Zen Tense: Not all Dead, Which Means it's Slightly Alive
Parting ways with the new company wasn’t easy. We called in family, who generously dropped everything and came out on a Saturday to help move everything that was ours – or we’d negotiated to keep to work on finishing the Zen Table Kickstarter – out of the venture’s work space and cram it into the two-car garage of our rental house. That was fun.
Then, Melissa and I set about figuring out what we could do, what we felt we had to do, and what even could be done at all.
While giving money to a Kickstarter campaign does not constitute any sort of contract – in fact, one could (and people do) argue that giving money to a Kickstarter project is a contribution toward an idea – to try and bring something into existence that otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t exist. Some people have, and will continue to, walk away from their Kickstarter campaigns when it doesn’t work out, it’s a risk that goes along with the crowdsourcing platform.
But, we couldn’t walk away. All of these people had put faith in me, and given money to back up that faith, and neither I, nor Melissa, could walk away from their expectations and optimism. In fact, both Melissa and I feel a bit sick to our stomachs when we think about the Kickstarter promises we haven’t yet been able to fulfill – despite working on it for years now, 11 of the original 125 backers are still waiting for their reward. It’s not a good feeling – for us or them, I’m sure.
So, there we were - no money, name and reputation still on the line, crappy Y axis mechanism that couldn’t be the final solution, dozens of unfilled pledges for desktop Zen Tables…
What to do? The first thing we did was write a detailed letter to each backer who had pledged towards a desktop or coffee table to gauge how folks felt. We sent a survey of sorts, about whether they’d rather get their pledged desktop Zen Table, eventually, and how long they felt they could wait on that, or if they’d rather take their chances with the company that preferred shifting towards selling 3D printer filament.
The response was humbling and uplifting. So many people still had faith in us, and really wanted a Zen Table. We prioritized delivery based on the tone of the emails we got back.
We posted an update trying to explain our predicament in fairly general terms, the whole thing was embarrassing, it felt like I was making excuses, like it seemed when so many of the other Kickstarter projects that’ve run late often do. Melissa and I tried to stay positive.
The next thing I did was throw out that crappy Y axis design.
After we junked the screw-drive Y axis mechanism, I had to design a replacement. I also had to get a job to pay the bills, set up a functional workshop in a garage, and build pledge rewards with our existing stock of parts for the urgent/impatient backers.
What Actually Came Next
I got a job to pay the bills, through a friend’s recommendation, with Carbine Studios (NCSOFT). I came home from my paying job every day, and worked on designing a new Y axis mechanism, fine tuning the tables Melissa was building from existing stock, testing prototypes, testing built tables, and packing up finished pledges to ship.
I had no life, or rather my life was down to working to make money, and desperately laboring to keep Zen Table alive.
In the end, having so many people back us on Kickstarter was a blessing and a curse. We struggled to get back on our feet, sinking every extra dime into the Zen Table; buying more 3D printers to manufacture all the bespoke parts and the ongoing prototyping for the new mechanism.
It wasn’t all bad. I was able to design an elegant, effective solution to the Y axis challenge. It fit into the existing space, was more accessible, and delivered the required torque with smooth, fast operation. It was working well and produced a quiet, smooth glide.
Both X and Y axis were belt-driven (no more screw drive), using OpenBeam extruded aluminum framing, with stepper motors controlling the motion on each end, and a slide-bearing magnet holder.
I was so thrilled with the design and functionality of the actuator solution that I decided to make it available to the maker community at large, and started BuildSpark. It was so popular that the demands of running BuildSpark and filling orders quickly consumed all our non-working time. Though the site is still up, and we intend to eventually get back to running it, we had to suspend sales so that we could have a sliver of a life and get back to Zen Table.
While I was redesigning the Y axis, I also came up with a recirculating ball bearing mechanism that would work with the OpenBeam system. I first discovered OpenBeam through Terence Tam’s Kickstarter project for it.
I had the opportunity to meet Terrance at a 3D printer show to demonstrate my recirculating bearing mechanism, which could replace a more expensive solution involving the addition of precision ground steel rails. The mechanism used Delrin ball bearings, instead of steel, so to not damage the extruded aluminum beam, and would be a fraction of the cost to produce. He and his partner were excited about the design and invited me to a designers’ group dinner after the show. The good things like this helped keep me designing new solutions and kept pushing the desktop Zen Table forward.
And still, we were challenged with the time required to manufacture and build all the parts, the cost of sourcing raw materials, and the necessity of devoting all our unpaid time to refining, building, testing and shipping Zen Table pledges…but we were still in business, so to speak.
