With John Conafay, Co-Founder & CEO of Integrate
Hosted by Kevin Mako, President of MAKO Design + Invent
John Conafay entered the manufacturing sector in 2014 after contributing to the United States Air Force for years as a communications and systems specialist. Following a wide array of collaborations with hardware startups and aerospace companies, he noticed a lack of refined communication tools, which culminated in the creation of Integrate – a unique software designed to streamline communication in the hardware development realm. Today, John will share how he made this discovery and how critical segregating communication channels is for modern inventors, startups, and small-scale manufacturers. John will identify the primary stakeholders in product development and elucidate the advantages of a meticulously constructed information framework for hardware product businesses.
Here are the key takeaways from the episode:
- Communication between internal designers, internal engineers, customers, manufacturers, investors etc., all of them need only the right information at the right time.
- It’s important to have a system that controls information to the correct stakeholders
- Firewalls are really important for information in consumer product development
- Make sure you maintain your source of truth
- Make sure that it is tracked in real time what changes are happening
- Intellectual property can be much better protected
- You heavily reduce the need for meetings, overhead, and unnecessary administrative work.
- Risk is reduced if you have teams in many places and even in many countries.
John Conafay Links:
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Kevin Mako Links:
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Producer: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to the above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories.
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