From Ivy League engineer to hardware founder

Vignesh Rajagopal: Welcome back to another episode of Fika Bytes. This week we'll be hearing from Noam. He graduated as an Ivy League engineer and he wasn't really sure what he wanted to do next. And that's when he decided to go and teach himself a whole bunch of more engineering so he could bring his hardware product idea to life. He's created the MyTMJ Pen. It's a heated vibration massager for those suffering from jaw pain and tightness as a result of TMJ disorder. Now that might sound like a niche product that's hard to market, but There's one thing I want you to take away from this episode. It is Noam's dedication to creating content on social media. He shows up on Instagram every single day posting a reel, taking build in public to a whole another level, sharing his wins, his failures, his entire story. In doing so, he's been able to reach not only potential customers and users of his product, but also a whole bunch of people who are now invested in his story, who are now rooting for him and want to see him be successful. So take note of how he does that. check out his Instagram. I'll put the link in the show notes below. All right, let's get to the episode.

Vignesh Rajagopal: All right, we're live. Noam, thanks so much for joining me here on Fika Bytes I'm excited to talk about myTMJ. So what I want to start off with first before we get into the product or the background, I want to talk about the health side of what this product is solving, because I don't know anything about it and a lot of listeners might not as well. So as the expert here, could you just give us a brief outline of what TMJ is and what your product is doing to help people

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, no, definitely. A lot of people haven't heard the term TMJ. Basically, it stands for Temporomandibular Joint, which is just like your jaw joint. And basically, your jaw joint is like the most used joint in your body, but at the same time, it's one of the least understood. It's very complicated, has a lot of aspects that are different than the most popular joints, quote unquote, like the elbow and the knees. So there wasn't a lot of specialties in the medical field that are looking into it. In fact, normally when you think about jaw pain, you think about a dentist, they only started specializing in it a couple of years ago. So basically, the whole reason that I am looking into the TMJ space and jaw pain stuff is because I had it. have it to this day, but like three years ago, I started getting this like popping sound in my right jaw. And this is actually like a very common thing. Whenever I quote studies and stuff, just know that there are very few of them and they don't have a lot of large sample sizes. But up to like 30 % of people have this like popping up to 30 % have some pain in their jaw at some point, maybe it's through puberty or at some other point. So even if you haven't heard of TMJ, it's much more common than you'd expect. But basically, I had this popping and I would go to doctor and it's , it's normal. But basically, the fact is that that popping was just the start of degeneration. In the way that you have this disc that your jaw joint rotates and slides with. And that disc can come out of place. And it can come out of place for a few different reasons. One being trauma, obviously. If you get socked in the face, that disc can come out of place and cause a bunch of problems. But another thing is that it can be pulled out of place by the muscles surrounding it through just general... overuse. So if you're clenching, for example, there's a muscle that pulls on this disc and it contracts when you clench. So if you have nighttime clenching or daytime clenching or grinding, that's a very common reason for this disc to displace. And when it does, basically, when you open your mouth, it pops in and out of the disc. And this is what caused that sound. But for me, when I started taking TMJ disorder seriously is when I started getting these lockups and basically, I'd wake up and my mouth would just be locked closed because this disc came so far to place that it folded in on itself and I wouldn't be able to slide my jaw forward, which is a pretty important part of, opening it and Yeah, so I was wow, the doctors told me not to worry about it, So when I started going there

Vignesh Rajagopal: Bye. just said, don't worry about not being able to open your

Noam Aizenberg: know about about like the popping and stuff, but that's that's what led to it. I was okay. Wow. Thanks But Yes, so at this point I I went to doctor he was like it's clinically recommended when you have these These like muscle spasms which are muscle knots from Trigger points say people call them That pull the disc out of place. You want to use a heat massage Pop like painkillers muscle relaxants, you can do So I had these like lockup episodes for like a year at first, they weren't frequent and they got a little more frequent and I started developing like a little technique for unlocking my jaw. I ended up using like a mug of water that I microwave Then the bottom ridge is very hard. So I'd be able to massage with that while also heating But the, mean, obviously,

Vignesh Rajagopal: Okay.

