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How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

johnnybowman.org

11–20 of 93 posts

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#11
post #7

Process as competitive advantage is an ace point. Most companies fail from mismanagement. Competitor teardowns is another good one, but what information do you use for that? How do you determine who their suppliers are?

It depends what you're manufacturing, but the obvious answer is probably either • visit their website • buying their product and looking it up the parts online • talk to your vendors For the last one, this is particularly relevant if you're buying in a market with few suppliers.

agreed and also trade shows. Simply asking "who are you a supplier for in Industry X" is surprisingly fruitful.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#14
having been through a number of tech businesses who do manufacturing... ( https://www.taitradio.com http://www.compacsort.com and now http://www.outpostcentral.com ) the key thing to me is how fast you can innovate which is all about how quick you can try ideas. As a startup, contract manufacture as much as possible so you can scale your production up and down. Definitely focus on your processes, kill bad product lines as quick as possible. Spend the time on making things robust, keep things as simple as possible as long as possible. Sell and promote your brand as much as possible.

.... and you are going to fuck things up anyways. But hopefully not in a terminal way. Some fuckups are learning opportunities, some fuckups are because you don't learn the right things from previous "learning opportunities".

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#16

"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup ( https://markforged.com ) and I disagree. Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years (give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software for your particular field is probably in its infancy. If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude more fruitful to look to the…

I think there's some truth in both perspectives, and the balance of process vs. software improvement comes down to how aggressively you need to compete on price. On cheaper stuff where prices is a bigger determining factor, it makes sense to me to focus on process and driving down cost. For markets where that's less of an issue, software innovation is the way to go. The Here One headphones [1] seem like they manage the balance pretty well. The Onyx One is super cool by the way.

1: https://hereplus.me/

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#17

"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup ( https://markforged.com ) and I disagree. Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years (give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software for your particular field is probably in its infancy. If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude more fruitful to look to the…

Your post made me think of an old Joel on software post where they wrote some access thingy to print customs labels.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/13/how-to-ship-anythin...

How many companies hired temps to fill out forms for these types of tasks? Plenty I'm sure!

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#18

"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup ( https://markforged.com ) and I disagree. Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years (give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software for your particular field is probably in its infancy. If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude more fruitful to look to the…

I disagree with you - Figure out your process and automate with software.

Your software will only be as good as your process. There are mid-market ERPs that are 30 years old or more (specifically, Dynamics NAV comes to mind). These software solutions implement the processes that have been honed by humans for more than a thousand years. It is much easier to innovate elsewhere. I am curious which specific ERP packages you have found to be innovative.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#19

"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing startup ( https://markforged.com ) and I disagree. Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years (give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software for your particular field is probably in its infancy. If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude more fruitful to look to the…

I don't know if I agree. Software is a pain to write well, especially for a process that's not yet understood.

A simple example from my personal life is writing down exercises I do at the gym. I was surprised by how many different type of exercises there are. At first it was just "lat pull down, 80 pounds, 3 sets, 10 reps". Then I tracked different manufacturers, to stay on top of machine differences. Then I started tracking number of attempted reps, along with reps at lower weight. Then I made a note for weights per arm, for machines with independent weights on each side. Then I took into account the base weight for the bar. I could add features forever.

To manage the complexity, I started looking at software to help. I decided to scrap the idea of building software in favor of writing exercises on a sticky note I stuck to my wallet, and later migrating the data to a "good enough" spreadsheet.

Software is meant to serve us. If you let it take over, it will. Manufacturing benefits from software in places, but sometimes a pen, sticky, and spreadsheet is all you really need, and if you outgrow it, you'll understand exactly how software can help.

My uncle and 101 year old grandfather make machine parts in a shop with a bunch of old school analog stuff. They have a computer for a milling machine. It all works great.

Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup

#20

Do you find merging the software and process/manufacturing side of things to be advantageous? I'm a process/chemical engineer getting into software and am wondering if it's worth splitting time.

In this order:

1) Product (will people buy it?)

2) Process (can you scale it?)

3) Software (now scale it)

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