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#04. Meet Dominic Symons🇨🇭, founder and designer of NanoFoamer
134 Plays4 years ago
Dominic has been the founder of a design consultancy and tech venture. Now, he’s on to his third company Subliminal. His first Kickstarter campaign Nanofoamer exceeded its funding goal in just four hours. The Kickstarter campaign was 3682% funded, receiving over a third of a million dollars in funding from 5,823 backers.
Early on in his career, he had the opportunity to design an espresso machine for a client. He began to research the intricacies of espresso and understand what it takes to make a really good shot. On finding out more about espresso: “Once you start going down that path, you know there’s no way back.”
With a knack of being in the right place at the right time, he had the vision to scale his last venture across 42 countries. That company was eventually acquired, with Dominic leaving to take on a new challenge.
Dominic started to think of ways to improve the experience of drinking coffee at home. Noticing there were already tons of home brewing products on the market, he looked for a niche where there would be demand for something new.
He launched The NanoFoamer on Kickstarter - a tool that creates microfoam as well as a steam wand. The campaign reached its funding goal in four hours and went on to raise more than a third of a million dollars.
His design philosophy has always been to provide value. ”What makes a product really great is when you are able to focus on an area and discover a gap you can fill.”
Interested to find out what goes on behind the scenes to bring a product to life?
Read the full article here
https://notabarista.org/dominic-symons/
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Transcript
Introduction to Coffee Stories Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the I'm Not a barista podcast where you can get inspired by real life stories from the people behind the cup. Join us as we talk about everything to do with coffee from having a career in this industry to brewing tips and how you can support this global community. Humanity runs on coffee and together we can empower the people behind the cup.
Guest Introduction: Dominic Simons
00:00:26
Speaker
Hello everyone, my name is Miki Wong. I'm your host today. I'm very happy to be talking to the founder of Subminimal, Dominic Simons. He's a product designer, entrepreneur, and most importantly, he's a big coffee lover.
00:00:41
Speaker
If you're into kickstarter or home borrowing, you must be familiar with his very successful kickstarter project, the Ninoformer Microform milk in 20 seconds.
Kickstarter Success: The Nanofoamer
00:00:51
Speaker
His project raised more than half a billion US dollars from about 6,000 international backers. It is one of the most successful kickstarter project in 2020. So let's get to know Dominic and hear about his story, how he started everything as a product designer.
Dominic's Journey: From Tech to Coffee
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, so it started out with me being an industrial designer. I've known since I was a kid exactly what I wanted to do. I mean, there was no mystery in life. This is what I was meant to be. And then so I grew up in Switzerland. I studied in California afterwards. And then I founded a company in California in 1999, actually, doing consulting. Then in 2005, I started manufacturing my own products.
00:01:43
Speaker
and started a sort of tech accessory company. So we made a lot of cable management and phone chargers and things like that. This was before the iPod and iPhone even came out. So then we kind of rode that wave. So when the iPhones and the whole iOS ecosystem came about, we were part of all of the plethora of accessories that came out with that. And I grew the company to sales and distribution into 42 different countries.
00:02:10
Speaker
We had two offices, one in LA, one in Indonesia. And yeah, so we had 15 staff and it was cool. And then in 2018, I had the opportunity to sell that brand. And so I sold it to a US company.
00:02:30
Speaker
And since then I've been freelancing, doing some design work and sort of planning my next venture. And I've always been super passionate about coffee. Um, I love espresso and espresso based drinks and decided to, you know, put some energy into, into this space, which was also booming. I mean, I've, I designed an espresso machine back in 2005 for a client in Austria. Um, yeah, I was really hooked on, on.
00:02:56
Speaker
espresso and coffees like way before it became way before you see the trend that is that you've seen these days, right? But then I ended up, you know, in this sort of tech world and didn't do anything with it. But after the after I sold my previous company, I had the opportunity to sort of refocus and decide that this was an industry I wanted to spend some time and energy on.
