Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries: You Can’t Outsource Knowledge (Podcast)

By Linda Lacina Aug 31, 2015
Anna Teregulova

Come see Limor Fried at the Entrepeneur 360™ conference, happening October 7, 2015 in New York City. She will be in a panel with other talented leaders discussing the traits of successful CEOs. Register now.

Listen to Ready For Anything podcast Episode 2, with Linda Lacina and Limor Fried with the audio player below.

As a child, Limor Fried was known to take apart VCRs and once modified a Radio Shack tone-dialer. This sort of curiosity helped her found of Adafruit Industries, a factory manufacturing DIY open source electronic hardware kits in New York City. Today, she and her team work alongside machines like pick-and-places and reflow ovens, not outsourcing the company’s top asset: knowledge. “When something’s not working, I know instantly, not two or three weeks later. Being next to the machines, I can revise and adapt quickly.”

Adafruit’s customers are encouraged to ‘hack’ the designs in the kits they buy, tweaking the final product. Listen to this chat with Fried from the factory floor as she explains how her approach demystifies hardware through education and makes certain types of engineering more accessible to creatives of any stripe. She’ll also explain why she doesn’t have a cell phone — and how it keeps her focused.

Related: Limor Fried: Pink Hair, Managing Growth and Keeping It Real

To follow this podcast series and others in the future, follow us on the following platforms:

SoundCloud
Stitcher
iTunes

Come see Limor Fried at the Entrepeneur 360™ conference, happening October 7, 2015 in New York City. She will be in a panel with other talented leaders discussing the traits of successful CEOs. Register now.

Listen to Ready For Anything podcast Episode 2, with Linda Lacina and Limor Fried with the audio player below.

As a child, Limor Fried was known to take apart VCRs and once modified a Radio Shack tone-dialer. This sort of curiosity helped her found of Adafruit Industries, a factory manufacturing DIY open source electronic hardware kits in New York City. Today, she and her team work alongside machines like pick-and-places and reflow ovens, not outsourcing the company’s top asset: knowledge. “When something’s not working, I know instantly, not two or three weeks later. Being next to the machines, I can revise and adapt quickly.”

Adafruit’s customers are encouraged to ‘hack’ the designs in the kits they buy, tweaking the final product. Listen to this chat with Fried from the factory floor as she explains how her approach demystifies hardware through education and makes certain types of engineering more accessible to creatives of any stripe. She’ll also explain why she doesn’t have a cell phone — and how it keeps her focused.

Related: Limor Fried: Pink Hair, Managing Growth and Keeping It Real

To follow this podcast series and others in the future, follow us on the following platforms:

SoundCloud
Stitcher
iTunes

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Linda Lacina

Entrepreneur Staff
Linda Lacina is the former managing editor at Entrepreneur.com. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Smart Money, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Family Circle. Email her at llacina@entrepreneur.com. Follow her at @lindalacina on Twitter.

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