6/10/25 - Founding Story
Hardware is more fun when you can see the messy parts.
Here's the blog that let's you see it. For those of you who don't know, On Zero is run by two people at the moment. Freesia (Who's writing this!) and Sean, who's currently chatting into my right ear about textile percentages for gloves. For a bit of a recap of what we're up to, I'll go down memory road.
January
It all started in January, I had the new years resolution to "like engineering again and play more video games!" Now on summer holidays, I reverted to my natural form. For two months I spend most of my life in VRChat or playing seasonal games like "It Takes Two," I've always had a soft spot for creative and social games. I was also tearing apart some e-waste and repurposing it, such as this car.
My college dorm was especially special, with the mattress under the bed frame to make the bed frame a work bench.
Now, it was clear that my 2nd year at university would start soon, and I really did not want to go back.
I was playing with microcontrollers, destroying some systems with Linux adventures, and jailbreaking some phones. I'm more of a tinkerer than and engineer. One time during an electrical lab they asked me how I got the answer to a cruel question the professor gave us, and I said, "I made the circuit and measured it."
For me, first year engineering was soul destroying, and not why I moved to the city. I wanted to meet crazy passionate people.
I decided to just work on my own projects to prove that I knew things to myself. One of them was the seed for what become "On Zero" (OZ.) I was on a train coming back from a science meet up, and I was coding a personal website that worked kind of like a video game in the browser. Ascii-themed, inspired by a PCB business card I made during Hack Club.
My computer went flat, but I had been cracking IPhones for the past few months, and had full charge on all of them. I tried to code on one using Termux, and realised why coding on your phone is miserable without the [Shift] or [Ctrl] button easily accessible. I wished I could just type in air. Like Sombra from Overwatch or something.
When I got home, I started working on it, along the way getting inspired by Zack Fredman's Somatic Glove, particularly loving him go, "It's cyberpunk as f***!" I clearly thought the same.
I started working on the idea in late January, but university started up again and at any given time I had like $60 to my name. I was eating the legends meals, Weetbix in the morning, frozen peas for lunch, and clearance chicken for dinner.
February - March
My sister noticed the JLCPCB boxes coming in and I told her amount my project. Two weeks later, she sent me a $1000 grant for creatives some random place called Blackbird was giving out.
I applied, with my application video being picked up by the algorithm on Youtube, giving my 0 subscriber channel 1.5k views.
It was so nice to see people excited. Or actually think there could be a use. You see, university was making it harder and harder to "look like a dumbass," cause everyone around me had something to flex about. I just wanted to be stupid. Finally, I had a group for it. At the same time, I started helping a nuclear fusion team with FPGA's, and joined the Security Society, cause I wanted to crack into peoples devices to prank them.
Some girl named Saron texted me to go out for coffee, and it looked like she might have money. For the last two months, I'd been helping start something called ACES (Australian Creative Electronics Society) start. There's this guy called Joseph Guo who I heard about on an electrical engineering backchat from my uni, and it seemed like he wanted to make a space for fun electronics that wasn't the most corporate brainwash I'd ever seen in my life. So I offered to help, with what limited business knowledge I had, cause if there wasn't a space like that, there was no point in me even moving to the city. It ended up growing pretty quickly.
One thing that ACES needed was money. Money for pizzas, and just growing generally.
So I go out for coffee with Saron, tell her a bit of my life story, and she recommends I apply to another grant with them for 1k. She seemed not evil, and it seemed like money, so why not? The only catch was that it was due in 3 days and required 'co-founders.' So for the sake of money, I pull together some start-up hydra of 7 of my most nerdy electrical friends, expecting some won't stay.
Notably one of which was Sean, who I made electrical projects with before (such as a Dalek,) the other was Chris who designed props at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, we all lived together in the same college. Just before I got in, I polled people on Youtube for the best use of on-site hand tracking, and it jumped between healthcare and gaming. As I was 19 without a degree it was going to be for gaming. In that moment, I'd realised something. VR used to be THE gaming device of choice for me, but in recent years, I'd put it down. Largely cause everything was impossible to buy and hard to work with. One innovation that's been around for a bit, but never actually made easier for the regular gamer to access was haptic gloves. I figured, "Let's just make a cheap haptic glove with not terrible documentation. It would make me consider putting my headset back on."
So we worked on that, and slowly the 'culling' happened. As exams crept up, Sean and Chris were the ones who stayed. I'd give Chris some crazy sketches insisting, "It had to feel like a Playstation controller in feel, else it's just another scientific innovation but not really usable." As he was helping with silicon molds and the look, I made a few sketches to show what I was seeing.
Then Chris would help turn these into molds and pin-pong with me about looks. Then I'd drive to his place at 12 am and slap them onto glove ideas.
April - May
From here, I was still figuring things out, crying over IMU drift, and learning things the hard way. At this point I got my friend Sean involved.
We had worked on projects before, mostly a hellish Dalek one that nearly killed me (not sleeping for 5 days,) and I learned he was one of the only engineering students who also wont give up with a few days left to play League of Legends. (An engineering degree has not tested you unless you've have a tear be evaporated by a soldering iron.)
I could rely on him. I also started falling in love with building again.
