that have happened throughout the world. So what did we have to do? We had to really ensure that communication was,

 

very frequent and when you’re dealing with China and at different language, that just exacerbates that even more.

So it’s really about that comms when you’re standing there in the office, even though you’re not speaking the same language, the body language helps you get to the answer faster. But when you’re over, over a zoom call or over a WeChat or over an email, it is just takes longer. You get there, but it just takes longer.

So I think that’s what we’ve, we’ve encountered. And I’ve seen that previously. And that’s why whenever I’m working with a team, I just say, get on a plane and go over there, but that’s not going to

happen

very soon anymore. So we’ve got to work out new ways to do it. I’ve got five PS of product development that I live by, that I’ve developed over the last 15 years.

And that’s persistence, passion, positivity, patience and pain. It takes those five to get  anything out. is that

A trademark

it’s personally trademarked. I haven’t, I haven’t gone out outside yet, but it I’ve just found that as long as you got those five. You will get there now you will make mistakes and you will fail, but those Fails are the best thing ever because then you make it even better

afterwards.

So, yeah. So that’s just a bit of background about the challenges of remote working,

but Will

Bosco: actually

Espresso Displays: got on the plane and went over there and lived throughout COBIT.

yeah, so I think it was the November 10, like, okay. We really need to actually go over there cause it looks like we have to make a product.

So. A fly flying over there and landing i remember  the first, first day, getting there, within a few hours, I was in a boardroom meeting with the, with the head of that factory discussing terms for manufacturing. and I constantly had much experience in that. it was, it was a bit of, a bit of negotiation, a bit of debate.

I had to learn all that on the go of it, but again, luckily I had Gary there, but we, we quickly, we quickly found out there’s just different, differences in cultures really affects, co collaboration. and they it’s, it makes it. It makes it so, cause you feel like you have to go through another layer of translation and it’s not so much the language, it’s more the way we do things and there’s a different way, depending on the culture.

And so we have to adapt to their way of doing things so we can communicate together. And again, it’s not so much the language, it’s just more, the way the worker stays style of work. And once, and it took a few, took a few weeks being over there, but once we really understood them better, we were able to contribute more and move along.

We’ll fall. So, but yeah, as Gary said, I was there. so I was there during, up until when COVID, when COVID became a big thing in China, I was there through that. so I have been through two lockdowns, one first in China, and then the second one here. So history is repeating itself for me. And it was, it was a lot of different paying being in China and saying that the, they were very, very, very strict on, on the lockdown, as compared to, as compared to here.

But, they being so strict meant they were able to get out faster. So I think production opened a few weeks,

later  than it that it normally would have after Chinese new year. but that’s only they’ll be able to be that fast because of how, how strict they enforce their, They, they, they, their restrictions.

So, we’re back to full capacity now, but for a few weeks that we’re really focused on, on different projects because they’ve got a hierarchy internally for, for, for them to work on. And they have to, I have to, they have to finish that before they can jump on other people’s projects, but we’re back to full production now.

Faz: Oh, that’s awesome. I think it’s a, it’s a really cool story. I mean, I know, my experience in Asia, I lived there for a fair bit and did work in China and Japan and Korea and, and all the different Asian cultures. to your point, Gary before, we’ve when the language is second to the local language for people.

So obviously a person that speaks English, English, speaking to a, a Korean person, et cetera, being in face to face, sort of is the best form of communication because you can use your arms and drawings and things like that to communicate. And what I noticed, especially in the Southeast Asia culture is that.

They will tell you yes, all the time, even if they don’t understand what you’re, what you’ve told them. And, and, and what happens is that you walk away thinking, and I’ve learned a thousand times, you walk away thinking everybody understood what you said three months later, nothing’s done. And they had no clue from that first conversation.

