510: The Secret Chip

Welcome to Embedded. I am Eliseo White, alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Christina Sear, and we're going to talk about geometry, maybe awards. Maybe starting a company. Telephones. Oh, and telephones. Telephones. That's what they're called. Hello, Christina. Welcome. Hi, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Could you tell us about yourself as if we met at... Supercon lunch. Oh, I'm the CEO of Detour. I created the Circle phone. It's an Android phone with a round display.

I've taught over 300 people how to build their own phone at conferences and universities. And occasionally I do work on the side for other companies. I've helped them improve their quality and reliability on PCBs that involve communication. And we have lots of questions for... Actually, all of that, I think. But first, we want to do lightning round. Are you ready? No one's ever ready for this, but go ahead. What is your favorite communication device that is not a phone?

Oh, that's a great question, radio. All right. Favorite shape? I love this question. Probably, I'm trying to decide, hexagon, octagon? Octahedron dome. Buckyball. Yeah. One of those. Yes, exactly. Sphere. I should say sphere. Yeah. Favorite fictional robot. Okay, so I had a list. Prepared. It went somewhere. But basically it starts off with, I love...

vacuum robots because it was the first time a robot can actually do something for me in real life. That's not fictional. It's not fictional. That's good point. Good point. In movies, I love humanoids because they're so intriguing. It's like all of the complexities of the social dilemmas and like all that kind of stuff is so, yeah, I love. Love diving into that. But my favorite hardware is Robot from the 2018 drama of Lost in Space. I loved that series.

I loved how they showed emotion on a blank screen on the face. That was really intriguing to me. Yeah, I thought they did a good job with that series. When you said Android, I was going to say, okay, like data or like murder bot. But I think now you've kind of answered that with the lost in space robots. Yeah. Just that emotion is amazing.

Favorite place to get batteries from? Oh, this is a great spot. So, what a great question. So... I don't think this is accessible so much anymore, especially after August 1st with all the tariffs and everything. But of course, going on Alibaba and looking for... battery vendors and then kind of interviewing them and asking them, you know, what they can provide and all that kind of stuff. So that's been my favorite. And I have some stories about that because...

Evidently, you can ship batteries if they're installed in something. So when they would send samples, they would rip out a regular... They would pick a toy and rip out the batteries from the toy and then install the lithium batteries. an extra lithium battery to actually run the toy. So the toy would like run under inspection, but like I would arrive and I would get like this cute, like one was like the Totoro.

mascot, like a little nightlight that you can have by your desk. And my kids loved them. They were fantastic. I had never thought about that. That's a way that you could ship batteries installed in a device, you know, but like, because they don't really define that very... Anyways, this is not a quick answer for lightning round. But as a side note, and I didn't put this in my notes, but I talked to somebody who...

worked for battery connectors, a battery connector company. And she sat down and spent some time with me and convinced me to switch from a pH connector, which everybody uses in all their maker. boards to an ADH connector and it's transformed my life. Anybody, I highly recommend switching to the ADH because the pH one, you try to pull it out to switch batteries or something.

It's difficult to pull out. And sometimes you pull out the wires instead of pulling out the plug and like all these kinds of things. You don't have that problem with the ADH. It's a better connection. It's easier to get in and out for prototypes. And it takes up like... A third of the space. These are the JST, variants of the JST connectors? Yes. I think I have the wrong ones for all the things I'm doing. And SparkFun actually sells a little tool.

To disconnect them. Oh, for crimping? No, to disconnect the connector because it's so hard to do without destroying the crimp. Yes, that's valuable information. Okay, I will get that tool. Because I need it, you know, if I'm trying out somebody else's. It's just a piece of plastic. Yeah, and yeah, they have better ratings for voltages and stuff. It's just, it's a vastly better tool. So, yeah.

Any company I work with, I'm like, really consider switching to this if you can. I'm going to consider that her tip everyone should know. That sounds great. We have a quick break before we jump back in. If you're interested in how 3D printing is changing design engineering, Mauser Electronics has some great resources to check out.

Their empowering Innovation Together platform is taking a deep dive into additive manufacturing. That's 3D printing. They're covering smarter production, faster prototyping. and breakthrough materials that move ideas beyond prototypes into real-world products. You'll find podcasts, expert articles, and videos to keep you informed and inspired. Sound like your thing?

Head over to mauser.com slash empowering-innovation and explore their latest content. Now let's get back to the show. Shall we go on to the longer questions? Yeah, let's do that.

Yes, let's do that. Okay. You mentioned detour, which is spelled D capital T capital O capital O capital R. Yes. Pronounced. Detour. Detour. I get it now. Wow. These things take me sometimes years to get. So thank you for helping me with that. And you mentioned the circle phone. How are those two things? I didn't quite understand. That's a great question. So what we started with was, you know, hey, we're making a phone with a round display.

