Why 97% of Hardware Startups Fail (and How to Avoid It) with Sera Evcimen

Chris Whyte (: 00:03

Hello and welcome to Why Design? I'm your host, Chris Whyte and today I'm joined by Sera Evcimen mechanical engineer, founder of Pratik Development, and host of the Builder Circle podcast.

Sera's career spans building satellites, working in clean tech and robotics, and advising dozens of hardware startups.

She's seen firsthand what makes early stage teams succeed or fail. And today she partners with founders as a fractional COO and CTO to help them avoid the costly mistakes that derail so many hardware businesses. In this episode, Sera shares some brilliant practical lessons. Why product decisions quietly shape your hiring needs, how sunk cost fallacy can kill hardware startups if left unchecked, and why rushing into in-house manufacturing too soon

can lock you into the wrong strategy. also introduces us to the world of tribology, the critical but often overlooked science behind how products wear, fail, and survive in the real world. We'll also dig into why more hardware founders need to be honest about their risks, how failure stories can be even more powerful than success stories, and how Sera's community building works through the Build a Circle podcast and hardware meetups is helping founders connect.

collaborate and learn from each other's hard-earned lessons. So if you're serious about building better products or supporting the people who do, this conversation is packed with deep insights that you can apply straight away. So let's get into it.

Chris Whyte (: 01:33

Sera, welcome to the podcast.

Sera Evcimen (: 01:35

⁓ It's so nice to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Whyte (: 01:39

No, not at all. It's lovely to have you. we're gonna get into the episode in a moment. I'm gonna just talk through, you know, the kind of stuff we'll talk about and then maybe we'll break from convention as your background's certainly far from conventional as it is. So I'll let you introduce yourself rather than me just repeating what's already pre-recorded. But in terms of our focus for today, we're dive into your career and that unconventional career path through kind of the hardware startups.

Sera Evcimen (: 01:54

You

Chris Whyte (: 02:07

what you've learned from working with dozens of teams as a fractional COO and a CTO, what tribology or why tribology matters more than most engineers realize, your take on common hardware pitfalls and how to avoid them, the lessons you've learned kind of in the field, but also interviewing startup founders as part of your podcast as well, and the power of community, meetups and storytelling to build better products. So we'll get into that in a moment, but...

over to you. So I want you to introduce yourself, give us a little bit of a flavour about who you are and what you do.

Sera Evcimen (: 02:43

Absolutely. mean, I want to start off by saying I really appreciate ⁓ you taking time and kind of talking to all of the people in the community and sharing their stories. I really appreciate what you do with your podcasts. I really appreciate what you do.

in general, so I just want to kind of start with an appreciation note. So my name is Sadaev Jaman and I'm a mechanical engineer by trade. And basically, after finishing mechanical engineering, I went right into ⁓ being, a lot of people talk about being a serial entrepreneur, I was a serial startup employee. So I went from kind of one startup and then

I did a bunch of stuff in one industry and then I was just fascinated by other facets that I learned. then I, because once you're in the startup community, kind of start to know a lot of people, everyone talks to each other, you get to network. And as a result of that, I was able to, I had the privilege of being able to be in a few founding teams, very like the core engineering teams ⁓ early stage. so.

started my career in the space industry. I was building CubeSat satellites and kind of working in a clean room, but also because we were only a few people, I was also doing kind of sales engineering. So I would go to conferences and I would talk to people and try to understand what the consumer, like the customer landscape was for our CubeSats. And then kind of bring that back into the technical requirements. And that was a really cool kind of role that I was able to hold.

And then afterwards I went into a consumer electronics business that was building bracelets for protection of women. And this was an interesting kind of social impacts project. And also it got me acquainted with the kind of contract manufacturer and mass production perspective from this really early stage. And then from there I went to Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

And I worked on ⁓ basically the R &D team that would be de-risking subcomponents for the fusion reactor. And then I went and worked on ion thrusters, and then I went to Toyota Research Institute and worked at robotics. So it kind of like tittered and tattered around a lot of different hardware industries. But the kind of the lifeline of all of them was that I really liked building physical products and really understanding.

the integrated systems and how they work together and what the risks are. And then also got completely infatuated with the process of what it takes to build something from absolutely nothing and kind of cater those relationships in your supply chain and kind of build it up, which basically ended up with me starting my own company so that I could do that more with founders in a more involved manner than just an employee with this specific job title.

⁓ I, now that's what I do. I basically, ⁓ fractional COO and CTO is like one of the things I do, but mostly I like to call myself like, ⁓ a hardware startup partner. It's like a, ⁓ a thought partner, ⁓ a lab partner. ⁓ I go in, I build, ⁓ build their products with them, or I kind of zoom out and I help them with their strategy.

kind of that that's me in a nutshell in this chaotic nutshell that my career has been.

Chris Whyte (: 06:12

That's awesome.

And

you're originally from Boston, I believe.

Sera Evcimen (: 06:19

So actually I was born and raised in Turkey. I sound very American. So a lot of people ⁓ assume I'm, well, I am American also, but ⁓ born and raised in Ankara, Turkey, and then went to school and stayed basically in Boston. And now I'm kind of going in between Boston and London to be able to continue my business, continue all of the efforts that I'm.

putting forth for hardware startups and then also ⁓ doing my masters here.

Chris Whyte (: 06:52

That's awesome. Yeah, I'm just looking at your, your career here and you've, you've dotted around all over the place. Haven't you? Turkey in Germany. Obviously the States and in the UK you've been, yeah. And that's, wonderful to see. And it's a, it's a common thread actually I see with, you know, quite a few of the guests on the podcast who have been really proactive or really successful is that international thread. It really is open up doors, isn't it? So

Sera Evcimen (: 06:58

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Chris Whyte (: 07:21

That's wonderful to see. let's start at the beginning then. So ⁓ why design? Where did it all begin? How did your journey into mechanical engineering begin? Where did you get the bug?

