Kevin Huo is the Vice President of EM Solutions. As a second-generation leader, he oversees the production of Printed Circuit Board Assemblies (PCBAs) and navigates the challenges of a rapidly changing industry.

Nate Wheeler is the host of the popular Manufacturing Insiders podcast. He also owns weCreate, a nationally recognized marketing agency that helps manufacturers grow, save money, and become more efficient.

In this episode of Manufacturing Insiders, Kevin Huo explains how a smaller, family-owned business competes against much larger manufacturers. He details a strategy centered on quick-turn prototyping and building direct partnerships with customers. This approach allows his company to thrive in a market that demands constant innovation and speed.

Kevin discusses the technological shifts driving the industry, from component miniaturization to the rise of flexible circuits for new applications. He also provides a look into the future, exploring how AI-driven design tools will soon allow anyone to create complex electronics. Listen to learn how to leverage speed and flexibility as a competitive advantage in a high-tech environment.

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Nate Wheeler (00:00.354)
Welcome to Manufacturing Insiders. Today I have Kevin Huo with me, a second-generation manufacturer whose family company makes PCBAs, or Printed Circuit Board Assemblies.

As vice president, Kevin wears a lot of different hats and has great insight on the PCBA manufacturing process and some of the difficulties manufacturers are having today with navigating tariffs and generational knowledge gaps. I’m really excited to pick your brain today, Kevin, so welcome.

Kevin Huo (00:41.841)
Thanks for having me, Nate. I appreciate it. You got my name down right, you nailed it.

Nate Wheeler (00:47.342)
Good. As I was saying it, I almost stumbled because, with the way it’s spelled, you want to say it in different ways in English. I’m glad I nailed it. So, your parents came directly from China, and you were born in the US. Is that right?

Kevin Huo (01:12.601)
Yes, my parents came from China and met in the States. I was born and raised in California.

Nate Wheeler (01:22.67)
I think Americans have a very conceptual version of China in their minds, but we don’t really understand too much about it in reality. I’ve been reading a little bit on the subject recently, so it’s fascinating to hear your perspective. Have you been back to China with your parents?

Kevin Huo (01:48.369)
I used to go a lot when I was growing up, probably once every two to three years. But I haven’t been back since 2018 or 2019, so pre-COVID. Your guess is as good as mine as to how much things have changed since then. I see what you mean, and what’s funny is people living in China probably think the exact same thing about the United States. You never really know about a place until you go there and experience it, so there’s likely a huge disconnect about what each country is actually like.

Nate Wheeler (02:28.566)
There’s a symbolic caricature in everybody’s mind of what a people is like. What part of China did your parents originate from?

Kevin Huo (02:41.765)
My dad is from Beijing, the capital of China, and my mom is from around Shanghai. They came separately around 1985, met here, and I guess the rest is history.

Nate Wheeler (03:02.349)
We talk a lot about China these days and Chinese manufacturing. From my understanding, one of the biggest challenges there was the one-child policy from the 1970s and 80s, which impacted China’s economic capacity. A lot of Americans feel like China is a big economic threat to the US, but looking at the lack of young people coming into the workforce, I don’t think that’s going to be the case moving forward. Do you agree?

Kevin Huo (03:47.473)
There are two ways of looking at it. The one-child policy definitely affected generations to come, as the current working generation doesn’t have as many people. For example, my aunts and uncles who had children about eight to ten years older than me only had single kids. Now they are able to have more children, but the thing is, people aren’t having as many kids.

I think this is a huge problem in Asia, for whatever reason. People don’t want to have kids and want to live their own lives, which will affect the workforce going forward. That’s a problem for the future and for the current generation as well.

Kevin Huo (04:41.904)
There’s a problem in China you can look up. There’s a name for it in Chinese that I can’t translate perfectly, but there’s a whole generation of people my age who just don’t want to work. They want to live at home and live a very simple life. They don’t have much ambition and just want to relax.

Nate Wheeler (05:04.928)
What do you think is behind that? What’s driving it?

Kevin Huo (05:11.472)
From what I’ve read, life is just comfortable over there. If their parents are working, they’re making enough money for them to live a certain lifestyle. Why would they go and try to make so much more to live above that, especially if they’re of the mindset that they don’t want kids? It’s not like they want to pass anything down. So they’re just playing a lot of video games and buying a lot of clothes. They’re not doing much. I wish I knew the name for it; there’s a name for this phenomenon in China. It’s a huge discussion amongst people my parents’ age.

Nate Wheeler (05:46.154)
Let’s see. What is the term in China for young adults who don’t want to work? Is it ‘Dink’?

