Daniel Cao

I'm Daniel Cao, the founder of EIM. As I'm writing this, we're closing in on the end of 2023. Time flies, but I can still clearly remember the rush of excitement and the overwhelming sense of achievement that our small team felt five years ago when we saw the first pre-orders roll in for our very first crowdfunding campaign for our first baby product MEGO. Believe it or not, this was already 14 months after we had made the decision to form a startup team (with my peers Terrence and David in research lab), during which time we had virtually no income. A rented factory corner located in Anacis island in Delta, BC, where we worked, lived and toiled, was where our dreams began to take physical shape. Amidst the buzz of machinery and the smell of solder, our first prototypes were born, each component meticulously placed by hopeful, determined hands. My partners and myself were all from technical backgrounds. Honestly, we didn't start with a clear-cut outlook or a sounding business plan. The inception of EIM Technology was purely driven by our passion for technology and education, and a simple yet sloppy goal: to develop some user-friendly products to facilitate research work, and if possible, sell to those folks in our neighbor labs or departments. In fact, the genesis of this idea was rooted in the practical challenges of my thesis research, which often involved lugging around heavy and cumbersome instruments to various labs in chemistry, biology, and health science. These labs typically lacked specialized electronic equipment, though occasionally, they might need just a basic power supply or some simple sensor circuitry to gather preliminary data. Leveraging my expertise, I made a compact, pocket-sized portable power supply (the version-0.1 of MEGO) and some electronic modules, which I brought to these labs instead of relying on expensive, million-dollar apparatus. I realized these minimalist designs sparked considerable admiration among my peer researchers, who expressed a keen interest in acquiring some foundational tech skills. This was an eye-opener for me. By hosting a couple of club evenets and workshops, I realized a broader interest in electronics existed outside the technical sphere, hindered by a lack of knowledge and high equipment costs. As someone who has been a student, engineer, and educator, along with a great team that shared the same zeal, I believed that our experience could genuinely help those who wanted to understand electronics. Consequently, our focus shifted to creating user-friendly, cost-effective devices, simplifying electronics for a wider audience. Our new mission bore fruit with the creation of MEGO, Zoolark, and Lab-On-The-Go, alongside a knowledge platform with a list of project-based tutorials and learning kits tailored to foster hands-on experience and understanding in the field.