Hardware Engineer, Glassboard Product Development
Elijah Clark has hosted four Episodes.
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The Art of the Hardtech Agency with Justin Sirotin (OCTO)
June 8th, 2026 | Season 3 | 47 mins 7 secs
Justin Sirotin, founder and CEO of OCTO, industrial designer, and the seasoned agency owner, joins DeAndre and Grant for a candid, founder-to-founder breakdown of what it really takes to build a product agency that lasts. From surviving 2020 without firing anyone, to why sales is the hardest job in the building, to knowing when to let a client "graduate," it's a masterclass in the unglamorous economics of relationship-based businesses.
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Inside gBETA: Building Hard Tech Founders Nationwide
May 18th, 2026 | Season 3 | 47 mins 18 secs
In this episode of The Hardtech Podcast, host DeAndre Harakas sits down with Davide Dantonio, Director of gBETA Accelerators in Indiana, to unpack what it actually takes to build a successful hard tech startup. Davide shares his journey from Naples, Italy through France, Spain, London, Kraft Heinz, and Amazon Pay, to running one of the Midwest's most active accelerator programs. They dig into customer obsession, the difference between customer discovery and "sales discovery," doing things that don't scale, the Pareto principle for early product roadmaps, and Davide's financing-and-milestones framework for fundraising. The conversation features real anecdotes from hard tech founders building truck-scanning AI, advanced optical lenses, pothole-scanning vehicle cameras, and plant compounds for animal gut health; plus details on gBETA's upcoming Industry 4.0 cohort launching in June.
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From Clinician to $100M MedTech Giant: Dr. David Albert, Founder of AliveCor
May 6th, 2026 | Season 3 | 52 mins 20 secs
Dr. David Albert, founder of AliveCor and pioneer of digital health technology, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman for a deep dive into building a regulated medical device company from scratch. From prototyping the first smartphone EKG using a gutted Mophie case and ultrasonic signal transmission to bootstrapping early revenue by selling to veterinarians, Dr. Albert shares the guerrilla engineering and entrepreneurial grit behind one of the most impactful consumer medical devices ever created.
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Scaling the Connected World with John Grady of Ayla Networks
July 22nd, 2025 | Season 2 | 42 mins 24 secs
In this episode, John Grady, CEO of Ayla Networks, joins the Glassboard team to explore what it takes to deliver seamless, scalable connected experiences. From smart home devices to emerging applications in medtech and industrial IoT, John shares lessons from supporting over 50 global brands and activating more than 13 million devices. The conversation dives into hardware-software integration, user experience design, and why the first 30 seconds of setup can make or break a product.