Sera Evcimen (: 07:36

Yeah, it's such a good question, right? Because everyone definitely has a story to getting into hardware, which I, this is something that I love about it. It's, it's, it's so much more than just nuts and bolts. There's a lot of emotion behind the, behind the designs. ⁓ So funny enough, the thing that got me interested in mechanical engineering was watching how it's made with my dad when I was a kid.

⁓ so I was just always really interested in the manufacturing process of things. mean, for those who are listening that don't know what I'm talking about, ⁓ how it's made is this like really old TV show that was on Discovery Channel. It was amazing. ⁓ there's still like kind of types of that show still, ⁓ kind of hearing on, ⁓ but basically they would take everyday items that you would see like a golf club or

Chris Whyte (: 08:15

It's brilliant.

Sera Evcimen (: 08:28

⁓ I don't know why I keep thinking of the golf club. I guess I was really affected by it. But then they show you from raw material all the way to the finished product, how it's made. And so that kind of got me thinking about every single thing that I would see as a kid, like my pencils, my notebooks, everything. I would be like, how does this get made? And then that kind of inherent curiosity coupled with

being an absolute dork about math and physics and loving it, I decided, okay, maybe mechanical engineering is the right path because mean, engineering is a huge umbrella and I feel like a lot of people really struggle with finding their niche within it. But the beauty of mechanical engineering is it's ⁓ the generalist engineering degree. You can do so much with it. ⁓ And so that's how I kind of...

got into mechanical engineering itself.

Chris Whyte (: 09:26

Amazing. And you mentioned on our intake call and obviously at the very beginning in your intro, you've had, you've worked in a lot of startups at the early stages, but you mentioned you've worked in failed startups. I think you mentioned a weird acquisition as well. ⁓ And then one that's doing really well. What that mix, you know, what was it about those experiences, ⁓ you know, that made you...

Sera Evcimen (: 09:41

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 09:54

kind of shift from, want to build things to, or to help others build better.

Sera Evcimen (: 09:59

Yeah, mean, it's, think ⁓ one of the things that really is jarring is that 97 % of hardware startups fail. And this is a known thing. And my personal experience with all of the startups that I've been a part of was I was able to kind of see the signs. Maybe it was not obvious to me at the moment, but like kind of afterwards being like, okay, like it makes sense that that did not work out or whoa, like they were really doing something right.

I'm still kind of keeping all of the learnings from that with me today and I'm applying them still today. So it must have been that they're pretty solid ⁓ over there. basically as I was doing this, I just realized that there was a lot of really, really good ideas. I met a lot of ⁓ academics that are working on really cutting edge research that has the opportunity to really shift the way that we operate in the world and have really positive impact.

But a lot of those ideas were kind of getting stuck on napkin sketches. And people just really weren't able to put the, I guess like the path stones in front of themselves to build systems and then build businesses around them. Or they thought they knew and they would get into it and they would have really good connections. They would get a lot of money and then not know exactly how to use it and when to use it. ⁓

⁓ how that path should go for a successful outcome. And it's kind of this inherent frustration and curiosity, I guess, that ⁓ led me to be like, okay, everyone's kind of making the same mistakes. ⁓ And there's a lot that people can learn from each other. It's also really difficult to share mistakes publicly. So not a lot of people learn from each other's for that reason.

Chris Whyte (: 11:36

You

Sera Evcimen (: 11:54

We see a lot of news about like, oh, we like raised this gigantic round. We have this super successful launch. have like all of these like super positive titles. Very rarely do you see people talking about like we really messed up. It's usually they don't want the bad PR. There's no such they always say like there's no such thing as bad PR. When you're a startup there is because

mean, VCs and customers are kind of looking for reasons to sometimes like not invest in you or not work with you because you're new and they're scared and there's like the reputational element. So ⁓ as a result of that, I was like, can I be a conduit to all of the people that I work with from all of the kind of case studies that I've seen and do it in a way that's not harmful to anyone?

where it's like, I'm not like throwing anyone under the bus being like, well, they did this mistake, so you shouldn't do it. It's like, no, these mistakes are pretty common. Like I've seen five startups do it. When I speak about it, no one would be like, she's talking about us because it's like, I've seen it so many times. ⁓ And so that, that whole kind of culminated to me being like, I need to, I need to get involved here and warn people.

and kind of give the big picture of just like this decision you're making right now has all of these domino effects, like have you considered that? And if they're aware of it, they usually, startups take a second to either make that decision or like get more resources involved or whatnot. And it just helps and it's just less wasted effort. And I think that's really important.

Chris Whyte (: 13:37

Yeah, absolutely. And I think from it goes down to a personal level as well, if you're always presenting as, you know, polished, and I think I see this a lot of this on LinkedIn, where people present their best souls, you know, and, and I get it, you know, my first year with Kodi was tough, it was really, really challenging going from something where I'd, you know, I'd spent 10 and a half years in established business, you have your routines, you have your team, you know, you've, you've, it kind of

Sera Evcimen (: 13:49

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 14:06

even during the hard times, it kind of to then start on your own. It's really, really hard. But I'd always get messages, you know, from people saying, you look like you're doing really well. And it's like, yeah, no, looks like that. And you see that a lot. But that's because that's what I'm presenting, you know. And it's, ⁓ think being vulnerable and being honest, you know, with those challenges gives actually gives people a

Sera Evcimen (: 14:09

Mm-hmm.

