EP 566: Scollar Founder Sold Company to AutoDesk in 08 Now Making $99 Smart Pet Collar with CEO Lisa Tamayo

Lisa Tamayo. She's the CEO of Scollar, an open platform, multi-functional, smart collar for pets. She has over 25 years of experience in entrepreneurship and financial and strategic planning. She's the co-founder of Green Building Studio which was acquired by Autodesk in 2008. She's also the chairman of SoCo Nexus, an incubator accelerator in Northern California.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Pitch Anything
• What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz
• Favorite online tool? — Evernote
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Trust Yourself"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:30 – Nathan introduces Lisa to the show
• 02:13 – Scollar is a smart collar
• • 03:10 – The first product, Scollar Mini, was designed exclusively for the under-searched cats and small dogs market
  • 03:29 – Scollar is currently on pre-order and has launched a Kickstarter campaign
• 03:52 – Scollar is like Fitbit for animals
• • 04:10 – The Fitbit engineering team has partnered with Scollar Mini
• 04:26 – Scollar Mini is currently at $99 for pre-order and will retail at $149
• • 04:35 – The pre-order started in mid-October
• 04:50 – Scollar is starting to build their following
• 05:15 – Scollar has negotiated with a bank to get credit
• 05:23 – Lisa and her partner have self-funded a part of it
• 06:00 – Lisa and her husband are the first founders of Green Building Studio
• • 06:18 – Autodesk has bought all the assets of Green Building Studio
  • 06:35 – Green Building Studio was Autodesk's market partner for a long time
• 07:28 – Lisa has almost $600k in Scollar
• 07:44 – Lisa discusses the spending
• 08:07 – Finding someone in hardware to help build the product are typically employed elsewhere
• • 08:30 – It took Lisa a while to find the right team to work together
• 09:08 – Most funding went to the trial and error of the product
• 09:25 – Team size is almost 40
• 10:00 – Lisa shares the factors involved in asking for a loan
• 11:10 – It took the bank months to agree with Lisa and grant her the loan
• 11:40 – Working Solutions gave them the loan
• 12:10 – Working Solutions is a great option for quick capital
• 13:00 – The cost of making Scollar
• • 13:19 – Cost per unit
• 13:43 – Possible wholesale price
• • 14:50 – They might use the wholesale price in 2018
• 16:02 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Hardware is a far different process to create than software—it may take time to find and build the right team.
• There are many options for gaining capital – choose the one that suits your company best.
• Trust yourself and everything will fall into place.

Resources Mentioned:

• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
• Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
• Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible.
• Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives