384: What's a Board File?
Liam Cadigan, co-founder of InspectAR and now at Cadence Design Systems, explains how the company evolved from a Memorial University capstone project into a commercial product before being acquired. He details the technical challenges of parsing complex PCB manufacturing data formats, specifically contrasting the intelligent IPC-2581-B standard with the legacy Gerber format. Cadigan discusses the strategic decision to use Unity for cross-platform augmented reality development and the difficulties of founding a hardware-adjacent startup from Newfoundland, including investor outreach and the eventual sale to Cadence in August 2020.