Voices: 15 steps to starting your own electronic-kit business is an interesting article. This engineer started her own successful electronics-kit business. Limor Fried has made Adafruit Industries into a successful electronics-kit business. You can too. Based on her own experience, she offers 15 practical steps for engineers who dream of starting their own kit business.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
How Greylock Partners Finds the Next Facebook
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/06/13/how-greylock-partners-finds-next-facebook-253329.html
Out of thousands of business plans Greylock sees each year, only 20 or so make it to a full partnership meeting. Of those, only half get funded.
Here’s one surprising lesson Biyani learned: If the partners start arguing about your pitch, you’re probably doing pretty well. That means they are intrigued enough to be grinding the details.
For a startup, getting Greylock’s backing means more than just an infusion of cash. “It’s like your company’s been blessed by the pope
Hard to imagine now, but there was a time when Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pandora and Tumblr were ideas that, to many, seemed crazy. But where others might see lunacy, Greylock has seen opportunity.
“When the idea is big enough and edgy enough—it’s either madness or genius,” says Hoffman. “What you are trying to figure out is which one it is.”
“There is a lot of mythology about how firms decide,”
“A lot of these voting systems are consensus oriented, where you need to have 100 percent unification of the group,”
Each of Greylock’s 11 investing partners has either founded a major startup or was early into one.
And then along came Facebook. The first time its pitch book came Sze’s way—in 2005—he blew it off. “I had a chance to look at it”—when it was valued at $100 million—“and turned it down because I was working on closing another deal,” he recalls.
Few VCs will go deep into the trenches the way Greylock does. Once the pomp of the pitch is over and the money is in the bank, the real hard work of building a company begins. And this is where Greylock gives its companies a huge edge. Because they used to be entrepreneurs too, the partners know what it takes to go from scrappy idea to real business. “What would you pay to have someone in the room who has had to deal with all the situations you are dealing with and has done that at two of the most successful Internet companies of all time?”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dear Clients, Please Stop: Ten Ways Founders Sabotage Themselves
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/07/dear-clients-please-stop-ten-ways-founders-sabotage-themselves/
1. Premature Scaling Is The Root Of All Evil
Dear clients: Focus on your product, not your stress tests.
2. Technical Debt Will Kill You
a stitch in time really does save nine.
3. Google Doesn’t Care
you are not industry players, at least not yet.
4. You Are Not A Platform
Platform. It’s a magical word. Everyone wants their app/site/service to one day be a platform. Unfortunately, this can lead people to believe that this is what they are in fact building.
5. Stop Trying To Make Viral Happen
yes, you do want to make it easy for users to share. But if your app doesn’t go viral, it’s almost certainly because it isn’t useful/good/fun enough
6. Have A Map Of The Valley Of Despair
know your market, and have a marketing plan other than “launch and go viral”
7. Stop Trying To Be The NSA
you won’t get valuable insights from just collecting the maximal amount of analytical data and then randomly browsing through it in an ad-hoc manner
8. Stop Managing By Crisis
Project management is a fine art, and a lot of clients are new to it.
save the big red button for real crises.
9. Let It Go (For Enterprise Clients)
read http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/
10. How To Report A Bug
use the form “when I did X, I expected Y, but got Z”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The essentials of a Business Plan – Part 2/3
The key elements of a business plan are;
The Problem – you are addressing,
The Solution – your unique value proposition,
The Model – your revenue streams,
The secret sauce – the most important thing about your solution that will create customer value,
Marketing & Sales – Who is your customer and how will you reach them,
The Competition – Never say there is no competition, just look harder and wider,
The Team – show how you complement each other,
Projections – Stress more on the costs and expenses side of things than revenue (for fresh startups),
The Status & Conclusion – customize to your audience.
See more at: http://www.entroids.com/blog/the-essentials-of-a-business-plan-part-23/?UA-50704509-1#sthash.QLobzCWR.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
$470 RepRap Derived 3D Printer Going Into Production:
New low cost, SA-designed 3D printer to go into production
http://www.htxt.co.za/2014/06/09/new-low-cost-sa-designed-3d-printer-to-go-into-production/
Don’t buy a 3D printer. You won’t see me write that often, but right now there is a good reason: there’s a new South African-designed 3D printer in town, which will be going on sale within the next few weeks. And if all goes according to plan, says its creator, it’ll be bigger, stronger and cheaper than existing 3D printer designs – and it will be available through OpenHardware.co.za and other stores for around R5 000 or less.
“We set ourselves a goal in 2012 to become ‘the’ organisation in South Africa to promote open source hardware,” says van der Walt, “That means we need to pull up our socks, stop “hacking” and start thinking of things like “sustainability”, “growth” and protecting our
relationships with resellers.”