Kevin Huo (05:55.281)
No, ‘DINK’ stands for ‘double income, no kids,’ which is a term we hear more in the States. That’s not it. It’s a Chinese term, so I don’t know if you’ll be able to find it easily. It might be one of those things that’s talked about online but isn’t an official term. Let me see if I can find it real quick.

Kevin Huo (06:53.36)
It’s called the ‘lying flat’ phenomenon. The translation refers to a trend where young adults, disillusioned with the hyper-competitive work culture and bleak job prospects, choose to reject societal pressures to overwork and overachieve. Instead, they opt for a more relaxed, minimal approach to life, sometimes even quitting their jobs or becoming ‘full-time children.’

Nate Wheeler (07:25.038)
We call that ‘failure to launch’ in the US. There’s actually a movie with that title. It’s a really concerning trend.

Nate Wheeler (07:39.834)
It sounds more like hopelessness than a comfort thing, as if they feel it’s not going to get better, so why bother trying? In my mind, the caricature of Asian culture is to make your family proud and do better than your parents did. This seems like a complete turnaround from that.

Kevin Huo (08:05.476)
I’m not really sure what’s causing it. It might be hopelessness or more of a mental issue as opposed to a societal or economic one. But the culture is changing a huge amount.

Kevin Huo (08:24.632)
I’m sure there are differences between your mindset and your parents’ mindset, but the differences between my mindset and my parents’ or grandparents’ are like night and day. How we were raised, our goals, and the struggles we face are completely different. For example, I’m running the company they started 17 years ago, and the problems I face versus what they faced are completely different.

Nate Wheeler (08:59.274)
That sense of hopelessness might also be driven from the top. The Chinese government under Jinping has created an extremely leveraged financial system, and the country is badly in debt. From what I understand, it’s very easy to get loans if you’re in the right club or group to run your business. But everyone else who isn’t part of that insider group doesn’t get that funding. Does that sound accurate?

Kevin Huo (10:02.71)
I couldn’t tell you much about that in China, but it sounds correct. China is very political at the top. When everything is run by one person, it all becomes political because it’s about who you know. Do you have this person’s favor, or do you know someone who knows someone who can get something approved? That doesn’t surprise me.

Nate Wheeler (10:35.724)
At any rate, tell me about the process of building PCBAs. Where do you get involved? Do you receive the bare circuit boards and then start putting components on them, or do you do design work? How does that all work?

Kevin Huo (10:59.482)
We’re a full turnkey operation. We source bare printed circuit boards for our customers and then do the assembly in-house. Our equipment is for the assembly process. The actual manufacturing of the bare boards is a much different process that requires different chemicals, equipment, and experience.

Kevin Huo (11:27.088)
We leave that to the people who specialize in it, as it’s not something we’re interested in. Our specialty is placing the parts on the board, and we have the equipment for that. We usually get involved when the customer has a design, and we can help them tweak it for manufacturability.

Sometimes things that work in theory need adjustments for manufacturing, like changing spacing or moving a component away from the edge or a heat source. We can help with things like that. Generally, the customer provides a design, we confirm it, get the bare boards manufactured by our partners, and then we do the assembly in-house.

Nate Wheeler (12:21.258)
Okay. What are the typical applications? Are they for industrial products, aerospace, or medical?

Kevin Huo (12:28.782)
The cool thing about printed circuit board assembly is that everything has them. You can look around your room right now—this laptop, my phone, a scanner, even the smart-controlled light bulbs above me have PCBAs. We build boards for every industry. Being in the Bay Area, the ones we build for most often are for semiconductor, memory, medical, and consumer electronics.

Kevin Huo (12:57.102)
It’s really cool because we see every type of company and industry walk through our doors. Each one has a different vibe and feel. It’s interesting to see the differences between the industries and the products they’re making.

Nate Wheeler (13:19.936)
It’s fascinating. Everybody has seen a printed circuit board and all the little components on it. I might know a little more than the average person about resistors and capacitors from an electrical engineering class I took. I was curious, when you look at a board, do you know what each of those components does and what it’s there for?

Kevin Huo (13:51.8)
First of all, give yourself some credit. You took an electrical engineering class, so you’re much further ahead than most people. When you look at a board, there are some components you can identify, like memory, a flash, or a controller. But once a board reaches a certain level of complexity with thousands of parts, it becomes hard to tell what everything is for. However, since many chip form factors are the same, if you know the function of just one or two chips, you can often tell what the board does.

Nate Wheeler (14:37.312)
You’ve been with the company for about eight years now. Over that time, technology has increased at a rapid, almost exponential rate. How have the assemblies you’re making changed? Have there been new components that made you think, ‘What in the world is this?’ and after researching it, you found it really interesting? Tell me about that.

Kevin Huo (15:08.4)
There are always new and interesting components. To hear my dad talk about it, the chips now are completely different from when he started 20 or 25 years ago. Back then, everything was through-hole, which involved bulky parts that needed to be hand-loaded and hand-soldered for stability. Now, everything is tiny, measured in mils, or thousandths of an inch.

The complexity of parts has definitely changed. You’re seeing new and creative packaging and denser parts. As they get smaller, you have to compact all the functionality into a smaller component, making it more complex and dense. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but when things are smaller, they have a greater tendency to go wrong.

Kevin Huo (16:19.824)
The main thing we’ve been seeing is that everyone is trying to build everything smaller. If something was on a five-by-seven-inch board in the past, people are now trying to shrink it to a two-by-three-inch board for a wearable or something similar. People want to condense their designs as much as possible.

The other thing we’ve seen a lot is a move towards flexibility with flex boards and flexible circuits. There are many reasons for this, mostly for things like wearables or to open up the field of applications if your board isn’t rigid.

Kevin Huo (17:22.19)
Those are the kinds of things we’re seeing. On top of that, components have developed over the years. For example, the biggest ball grid array (BGA) might have previously been 1,024 balls. Every once in a while, we’ll see a prototype project with a 3,000-ball BGA that costs $2,000 per part. Especially with prototypes, people are always pushing the boundaries of what is doable. It’s interesting because if this is what we’re seeing on the market now, it makes me wonder what’s on the cutting edge of development.

Nate Wheeler (17:55.946)
It is an interesting topic. We chatted about this before—I met someone who made a material that can 3D print electrical circuits. I wonder if the future of this space is completely three-dimensional boards that you can put in any plane. Instead of a flat board inside a watch, the assembly could take up the entire inside of the watch. I would think that might be a more efficient use of space in some cases.

Kevin Huo (18:43.044)
When we talk about flexible technology, that’s what we mean. Clothing is a big application; people are trying to weave a little tag into clothes. As a big sports guy, I see Nike and Gatorade doing cool things with wearable trackers for athletes. The technology is flexible, small, and condensed, so you can put it on an athlete without bothering them during training, and you can collect all this data from the sensors on the board. These are things that previously weren’t doable with the technology.

Kevin Huo (19:33.221)
Imagine having a driver’s license-sized device taped to your thigh while you’re trying to run. You could collect data, but it would be annoying for the athlete. Now these things are so small that the athlete won’t even notice them. For football specifically, they’re going to put a chip in the ball. Because it’s so small now, it won’t affect the ball’s performance, but previously, there’s no way they could have done that.

Nate Wheeler (20:03.084)
That’s fascinating. It’s not just that it’s small, but also its durability. If you abuse a PCBA by throwing it around or spiking it, that’s typically not going to help its longevity. So how do you compete in the marketplace? You’re a relatively small company of 20 to 25 people, competing against some really big companies. How do you acquire customers?

Kevin Huo (20:41.284)
As a smaller company and a family business, our mindset is to have a personal touch with our customers. There are customers who really want that, especially in the prototype stage or in small to midsize production. They’re looking for one-on-one customer service, guidance, and a true partnership, as opposed to a manufacturer who is just there to build their product and doesn’t care about the outcome or work with you through troubles.

Kevin Huo (21:31.878)
We have two silos in our business, and one is the prototype side, which involves small-batch builds. Things are often not finalized, and issues can arise. Engineers like to use us for these projects because we’re flexible and provide the service to help them get where they need to go.

Everyone makes mistakes, especially during the prototype phase—that’s why they’re called prototypes. When unforeseen things come up, we work with the customer to make sure they get the result they want. If they’ve made a mistake with a part, we don’t hold it against them or stop everything. We work with them to find a solution.

Kevin Huo (22:21.878)
We try to come up with a mutual solution that’s beneficial to both of us—one that won’t affect our manufacturing process too much but will help them get the board they want. Whether that means doing some crazy rework or finding a purchasing hack to get a cheaper price on something, we’ll work with them. Customers have many different metrics for what they would consider a successful project.

Kevin Huo (22:55.147)
On the larger, low- to mid-size quantity side, our quality is a given. Anyone who manufactures boards in the Bay Area, or manufactures anything, and has been around for 17 years has to have good quality. That’s the number one thing. You can have the best pricing and customer service, but if your quality isn’t good, no one will use you.

We have fantastic quality and still work with customers that my parents started with in 2008 and 2010. Our quality is good, our pricing is good, and as I said, customer service is where we really shine. We want to work with our customers as partners and bring that family business feel to their products.

