The Hustle
Years in Tampa Bay
16
Hustle (job)
Founder / CEO
What do you do?
I started Faraday in order to develop the Vino Novo, a device of my own design that ‘ages’ wine by creating an electric field that causes an electro-chemical reaction which simulates aging.
Why do you do it?
The obvious answer is because I knew it would be something that would make a lot of money… internally though it was because my family makes wine (or did) and I wanted to build a large commercial version that allowed my uncle to speed the process up.
What was your Catalyst? (How did you get started?)
I got started by building a prototype in 2015… the catalyst was my wife convincing me that I could do it, that we had the money to do it and that it would succeed.
What’s a common misconception or unknown aspect of what you do?
People think I must know a lot about wine… I don’t. I don’t even enjoy it.
What’s the most challenging part of your Hustle?
Staying focused during the times when there is stagnation. People think that if you are a startup owner that you must be working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. I’m not a coder and this isn’t a product that requires the use of software (as a main function), so there are times in between development sprints that I don’t have anything to do and it makes staying focused very, very hard. When you’re developing a product, a lot goes into the electronics and the manufacturing and those are things that I don’t personally do. I have a team of engineers and they know what they are doing, meaning, I only need to let them know what I’m thinking when it comes to higher level decisions that need to be made.
What’s the most valuable piece of business advice/insight that’s helped you?
Sometimes trying to save money by NOT hiring a full team is the biggest mistake you could possibly make. Had I hired my engineers in the beginning, I would have easily launched and been on a second or even third revision at this point. I tried to save money and in turn, it took me three times as long.
Whats the next step in my hustle?
We are launching on Kickstarter at the end of next month and starting a full tilt pre-marketing campaign a week from this Monday. I hired a big marketing firm that does nothing but crowdfunding and they are handling the subtle nuances of the marketing, the emails, the follow up… I am just along for the ride.
Whats my end game for this product?
I want to license my IP (I own the patent) to a large company like Keurig or Kitchenaid to take what I do and integrate it into their own line of ‘at home connected wine products.’
