Jet Boil

While perusing the Outside Magazine gear of the year web site, I became aware of a company called Jetboil. These guys are doing exactly the kind of thing that I want to do as an entrepreneur, they have created an innovative, durable, aesthetically pleasing, and generally well designed product that makes use of some rather simple scientific concepts and easy to implement technology.

Far too few manufacturers make enough effort to perfect their products before releasing them into the market. It appears that none of the industry leaders bothered to examine ways to improve the efficiency of heat transfer from backpacking stove burners to the pots above them, something that would seem like a very logical task for an engineer working on such a project.

Its nice to know that two guys can still build something in their garage that is vastly better than the so called top of the line products made by venerable companies, but more than a little bit disturbing to realize just how uncommitted those companies are to producing a nearly optimal product. At least the software industry sort of does this, and yet linux is still vastly better than its commercial counterparts.