00:03:21
Speaker
And that's how I ended up designing the first product that you've seen, the Nanofoamer. And it's the first obviously in a series. I want to build this into a brand and go from there. So you studied your first coffee design in back in 2005. That's many years ago. Definitely very impressive. Could you tell us about where or when did you start your coffee journey?
Espresso Machine Design and Coffee Passion
00:03:49
Speaker
And were you a big coffee lover before that? Well, back then, I mean, when I started working on the, I mean, I always liked coffee even before that, but when I started designing the espresso machine, then I really started researching all the intricacies and the finesse and what it takes to make a really good espresso. And then once you start going down that path, you know, it's like, there's no way back, right? There's no way back, yeah. Yeah, you end up trapped there.
00:04:18
Speaker
And then after that project was done, I mean, I had samples of espresso machines that they sent me that I had at home. So I had like a semi-professional machine at home, which is kind of nice.
00:04:30
Speaker
But after that, it was really more like frequent in really nice coffee shops. I mean, I really like, I enjoy the experience. I enjoy the experience of the coffee shop as well. And so it was always, if I'm traveling or anywhere I go, like that's one of the first things on my list is to try and find, you know, what's the coolest coffee shop near where I am, near the hotel, near the airport, near wherever it is. I always wanted to know. And so, so I have this sort of love of going and really enjoying
00:04:58
Speaker
coffee and coffee shops, but then, you know, started making espresso at home again. And once I had more free time after selling the company, I was really making coffees at home a lot. And that's where I really decided to focus on, you know, making tools for people who want to make really good coffees at home. That was the
Pandemic and Home Brewing Boom
00:05:22
Speaker
idea.
00:05:22
Speaker
So you launched your project last year, right? Yeah, it was October last year. Actually, it's the perfect time to launch such a product for people who make coffee at home because of pandemic. Most people, we can make simple pour over. That's easier. But if you want to make a latte, you need to invest a lot for an expensive coffee machine, of course.
00:05:46
Speaker
And you also need some space for the big machines. And if you don't drink lots of coffee every day, it's kind of completely waste because, you know, the heat up and the cleaning, everything is super complicated. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a...
00:06:03
Speaker
So the pandemic was kind of weird because obviously I developed that way before the pandemic hit. I mean, you know, product development takes a long time and it took a long time of testing. I mean, honestly, this was also kind of a side project. I was working on different types of projects within the coffee space. And then this is one which was not sort of my primary focus, but then it became the first product that I developed because I,
00:06:28
Speaker
You know design is not always linear I mean if you're just designing something for the shape then yeah sure I can design a nice tamper tomorrow right, but if you're designing something to try and solve a problem and come up with something a new solution. it's not always linear sometimes you know you work on a project you give up you work on it again and you stop and then.
00:06:44
Speaker
And then you see a truck go by and something on the truck inspires you, right? And then so that gives you an idea on how you could do something. And so it's really not linear. And so I had a few things going on and all of a sudden this sort of milk frothing project really boiled to the front.
00:07:02
Speaker
But again, as I said, it was developed way before the pandemic hit. And when the pandemic first hit, I was like, oh, no, this is terrible. I mean, do I really want to launch a business when the whole world looks like it's coming to an end?
00:07:17
Speaker
But then two or three months into the pandemic, you realize, oh, now I wish I was launching it sooner. Now I wish I already had it in production, right? Because all of a sudden it's like, the world is not quite coming to an end, but everybody is at home. And this is the perfect time. So all of a sudden I went from having this fear of launching a new company during a pandemic to wanting to push forward and move even faster to launch.
Design Process: Problem-Solving and Innovation
00:07:43
Speaker
Because you're right, the timing is right.
00:07:46
Speaker
Obviously, the pandemic has lasted a lot longer than anybody expected. People are still at home. People are still making coffees at home. But we've probably also seen sort of a permanent shift. I mean, now that people have bought the tools and accessories and learned how to make a good coffee at home, this is probably something that more and more people will
00:08:06
Speaker
keep as a permanent routine, even if they do end up going back to the office and everything. Yes, this pandemic definitely changed a lot of things. And we created a lot of this pandemic, created a lot of new coffee lovers. They got hooked by a boring coffee at home. So I guess after the pandemic, people will keep the same routine, like you said.
