Picto Diary - 05 August 2015 - Drums Jumps!
Above: David Wiener, Inventor/Entrepreneur, speaks to La Societe Deux Magots (LSDM) . Wasatch Bagel, Park City, UT. 05 August 2015
Note: Note taker is fallible. Mistakes are his. David Wiener is welcome to make changes and/or corrections to these notes.
Hat tip: The Bishop
Note taker aside: Note taker knows David and Kate personally. Outstanding parenting of three boys, two out of college and one midway through college. No network television period for boys while growing up. Extra curricular winter sports. Occasional videos and movies... things their parents thought they should see to give them a leg up. That and other solid parental techniques paid outstanding dividends.
Above: David Wiener presents to La Societe Deux Magots (LSDM). Wasatch Bagel. Park City, UT. 05 August 2015.
Background:
I liked to invent from an early age.
I lit my desk on fire in grade school in New York City.
Studied engineering at University of Vermont.
Transferred to Hampshire College, Amherst, MA. Hampshire was a great place for people with an entrepreneurial bent... also Hampshire was a place where art, engineering and aerodynamics converged.
My Hampshire thesis was on vehicles for a world human powered speed championship. I couldn't build a race car so I designed and built a bicycle. It was a recumbent bike.
Took first job in California with Paul MacCready, the most prominent design/engineer of the age. He had spent a lot of time working on man powered aircraft.
After a few months I left MacCready and went back to Connecticut to do my own thing. I wanted to build a commercial version of the recumbent bike.
Above: David Wiener designed recumbent bicycle. Landspeeder.
Speed Bike
I wanted to see if my bike would work. Some friends and I brainstormed about who we could get to ride the bike. One of them, a bike racer geek, suggested Eric Heiden, a recent Olympic speed skating champion. Everyone else laughed. But, I pursued the idea. I called up Eric's dad... but, Eric himself answered the phone. We became friends. Eric became the one to test my bike. We both moved to Park City, me in 1993 and Eric and his wife in 2003.
I had to learn about raising money. I was a design freak. I learned that designing things must be accompanied by things like funding, manufacturing, sales and distribution. I think that whatever success I have achieved has derived from my ability to integrate art and design with funding, production, marketing and sales... overall execution.
In the end my recumbent bike didn't have great commercial success. I made mistakes. But, I gained deep insight into what was required to make an idea commercially successful. You need an integrated approach to design and product.
Ski Clothing
Mid-80's. I always thought I could improve on ski clothing. I bought a sewing machine... studied clothes... made some samples. I took my ideas to CB sports. After my presentation they said. You are going to design our next two lines of ski-wear.
In the early 90's I designed the Columbia Sportswear line now so popular with fishermen and world travelers.
DW Ventures
I found my own design company, DW Ventures.
Around 1990 I was approached by a new air craft company. They wanted a new logo. They knew about us because we had been working on some high visibility stuff. Also, I was somewhat known because CBS once did a documentary on my college thesis. After I talked to the aircraft people for an hour or so, they said, "forget the logo... we want you to design our aircraft!"
Its always been like that for me. Style and performance define us. I've always loved speed. I've always been entrepreneurial.
I used to love building custom Porches. We built the first Porche convertible, before Porche themselves started doing it. We got a lot of press from our car business. My studio was in Westport, CT right across from the Metro North train station. A lot of NYC commuters would come over to see what we were doing.
Speakers
I started experimenting with speakers. Some of my friends said, "you're crazy." That got me going. Being told I'm crazy has always been my fuel.
We built something we called a "flexible tube" speaker. Our company, Sound Tube Entertainment," grew to have 50 employees. Before long we were supplying speakers to many of the chain stores around the county.
Our speakers had "omni directional sound." Quality sound is critical to our environment. I wanted to achieve the best sound.
In addition to having high quality speakers, ours were easy to install. Gap installed our speakers in all their stores. Their process called for speaker installation only the day before opening. Our competitors' speakers required a myriad of complicated tools. You could install our speakers using a quarter. In addition to having a quality speaker, we learned to differentiate ourselves with common sense engineering. Now our "sound tubes" are used all over the world.
Above: Sound Tube speaker developed by David Wiener Ventures.
Ferrari
I wanted to do something more exciting. We teamed up with Ferrari to build sound components we called "art engine."
After the design phase, we bought huge sheets of aluminum which we fed into a robotic cutting device at our Salt Lake factory. It took 18 hours for the robot cutter to create the finished speaker shell product.
Our Ferrari speaker products are sold through Ferrari stores throughout the world.