And they had no clue what you spoke about. And they felt like they shouldn’t speak up or tell you that they didn’t know what they were talking about as well. And so. That’s a, that’s a very valid point. Anybody on this listen to this podcast is thinking about doing work in Asia. Remember that? Make sure you confirm everything.

so the, the other side understands what you’re saying.

Bosco: So you guys were able to raise over 400,000. I think it was on Kickstarter. just tell us a little bit about that and if you had to do it again, would you do anything differently?

Espresso Displays: Yeah. So, with the Kickstarter, the way that it works, for any, any people who aren’t as familiar with it, it’s you, you give it, you give an offering.

So for us, it was our, we had two displays and a, and a few accessories and he kind of, the way it actually works is kind of like you, you like kind of donate or pledge as Kickstarter says, the amount that is basically your retail, sell price and in return, you, we will give. One of those, four based on the pledge that you’ve got and.

The way that kind of works. I think because if the way that presales work in different countries and then shipping all that type of stuff, it’s very much a, it’s a big social campaign and launch. And for us, that was a compressed window of marketing and sales and everything. 101, and which started off with a big presale list, we had full weeks, a very big, four weeks of preparation of we’re doing a lot of talks.

We’ll building an email is we ran, I think. To get people to get people involved. And then from there, yeah, we had the big launch day and the number the first two or three days is very big. And from there, it’s just about ours wen for 40 days. So just every single day, emailing you to new places, doing a whole bunch of stuff, just to try and get the word out there.

And. and we’ll feature it in some things like, Ausdroid, which is the Australian Android magazine, where we’re in a smart company as well, and a bit of a feature on us. so a few things like that, just to really get that, get the name out there and to. Make that campaign quite good. And, but going into doing that, so say with, with no brand, with nothing to launch or anything like that, it is a pretty expensive marketing activity.

So you do, you have to invest a lot in having a nice video, having really nice content. that makes people, be willing to pledge, without actually having the final product or being able to buy on Amazon, receive it in two days time. So for us, it was the natural, approach, for what we needed at the time.

Cause we needed to create and really sell that vision of look, this is what the product is and this is what we plan to make it, but we need to know how many to make and we need, we need that. We need to know that validation in order for us to go ahead and do all of that and understanding if there’s really like a.

is there a business case for doing this? And if so, that’s going to determine the volume, whether it’s, you know, I’d say if a hundred people did it, it’d be very different to say a thousand, which is also very different to say 10,000 units. So we need to know which, which one of those paths to take. And that gave us that, initial momentum to get that going.

And even since then, we’ve added a whole bunch of, we’ve added some features and the product’s been even better than kind of what we expected and what we’ve promised. at the beginning, as we kind of learned, when we got into the details of that product development and we could make the appropriate decisions to do so.

So crowdfunding was certainly the best path for us. To launch and given the stage that we will at. but there’s been a big learning curve there since then, if you do have your, you know, your direct to customer base, communication and relationship, you might not need to go through some of those channels where, you do, you do have to kind of, there are agency fees and there are platform fees and, and, it’s a very compressed marketing.

A campaign

about what you said before about you do most of your, you don’t use an agency, you do all your branding in house. I think we kind of learned a bit about that during our campaign where we had, we had an agency reaching out to PR, but we found that they care less than 1% of what you care, because all the big outlets that we ended up talking to was from our own push organically.

And because they go the at 5:00 PM, they clock off. They go home, they enjoy their weekend. They don’t think about it when they go to bed. Whereas we cant sleep, because we’re freaking out about what’s the best way to reach more people. And so we ended up doing it way better, doorbell spells,

Faz: and you’re not four years in, you’re still be freaking out.

Trust me, but I mean like the Kickstarter platform and I’ve only ever invested in one thing in Kickstarter, it was the, the bag with the hides, the zippers, and it has the USB ports on the side. Have you seen that? Is it like the. Anti-theft, backpacks where, when you, when you’re holding the backpack, you can’t, you don’t see the zippers on the outside, they’re on the inside, so they’re hidden behind your back.

and then I see them everywhere now. Right. And so that’s, that gives you an idea of the opportunity. And I think I see kicks start a Kickstarter as a platform for you to test your idea and not, not go and spend crazy amount of money with something that may not work. Right. And it’s like, Cost effective way to just test the waters to see, alright, is this thing going to work?