But there were these cool displays that were in the shape of hearts and stars. Maybe not a star. It's like if you have a bubbly star. It's more like a flower. you know, with the flower petals. And so, yeah, we started seeing all these really cool displays and we're like, okay, so... I think we can do, once we get the software nailed down for the circle phone, like we know all the bits to change for these other shapes as well. So we could do all of these.

other cool, you know, collectible phones, you know, and all these different shapes. And so that was kind of the initial thread. And because of that, and I had to incorporate So it's a long story because really I was just building this phone for myself, but then I couldn't buy parts unless I was a company. And so then I had to incorporate and blah, blah, blah.

The original question was the linkage. So originally the acronym for the company was designing the opposite of rectangle. So we could design everything under the sun, any shape, any form. But it could not be the rectangle because that was what everybody else was building. And this is how we distinguished, you know, what we were doing apart from what everybody else was building. And of course, since all of our co-founders are female and...

We have a very diverse, we've had a very diverse collection of people that have worked on the phone.

So we also thought it was a detour from other companies and we're actually a social purpose corporation and had to file special paperwork for that, which means that you put people and the environment. above profit and, you know, no investor really wants to see that. But you really have a sincere, earnest desire, you know, to make a better company. Yeah. So that was detour. But the acronym, what it stood for, was also a little bit negative. So we actually have a newer slogan.

that developed like six months later. And it's non-rectangular phones for non-rectangular people. That would have been a more awkward acronym though. Yes. So sometimes we do abbreviate it. So, you know, non-recticular funds. So it's NRP, NRP. But like, that doesn't make sense at all. NERP, NERP. Yeah. Okay. A social purpose corporation. And this is US-based. And it's only in some states. Sorry to interrupt. Oh, no, that's good. It's a for-profit business, like a normal corporation, but...

it also has a specific social or public benefit goal. Yes. Yes. And in general, companies who... file as a social purpose corporation are generally environmentally focused. And we do, our phone is environmentally focused as well. The enclosure is... supposed to be biodegradable and it's repair friendly, user repair friendly. So there's a lot of environmental aspects to it. Being environmentally sound in the smartphone industry is really difficult. It's even possible.

Yes, it does. But we still keep looking for avenues to do that. And hopefully we'll talk about some of them on the podcast here. It's funny because we only very recently talked to Steve Hinch, who made it a point to say that corporations, public corporations, ones that are shareholder focused ones. They have to do what's in the best interest of the shareholders. Not in the best interest of the future. Financially of the shareholders. Not in the best interest of the workers.

Customers. It has to be the shareholders, which is such a limited and limiting view. Yes. I loved it when he said that. That was just really grounding. Like, yes, that reflects everything that I've seen in the industry. It reflects a lot of what's wrong with the industry. Yes. Yes, it does. That's kind of new. No, it isn't. I thought before like 2010-ish, there wasn't quite as much focus on that. I don't know that that's true.

No, no, I'm thinking back and forth on that. I feel like I heard about fiduciary duty long before that. I think we're becoming more and more aware of it. Maybe. in current years but yeah what was it before like even in like the 1920s like when they got the railroad up and running was it in the best interest of the investors or

That's a really good question. You might be right. I don't know, but I remember it being complained about somewhere before there. I thought it got stricter recently. Possible.

It's good to know that there's an alternative, but you said there's more paperwork. Yes, but you do have to claim it and submit formal documentation when you incorporate. In addition to that, then you also have to have a social purpose corporation, like annual statement, and it's tied to your websites. So you have to have that.

at the bottom of your website. You need to have a link to that. But I have to say that most corporations who file for SPC... uh are not around two years later like it's really a well-meaning uh finally and then also if you're not in it for the investors if you're in it for the environment you know Maybe you've sold all that product and then you close the business. I don't think it's worthless to do it. I think it's worthwhile to do it. But maybe it is a factor of that particular.

set up that makes the company not be alive for very long. But we've been alive for 10 years. And do investors run screaming when you are near them? I was told that initially, but I think investors run screaming from hardware faster than a social purpose corporation. So, yeah, I think there's worse. There are worse things that you could do to pose your company to not be investor worthy. How do you get funding for your company? That's a good question. I actually don't.

That's the answer to that question. But shipping hardware is really expensive. Are you entirely bootstrapped? Yes. It is entirely expensive. We've had several successful crowdfunding campaigns. Thank you to all of our backers again and again and again. I appreciate you. And it's... been from the love of backers and also just my family's determination. Is the Circle phone for sale now? Yes.

If you go to the Circle Phone website, then if you click the shop button, it's available. We have one unit left. So when you say the circle phone is available. And one of the global unit available. And I just realized going through inventory that. we can actually put together a Japanese unit as well. So maybe you will see that on our website pretty soon. But because they are the last units available on the planet, yeah, they're listed at...

