The 13yo restoring old Soviet tech 🗝
When your devices break, what do you do?
Let us guess: Wait for it to be broken “enough” to buy a new one?
We won’t blame you - it’s what most people do (we are guilty of it sometimes too…)
But did you know: In 2021 alone, humans generated 57.4 Mt (Million Metric Tonnes) of e-waste.
That’s 57,400,000,000 kg of pure e-waste 🤯
Only 17.4% of that is known to be collected and properly recycled… and the rest? They go to landfill, the seas or on our streets.
This is why we ❤️ people and companies who give electronics new lives, such as this 13yo Georgian girl repairing family and friends’ devices - as well as the vintage, Soviet tech she finds! More about this below.
PS: What should we do with this e-waste issue? It’s a big goal but anything that we can do to help… maybe post/share videos on how to repair your own phones/laptops?
Here’s what we’ve put together for your weekly Spark reads:
The Web3 version of CoinMarketCap is live: Say hello to Mobula.fi 💎
Empower your product team with Zeda.io 🦾
Get ready for immersive extended reality (XR) sports 🥇
The 13yo restoring old Soviet tech 🗝
Writing the ultimate Hardware Startup Playbook 🛠
💙 NEWS FROM OUR MATESThe Web3 version of CoinMarketCap is live: Say hello to Mobula.fi 💎
Ever used CoinMarketCap to keep track of your cryptoassets? Crypto runs on a decentralized system, but CoinMarketCap doesn’t… so our mates built its Web3 version: Mobula.fi 💥
Mobula.fi is a seamless, decentralized data aggregator built with ultra-reliability first in mind. The collection, processing, and transmission of data are on-chain, so the data you see is ahead of CoinMarketCap (and their millions of visitors!).
You can customize your search with advanced filters (KYC, flow, etc.), analyze your wallet and its performance, get smart token recommendations and even earn Mobula’s tokens and other project’s tokens - all without collecting any of your data.
They’re currently on beta, go ahead and try it out!
🤸 FUN PRODUCT WE LOVEEmpower your product team with Zeda.io 🦾
How are the best products built?
By solving pain points well.
How do you do that?
By listening to user’s well - then having a clear direction and executing it to the best you can.
We know, it’s hard to manage user/stakeholder feedback… from receiving many across multiple platforms, to breaking them down into actionable tasks.
But this is where tools like Zeda.io can empower your product teams!
Features:
💬 Collect feedback from your users, stakeholders and internal team, and let them vote their favorites to the top.
💡 Get ideas & requests directly from tools like Slack, Zendesk, HubSpot, and many more.
📊 Analyse feedback, feature requests, ideas & bugs in a single place and identify products & features that your customers truly need.
🎯 Plan your goals, align Initiatives & map features from backlog.
🗺 Make powerful and continuous roadmaps for better visibility & collaboration with your stakeholders.
📑 Execute your product requirements seamlessly by writing well-defined features & documentation and syncing them with Jira.
🔔 Keep your users and team in the loop about new releases using the in-app widget, customer portal, emails, Slack notifications, and more.
Who it’s for: Product Teams, software or hardware!
Price: Starts at US$24/user/month, but has 7-day free trial
(If you’re a startup, let them know and they’ll give you 90% off!)
💭 TECH FOOD FOR THOUGHTGet ready for immersive extended reality (XR) sports 🥇
With virtual and augmented realities, as well as the surge of the Metaverse, startup REK.tv and its cofounders Cix Liv and Bart Trzynadlowski are creating the ‘sports of the metaverse’ 🤾♂️🌎
The video you see above comes from REK, and shows off how sports, fitness and exercise can be reimagined with virtual features and augmented experiences! They’re also working on building a more immersive experience for VR sports spectators, setting a new genre of VR entertainment.
How excited are you about this? How do you imagine sports and esports converging in the coming years?
🌱 TECH FOR SUSTAINABILITYThe 13yo restoring old Soviet tech 🗝
13 year-old Mariam Ben Nakhi grew up with her stepfather Thomas Burns, a former Hollywood cinematographer and self-proclaimed “electronics nerd”.
They spent their days tinkering and helping friends and family repair broken devices, and when word got out about how well they did it, more and more people came to them - triggering the start of their family business in Georgia. They called it “Mariam's Computer Repair” as a point of pride for their family, but also project that women can also repair!
Mariam and Thomas’ favorite things to repair aren’t broken devices though, but old Soviet tech they would find in old markets. Soviet tech used to be very isolated and sealed off from the world, so they made it their mission to understand the tech developments used, why they were built, how they worked, and how we can use it for today! They even have a YouTube channel “Workshop Nation” to show you some of these gadgets.
💥 WHAT’S ON @ SPARKMATEWriting the ultimate Hardware Startup Playbook 🛠
We’ve been very lucky to have an up-close view of the coolest things entrepreneurs build and go through in their journeys - that’s 100+ hardware entrepreneurs on building solutions to solve the world’s biggest problems!
We decided to document all the best things we’ve learned during our years in the trenches. All the best tips and tricks to building kickass hardware products and companies.
Then our documentation slowly became a playbook. A playbook we want to give back and share with entrepreneurs (like you!) who want to do the same.
We’re still working hard to refine it. If you’re interested in being a beta reader, let us know and we’ll send it over when it’s ready! 😉 We’d love to hear what you think.
Exciting things are happening every day ⚡️ Follow us on social media to stay tuned!