I know,

Chris Whyte (: 14:35

an opportunity to be helpful. Because I think I think people generally want to be helpful if you don't give them a clue. You know, how do they know who to help? I've certainly seen that on an individual level that and on the business one, you know, I think and I think from an investor's point of view, and, you know, there's no such thing as the perfect opportunity and the right investors will have the right connections and be able to help they're looking for problems to solve and be useful. It's not just money. It's about how can we

Sera Evcimen (: 14:38

Totally.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 15:04

How can we leverage this opportunity, money and expertise included, but if there aren't any problems to solve, I think in some respects that's possibly a less attractive investment. But yeah.

Sera Evcimen (: 15:06

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

it's, it's also I've talked to a few VCs about this because I've wanted to kind of demystify this like process that they follow when they choose. ⁓ because it's this like, like this illusion. mean, it's, I feel like it's, it's a really important part of the ecosystem. And a lot of, ⁓ startups come from this pretty low level of leverage, ⁓ into those conversations. So I totally get being absolutely mortified.

⁓ going into that, knowing that certain things are not working on your part, but time and time again, specifically with hardware savvy VCs, what I've seen is that they really respect founders that know their risks and can like kind of own up to it being like, this is a problem about our system and we're fixing it doing like this test and this prototype and this partnership.

⁓ and that's basically like our sole focus. And then we have all of these other risks that we are considering and doing de-risking efforts and mitigation efforts as well. And this just shows rather than being like, no, everything's going to be perfect. We have amazing product market. Our products working great. Like it's that kind of gives more of a sense of pause more than it gives comfort. I think that people think. ⁓ so I agree with you. It's like.

Chris Whyte (: 16:38

Yeah.

Sera Evcimen (: 16:40

Owning up to your problems not only allows people to help you, but it also shows that you know what you're talking about, in my opinion.

Chris Whyte (: 16:46

Yeah, it's just been been honest, isn't it? So that's great. So you you launched Pratic then to fill the operation on technical gaps that you know, often slow hardware teams, especially startups down. know, what what some fairly obvious from what we've just been discussing, but what made you start Pratic? You know, what was what made you kind of make that leap? And, and then how do you usually plug into, you know, a team you mentioned your heart, you kind of

Sera Evcimen (: 17:00

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 17:16

quite hands-on by the sounds of it actually building stuff or are you talking kind of metaphorically building stuff?

Sera Evcimen (: 17:25

All good questions. So it's funny, actually, how Pateek came about was out of, in a way, kind of necessity. I wasn't planning on it by any means. What happened was when I started doing my mentor in residency at Techstars, I had a few companies out of the accelerator show interest in working with me as an advisor. So once that kind of initial pulse came through,

I said, okay, I should probably form some type of like limited liability ⁓ situation just to be smart about it. And I'll take these on as just like onesies twosies. And then as I was doing it, I was gaining a little bit of steam, kind of had this word of mouth situation happen. And then I kind of looked at the amount of interest that there was and the numbers.

And basically it made sense to do it full time at that point. So I made the leap out of like, I guess, like if I'm the product, a good product market fit for the time. And then as I did it more, I just really loved it. So I kept doing everything I can to possibly increase my impact, which is why I created the Builder Circle, which is the podcast that I create for hardware startups. And it kind of progressed from there.

And in terms of how I work, it's a good question because it's not really obvious, I suppose, because I don't work as like a traditional consultant. A lot of consultants usually ⁓ do pretty like high level analysis. They like meet with you a few times a month maybe. I'm definitely a more like integrated engineer at the same time as a strategist. So I usually...

I mean, I could give you some examples of how I've worked with clients in the past. So like I've had one client that's working on this robotic solution for the life sciences with them. I integrated to do like a DFX analysis of their product because it was a first of a kind that they had built. It was pretty scrappy. And I said, Hey, like for me to do a proper DFX analysis, I need to build this with you. So I went to their facilities in San Francisco. I sat with the head engineer and we actually built the robot.

And then as we were building, I was writing a document of like all of the things that I thought that they can change to make it better. And they like that kicked off a whole effort internally for them beyond like the suggestions I made. And then they ended up reducing their part count by significantly. They did some redesigns that reduced their labor time significantly. So that was one thing. And then they were looking into the process of insourcing versus outsourcing. So then I kind of took a step back to a higher level.

And I was working with the CEO and engineer to be able to figure out, if you insource this, like what are the trade-offs? What is it going to cost? Like, what are you trying to deploy? And then if you outsource, what kind of contract manufacturers should we be looking into? Let's have some preliminary conversations with them, understand how they work, get a preliminary quote, be able to kind of compare those to each other, and then kind of make an assessment for what the proper strategic approach would be. So that's like a

Chris Whyte (: 20:39

Thank

Sera Evcimen (: 20:43

pretty like hands-on ⁓ in one way. Other clients I've worked with is I literally worked on a manufacturing process development with them because I had a very niche like expertise in the thing that they were building. So it was like creating the process of how it gets built, finding equipment for it, specing the equipment, finding the vendor, qualifying the vendor, doing factory acceptance testing. I went to the facilities of the vendor with them.

Chris Whyte (: 20:47

Okay.

Sera Evcimen (: 21:11

to qualify the equipment. got them shipped to their factory. like very, very much like I was like taping their grounds so that the equipment could be like placed in the correct place. So it really depends. I always joke that I'm the happiest when I'm crawling on the floor of a factory floor. ⁓ And I try to put myself in situations where I do that.

Chris Whyte (: 21:31

the

Yeah, sounds like a lot of fun. ⁓ Before you're kind of crawling on the floor then, ⁓ what do you typically look at first when you're brought in?

