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Adriaan Smit, who is a full time engineer, part time entrepreneur and co-inventor of the WavyWand currently seeking funding on Kickstarter joins Enterprise Radio. He discusses the typical process for developing an idea into a product.
Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Adriaan Smit discuss the following:
- What business idea are you currently working on?
- Where did the idea come from?
- What is the typical process for developing an idea into a product?
- As an entrepreneur, what do you think it takes to be successful?
- What resources can you share that have been invaluable in your business?
Duration: 5:47
Adriaan Smit was born to be an engineer. Always very inquisitive and from a young age spent hours figuring out how every day things around him worked. Toys just seemed more interesting when they were taken apart. Adriaan was born in South Africa and grew up in a small academic town, Potchefstroom; just south of the better know Johannesburg. He grew up on a farm and took full advantage of the opportunity it provided to design and create; building tee houses, zip lines and even pitching in to help fix things around the farm. In high school Adriaan opted to take some science classes and discovered his interest in electronics and computers. The need for an automatic water pump controller to keep the water tank full on the farm spurred his high school senior project and even turned into a small business when the surrounding neighbors decided they need one as well.
After high school Adriaan embraced the opportunity to study abroad and hopped on a plane to Walla Walla Washington where he did his Bachelors on Engineering. The onion fields of Walla Walla provided an ideal place to explore his engineering potential. Adriaan and friends built all kinds of DIY radio controlled planes and other crafts. Encouraged access to the university machine shop enabled Adriaan and a fellow class mate to build their own snowshoes and cover their costs by taking a dozen or so orders.
Adriaan’s interest in improving on existing or designing new product continued to grow during his time in Corvallis Oregon while doing his Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Adriaan is now a full time engineer at Intel but spends a lot of his free time on entrepreneurial projects. Adriaan also holds a managing position with Green Sky Ventures, a company based out of El Segundo California that develops and takes creative ideas to market.
Links: www.wavywand.com
