Bare Conductive started off as a group project at the Royal College of Art in 2008. It spawned much public interest and inspired its four founders to turn their product into a business.

Starting out with a jar of (conductive) paint, Bare Conductive now offers paint pens, various kits, and the Touch Board, their latest addition which they crowdfunded via Kickstarter last year. Part of Bare Conductive’s business is about understanding what their products enable and where users decide to go with them. So they won’t be sitting still just yet.

Determined to lead the way in the area of physical interaction design, Bare Conductive plans to organise global hack days to connect the huge network of projects in their community.

Q&A with Matt Johnson, co-founder of Bare Conductive

We asked him about his experience and reflections on starting up.

When building your company, what was particularly challenging?

Recruiting talent - that is tough, that to me is the hardest thing. I think the mistake that we’ve made is hiring on skills alone and not personality. That, to us, hasn’t provided the infrastructure of growth. At this point, we need to hire people that could potentially be managing somebody else, not because they’re going to, but because they have to take ownership over their area and develop it independently.

You received Technology Strategy Board (TSB) funding – was this helpful?

Actually the TSB grant, I think, was probably more crucial than we realise in providing a stamp of approval, that clearly the government is taking it deadly seriously, so individuals should as well.

Did you consider using other support programmes, for example incubators or accelerators?

When we look at companies that are still operating in the incubator space, we feel like it’s not a true market test. It essentially still feels like you’re in school, because you’re next to other startups, which some people see as a great networking opportunity and is good for problem-solving. For us, it was really exciting to get our first office space, it was the most exciting moment, but it was also really intimidating because it was like, “Okay, now we’ve got to pay the rent.”