Ep. 46 - Entrepreneurship in the Maker Community with Matt Verlinich
In this installment of the Future Grind podcast host Ryan O’Shea sits down with Matt Verlinich. Matt was the founding General Manager of TechShop Pittsburgh and a founding member of the Protohaven makerspace. He’s also the founder of Clear Ice Rocks, where he invented, prototyped, crowdfunded, and mass-produced a system for creating completely clear ice at home (check it out here). Matt is now a part of the Innovation Works team, where he works with early stage hardware companies to guide them through the design and manufacturing process.
They discuss his insights into the maker movement and where it’s headed, the relationship between the maker community and entrepreneurship, how you can get work to get a product made and marketed, life-logging, and more.
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Show Notes
TechShop [2:37]
TechShop Community - Hobbyists, Artists, Entrepreneurs [5:30]
Expensive Tools & Costs [9:11]
Makerspace Investment Partners [11:00]
Matt’s path to Entrepreneurship [12:45]
Clear Ice Rocks! [16:02]
Case Study: Manufacturing Physical Products[18:14]
Navigating Manufacturers [20:59]
Innovation Works & AlphaLab Gear [23:10]
Innovation Works Portfolio Companies [27:00]
How to Identify Manufacturing Needs [30:03]
When to Manufacture Locally vs. Overseas [31:21]
Hardware Cup & AlphaLab Gear Opportunities [34:17]
What Sets Innovation Works/AlphaLab Apart [35:54]
The (Avoidable?) Collapse of TechShop [37:45]
The Creation of a Non-Profit TechShop - Protohaven [41:30]
Matt’s Photographic Life-Log [44:36]
Relationship Between Photographs & Memory [49:14]
What’s Next for Matt [52:22]
Mentioned
Instructables
Walnut Capital
Bakery Square
UPMC Enterprises
Human Engineering Research Laboratory
Ascender
Nikola Tesla
Westinghouse
Rapid TPC
Ben Franklin Technology Partners
AlphaLab & AlphaLab Gear
ESTAT Actuation
Sparkwear (Aura Sparks)
MAKE: & Maker Faire
Dale Dougherty
Artisan’s Asylum (Boston)
HackPGH
Prototype - Feminist Makerspace
Carnegie Science Center Makerspace
BDYHAX’s Human Augmentation 101
Adobe Lightroom
Google Photos
Study: Point-and-shoot memories: the influence of taking photos on memory for a museum tour
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