Yeah, he worked on a drone that could give you a tattoo, as well as a pair of jeans that would send you a text if your barn door was open.
But behind some of the flashy projects Eric Schneider worked on while at Chaotic Moon was the desire to make it easier and faster to design and manufacture the circuit boards that enable many of our modern tech toys and tools.
“If I want to build stuff for the rest of my life, I had to build the tool first," he said.
So he has poured all of his energy into a new startup that does exactly that -- it makes it simple to design PCB prototypes online and have them shipped to you in a matter of days.
It's called Patchr, and it has already won the support of Ecliptic Capital, a relatively new Austin venture capital firm led by Schneider's former Chaotic Moon bosses, William Hurley (who is better known as "whurley") and Mike Erwin.
Patchr, which is a five-person team currently, was recently accepted to the Capital Factory Accelerator. Last year, it filed SEC paperwork indicating it had raised $100,000 in funding. It is currently raising a significantly larger seed round, but Schneider declined to say for how much.
Traditionally, PCBs have been designed on software such as Autodesk -- or more recently, KiCad. Schneider said Patchr isn't trying to lure away engineers who have been working with other programs for decades. It's more focused on next generation users, including small businesses, makers and other hobbyists who want to design boards for everything from a simple LED light to complex synthesizers and high-level robotics.
Patchr, which has drag-and-drop simplicity, has already been used by cosplay costume makers, people designing business conference badges, IoT companies, robotics and beyond.
After designing on Patchr's platform, the boards are manufactured at Royal Circuits, which makes boards for Tesla, 3M and Amazon. It uses leftover space on much larger circuit board orders to lower cost and maintain high quality.
When I met with Schneider, he planned to meet with a guitar pedal effects company later in the day. Creators have a lot of ideas, he said.
“Tons of guitar filters, tons of guitar amps," he said. "And I build a lot of synthesizers. A weird amount of synthesizers are going through [the platform]. And then a lot of robotics projects and IoT devices. People are putting circuit boards in their beds. They’re everywhere now.”
Major pushes to enhance STEM education worldwide have also helped boost the need for rapid prototyping and circuit board tools.
In many ways, Patchr is a startup that was born out of Schneider's desire to build things.
"I always built stuff," he said. "That’s been my passion my whole life."
He studied art in high school, went on to study interactive art in college and later studied interaction design -- always with a passion for building hardware. During his master's in London, he sent an interactive resume to whurley at Chaotic Moon. He got the gig, and worked on flame-throwing drones, fitness trackers and many other flashy projects.
He went on to join whurley's next company, Honest Dollar, which was acquired by Goldman Sachs. Schneider worked there briefly before setting out to start Patchr.
“Little did I know, it wasn’t as easy as building it and having all this infinite time to build all the things I want," he said. "I became an full on business founder, and I’m doing a lot of pitching and sales.”
He said Patchr is focused on building a community. Its premium SaaS product costs $15 a month, which provides privacy on your projects. The free version is all open source, which is key to Patchr developing a community of makers.
“Our competitors have built the software and said 'hey, here it is, use it,'" he said. "We’ve built the software and we’re trying to cultivate this brand around it and these people around it … really build a community where everyone is sharing what they’re building.”