“Demand started to overtake supply using the RepRap production methods we were using too,” he says, “It became more and more clear that we need to start looking at an alternate production method or we’d need to invest in at least 4 more printers to keep up with the demand in a reasonable lead time.”
“[Selling 3D printers in] kit form saves on assembly labour but the support load does take its toll,” says van den Walt, “When you work on the low markup we were using one broken controller can eat all the profit on one kit in a minute. Not offering a warranty is the standard open source hardware backup plan – but it should not be like that.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Failure is not an option… Never give up.’ Not in Silicon Valley, mate
Serial failures don’t make it big, no matter what rumours say
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/31/failure_is_not_an_option_nonsense_reality_of_silicon_valley/
Consider these two things: “Failure is not an option,” the famous words of the Apollo 13 mission controller in Houston
Contrast this approach with that of Silicon Valley, where failure is tolerated – nay, recommended – as part of a learning process in business. Throw mud at a wall, Valley lore says, and if it doesn’t stick, taking you down with it, change the design, the technology, the process, or whatever, and try again.
USN SEAL lore says don’t give up, don’t change, just stick with it, whatever it takes, and then give it some more.
Silicon Valley lore says recognise failure fast, withdraw, regroup, redesign, re-apply and toss the remixed mud at the wall again… and then change it once more and toss it again when it fails. Rinse, redesign and repeat.
Only we all know it’s not really like that, and definitely not when VCs are looking to gamble on a startup. They don’t invest in startups run by serial failures.
No, they want a track record of success in everything and so they look for people who have overcome failure, or who have succeeded in their roles despite their businesses crashing and burning.
Both Navy SEAL lore and Silicon Valley lore are unrealistic.
People who don’t have the rounded education provided by early failures end up with an inflated opinion of themselves and possibly unreal expectations of others.
Failure is not an option? Oh yes it is – but be sure to pick out your successes, stick them on your CV, present them as your track record, and try again
Tomi Engdahl says:
Learn about the top social media tools you should explore for your business
http://www.register.com/learningcenter/marketing/5-social-media-tools-for-your-business/
Facebook
YouTube
LinkedIn
Twitter
Your blog and local/specialized forums
Payroll Solutions says:
It is incredibly time intensive and large amount of manual errors
may happen. It guarantees that the exact time served by each worker is entered and taken into
account. Just input a bit information and the calculator will do the hard work for you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Money Doesn’t Talk. Why Most Startups Aren’t Announcing Their Seed Financings
http://hunterwalk.com/2014/06/07/money-doesnt-talk-why-most-startups-arent-announcing-their-seed-financings/
Most of the startups we’ve backed at Homebrew don’t rush to announce their funding. Not because they’re all operating in stealth or pre-product – in fact some already are earning $1m+ in revenue per annum. They just don’t feel the need to draw attention to themselves or alert possible competitors. And my sense is the trend carries outside of our portfolio these days. Contrast this to just a few years ago when it seemed every startup was jumping up and down to shout about their initial raise. What’s changed?
Hiring Has Changed: Before the press was a way of generating interest for hiring. However with so many companies being funded these days, just getting a mention in a tech blog doesn’t really impact job seekers. Founders are building small, focused teams based on people they worked with previously and referrals from their networks.
No One Blog Moves the Needle As Much Anymore: One used to announce and hope for the “TechCrunch effect” where a rush of new users kingmade your product.
Techies Aren’t the Only Early Adopters: The TechCrunch reader used to be your target audience because they were the only ones leaping into new technology. Now your mom has the same smartphone as her Facebook engineer daughter and the tech readers are increasingly judgmental, ready to snark on newness. Startups instead are identifying early adopting communities in their specific niches and going after them outside of corporate-based PR.
You Don’t Need to Show Off for the Fortune 500 CTO: Funding announcements used to be the credibility you’d need to get a meeting with the CTO or other management with purchasing power and a RFP.
Announcing Last Funding Is Really About Starting the Next Round of Fundraising
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inside Shenzhen: China’s Silicon Valley
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jun/13/inside-shenzen-china-silicon-valley-tech-nirvana-pearl-river
Just 30 years ago this Pearl River Delta megacity was a mere fishing village. Now home to up to 15 million people it hopes to become a tech nirvana for the world’s hardware startups
“Everything you need is here,” says Eric Pan, founder of Seeed Studio, looking out of the dusty windows of his mid-rise office/factory/warehouse. Within walking distance of his building are circuit-board manufacturers, injection-moulding companies, packagers and shippers. He is three hours from factories making every imaginable electronic component, and three days by FedEx from 90% of the world’s population.
