The Jacobs Institute invites members of the UC Berkeley community to a just-announced addition to the fall 2015 lineup of Jacobs Design Conversations, a series that invites leading designers and makers to Berkeley to share their insights with the campus community. Connecting diverse perspectives under one roof, Jacobs Design Conversations are spaces for dialogue on a broad spectrum of innovations and ideas.
On Friday, November 13, the Jacobs Institute will welcome Benjamin Joffe, who will speak from 12-1pm in 310 Jacobs Hall. Joffe is General Partner at HAX, the world’s first and largest hardware accelerator with 80 investments across 5 main categories: robotics, health, lifestyle, IoT tools and advanced manufacturing. He has lived in China, Japan, Korea since 2000, working in strategy, telecom, Internet and gaming before turning to hardware in 2013. Born in Paris, Benjamin speaks English, French, Japanese and enough Mandarin for a conversation to last a domestic flight in China. Benjamin is also an angel investor and in-demand speaker in tech conferences.
At the Jacobs Institute, Joffe will discuss building a global hardware startup in 2015. He says: “Smart watches, activity trackers, drones… the market seems to be flooded with those today. Yet, despite this acceleration in commoditization and competition, there are many opportunities and new ways of building products faster, cheaper, better and launching them globally.” In this talk, Joffe will share the HAX vision of the “Lean Hardware” approach and their experience investing in and accelerating 80 startups ranging from robotics to health and lifestyle devices. This will also cover learnings from running over 40 successful crowdfunding campaigns.
This talk is free and open to the public; to help plan for the event, advance registration is encouraged. Lunch will be provided and first priority for lunch will be given to those who register in advance, but day-of guests are welcome.
Beyond this new addition, upcoming Jacobs Design Conversations events include a talk from Ellen Lupton on November 20. Read more about this event and Jacobs Design Conversations.