How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
johnnybowman.org
How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
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Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#2"It’s easy to find new ways to make shit more complicated. It’s hard to find new ways to make shit simpler. "
Applies to software just as well :)
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#3"It’s easy to find new ways to make shit more complicated. It’s hard to find new ways to make shit simpler. " Applies to software just as well :)
its just a general life lesson.
"Everything shoukd be made to be as simple as possible, but no simpler." -einstein
this shouldn't detract from the complexities of manufacturing vs software
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#4"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 software improvements which can be made to your technology because orders of magnitude fewer man-hours have been spent by humans so far solving those problems.
"In indoor farming, we see a lot of competition focus on how data will drive yield increases, yet they haven’t figured out how to regulate air temperature in their facility." I have to assume that these competitors are looking for the innovations that will make them 10x more competitive. Startups are dead by default. Innovation is the only way to survive.
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#5"It’s easy to find new ways to make shit more complicated. It’s hard to find new ways to make shit simpler. " Applies to software just as well :)
I go for the "reverse watchmaker", referencing this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2344
You want, in priority order: 1) The least interactions 2) The simplest interactions 3) The simplest components
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#6"It’s easy to find new ways to make shit more complicated. It’s hard to find new ways to make shit simpler. " Applies to software just as well :)
its just a general life lesson. "Everything shoukd be made to be as simple as possible, but no simpler." -einstein this shouldn't detract from the complexities of manufacturing vs software
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#7Process 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?
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#8Hi Johnny! Great to see you on HN... and great article about some of the challenges with manufacturing!
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#9From the article: "A good, defensible manufacturing strategy is one where you’re applying and protecting (ideally via patent) a faster, cheaper, more reliable way of doing something in your industry, by borrowing a proven approach from a parallel industry."
If you're looking for a formalized system designed to help with some of this, take a look at TRIZ[1][2]. I'll just steal one note from the "What Is TRIZ" article - "Somebody someplace has already solved this problem (or one very similar to it.) Creativity is now finding that solution and adapting it to this particular problem."
A big part of the basic tooling for TRIZ is the results of people going through a huge mass of patents looking for patterns of problem categories and how they were solved.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ [2] https://triz-journal.com/triz-what-is-triz/
Re: How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup
#10Process 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.