This time, I’m joined by Sam Shames, the co-founder and COO of Embr Labs, an MIT-born startup that’s creating a whole new category of wearable tech—personal temperature regulation. Sam’s journey is a masterclass in building hardware startups that survive, scale, and serve a deeply underserved audience.

We talk about:

🔥 Inventing a wearable that heats and cools

👩‍🦳 Solving real pain for the thermally underserved (think menopause, MS, dysautonomia)

🧪 What 4 years of R&D before Kickstarter taught them

🚀 A subscription model that unlocked $4M ARR in 8 months

🧭 What most hardware founders get wrong about manufacturing

This episode is packed with real, tactical insights on building category-defining hardware, finding PMF, staying alive when others fold, and navigating the messy middle of hardware + subscription + software.

Important links:

Embr Labs: https://embrlabs.com/

Shop 71: https://shop.7tea1.com