Sera Evcimen (: 21:36

you

Hmm. I always start with a systems mind map. That's my, I guess, it's secret sauce. It's not that secret. I mean, people should do it. Whereas like, I really need to understand the system that I'm working on. I usually really like working on complex kind of deep tech, like industrial systems. So there's a lot of sub components and subsystems and how they interact with each other. And then from there, I usually kind of take that system architecture.

and then work with the team to develop understanding around risks. ⁓ Basically understand like, okay, what are the risks with these systems? Are they technical risks, operational risks, supply chain risks? And then also understand how they interact with each other. Like if this system risk impacts this one and like what timelines they're thinking about of deployments. And just that gives me the best like kind of in-depth understanding of what decisions they need to make and all of that stuff.

And that's kind of where I began. And then that's how I scope like what I could potentially help them with.

Chris Whyte (: 22:50

Yeah, I guess you go through a process of, there's some obvious low hanging fruit here and then there's lots of questions we're going to, why do you do it that way? You know, trying to understand how they've got to that. Now that's, that's really interesting. ⁓ So in terms of some of the common pitfalls then, obviously you go through this a lot in your day job and I know you talk about it on your podcast as well. Kind of hardware, horror stories, I think you called it. So, ⁓

Sera Evcimen (: 22:55

Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 23:19

What

are some of the most common pitfalls that you see founders and engineers fall into?

Sera Evcimen (: 23:24

Yeah, I mean, there's there are many, many, ⁓ But I usually try to go into like some deep cut ones where it's like it's not super obvious. But I'll kind of touch upon what I said before, where it's like rushing the decision to in source versus outsource. And this happens sneakily. It doesn't happen like, ⁓ whoops, we did that. It's engineering teams ⁓ go and like they spend their gears and they're like trying to figure stuff out.

They're like, okay, we'll buy this and we'll buy that and we'll get this and we'll assemble it here. then, this decision has been made already. We've moved on. Hold on though. Like that, that's pretty big because what that does is it creates the precedent of what maybe the company strategy becomes. Because if you're used to doing it in-house, you start to hire people who do it in-house and then you're more likely to continue doing it in-house, even if it doesn't make sense with your car competencies that you're trying to build.

and like what your techno economics are telling you. So it's like, as an engineer, I actually just recently give a talk about this at the Hackaday conference. And a lot of the listeners were engineers and I kind of brought this perspective to them being like, you might look at this and you might hear me talk about these things and you're like, that doesn't matter to me. I'm not a founder.

It's like, no, actually, these decisions, these things kind of percolate in the engineering part of the organization, and then they don't get caught until way later. And then it's kind of like the sunk cost fallacy, like, we've already done all of this work. Basically, we should just continue it. So in my opinion, that's a pretty big one. In terms of sunk cost fallacy, mean, sunk cost fallacy is a huge one because you're constantly operating in this constraint mindset, right? You have very little money, you have very little time.

So once you've sunk any type of cost or time into something, there's this inherent attachment to it that I think is pretty problematic. I don't think this is really startup. This is like any one in hardware because it's so hard to start over and the cycles are so long. But I mean, some cost fallacy with design is really a true thing. I even had one founder that came on my podcast about it being like, we were so

Chris Whyte (: 25:26

Hmm.

Sera Evcimen (: 25:43

headstrong about like how we did this particular thing and we ended up buying so much of it but then we had to pivot because the market was telling us that like it was not the right move and then they had to they basically had a bunch of inventory that they had to basically throw in the garbage. ⁓ So that's a big one I'd say.

Chris Whyte (: 26:03

Yeah, it's easy just to get carried away, it? And yeah, you're too far down the garden path now. Let's just keep going. you said to me as well that ⁓ product decisions define hiring needs. Perhaps you could unpack that a little.

Sera Evcimen (: 26:11

you

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. I mean, this is just right up your alley, isn't it? I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. Yeah, this is another actual sneaky one because I don't think people think of it. I think of companies and startups and systems, well, not systems, but like technology as a system. Like they're all interconnected and they really touch each other and there is this inherent dependency that I feel like we keep forgetting where it's like when you have a product roadmap,

Chris Whyte (: 26:24

Well, yeah. ⁓

Sera Evcimen (: 26:51

and you have these, I guess, milestones that you need to hit, you need specific people to be able to unlock that, which is obvious. ⁓ But when you're making hiring decisions, I think it's really important to understand what technical decisions are going to affect your hiring decisions. So the example I gave is a pretty perfect one, where it's like, you're insourcing and you're, let's say, planning on hiring kind of like an operations person,

Right. If you're, if you're insourcing versus outsourcing, their background is going to differ drastically. If you're like insourcing, you want someone that has manufacturing experience, someone that has process engineering, ⁓ some type of, maybe they've like trained technicians before, ⁓ and like internal ops. But if you're outsourcing, you want someone with supply chain experience, maybe a little bit of manufacturing, but more so like someone that understands like vendors, contract negotiation.

maybe is really well connected in the contract manufacturer world. So like when you're like, I need an operations manager or I need a COO and you haven't made this decision, it's just like, it's risky. It's risky on who you will hire and if it will be a good fit for what your business will need. And what happens is if you hire too early, it will basically make the decision for you in a way. Because if like you're hiring a COO with

with manufacturing experience, guess what they're gonna wanna do? They're not gonna wanna outsource that manufacturing. They're excited about it. And so what I usually do, and this is ⁓ actually a workshop that I gave in one of the accelerators, was like mapping out skills according to the milestones that you're trying to hit, and then understanding your skill deficits. And then that helps you determine what...

Chris Whyte (: 28:20

Yeah, absolutely.

