Thirty miles per hour. Head down. Jo Guo glances at his phone for a split second and almost meets a bumper. Three inches to spare.

Heart racing, he asks the question every cyclist eventually does: What if I didn't have to look down to see my stats?

That became Minimis, AR sunglasses that put performance data directly in your line of sight so you never have to look down again. It's a clean story. A visceral one. Almost everyone who runs or rides has had some version of that moment.

Jo and his cofounder Paul pre-sold $100,000 worth. They flew from Sydney to San Francisco to raise $2 million. But something tripped them up.

The culprit? The very thing meant to prove the dream was possible, a first-pass prototype, turned into the reason nobody could see the dream at all.

They later gave it a name that fit a little too well: The Frankenstein prototype.

#179 Minimis: Declaring War on Garmin

The Prototype Paradox

If you’re building hardware, you know the no-win choice:

• Show nothing? You’re vaporware.
  

• Show the early thing? That early thing becomes the product in everyone’s mind.

Charles Hudson said what seasoned hardware investors were thinking:

“The gap, the imaginative leap you had to take from seeing the first version to the final version, it was like a gigantic leap.”

And when the product lives on your face, the leap gets even bigger.

Enterprise SaaS can be ugly. Industrial equipment can be clunky. Consumer wearables? They must disappear.

Dawn Dobras, a competitive rower, is wearables obsessive and the kind of buyer Minimis wants. She put them on and didn’t hesitate:

“I’m just gonna say this: they’re clunky and I wouldn’t use them. I love the idea more than how it felt on my head.”

That line is lethal in consumer hardware. Because at $699, you don’t get graded on effort. You get graded on inevitability.

When Form Kills Function

Internally, the prototype was called “Tim Tam”, after the Aussie cookie. It’s a 3D-printed shell with visible wires and nearly double the intended weight.

Jo later admitted:

“We started to call it the Frankenstein prototype because… we put together what we can and we’ve sort of kept it as a trophy item.”

Paul, who has 30 years in wearables and medical devices, dropped the most important sentence of the entire episode:

“The electronics are never the hard part in a wearable. It’s getting the fit right across a population and getting the aesthetics just right.”

That’s the part investors underwrite. Electronics can be engineered. Fit and identity are brand-defining.

At $699, you’re not competing with Amazon gadgets. You’re competing with:

• Garmin Fenix ($600–900)
  

• Apple Watch Ultra ($799)
  

• Premium Oakleys ($400+)
  

Dawn said it best:

“I’m really specific about it… I’m not just gonna add something random to that tech stack.”

When something lives on your face, technology is the easy part.

The Missed Bridge

Elizabeth offered the simple bridge they needed:

“Even if you had like a 3D-printed version of what you want it to look like… that would be very helpful.”

Not asking for magic.

Just asking to see the future.The best hardware teams don’t just show progress, they show trajectory. Put the ugly working prototype next to a beautiful “looks-like” shell. Show the delta. Reduce the imagination tax.

Charles’ reflection was revealing:

“All of the teams that we did invest in… when you look back at the original version, you’re like, I don’t know why we invested in that iteration.”

Great investors can imagine. Great founders help them.

The Category Was About to Shift

Weeks later, Meta announced its Oakley collaboration with Strava integration. No display. Not standalone. But suddenly the world was talking about smart glasses again.

The ad comments lit up:

“Can you add a display?”

“Can it be standalone?”

Category validation arrived, just after the failed pitch. The irony? Frankenstein might have landed differently in a post-Meta room. Timing matters.

The Redemption Lap

Jo and Paul didn’t fly home. They stayed in San Francisco for three months. At Founders Inc., 50 hardware builders under one roof. Iteration at absurd velocity. Paul attacked weight and silhouette. Jo biked to 50 Bay Area bike shops. Eleven signed on. That’s a 22% conversion rate in specialty retail. Not hype. Signal. They raised $270K from 18 angels and landed their first VC check from Entrepreneur Ventures.

Six months later, version two:

• Less than half the weight
  

• Sharper silhouette
  

• “Looks like Oakleys from the front”

Frankenstein became a museum piece. The lesson isn’t “don’t show a prototype.”

It’s this: In hardware, the prototype doesn’t just prove feasibility it proves taste. And taste decides whether investors can see your future or only your present.

Join us for The Pitch Tampa!

April 21-23. Sunny Tampa, FL. Three days of live pitch filming, real conversations, and the kind of community you can only build in person.

We're bringing together the investors, founders, and listeners who make this show what it is. If you've ever wanted to see what actually happens behind the scenes—or if you just want to spend three days with exceptional people who are building the future—this is it.

This event is for:

• Investors looking to meet their next portfolio company

• Listeners of the show who want the IRL experience

• Anyone who wants behind-the-scenes access to how deals actually get made

You'll watch live pitch filming, connect with brilliant builders and investors, eat incredibly well (it's Tampa, after all), and be part of the community that's shaping the next wave of startups.

Founders: Want to pitch on the show? Apply here.