As you know, building a hardware product takes time and patience. We have made tremendous progress over the last year, and are on track to ship your ovens for this holiday season!
Last month, the hardware team set up camp at our manufacturing facilities to work on bringing the DVT prototype to life. We’ve come a long way since we started this endeavor, and so instead of throwing out terms like EVT or DVT, we wanted to shed some light on what this process looks like.
1st Generation Prototype — “Pre-Proto”
June 2015
Our team hand-built a one-of-a-kind prototype that looked, worked, and felt close to the final product.
2nd Generation Prototype- “Proto”
October 2015
We worked with our manufacturing partners to build a small batch of fully functional prototypes. We then tested and validated reliability and performance.
This was the first prototype we shared with the world. June was featured on Bloomberg and CNN, and we shared its debut demo at WSJLive. Ashton Kutcher saw one in action and gave us a shout-out on TV. (Thanks!)
3rd Generation Prototype — EVT (Engineering Validation)
March 2016
The goal for this generation was to test and validate all functional aspects of the design, with enhanced focus on reliability and performance. All June employees got to take an oven home, and their “real life” cooking experiences helped us debug and refine the product.
At this stage, we introduced June to Chef Scott Conant and editors of various food publications, and shared a demo of cooked meals with journalists and investors.
4th Generation — DVT (Design Validation)
August 2016
This is where we are right now.
The goal for this generation is to test whether we can make a large number of units that all look and work exactly like the final product. A much larger number of prototypes were built at our manufacturing facility with a more mature supply chain in place. There is continued focus on reliability and performance, along with fine-tuning cosmetics.
Beta Program
These DVT units are on their way right now to a group of testers and customers who are part of our June Beta Program. Thank you all for signing up for the Beta program!
This stage is pivotal for any hardware product, as the feedback from beta users will help us fine-tune the product ahead of the next and final phase of development.