00:08:28
Speaker
It's so fantastic, like everything just happened at the right time and it was a big success for your project. You were more than 1000% success, right? There you go. Yeah, I didn't count the percentages, but yeah, we... That's very, very impressive. Could you tell us more about the project, how you prepare it and how you... I know the product has this unique characteristic.
00:08:57
Speaker
And it definitely addressed the pain point of all coffee lovers and with a great design and great marketing as well. So tell us more about how you prepare the project from the very beginning. You know, once you say, I want to launch this right now, even it's a bad time.
00:09:15
Speaker
Well, it's really, it's really quite progressive. I mean, I think with, with projects like this, you need to spend a lot of time testing. So, I mean, the, the design process was trial and error. You, again, you don't just, um, it's not just a shape, right? It has to function and it has to function with milk and alternatives, milk and this and different things.
00:09:35
Speaker
And so you don't know how it's going to behave even at the different temperatures of the milk. And so I've tested so many solutions from vibrating to ultrasonic to all these different methods of trying to achieve, you know, microfoam without a steam wand.
00:09:50
Speaker
Um, and then once I had a solution that worked, I mean, I literally used my Dremel tools and things I had like, literally like workshop tools. And I was making coffee in the morning using literally a workshop tools, right? With different attachments at the end. And so if you looked at my kitchen, I was, it looked pretty weird when I was making my using my prototypes. And then you get to a point where you, you get comfortable and, um, uh, with, with what you have and you feel like, you know, it's, it's kind of ready for prime time.
00:10:20
Speaker
And that's when it gets really quite painful because then you're like, okay, this is good. We're going to do that. So we apply for the patterns and everything to get some protection, meet your suppliers, and then it seems to take forever. From the moment you know you have a good product until the moment you can launch, I mean, it's 18 months, sometimes up to two years, but that 18 months or
00:10:44
Speaker
It's like, it seems like forever. By the time you've launched it, it's new to everybody else. But for you, it's like an old project. And it's the most frustrating time because you really want the world to know about it and you really want to get it out. But you have to do the tooling and you have to do testing and do certifications and check with FDA and all the regulations. And there's just so many steps.
00:11:07
Speaker
On the other hand, because it's a brand new company, I mean, I used to do that with my previous company and we had, you know, 15 people, but I had a graphic designer, I had different people that sales people that did all the different parts. In this case, I'm starting from scratch and I'm doing 100% myself. I mean, it's just, it's literally a one man show, right? So from-
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, so from all the photography, all the, I mean everything photography film, everything I did. I kind of did by myself, but I was able to do that because the product development takes that much time right because it took
00:11:42
Speaker
let's say, 12 to 18 months to develop the tooling and everything. During that time, I could develop my identity, develop my logo, apply for the trademarks, develop the website, and even learn different web technologies and learn videography and do all that stuff. You did it all yourself. Yeah, it was a lot. And once I start launching the second or third product down the line, I don't know if I'll have the time to do everything alone, but
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's kind of good to get back to the roots. Well, what a journey, right? Yeah, exactly. I hope you have the time to realize a little bit after this project It's such a long journey Could you tell us more about the current status of your project and what is really going on there and what's gonna happen next? Yeah, so we're currently in pre-order so that all of our
00:12:36
Speaker
So when we did the crowdfunding, we had early birds, which we were shipping early. And so what I did with that is I actually did a pre-production one. I really like to be ready like that. So when I launch a product, it's something I really believe in.
00:12:55
Speaker
I feel like I've tested it sufficiently myself or with some friends. But we don't do a huge amount of research up front. So not that many people have seen it, right? But I really believe in it. And so that means I also already invested in the tooling and development. And it's pretty much ready to go, right? And so once we launched the Kickstarter, what I was saying is that I was pretty much ready.
