Boise inventor wants entrepreneurs to get smart about planning a business

Caleb Chung is co-founder of Ugobe, the company behind Pleo, an autonomous toy dinosaur. Chung also designed Furby, which was released by Hasbro. He is one of the speakers and presenters at Kickstart, an annual event celebrating and supporting entrepreneurship and innovation.

What will you talk about at the Kickstart conference?
I’m just trying to figure that out. I’m going to really be talking about digging deeper into innovation, aside from all the rules of startups. That ground is really well covered. I’m concerned about nurturing the seed of your idea. The DNA of your company is the seed of your idea; what it’s going to grow into. I think there’s not enough attention to honing the concept itself.

The easiest trap to fall into as a designer or inventor is to fall in love with your first idea. I can’t tell you how many people started companies with what they thought was the next best thing when the better idea was laying about three inches deeper than the first idea. I want to talk about ways to broaden the understanding and broaden the scope of what your original idea is.

First, of course, is research. I don’t think people research hard enough. A lot of people go to people who have reasons to say nice things to them. You need to go to people who are going to be your critics. You really have to put your idea through its paces to know you have something remarkable. Otherwise you’re not really innovating. If your idea has real innovation and breakthrough attached to it, you will weather those storms.

You have to be multi-disciplinary. If you’re a tech person, make sure you work with artists and designers and people outside your field. Focusing the question on a cross-pollination of talents gets you value above your competitors. A good example is Apple. A good MP3 player is just tech sitting on a table. You add design and you get the iPod. The golden mix for innovation is art, science and business. The product appears between those three. Otherwise you get technology for technologists and art stuck in the Stone Age.
The art of the brainstorm is very important. Take your product as it is and brainstorm around it. Find the edges of what your category influences. Then look cross-industry to where your product might influence people outside your industry. With Pleo, we’re making a robot dinosaur. Most people think it’s a kids’ toy for boys. Our demographic is widely different. This is not what I was planning.
If you’re not on the Web all the time looking at what’s new, you can’t see where trends are taking us. An incredible tool is the Google search engine and Google patents. It’s always been a problem getting patents from the U.S. patent office. If you read everything about the patents you would be one skilled in the art. It may take a week to read them, but you would know everything you needed. I don’t think a lot of people do. What I hear is people saying they have an incredible idea – that there is nothing like it out there. That can mean it’s a really good idea or a really bad idea. What you want to say is there are tons of things out there like it but yours is twice as good. A lot of people new to business need this type of pep talk.

What can Idaho do to attract and develop more innovative businesses?
One of the most important things to do is follow through on creating learning institutions that create a multi-disciplinary approach to education. Again, science and art. The Apple model. We need to turn out people who understand business, art and design. You can’t just think “I’m going to have better technology than the next guy.”
If we’re going to woo other companies, we need an educational system that supports their new employees. We need a clear identity for Idaho. The identity right now for people who don’t know is potatoes, agriculture and militia. The identity we want is innovation. We can be more innovative than other metropolitan areas. We have a blend of art and science, this incredible landscape of nature.

When did you become fascinated with toys?
I took things apart as a kid and made new things with them. I just had a fascination with them. The thing about toys is that any good idea, mechanical or electronic, will end up in a toy. But it’s boiled down to its essential components. It’s a great teaching tool. When you open up a toy, you’re always surprised about how few components there are and the effect they have. As a child it’s easy because it’s not clouded with components. Because of the mass market price reductions you see a lot of technologies simplified to only what is the most important. That’s what intrigued me about it.
 
How is work like play?
The only way to get new ideas is to be off-balanced and out of your head. Out of your critical mind allows your intuitive mind to take over. The intuitive is not some wishy-washy thing. The intuitive moments you have are really very dense data that you can’t deconstruct with your conscience mind. You’re taking 20, 30 elements at once and getting a feel about them and they click into place. You can’t do that if you’re thinking linearly.
The essence of that is letting go. Playing. It opens pathways that allow ideas to flow. Ideas just come easily. That’s the power of play. Of course you do your research, all the real world things you’re supposed to do. And you hope for that inspiration. Play is a tool. But you can’t think of it as a tool or it’s not play.
Play reminds you, especially in my field, that people are buying an experience. They’re not buying technology. They may analyze with their mind, but they’re buying with their heart. Play reminds you of how humans behave. It’s an emotional thing.

How did the development of Pleo differ from Furby? Was it easier because you’d gone through the process before?
It’s very different. Furby was a licensed product to Hasbro. Hasbro did the development. My job was to invent something cool and build some prototypes for trade shows. Build the character and put it up for adoption. Pleo was “have an idea and build a company around it to manufacture and distribute it.”
I would always recommend licensing first. Most people want to create a company. If your product is licensable you should always do it first. You get a name and some credibility. That’s the first step unless you have experience building companies already. You need a war chest to survive while your seed is growing. With Pleo, the idea is just part of the equation. You don’t get into the room without a good idea. But the room is the size of a stadium and it’s filled with people with good ideas. There are thousands and thousands of people with good ideas.
I’m not really a business person. I know my place in the ecosystem. The idea has never been a problem. How to execute, getting a license or forming a company is the challenge. My advice is: Don’t start unless you have the right people or at least one good person who knows how to find the right people.
The other key is if you find the right person to start, they will lead you to other great people. They will help you build the culture and the DNA around it. I wasn’t going to do this unless we found the right person.
I was able to know they were the right people when I met them. That’s no little thing. A lot of people pick the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Date first. Don’t just jump into business together.

When is Pleo coming out?
July-ish. Middle of summer.