Daniel Price and Daniel DeLaveaga made an offbeat pitch to the first employees of Breadware, the young company whose IoT prototyping kits began catching on this summer.
The company didn’t offer great salaries to those early employees, but they could have free room and board in a 14,000-square-foot mansion the company was leasing not far from Santa Barbara on the Central Coast of California.
Rather than rent an office in Santa Barbara, where the going rate was $5,000 for a space that would be cramped quarters, at best, the founders allocated the $5,000 towards a sprawling abode in Santa Ynez. For one year, everyone worked together for long hours in the electronics wonderland downstairs, occasionally retreating upstairs for a meal and some sleep.
“Work-life balance was a challenge,” Price remembers with a laugh, but that at-times chaotic year paid off this spring when Breadware rolled out its Mega B-Line kits that allow absolute amateurs to develop prototypes for Internet-of-Thing prototypes.