Noise Engineering co-founders Kris Kaiser and Stephen McCaul share their journey from hobbyist DIY synth builders to leaders in the boutique audio hardware market. This episode reveals how they successfully transformed a passion into a thriving business by deeply understanding their niche, leveraging community engagement, and focusing on authentic product development. Learn actionable strategies for navigating manufacturing challenges, gaining market traction, and building a brand with integrity in a specialized industry.
Kris Kaiser and Stephen McCaul met at a pub in Santa Monica, California, and hit it off immediately. A shared interest in sound brought them together. Kris and Stephen's professional paths were quite different, but audio was a common thread throughout their lives. Kris's PhD dissertation studied the effects of urban noise on the breeding behaviors of frogs. Stephen developed audio software for video games. Both shared a love for spreadsheets, food, and the glorious sound and invitingly impenetrable interface of the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. A few years later, Kris was a professor and Stephen worked on increasingly complex audio problems in his day job. As an escape, they began experimenting with home-built synthesizers and wild DIY noisemakers. Stephen developed a Eurorack module over a weekend after a dare from a friend, and the synth community took notice. That was the beginning, and in 2016 they quit their jobs and took Noise Engineering full time. Now a staple boutique developer, their hardware and software products are used and adored by hobbyists, composers, artists, and producers around the world. In This Conversation We Discuss:[00:59] Intro[01:26] A hobby into a full-time endeavor[02:18] Turning hackathon ideas into tangible products[03:26] Navigating the challenges of early manufacturing[04:25] Finding solutions through industry connections[06:13] Collaborating within a niche community[07:42] Gaining traction using marketing platforms[09:50] Episode sponsors[13:04] Balancing quality & price in a competitive market[15:35] Attracting early customers through trade shows[17:06] Educational content as top-of-funnel strategy[18:05] Connecting with people via face-to-face outreach[19:29] Tapping into LA's vibrant music community[20:00] Showing prototypes & gathering real-time feedback[21:50]