Noam Aizenberg: I was like doing this every morning pretty much. It's you got to do it quick. Yeah, I got to brush my teeth in class. I was this is a little annoying. I'm ready to buy a product for it. Like show me something that can heat and massage my jaw joint. Looked it up, nothing, not only nothing, like the things that come up when you look up like TMJ products, something that five to 12 % of the population have, maybe even up to 30, it was was appalling. I'm very used to brands and plenty of nice looking products, stuff like that. This was complete scam looking bottles of try this magnesium oil. Literally oil salesman stuff. And there would be this night guard where it's at this point proven night guards don't do anything, especially night guards that aren't custom fitted because you can still clench on a night guard. And it like I bought that I was okay, this is crazy like they're literally zero products marketed to people with TMJ disorders and Yeah, so that's that's the like medical history of How I came to the idea and I was still still in college at the time

Vignesh Rajagopal: So at what point did you realize that this wasn't just you? Because there's one thing which is to solve your own problem, but then realizing there's a whole market out there, what was that moment for

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, I started gathering that just from when I when I go to see like a doctor, they would if it's someone that specializes it or in my like physical therapist, they would be Yes, it's crazy. Like, there's just no research about it. There's so many people that have it. They'd like spit out like percent like five to 12 percent. I looked it up. It's oh, interesting. Like, really, a lot of people have it. I went on the Reddit on the subreddit. And I was I was also mind blown there. It's like this thing has like almost like 50 ,000 members and like constantly you see people like posting, it's people are like suicidal, are it's it is some serious like messed up stuff that they're dealing with. It's like I was oh I have it like honestly good, cause you know even yeah my jaw locks but I'm not like trying to kill myself over the pain but yeah it's crazy.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Wow, that's crazy. So then you were OK, there has to be a better way. That's like a common quote right before someone invents something. And your background was mechanical engineering. Tell me about when you had that idea of what that first prototype should look Then we'll break down exactly how you did it without having all that electrical, firmware, and manufacturing stuff beforehand. So let's start there. So what was that aha moment of I can solve this?

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah. the idea actually came before I had the moment of I'm going to pursue this, I've been working on ideating things for a while. I have a huge list of ideas that I've had. And as time goes on, they get better and better. So I was still in the second semester of my senior year of university. And I wasn't really prepared know, start a hardware startup or anything at the time. But when I got to the point of, I would still keep having these like lockups and I would deal with it the way I can just like through the next months. But then when I got to the point of okay, I think I want to actually create a product, document everything and just take an idea and start selling to real people. I started going through that list and evaluating what ideas were the best. And this one just ticked so many boxes for me. Because I'm a big fan of entrepreneurial podcasts, like how I built this and stuff like that. So I've heard these stories all the time and it's always a problem that the founder has. And it's always, they look it up and there's nothing out there. It's wow, this sounds like So and it was simple enough, like basically what I explained before is like what I need is something that heats up and is able to dig into jaw muscle tissue and like vibrate. So I was that's simple enough. I definitely have the mechanical understanding. I have the electrical understanding firmware and everything. So I'm going to get into that, yeah.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Where did you have the electrical understanding? What was your electrical background at that

Noam Aizenberg: I always thought that purely mechanical products are pretty rare these days. Most of time they're like gadgets or something. was pretty early on, was I need to have an understanding of circuits and electrical engineering. So through college I would take classes here and there. So I would take circuits and we have a nice mechatronics class and advanced mechatronics. And when I did my senior design,

Vignesh Rajagopal: Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Noam Aizenberg: mostly like an electrical and like software thing. Like I would try to expand my breadth outside of mechanical engineering. I had some. I've never designed PCBs before, but yeah.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Okay. So then at this point, we talked about how in college there isn't really something that has someone go from idea all the way to production, like that A to Z of the whole process. and you want to see experience that for yourself and with the lists of ideas narrowed it down. and Yes, like all the podcasts say scratching your own itch, solving your own problem. So at this point, when you were okay, this is the idea. I'm going to start building something to solve this. Did you already know you wanted to try to sell it and turn it into a business or was it still I want to see it. This is just like a hobby thing for myself and maybe a few others.

Noam Aizenberg: No, I 100 % thought I'd want to sell it. As we were saying, pretty much the biggest thing here is that I don't expect this to be the company I work on for the next 30 years or , but I think my future is in product design and I have to do that first step of taking it from idea to launch. that's the exciting part. Obviously I

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yes, okay.

Noam Aizenberg: hack together a little Arduino thing that heats up and vibrates and has like a little tip that massages your jaw. like that I got done within like a month or . It's that idea, taking it into like production that excited me with

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah, Yes, Then, you obviously you get to help a bunch of people along the way too, which is fantastic.