$10,000 each. So you have to really, really want it. There are people who collect phones who have thousands of phones. For those individuals, it may be a worthwhile investment. Or it's also a great dev board. So for example, if you were developing a round display for your car, you know. that you wanted to release to the public, maybe we could, you know, work some sort of deal with you. So is it a going concern? Actually, I guess I shouldn't have said, are they available, but are you?

Are you planning to build a lot more? Are you in sales? That's a great question. So those were as many as we manufactured. We do actually have... thousands of chips actually available still. We could manufacture more, but it's time to move on to the 5G. So these are all 4G phones. We're just waiting for the 5G chips to actually drop even further in price. So the Circle phone has won...

some pretty interesting awards. One of them was the CES Innovation Award. Could you tell us about that? Yes. So the CES Innovation Award, I... was so excited to go and pick it up. I know that's not what you're asking about, but I have to relive this moment of like getting to go, you know, designing a phone. This is actually the second phone. The first one was just a 2G phone. It was the prototype. And I was testing it on people and they're like, Ashley, I want to buy this one. And they're like.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no. You want to wait for the 4G, really? No, no, no. I want this one. This is great. It's so cute. And it has a small display on it and everything. But so to me, this is like the real phone, you know, the 4G phone. This is great. Running Android. Fantastic. So when I went to go pick up the award, it meant a lot to me to be able to design something. that someone recognized like that. But I have to say, in the industry, you have to apply for these awards.

One of the things that I was dismayed about was you actually have to pay money to submit the application, which I guess makes sense. You know, they have to have a team of people. you know, reviewing these things. And I can't remember how much it is for CES, but like for Mobile World Congress, we did submit one year to be considered. And they did consider us. Unfortunately, we lost to the Fairphone.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I love the Fairphone and what they're doing. It's so fantastic. They're reviewing all the sourcing and making sure that it's ethical. They have replacement parts for your phone so you can replace, for example, the camera, things like that. And they make sure that their phone is... as environmentally friendly as possible and still looks like a phone, like a rectangular phone that you would see in somebody's hand. It looks like an iPhone. Yes, it's...

It's wonderful. And I love the team. So in the industry, you get to know everybody who's kind of your parallel. And I guess you could say your competitor or whatever, but I don't consider them. I consider all of the fellow phone makers are like brethren, you know, like siblings. And we're all trying to, you know, do this impossible thing in the face of...

just unbelievable odds. But so for the Mobile World Congress, I think it was like that year, it was like $600 that you had to pay just to be considered. It was interesting because the next year I had never received anything like this before, but they reached out to me and said, can you please apply again? So, you know, but at that point I was like, so.

bummed about the previous year. And I was like, I don't think we want to spend, you know, another chunk of change on this. But yeah, so I don't know if that is about... if that's the same for design awards and everything. But if you're in the smartphone industry, these are the kind of things that you have to pay for, you know, and also...

I could go into also paying for booths and all the shows. That's a whole other ball of wax. Part of the reason I know you went through some of that was because I asked you before the show started. I have been looking at podcast awards. Oh, yes. And just because... Because Steve Hinch says he's an award-winning author, and I was jealous. Yes, exactly. And you're like, exactly. Why can't I have an award? And it's like, I don't care what the award is. I'll make you an award.

Yeah. 3D printers are nice. I'll spray paint with some gold. Yes. And it helps because like, you know, I happen to be in these meetings with, so I'm part of the CTA wireless. division board meetings. And it's like, it's hilarious. It's like Verizon and there's Qualcomm and there's Samsung. And then there's me. It's just like, and this room is like filled with only like 20 people. And I'm like, okay. But like, you know, I'm talking to the Qualcomm guys and I'm like, hey, you know.

I know it's hard to get chips and everything, but like, do you have anything for an award-winning designer? So it does pay off, I think, to... you know, fill out all these forms because you have to fill out like so many different pieces of paperwork. And like, fortunately the one for CES, it's all in one questionnaire, but you have to say, you know, why you're.

product is of course, you know, notable, but you have to like fill out all these other details and it's just, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of time and, you know, I'd rather be building the next phone. So, yeah, but. It is worth it to be able to add that to your belt. So I totally encourage you to do that. It is worth it. Just so I can say award-winning. I mean, couldn't Christopher just go buy me a blue robin? I can. I don't know if it'll work the same for you.

I know. And, you know, I wonder, you know, once I went through the process and, you know, if you get an award, you're like, did they just give these to everybody now? But it is hard. It is hard to get an award because you think of there are how many startups are there at CES? All of them. I know. One year there was 4,000. Oh my God. Yeah. And they only give away, I don't know, less than a hundred awards. So maybe even less than that.

