Chapter One

How did you find yourself in Hong Kong, and what is it like being an undergraduate there?

It is an interesting experience to be in Hong Kong as a “Mainlander”. Here you feel that there are a lot of things in common but people also do a lot of things differently. It was a great chance to fully merge into such a society as a student here. It is a pretty diverse campus, where we can talk to people from different backgrounds.

I am curious to hear how you came up with such an ambitious idea. Tell us about the ideation stage, and how you came to refine your vision.

At the beginning it was just to solve a common problem of have shaky videos all the time with our cellphones. As a bunch of engineers, the first idea that came to us was to build a gimbal by ourselves and it did turn out to be a success. Later on, we noticed that there are far more people around us facing the same problems, and then decided to form our own company and bring the product to even more people.

Explain to me what a gimbal is in your own words. Who are your targeted customers, and what would be an example of a use case? Is there a certain geography you are looking to target?

Gimbal is an extension to your hand that help you eliminate unwanted shakiness. Our customers cover a full spectrum of individuals that are involved in shooting videos with cellphones. It could be a traveler, a filmmaker, a Vlogger, a live-streamer, or even a reporter. We target almost the same group as cellphone cameras, and whenever people take videos with their smartphone, a gimbal could come super handy. In terms of the geography, so far, as we are still rather small, we mainly focus on North Americas and Europe, as the population is more educated about smartphone videography and could potentially save us a lot of effort from educating the customers.

What were some obstacles you entercountered during the product development process, and how did you overcome them?

Well, generally I guess it can be categorized to mainly 3 obstacles.

1. Team synergy: it is extremely hard to found a startup with a perfect team. Our team didn’t start perfect. There were a lot of arguments and even fights. We brought in new members and some of them left as well. It takes the whole team’s effort to adjust to each other. Luckily, we made it.
2. Production: different from a lot of startups nowadays, DelTron builds intelligence hardware product. This involves an additional process of manufacturing and import/exporting work. From industrial design, manufacturing, assembly to shipment, we learnt most of these processes the hard way. It was a tough process to learn so much in such a short timeframe, but it also helped us grow and mature.
3. Promotion: although a lot of our potential customers already know about the concept of gimbal, we encountered tremendous difficulties while promoting our product to the world. Even though we were very confident about our product and its features, it turned out to be extremely hard to make our customers feel how exactly is the charm our Vimble. It took us a lot of effort to finally come up with the videos that could actually help our customers understand the product more intuitively.

What was the process of forming your founding team? What were some difficulties that you faced?

As said before, it was a long process. We had 4 of us at the beginning, and luckily all of us 4 are still here. During the 2 and a half years, we brought in many people to help us carry on the daily operations. Some of them left due to different reasons, and some stayed with us. It is especially hard for us that we are almost always short of people. Sometimes we have to take over totally irrelevant works. Take myself for an example, at one time, I was at the same time working with the design house on the industrial design, coordinating with manufacturers and communicating with media. It was probably one of the most tiring time in our entire lives, but we sure enjoyed it as a great adventure.

What have you enjoyed the most in your startup journey?

It is very hard to tell how exactly I felt when our crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter first reached the goal. I guess it is more of a combination of excitement, satisfaction and also somewhat empty. Although the campaign did not only end at the goal, that was probably the most memorable moment in this journey. There are a lot of other similar moments of fruition, and I guess I enjoyed those moments the most.

The Kickstarter campaign you launched late last year was wildly successful: you managed to reach your pledged amount in just over a day. How did you plan the launch? What factors do you think contributed to the success of the campaign?

Yeah it was actually even better than we expected. 1.4 million HKD was 250% over our original goal.

It was not a surprise that the preparation process was painful again. We decided to come up with a Kickstarter campaign only about 2 months before the actually crowdfunding campaign. We had only a short time window to crowdfund our project, as Thanks Giving Day was coming and we wish to capture it. It was hardly enough for us to get everything ready. Promotion videos, images and the campaign page all took us a lot of effort. Moreover, we encountered a lot of additional difficulties while building up our mailing list. Compared to our counterparties that have worked on their mailing lists for years, our preparation time was really in a hurry. I guess that would be the greatest difficulty.

What was it like to balance a full course load and the launch of your startup?

Good side was that I was much better with time management. Bad side involves a reduction of sleep time, less time for going out with friends, and becoming a deadline fighter.

Are there any specific reasons why you chose to launch DelTron in Hong Kong? How do you think the experience would have been different if you chose to do so in the Mainland?

Most members of our team are based in Hong Kong, and starting up a Hong Kong company gave us the chance to utilize the resources of Hong Kong incubators. Also Hong Kong is a really good location for exporting. I guess these are rather straight forward.

One major difference would be the support from incubators, I guess the funding support would be less if we were in Shenzhen, but at the same time, it would be easier for us to seek for resources in, for example, manufacturing.

Did you have any reservations in launching a hardware startup?

I guess overall it is much harder for a hardware startup to succeed, as it involves additional processes of manufacturing, warehousing and most of the time delivery of product. These are all great obstacles when starting up a company from scratch. Taking that into consideration, I wouldn’t say it is the best choice to startup a company with almost zero experience, as we did. Actually, looking back right now, I still feel very lucky to have gone so far.

I’d like to hear your comments on the greater Chinese hardware startup scene. How does it differ from that of Hong Kong?

Thanks to all those manufacture resources and the support of the government, I think overall hardware startup is more of a thing is Mainland. One issue that I feel right now, is that due to many reasons, there still lacks a sense of innovation in the area.

On the other hand, Hong Kong startups are more, actually, much more focused on software, especially on FinTech related topics. The whole ecosystem is as a result a lot different form that in Mainland.

Did you consider reaching out to mentors, or joining an incubator / accelerator?

We did actually try out all of them. We had 2 mentors at the beginning, both of them came from big international firms. They did give us a lot of precious advice and suggestions, but after all they are only mentors, it takes much more than following their instructions to succeed.

Our company also joined an incubator, and got a lot of resources from them. They surely helped us a lot with legal issues, funding, and also connections. It greatly accelerated our startup process in all senses.

Tell us about your networking process - finding marketing channels, investors, and the like.

There could be huge books talking about this. Long in short, I think the networking process takes effort from many sides. We got the initial connections mainly from our friends, families and also from the incubator. But later on, it began to expand in a faster pace, as we were referred by more people, and went to more exhibitions and roadshows.

What criteria did you set out for yourself when recruiting extra employees?

Usually we would have very clear goals when looking for new employees, so at least our candidates should demonstrate strong skills in the related area. They should also like our idea and be confident with our product. With the first two criteria met, we will usually further see if they fit in the team and get along well with all the members. If someone passes all these, we are more than happy to have him in the team.

What are your future plans with DelTron? Do you expect to carry on with your work after graduation?

So far, there are still some development works to be done on the current product to eventually provide the best user experience we envisioned. We also need to further expand our connections and boost the sales in the world, especially in Mainland China. We see Mainland as a big opportunity, but the customers are yet to be educated about the concepts of gimbals.

As for myself, of course I am more than happy to carry on after graduation.

If you want your startup to be interviewed, please reach out to me at contact@taehongmin.com. Thanks!

Thank you so much to Veronica Seo for the guest interview! If you have any questions or concerns please each out to her at veronica.seo@gmail.com