Family Dinner Recap: Alex Ocampo

Great ideas often come from small annoyances. For Alex Ocampo, Founder and CEO of Ganance, it was the awkwardness of wearing a watch on one wrist and a Fitbit on the other.

“I could never really get comfortable with that two wrist look, but I got hooked on the data,” Ocampo said.

On Tuesday, February 25th, he shared his journey with Residents at Family Dinner, reflecting on how a simple frustration led to the creation of Ganance. Ganance is a wearable tech startup that produces a slim, attachable sensor to turn any classic watch into a smartwatch.

“I chose my data over my style,” Ocampo said, recalling the moment he stopped wearing a cherished watch his brother had gifted him for graduation in favor of a Fitbit. “That’s when I first asked myself the question: Why can’t I have both?”

That moment planted the seed for Ganance. But like many ideas, it didn’t materialize immediately.

“Like many great ideas, I did nothing with it for many years,” Ocampo said with a laugh.

When he finally decided to pursue the idea in 2021, Ocampo found himself in San Francisco as a participant in the ColorWave leadership development program.

Ocampo began his research by asking smartwatch users two simple questions.

“Anyone I saw wearing a smart anything, I would ask them: One, do you like it? 100 percent of people said yes, for different reasons – I like the data, I like the tracking. My follow-up question was, if you could be wearing anything on your wrist, would you be wearing that? 100 percent of the people said no,” Ocampo said.

For Ocampo, this was the validation he needed in order to prove the solution he ideated was solving a real problem.

Having studied Economics and Entrepreneurship in college at Tufts University and started his career at IBM Watson, Ocampo came into the startup ecosystem with a robust background in consulting and AI product development – but little experience in hardware or building physical products prior to Ganance, which he admitted posed a challenge.

Programs like TechStars, a global accelerator program for founders, and mHUB in Chicago, one of the nation’s leading innovation centers for physical product startups, offered Ocampo the technical support necessary to move from prototype to production.

Reflecting on the successes of the year, Ocampo repeated to Residents a mantra he shared with his team at their end of year meeting: “Sales solves all problems.”

“If you have the sales, the money will come to you. Investors want nothing more than a company that makes money,” Ocampo said. “If you can build a company that already has the sales, the traction, the interest, you’ll either attract the investment you need or you may never need an investor.”

Although Ocampo has garnered interest from top iconic wrist watch brands like Gucci, Casio, and Breitling, his sales-first mindset enabled Ganance to thrive by going directly to consumers.

By securing enough preorders to fund the first production run, the company avoided overreliance on outside investment and maintained greater control over its growth.

Reflecting on his experience building a hardware startup, Ocampo left Residents with some parting advice.

“One of the biggest challenges for early startups, hardware or software, doesn’t matter, is continuing to find ways to not get stuck. You are going to hit walls. You are going to feel like this is impossible,” Ocampo said. “That’s part of the thing you’re signing up for - finding creative ways to push through and get unstuck.”