6 Questions: Serge Didenko, BLOCKS Wearables Co-Founder
Last year, HWTrek sponsored 30 hardware startups and creators to visit Taiwan and Beijing on the Asia Innovation Tour 2014. We’re doing it again this August. We reached out to Serge Didenko (Co-founder of BLOCKS Wearables), a participant in the tour last year, to see what he’s been up to during the past year.
Apply now, the deadline is coming up soon, to join Asia Tour 2015 and have the chance to meet 300 manufacturing industry experts, see assembly lines, and gain insights about China's market.
HWTrek: We’d love to catch up with what you’ve been doing since you attended Asia Tour last year. What are you working on?
Serge: Blocks is the world's first fully customizable smartwatch - an open platform for wearable technology.
What are some of major lessons you learned along your entrepreneurship journey?
A dedicated team that is ready to keep going no matter what (getting investment and building prototype on time do not always go to plan).
What advice would you give someone who might have an idea, but has yet launch a hardware startup?
Love what you do because you will have to work very hard for it and give up most of your free time for that dream. But the journey will be also fun as long as you have the right team.
Looking back a year on now, what are your takeaways from participating in the tour last year?
The power of network - try to befriend a couple of hardware startups ASAP. Spend some money on actually going to Taiwan and staying there - there is nothing like doing development and talking to manufacturers on the ground.
What trend do you see that is changing your sector or what shift would you like to see happen?
Consolidation of the first wave of smartwatch makers - the big players are coming in. There is still a lack of a true killer application out there. We hope to bring the variety of much needed sensors with Blocks.
Do you have any recommendations for a must-read/watch/listen article, book, blog, film, or podcast, etc.?
kevinrandom.com/startup-ceos-101/
A version this article first appeared on blog.HWTrek.com.