We recently connected with Dave Zuverink and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Dave thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes and across all industries, so we’d love to hear about something you’ve done that you feel was particularly innovative.

I think the best example was the development of the Focus Timer. I had been making SlimFold Wallet products for ten years by then but I had always had this idea for a timer that could help you stay in the flow state. It just had so many new challenges that I never knew where to start.

So in 2001 I decided to just dedicate a few months to it, even if I didn’t know the next step or where it would lead. It ended up being so fun to learn about 3D printing, electronics, and manufacturing that I stuck with it for 2 years until I finally had a product I was proud of and launched it on Kickstarter.

There was no outside funding or magic formula. Just consistent work towards a single vision… and enjoyment of the process along the way.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I guess I think of myself as a generalist product designer or inventor. I really enjoy the initial stages of bringing ideas into reality and tend to pick up the necessary skills as I go in order to solve the problem at hand. In terms of background, my education evolved as I learned about disciplines that were more and more interesting to me… from Physics to Mechanical Engineering to Industrial Design and finally a Master’s in Human Factors. Initially I applied that to user research and interaction design at tech companies in the SF Bay Area. But along the way I started making wallets out of Tyvek, pretty much as a hobby.
Eventually I developed SlimFold (www.slimfoldwallet.com) and launched a Kickstarter for it.
We’ve since done 5 Kickstarter projects for SlimFold as well as our most recent one for Focus Timer (www.getfocustimer.com) which is now its own separate company.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Living in San Jose, bootstrapping sort of goes against the grain. But I think for most ideas you can get started on your own. In my particular case I had the idea for the wallet and just continually developed it before and after work for 2 years before I had a product that was ready for mass production.

Could it have been faster? Perhaps. But I think something that goes overlooked in product development is incubation time. By keeping my day job, I didn’t feel rushed to make this product support me. I dedicated an hour before work each day and an hour in the evenings, and just kept with it.

I had various milestones in mind- like when revenue was equal to my day job. But when I hit that, I asked myself what I would do with the extra time if I quit? Customer service? Shipping products? It continually was a better option to outsource those things than to quit my day job.

Even after the profit from my company was equal to my day job, I kept doing both for about 2 more years. This helped me continue to fund the company and I actually enjoyed my career even more, knowing that I wasn’t completely reliant on it.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

I love the leverage that e-commerce affords. My initial plan was to try to get into stores so I could keep my day job and just ship larger boxes to stores. So I went to a trade show to try and get some wholesale orders. To get ready for that I make a makeshift WordPress site and connected a buy button to my new Etsy store as an afterthought.

I got a few orders from the show but it was kind of a pain- the wallets didn’t sell all that fast and it took a lot of follow-up to get vendors to pay.

Then somehow a blog called Uncreate featured the wallet and we got thousands of orders immediately. That opened my eyes to the power of the internet and we never looked back. We now sell on our own site and Amazon and since the margins are so much better than wholesale, I don’t see us in stores any time soon.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.getfocustimer.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getfocustimer/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zuverink/
• Other: Also include SlimFold? www.slimfoldwallet.com https://www.instagram.com/slimfold/