But does that mean that like most of those 4,000 paid to be in the running? My... Goodness, you could make a lot of money. I take it back. No, you don't want to get an award. That's right. I want to start giving out the awards. Please apply. Exactly. I was talking to my friend last night and I was like, you know, in like. in in this because we also do like

In the past, we've done philanthropy, you know, like galas and raising money for organizations and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, you know, I used to look at the people who received the award and now I start focusing on. Who gives the award or like who looks for these people to give the award to, you know, if there's no formal like award application process, you know, like, and who, you know, basically these people are the historians of life, you know, who.

designate, like, oh, this person should receive this award. Like, the Nobel Prize is like, do they, who funds that? Dynamite, as far as I remember. No, you apply to be. People apply. No, they get nominated. They get nominated. Yeah, you don't apply for your own award. Right. That's right. That's right. So...

And then it has to be people who are looking, I mean, I guess you could talk to your friend and say, hey, can you please nominate me for this? But like people who get nominated out of the blue, like we're totally off topic. What's the next question? Should Elysia start the Embeddies? We can work on the name. The Embeddies?

Like groupies? Like we could follow you around in like a little VW trailer? No, this would be the awards, the embeddies. No, that's bad. That's bad. I'll think of something better. Oh, that would be so cool. Yes! And we could give it to big corporations. Right, right. Like, you know, best microcontroller. It'd be like Nordic versus ST versus. Yes, yes. I have some candidates. That would be so cool.

That would be so cool. And they'd have to reapply every year. Oh, yeah. And in order to get best IMU, you definitely have to show me that code. Oh, my gosh. That's so fantastic. Yes. please do this. Yeah, I think so. Because otherwise, how do you know which is the best chip, really?

So for example, I'm at conferences and I feel like a drug dealer. I'm like, okay, you know, for GNSS, you know, I heard the Sony, the Sony. chip is like totally you know low in power usage but i hear there's another one on the street that's like even lower like the secret chip you know, exactly the secret chip, you know, kind of thing. I have done this. I've done this. I've used secret chips. We did at Fitbit. Yes, yes. But I mean, the whole, when Ublox came out with the, with some.

of the combined chipsets they have. And I was like, no, no, you got to wait a month. I promise you it will be worth it. Don't buy the two chipsets. It's not going to be good. And there's also chips that are not available to the public. Like, you have to be shipping 8 million units. Yeah, I went to one company and did some work for them, and they were shipping like 8 million units.

weight of that that you could throw around in the industry like everybody wanted to meet with me at CES and I was like oh my gosh, there are these chips out here? How come I have never heard of these? These are incredible, you know, kind of thing. And like new companies coming on the block. I mean, everybody wanted to talk to me. And I was like, I want to talk to you. you this is fantastic you know so i just remember being in some meetings with some very nice uh gentlemen from toshiba

And they had a chip that we use at Fitbit, which I can say now because I've been gone there for a million years and it's not even Fitbit anymore. So who cares? It was a Toshiba chip. And it was the only one in the world that had a little 2D graphics engine at the time and all this great stuff. And it wasn't publicly available at all. And we were the only customer.

And they were like, so we had, we'd made them do silicon changes and all sorts of stuff and go back and forth. And they sent us a simulator when they didn't have, it was, it was amazing. I'd never done anything like that before, but yeah, there's definitely chips out there. It's like. Yeah, we have this. Nobody buys it, but it might be perfect for you. Sometimes it is. It's exactly what you need.

And you're like, okay, yes. Can I get 8 million? They're like, yeah. In about 18 months. Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's a different world. It's like living. impoverished on the streets and then suddenly getting to go to um what's the buckingham palace or you know like the buckingham palace yeah Exactly. I was like chirping over the name in my mind. I'm like, is it the Buckingham? Yes, it is the Buckingham Bells. So, yeah.

Next question. The social responsibility, the social purpose for your corporation deals with environmental concerns. Yes.

One of the things I saw when I was reading about the circle phone was about lithium battery recycling. Yes. Tell me all. Yes. I want to talk about this so bad. So I am really excited about the possibilities. of making lithium batteries from recycled lithium. So there's actually more lithium in a ton of iPhones, or let's just be, let's just be. There is more lithium in a ton of smartphones than there is in a ton of raw lithium ore. Okay.

So when you think about that... But which one is more easily recoverable? That's a good point. So actually raw lithium ore is not that easily recoverable because it... involves vast amounts of water. Yeah. And it dehydrates the towns around it and causes this huge environmental impact. There are programs. I think the Gates Foundation is working on one research project that uses like an eighth of the water. But really, we have all of these used phones.

on the earth that we could be reclaiming the lithium from. And the second piece of the puzzle, so 2021 was the first year that we could make batteries from recycled lithium. More cheaply, am I using that correctly? Cheaper than we could from raw lithium ore. But at scale, you had to do 30,000 to 70,000 units. So it was not for like a maker individual, but definitely for any company who's involved in large scale industry, this would be a great path.