Twenty years ago, digital tools made it possible to build internet businesses with minimal costs; a company like Facebook could launch from a dorm room without any major investment. Hardware was different, though, the domain of corporate labs and R&D budgets. Now that’s changed, and making a proof-of-concept for an internet-connected doorbell or GPS-enabled tennis racket is a weekend project for the right kind of geek.
Hi-tech entrepreneurs are having an idea, building a prototype, making a convincing promotional video, then posting it to the world on Kickstarter. If the idea catches fire, the founders may find themselves with a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank, a prototype, and a host of excited customers to satisfy. Which is when – often – they make the pilgrimage to Shenzhen to meet manufacturers and suppliers face to face. They’ll rent an apartment, learn a few words of Chinese, and likely apply for a tech incubator scheme such as HAXLR8R.
Tomi Engdahl says:
$500k “Energy-Harvesting” Kickstarter Scam Unfolding Right Now
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/06/23/2357200/500k-energy-harvesting-kickstarter-scam-unfolding-right-now
Kickstarter “iFind” Bluetooth 4.0 tracking tag. Nothing new about such tags (there are many crowdfunded examples; some have delivered, some have disappointed), but this one claims it doesn’t require any batteries — it harvests its energy from electromagnetic emissions (wifi, cell towers, TV signals, etc).
Using just their published figures, their claims are readily refuted, yet still backers flock in.
Tomi Engdahl says:
From Snake Oil in the Old West to weight loss scams, baldness fixes, male vitality enhancers, or Breatharians, the easiest thing to sell is false hope since it tricks the buy into thinking about only what they want, not what is actually possible.
Source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/06/23/2357200/500k-energy-harvesting-kickstarter-scam-unfolding-right-now
Tomi Engdahl says:
Business for Engineers: Marketers Lie
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1322859&
At the end of the cooking time, the cooled cans were sent through a labeling machine that applied product labels to the cans. I was shocked to see that the same peas, from the same process run, were having two different labels applied. One label was plain white paper with a cartoonish figure and the words “baby peas.” The other was a beautiful silver foil with embossed letters that said “petit baby peas.”
The answer was profound. I wasn’t buying peas. I was buying a mental image of who I was and how I fit into society. The silver foil-labeled peas were man’s peas. The white paper-labeled peas were for kids.
So marketing tells lies — falsehoods — things that serve to convey a false impression. Those are pretty strong sentiments that seem to damn marketing professionals.
Like a great many things in engineering life, sorting the information into bins is the first step. But there is an important message that goes with this sorting: Don’t drink your own Kool-Aid. Another way to look at this is to break everything down into objective measures. It may be easier to get to the essence of discerning fact from fiction by listing a few commonly used phrases.
Then there are statements like “We developed our product with your business in mind.” Another dose of mushware.
Quantifiable, verifiable, and intrinsically fair — these need to be the objectives of getting at the true facts used to drive engineering development. The way to get there is by using engineering principles. Now, marketing professionals are just that — professionals. As engineers, we can work with marketing to ensure that the right followup questions are asked to guide us during the product specification and development phases. The purpose of our questions is to ensure that the product meets the customer needs. Marketing’s purpose is gain answers for us in addition to determining how the product will be branded, positioned, and sold.
medident says:
I do accept as true with all the concepts you have
presented in your post. They’re very convincing and will certainly work.
Nonetheless, the posts are very short for beginners.
May just you please prolong them a little from subsequent time?
Thanks for the post.
Jonelle says:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Send in the clones
Massimo Banzi — July 10th, 2013
http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/07/10/send-in-the-clones/
When we came up with Arduino, one of the things we decided very early on was that we wanted to release the hardware design files so that people could make their own versions or just make an exact copy if they couldn’t find boards where they lived.
I think we contributed to popularize the concept of open source hardware and we can see it from the huge amount of variations of Arduino-compatible devices being released every day.
After the platform started to become popular we had the issue of figuring out a business model to sustain our work and keep innovating the project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Make Your Brand Instantly Recognizable
http://www.snappycopywriting.com/get-brand-recognition/
Every business owner is aware of the importance of brand recognition. In fact, the goal of any entrepreneurial effort is to be loved by your customer base and respected by your peers.
But if you aren’t a household name yet, it’s important to understand what makes a brand identifiable, and that means you need to be aware of the five stages of brand recognition.
