IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015 - 30

was development director at EA Sports.
Both Scheinberg and Harden are married with young children, which inspired
them to create a more educational toy
for their own kids.
Once they settled on the idea for
TROBO, they got to work solidifying all
aspects of their product-the application,
the plush TROBO robot, and the content
and design. They hired a team of developers to build the application, contracted a
factory to develop the working prototype,
and reached out to the TROBO community for help with story ideas. The original five stories were voted on by Kickstarter backers, and additional stories
were developed through online writing
contests. Additionally, they formed an
Educational Board of Advisors comprising teachers, homeschoolers, and experts
in behavior development to vet content
and design decisions.
Harden is responsible for the creative design of the character and story
elements as well as the technical design
and development of the application,
while Scheinberg runs the business
side and directs the manufacturing and
sales channels.

Jeremy Scheinberg and Chris Harden launched a Kickstarter campaign to turn the
TROBO prototypes into a marketable product.

market validation can be a big mistake.
Having learned this lesson in a previous
venture, the team made sure to validate TROBO through many channels,
including Startup Weekend, a parent
focus group, and Kickstarter. They have
tested TROBO with over 750 children,
parents, and toy industry professionals.

Kickstarter
In September 2014, Harden a nd
Scheinberg, by this time both working
full time at the company they named
Skookoo, found themselves at the
threshold of turning their dream into
reality. They set up a Kickstarter campaign to turn the TROBO prototypes

Tackling Challenges
Bringing a technology product to market does not happen without a few challenges. A major technical challenge was
choosing the right platform for application development. According to Harden,
"picking a technology stack, like Flash,
HTML5, or Unity, to name a few, entails
not only ensuring it can support all the
features and infrastructure for your
app but that you can find developers
to help you move quickly, the licensing and tools costs are affordable, and
that it will be supported for a significant
period in the future." To select the platform, they downloaded the contenders,
developed critical features for proof of
concept, and then reached out to their
networks to find development partners.
From the business side, the biggest
lesson learned has been that "cash is
king." Here, Scheinberg says, "the lesson is to get the product in front of
potential customers as quickly as possible." Developing a product without solid

IEEE women in engineering magazine

Both Scheinberg (left) and Harden are married with young children, which inspired
them to create a more educational toy for their own kids.

june 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015