Working on sound for Ferrari got me focusing on further advancing quality of sound.
Aphex
We bought Aphex, a California company, with the idea of developing and pushing a higher quality of sound.
We learned the hard way. People are cheap. They don't like to pay for apps.
By all standards our Aphex app improved sound quality significantly. We charged $3.00, but, we should have given it away... then charged for later add ons/upgrades.
We sold Aphex last year and we're now out of the audio world.
Advanced Health Care Products
Huge market as population ages.
Who wants to be seen with one of those hideous looking walkers today?
We've developed a whole line of elegant looking, high tech health care aids.
David showed the ROMEOs some examples of hyper designed walkers. Not yet on line.
Ted
I'm working on a Ted talk on entrepreneurship.
I want to focus on how the creative idea itself is not enough.
I want to show how an integrated knowledge of manufacturing, marketing, execution etc. must complement the creative effort.
Companies who become to big, lose the entrepreneurial spirit. We took our Aphex discoveries to Bose. They listened, agreed that our technology offered a significant enhancement to their sound quality... but, they weren't interested. "Not invented here," syndrome?
Young people want to be entrepreneurs. Many have creative ideas, but, they have no idea how to "make" and "market." I think I can make a contribution by helping them to understand that.
I like designing stuff. But, I also like making stuff. I like to get dirty and play with tools.
Q and A
LSDM: When you take your ideas out to sell, how do you protect your ideas?
DW: Patent protection and confidentiality agreements.
LSDM: Has anything been stolen from you?
DW: I was accused of stealing someone else's idea. The claim had no merit and the plaintiff dropped the case.
I've had a few things stolen from me... but, I didn't pursue. We're working on so many things, many of which score. Don't have time to worry about "little" thefts.
Bose attacked me for my first tube speaker... but, the case had no merit and they dropped out.
George Lucas came after me for using the expression "land speeder" to describe my recumbent bike. Nothing came of the claim, largely, I guess, because the bike never gained commercial viability.
LSDM: Is your Aphex App still available.
DW: Yes its still out there. Now controlled by the new company who bought it. Upgrades, if any, will now come from them.
LSDM: Final comment?
DW: Had I known how hard all of this was going to be I'd have stayed with cars!
David Wiener Show and Tell
Above: Blade for push lawn mower. A DW project shelved ten years ago, but a favorite idea that David wants to revive.
Above: A combined flash light and pepper spray safety device designed, for a Heber, UT, company by David Wiener.
Above: Clear Sounds device designed by David Wiener. The ROMEOs loved this. Wear around neck. "Pendant" is a transmitter to hearing aid or ear buds. Transmitter (pendant) can be separated with microphone piece put across the table.
How many times have ROMEOs, with geezer hearing, not been able to hear a dinner conversation where there is ambient background noise? Pictured device solves that problem.
This product synchs with David's idea of opportunities arising from growing geezer (LSDM term) market for "high tech" health care aids.
Above: David's true love. 2115 Porche 911 4S. Specially ordered 7 speed, manual transmission. A clutch no less! Hearkens back to the day when people actually "drove" (as opposed to steered) their automobiles.
Camario, facing camera at right, has a 2010 version of this car.
Thank-you
LSDM thanks David Wiener for his fascinating story of real time entrepreneurial success. We hope to have him back when he develops his TED presentation... to explore the innards of what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
La Societe Deux Magots (LSDM) is a non-partisan ROMEO (retired old men eating out) group which meets daily, at 7:00 AM at Wasatch Bagel in Park City, UT. LSDM members are the rightful intellectual heirs of a group of authors (Hemingway, Sartre, Camus, deBouvoir) who met daily at Cafe Deux Magots, in Paris, France in the 1930's.)
Above: Summer jump apparatus. Utah Olympic Park. Park City, UT. 05 July 2015.
Above: Drums (yellow boots) awaits his turn on jump. Utah Olympic Park. Park City, UT. 05 July 2015.
Above: Drums jumps! Utah Olympic Sports Park. Park City, UT. 05 July 2015.
Above: Climbing Wall. Utah Olympic Sports Park. Park City, UT 05 July 2015.
The reward for climbing to the top of the wall is a jump into the pool. I was afraid to jump off of a normal pool high dive when I was a teenager.
Above: Climbing Wall. Utah Olympic Sports Park. Park City, UT. 05 August 2015.
Close up of climber.
Addendum:
Above: Montage at Creole ski run. PCMR. 05 August 2015.
Offering proof he climbed the Sweeny Switchbacks. But, how do we know he didn't take the Town Lift up?
Just kidding. Congratulations Montage.