Being in business today means it is more critical than ever that you respect your customers and give them what they want. Meet them in the middle, or your venture will fail because unhappy customers now have an option to publicly voice their displeasure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding
https://www.choice-loans.co.uk/crowdfunding/
Thinking about Crowdfunding your business or next campaign? We’ve compared every major platform, notable campaigns, the amount each raised and the stories behind them in one ultimate guide.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Management International Review, published study found that, among other things, the companies motivation for internationalization, innovation, risk-taking, as well as market orientation positively affected, particularly in their early stage of growth.
Companies with increasing effect of these factors was reduced and even turned negative, while international networks and the importance of learning to stimulate growth increased.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/summa/startuppien+kasvaessa+niiden+motivaatio+kansainvalistya+pienenee/a1006166
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is how I set about making a fortune with my own startup
Would you leave your well-paid job to chase your dream?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/25/doing_my_own_ting_making_money_from_a_startup/
I’m not a brilliant businessman, nor a star academic, nor a rocking developer, but I’m reasonable at a couple of those things and currently have a well-paid contract in the City
As I got more involved I found that I’d become an expert in a small way in various aspects
In the course of this I realised that some relatively simple technology could halve people’s space-heating costs in the UK
I was invited to give the first presentation for a “smart heating” workshop at the Department of Energy and Climate Change by the chief scientist, at which I pointed out that it seemed blindingly obvious that introducing “zoned” heating (heating only the bits that actually need it) and occupancy sensing, as is common in larger commercial buildings would be simple and likely save loads without reducing comfort. Everyone nodded sagely in agreement, but there was nothing on the market at the time that had the right combination of features.
Some of you will hesitate to give up the security of a job and “bet the ranch”, and one of the biggest issues is knowing if and when to jump, but there are bazillions of books and websites out there to help you with that.
The key items to be clear about in your mind are, I think:
Do you have something novel and useful? (Don’t be just another nailbar.)
Understand that building a better mousetrap is not enough, you also have to be able to execute a business plan (sales, marketing, etc)
We techies can be bamboozled by the features; it’s benefits that count
Remember that founders are not necessarily long-term managers. That’s not a problem, but be prepared to exit gracefully at some point
Decide what you want more; do you want X to happen or do you want fame and glory for making X happen? The former is easier and rather different to the latter.
Are you actually interested in and engrossed in your idea? It’ll feel less like hard work if you are!
OpenTRV is not rocket-science, but our “giving it away as hard as we can” approach to making it widely adopted appears to be
OpenTRV is very much going to stay open to support the FOSSH community, which is why we’re now selling kits at cost, and doing talks and workshops (FOSDEM, WutheringBytes, EC1404, OggCamp) etc, etc.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How This Man Built A $3M Business A Year After Four Years In Prison
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/08/21/how-this-man-built-a-3m-business-a-year-on-from-four-years-in-prison/
Frederick Hutson is a man who sees business opportunities in everything.
Transitioning from digital to analog is tough, says Hutson. It’s hard to sit down and write a letter now but simple to text or email. What if you created a website that printed out emails, texts or photos from your computer, Facebook or Instagram and mailed them for you in the plain white envelopes these institutions favored?
The idea for Pigeonly was born.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chumps stump up $1 MEELLLION for watch that doesn’t exist
By the way, I have a really nice bridge you might like…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/01/ritot_projection_watch_million_dollars_crowdsourced_funding_but_no_prototype_exists/
An Indiegogo project to build a watch that projects its display onto your hand has blown the doors off its target by raising a million dollars in funding – even though no functional device has yet been built.
The Ritot watch uses a DLP matrix in a wristband to project an image on to the back of the wearer’s hand. In addition to the time, the watch can show caller ID, texts, Facebook statuses and tweets.
It’s a compelling device. Having raised 2,482 per cent of its target funding of $50,000
Unfortunately, there is a problem. It’s hinted at in the Indiegogo pitch
“Currently we don’t have a fully working prototype, the photos in campaign [sic] are computer renderings of what we envision the device to look like.”
It’s telling that Kickstarter would not have accepted a project at this stage. Indiegogo is more liberal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
For a Hardware Startup, Version 2.0 Is ‘Made in America’
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323825&
Entrepreneur Lisa Q. Fetterman has been so successful at running crowd-funding campaigns that she now teaches others how to do it.
The CEO of Nomiku, she raised nearly $600,000 in 30 days on Kickstarter and a seed round in Silicon Valley to fund the launch of the world’s first sous vide immersion circulator for home kitchens. (For non-chefs, it’s sort of like a gourmet slow cooker with very precise temperature controls.)
Now Fetterman is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund Version 2.0 of the cooker, which is equipped with WiFi.
It will be made in America.
“We prototyped Version 1.0 in China, which involved going to the market in Shenzhen, soldering the pieces we needed together, and sending the CAD drawings out to a prototyping factory,” says Fetterman.