00:13:24
Speaker
a pre-production run. So we had our first sort of minimum order run which we produced and we could offer those up to the early birds. So we were already in production and we knew that I knew that this was something I was going to be doing.
00:13:38
Speaker
But then you never know how successful the crowdfunding is going to be, and you still need to place your second order once that's completed. And so that's what we did. And my lead time is not so quick. We have a three-month lead time with our supplier. So it takes quite some time to restock, but that's what we've been doing. And everything has been pretty much on time. I mean, you always have some delays here or there or something that goes a little bit wrong.
00:14:06
Speaker
pretty natural as part of the process. But yeah, we're on time. All the products are in the containers right now on the way to LA and Singapore where we have our warehouses. And we should be shipping at the end of February. The goal was to ship at the end of February. It's gonna be super tight because I think both containers seem to be delayed by about a week now. So it's gonna be really tight, but I hope to start doing all the deliveries at the end of February.
00:14:36
Speaker
And then from then, from that, from that moment onwards, once I've shipped out all the crowdfunding orders, then it, um, and start working with distributors and sort of the business gets going, basically the businesses as it will for the next. I used to yourself working on the whole project or you have some more help right now. I hope you do.
00:15:03
Speaker
That's more impressive. I truly understand how difficult it is for, but I guess, well, that's the process. That's the interesting part as a solo entrepreneur. You do everything yourself, everything's yours.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, no it's kind of interesting as well because you you go through these different phases I mean with my previous company as I said we grew to about 15 people I had eight people here six seven people in LA. And it's great because you have all the different people who do different things.
00:15:34
Speaker
But I, right now I also kind of like this remote working I mean I kind of do enjoy working from home and developing. And so, you know, as the company grows I am going to need people, most probably they're going to be remote as well. I'm not super keen on
00:15:51
Speaker
going the traditional route of getting an office and having a bunch of employees in the office and all that currently. I mean, that might have to change. But I'm pretty happy. And the challenge with that is finding very trustworthy people that you know are going to be putting 100% behind it when you don't see them on a daily basis. So it's more challenging to hire and find the right people.
00:16:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of the new way of working. So if I can make it work that way, then I will. But it's great to hear that you so far manage everything so well together just by yourself. And let's say everything runs smooth and the shipping will be on time. And then you find great distributors so you can share this awesome product with a couple from all over the world.
Daily Coffee Routine and Espresso Love
00:16:40
Speaker
I actually believe this is a very, very successful product. So let's talk about coffee and tell us what drinks, what coffee do you drink every day? Is it only espresso, latte, or are you also a Pearl Verlover?
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I buy locally. So I always buy like locally roasted, I find. And I try different coffees from different local roasteries. And so you have your preference and you use that for a few months and then you try something new and you have a new preference. I don't have tons of coffees on hand. I always have one or two that I like at the moment. And then I try. I use a flare to pull my espresso. So I do it fully manually with a flare espresso maker.
00:17:23
Speaker
You can pull some really good shots on that. I do really like it. And then I used to grind by hand, but that got pretty tiring after a while. Because we always make two coffees, me and my girlfriend, we always make two coffees at a time and grinding by hand just got a little bit...
00:17:43
Speaker
A little bit exhausting. So I ended up, one day I was in a coffee supply store and I bought a Mazda Mini. So the biggest accessory I have in my house is the grinder. It's like this massive grinder and then the smaller flare next door. So in this case, electric grinder is definitely what you're needed and it's going to be very helpful. And I can imagine if a grind
00:18:07
Speaker
and coffee for espresso every time by hand. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's definitely a lot of work. So what machines do you have at home right now? Not anymore, no. I mean, everything by hand, yeah. Well, so tell us about your daily coffee routine.
00:18:26
Speaker
Yeah. And you get, you sort of get down to your little routines, right? I mean, the first couple of times you do it is maybe a bit awkward, but you know, after you've done it for a couple of weeks and now a couple of years, you really get down to your routine. I mean, how you warm up your milk, you know exactly that you can put the milk on the stove, turn it on to them.
