Solidtrust: Failed product
2006 was a pivotal year for our company: we decided to pick up several projects such as Ekoparty and we started to develop what turned out to be our first official product within Infobyte (experience we used later on to create Faraday)
We introduced Solidtrust, a hardware- assisted geolocalization solution for notebooks.
MVP was simple, or at least that’s what Fede Kirschbaum (friend as well as Ekoparty and Faraday co-founder) and myself believed, considering that we were the master minds of several projects.
Our original idea:
The new GPS PCMCIA ExpressCard, with built- in battery, data location reporting, and in case of theft, subsequent tracking, even if the computer was turned off (since the battery kept on charging whilst the device was plugged in), including 72 hrs. tracking in case of theft.
E-MIPS and its partners Juan Pablo Daniel Borgna and Sebastián Kennedy helped us design our idea.
Considering that this product could not be manufactured in Argentina because of the card size, we decided to produce and import 10 prototypes from Taiwan together with Titoma (currently, such as our original idea, this company no longer exists)
What went wrong?
- MPV never worked well. There were problems with antennas and the GPS could not lock the location accurately under specific conditions.
- Express card ceased to be a standard and computers no longer had the socket ;)
- Lojack/ Computrace launched its own software location system.
- Malware was installed in practically every CPU in the market (maybe every) setting off a relevant investigation (presented at ekoparty 2009) which we monitored closely because we were convinced that it would have an impact on our product.
- Technology back then was a barrier for the autonomy and batteries we needed, or perhaps at that time we could not afford them since we were a couple of lunatics in a remote country called Argentina.
Lessons learnt
Later on, and much more experienced we redirected our goals to further projects which continue to grow and develop. It is critical to have better planning so as to work with providers, import hardware, manufacture cards, sell, present ideas and especially learn how to let go projects that do not work out and undertake new ventures.
Anecdotes:
Our friend’s Miguel Marino’s email address when he got in touch with us to inform us that the web site was active :) For those who are not familiar with him, Mike was the creator of ekoparty’s logo and image. Since then, he has worked hand in hand and cooperated with us in all our adventures and projects, such as Faraday (our brand, company and great work team)
Today, in 2020, we share this story since, for several reasons, we had to open our keepsake box and because maybe some research and know-how can be helpful for an excellent project you should follow closely: LIA Aerospace founded by Dan Etenberg
If you want to know more about what this great crazy guy is developing, we are glad to tell you that he is challenging Elon Musk and SpaceX with a very different perspective of what he considers will be the future of the Aerospace Era.
Eko grannies and grandpas maybe remember him as “Loco Turbina” because legend states that in an eko Get Together he took a turbine to the Centro Cultural Konex just for fun ;)
By the way, if any VC is reading and in search of their first A Series, we shared with him a trip to Finland to introduce ourselves in Slush 2019
A modest piece of advice, suggestion or incentive: begin with that pending startup, idea, product or trip because you never know how it will turn out or what it might turn into (and transform you). For sure, throughout the journey, those ideas you dared to realize (in spite of the fear, doubts and errors) became the most valuable ones and will be a source of stories to tell and share.
Francisco Müller Amato
@famato
www.faradaysec.com