The biggest change, however, is the move to manufacture and assemble the parts in the United States.
“We’re fortunate that companies are springing up here on the West Coast that have 3D machines that can mold new materials like SLS Nylon, polycarbonate, and elastomers for flexible parts. A prototype now costs us only around $600, and we get it with fast turnaround because we get them printed right over in Oakland.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Global Radiation Monitoring Network Update
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/11/global-radiation-monitoring-network-update/
Things have been busy at Global Radiation Monitoring Network Central Command.
[Radu's] latest news is that he’s ready to go into production with model A of the uRADMonitor. Moving from project to production can be an incredible amount of work due to sourcing parts, setting up assembly houses, and dealing with any snags that come up along the way.
Tomi Engdahl says:
9 Free Business Productivity Tools For Startups
http://tweakyourbiz.com/technology/2013/04/08/9-free-business-productivity-tools-for-startups/
Starting a business can be a daunting endeavor, especially if all you have is a cool product and not enough capital. In the tech world, or in any other niche for that matter, most startuppers fail not because they have bad products but because they are unable to generate enough consumer interest in their products.
Considering overheads and other back-office expenses, this scenario doesn’t come as a surprise. So if you’re still starting out and find yourself strapped for much needed funding to keep your startup afloat, the following free business productivity tools are worth checking out.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, And Marissa Mayer Want To Teach You ‘How To Start A Startup’
The 20-session course will be taught at Stanford within its computer science department. But all videos, reading materials, and assignments will be posted online on Altman’s website, so anyone can follow the class content for free.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-marc-andreessen-and-marissa-mayer-teach-how-to-start-a-startup-2014-9#ixzz3DYQnZzuT
Tomi Engdahl says:
NYC Maker Faire: The Logistics of Manufacturing Pentagons
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/20/nyc-maker-faire-the-logistics-of-manufacturing-pentagons/
Last year, [Matt] put together a Kickstarter for Blinkytape, a WS2812 LED strip with an Arduino on one end of the strip to generate patterns of colors. This year, [Matt] is moving into three dimensions with a system of pentagons with a single RGB LED mounted in the center.
[Matt] has a few tips for anyone wanting to run their own Kickstarter: don’t have a lot of SKUs. [Matt] only has to keep track of a single panel of twelve pentagons. Compare this to other failed Kickstarters with dozens of options, several colors, and a few stretch goals, and you quickly see why many, many Kickstarters fail. [Matt] is just selling one thing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineering the pitch
http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4434924/Engineering-the-pitch
So you want to start your own company or have an outstanding new device to bring to market. That’s great. But where do you begin?
Business advisor and founder of Alayne Strategies Jennifer A Myers recently spoke to EDN about taking the first steps on entrepreneurial paths. Utilizing her background as both a transactional lawyer and a businesswoman, Myers spoke about balancing creativity with need and big goals with limited resources, common mistakes made in the start-up phase, and the pitch – one of the most important tools in an entrepreneur’s arsenal essential to starting, maintaining, and driving a company to success.
EDN: We hear from a lot of engineers – be they just out of school or nearing retirement age – that want to start their own business, without going into tremendous debt. What’s step one of that process?
Myers: Regardless of where you are at in life, the first step is to test if there’s a “there there.” Say you invent a cool new gadget, you need to figure out if you are providing something for the benefit of who the audience is and whether the audience are really the people that will spend money necessary to manufacture it. Basically ask if what you are thinking about creating is marketable? Then you have to figure out if you have a single product that’s a good idea or actually a company.
A lot of engineers come up with great new things, but not [enough to found] a company on. Determining if something is worthy of being a company is step one.
Once you’ve made this assessment, look at the life that you have and the lifestyle that you want and the people you want to be working with. I think engineers in particular need to think about what they are trying to create as bigger than just a product. A lot of them are very excited about what they’ve designed and want to jump in right away. Slow down and look at the goal: What do you really want to do?
Myers: Keeping passion alive is a personal journey. I would say that focusing on the excitement of testing and improving their designs in order to get through some of the more icky stuff — like finding funding, the stuff that may not come as naturally.
Keeping passion alive is really a day-to-day exercise.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Now Hear This!
How to make your hardware idea a reality
http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4429844/How-to-make-your-hardware-idea-a-reality
Hardware start-ups have typically been risky and expensive projects, and even as new resources make the process easier, they require a lot of work and careful planning.
Supalla got into the electronics industry just a few years ago when he made an Internet-connected LED blink with a remote switch using Arduino. From there, he developed a product to bring lights online, the Smart Socket. But when he was beaten to market by the Philips hue and LIFX, the Kickstarter campaign for the project failed.