Noam Aizenberg: No, 100%. Yeah, it's just Yes, it ticked a lot of boxes there.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah. Okay. So as you're starting this production intent design, so you gave a hint at like the Arduino prototype that you did in like a month as you started pivoting to production, there were a lot of things I bet that you had to learn and figure out on your own. And I'm just wondering where did you turn to when you needed help with some of those things? And how did you go take the next step, take the next step, take the next step until you got to the

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, YouTube, There's a lot of groups out there. I had the baseline understanding of electronics. So really the hardest part here was the circuit board design. When it came to the mechanical, I had it all in the way that if I just kept on trying and prototyping things and redesigning and redesigning, I knew I could get

Vignesh Rajagopal: yeah.

Noam Aizenberg: place where I was comfortable with it, but with the electronics I didn't exactly know where to go because when you're doing a little prototype it's if it works one time that's fine. Even if it breaks a little bit, know, fix it up. Yes, doing like full -scale PCB design was a little more challenging. I

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah,

Noam Aizenberg: We talked about how I this friend who does a Who has his own like product company he he did the same thing like he designed circuit boards so like here and there I'd pass ideas to him and he passed him back ideas, but Yes, I think I think in reality like It I found it to be easier than expected to do it all yourself because like PCB design isn't isn't all theory as like most things. It's like you go in, you find components, you read the data sheets. They pretty much tell you all the equations. They tell you what to plug in. They tell you what components you need to put together. It's just like you just make this like block diagram, find the right components. You, ram your head into it and you find something. But also Reddit was useful towards the end where I was doing some more like...

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah.

Noam Aizenberg: safety based design so like when you're talking about like heating with someone's face, know, really the worst case scenario is you have a heating element that it's stuck on, And again, in a prototype, it doesn't matter, but in this case, if I'm making 100, 1000 of these units, there is a chance that maybe like a static shock or It creates an overvoltage that destroys the transistor that controls the heating element Then suck on or the microcontroller crashes and sticks it on or like a million things. So I asked on Reddit tons of like engineers with way too much free time that love roasting your designs. And Yes, actually, the designing came up with it was pretty influenced by

Vignesh Rajagopal: That's incredible. you had those electrical classes that you took in college, which gave you at least you knew that something could go wrong. Cause if you didn't have that electrical background, you wouldn't have known about stuff like ESD and overvoltage and stuff. So you had enough knowledge to know that something was wrong. And then you went and basically I don't want to say crowdsourced, but you went to Reddit and use other people's help to finish out the design. Can you give me an example of what did that Reddit, what are one of these Reddit posts actually say, or what do they look

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah,

Vignesh Rajagopal: just to get a specific

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, yeah. So specifically, the thing I threw out was OK, can I just use another transistor to be like a secondary driver that I have to turn on? And that's like a backup safety plan, But then they would say, OK, but you have to think about why these things would fail. Because if they're basically in series, then you have an overvoltage maybe break both or overheating would probably break them both or a microcontroller crashing, you would still be sticking them both on. it's not the perfect solution. That was one of the comments that another one suggested, like a crowbar circuit, is basically just whenever you sense something, you just shut off the device, And you just you pop a fuse. And Yes, so was crowbar circuit. I've never heard of that. That's interesting. So looked into it and it Yes, you can use these like triacs to basically just like turn on the current through it and blow the fuse. Yes, so I basically just made this like separate little safety circuit there that basically required at least two things, two events to fail at the same time for the device to break.

Vignesh Rajagopal: And it's good that you had the forethought of like prototype versus production. If we're getting these to hundreds, thousands of people's hands, you gotta watch out for their safety. So I think it's super impressive that you took on this challenge Then went and got the knowledge that you didn't have to fill in those gaps. And then I wanted to touch on one other thing too, which was you said you had a unique situation with this friend of yours who had another part that he was developing and you got to help out, maybe see a little bit of that, use some of the resources. Tell me a little bit about what that situation looked

