41–50 of 85 posts
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I own the company. We do both product development for third parties and our own products. Software, electronics, mechanical, anything. From LED's to robotics. We are also developing a neat portable barbecue system that might be launched via Kickstarter.
Very cool! That's just about as good as it gets.
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> The complexity of developing hardware is driven by the number of discrete components used Sorry, that's not even close to being true. Interesting how on HN "hardware" seems to mean "a board with chips". You know, like a Raspberri Pi. That is one type of hardware but not, I dare say, where the $10B (and maybe even $10M) startups would exist. We are developing two hardware products right now. One is an innovative fir…
Packaging is best thought of as another hardware product itself. Form and function have to be design-gineered, and materials and parts and assembly have to be corralled into a schedule and budget. The idea that software is eating hardware, while true on some level for some class of products, is also what leads to lots of startups with solid software backgrounds offering a beautifully designed product that suffers fro…
I think really the lesson here is that you really, really, really shouldn't try to build an electronics or software product without in-house knowledge of electronics and software.
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To expound on this, look at profit of product negating development. For software, it is nearly full profit. I sell you my app for $4. The app cost me $0.04 to sell. Each additional copy of the app costs almost nothing. Essentially, just Crtl-C, Ctrl-V. Yes, there are hosting costs, Apple's marketplace for apps costs, etc. But hardware has very similar costs too; they cancel out. For a hardware product, to make anothe…
you miss the more important issue - cash-flow - with software you need almost no cash-flow to scale to infinity, with hardware you have to commit money to warehoused hardware - using income from your sales to pay for manufacturing causes a feedback term to kick in to how fast you can scale your market, even if the demand is out of site you can't meet it (the alternative is paying the bank interest)
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Packaging is best thought of as another hardware product itself. Form and function have to be design-gineered, and materials and parts and assembly have to be corralled into a schedule and budget. The idea that software is eating hardware, while true on some level for some class of products, is also what leads to lots of startups with solid software backgrounds offering a beautifully designed product that suffers fro…
Right, I didn't mention such things as thermal and environmental testing. How is your widget going to work in an Icelandic winter or at the peak of summer in Death Valley? How about dirt, grime, dust, vibration and humidity, rapid cycling, cycles per day, drop, impact? The list is huge and highly dependent on the product being designed. About ten years ago a company owned by a friend of mine shipped a machine worth $…
On shipping: these days it's pretty common to ship everything with mechanical accelerometers in the packaging that trigger on high loads so you can tell when the crate has been dropped. Crazy how often it happens.
The reason that a larger number of hardware startups have recently appeared is quite simple - these are mostly actually software companies. Modern hardware that a startup might produce - IoT stuff, small computers etc - are essentially bare-minimum hardware wrappers around black-box chips. The complexity of developing hardware is driven by the number of discrete components used. Every additional resistor is a resisto…
Moreover, if you look closely at many so-called "hardware companies" (especially IoT ones), you can see that they actually stick a SoC into a nice packaging and build an app and a cloud platform for that, even when it makes no sense whatsoever . Why? Because that's how they get the money. On the cloud it's easier to keep monetizing your customers, and more importantly, you can literally just point out that you have "…
The big problem is that IoT isn't really a hockey-stick business: the configuration of even a modest whole-home setup is so complicated that consumers can't do it themselves. You won't see the valuations that accompany software startups because user acquisition is so much harder that they will never give the growth returns that a software company can. Contrast an IoT platform that you have to buy a $50 device to use with a service like Dropbox where there is little to no barrier to becoming a customer.
Ultimately, I think IoT will enable spiffy home automation systems to come down to the price range of mere mortals. But I don't think it's the next $10B market simply because it doesn't solve any problems that most people have.
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Moreover, if you look closely at many so-called "hardware companies" (especially IoT ones), you can see that they actually stick a SoC into a nice packaging and build an app and a cloud platform for that, even when it makes no sense whatsoever . Why? Because that's how they get the money. On the cloud it's easier to keep monetizing your customers, and more importantly, you can literally just point out that you have "…
Because the software platform is the valuable part of IoT. The technology behind most of the hardware is commoditized and cheap; VCs are investing in "hardware" companies because you need to sell hardware to get your software in the door. VCs know that hardware gives a lot lower potential returns than software, so they just focus on the value of the software because that's what they know. The big problem is that IoT…
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Because the software platform is the valuable part of IoT. The technology behind most of the hardware is commoditized and cheap; VCs are investing in "hardware" companies because you need to sell hardware to get your software in the door. VCs know that hardware gives a lot lower potential returns than software, so they just focus on the value of the software because that's what they know. The big problem is that IoT…
Nest was acquired for $3.2 billion. The thermostat measures home activity and controls your HVAC. The reason it's highly valued is because of the aggregate of data from all thermostats, which they use to optimize the environment for each customer. Nest is the beginning of home automation for the masses, a market easily greater than $10B.
A need for A/C optimization doesn't extend to there being a need for IoT/home automation as a whole. What benefit exists for a "smart" house? Drastic energy reduction can be achieved through simple use of CFL/LED light bulbs; they don't need to be Wi-Fi connected. What else would you even want automated in your house?
EDIT: Also, my original point stands: Nest is not a hockey-stick business. They get revenue when a customer buys a product, yet their platform has to support all of the thermostats they've ever sold.
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Because the software platform is the valuable part of IoT. The technology behind most of the hardware is commoditized and cheap; VCs are investing in "hardware" companies because you need to sell hardware to get your software in the door. VCs know that hardware gives a lot lower potential returns than software, so they just focus on the value of the software because that's what they know. The big problem is that IoT…
Nest was acquired for $3.2 billion. The thermostat measures home activity and controls your HVAC. The reason it's highly valued is because of the aggregate of data from all thermostats, which they use to optimize the environment for each customer. Nest is the beginning of home automation for the masses, a market easily greater than $10B.
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Very cool! That's just about as good as it gets.
Owning your own business: You get to choose which 20 hours of the day you are going to work! But, yeah, it can be fun.