I’ll build a business based on what people are saying here. And if people are investing and putting money in, then yeah. You know, freaking out this is going to fit. Things can definitely work if people are putting money in. So, which I think is a really good platform to use. I bought a,

Bosco: I bought my first mechanical keyboard on Kickstarter, which everyone in the office,

Faz: everybody in the office here,

Bosco: everybody in the office actually gave me crap about it.

Cause it looks kind of retro it’s key Chrome. I don’t know if you’ve heard of

Yeah, there’s a Gatoron switches and there’s a couple of other options, but yeah. So they’ve got like, so they started with one model and then they’ve got like six or seven that they sell direct through online store. So yeah, they started on Kickstarter as well. So

Dom: yeah, so guys for our listeners. probably should talk about a little bit about the product and I’ll let you have your spiel, but there was also some pretty cool accessories and attachments that you can add onto your screen.

So tell us a bit about the product.

Espresso Displays: Yeah. So our product is the world’s.  thinnest portable monitor. It’s a, it’s a like a desktop monitor in a tablet form factor. So just with the USBC cable, you can play, plug it from your laptop in, or even phones and tablets and other devices that use USBC. You can plug it in to just have access an extra screen for whatever device you’re using it from.

it’s touchscreen it’s ultra-thin it’s 5.3 millimeters in thickness. So it’s thinner than an iPad pro and. It really works incredibly well. It’s very simple to use and I’ll let Will talk about the Mac feature. that’s pretty awesome.

Yeah. So w I remember one night, well, Scott rode home from our uni or something, and he said, Oh, we didn’t have a good stand up.

We need to make a good stand. So. I thought I’ll just jumped on CAD and we probably prototype something together. And we found out that that standard ends up being our biggest accessory sell off. And we focus around magnets because magnets are just like, they just snap and then it connects, right. You’d have to screw anything on.

You don’t have to clip anything. It just snaps. And it’s so easy. So every accessory we designed, we’ve made sure. You could just use it within one second. You could just snap it on because we knew this whole thing’s portable. So if you have to screw it on, no one’s gonna use it. It’s no longer portable. It doesn’t matter if it weighed one gram.

If you have to screw it in, it’s not portable. So we focus on magnets. and then we’ve MAC here without a huge Mac, is, are a huge user base for us. So a lot of, a lot of the backers were asking for a Mac. So Mac touch to be able to use touch on Mac. And then Mac had a big, they’ve changed from, they changed the Catalina operating system update during the campaign.

And that, that was a big, a big. Oh, during the Swift talk up for us. And then we had to actually, we had to find a way to make that work because touch was so important. So we ended up getting touch functionality, working really well on Mac. and so now you can customize gestures and you can, you can, you can set all that up.

How you like, so you can play around, you can multitask using your fingers on a MAC.

So it can really turn like your Mac book pro with a second screen into like a two in one. So you can really use it like a tablet without actually having an iPad. So just really having that. Awesome versatility for how you want to use and how you best work.

And we kind of provide that right solutions for it. And I think as far as our positioning of, you know, where do we sit in this market? Like you’ve got these big players, like, you know, your HPS and Dells and whatnot, and you’ve also got other kind of no name manufacturers. And you can tell that either of those groups neither really care about making the individual more productive.

they’re very focused on, you know, having a technology solution, like, you know, HP will chop off the top of a laptop. and other manufacturers will look at portable monitors selling, but it’s not really the design focused around how do we actually make people who people like us. that work anywhere and everywhere, how do we actually help them?