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, so basically like there I don't know there's this like notion I guess that when you're doing when you're starting a business or like a startup you want to call it you have to just like full -send it drop everything risk everything and and just like your focus like pursue that thing and I'm I'm more of like a I stay on the safe side with most things and Basically had this opportunity where my friend he he did this a couple years back what I'm doing now so he designed the product and he he has a company around it and He was let me like hire you to work on my On my company like run things a little bit do some design work, but I'll also provide you the space provide you 3d printers You know, I he orders like batteries and PCBs all the time so I could pop my orders in with him. And basically, I really like that for myself because one, I have a job where I'm not losing money working on my own product. I can test, I can figure out whether this thing is really going to work. I can basically develop it for free. And at the same time, I'm making it easier for myself to do thing that I want to do. Yes, I I was trying to like minimize the risk, but it did take longer than it had. Like if I did full send, I probably would have had it done half the time.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Right. But you sounds like you had the perfect mix of like right place, right time and everything, right connection. Um, one of the things that I say a lot is the best mentor, uh, is not someone that's 20 years ahead of you and like VP of something at something. The best mentor is one that's like three or five years ahead of you, um, three to five years. And then they know exactly what you've been through. They remember it. And it sounds that you like had this great opportunity where your friend was just a few years ahead of you in terms of product development. That learned some of the lessons, but also like actually use some of the resource like 3D printers and the workspace and stuff. So super cool. Last thing I want to talk about. And what you've done is obviously super impressive, but this one thing is what I think is what separates you and like makes you really stand out to me. It was also how I found you. And that is this whole notion of building in public.

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah.

Vignesh Rajagopal: building in public for those that might not know, is I would say a more or less recent trend where a lot of people who are building stuff are posting about their progress, their revenue numbers, behind the scenes stuff to show how things are being done. But historically, I've only ever seen that been done for software. So phone apps, web apps. And so that's what's really unique about you is you're given this whole behind the scenes. And I don't know how and when you started that, but I want to know about what drew you to that. And how that has impacted your journey and how you've seen it cause a difference to what you're doing.

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, that turned out to be a much bigger part of the journey than I expected, but I started that basically day one. think I started, I made my first YouTube video like a month after, a month after starting, but I basically, you're right, there was like never a hardware business that was recording and like logging everything from the start. Like on YouTube, I'm a huge fan of a ton of channels that do these hardware projects. And they make super cool projects. One is I found this lamp that's really cool, and I want to design it this way. Or I have this problem in the house, I want to design this thing for that. But all they ever were were just projects, and I enjoyed it. it would be really, really cool if that project turned into that next step of being like a full product and I just thought that that would be like a series I would be like a die -hard fan of. So I'm not like against building in public. When I started this some people think it's probably bad to like share because you can get like copied and stuff but I think it's probably more of an advantage to like have a brand both for like the company and like a personal brand. Like if you get to the point where people are stealing your idea, you probably already got big enough for it. It was worth it. But yes, I've mostly just been doing like YouTube videos every every couple of weeks going through like the hardware design stuff. Now, as the design is coming to an end, I'm building

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah, absolutely.

Noam Aizenberg: I'm getting into like sales and marketing and all that stuff where it's now it's shifting to be more of like a business channel than an engineering one. Yes, interesting. But Yes, I really enjoy it. It's tough to do it with only like 500 subscribers, but it's just a matter of I gotta do this. It's going to be so sick to look back on in a couple years.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah. And it's something okay, I got a couple points on that. 500 subscribers, like it doesn't seem like a lot because everyone's talking millions on the internet, but like imagine if 500 subscribers were like in your room right now. That's a lot of people. And it's I also feel something like this has a lot of impact per person. Like for example, I showed my brother your socials cause he's getting, he's in college, he's getting into product development. And Yes, I was

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah.

Vignesh Rajagopal: this kid has never seen something go from start to finish. And I found your channel and I was this is a perfect example of someone that's doing that. And so I think, you you wanted something, it wasn't out there, you created it, a recurring theme here. So that's, that's super awesome. How do you think that the building public actually like impacted your business? Like I get what you did and why you wanted to do it for yourself. But as far as the business and the product goes, was there any points where someone maybe gave you some feedback or based on some comments from building in public or did people reach out to you? I want to know about the impact of building in

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, I'll say it's at this scale, they're a little like separate, like the building in public is like a Noam Eisenberg thing where it's I'm an engineer, I'm a product designer, blah, blah, blah. And then there's the TMJ social channel where it's I'm trying to reach people with TMJ disorder and stuff like that. And they're very like separate. I'm only now experimenting with combining the two, but so I haven't exactly had people randomly come in and give me advice on YouTube or anything. Mostly it's just a thing that I know I should be doing. And also there are plenty of times where I submit an order for PCBs Then I have I have like three weeks to basically wait. it's this makes me like 100 % more efficient, where it's whenever I have downtime, I can grind out like a YouTube video or like a couple of shorts and stuff like that. Yeah, it's just like I'm putting in the investment. I can't really tell you if it'll like work out or not, because again, it's pretty small. But even now, it's get like positive comments here and there where it's

Vignesh Rajagopal: Okay, still early.

