HoopDee - Started With Software, Ended With Hardware

Roxie Alsruhe had never done anything in hardware or manufacturing when she came home from the hospital with her first born and ran straight into a problem that a lot of families quietly deal with, which is knowing when a bottle of breast milk expires without having to decode a CDC chart while you are exhausted. That problem became HoopDee, a set of NFC-enabled silicone rings that stretch onto any bottle and sync to an app with a tap, so everyone in the house can see what is in each bottle, where it has been sitting, and when it expires.

In this episode Grant Chapman and Drew Westrick talk with Roxie about a founder journey that ran backwards from the usual hardware story. She started with an ugly PowerPoint instead of a prototype and shared it with friends until she knew the problem was real, then tested the tap-to-sync experience with stretchy bottle bands and NFC tags bought off Amazon, and released the app months before the hardware existed so she could iron out workflows and collect feedback while manufacturing caught up. They get into the reality of hardware once it arrived, including longer timelines and higher tooling costs, simplifying the design down to a single over-molded piece of silicone with a laser-etched secondary process, and the test rig her dad built to stretch samples a thousand times to find the right formula.

The back half is go to market, which Roxie is candid about being the hardest part, because her core audience is first-time parents who have not experienced the problem yet. She talks about why the conversion rate at in-person expos is so much higher than anything online, how grandmothers and sisters at her booth end up selling the product better than she can, and why TikTok Shop and affiliates are the closest digital version of that moment. She closes with advice for new hardware founders, which is that everything takes longer, keep reserves, and keep asking for feedback even when it stings.