The aerospace, defense, and automobile industries have long been reliant on obsolete processes for hardware design and manufacturing that do not fully encapsulate the potential of technology. First Resonance is the manufacturing intelligence platform that allows next-gen hardware companies to innovate, iterate, and get products to market faster with unprecedented real-time visibility into production status. Replacing spreadsheets, documents, and costly legacy manufacturing processes, First Resonance’s ion Factory Operating System leverages data science, API integration, and machine learning to provide flexibility and collaboration between knowledge teams in established manufacturing workflows. Founded by former SpaceX engineers, the company is presently a team of 20 with plans to expand to 65 to help advance the future of climate change, space travel, planetary exploration, and sustainable agriculture.
LA TechWatch caught up with First Resonance CEO and Cofounder Karan Talati to learn more about how technology is modernizing manufacturing, the company’s strategic plans, latest funding, which brings the total funding raised to $19.3M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We are announcing a $14M Series A investment led by Craft Ventures and joined by existing investors including Blue Bear Capital, Fika Ventures, Stage VP, and Wavemaker.
Tell us about your product or service.
Our Factory Operating System, called ION, is used by some of today’s hottest startups including Joby Aviation, Astra, and Reliable Robotics to take on big challenges such as new types of air travel, clean energy, and space exploration.
ION takes a fresh perspective on manufacturing, eliminating many of the needless and outdated structures for managing workflows, replacing them with flexible, connected, and data-driven workflows that a new generation of manufacturers taking on big challenges like climate change, congestion, and sustainability need to be successful.
ION replaces spreadsheets, documents, and outdated, costly manufacturing and supply chain processes and tools with a platform that leverages machine learning, IoT, and advanced data analytics to support rapid engineering and manufacturing iteration.
Most recently, we have developed a number of features to help manufacturers navigate the supply chain issues they are facing right now by giving them new tools to manage a complex supply chain from parts purchase, to receipt, to inventory management. With these new features, engineers, certification auditors, quality teams, and more are able to quickly determine how to build products faster.
What inspired the start of First Resonance?
After experiencing bottlenecks caused by trying to design and manufacture modern hardware products at companies like SpaceX, JPL, Zoox, and Toyota using standard manufacturing processes, we started First Resonance to build a manufacturing platform to help engineers move quickly, collaborate with their teams efficiently, and make decisions automatically.
How is it different?
First Resonance has a front-row seat to the manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics challenges modern manufacturers are facing. As the world transitions to electric transportation and opens up airspace for new types of flying transportation, the challenges of supply chain backups, geopolitical tensions, and an increasing need to meet environmental and sustainability standards, managing an efficient manufacturing supply chain is incredibly difficult.
Our team is made up of former engineers from SpaceX, NASA, Toyota, and other leading aerospace and automotive manufacturers – brings a unique set of skills and experiences to help our customers solve these big challenges.
ION takes a fresh perspective on manufacturing, eliminating many of the needless and outdated structures for managing workflows, replacing them with flexible, connected, and data-driven workflows that a new generation of manufacturers taking on big challenges like climate change, congestion, and sustainability need to be successful.
It replaces spreadsheets, documents, and outdated, costly manufacturing and supply chain processes and tools with a platform that leverages machine learning, IoT, and advanced data analytics to support rapid engineering and manufacturing iteration.
What market are you targeting and how big is it?
Our customers are in aerospace, autonomous/electric manufacturing, robotics — any industry doing complex manufacturing and innovative startups solving some of the world’s biggest challenges such as climate change, space travel, planetary exploration, more sustainable agriculture, and more.
In terms of market size, ION addresses the needs of the manufacturing execution system market which is anticipated to grow to $14.9B by 2025. This figure is being rapidly accelerated given the massive shift in supply chains and manufacturing landscape brought on by shifting supply chains, constantly shifting geopolitical landscape, and accelerated by COVID-19.
What’s your business model?