So the second important piece of the puzzle is that in 2021, as of 2021, the recycling of lithium batteries... And how it became better was that normally they would just grind the entire lithium pouch pack from a smartphone. And lithium... have a little circuit board on the top to regulate the temperature. So basically, not only were you grinding the lithium pack, but you were grinding everything in that PCB.

Now recyclers know to remove that PCB before they grind the pack. And the pack only has like four or five elements in it. And so because of that, it's able to be recycled a lot easier than... previously, those elements are able to be isolated a lot easier. And if you think about it, think about the possibilities. If you are refining that lithium one more time, think about how efficient.

Those batteries could be. I mean, just in theory. I'm not saying that there's research or scientific evidence out there right now, but just probably. If you refine it one more time, it's going to be more pure, more efficient. Because some consumers don't want to use recycled materials.

But if you're refining it one more time for metals, it is good. Okay, wait a minute. I can understand not wanting somebody else's refurbished tennis shoes. Right. You don't wear tennis shoes. I have ordered tennis shoes this year. You don't want anybody's tennis shoes. But recycled... Recycled metal. I mean, we've crossed that with aluminum. I mean, people are okay with aluminum. Exactly. And steel. Right. Like 90% of steel. Is recycled? Is recycled. And a lot of batteries, like...

for car batteries especially, they are done it when they're at 80% capacity, when they're still usable for storage infrastructure. So you can just take those batteries wholesale and keep using them somewhere else. Didn't this cause a fire near us recently? That's true of all lithium batteries. That's a separate issue. But fires are because people don't know to recycle their phones outside of the...

regular trash waste stream. And so there is actually movement in the last... So let me back up a little bit. So in 2021... you know, I was really excited about this and I thought, what smartphone manufacturer is dealing in these volumes? And wit to pitch them. Yeah. And they said, that this is a fabulous idea. It's too early for us. And I said, you're competing against this other smartphone company who is bragging about this particular...

piece in their phone and it takes up less than 1% of the weight by volume. If you use a battery from recycled lithium, your phone will suddenly be 30%. eco-friendly. I mean, just by weight. Think of the awards. Think of the awards. Exactly. And they're like, no, no, it's totally. But at CES 20, let's see, this is 2025, 2024, they announced that they were finally making, you know, diving into. Okay, so now I know which company it wasn't. And in addition to that, I've heard...

Nothing from them. But I think it is a long process. You know, we were offering to make 20,000 units and to be able to... substitute those batteries, make them completely to the specs that they had for one of the lines of phones. And I recommended it for their second tier phones. We were going to make it here in the United States. So there is a battery recycler in Texas, Austin, Texas, who recycles only three versions of this manufacturer's phones.

And so they know exactly what the plastics are made of, so they can actually offer those plastics for sale again. And they do a great job of recycling the lithium. And then we had a smelter. on the east coast uh to be able to smelt the batteries and then we had a manufacturer uh i think in new jersey for manufacturing the batteries so we were all ready to go but um

Yeah, hopefully, since they work with different vendors, I'm sure they're working with their vendors at this time. So moving on from that, I approached Bunny Huang.

And I said, gosh, I'd really like to do, wouldn't it be cool to do a crowdfunding effort to make this recycled? battery, you know, from recycled lithium. But I'm like, you know, all these maker projects have different lithium pouches, different sizes, different requirements. And then he's like, oh, well, why don't you do that 1865?

a 650 battery, because that is like standardized. And then, you know, people would buy lots of those. And I'm like, you know, I loved you so much before this moment. And then you just come up with this really... an idea in this in this idea that i've been thinking about for like over a year and i'm like thanks And I'm like, and we were at the crowd supply teardown, you know, and I'm like, and he's like, and you could do it through crowd supply.

And because, you know, with their vendor, they have to like, whatever you sell through the crowdfunding campaign, they actually have to buy the same amount, you know, to store, to sell to average consumers. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you just like. doubled my you know my moq at like it was like amazing yeah he's he's amazing and um except for my chagrin of coming up with that solution like right away. So if you see another crowdfunding campaign from me, notice from me.

In the future, it may be for that. But there was one more note on the lithium batteries. The infrastructure investment and jobs. Act requires the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy, the DOE, to develop a national EPR framework for batteries that addresses battery recycling goals.

cost structures for mandatory recycling, reporting requirements, product design, collection models, and transportation of collected materials. The kickoff was in April 2025, but it was talked about, you know, kind of... bubbling to the surface all in 2024. So if you are into batteries in any way, or just even slightly interested, I will send this link. to Alicia to add to the show notes for the EPA.gov so that you can join the meetings.

I've learned so much from these meetings about collection practices and like preventing fires and how many fires have been started just in the last couple of years. from lithium batteries and how there's going to be more education to the consumer about take-back programs, of course, for OEMs, but also how to recycle just anything with a lithium battery.