Nate Wheeler (24:00.716)
I can definitely see how you wouldn’t necessarily get that from a bigger company.

Kevin Huo (24:08.014)
One other thing I forgot to mention is quick-turn manufacturing. In our industry, that’s a typical term. With larger companies, there’s a lot of logistics and red tape to go through just to get a project on the board. I’ve talked to people working with larger companies, and it can take them three to four days just to get a project quoted or started because of their internal processes.

This is just a function of how they work; I’m not saying they’re bad because of it. But in this industry, three to four days is really valuable. I could probably build an entire board in that time. Not having to go through those hoops or that red tape lets our customers get a leg up on their competition, getting to market or testing faster.

If they call me and say, “Kevin, I need this started tomorrow,” I can do that, no problem. In a larger company, the bureaucracy requires getting approval from multiple people and getting three quotes, so just getting to things quicker is a huge benefit.

Nate Wheeler (25:43.981)
That’s hugely valuable. Many companies avoid prototyping because it often isn’t profitable; it’s a lot of work for little reward. For other companies, it’s a loss leader, a strategy to get the production business. For you guys, is it a standalone product that you make a good profit on and are happy with, and if it turns into production work, that’s just a bonus? How do you look at that?

Kevin Huo (26:26.446)
All those points are valid. Prototyping is hard, especially with the uncertainty involved. You never know if something’s going to work, which can cause RMAs, returns, or the need to help a customer with repairs, and those things don’t generate much money. That being said, prototyping is necessary. Everyone needs to do it.

You want to develop these relationships with your customers so that when they move from the prototype phase to the production phase—which is admittedly easier and where you’ll make more money through higher volume—you’ve already supported them. You develop that trust and foundational base of knowledge and cooperation. It’s unfair to tell a customer, “We don’t want to work on your prototype, come to us when you have the big money stuff.”

Kevin Huo (27:50.689)
I understand that’s some people’s business model, but for us, we’re not just trying to make money; we’re also trying to support customers. We love to see customers win and get to the next level, and we love to be a part of that. Being a part of that means doing the prototype work, the stuff that can be a little dirty and sometimes not the most fun, but we think it’s necessary.

It might sound a little psychotic, but there’s fun in the madness and chaos of it all—trying to get things done quickly, trying to do things that other companies can’t. People come to us and say, “I’ve taken this to a couple of shops around the Bay, and they can’t do it. Can you do this in two days?” Figuring out how to do that is part of the fun.

Nate Wheeler (28:46.092)
It sounds like you guys are in a great geographic location for your offering with that super-fast turnaround. We think of Silicon Valley as the home of the highest tech, fastest-moving startups, and the people creating these technological advances. I understand some new hubs have popped up, like Austin, Texas, and other places in the Southwest. Would you say you get 90% of your business from the Silicon Valley area, or do you address other areas?

Kevin Huo (29:29.56)
I would say probably 80 to 90% of our business is from Silicon Valley, especially on the quick-turn side. We have a lot of geographical advantages by being where we are. We’re in San Jose, right by the airport, which is close to many of the big players in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and San Mateo. This gives customers the added benefit of being able to drive down to discuss a project, bring a board by for a quick rework, or drop off consigned components. You gain a lot of advantages just by being there.

Of course, it’s easy to work with companies in the Bay Area. But with printed circuit boards, you don’t have to be next to someone to build boards for them. One of our closest customers is actually in Ontario, Canada. We have customers a little further out in Nevada and Oregon. So, while the majority of our projects are in the Bay Area, we do see a decent amount of our work coming from outside the bay.

Nate Wheeler (30:54.35)
What has been your marketing strategy, especially for companies outside of your area? How do you get in front of them?

Kevin Huo (31:08.408)
It’s a labor of patience. We do outreach through trade shows, like PCB West, which has maybe 200 exhibitors each year. They give you a list of attendees, and you can go through it on LinkedIn to see who might be a good fit, since many people attend for different industries that aren’t helpful to you. Once you find these people, it’s about direct reach-out.

I don’t like doing huge email campaigns and just emailing every single person I can get my hands on. You probably get those ads that say, “We can get you 5,000 contacts from your industry for $200,” and then you just shoot off a mass email. That’s not what we’re about. We want to make more personalized connections through individual outreach. Sometimes you read about a company, go on LinkedIn, and try to find the head of engineering or procurement to start a conversation.

Kevin Huo (32:44.29)
The reason I say it’s a labor of patience is that if you’re in manufacturing, you already have a manufacturer. You can’t not have one. The question is, are you happy with them? If you are, there’s no reason to entertain someone else. It’s like with anything; if you’re happy with your dentist, you’re not going to give another dentist who calls you much time.