Noam Aizenberg: It's is great. You're inspiring me to build my own product, which is really cool.

Vignesh Rajagopal: I think you've done like the legwork now and it was good to hear that you're experimenting combining the two. Cause I feel you you talked about all the other products for TMJ that are out there and you mentioned, some of them are scammy, they're like snake oil. And let's say someone discovers this product. If they're in that same ecosphere of other TMJ products, their first impression might be like skepticism, But I think once they go even a little bit deeper, they'll discover you know them and they'll be here's the person, the face that's building this product, and wow, he did it all by himself. Here's like the past six, eight months of building. And I think that really will go a long way to build that trust with your potential clients once they discover

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, actually, yeah one thing I will say is that that actually even works in the like one one -on -one like sales aspect where I haven't done this a lot But I have called a few a like physical therapists chiropractors like met with a couple and The the thing that differentiates me as opposed to like a normal salesman is usually the fact I can claim to be like like I I built this thing like I'm the inventor you should check out the YouTube it's if you're interested in how it went. And that interests them a little more than just me being like a med device salesman that is just like a robot that sells,

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can go in and be hey, I'm the founder and inventor as opposed to, hey, I'm a sales guy for this thing, you

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, Yes, yeah. So Yes, I'm trying to take advantage of being super small. So even on the packaging, I have like the, like about us and the picture of me on one side Then the product, course.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah. Nice. That's awesome. You're, you're touching on so many different disciplines here, which is why I always encourage people to like take something from start to finish. Like now you're doing cold calling and you're going in person to these clinicians and it's just, you're getting to flex every single muscle where after this is done, you want to do next, you'll have built up all those skills already. So I think that's super impressive.

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, Yes, no, it's definitely pretty nice to be able to like learn all those things because you have a the learning curve is like Logarithmic, so the more the more the more time you spend on like learning new things the more you learn technically

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah, absolutely. What advice would you give for people that are in where you were three years ago, maybe still in college and having this idea, but not knowing what to do? What advice would you give them? If I was like picking an idea, getting started Then seeing it all the way

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, I think for people that are safer like me, I wouldn't have an issue working like you at a product development firm. That's honestly really, that might be what I'm going to be doing in five years. But that idea is the important part to push you into action and... So I guess the advice for ideation is just you really need to focus on like in every single aspect of your life to just like think about these problems. Like at first the ideas are going to be trash and you're going to think they're great, but it's I can look through my list right now, back like freshman year, it's some like stupid ideas, but now like the later ones are a lot better. Yes, it's the most like weird. things, the weird things that you do in life, if you like travel or like if you, if you get like super niche into like thermodynamics or if you get if you're a construction worker and like you get super niche into that, like the more niche you go, the more opportunity that there is for like ideation, finding little problems. And then once you find that idea, I think it's just a matter of take the first steps and you build some prototypes Then it's just the classic stuff. Build some stuff, show them to people, see what they say again. And Yes, you don't have to quit your job and do it all at once.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah, absolutely. I just want to highlight one of the things you said, was, the takeaway that I'm hearing is that ideation is actually a skill. It's not like the, what is perceived in Hollywood of like the stroke of genius and like Eureka moment. Like it's actually something that you build up and as you learn to ideate better, your ideas get better, you get more experience, your ideas get better, Then you can find a good idea. So I think that's a key

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's a very important point.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Cool, well, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your story. I'm obviously going to tell people to go check out your YouTube channel, see the behind the scenes of all of this, but what else can the listeners do to support

Noam Aizenberg: Perfect. Yes, no, the YouTube channel would be great. Definitely follow the journey. if, if you hear this and I'm also doing more like shorts and like reels and stuff on the Instagram, which is like at myTMJ relief. which Yes, started out as like a TMJ tips thing. So that's definitely changing, but Yes, just follow on the socials. I don't think, you'll see if anything comes up that you can help me out with.

Vignesh Rajagopal: Yeah, everything's out there. That's the beauty of it. Awesome. Thanks so much,

Noam Aizenberg: Yeah.

Vignesh Rajagopal: thank you for making it all the way to the end of the episode. Please let me know what you think about Noam's story. If anything he said resonated with you, I would love to hear your feedback. It really gives me motivation to keep this podcast going and continue sharing these hardware founder stories. So drop me a note, drop me an email, comment on Spotify, YouTube, . Would love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in until next week.