And more battery collection centers will be stood up in the next couple of years because of this. So I'm really excited to see this because it also means that these items can be recycled. even better in the future. So I have hope for our future, for our future electronics. I have some listener questions.

Yes. CG asked all of these, okay? She was the only one I talked to. How did you continue to grow technically as an engineer after you left college? That's a great question. So I bounced from technical job to technical job. I would change jobs every year. Kind of fun. I mean, as a consultant, yeah, I do that. But it was a myriad of things because my degrees are in biochemistry and physics. And because of that...

And because of some biochemistry and physics with a side of Japanese, right? Yes. Yes, this is true. So what happened was, so for example, like I was writing like in college. During the summers, I would write testing procedures for testing piping aboard nuclear submarines.

Yeah, exactly. When they would come in for overhaul, they would rip out all the guts and then they would put everything back, put all the piping back and they had to make sure that, you know, nothing leaked. So it'd be for oil, water, air. And I would be the one writing all those testing procedures. You know, I don't know. I was like 19. Why? Why you?

Because a friend of mine had had the job previously and he's like, hey, I really like this job. It was really cool, you know, but I'm moving on to this other job. Can I recommend your name? And I was like. Yes, please. I would love to give this a try. And so, yeah, so I did that for a year. I worked on clinical trials for the... medicines that people take for AIDS today, the triple drug combination first came out. And I was one of the three techs who got to see the results because I was...

I was really fortunate because I added biochemistry like midway through my college education. And by the way, I went to Occidental. Go Oxy. I know you guys went some months. And so, and there's tunnels underneath Occidental. Anyways, it's so cool. But anyways, so I took all the sciences there except for like geology, but. Anyways, one of the instructors for biochemistry had just graduated with her PhD and knew this new technique, PCR. And so we learned PCR in the lab. And so I got to...

go do this amazing thing for this research laboratory. And I just started, I would just go to work. A PCR was not as automated as it is today. It would be like a 10-hour shift. And so, you know, you would spend the samples and, like, do all this stuff. And at the end of the day, you know... You see the results and I would just start crying. And like the guys over that would do the blue Eliza test would just be like, I know these patients are testing negative on the blue Eliza now. It's just.

Incredible. And up to then, we just had, what was it, AZT? That was it, right? Yeah, it would just buy you 12 months. So, yeah, it's just amazing. I'm so proud of this. It's almost like I designed the medicines myself and it's not. It's cool to be at present at those moments. Yes, at those moments in history. So, yeah, I worked down in Los Angeles for, was a laboratory for the three main doctor's offices that...

That collected all the samples for peace people with HIV. So, yeah, that was an amazing job. And then I went through a billion different other jobs. But. The first job that I actually had my year. annual review in was I was working on Japanese software at Microsoft. And my manager's like, you're shaking. I'm like, this is my first annual review I've ever had.

But it was a great opportunity to work with really smart people and have your job change every three or four months. There would always be new techniques, new...

you know, new things that they were going to try. And that was an invigorating environment. And then I had kids and I felt like my world stopped for 10 years. So I took care of the kids for 10 years. And then I wanted to build this phone and I started, you know. building hobby phone after hobby phone at a makerspace in downtown Seattle called Metrics. It was open for like 10 years. It was a huge incubator for lots of startup CEOs.

And I met a lot of incredible people there. But pretty soon, like I said, I couldn't get the parts unless I had a company. And so I kind of fell into it. But I have to say, raising kids, it was really daunting being so technical. leading up to it. And then thinking about getting into the job force again was just an insurmountable, you know, activity.

And I would show up at pickup to go pick up my kids. And I would be with these other women, or I wouldn't say other women. Let's see, other stay-at-home spouses or other stay-at-home parents. who had like this one woman had a PhD in chemistry and she had four boys. And she's like, yeah, I'm not going back to that.

Just because it's so technical, we would talk about our technical degrees and how hard it would be to enter the workforce again. But once I was in the startup arena, I saw how easy it could be to onboard. to a startup who is working on new technology, because a lot of startups don't have a lot of money. They only need you for like 10 hours a week, can only pay you for that amount.

And you're learning something new. If I had only known, I would have gone back to the workforce probably at least five years earlier. You know, I could have worked while my kids were in school. onboarded that way. So I wish there was some onboarding for people who decide to stay home and take care of their kids, but...

have worked in the technical industry because we have incredible, incredible minds and you start to see things a little bit differently after having kids too. So yeah, I just, so. Yeah, I have some onboarding tips for people. Check out, I think it's called Wanderlust now. It used to be called AngelList. It's a list of jobs available for startups.

And then cross-reference that with Crunchbase, make sure the startup got funded recently. And then those are great places to not only apply for that job, just contact them directly and say, hey, you know, I've... This was my background. I'm interested in your product. You know, where can I fit in? How can I help? You know, kind of thing. AngelList became Wanderlust? Yes. It was hard for me to keep up.

