Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1067105
30 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2019 Feature Interview by the I-Connect007 Editorial Team The I-Connect007 editors recently sat down with Dan Schoenfelder, vice president of busi- ness development at Octopart. We discussed online parts libraries and the impact they can have on choosing parts based on availability data during the design process. Nolan Johnson: Dan, could you give us an overview of what you and your teams do at Octopart? Dan Schoenfelder: I run the business and oper- ations teams at Octopart. We're a small team of about 20 headquartered in Manhattan—the Flatiron District—and that's pretty much where all of our staffers are. We are a search engine for electronic components, and our biggest goal when it comes to what we're trying to accom- plish is to democratize information for those in our industry who need it whether it's design- ers, engineers, buyers, etc. Octopart itself is a very widely used platform. We have more than 900,000 unique visitors per month who visit our site and search for products. We receive more than 2 million searches per month for electronic components. We find that our audi- ence is geared toward being more technically focused resources, so we see ourselves on the front end of that design experience for a lot of electronic assemblies. We are owned by a company called Altium, whose primary product is ECAD tools for circuit board design, and their flagship prod- uct is Altium Designer. We've been a part of the Altium family for about three years now. Johnson: That's a great overview. Dan, one of the things about Octopart is you built a pretty unique spot in the supply chain. It's emerging and disruptive. You have a different perspec- tive doing what you do, standing between designers as they design and make decisions about their components in the CAD tool envi- ronment, and then having that conversation with manufacturers and distributors. Can you talk about that experience? Schoenfelder: First, just touching on that some- thing you mentioned, we're in an emerging Dan Schoenfelder: Searching for Parts in Real Time