“When I came up with the idea for the Arduino light, people generally thought that I was nuts,” said Supalla at his EE Live! 2014 session on bringing your product to market. “We went from being crazy to old news. From the moment that you decide to do something to the moment that you actually get to market, that’s a really important period of time.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Now Hear This!
How to make your hardware idea a reality
http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4429844/How-to-make-your-hardware-idea-a-reality
Hardware start-ups have typically been risky and expensive projects, and even as new resources make the process easier, they require a lot of work and careful planning.
Supalla got into the electronics industry just a few years ago when he made an Internet-connected LED blink with a remote switch using Arduino. From there, he developed a product to bring lights online, the Smart Socket. But when he was beaten to market by the Philips hue and LIFX, the Kickstarter campaign for the project failed.
“When I came up with the idea for the Arduino light, people generally thought that I was nuts,” said Supalla at his EE Live! 2014 session on bringing your product to market. “We went from being crazy to old news. From the moment that you decide to do something to the moment that you actually get to market, that’s a really important period of time.”
His current project involves the Spark Core, a development tool kit that connects to the Internet over Wi-Fi and brings with it whatever it’s connected to, and the Spark Cloud, a cloud service that powers the connected devices the Spark Core connects.
With the Spark Core, Supalla crafted a well-thought-out process to take the product from idea to reality. His steps, in this order, are to make it work, make it pretty, sell it, make friends, make it manufacturable, make it, and ship it. The Spark Core is currently on the next step of making it grow.
“Invest in good lighting and a good camera to make your product look great,” said Supalla.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kickstarter lays down new rules for when a project fails
In the wake of Neal Stephenson’s failed Kickstarter game, terms get an update.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/09/kickstarter-tries-to-help-creators-who-dont-deliver-with-new-terms/
Kickstarter announced several updates late Friday to its terms of use and policies for crowdfunded projects, according to a blog post at the company’s site. The terms of use are not changing much about the spirit of the platform
most recent wave of revisions surrounding the site’s transition from only posting projects cleared by the staff to clearing all projects that meet a basic set of criteria. Even still, some projects lack clear goals, encounter setbacks, or fail to deliver
Section 4 of the new terms of service goes to lengths to help project creators set themselves up for success and/or not frustrate their backers. If the creators can’t deliver, Kickstarter explains how to try and make good when the creators do not fulfill their goals or backer rewards.
In that event, creators are expected to explain what is happening and how the money was used, giving refunds to any backers who request them. Kickstarter also writes that, in lieu of giving refunds, backers can “explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form,” which still provides a loophole for a creator to keep a project in eternal development hell.
section 5 has some reminders: estimated completion dates are, in fact, estimates, and Kickstarter is not responsible for issuing refunds.
Krachtig schoonmaakbedrijf in Amsterdam says:
Good day! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with
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Tomi Engdahl says:
First lecture of the Stanford course “how to start a startup” with Sam Altman and Dustin Moskovitz now online — Lecture 1: Welcome, and Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part I — Why to Start a Startup.
How to Start a Startup
http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/
Lecture 1: Welcome, and Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part I
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup temptation to fade away
According to a recent survey, only 16 percent of jobs in the Startup dreams. 60 percent of those surveyed wanted, preferably a medium-sized IT company. A quarter would go from large companies breads.
Robert Half Technology survey was answered by 2,300 American IT professionals.
Younger people are more interested in startups, but the age and financial obligations of the enthusiasm of a small growth company drudgery, mere agony faded among the respondents.
Robert Half Technology’s John Reed said startups to present more more acceptable career path. In recent years, the poor economic situation has prompted people to consider small business risks and made more stable medium-sized enterprises more attractive.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/kaikki_uutiset/startupien+houkutus+hiipuu+nyt+halutaan+toihin+tallaisiin+itfirmoihin/a1014771
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bubble 2.0? Moneybags VC Andreessen warns profit-free startups: ‘You will be VAPORIZED’
Cash-burning, post-revenue Valley upstarts told to worry – ‘the market will turn’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/26/marc_andreessen_coming_crash_in_vc_funding/
When it comes to the internet age, Marc Andreessen was in there right from the start. Now, when he talks, people listen.
So when the geek-turned-venture-capitalist today warned there’ll soon be a bloodbath unless startups start making bank, we imagine there were a few spilled soy lattes in the Valley.
“The average burn rate at the average venture-backed company in Silicon Valley is at an all-time high since ’99 and maybe in many industries higher than in ’99,” Gurley said.
“And two, more humans in Silicon Valley are working for money-losing companies than have been in 15 years, and that’s a form of discounted risk.”
