resolutiontube21When Arnav Anand worked as a technician at Boston Scientific, he sometimes spent hours — even days — trying to fix machines. The whole process ended up costing the company millions of dollars annually.

He knew there was a better way.

“With the advent of mobile and other developments within the industry, I saw an opportunity to fix this problem and, in fact, fundamentally change the way customer service is done today,” Anand said.

So, Anand took the entrepreneur leap and started ResolutionTube in August of 2012. The company uses a mobile app and augmented reality to bring intelligent technology to the physical-product troubleshooting process. The goal is to help technicians fix problems faster and in turn, save money.

arnav
ResolutionTube CEO Arnav Anand.

“We have a big vision: to fundamentally change the way broken machines are fixed and in the long run how customer service is done altogether,” Anand said.

Resolution Tube, a three-man team currently in Techstars Seattle, is already building an app for Google Glass. We caught up with Anand to learn more about the company in the latest edition of Startup Spotlight.

Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: ResolutionTube is a mobile application for people who fix complicated machines, helping them collaborate and access important information, at a fraction of their current cost and time.

Inspiration hit us when … For the last decade or more, my life has been in manufacturing. During my last job at Boston Scientific, I was managing the manufacturing floor at a large medical device company. Whenever a machine would go down it would cost the company tens of thousands of dollars and we would need to fly in an engineer from the machine manufacturer to fix the troubled machine. During the same time, I chanced upon a video about Telemedicine. My fixing of machines had a strong analogy with the doctors treating remote patients remotely. With remote troubleshooting facilities, doctors were treating sick patients separated by thousands of miles and similarly technicians could treat their sick machines. This spawned a flurry of ideas for machine repair collaboration.

resolutiontube12VC, Angel or Bootstrap: Angel and/or VC. We’ve made a ton of progress on absolutely bootstrapped money, but we are always looking for ways to “do more faster” (as per the TechStars motto). With a little extra fuel we are looking to kick things into high gear and grow this company as fast as possible!

Our ‘secret sauce’ is: Paul Graham said it best when he boiled being a good founder down to two words: relentlessly resourceful. We believe in the power of hard work and determination, and we will do anything (within moral and ethical parameters, of course) to make this business a success!

The smartest move we’ve made so far: Spencer Poff, a young ambitious and smart UC Berkeley engineering senior, started working with us for sometime. Just a few days before his graduation we got the offer to pilot our product at a customer on the East Coast. We as a team from Berkeley made the fast call to abandon all other obligations and move to the East Coast to test our product in the Field and get real feedback!

The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: We really should probably be sleeping more…

Would you rather have Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: Bezos. His tenacity is truly inspiring and resonates with our philosophy on what it takes to be successful.

Our world domination strategy starts when: Last August.

Rivals should fear us because: We are laser-focused on our customers and are willing to do whatever it takes. We as a team have stayed and worked out of an office 24/7 to meet customer deadlines. We will not stop until this business is off the ground and soaring.

resolutiontubelogoWe are truly unique because: We care deeply about all of our customers, not just the decision-makers. We are passionate about making a product that is not just extremely useful, but also one that people love to use.

The biggest hurdle we’ve overcome is: There’s a new hurdle every day, we just focus on doing our best to cross them one at a time. The way how we managed to overcome the visa challenge always keeps our faith in being optimistic that things will eventually work out.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: I don’t know if we are qualified to be giving out advice just yet, but I’d say one thing we’ve learned is that in entrepreneurship good things happen to those who work hard, are willing to fail and then wake up again to keep pushing on the journey. Just keep pushing forward!

techstars-casinoEditor’s note: This month, GeekWire will be featuring the 11 startups participating in TechStars Seattle. This marks the ninth of those profiles.  Make sure to check out TechStars Demo Day on Oct. 24th, and GeekWire Startup Day on Oct. 25th, both part of Seattle Startup Week. You will also get a chance to meet the Resolution Tube team at the Demo Day after party, a fantastic opportunity to hang out with hundreds of Seattle entrepreneurs, investors and members of the Seattle startup ecosystem.

Past TechStars Seattle Startup Spotlights:

Sparktrend tells you where to buy those Pinterest-inspired outfits

Inside Social helps brands measure social media ROI

Vetted matches big companies with independent consultants

Codementor offers real-time, screen-sharing coding support for developers

Perfect helps you edit, share videos filmed with Google Glass

Shippable helps developers speed up software deployment

Designlab teaches you web design skills with interactive lessons, in-browser tools

Ex-Amazonians helping teachers create and sell online courses with Everpath

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