00:18:43
Speaker
lowest heat, grind, tap, do all your stuff and everything will just come together just right. You just end up with this like mini routine that you do and it works for you. I think everybody ends up in that little cycle that they end up doing. It's a big part of life in practice every morning. In the end, it's a part of us. Do you drink, pour over or use other brewing methods in your daily life?
00:19:09
Speaker
No, I've I don't know why I've always been stuck on espresso since since the beginning. I've never really drank pour over. I mean, my parents are English. I'm I'm I grew up in Switzerland, but I have English parents. So we drank tea a lot. Yeah. Right. English people like tea. And and so somehow for me, if I'm going to drink a pour over, I'd rather have a nice tea. That's the way I see it. Like when I drink espresso, I want something really strong or something with a bit of milk. But if I'm going to have a longer drink,
00:19:39
Speaker
I'll tend to make tea rather than coffee. So it is like espresso or no coffee.
00:19:47
Speaker
And anyway, you got all the tools you need for a perfect shot of espresso. So definitely, yeah, no doubt that you're a very successful designer, perfectly combined coffee and product design. And in your opinion, what makes a good designer? How to create such a successful project? Or what is your secret?
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah. Design comes in so many shapes and forms that I don't think there's one solution. You see design processes that go through all kinds of committees and all kinds of research to get to a final solution, but then you also have
00:20:33
Speaker
designers who are just one person with an amazing idea or ability to come up with the right ideas. I don't think one is the right way or the other. It depends who it's for. If it's for a massive company like Volkswagen, then maybe you need one way. If it's for another brand like mine, then you need the other way. For me, one thing that's interesting is I
00:20:57
Speaker
I mean, I designed footwear and sports equipment and stuff like that in the past. And a lot of that is like, there's a lot of innovation in it, but it's also very visual. And for that, you end up designing so many versions. You have so many versions of shoes or boots and things. And I end up struggling making a decision. I mean, I have my favorites, the one I like, but it's just not a personal preference. Like, oh, I like this one or I like that one. When I design for myself, when it's my own brand,
00:21:22
Speaker
I have to have a real reason for that product to come to life. I don't want to make stuff, right? I don't consume much myself. I'm not a, I'm a designer, so I'm, I'm making new stuff in this world, but I don't really believe in the world needs tons of stuff. And so, so when I design a product, I really have to have, and if I'm going to invest in producing it, I really have to.
00:21:46
Speaker
feel that it has a reason to exist. Um, so not just, um, again, a new shape or something pretty, it has to, and that's, and that's a challenge. That's what makes my products. What they are is that that's my requirements. When I want to produce something, which is a little different if I'm designing for a client, if a client says like, Hey, we need a new headphones or something, then yeah, you go and design and come up with headphones. And that's because the client asked for that.
00:22:15
Speaker
And so my way of seeing the design result is different if I'm producing something for myself as to if I'm doing something for clients. Passion plays a big role here. What other key factors?
00:22:29
Speaker
I think the key factor is you have to go down a path and keep an open mind, which is sometimes difficult. Sometimes you go down a path and you're so stuck on one way of doing something, right? And then you branch off and you go like, oh, that's the way I should be doing it. And so you have to give yourself enough time and go down a certain path, keep an open mind for that path to not be
00:22:52
Speaker
as linear as you thought it would be at the beginning. So what you end up doing, and I think what makes a product really great, is when you're able to focus on an area and then find out within that area that there's a gap and that you fill that gap. And I think that's kind of what's successful with this product is that
00:23:17
Speaker
I started thinking about coffee accessories. And when you think about it, there's a lot of coffee accessories out there. But in reality, when you look at what I ended up doing, I ended up working on the milk, not the coffee. And that's why I really kind of filled the gap in the market. Because you have a lot of frothers, but they create all this bubbly foam. And no one has really solved that problem. There's a few solutions, attempts, but nothing nobody's really solved that problem.