It’s a patience game. You’re essentially waiting for someone to screw up, and you have to stay top of mind so that when they do, you can slide in and solve whatever problem they have, whether it’s a lead time, pricing, or customer service issue. You have to be there, waiting to pick up where the other person left off.

Nate Wheeler (33:46.478)
I’m very familiar with that situation. The way I deal with it for my customers is this: typically, when someone does a web search for a new manufacturer, it’s because they had a problem, whether it was turnaround time, quality, or on-time delivery. We do a process called search engine optimization (SEO) for our customers. The idea is you have two choices: you can cold call to get in front of people and develop relationships so they think of you when a problem arises in the future, or you can take the much easier path of just being visible when they do that search.

A hefty percentage of those people won’t have a fallback relationship they’ve developed. Many people don’t have another contact, so they’re going to look for one. For you, getting in front of those searches for terms like “fast turnaround PCBA” would be a huge advantage for your growth strategy. When they get to your website and see you can turn a board around in three days, they’ll say, “Wow, okay, great. Let’s do it.” I think that would be a great strategy for you to consider.

Kevin Huo (35:31.633)
For sure. What would your strategy be? For us, there’s a lot of competition in the Bay Area with a lot of resources. I’m not an SEO or Google AdWords expert, but I imagine it would be difficult to be competitive. If there are 30 printed circuit board assembly houses and I have the 26th-highest spend on Google AdWords, can I really be competitive in search results?

Nate Wheeler (36:10.462)
That’s a great question. Let’s use those numbers. Say you have 30 competitors in the Bay Area, and half of them advertise their fast-turnaround capabilities. Now you have 15 competitors. You have 10 organic spots on the first page of Google search results, and we all know if you’re not on the first page, you’re nowhere. You have the 10 organic listings, the paid ads, and the map listings. So you have 15 competitors in the “fast turnaround PCBA manufacturing” space.

Now, look at their websites. How many of them have a page specifically developed on that topic? A page with 600-700 words of content makes it very clear to Google that you want to rank for that term. From my perspective, you’re probably down to seven competitors, because half of those focusing on fast turnaround likely haven’t put much effort into building out that page.

Nate Wheeler (24:00.716)
I can definitely see how you wouldn’t necessarily get that from a bigger company.

Kevin Huo (24:08.014)
One other thing I forgot to mention is quick-turn manufacturing. In our industry, that’s a typical term. With larger companies, there’s a lot of logistics and red tape to go through just to get a project on the board. I’ve talked to people working with larger companies, and it can take them three to four days just to get a project quoted or started because of their internal processes.

This is just a function of how they work; I’m not saying they’re bad because of it. But in this industry, three to four days is really valuable. I could probably build an entire board in that time. Not having to go through those hoops or that red tape lets our customers get a leg up on their competition, getting to market or testing faster. If they call me and say, “Kevin, I need this started tomorrow,” I can do that, no problem. In a larger company, the bureaucracy requires getting approval from multiple people and getting three quotes, so just getting to things quicker is a huge benefit.

Nate Wheeler (25:43.981)
That’s hugely valuable. Many companies avoid prototyping because it often isn’t profitable; it’s a lot of work for little reward. For other companies, it’s a loss leader, a strategy to get the production business. For you guys, is it a standalone product that you make a good profit on and are happy with, and if it turns into production work, that’s just a bonus? How do you look at that?

Kevin Huo (26:26.446)
All those points are valid. Prototyping is hard, especially with the uncertainty involved. You never know if something’s going to work, which can cause RMAs, returns, or the need to help a customer with repairs, and those things don’t generate much money. That being said, prototyping is necessary. Everyone needs to do it.

You want to develop these relationships with your customers so that when they move from the prototype phase to the production phase—which is admittedly easier and where you’ll make more money through higher volume—you’ve already supported them. You develop that trust and foundational base of knowledge and cooperation. It’s unfair to tell a customer, “We don’t want to work on your prototype, come to us when you have the big money stuff.”

Kevin Huo (27:50.689)
I understand that’s some people’s business model, but for us, we’re not just trying to make money; we’re also trying to support customers. We love to see customers win and get to the next level, and we love to be a part of that. Being a part of that means doing the prototype work, the stuff that can be a little dirty and sometimes not the most fun, but we think it’s necessary.

It might sound a little psychotic, but there’s fun in the madness and chaos of it all—trying to get things done quickly, trying to do things that other companies can’t. People come to us and say, “I’ve taken this to a couple of shops around the Bay, and they can’t do it. Can you do this in two days?” Figuring out how to do that is part of the fun.