“When the market turns, and it will turn, we will find out who has been swimming without trunks on: many high burn rate co’s will VAPORIZE,” he tweeted.
Getting hold of so much cheap cash effectively means that companies can run a long time without actually making a profit, he said. A case in point is Andreessen’s choice of communications media: Twitter. It has a market cap of over $30bn, but has yet to make a profit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ignore Marketing at Your Own Peril
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324088&
With less investment money available in the semiconductor industry these days, startups have abandoned some of the tried and true elements of marketing used to create widespread awareness and build visibility. Instead, they’re focused on engineering and sales. Marketing the company is viewed as a luxury and takes a back seat. The strategy is to delay any marketing while building revenue from initial customers.
It wasn’t always this way. When semiconductor startups were trendy and well-funded, marketing had a cache of programs to position the company. Many of the savvier startups took a one-two approach to launching themselves and their products.
First came the company rollout that seeded the market with the company’s positioning. The corporate news release included high-level positioning and salient facts, such as investors, board members, and key staff members.
Anywhere from two to six months later the company’s first product was rolled out. Between these two points, trade and online publications often published commentaries and technical articles contributed by the company to set the stage for the product launch. The wave of announcements continued, and the industry was conditioned to see customer-adoption news releases and, perhaps, news on the health of the company through year-end releases reporting growth.
Obviously, the world has changed, with many companies being bootstrapped, lacking the resources for this proven marketing strategy. Scarce funds are now reserved for product development and sales. Customer support, news releases, articles, whitepapers, and case studies are still valued.
The main motivation for rollout campaigns is no longer the articles they might generate in online publications, but the fresh information they bring to a company’s website and the boost they provide search engine optimization (SEO) results. Blogging and social media are now essential components of a balanced marketing strategy.
I contend, however, that the two-phase strategy still makes sense. In fact, there’s no reason not to implement it in a well-conceived, cost-effective marketing program employing a variety of elements including SEO, blogging, and social media.
Marketing is an important element of growth and the most significant means of building brand identity. Don’t neglect it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wearables & IoT Boom Creates Supply Chain Challenges
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324123&
Entrepreneurial designers are creating new ideas for wearable and connected devices daily. Consumers are racing to support their Kickstarter campaigns. Unfortunately, many brilliant ideas are killed when it comes time to move from prototype to full-scale manufacturing.
“The barriers to entry are low in the wearables market, because the parts exist,”
At the same time, the crowdfunding community is pushing back on designers to make sure they’ve considered manufacturing and procurement issues. “One of the major challenges that crowdfunding sites have run into is that a product idea will go on the site, get funded, and then run into problems with manufacturing,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startups are very counterintuitive, and you can’t always trust your instinctsFind
Before the Startup
http://paulgraham.com/before.html
(This essay is derived from a guest lecture in Sam Altman’s startup class at Stanford. It’s intended for college students, but much of it is applicable to potential founders at other ages.)
Counterintuitive
The first item on it is the fact I already mentioned: that startups are so weird that if you trust your instincts, you’ll make a lot of mistakes. If you know nothing more than this, you may at least pause before making them.
Batch after batch, the YC partners warn founders about mistakes they’re about to make, and the founders ignore them, and then come back a year later and say “I wish we’d listened.”
Why do the founders ignore the partners’ advice? Well, that’s the thing about counterintuitive ideas: they contradict your intuitions. They seem wrong. So of course your first impulse is to disregard them.
Expertise
The second counterintuitive point is that it’s not that important to know a lot about startups. The way to succeed in a startup is not to be an expert on startups, but to be an expert on your users and the problem you’re solving for them. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t succeed because he was an expert on startups. He succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups, because he understood his users really well.
If you don’t know anything about, say, how to raise an angel round, don’t feel bad on that account. That sort of thing you can learn when you need to, and forget after you’ve done it.
In fact, I worry it’s not merely unnecessary to learn in great detail about the mechanics of startups, but possibly somewhat dangerous.
Game
We saw this happen so often that we made up a name for it: playing house. Eventually I realized why it was happening. The reason young founders go through the motions of starting a startup is because that’s what they’ve been trained to do for their whole lives up to that point. Think about what you have to do to get into college, for example. Extracurricular activities, check. Even in college classes most of the work is as artificial as running laps.
It’s not surprising that after being trained for their whole lives to play such games, young founders’ first impulse on starting a startup is to try to figure out the tricks for winning at this new game.
All-Consuming
That brings us to our fourth counterintutive point: startups are all-consuming. If you start a startup, it will take over your life to a degree you cannot imagine. And if your startup succeeds, it will take over your life for a long time: for several years at the very least, maybe for a decade, maybe for the rest of your working life. So there is a real opportunity cost here.
