Lessons from a Recovering Hardware Founder | Bluesmart, ROOM, Kite Compliance | Brian Chen
For this episode, we sat down with Brian Chen, founder and CEO of Kite Compliance, an AI-powered product-compliance platform built to make certification faster, safer, and less painful to scale. We discuss building hardware during the last hardware renaissance, surviving lockdowns while running a business dependent on in-office work, and how regulators can make life very difficult for hardware founders.
Brian dropped out of MIT Sloan after one semester to co-found Bluesmart, the YC W15 smart-luggage startup that raised $2.2M on Indiegogo before airlines banned non-removable batteries and grounded the category entirely. He then co-founded ROOM, creators of those modular office phone-booths we’ve all taken calls from. There he scaled the business to $60M in annual revenue before selling it to contract-furniture maker OFS in 2023.
Today Brian is focused on helping companies solving hard problems overcome compliance and regulatory hurdles. On the side, he's an active angel investor backing other founders.
For more information on the podcast, check out https://tradeoffs.fm
Episode: T-26-014
Episode: T-26-014
