An Interview with Arne Korsika, Founder and CEO of Sudo Systems
Sudo Systems, based in Slovenia, makes a great little quad-core Cortex-A17 module called the SudoProc that’s perfect for rapid development…
Sudo Systems, based in Slovenia, makes a great little quad-core Cortex-A17 module called the SudoProc that’s perfect for rapid development. Thanks to Arne Korsika, CEO of Sudo Systems, for answering all the questions we asked him.
I was always interested in the newest technologies and building things from scratch, whether that was hardware or software, it didn’t really matter. I’ve constantly challenged myself with difficult projects. Once I’ve built something I needed another hard task
How long did it take you to develop your first prototype?I was lucky to be in the team of smart colleagues and friends from university. We’ve already done projects during our student years which took us to European and world robotics tournaments. For the SoC alone, it took as eight months for drafting the system and about two years to perfect it.
How hard was it to manufacture it, and where is it manufactured?Manufacturing complex hardware is hard and upfront cots are enormous, that’s why Sudo is a fabless manufacturing company. This means we had to find reliable partners to outsource the manufacturing. We have three main conditions when finding partners. First, end product must be of high quality. Second, production must be on time. Third, they must be reliable. Our modules are manufactured in Slovenia but parts are sourced from all over the world.
What is the biggest challenge to starting a hardware startup in Slovenia? The biggest challenge is actually believing you can do this. Hardware, specifically in thet embedded industry, is expensive; however by having support from our investors, we were quickly able to find the right sources.
What advice would you give makers looking to launch a startup? What about someone who has an idea for a hardware product, but isn’t sure which direction to take it?Unless you have a hobby project, a labor of love, make sure your product is solving a problem.
- Get at least couple of customers before you even begin creating a product. The “build it and they will come” model isn’t the smartest business advice anymore.
- Get out and talk to people. Make sure someone is interested. The bigger the pain point, the better your chances are to succeed.
- Solve your own problem. We’ve working on a project and we were looking for a solution out there. No matter how many embedded systems we’ve tested, there wasn’t a right fit. So we made our own.
Sudo Systems opened its doors to the public earlier this year. We are going to focus on developing new embedded systems that are going to amaze IoT engineers worldwide.
What’s your favorite prototyping platform?Linux, since it allows me to build whatever I want.
Which technological advance do you think will have the biggest impact in the next five years?Machine learning, big data, robotics, and IoT are already changing our lives. If I was to pick one, I think autonomous driving would drastically change our transportation habits.
What are the hot, growing tech segments in Slovenia? In Europe?Slovenia is deep into cryptocurrencies. For a small country, it’s incredible how much crypto technologies has been evolved. On the other hand, Slovenia is known for high-quality developers — most of them are finding higher paying jobs outside the country but this is also changing. Startup culture is very welcoming for new ideas here.