The Opportunity of a Lifetime
We’d been limping along for about eight months – working and building, building and working, and not much else – when a friend reached out with an opportunity to apply for an open position with Oculus VR.
I’d convinced this friend to get hired on at Oculus after their Kickstarter was successful and they started setting up a real business. I asked him to tell me what it was like working there, and what Palmer Luckey was really into – lucky me, Palmer was really into lasers. So, I stayed up late the night before my interview using my custom actuator system to build a bespoke laser cutter. I’d planned to use it to cut the Oculus VR logo into a piece of wood. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any good wood scraps about the house that weren’t already slated for use in Zen Table, so I tried cutting a ream of paper. Not a good plan, since the paper caught rather spectacularly on fire.
I packed up the custom laser cutter anyway and brought it with to the interview as proof that I had the skills needed to quickly design, build and program whatever Oculus might need. The interview team was thrilled and wanted to power it up and cut some wood right there in the conference room. Sadly, I only had one pair of laser safety goggles with me and, since I didn’t want to blind my potential future employers, I couldn’t turn the laser on right then. But, I got the job anyway.
I joined the Oculus VR team, as employee number 17, in May 2013. Oculus was, at that time, a typical start up. So, I went from working day on Carbine games and night on Zen Table, to working day and night and weekends for Oculus. I also took a pay cut for the opportunity of a lifetime – which meant that financial hole got a little bit deeper and the path to dig back out just a bit longer.
I loved working at Oculus. It was exciting with new challenges and problems to solve, both technical and practical, every day. However, the intensive, all-consuming nature of a startup, especially an ambitious startup like Oculus, ate all my time and work capacity.
As I spent more time at work, or traveling, for Oculus, a permanent nagging guilt set in, and hasn’t gone away for three years now. We continued to build and deliver Zen Table pledges a few at a time, but the burden of my work schedule and the outstanding Kickstarter commitments began to chisel away at the foundation of my marriage.
And then, Facebook acquired Oculus (while I can’t provide details, I can suggest you read through my post about The Big Acquisition, and then draw any conclusions you’d like from there).Then, Oculus relocated their primary operations from Irvine, CA to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, CA – which meant packing up our household, and extensive workshop, and trying to find a place to rent, in one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, with enough space to set everything back up in a functional way. Which hasn’t worked out so well.
We’re still working on it, slowly, with a mechanism that has been further refined for efficiency and functionality.
Around the same time, I delivered a pledged desktop Zen Table to an early backer of the project – a guy named Boz. He posted about it on Facebook. It wasn’t until we traveled up to Facebook HQ for orientation that I realized who Boz was: Andrew Bosworth, one of Facebook’s earliest employees and current VP of Engineering.
A while after moving up to Menlo Park, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Boz. I met him at his desk, and there was the desktop Zen Table working away, drawing its little spiral pattern. Since Facebook doesn’t have offices, even for execs, each desk is prime work real estate – deskestate? – so many people stop by and see the Zen Desktop there. According to Boz, they’re intrigued and want to know how to get one. He is enthusiastic about being an early backer of Kickstarter in general and Zen Table and his genuine excitement is inspiring.
Meanwhile
Our first spring in the Bay area, I was excited to go to the Bay Area Maker Faire – the 10-year anniversary. Some friends had tagged me because they’d seen a project on display that was similar to my Zen Table, the Sisyphus sand table. Melissa and I spent some time walking about, checking out cool new inventions, talking with the inventors. Until we reached the Sisyphus booth.
I spent a few minutes looking at what they had, the tables, the software running on a screen, the mechanism on display. The external finish on their tables was attractive, but there were some technical details, including the noise resulting from the tables’ operation, that wasn’t as developed as I’d expected (and explained why they don’t have any videos showing their table’s operation with native sound – all their videos have soundtrack with music playing instead of the crunch of a metal ball bearing grinding through sand). I considered carefully whether they’d welcome any technical discussion or feedback – Maker Faire is supposed to be a collaborative place, but before offering unsolicited advice I wanted to get to know them a little.
So, I introduced myself…
“Hey, did you see a Kickstarter a couple of years ago for a similar product?”
“Yes, we’ve seen that.” He said
“That’s mine, the Zen Table. I wanted to come see yours. It’s beautiful.
”They ignored the compliment and instead he asked, “What are you planning on doing with the work?”
