04 - Putting the Touch in 'Touchless' Tech! - Tom Carter - Founder & CTO, Ultrahaptics

TOM CARTER — FOUNDER & CTO — ULTRAHAPTICS Tom Carter is the Founder and CTO at Ultrahaptics. A leading technology company making mind-blowing technology that lets users feel the sensation of touch in mid-air. The future is coming and they are at the pinnacle of it. Tom invented the technology behind Ultrahaptics alongside his professor in a research lab at the University of Bristol. They have since grown the idea into one of the UK's most innovative businesses raising multiple rounds of funding with a rapidly growing team. You don’t go through events like this without learning a lot of lessons. <a href="https://imgur.com/3R14UFw"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/3R14UFw.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a> On the podcast, he shares some amazing insights into what he has learned along the way. It's an incredible story direct from the front line and I’m sure something all listeners will want to follow updates as their tech gets into the hands of consumers over the coming years. TOM’S TOP TIPS: 1. Culture: I love the way he thinks about making a nice culture without trying to take over people’s lives to try and squeeze more work out of them. Just getting more hours out of people doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get more work Allow people more freedom from work, so work 9–5 and they can go home. They can enjoy the money they earn and live their own social lives. Make sure that meal times are utilised as a good way for the team to bond and get some down time, consider this in the layout of your office 2. Focus on your strengths: I’ve got a lot of respect for the way he freely accepted taking on an incoming CEO so early on in the business, giving the company the management experience it needed to scale rapidly and allowing Tom to focus on driving innovation . Know your own strengths and limitations and just step back Be willing to get better people to do things you can’t do as well, this can help you achieve far more in the long run and you might learn a thing or two from them in the process. 3. Hiring He has a lot of i