Nate Wheeler (28:46.092)
It sounds like you guys are in a great geographic location for your offering with that super-fast turnaround. We think of Silicon Valley as the home of the highest tech, fastest-moving startups, and the people creating these technological advances. I understand some new hubs have popped up, like Austin, Texas, and other places in the Southwest. Would you say you get 90% of your business from the Silicon Valley area, or do you address other areas?

Kevin Huo (29:29.56)
I would say probably 80 to 90% of our business is from Silicon Valley, especially on the quick-turn side. We have a lot of geographical advantages by being where we are. We’re in San Jose, right by the airport, which is close to many of the big players in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and San Mateo. This gives customers the added benefit of being able to drive down to discuss a project, bring a board by for a quick rework, or drop off consigned components. You gain a lot of advantages just by being there.

Of course, it’s easy to work with companies in the Bay Area. But with printed circuit boards, you don’t have to be next to someone to build boards for them. One of our closest customers is actually in Ontario, Canada. We have customers a little further out in Nevada and Oregon. So, while the majority of our projects are in the Bay Area, we do see a decent amount of our work coming from outside the bay.

Nate Wheeler (30:54.35)
What has been your marketing strategy, especially for companies outside of your area? How do you get in front of them?

Kevin Huo (31:08.408)
It’s a labor of patience. We do outreach through trade shows, like PCB West, which has maybe 200 exhibitors each year. They give you a list of attendees, and you can go through it on LinkedIn to see who might be a good fit, since many people attend for different industries that aren’t helpful to you. Once you find these people, it’s about direct reach-out.

I don’t like doing huge email campaigns and just emailing every single person I can get my hands on. You probably get those ads that say, “We can get you 5,000 contacts from your industry for $200,” and then you just shoot off a mass email. That’s not what we’re about. We want to make more personalized connections through individual outreach. Sometimes you read about a company, go on LinkedIn, and try to find the head of engineering or procurement to start a conversation.

Kevin Huo (32:44.29)
The reason I say it’s a labor of patience is that if you’re in manufacturing, you already have a manufacturer. You can’t not have one. The question is, are you happy with them? If you are, there’s no reason to entertain someone else. It’s like with anything; if you’re happy with your dentist, you’re not going to give another dentist who calls you much time. It’s a patience game. You’re essentially waiting for someone to screw up, and you have to stay top of mind so that when they do, you can slide in and solve whatever problem they have, whether it’s a lead time, pricing, or customer service issue. You have to be there, waiting to pick up where the other person left off.

Nate Wheeler (33:46.478)
I’m very familiar with that situation. The way I deal with it for my customers is this: typically, when someone does a web search for a new manufacturer, it’s because they had a problem, whether it was turnaround time, quality, or on-time delivery. We do a process called search engine optimization (SEO) for our customers. The idea is you have two choices: you can cold call to get in front of people and develop relationships so they think of you when a problem arises in the future, or you can take the much easier path of just being visible when they do that search.

A hefty percentage of those people won’t have a fallback relationship they’ve developed. Many people don’t have another contact, so they’re going to look for one. For you, getting in front of those searches for terms like “fast turnaround PCBA” would be a huge advantage for your growth strategy. When they get to your website and see you can turn a board around in three days, they’ll say, “Wow, okay, great. Let’s do it.” I think that would be a great strategy for you to consider.

Kevin Huo (35:31.633)
For sure. What would your strategy be? For us, there’s a lot of competition in the Bay Area with a lot of resources. I’m not an SEO or Google AdWords expert, but I imagine it would be difficult to be competitive. If there are 30 printed circuit board assembly houses and I have the 26th-highest spend on Google AdWords, can I really be competitive in search results?

Nate Wheeler (36:10.462)
That’s a great question. Let’s use those numbers. Say you have 30 competitors in the Bay Area, and half of them advertise their fast-turnaround capabilities. Now you have 15 competitors. You have 10 organic spots on the first page of Google search results, and we all know if you’re not on the first page, you’re nowhere. You have the 10 organic listings, the paid ads, and the map listings. So you have 15 competitors in the “fast turnaround PCBA manufacturing” space.

Now, look at their websites. How many of them have a page specifically developed on that topic? A page with 600-700 words of content makes it very clear to Google that you want to rank for that term. From my perspective, you’re probably down to seven competitors, because half of those focusing on fast turnaround likely haven’t put much effort into building out that page.

