The Fundamental Molecule
Mike Ting - Building a World-Class Physical Product
I am a big fan of Cala Systems. They've set a completely new standard for the heat pump water heater and water heaters in general. What was initially an afterthought from large manufacturers - essentially a marketing ploy that really didn't make much of a difference to overall water heater performance - Cala is a step-change in its $14 billion annually non-discretionary market. When you need a water heater, you need it regardless of what's going on in the economy. We talked to Co-founder and CEO Michael Rigney in Episode 24. It's great - check it out - but we wanted to do a TMF first and have a product lead on. Mike Ting is the Co-founder and CTO of Cala and has overseen the creation of a world-class product, up to and including setting up an entire factory twice. He's a super guy, and this is an insight-laden masterclass in building and scaling a product. Please enjoy my product-first conversation with Mike Ting. Subscribe to The Fundamental Molecule here: https://www.burntislandventures.com/the-fundamental-molecule For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fundamental-molecule/id1714287205 ----------- Mike Ting is the Co-founder and CTO of Cala, where he builds intelligent heat pump water heaters that act as grid-interactive thermal batteries. Before Cala, Mike spent ten years developing consumer hardware at Bose and SharkNinja. He worked in the headphone group at Bose and led product teams at SharkNinja, shipping high-volume electronics globally. Today he scales hardware from proof-of-concept to mass production at Cala’s Wilmington, MA factory. Mike earned a mechanical engineering degree from McGill University and is a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen. 00:00 - Introduction 02:01 - What Actually Makes a Good Product 07:10 - Building the World's First Intelligent Water Heater 16:24 - Scaling From Prototype to Manufacturing 26:30 - Blending Hardware, Software, and Customer Experience 33:59 - Why Installers Are the Real Customer 39:27 - The Future of Smart Water Heating 45:05 - Startup Lessons on Building Products That Last Links: Burnt Island Ventures: https://www.burntislandventures.com/ Mike Ting Cala Systems SM Material Key Takeaways: “The biggest thing for me has always been delivering real value to the customers.” “The best products that you can use are the ones that you don't have to think about.” “At Bose, we used to talk about building products that nobody could have ever thought about before, but once they use them, they could never think about living without them.” “Never assume that you, as the product designers, the engineers, marketers, whatever, know better than what the consumers do.” “If you build something that's way too futuristic, it's a product people already aren't thinking about, it's generally going to scare them away.” “There just aren't contract manufacturers who know how to build water heaters.” “You have to be really resilient and really scrappy. Accept the circumstances and say, ‘Okay, here are the problems I'm going to go solve today.’”