Sera Evcimen (: 28:43

position you need to hire for from the skill deficits. And then furthermore, you can have your kind of design test build cycles listed out in a like Gantt chart format kind of, and then you can have these skills ⁓ kind of saying, okay, I need like, this person, our second cycle of build tests, so I need to put the job description out now because it takes this much time to hire. And then you might find skill deficits that are

not a full-time position. And that's also a really good find because I oftentimes see startups hiring full-time positions and then people either are super overstretched or opposite, don't have enough things to do because they were hired for something that could have been done by a contractor. So all of these really affect, I think, a startup success.

Chris Whyte (: 29:38

I'm interrupting this episode to share some exciting things happening around Why Design. At the core of this podcast are the incredible design journeys my guests have been on and where they're heading. These journeys stem from the relationships they build, the communities they're part of, and the amazing achievements that come from collaboration. So beyond the podcast, we're hosting regular online huddles and quarterly meetups in the UK with plans underway for an annual gathering in the US.

We're also running hands-on workshops both in person at Makerspaces and online to connect and inspire people in physical product development. So if you'd like to join us or stay in the loop about upcoming events, sign up at teamkodu.com forward slash events or click the link in the show notes. Now back to the episode.

Chris Whyte (: 30:28

Massively, yeah. it's certain roles where you don't want them to be figuring it out on the job either. Like product discovery and figuring out mechanisms and things like that, yeah. Maybe that's a lot of the stuff you look at might be unsolved, know. But when it comes to the operations side, it kind of pays to have someone who's got a few gray hairs and maybe a few battle scars dealing with supply chains if you're going down that route.

Sera Evcimen (: 30:35

Hmm.

you

Chris Whyte (: 30:57

fantastic. let's talk about tribology then ⁓ and failure modes. Let's dive into this. So ⁓ you mentioned this ⁓ on our intake call, but what pulled you into tribology and what is it for those of us, mainly me, who've never heard of the word before?

Sera Evcimen (: 31:02

Okay.

Yeah,

so as I mentioned in my introduction, I decided to pursue a technical master's in mechanical engineering and focusing on tribology here at Imperial College. And ⁓ my whole reasoning for it was because I've been in these kinds of like, like operational roles, like test engineering and all that stuff. And throughout ⁓ doing engineering,

And I feel like anyone that's listening that is an engineer has felt this way. It's like, you always kind of notice your knowledge gaps ⁓ or people very rudely point them out to you. And it becomes this thing of like, I really want to learn that. And I started kind of keeping a list and I, in my mind, kind of said, okay, once this list gets like 10 items on it, I have to do something about it. And that kind of triggered this notion of like, okay, I really want to.

Chris Whyte (: 31:57

You

Sera Evcimen (: 32:16

learned a little bit more about like thermoeconomic analysis. These are random things. These are not related to tribology. I'll get to tribology in a second. But I was like, really want to understand thermoeconomic analysis. I really want to understand polymers better because they're used in everything and they don't behave like metals. And I haven't really learned properly how a transmission system is designed and how like your geometries are made. And these are things that I kind of just like randomly wanted to learn.

Chris Whyte (: 32:23

You

Sera Evcimen (: 32:46

⁓ and it just made sense to do a master's and because I have my own business now, I can dictate my own time. So it ended up working. and basically as I was looking into where to do it, Imperial was top of mind because of how good of a school it is. It has a really good reputation. ⁓ they also have one of the largest tribology groups in the world, which a lot of people don't know. ⁓ so getting into what tribology is. So.

Chris Whyte (: 33:09

well.

Sera Evcimen (: 33:14

for those listening, it is not the study of tribes. People have asked me, they thought I was doing a sociology degree. ⁓ That is not true. So tribology is the study of contact. Basically it's friction, wear mechanisms, lubrication, and everything in between. This is something that in our physics classes and in general, like dynamics classes, we just basically just like the tip of the iceberg is taught to us. You learn about friction force and that's about it.

Chris Whyte (: 33:31

Mm-hmm.

Sera Evcimen (: 33:44

and then no one really talks about it. But tribology ⁓ really dives deep into what happens in the contact region and not just dry contact, but lubricated contact, which is ⁓ most like bearings, gears that are in every day everywhere and how they behave and why they fail and how they fail.

⁓ and when I started learning about it, I was just completely infatuated with how, firstly detailed it was, but also how kind of it seems like uncharted territory a little bit. There's a lot of newness to it in something that is inherently the most common phenomena in any mechanism. I mean, everything works with contact. So it was, it was just this fascinating.

Chris Whyte (: 34:32

Mm.

Sera Evcimen (: 34:38

It almost felt like a lost language, lost art type of thing, but super critical and the baseline of really understanding any type of failure mode. One particular one that I was really interested in was a lot of, for example, wind turbines ⁓ fail due to their gearboxes failing or their ⁓ main bearings failing or their rotary bearing bearings failing.

A lot of times it's connected to a tribological phenomena that that's happening. It's like when you have two contacts that have lubrication between them, if they are going at a specific speed and the lubrication has a specific viscosity, virtually they're not touching. There's a film between them. The lubricant is between the two surfaces.

And so tribology really dives into and the project that I'm working into really dives into understanding how that film changes according to temperature, speed, loading conditions and all of that. And then understanding once ⁓ that film is no longer there for any given reason, what does the where look like? There's different types of where's they happen for different types of reasons.

And being able to understand this and understand the phenomena ⁓ really helps to determine how you do maybe preventative maintenance and then understanding how different materials interact with each other gives you an understanding of how those failure mechanisms could kind of conceptualize and instantiate in any types of systems. So I...

I just kind of grew very fond of the topic itself. And then I saw its application and transmission systems and gears. ⁓ So I was basically like, this is just like the baseline of understanding mechanical failure modes. And I feel like everyone should learn it and do it and know it. And it shouldn't be this lost art.

