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Tell me a little bit about why you started Plugable.
At IBM, I worked on graphics devices.
At Microsoft, I worked on USB and Bluetooth stacks.
Our internal mantra is better products, better information, better support.
So, we’re a 15-year-old company that has 150 products, almost all USB-based."
What are some of the pain points of USB charging?
“USB charging is ubiquitous, and yet it’s really awkward, ugly, frustrating.
Tell me about the design of the new 10-port dock.
“I’m really excited about our work here.
The goal is to plug in all your devices up to 10 and have them all charged by morning.
If there are some devices you want charged sooner than others, plug them into the leftmost ports.
We call it Priority Charging.
There’s a compromise with the priority charging.
But other than that trade-off the design is perfectly symmetric.
Now we’re excited to get it to the full market here in February.”
We knew that we wanted to have different size factors.
But we also knew we wanted to do smaller port counts because it’s more practical.
So, we’re doing a six-port version right on the back of the 10-port version.
To support that, we changed the case to be an extrusion.
And so we just cut it off at a different spot.”
So, if you wanted to, you could make a 20-port or 25-port USB-C dock.
“Yep, or eight.”
“I think it is.
I’m not aware of another one.”
Where do your new product ideas come from?
Is it internal or based on feedback from customers?
“It’s a little bit of both.
The feedback from customers tells us where the problems lie.
And, you know, good product design starts with a problem.
Our same North American team that supports our products is also the ones who do the product design.
And so we, we’re really in touch with where our customers are frustrated.
We read all the reviews, we do 100,000 tickets a year of customer service.
And then it’s matching up those customer pain points with technology.
Who are your biggest competitors?
And what sets you apart from them?
“In this space of charging Anker is our biggest competitor.
In fact, much bigger.”
Our same North American team that supports our products is also the ones who do the product design.
And so we, we’re really in touch with where our customers are frustrated.
“Generally, Western companies cannot go head to head with a Chinese company.
And again, this is leveraging this kind of magic flexibility of USB.
Outside of individual customers like TG readers, who is the intended target for Plugable products?
“We focus a lot, actually, on business.
That headset charges with USB.
So, you’ve got the option to have a single charging station that everybody plugs into.
The other example that we use a lot is in education.
Our charger works whether it’s a phone charger or a laptop charger (youre plugging in).
I have kids, and the big thing with kids and laptops is they’re always losing their chargers.
Here, you don’t need to have one charger per laptop.
You only need a few chargers per classroom.”
“The biggest challenge is the global situation.
With the dominance of China and as a U.S., company, how do we succeed in that environment?
But fortunately, from the market and customer challenges come opportunities.
We’ve chosen to focus largely on this technology, USB.
Fortunately, since I started Plugable in 2009, it has become even more ubiquitous.
USB is the one thing that we connect everything to and charge everything with.
You’ve got different behaviors.
“Again, I’ll use the 10-port charger as an example.
And so there are more opportunities to solve other problems that are like this.
Our other big areas are docking stations and multiple display setups.
“The other big product that we announced is our UD-7400PD five-display docking station.
So that’s why we end up having a kind of a broad dock line.
Because of the ubiquity of USB, that is a huge area of opportunity for us.
There’s also a lot coming up and happening with AI devices.
