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Ogo, a new take on personal transportation

ogotechnology.com

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Re: Ogo, a new take on personal transportation

#61

Post by andy_ppp »

andy_ppp wrote: post #19

Oh god, reminds me of the Wall-E hover chairs used by the humans who have basically ceased moving... https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wall-e+hover+chairs&tbm=is...

I'm really not sure why everyone is downvoting this!

It doesn't help that I'm hovering around 501 karma :-)

Seriously though I'll never use downvoting (apart from say, racist, homophobic, rude and extremely wrong comments) because I think it's bad for discussion; if your aim is blandness then I would say that downvoting is great but I still maintain that a comment with lots of people in disagreement (for it and against it) is an interesting comment, one that would probably add to the discourse.

Re: Ogo, a new take on personal transportation

#62

Post by TeMPOraL »

themartorana wrote: post #60
TeMPOraL wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Segway, which could make even the coolest person look like a mall cop. That's an curious association - I assume this is because only mall cops (and tourists) tend to use it nowadays? :).

Also Mall Cop . http://bit.ly/1hNdlIx

Missed that one. Thanks!

Re: Ogo, a new take on personal transportation

#63

Post by TeMPOraL »

scribu wrote: post #58
paulsutter wrote: post #28

This looks like a huge improvement over a wheelchair (have you ever tried the joystick control on an electric wheelchair?). Way better mobility. And it looks cool. Completely the opposite feeling of watching someone on a Segway, which could make even the coolest person look like a mall cop.

I agree and I think the cool factor comes from the fact that users of Ogo need it in order to move without their hands being tied up and also that it actually takes a bit of muscle effort to operate. Compare to Segways, which are associated with laziness (at least in my mind).

Segways are cool. Don't have one but I got a chance to test it once.

I can see how they could be useful for things like malls and factory floors, in a similar way a kick scooter is. But you know what? Kick scooter is even cooler! The speeds you can achieve on a good concrete surface are exhilarating!

Re: Ogo, a new take on personal transportation

#67

Post by notahacker »

DavidSJ wrote: post #13

Looks very cool. One thing I noticed about the video introduction is the speaker is explicitly talking to the viewer as if he or she is not the target audience, e.g. "while you and I may take this for granted ..." and "the disabled are exactly the same as you and me ..."

The video is presumably made to be shared amongst a wider audience than the target market.

And I guess that for a disabled person it would be a huge psychological win to have able-bodied people looking with envy rather than sympathy at their means of locomotion.

Re: Ogo, a new take on personal transportation

#68

Post by netcan »

Looks cool, but I don't know anything about this market so I can't really comment directly on utility or prospects. But, to take a tangent:

I think there's a shift that hardware oriented entrepreneurs might mine for some ideas.

Around web 2.0 time there was a shift where people got more comfortable with the internet. They used real names, and pictures without expecting this would inevitably lead to serial killers at the door. Facebook worked because people agreed to tell the internet their name. Online dating went mainstream. Twitter, Linkedin, all sorts of sharing become common. The interesting part is that the technological trends like were only part of the picture. Cultural shifts were just as important.

Tech is cool now, that's the new trend. Where a calculator watch in the 90s would get an 8 year old beat up, todays equivalents are status symbols. Interestingly, glasses became cool in recent years.

So, ideas might be found by looking over old technology that is uncool and seeing if it can be re-imagined as 2015 tech. A regular electric wheelchair is uncool. This segway thing is cool.

One real obvious device to think about Apple-ising is hearing aides. Hearing aids are so uncool 80 year olds don't want to be seen with one. They are all about being small, flesh colored and "invisible." I think there's a decent chance a bright green large ear piece might be cool.

And speaking of hearing aids… Can hearing aids improve the hearing of non impaired people. Can you get better than normal hearing from a hearing aid?

Re: Ogo, a new take on personal transportation

#70

Post by triangleman »

ThomPete wrote: post #57

It's very easy to get tied up in valuations, unicorns, growth metrics and living the life as a startups with a great idea but no way to monetize it until you get 500millioner users. But at the end of the day they most optimal recipe for success still is 1) Find a real problem 2) Build a solution 3) Start selling There are alternatives to growth-hacking and content marketing and what other tricks are out there. Just l…

While I agree with the spirit of your post, let us step back and think clearly about where your criticism lies.

Think about what it means to "hack" on something.

Today we often use the term to describe a programmer working feverishly on his software project "hacking away".

But based on your use of the term ("growth-hacking") we can see that it can often be used in the sense of hacking a problem into something more manageable. Jury-rigging, taking a smart shortcut, duct taping things together. Working smart, not hard [1]. Is that not what most of the people here are aiming to do?

So let's not get offended that someone else's hack is different from your own.

You admit that selling is important, and yet a good solution "doesn't need marketing", because I suppose the product sells itself? This board is filled with hard-earned lessons from fellow hackers who had a great product but no market(ing), and ultimately failed.

This "ogo" product is certainly not getting revenue from day one.

[1] http://threevirtues.com/

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