I think it's Wanderlust. Yeah, because Wanderlust seems to be some sort of other thing now. Right. Building infrastructure, powering startup economy, whatever that means. Yes, it really veered. Oh, Well Found, excuse me, is the name. I thought they'd just gone away. Okay, good. Search for guitar pedal embedded development jobs. Okay, so I'm going to cut this part. I think it's really important for people who are out of the workforce to realize that you don't have to jump in the pool.

over your head you can dip your toe in this is an important point and and the startups are actually It's easy to get sucked into them. And you should realize that if you hit a good startup and they grow really fast, they're going to want you to work for them. But for a lot of startups, a little bit of help is enough. Yes. And if you're doing it for your intellectual curiosity, you might be able to do some work for a lower rate. I mean, don't devalue yourself.

But there is, you know, you can do pro bono work that is interesting to you without devaluing what will be the rate you have when you go back to a full-time job. Indeed. And nine out of 10 startups actually fail. Right. So the chance that you're going to be part of a startup that actually succeeds is rare. you will learn so much just in the, even the first six months that you work there about business. You'll learn about the technology that they're working on. You'll get to meet.

interesting people. When I first started, I realized it wasn't how much cash I had, but who I knew to ask. about these important technical topics. That was actually a better currency than the dollar. And it gives you access to people. who have done it before. And whether or not that turns into a formal mentorship relationship or if it just turns into a, I got a weird call from some investor. Have you ever used them?

and the other person says, stay away, that sort of information is really worth it. This is true. And in particular, in hardware, when you're pitching investors, So the typical number for pitching investors until you get funded for software is the average number is like 30 to 45. But for hardware, it's 149. So you have to pitch a lot of investors, and that's if you know what you're doing. Like, not the investor who invested $10,000 last year.

You have to wade through a lot of those investors to get to the ones who are actually investing, you know, not... hundreds of thousands of dollars, but actually millions of dollars because hardware is expensive. It's really expensive. So those investors are few and far between. I'm blanking on the name. Crunchbase, of course, is a place to go, but there's... Oh, I'm sorry. I'll put it in the notes later. But their pitch book is definitely...

the place to go. And that's like, to get access to PitchBook, it's a repository of, you know, who's invested in what. It's very reliable. They do their research. They were bought by Morningstar years ago. It's just... Their information is really solid. However, to get a subscription, it's like $5,000 per month. Yet, if you... are an alumni or a college student, or you can even hire a college student who has access at their college to PitchBook. That's worth your time and money to invest.

in to do that research and find out what investor is actually interested in your product. It saves a lot of time and a lot of wasted energy.

Do you have any advice for someone wanting to get started on their own hardware idea? Just do it. Just do it. You learn so much just by diving in. and figuring it out. You meet so many people you, you know, because. You'll get the courage. You'll get over your hesitation because you'll want to know so badly, like what chip was in this product kind of thing. And you will...

You know, hunt that information down until you can find someone who's going to give you the answer. And in the process, you will discover people, products, possibilities, potential. And you'll develop your skill set. So, yeah, just dive in. How do you know if it's going to be a good idea? It doesn't matter. It's your idea. Yeah, it's your idea and you should go with it. You should really explore it and figure it out. And along the way, your idea will probably change.

You'll get new ideas. And yeah, it doesn't matter if it's a good idea. It doesn't have to be a good idea to anybody or anything. Yeah, just do it. And I know that's hard in hardware because hardware is really expensive, but you'll figure out how to find recycled. products or recycled materials that you can build it from until you can afford or be part of a team who's building something similar. How do you find the motivation?

Oh, gosh, this is a really good question. So some days waking up and, you know, trudging to the desk and, you know. especially if the day before you just reached a blocking issue and you could not, for the life of you, figure out any way past it. Always definitely sleep on it. The morning always looks better. Morning routines are really important. I always eat oatmeal every single morning. I try to walk the dog every single morning just so that normal life can happen.

For me, the key has been having an accountability person. So Seth Kinsarians, shout out to him. He's been mine for the past, what, two and a half years. We met at Supercon. gosh, several years ago now. And I said, and he's a sole practitioner and he's a consultant, an EE consultant. I said, sometimes it's just really... hard. And I hear about these other startup founders who have this three-point list. And they're like, if I can just get this three-point list done today.

You know, not a whole sea of activities, but just like, this is my three-point list. And sometimes it includes, you know, calling the doctor for that doctor's visit or whatever. You know, it may not be specifically... work focused, but just having that task list every single day and then sending it to him and exchanging one with him. I can also, you know, bounce questions off of him.

be because he's an e so um it's kind of water cooler talk you know like hey yeah i'm working on this chip and i used you know this microscope or i used this analyzer and i had some good experience with it but you know there were some caveats and here they are, you know, kind of thing. So having that accountability buddy, especially if they're in your industry, really, really helps, especially if you're a sole consultant. So that's really helped for me.

