On the TechVancouver stage ×1
First seen on the TechVancouver stage in 2018. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Campbell ↗
In their words
The thing that's interesting is I have no background in this industry. The customer development process for this was done for us, in a way, by BC Hydro. They put out a small RFP and said, hey, we're looking for a wearable to protect our workers from electricity.
This is embarrassingly simple, but for our customers it is space-age stuff. It's really exciting when you're working on a problem that a customer's defined and you come up with a solution that's simple and they really like it. Now this causes me anxiety, because I like sophisticated complicated solutions.
I'm right now in hardware hell. Hardware sucks. If this device already existed I would love just to build software for it. It just doesn't exist right now — there's no connected solution, and a lot of the sensors out there aren't that good, so we built our own.
Around the web ×4
Quick answers
Who is Campbell Macdonald?
Co-founder and CEO of Proxxi, a Vancouver industrial-safety company. Its Voltage wristband senses electric fields and warns workers before they contact energized equipment. He demoed it at TechVancouver in July 2018.
What did Campbell Macdonald do before Proxxi?
He co-founded and led Pathful, a marketing analytics company acquired by Mobify, and later advised Mobify. Earlier roles included Canadian Pacific Railway, Home Depot and BuildDirect.
How did Proxxi start?
BC Hydro put out a small RFP for a wearable to protect workers from electricity and funded the research. Macdonald's co-founder Richard Sim built a working prototype instead of just researching the idea.