Nate Wheeler (37:37.646)
So now you have seven competitors with a well-developed page on the topic of PCBAs with a specific geographic focus, like “fast turnaround PCBA manufacturing in Silicon Valley.” At this point, Google will ask, “Which one of these seven websites has the most credibility?” The way they measure that credibility is through something called backlinks. Have you ever heard of that term?

you have seven people with a well-developed page on the topic of PCBAs and with that specific geographic focus. So like from a Google search term, that would turn into PCBA manufacturing or fast turnaround PCBA manufacturing in Silicon Valley. So now Google is going to say, OK, which one of these seven websites has the most credibility?

And the way that they measure that credibility is through something called backlinks. Have you ever heard of that term before?

Kevin Huo (38:13.282)
I think so, but I don’t want to be wrong.

Nate Wheeler (38:16.174)
A backlink is just a link from another website that points to yours. As an SEO professional, I know how to find good, relevant backlinks. We want Google to see these backlinks because they are votes of credibility for your website. For example, if you’re a member of the National Association of PCB Manufacturers—I don’t know if that organization exists, but let’s say it does—and they link to your website, that would be a backlink.

Nate Wheeler (38:46.252)
In Google’s eyes, that’s a vote of credibility for your website. They see a credible organization linking to you, which means you must be relevant. In most cases, if we can find five or six good backlinks and combine them with a strong page of content on the topic you want to rank for, there’s a good chance we can get you to the top of the search results for that topic.

Nate Wheeler (39:17.646)
That’s really what we do. We like organic SEO because there are thousands of possible ways someone could look for you. They could be searching for an “ISO 13485 certified PCBA manufacturer” if they’re in the medical space, or an “ISO 9001 certified” one. They could also use keywords like “precision.” There are thousands of variations.

The next thing we do in SEO is identify the next most relevant keyword for you and build a new page about it while also building backlinks so that content will rank. Over time, we often see a 200-300% increase in traffic year-over-year for customers because we’re building new content and backlinks. This is directly correlated to lead flow, as the number of leads you get is tied to how many people visit your website.

Kevin Huo (40:24.762)
So you’re essentially working on long-tail theory, whereas a smaller company like mine, I might not be competitive on the main keywords. You mentioned creating or generating backlinks.

Nate Wheeler (40:34.68)
Sometimes, yes. It all depends on the backlinks.

Nate Wheeler (40:44.44)
Creating them is key, and that’s another misnomer in the space. You can go on a site like Fiverr and find someone in India to build backlinks for you, but the reality is Google cares more and more about the quality of those links. They want to know that the link is relevant to you and that the organization linking to you is credible.

A lot of times, when you hire people who just generate backlinks, they use spammy blog networks to give you a bunch of links. Google looks at those and sees they don’t add credibility. The short-tail keywords are viable, but you’re right, they are difficult to rank for when you don’t have a lot of web authority or backlinks.

Nate Wheeler (41:43.432)
For example, I have a customer that does aluminum die casting. You can Google “aluminum die casting” anywhere in the world, and they are the number one search result, even in other languages. You can rank for those types of terms if you build enough backlinks.

Kevin Huo (42:03.888)
That makes sense. It’s interesting because it’s almost an even playing field at that point. It’s not like Google AdWords, which is basically pure spend.

Nate Wheeler (42:14.008)
Pure spend, yes. And that’s why I dislike it. We do it, and it works, but I prefer to use it in cases where there isn’t a ton of competition. For example, if you’re a machine shop, there are thousands of them in any given state. There’s always going to be a bigger shop that can outspend you, so it’s not even worth playing that game.

However, I have a customer that does rubber molding—injection and compression molding. There aren’t that many of them, maybe 50 in the state. At that point, your ad spend can go a lot further, and we can generate clicks on a smaller budget. But I always prefer SEO because once you get ranked, you don’t just go away.

You can move on to a new keyword and not worry about the old one. You build your traffic over time, and even if you were to completely stop doing SEO work, you would still maintain your ranking for at least a couple of years. There’s a lot of residual value to it.

Kevin Huo (43:27.898)
That’s interesting. Thanks for the explanation. I had bucketed Google AdWords and SEO in the same category, but it sounds like they’re functionally very different.

Nate Wheeler (43:37.218)
Right. The end result is the same, and the profile of the person getting to your website is the same. In both cases, it’s someone with an immediate need who Googled a term, saw a listing, and clicked on it. But the implementation is different.

Nate Wheeler (44:06.316)
There’s a lot of opportunity there. The other question I wanted to ask was about the use of AI and robotics in your operation. From our previous conversation, it sounds like you use robotic picking and placing of components. Is that right?

Kevin Huo (44:33.392)
Yes, for pick-and-place, it’s a machine that’s programmed to do all the work. You can imagine if there are 500 components per board, how long it would take a human to place them. Our machines operate at 50, 60, or 70,000 components per hour. You can assemble 20 boards with a thousand components each in about 10 minutes if you maximize the machine’s capability. Trying to fathom that as a human is impossible.