And the other thing that's really helped for me, I know this isn't like motivational, but it ends up being motivational. For every project I work on, I have a little notebook. Some people save these in various formats. Since, of course, I was a Microsoft baby, I saved them in Word. But it has pictures and links to whatever I'm working on. And I don't have to input things every day. So it's not like a... I call it my work journal, but it's not... I do also have a work journal, but it's...

Per project, so for example, when I worked on the display driver for the Circle phone, for this latest version, it was banging my head against a wall for six months. And it turned out four months in, they gave us the wrong file. And another month later. They sent us the new file, but the vendor intermediary who was trying to send it to us, it got trapped in his email. He missed it for a month.

So it wasn't until the last month that actually could finally get that file and start developing the display. And what that did to our business was, you know, it was really.

horrible, but you learn to just keep going. And I also had links of like all of the threads that I could pull off the internet in one place. So when I had to go back to the... display. So I made another one for the camera driver and the camera driver, like I got it working, you know, we were on the road to 20, let's see, what was it?

the 2020 CES, we had a booth there and all that kind of stuff. And then I was like, oh my gosh, the back camera's not working. Like what is going on? What are we going to do? And fortunately, everybody wanted to take a selfie with the phone, but like not far away. So thank God. There's some tricks that you learn in the booth that like, for example, people will not input their email.

or contact information into, like if you have a tablet. Heck no. Yeah, a scan there. But if you have a piece, a pad of paper and a pencil or a pen. And you're like, oh, did you want more information? Well, yeah, we're keeping this list for people who wanted more information, but it's just on this padded paper. So many people will give...

view their email address and they can see other people's email addresses and what questions they wrote down. And like, I could not believe that. Like, it was mind boggling to me and horrifying to me. that, that this, it was like so old school. They were like, oh yeah, sure. You know? And like, oh yeah, I know this person. I'm like, you know, I meant to talk with them and blah, blah, blah. So like.

Yeah, it was mind-boggling to me. So we always keep a pad of paper and a pen now at the booth just in case people do want to leave their contact information for later. But yeah, isn't that astounding? It's like... Social, what is that called? Social engineering. Yeah, it's really interesting. And I, you know, you said input your email and I have been in booths and I'm just like, no, thank you. I'll walk away now. Right.

And yet, if you handed me a piece of paper and I was sort of interested, especially if I got to see the other people's email addresses and questions, for some reason that would make me do it. It disarms you. It totally disarms you. And I can't tell you how awful it is for me later after the conference. I'm exhausted. You know, the next week I pull up this pad and I have to like transcribe.

all of the email addresses to send them the information that they want, do the follow-up and all that kind of stuff. And I'm sure this is what salespeople do.

keep your contact information. They follow up after the events and they're really good at that. And I've noticed there's a cadence for, yeah, for CES, there's a cadence. Typically I'll get a follow-up from a vendor like two weeks after. Because everybody's just exhausted. They usually have some cold or something. I hate the crud. Because it's like, CES, I love it to death, but like one year over 200,000 people attended.

And there are only 150,000 rooms in Las Vegas. So like, you do the math. It's like... And that was before the pandemic, so before everything went online. And they have tons of people attending online in addition to everybody who attends in person. There are 13 different. tracks. So whether you're doing, gosh, what is it? Health or smart home or education or, you know, they have all these different tracks. It's like 13 different conferences.

all in one conference. It's amazing. And you definitely have to wear tennis shoes. It's in several different venues. You have to take the monorail between different venues. Yeah, it's enormous. But you see so many inspirational things at that conference. I love it. Yeah. Talking about good conferences, that, Teardown.

And Supercon, yeah, those are my loves. Christina, thank you for spending so long with us. I have more questions and yet we should go about our day. Definitely. Definitely. It's a good Sunday here in the Northwest. migrating from blackberry season to apple season. So, um, I hope the weather is holding up for you down where you are. Perfect. So we need to go out and play. Yes.

Definitely with the dog. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Go out and learn. That's my final thought. That's a good one. Our guest has been Christina Sear, Senior Principal Electrical Engineer and CEO of The Circle Phone. Thanks, Christina. Thank you. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to our Patreon supporters and to Mouser for supporting us.

Thank you to Debra Ansell for the connection and Siji Oluwadara for the suggestion. And then thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show at embedded.fm or at the contact link on embedded.fm. And now a quote to leave you with. This is from T. Kingfesher. Hemlock and Silver came out recently and I started it before this show and barely made it on time because...

It is a good book. There is a crazy wild light that comes over you when you discover something new, something extraordinary. If you try to share that and people look at you blankly, it's crushing. But if there's someone else there to say really and take fire with enthusiasm alongside you, well, that will keep you going for a long time.