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Thank you Kate McAndrew for the introduction to my guest today Tyler Mincey ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmincey ) , Partner of Bolt VC. ( https://bolt.io/ ) Bolt invests at the intersection of the digital and physical world. Tyler started his career on the ipod team at Apple, focusing on the shuffle, classic, nano and touch. I don't know when I last heard those product lines to be honest. What I loved about our conversation and what you'll learn is Tyler's deep love and appreciation for hardware / tech enabled products. Alot of VCs want to focus on software, but Tyler certainly spends alot of his time looking at physical products that can change our world. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Gorgias. Gorgias combines all your communication channels including email, SMS, social media, livechat, and phone, into one platform and gives you an organized view of all tickets. Sign up *here* ( https://gorgias.grsm.io/consumerVC ) and mention the Consumer VC podcast for two months free. Questions I ask Tyler. * What attracted you to engineering? * What was it like working on the ipod and the iphone? * So after working at Apple, you ended up working for a product studio and incubator. What attracted you to startups? * How did working at a large company like Apple help make you think about innovation? * What are some of hardest parts of producing hardware? * We've talked about on this show about how important it is to eliminate friction, mostly focusing on user design relating to software. What are some examples in hardware when you are thinking about user design and working with startups? * How do you think about design vs. sustainability? * What led you to Bolt? * Why investing? * When you are conducting due diligence on a company, when it comes to product what are you looking for? * What makes the team the right team that's worth investing in? * How has some of the business models evolved with SaaS with a box companies? * What are some of the current trends that you are most excited about? * What's one thing you would change when it came to venture capital? * What's one piece of advice you have for founders?