00:23:43
Speaker
And so I kind of let myself focus on this industry. I tried to force my way into doing product A, but on the process, I found a gap in the market and that was dealing with the milk and I ended up focusing
Market Gaps and Product Success
00:24:01
Speaker
on that. And I think that's what makes a product successful is when you're able to
00:24:07
Speaker
to find that little gap or find all and also as well you also need to be at the right place at the right time and we talked about that earlier with the pandemic maybe this is the right time and that was just totally coincidental right. I mean the fact that I sold my company in 2018 started focusing on this about to launch it and then the pandemic hit and no one could have planned that but
00:24:27
Speaker
Sometimes that's just what it is. If I'd done this product in 2005, maybe no one would have noticed because the third wave coffee had not really been in full swing yet and the pandemic was not on. So timing is also very important.
00:24:47
Speaker
while timing is super important. And I believe there are other factors are equally important here, such as your design experience, your special skills and your ability to make everything happen by yourself. That's really impressive. So let's get to know the real you. What kind of person are you in real life?
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, I listen to music. I've become less and less specific about my music. I think I was much more specific earlier now. It's not something that I absolutely have to always have on. I read a lot, but I read a lot of news. I've become one of these persons who just consumes snippets. Over time, I found it harder and harder to really finish a book. It's kind of sad, but that's the reality of how we live to a great extent.
00:25:41
Speaker
I've picked up books and I've gotten halfway through and just can't get to the end anymore because I've moved on to this society of just reading short, fast articles and a lot of news. As a person, I'm generally pretty mellow, pretty shy, not necessarily
00:26:03
Speaker
When it comes to launching a product or brand as well, I'm not necessarily someone who likes to shout and scream about what I do. So it's always good for me to have someone doing marketing for me. Because I'm not the person who advertises myself that much, so it's usually pretty reserved. Yeah.
00:26:35
Speaker
I'm just not comfortable with it. But talking about that video, because of the pandemic, I have this really great latte artist that I wanted to work with. And we were supposed to do the video together, and we couldn't do it, because he couldn't come here. So in the end, I'm the one who is doing all the pause in the video. And I never expected that, because I don't think, I mean, my latte artist is not that great. I mean, I learned as I did this project, right? This is how I picked it up.
00:26:55
Speaker
Exactly. I'm not comfortable with my own voice.
00:27:04
Speaker
But again, I was kind of forced and I had a video team in place that I wanted to use as well. And nothing could have, we couldn't do anything. I actually waited three months hoping everything would settle down and then it would work out.
00:27:17
Speaker
but it looked like nothing was ever going to settle down. So I eventually shot the whole, you know, kickstart a video myself and, and, well, it just surprised me again. Literally everything. Literally my girlfriend was holding the camera and I was directing everything. We did everything in my house here, literally from A to Z. Um, and I just hired someone to do the voiceover because I'm just not comfortable with my voice.
00:27:39
Speaker
I totally understand that it's very, very difficult to fall in love with your own voice in the very beginning. And talk about your challenges. I think my challenge was my fear of the unknown. You feel like Kickstarter. I launched a lot of products with my previous company, but we did it the traditional way. We either did trade shows or press releases, and we never did a crowdfunding. And crowdfunding is a little bit different. And one of the main differences
00:28:09
Speaker
is this whole concept of the pre-launch. You need two months or more to pre-launch. Well, I'm used to being pretty secretive about my products before launching. We have launch day, that's when I reveal my product, right? But with crowdfunding, you can't. You need to
00:28:26
Speaker
gather community before you launch. And yet, I didn't want to reveal my product before I launched. So how do you advertise a product without showing the product? And say, we've got this great innovation, but I can't show you. It doesn't work. And how do you start advertising a product without launching it? I mean, to me, it's like it
00:28:48
Speaker
is a conflict which works in some, in some cases it works. There's some projects that work really well like that. And in other cases, it's more difficult. And that was one of my challenges is really getting, and I knew a year beforehand that I would have to get comfortable with this idea, even though I didn't know how I was gonna truly tackle it at the end, that how do I do a pre-launch without actually launching? How do I get people excited without revealing the product? And then there's all of the concerns of
00:29:18
Speaker
of, you know, am I gonna do a good enough job? And is it gonna fail? You have this, I have this fear of failure, of course, because it's on Kickstarter, it's very public. If your campaign flops and then it's there for life, everybody sees it and it's kind of a disaster, right? And so I wanted to be successful. And obviously I interviewed lots of different agencies to help with marketing. And you find that it's a bit of a zoo out there. There's so many different people offering so many different services. And it's, it becomes very difficult to,
00:29:48
Speaker
to try and understand what's real and what's worth it and what's not. Some people charge a lot, a lot of them want a percentage of your project and I was like, you know, is it? Yeah, so there's a lot of things to weed out and try and understand what's,
00:30:07
Speaker
what's real, what's not, and what you should be spending money on and not. And I think once you've done it once, maybe the second time around, you get a bit more comfortable because you've seen the process, you've gone through it once and you kind of know what to expect. But it's really that first time where you really feel like you're not sure if you're making all the right decisions.