Chris Whyte (: 36:50

Absolutely. Yeah, so it sounds like it's it's helped you solve quite a lot of problems as well. Getting to the root cause you can it's a lot easier than to prescribe a solution. ⁓ Why do you think it's so overlooked then in mechanical engineering?

Sera Evcimen (: 37:00

Yeah.

See that I have no idea. it is it is something like the the basically institutions have ⁓ tribology like There's the this tribology class and at Imperial is the one that I've seen the most in depth There's other institutions that kind of touch upon it as like a sub sub topic but

I believe it's a marketing problem, more so than anything. I've even talked to my professors at Imperial being like, how is this not like a fundamental, like you have to take this course. It's an elective technically, but in my opinion, it should be one of those courses that like, for example, we have to take ⁓ statics and dynamics and fluid mechanics and thermodynamics. Like these are

fundamental heat transfer. These are things that you need to know as a mechanical engineer to be able to understand any type of phenomena and be able to analyze it. So I feel like tribology is almost like a unit that should be taught. But this is my personal opinion, and the professors obviously very much agree. But yeah, think even if this episode triggers three people to Google tribology and start

Chris Whyte (: 38:18

Absolutely,

Sera Evcimen (: 38:26

like really getting interested in that, think I'll be happy.

Chris Whyte (: 38:31

We'll

be creating a whole tribe of tribologists before you know it. So we'll definitely raise the flag for that. I'm gonna make an attempt at a very tenuous link here into the next section. Because you mentioned tribe, obviously tribology, I presume, has its kind of entomological roots in tribe and contact, know, because it's all about contact. You strike me as someone...

Sera Evcimen (: 38:35

Thanks

Ha ha.

of breath.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 38:58

you know, you're quite personal and with the podcasts that you've run as well, there's a lot of contact, there's a tribe there that you're building. that's, you know, there's the tenuous link there. Let's talk about, I'm sorry, hardware, horror stories. Yeah.

Sera Evcimen (: 39:06

That was really good. That was honestly really good. I'm very

impressed. That was a really thin link, but you did it. You did it.

Chris Whyte (: 39:16

It

was there and I didn't pre-rehearse our and it literally came to me and I was waiting for an opportunity just to put that in there. so let's talk about your podcast then. that's something we've obviously both got in common. But from the contact, the tribology point of view as well, we're both into kind of creating connections and helping people out in that respect. ⁓ your podcast, what's the name of it again? Sorry.

Sera Evcimen (: 39:21

Very poetic, I love it.

Mm-hmm.

So it's called the Builder Circle.

Chris Whyte (: 39:47

build a circle. Cool. So that but it's full of near misses, isn't it? You know, and your day job as well. The minute misses the fixes the quite free, quietly painful lessons, know. So where did the podcast start? And, you know, just give us a note for you. What were we going through on the podcast?

Sera Evcimen (: 40:02

Mm.

Yeah, for sure. mean, the podcast was another kind of natural project that came about because I, the podcast really amplifies the voices of the primary operator. That's what I really like to do. The primary operator, the primary engineer. It's like the, not the Steve Jobs, but the people that worked on the first iPhone, which I actually have two guests that worked on the first iPhone.

So it's really about ⁓ kind of one, amplifying the stories of unsung heroes. Two, I'm ⁓ all about practicality. Pratik in Turkish means practical. So I really strive to keep the episodes as informative, snappy, deep cut as possible so that people who are listening really get some lessons out and they can apply it to their product tomorrow. And so...

All of the episodes are handcrafted through topics that I feel like hardware startups struggle the most. It's either they're aware of it or they should be aware of it. So I try to kind of create that conversation. And then I find the kind of best person, best subject matter expert I can think of and through my network that I can bring in to have that conversation with. I get to selfishly have that conversation.

⁓ so I feel like basically what was happening was I would be having these conversations with my connections and it would be on a zoom call and I'd be like, man, I wish I recorded that because I feel like that would have been so useful, ⁓ for so many people. one, ⁓ one time I was, ⁓ speaking to, ⁓ this amazing, ⁓ industrial design studio out of San Francisco called Prowl. they, they are all about kind of the regenerative future. They all.

They try to make everything sustainable. always think about, they have the catchphrase of we start at the end. So they think about what happens at the end and they design and build stuff according to that. And I was talking to the two ladies that run it and I said, if I did a podcast, would you get on it and talk about industrial design and sustainability? And they were like, absolutely. And I kind of kicked it off.

But then it kind of spiraled into this, okay, like I really have these tactical questions I want to ask. So I got Scott Miller, who's the head engineer that worked on the iRobot Roomba and got it scaled up in China for the first time. And they had a lot of like failures and they were unable to detect it. he had the cow key set that up. And then I had Ying Liu who was the

person that essentially set up the supply chain of Apple in China from nothing. So she's one of the most impressive guests I've had. ⁓ And then I got like Tyler Mincy, who was the ⁓ project manager for the first iPhone. So it was just like all of these people that have worked in this like really early stage, really difficult to scope, chaotic. ⁓

Chris Whyte (: 43:01

Right.

Sera Evcimen (: 43:23

environment for these huge companies that later on became gigantic and really trying to claw at, but how, but why, really be able to concoct this equation that people can use to apply to their own product. And with that, it created community. I have incredible listeners that reach out to me and direct message me their questions.

Chris Whyte (: 43:33

You

Sera Evcimen (: 43:52

They come to hardware meetups and I get to meet them. So it's become this kind of micro community that I've been able to create. It honestly makes my day. I sometimes get messages saying that, hey, thanks to your podcast, I've decided to embark on this journey and I feel well supported. ⁓ So it's really, really cool. It's been the most rewarding.