At this stage, ACES was getting really big, and the courses this "Blackbird" place was giving were pretty good. Somewhere along the way, I realised these guys are something called venture capitalists, and like, the biggest one on the southern hemisphere. I remember one night going, "Holy S***!?" as I realised these were the OG Canva investors. The only time I'd ever heard of a VC was when some crazy guy was trying to get me to be his CTO and apply to something called "Y Combinator." Funny enough, I posted on Hacker News but had no clue what the site was actually made for. I just assumed YC was a cult to steer clear of.
Now, I take everything very literally, and decided, if they're a VC and not a bad one, and I clearly see VR has like a million entry level things to solve before the ''''metaverse'''' makes sense, why not just try to fix the problems that made me put down my own headset? I've got nothing to lose, and frankly adored getting to build stuff without being told to again. I also realised, while it was just a lot of wires, and beyond the irony, this was actually a problem with the industry that had pissed me off. It was my entire social life as a kid, and there's been like zero real input improvements for the everyday user in years. So I went with it.
At the same time I'm also learning how to pitch for sponsors for ACES and haul beer half-way across the city for the hardware meetups.
I also ran a hackathon with a guy who runs something called Arrayah, shoving all my electronics into the back of my car for it.
Then spent countless nights coming up with the weirdest marketing ideas for ACES, from printing out looooooaads of posters and running around town, to funny pictures like this.
At this point, we had been approached my multiple people with money, and I was still figuring things out. We decided we wanted to go fast and be with people who understand our problem. Blackbird felt like a family, and understood why I was so upset about the state of VR, Startmate had a huge community and pushed people to "Focus and Execute," so after seriously sitting down with Chris and Sean, I decided to have Sean as my CTO, and Chris was happy with his life as it was, but still offered to help out.
By the time the program ended, one girl at an ACES event shouted, "Show the On Zero pitch!"
I decided over the weekend after that, when I pitched Blackbird, that if I didn't get accepted, "F***, it I'll bootstrap and Kickstarter this if I have to." Had my girl crash out and dyed my hair red. (Equivalent to a guy going through a big break up and hitting the gym.)
June - July
They said yes. I was so happy, because they understood what equity meant to me, and how important it was that the community could shape VR before investors. Blackbird, to me, had invested into companies that make the world better for creatives, like Canva and Redbubble. I had the shot to go fast and make something beautiful, and I was not here to throw it away. We picked up Startmate as well to be in an environment of fast builders. We started slamming through prototypes. I almost went homeless in San Francisco, and got to meet Michael Reeves, who laughed his head off when I said I was making a glove that could let you pat anime girls in VRChat. (A personal win.)
We did some business stuff, I cried over contracts, and we survived! Notable journeys include:
Borrowing 10k from an international student
Going to Open Sauce
Being adopted by the Stanford Muslim Union
Putting my last $100 on memecoins
Staying in the "Cheapest hostel in SF"
Dying my hair white with an ex-felon and a French backpacker
Meeting some of the godliest engineers in my life
August - September
This was a painful time, getting the money by the end of August, but still iterating. Still hosting ACES events, figuring out the living crisis, and much, much more. I can't lie, this was a really tough time. One godsend for ACES was a recruiting team called The Onset, a girl called Thais and a guy called Toby really helped out. Alongside a girl called Leah from CSIRO. I could not have lived through August without them helping out, as I attempted to learn how the law worked while eating like a monk.
ACES started doing really well, and OZ was too. I was functioning on barely enough food, money, and stability. I didn't know why I felt so tired every day, and I think the best advice I'd received was from a mentor, Michael Blackhurst, who said: "Get. Vitamins."
Truly genius.
I realised one of the reasons I was tired was not just living conditions, which got significantly better after getting the money, but it was calling shots every single day. I had 1000 things I wanted to do, and only so much time I could focus every single day. I went from brown to white to pink to purple to every color of hair, it was bad, so I started chunking things up. I ruthlessly started to prioritise what I actually cared about. If it was even slightly wasting my time, good bye.
At this stage we got into IAC, the worlds largest space conference, and people were pretty excited. We had quite a few people joining our Discord community. Anybody from NASA engineers to robotics guys from Queensland were joining in!
At this stage, some friends from Nextgen Ventures helped us get into SXSW. They're a VC fund that helps younger innovators, and as we started this all at 600k, they were happy to help out. I genuinely love the boys who run it. :)
I started getting into the branding side at this stage. One of the reason I really like Kickstarters is that it forces you to make something people actually want. It's cruel, and in a way, I like that. I knew a guy two grades above me in high school who did one but sadly didn't come to fruition, I suspect this is because they didn't have a campaigning budget. The game itself was amazing, and especially visually brilliant.
That guy I knew was open to commissions, and I love supporting artists, especially one as talented as him. Since the whole idea of the gloves was the let you 'touch pixels,' I figured I should reach out the the best pixel artist I knew. I'd ping pong back and forth with him, starting with the SXSW banners.
I'd give him this,
And he'd send rough sketches through super fast!
October
It's now the 6th of October, and we're getting into:
Building community, mostly focused on Youtube and Discord
Getting media releases out
Learning 'soft goods' - so sewing in some of the things we need to make it feel as comfy as it looks
Getting to every conference we can get to
Branding and Campaigning
ITERATING!!!
So if you know any cracked campaigners or people who would love this tech, tell them about us! :)
That's the story, up till now!
