"Electronics circuit design."

Most engineers, even some hardcore techies, don't get a feeling of bubbly enthusiasm when they hear the aforementioned words. (It's also an awkward conversation-pauser at parties if asked what you do — just say "I make electronic gadgets," jeezus!)

Because it's not fun for most people, including engineers (and because to say that the electronics business is "huge" is laughably modest), therein lies an opportunity.

In this episode, I speak with Tobias Pohl, the CEO and Co-founder of Celus, which builds AI-assisted tools for circuit design.

The goal of their tools isn't to replace the engineer, but to reduce the time they spend on certain design problems from weeks to hours.

We dive into the structure of the industry, how the electronics engineering process works (in simple English), and what it really takes to build USEFUL AI software for the purpose:

1:49 — Why engineers hate electronics!
03:33 — The current process of Electronics Engineering, and why it's so damn hard
13:00 — Nerd ego, and why “experience” in electronics design is a double-edged sword
19:59 — What can you automate? The value of machine learning in the engineer's process
28:47 — How machine learning streamlines and upgrades circuit designs
41:16 — Finding the right source of data for training Celus' ML models
45:37 — The challenge of synthetic data for ML
49:00 — Celus' journey as an AI software startup
56:06 — Celus' target market and sales process: do big companies like Apple and Sony have their own electronics design tools?
01:01:40 — Why the "build vs buy" dilemma is not a problem for software startups anymore