“Well, I’m super busy at the minute with a job at a startup, but I’m glad that other people are carrying this forward…”
He continued on the same vein, “We know who you are. You’re a video game designer, right? When exactly did you come up with the idea and can you prove it?
”At this point, I was starting to get upset, “Hey, I’m here to compliment you, not to make a claim or anything. I’m not sure why you’d ask that.”
“Well, you claim you came up with this idea, coincidentally just before ours…” he began.
“I don’t really think I need proof here. We’re at Maker Faire, where inventors come to share ideas. Why are you asking me this?” I said.
“It’s pretty clear to us that you’re not capable of coming up with this idea. So, you copied ours. Where is your degree from? How can you claim you did all this on your own?”
The conversation went, generally, downhill from there. I was getting genuinely angry and defensive, while they continued to attack, accuse me of stealing their idea, and of being uneducated and unintelligent enough to conceive of, and execute, an idea like Zen Table. They also strongly suggested they might think about pursuing “action” against me.
At this point, Melissa, who’d been looking at adjacent projects, heard the tone and direction of the conversation and came over to intervene. We started to walk away, when I turned back and took this picture of the clearly defensive and, frankly, snotty Sisyphus team.
Sadly, this unpleasant interaction pretty well ruined my day, and the Maker Faire experience. It was so rude and ugly, and the absolute antithesis of what Maker Faire is supposed to be about – it was just awful.
Well, bad news Sisyphus guy, we’re not the only two people with this idea. Several others have developed working prototypes, and fully functional versions, of the same thing – with varying levels of finish and functionality. You’re going to have a lot of people to investigate and threaten (check out the partial list in the appendix at the bottom of this post).
I will take this small moment to point out that the Sisyphus team does not yet have a working, scaled down, desktop version of their sand table. Boz got his from Zen Table (me) in October 2014, and it’s still working away, silently drawing elaborate patterns in sand, on his desk.
Where do we go from Here?
I’m still tinkering and refining the desktop design, I’m still pushing toward finishing those last 11 tables, that hang like a great weight around my neck. Despite the festering well of guilt Melissa and I feel about those last few promised tables, progress toward completion is incremental, difficult, and slow.
It’s hard to know that I’ve let people down who showed so much faith in me, in this project. There’s no way to express it in a way that feels okay – people want their stuff and they deserve to get it.
I haven’t given up on Zen Table, I will get those last few delivered – sooner than later, preferably – though ‘later’ passed years ago for those who are still waiting. It would be great to get Zen Table to market, but those 11 come first. So, I keep moving forward on the design to make it better, and so we can make it faster, and get it to a point where we can build out those last few and get them delivered.
I do think we could find a market for the desktop Zen Table, which is a compact, elegant, and yes, Zen-like piece of art. We’re still working on that bit – but in a way that won’t destroy the rest of my life.
Ultimately, through all of this – 20+ years of planning, working, sacrifice and incredible effort – I learned a good bit about what it truly means to be an inventor and an entrepreneur.
It’s not enough to just have a good idea, or even a great idea. You’ve got to know how to get your idea out there. You’ve got to figure out how you’re going to make it a reality, what you’re willing to give up so that you can make a go of it. You need to know that you will be giving most, if not all, of your time and life to that idea – whatever it is. You need to be willing to have that idea consume all of your energy – and you’ve got to know if the other people in your life can deal with that new reality. You must be driven by that one thing until it succeeds, or is so sunk there’s no chance of getting it back aloft, and you have to be willing to go down with the ship you’ve built.
If you do it just right, and the stars align, and you’re able to get the right crew on board, you might get to see your idea take off and fly.
Note About This: This is the story of my inventing and creating the Zen Table – I’m posting it in several pieces to make it easier to tell.
It’s about having a dream, working hard to make it a reality, success, mistakes, stumbles and trips, failures, lessons learned, battles fought and the cost of still struggling on. I’m telling this story because it was pivotal to my life, and I think it has some valuable lessons in it for other inventors, creators and dreamers who want to make their ideas real.
In the spirit of being real, I’m going to be as up-front as possible about where I may have messed up or taken a wrong step – and equally honest about where other people may have had something to do with it too. I hope you read, I hope you find my experience useful and I hope to hear from you if you have questions or if you want to share your story.
Cheers.
Appendix | Other Sand Table Projects
http://jeanpierrehebert.com/docs/sand%20story.pdf
http://dubno.com/sandtable/index.html
https://tinkerings.org/2016/07/21/my-coffee-table-is-a-robot-the-sand-plotter/