00:30:29
Speaker
I believe most people when they do something new for the first time and we all feel insecure a little bit, you know, can we make it and is it worth it? And there are many other questions, but the result actually tells the truth that all the hard work paid off and you did great job there. So what is going to happen after this project?
Future Innovations in Coffee
00:30:50
Speaker
Are you going to take a break?
00:30:52
Speaker
No, no, I'm launching. I'm developing. As I said, I need to solve a problem. I need to find something. So you're not going to see my company suddenly have a collection of 30 different products. It's going to be one product every 18 months or even more, I don't know, because the time it takes to develop. And so, yeah, there's products in the pipeline. Some are simple. Some are more complex.
00:31:20
Speaker
Typically, probably increasing complexity. And as I find something very simple that I can do. And I, doesn't mean I'll do everything on Kickstarter as well. That was a great experience to launch, but it might not be the right avenue for the next products. I don't know. You're better off, you know, building one company and staying focused. And that's one thing that's very much what I'm about. I'm really about trying to stay focused. I don't want to do 20 different things at the same time.
00:31:47
Speaker
I want to do one thing that I'm passionate about and really believe in. It is very hard to believe that one person could manage to finish all these difficult tasks. You must have learned a lot from this project. You communicate a lot with the bankers and did research.
00:32:06
Speaker
Based on your understanding of the coffee industry, so based on your experience and knowledge gained from this project, what do you think has been changed in the coffee industry and then what will be the future? The only change that I have
00:32:24
Speaker
maybe seen as is what you said before, just people getting more used to making a quality coffee at home, you know, and I think there's more and more tools, the tools have a lot of them have been available, but there's more and more tools becoming available to make really good quality coffee at home and
00:32:42
Speaker
I think the whole third wave of coffee in coffee shops really gave people that taste of what a great coffee can be like. And once you've gone there, of course you can't go back. But I often felt that there was a discrepancy. The cappuccino I could make at home was nothing like the one that I got from the local coffee shop. And I think people want that to become closer. People want to have that same experience at home.
00:33:12
Speaker
And and so you know there's there's a number of I mean we're helping with that but there's a number of other companies that are helping to to allow you to reach that same same level of coffee and take that that sort of mystique out of it and assure you that like yeah you you can do something it tastes just as good at home.
00:33:32
Speaker
It is true that you can brew very tasty coffee at home with the right juice and with the recipes. You may not be able to compete with the world champions on the stage, but making a good cup of coffee at home is very simple nowadays.
Episode Wrap-Up
00:33:48
Speaker
I have learned a lot today from Dominic. Reading a successful project requires more than just a good timing. You need to be very focused on the most important job and you're willing to learn the new skills, knowledge, of course, work hard. Thank you very much, Dominic, for joining us today. I am looking forward to seeing more projects for you. All right. Thanks again.
00:34:12
Speaker
Thank you so much for tuning in to the I'm Not a Barista podcast, where people get inspired and connected through coffee stories. If you want to join our community, then please subscribe for future episodes and follow us on our Instagram to get connected. Until next time, keep smiling and most importantly, keep drinking coffee.