OKdo was founded exactly 4 years ago today! As part of our 4th anniversary, we wanted to celebrate 15 OKdo highlights we achieved throughout the years.
But first, we want to express how grateful we are to the team of our incredibly talented team, our partners, and most importantly, our customers and all our supporters across the globe – we couldn’t have done any of it without you.
- Our Story So Far: How Did OKdo Start?
- Our Mission
- Our Partnerships
- We Launched OKdo ROCK – the SBC We Always Needed
- We’re About Lots More Than Just Hardware. Discover Our Services
- 15 Milestones We Want to Celebrate Today
- Our Team – The Fuel of the OKdo Engine
- Useful Resources You’ll Love
- Top Industry Trends @ Events & Webinars
- Let’s Make Amazing Happen Together
Interview with Richard Curtin, the co-founder and CTO of OKdo
Our Story So Far: How Did OKdo Start?
My name is Richard Curtin, and I’m the co-founder and CTO of OKdo. We’re a company that provides technology products, solutions and services to makers, developers, and businesses worldwide. I am excited to share our journey with you as we continue to grow and innovate in the technology industry for a better world.
When I was working as the Global Vice President, Product Technology & Innovation at RS Group, my team started to visit technology start-up incubators, design labs, contract manufacturers and large-scale technology companies. Back then, I talked to engineers, students and business leaders and observed the rapid adoption of single-board computers and compute modules used in enterprise and industrial solutions driven by the growing demand for smart, connected edge computing capable of running AI/ML applications.
We recognised the pace of change in the global single board computing market and the need for entrepreneurial innovation & disruption. This was the catalyst for the launch OKdo.
Our ambition was to create a global technology company focused on building strategic alliances with the world’s leading technology companies, enabling OKdo to develop the most innovative hardware, software, and service ecosystem to support every step of our customers’ design projects.
Our Mission
At OKdo, we are passionate about designing a smarter, more sustainable world. We are committed to supporting students, entrepreneurs, developers and design engineers to achieve incredible things because we genuinely want to create a brighter future for us all. So, let’s OKdo this together!
OKdo was born to provide everything from hardware components and software tools, to educational resources and community support.
OKdo was founded in April 2019 with the mission to provide the tools and resources needed to bring innovative ideas to life. As a team of technology enthusiasts, we understood the challenges makers, engineers and developers face when trying to turn their ideas into reality and exist to provide the solution.
These 4 incredible years have allowed us to develop our passion for technology into a global IoT company driven by a worldwide mission to deliver the imagination, creativity and technical expertise our customers desire.
Together with some of the best technology companies in the world, we’ve been working hard and passionately to bring the latest products and innovations to more people worldwide, wherever they are on their SBC and IoT journey.
And today, we’re ready to look back and celebrate our biggest achievements with you proudly.
Our Partnerships
Since our launch, we have made significant strides in achieving our mission. As part of the RS Group, we’re already a global company with big partnerships.
We have established partnerships with some of the biggest names in the technology industry, including NVIDIA, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BBC micro:bit, LEGO Education, LAIIER and many more, to offer a wide range of products and services to our customers.
Of course, our journey so far has not been without its challenges. Like many companies, we have had to adapt to the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and the global chip shortage. We have had to find new ways to connect with our customers and partners and continue providing the products and services they need. But thanks to our talented team’s dedication and hard work, we have been able to overcome these challenges and continue to grow.
We Launched OKdo ROCK – the SBC We Always Needed
One of our biggest successes so far has been launching our own branded products. We have developed a range of affordable and high-quality products, such as the OKdo E1 Development Board and the OKdo Air Quality Kit, designed to make it easier for makers and developers to create their own projects.
OKdo ROCK was born out of our love for technology.
More recently, we launched the ROCK range of products in collaboration with Radxa. This has allowed us to provide a solution that is appropriate for industrial applications for a broader range of customers. Having listened to what you really needed in a single board computer, we decided to build something different. You can learn more about ROCK in an interview here.
In 2022, we were also thrilled to launch the OKdo Nano C100 Dev Kit in collaboration with NVIDIA®. The reason we’re so excited about it is that it’s a production-ready system that enables customers to scale AI projects while taking advantage of the familiar and low-cost Jetson Nano form factor. You can learn more about this powerful product and get started with Nano C100 in our step-by-step guide.
We’re About Lots More Than Just Hardware. Discover Our Services
We’re also extremely proud of how we evolved throughout the years and how our offer has developed and grown. With a lot of work and dedication, we’ve built an end-to-end ecosystem of services and delivered a unique combination of software, development support, distribution and manufacturing services to inspire and enable customers to generate new ideas and turn them into commercial reality.
15 Milestones We Want to Celebrate Today
We, of course, aim to multiply our successes as we grow. But today, we want to celebrate 15 milestones that we’ve hit during these 4 years and that we’re proud of:
- 681,000 orders – helping you design the world
- Connecting 234,000 customers to new technology & products
- Over 50 employees are part of the team spanning across Asia, The Americas & Europe
- We built a complete end-to-end suite of services to support you, from design and software development, to manufacturing and distribution
- We launched a full ROCK ecosystem, including a core range of 6 ROCK single board computers
- Donated 10K+ micro:bit boards as part of the do your: bit initiative for children from under-represented groups around the world
- Launched OKdo Renew – the first official Raspberry Pi recycling scheme, supporting our passion for ESG and our sustainability agenda
- Built an OKdo.com presence in 6 markets: UK, US, Germany, Italy, France & Netherlands
- Our websites were visited by users from over 200 countries across the world last year
- We’ve kept our customers happy, reaching a 4.5* Trustpilot rating based on over 800 customer reviews
- We’ve built a Software & Knowledge Hub
- Written 50 Getting Started Guides to support your growth
- Created over 100 Projects to help unleash your creativity
- Began not one, but 2 communities for fellow designers and engineers on Design Spark & Wevolver
- Launched our first-ever OKdo ROCK Design Engineering Challenge, for teams of engineers across the world eager to create the products and systems of tomorrow.
Looking to the future, we are excited to build on our successes and continue to innovate in the technology industry. We have some exciting projects in the pipeline, including new product launches, strong partnerships and inspiring initiatives to support our customers. We are also committed to playing our part in addressing some of the biggest challenges facing the world today, such as climate change and social inequality.
Our Team – The Fuel of the OKdo Engine
We are a truly global team with colleagues in the UK, Sweden, Denmark, China and America. And counting! And we’ve been fortunate to have some brilliant talents join our team and incredible leaders who fuel this whole engine – OKdo. Kudos to the whole OKdo team!
I want to thank our colleagues, customers, partners, and supporters for joining us on this journey so far. We couldn’t have done it without you, and we look forward to continuing to work together to bring new ideas to life.
With a blend of expert technical knowledge and commercial partnerships alongside innovative design & manufacturing capabilities, together we can achieve great things, and build an exciting future and empower amazing things through technology.
Useful Resources You’ll Love
Top Industry Trends @ Events & Webinars
Let’s Make Amazing Happen Together
We have the right solutions to help you solve your problem. Whether it’s software development, SBC customisation, manufacturing and distribution, or an end-to-end suite of services to help power up your projects and lead your idea to success, our team of expert engineers is here to help.