And I think that we’re the only ones that have these other stands like that VESA are stand the mount Go, the mount Pro and that’s because we identified that there needed to be better ways to actually set it up the stand that the product experience doesn’t end just with a monitor, like a tablet.

If I give you a tablet or a monitor, you hold it holding. Like, what do I do with this? Especially the stands and all the attachments and how your whole workspace comes together. That is really. What the outcome that the customer wants when they go and purchase a product like ours?

Dom: I think that’s what,

when I first watched the Kickstarter video for me, that it was the VESA mount of stand that really clicked my mind about having this second screen, that I could be at the airport working, you know, traveling.

I could come to the office and I could just literally throw it up and sit on the magnet, but I could also have the same amount at home so that when I’m working at home remotely, I can also have it there. So yeah, there’s some cool accessories that you can add on as well.

Faz: Take the, take the productivity of your office on the go with you.

That’s the one, that’s the way I see it.

Dom: Yeah. There’s a new tagline. I

t’s the tagline

Faz: we charge for that, by the way. well, I mean, I guess the last thing I think we’ve really spoken heavily about the product. I think it’s great. I think, you know, everybody needs to go check it out. So I think what we need to do is tell people how to go check it out and where they can get involved and learn about it and buy it and, and support your, your business.

Espresso Displays: Well right now, it’s still, it’s still on Indiegogo on demand, which is a service that allows you to keep selling after your main campaign. and we’re about to enter what we’re calling our hard launch, where I will have units start shipping in fulfilled by Amazon. So that will be coming in the, in the coming weeks.

But right now, it’s on Indiegogo in demand. So we can, we can send you that link as well.

And we have a 27 to 34% discount on that because it is a presale and there is a bit of, extra wait, but we’re getting real close there now. So that’s now now’s a good window to support us in. Still get one of the first displays that get out there.

Also we’ll make sure,

Oh, sorry. www.espressodisplays.com.au. And that’ll take you right there. Yeah.

Faz: Awesome. We’ll make sure we put that into the show notes, on our podcast platforms, which is great though. I mean, I think, look, thanks very much for having, for coming on board and telling us your story.

I think, we, we have a story. You guys have the story and I think that’s the reason why, we, we love to talk to people like yourself. if anybody listening, who’s got ideas or stories and. is thinking about doing something like take a listen to this podcast. I think there’s a lot of cool tips and tricks and some insight here around starting a business and there’s and ways you can do it without all the expense that comes with starting a business.

And, I think it’s just a great story guys. And we, and we love it. Obviously we can resonate with it. I think, Well, I think we were definitely going to go and check it out after this, but, look, thanks for being on. thanks for catching up with us. Thanks for being on the show. And, like I said, we’ll put all the details into our show notes, but, thanks guys.

And good luck with everything boys. another the episode done and dusted, Dom Bosco. Anything else to add?

Oh, that’s cool. Brian. Good, good, good Ozzy. Start up. Yeah, it’s awesome. I love hearing those stories about, the Ozzy startups. I mean, I think we’re obviously one ourselves and, you know, with our Australian customer service and our, local support team here, it’s good to hear the guys having success.

And so anybody out there go and  support your local team, or, you know, well, not your local team, but your local business team, and get behind them, especially in this time of the world that we’re in at the moment. And if you’ve got a business idea, just don’t be afraid to start. Yeah, exactly. And if anybody’s got any ideas, and want to be on our podcast email us at [email protected]

Dom, say Bosco. See you guys. Bye.

Dom: Thanks for listening to the Let’s Be Mates podcast by the team at Mate search for the Let’s Be Mates podcast on iTunes, Spotify,

YouTube, and at LetsBeMates.com.au.

Bosco:  hit subscribed to get the latest episode each week. All your telco needs. Choose a provider.

You can trust like a mate. visit LetsBeMates.com.au Google mate. Or call us on 13, 14, 13 to sign up today.

Faz: See you soon, mate.