Chris Whyte (: 44:14

I that.

Yeah,

it's amazing, isn't it? It's, think, how long has the podcast been going?

Sera Evcimen (: 44:23

⁓ so I will have my two year anniversary in June, which is when I intend to launch my third season.

Chris Whyte (: 44:31

amazing. Yeah, so you've been going and yeah, just about a year longer than than wide design. But it's even, you know, we've been going a year and still, you know, we get kind of good listeners, we get kind of, it's going up every week, which is which is great to see. But I don't know about you, but going to events and people recognizing you and come up and saying, saying really nice things. It's with the British in me, but it's

It's lovely but odd as well. So, but yeah, anyone listening that sees me at an event, do come up and say hello. I don't want to put you off. It's generally one of the best things about kind of running this podcast in the community. It's just really nice, isn't it? Just to, you know, you feel like you're having even just a tiny impact. You know, it's all positive.

Sera Evcimen (: 45:01

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I always, like when I first started it, I always said, if I can, if I can like change one person's opinion or inspire one person, I've done my job. And my partner has been really supportive of it. And he always kept that in mind too, because I mean, when you first start a podcast or anything, there's like very few listeners and there's not that much like to it. And it's like being able to keep at it with that kind of notion and goal in mind is so important.

Chris Whyte (: 45:50

Yeah, but let you say it's, you know, for, for wide design, I'm not, I'm not expecting to be rivaling kind of Stephen Bartlett or Joe Rogan or anything like that. It's a very niche audience that we're appealing to. ⁓ but like I say, if you can, you know, spark conversation, you can spark thought, if you can make connections, you know, we've got people in the, in the WhatsApp group that are making kind of side groups and kind of talking about collaborating and like small consultancies that are really kind of banding together through challenging times. It's like,

Sera Evcimen (: 46:00

Totally.

Chris Whyte (: 46:20

That's awesome. I absolutely love it. And you must have the same with the Builder Circle. that's awesome. talk to us about the meetups then, because that's kind of, again, segues nicely from kind of podcast to meetups. We're going to catch up tomorrow, but another one that you're involved in, aren't we? So be too late to promote it on this. This will come out weeks after.

Sera Evcimen (: 46:22

Mm.

Mm.

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 46:48

How did you get started in the, you know, the hardware meetup scene and kind of, what was the best thing about kind of that whole kind of community?

Sera Evcimen (: 47:00

Yeah, I mean, I didn't know about it until a few years ago and I saw one hardware meet. I think someone just shared it with me being like, like, you should go to this. And I went to it and ⁓ the format was really cool where it was like a few people gave, we haven't been able to do this in London yet because it's a new and baby community. So we're trying to baby step. ⁓ But basically ⁓ the way that it was, was they would have two like speakers.

that would present something about like a cool technology they're working on or like a cool, personal project or just something like I spoke at one where I talked about hardware pitfalls because that's my current, ⁓ personal brand is just the girl that cried pitfall. ⁓ but basically like you listen to these like really deeply technical conversations and you can ask questions. and then they have an open mic at the end.

where if you're working on something, you could give like a 30 second pitch about it. If you actually bring a demo, you have like two minutes to show people how it works. And it was pretty daunting at first because I went in and a lot of people already knew each other. So I just kind of, the odd one out, I like saw one other woman and I just like went to them being like, hi. And then I just like talked to everyone. so this was in Boston.

⁓ and I got to meet the, ⁓ the event, like, hosts that were there. ⁓ and they, they did such a phenomenal job. So as I, as I met with them and as I went to, ⁓ more hardware meetups, ⁓ I knew more people. mean, I'm naturally pretty outgoing and extroverted, so I tend to talk a lot. ⁓ and so I just really loved what it was doing. ⁓ and I had the opportunity to present my podcast.

Chris Whyte (: 48:41

You

Sera Evcimen (: 48:49

⁓ and everything. then basically Nate, who is, ⁓ Nate Padgett, who's, ⁓ one of the partners at Informal. ⁓ he was at one of the hardware meetups. They host them. They are the like founders of hardware meetup basically. And he asked me like, Hey, you've been coming to these and we like really love your energy. Would you be like willing to host with us? Because I, we think that it'll be a really good fit.

⁓ and then I started hosting a few in Boston. Some people thought it was my full-time job, which I was like, no, do I look like an event coordinator? think I would lose my absolute mind. I will, I will stay on the lab. Thank you. ⁓ but, ⁓ I, got to, as a host, it was quite different because now people really associate you, ⁓ with the hardware community, which is just so near and dear to my heart. ⁓ and it's, it's just been growing and.

Chris Whyte (: 49:27

You

Sera Evcimen (: 49:44

When I told me that I was popping over to London, he was like, actually, we really want to create a community there. Like, could you help? have someone that's already working on it. And then that's how Michael and I got connected to each other. And so we will now be throwing our second, which is tomorrow. And the I mean, the list keeps growing. I just very serendipitously was was in Boston, so was able to host one there. And we had 280.

people. And it was like that was how many people registered and about 200 people showed up, which was the most it was a record shattering participation. And I think this one for tomorrow has around 80 people, which is way more than what we've had in the past. So I'm really excited. And I think hard, I always say like,

Chris Whyte (: 50:14

Wow.

That's nuts.

Sera Evcimen (: 50:41

Community is the lifeline for hardware. mean, supply chain is based off of community ecosystem. Support is everything. And so I try to create an environment where those connections naturally happen and that we can create a safe space for everyone.