We make it extremely easy for manufacturers to get onboarded. With our cloud infrastructure, a manufacturing company can start using ion in seconds – not wait months to go through process mapping, requirements gathering, and implementation plans. We also make pricing very simple to start, and we even publish it on our website. It’s a simple $100/user/month to get started.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
We opened a new office in downtown LA in august. As we look ahead, we are excited to be bringing collaboration back into work while allowing for the flexibility people need to live productive work and happy personal lives. Since reopening our office in August, we’ve seen a huge difference in being able to onboard new Resonators and improve communication when people are in person. Our office in downtown LA may be accompanied by hubs in other cities, and we will continue bringing remote employees into the collaboration spaces every few months.
What was the funding process like?
It’s no news that the venture market is hot right now. That said, fundraising is never easy. It’s an opportunity to refine one’s vision and story and to run a rigorous process to find the right investor for your business. We are grateful that we’ve gotten to know Michael Tam at Craft over the last few months and learn about Craft’s commitment to accelerating underserved industries through user-focused software platforms.
It’s no news that the venture market is hot right now. That said, fundraising is never easy. It’s an opportunity to refine one’s vision and story and to run a rigorous process to find the right investor for your business. We are grateful that we’ve gotten to know Michael Tam at Craft over the last few months and learn about Craft’s commitment to accelerating underserved industries through user-focused software platforms.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Our toughest challenge was refining and concisely articulating our story. We have learned an incredible amount since starting First Resonance, and things continue to rapidly shift. Adapting to the changes happening in the world and bringing that together with the overarching vision and story of the company is an art and a science.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
We have always focused on making a software platform that would be useful to ourselves in our past lives as Manufacturing Engineers rather than for only the IT department at manufacturing companies. Our focus on building for the end-user inadvertently led us to discover the product-led growth and bottom-up SaaS methodologies, something that Craft wrote the playbook on. It’s traditionally very hard to employ this approach in traditional industries, however, our unique insight and background of being the user while understanding business model innovations from investors like Craft made for a great pair.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Now that we have rebuilt critical manufacturing and supply chain workflows to support more flexible manufacturing, we are going to grow our engineering team to make the data coming out of daily manufacturing workflows to use for our customers. Rather than simply adding more approval workflows that traditional enterprise software has, we believe there is huge power in applying modern data science and machine learning to maintain flexibility in hardware manufacturing while driving better insight faster. This approach will allow our customers to innovate faster than competitors and be one step ahead with predictive insights. The model is unproven, and our target market for this is a tough one to get right for this.
We are also going to be growing the team significantly to support expanding the ION Factory Operating System to the tens of thousands of aerospace and manufacturing suppliers. We have grown revenue substantially this past year, and we plan to continue and accelerate that growth rate.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Keep an eye on your North metric. There are plenty of resources and philosophies out there created by venture capital to guide companies toward building a fundable business. Don’t over or under index on these metrics. Use metrics to keep yourself honest and accountable for the value of your business. Use them to craft your narrative. But don’t let them guide and define you. At the end of the day, if venture funding is important for your business, focus on your customers on a day-to-day basis and on your north stars when thinking about how to make your business attractive for venture capital. And, of course, if you don’t have a lot of money, be very resourceful with your spending.
Keep an eye on your North metric. There are plenty of resources and philosophies out there created by venture capital to guide companies toward building a fundable business. Don’t over or under index on these metrics. Use metrics to keep yourself honest and accountable for the value of your business. Use them to craft your narrative. But don’t let them guide and define you. At the end of the day, if venture funding is important for your business, focus on your customers on a day-to-day basis and on your north stars when thinking about how to make your business attractive for venture capital. And, of course, if you don’t have a lot of money, be very resourceful with your spending.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We are going to be growing from 20 people to 65+ in the next 6 months. Team-building is our biggest focus in the next 6 months. At the same time, we have brought on a number of extremely exciting customers, so we are going to continue working closely with them to refine how we are revolutionizing the manufacturing industry.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Hiking up the trails to Griffith Observatory. I love it so much, that’s where I got engaged!