That’s what manufacturing is about: leveraging these machines to increase our efficiency. With AI coming into the fold, you’ll be able to increase efficiency even more. Going forward, the programming that’s currently done by hand or with a lot of human help can likely be optimized by AI. Since AI is formulaic, and some of the ways we create programs are also formulaic—taking one set of data and converting or formatting it to be readable by the machine—there’s no reason AI won’t eventually be able to do that.

Kevin Huo (46:06.16)
It’s going to decrease the need for engineering, which is unfortunate, but that’s the open secret. A lot of things will be automated, not just in my industry, but in any manufacturing industry. If you sit down and think about everything that happens in your facility, many of those things will be able to be automated within two to three years, if not right now, given how things are going.

Nate Wheeler (46:38.286)
I can imagine it’s also being leveraged a lot in the actual design of the circuit board and the components needed. For example, determining what components are needed for a specific function. I would assume that was largely a manual process for a long time.

Kevin Huo (47:07.664)
Definitely. It’s interesting you said that because I just had a conversation with my friend at a company called JITX. They’re trying to simplify the design process. Previously, you could only design a board if you had electrical engineering knowledge. You had to know the components, their interactions, and what you needed for every circuit. You basically needed to have gone to school, studied, and had a ton of experience to do it.

What my friend is doing at JITX is creating something that is essentially a ChatGPT for circuit design, which is super interesting to me because I don’t have an electrical engineering background. You can just input what you want, like, ‘I want to design a circuit that will snooze my alarm clock,’ and it will spit out a plan and a layout design for your board. It gets you on track with what you want to do and lays out the board.

Kevin Huo (48:25.872)
Theoretically, you’ll be able to take that design to a manufacturer like me and say, ‘Here’s the product I want to build.’ You won’t need any electrical engineering knowledge to design a project. Someone like you, with no offense, who doesn’t have an electrical engineering background but has an idea, could theoretically use this application to get a design without hiring someone else.

It’s still important to have a manufacturer you work with to look through things and double-check because AI isn’t perfect yet, but it’ll get you close enough. For that to even be an option is pretty unique. He’s working on something cool over there.

Nate Wheeler (49:14.926)
That’s fascinating and unbelievable. You can see a future where if you have a new product idea, like a watch that tracks data and provides atmospheric weather conditions, you could specify the aesthetics and function, and then just use your 3D printer to make it.

Kevin Huo (49:50.223)
It’s going to get to the point where you just need to have ideas. If you have an idea for something, there’s a path to get it made, which is really cool. Ten years ago, this wasn’t a possibility. You could have a great idea but not know where to go with it or have the funds or resources to build it. I think it’s really cool that two years from now, a 16-year-old kid could just type something into a website and get started on a project or a product.

Nate Wheeler (50:34.702)
Once things get to the point where you can 3D print most things from home, you won’t be buying things online. You’ll be buying designs. You’ll be able to buy the file for that thing, license it, and then make the product with your home printer.

Kevin Huo (50:59.824)
I wonder if 3D printing will ever get to the point where it’s so accessible that everyone has a 3D printer, just like a regular printer at home. As you’re saying, why would I go out and buy Keurig cups if I can print them at home and fill them with coffee myself? If 3D printing becomes accessible and easy enough for everyone to load a design and print it themselves, there will be so many things we spend money on now that we won’t need to if we can just print them ourselves.

Nate Wheeler (51:41.59)
It’s fascinating. What a future we’re in for.

Kevin Huo (51:47.82)
I know. What’s interesting is that in five years, you’re going to look at all these things and be like, “Wow, that really developed.”

Nate Wheeler (51:56.716)
Yeah, if we don’t destroy ourselves first.

Kevin Huo (52:02.112)
That’s a given. That’s why I try not to look too much into the future.

Nate Wheeler (52:09.55)
We have to have faith in humanity to improve as beings at the same time as we’re improving technologically. If you get too technologically advanced without evolving as a species—spiritually, mentally, etc.—you’re going to kill yourself off.

Kevin Huo (52:30.958)
That’s how we get movies like iRobot. We should probably learn from those somehow.

Nate Wheeler (52:33.397)
Yeah, definitely. Well, Kevin, thanks a lot for joining today. I think that was an awesome talk. I wish all the best of luck to you guys. As you’re taking the helm of the company, I hope you’re able to grow it way beyond even your parents’ wildest dreams.

Kevin Huo (52:58.148)
I appreciate it, and thanks for the great conversation.

Nate Wheeler (53:01.782)
Awesome, thanks.