Chris Whyte (: 51:02

I mean, so much good comes out of those events as well, like networking events. ⁓ I met Jordan Nolman, CEO at Sprout, ⁓ over at Vegas at CES ⁓ at a networking event just across the room. Recognized him straight away. He's quite a distinctive character. so I went and said hello. Been following on LinkedIn, politely pestering him for months, but because he was across the room, you know, we had a chat, we shared a beer, got chatting and now...

Sera Evcimen (: 51:13

Mm.

Chris Whyte (: 51:30

going out to see him in Boston in June is going to be on the podcast, but in person. Yeah. So, and he's, connecting me with a bunch of people. It's like, you know, sure. That could have happened online. It could have happened over an email or a phone call. Um, but because we had that personal connection, because, you know, because I went up and said, hello, um, you know, in person, it makes such a big difference. Do you have a, um,

Sera Evcimen (: 51:35

Awesome!

Huge.

Chris Whyte (: 51:59

you know, a go to kind of top tip for a nervous networker, you know, how to break the ice, how to say hello to people.

Sera Evcimen (: 52:08

I would say focus more on being interested than interesting. ⁓ I think that's just a good advice for anyone. I think people love talking about themselves. Even if you don't like talking about yourself and you're nervous, that's okay. I think it's really good to kind of ask people, like, what are you working on? What inspired you to work on that and kind of drilling into that.

Chris Whyte (: 52:18

Mm-hmm.

Sera Evcimen (: 52:37

Also in networking environments, there's no such thing as like pre-created groups or people. ⁓ Most likely everyone is meeting each other. So I think there's this like ⁓ activation energy that requires you to kind of step in and talk to people, but know that they're likely just meeting. So that's, it's okay. And if you don't have anyone else to talk to, just come find me. I'm very friendly. I usually scout out the very silent people and I go.

Chris Whyte (: 52:44

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sera Evcimen (: 53:07

I maybe traumatize them, who knows, but ⁓ I go and talk to them because I understand it's a huge effort to put forth and we're all engineers and talking and writing and stuff is not our forte, so it's okay.

Chris Whyte (: 53:21

Absolutely.

mean, I've been on stages singing and playing guitar and I still find it kind of strange and I was going up to strangers in a networking event. But I think ⁓ we kind of crossed paths at a hard stuff event, we, before Christmas, kind of across the room and we connected online afterwards. But they borrowed the open mic idea as well from that. And I thought that was an absolutely brilliant thing to put in because it

Sera Evcimen (: 53:39

Yeah, we did.

Chris Whyte (: 53:51

And if anyone's at a networking event and they do a similar thing where you get a chance to stand up and say who you are for 30 seconds, I think definitely take a look because even me as a recruiter, and I don't know, it's slightly different in the States, but in the UK, recruits don't have a great reputation. They stay clear of recruiters. So for me to stand up and say, hello, this is who I am, I still had a lot of people interested coming up and speaking to me once they realized that.

Sera Evcimen (: 53:58

Hmm.

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 54:18

I'm not just a recruiter, there's a nice person in there in the hardware community as well. But yeah, it's great because then people will seek you out. I liked what they said about that thing. I'll go and ask them about it. But no, that's great. ⁓ So we're kind coming towards the end of time here. End of time, that sounds very deep, it? the end of the podcast.

Sera Evcimen (: 54:20

you ⁓

End of time.

Chris Whyte (: 54:47

So

⁓ between ⁓ growing and critique and finishing your masters, what are the plans have you got for looking ahead now for the next 12 months or so? What are you most excited about, ⁓ either personally or professionally?

Sera Evcimen (: 55:07

Yeah, I mean, I think it's the part about the job that I really like is that I can't really predict where it's going to take me. I one thing that has been incredible is like having this community, having a voice on LinkedIn and the podcast is that it's just brought up opportunities that I wouldn't have been able to dream up really.

⁓ So, I mean, I really love what I do. I love working ⁓ on hardware. So that's a definite and I look forward to that always. ⁓ I really look forward to ⁓ like this new season that I'm going to release for the podcast. I just got my first sponsor, which is a huge deal for me after two years. ⁓ So I'm very mega excited about that. ⁓ I'm getting married in the summer. So I guess that's like a personal excitement. ⁓

Chris Whyte (: 55:48

Amazing.

Congrats. That's amazing.

Sera Evcimen (: 56:00

And yeah, it's, mean, overall, I just really, really want to continue fostering this community and building upon what I already have. who knows, maybe I'm working on some kind of personal hardware projects. Maybe those will spin out into companies. We'll see. Just leave it at a cliffhanger there.

Chris Whyte (: 56:23

Very, yeah,

very, very exciting. So, ⁓ that's really great. ⁓ when do you finish your studies? Is that this year, is it?

Sera Evcimen (: 56:35

Yes. So basically I am going to be done with my finals in three weeks and ⁓ then thesis is due at the beginning of September. So it's a one year program. really quickly.

Chris Whyte (: 56:50

And have you got a date for the podcast for when the new series goes live?

Sera Evcimen (: 56:54

The plan is for late June.

Chris Whyte (: 56:57

late June. Okay, well this will be out by then. ⁓ no, that's wonderful. Well, thank you for squeezing us in considering how busy your kind of your schedule is at the moment and best luck with the finals and I will see you tomorrow. But thank you for joining us, Sera. Awesome. Thank you. No problem at all.

Sera Evcimen (: 57:11

Thank you. Yes, you will. ⁓ Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure.

Chris Whyte (: 57:21

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Why Design. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a review wherever you're listening. It really helps others discover the podcast. And while you're at it, why not share it with a friend or colleague who do enjoy it too. If you'd like to stay connected or explore more about the work we're doing at Kodu.

feel free to visit teamkodu.com or connect with me, Chris Whyte on LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time.