Y Combinator has now funded several companies that can be called big successes, and in every single case the founders say the same thing. It never gets any easier. The nature of the problems change. You’re worrying about construction delays at your London office instead of the broken air conditioner in your studio apartment. But the total volume of worry never decreases; if anything it increases.
Starting a successful startup is similar to having kids in that it’s like a button you push that changes your life irrevocably.
Try
Should you do it at any age? I realize I’ve made startups sound pretty hard. If I haven’t, let me try again: starting a startup is really hard. What if it’s too hard? How can you tell if you’re up to this challenge?
The answer is the fifth counterintuive point: you can’t tell.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Blink(1) and How To Kickstarter
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/08/hackaday-10th-anniversary-demoscenes-and-blink1/
When it comes to electronics and tech Kickstarters, Blink(1) defines what it means to have a minimum viable product. It’s a USB plug, a small microcontroller, and an RGB LED. That’s it. [Tod] wanted to take this simple project and learn how to turn it into a product. [Tod] emphasised the ‘learn’ part of his plan; the alternate title for this talk was, “How to Fail Multiple Times and Still Ship 20,000 Units.”
The Blink(1) started as a standard My First Arduino Sketch, blinking three LEDs, quickly moving over to a USB LED device. This rather large USB dongle sat there for a few years until he decided to turn this into a product. It turned out building a product is a lot more involved than building a kit, with considerations to the enclosure, the packaging, and the inevitable CNC mold fails.
http://blink1.thingm.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Honesty on Kickstarter is a mistake we willingly made
http://arcticstartup.com/2014/09/15/honesty-on-kickstarter-is-a-mistake-we-willingly-made
Let’s be honest, no matter how old you are, deep down you still want to believe in miracles. So did we, when we decided to go for Kickstarter with a game that we always dreamed to make. We spent a few years in preparation while analyzing successful as well as failed campaigns on Kickstarter to understand how things work. We also have spoken with a number of experts in the crowdfunding field just to be sure and the result shocked us. They all underlined the same thing over and over – Kickstarter is no longer what it seems and maybe it never actually was. Here are the main things most crowdfunding veterans agree on
Tomi Engdahl says:
How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up
https://medium.com/everything-about-startups-and-entrepreneurship/how-quitting-my-corporate-job-for-my-startup-dream-f-cked-my-life-up-3b6b3e29b318
There was something wrong with this consulting life, though. I couldn’t stand this bullsh*t any longer and one day I called my parents:
“Dad, mom, I just quit my job. I want to start my own startup.”
My mom almost had a heart attack. It wasn’t the first thing a perfectionist mother wanted to hear after encouraging me to graduate from the world’s top business schools with top grades.
I tried to ease her distress. No chance.
I told everyone that I just quit my job to follow my startup dream. Some of my friends gradually stopped seeing me
While the rest of my friends were supportive, there was, however, still something wrong with my relationship with them:
I soon realized I was starting to pull myself away from social gatherings.
Every time I met with those friends, I didn’t have many updates to give them in response to their repeated questions, such as, “So, how is your startup going? You are going to be the next Zuckerberg, right?” “Oh man, we are so proud of you and we are so sure you will soon receive a huge round of investment.”
The only comfortable place was next to my few entrepreneur friends. It was true, only an entrepreneur could understand an entrepreneur.
As if the social pressure and loneliness were not enough, I was meeting the mother of all stresses: running out of cash much faster than I had imagined.
This was killing my productivity and ability to make proper decisions.
There are, however, five things I wish I had asked myself before starting this painful journey.
1. Are you ready for the social pressure?
2. Are you single or do you have an extremely supportive partner?
3. Do you have enough cash to last at least a year?
4. Are you ready to sleep only few hours a day?
5. How do you define success?
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Tomi Engdahl says:
7 Celebrity-Backed Startups That Totally Nailed It
http://techcrunch.com/gallery/7-celebrity-backed-startups-that-totally-nailed-it/?cps=gravity
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anonabox Accused of Lying About Its Product Being Open-Source On Kickstarter
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/10/15/2256212/anonabox-accused-of-lying-about-its-product-being-open-source-on-kickstarter
The “anonabox” has raised more than $550,000 on Kickstarter in only three days. But some believe the company’s claims that the router-like device, which is said to automatically route users’ Internet traffic through Tor, is entirely open-source are false.
Wildly successful crowdfunded ‘anonabox’ router accused of lying to customers
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/anonabox-accusations/
The inventors of the anonabox—the crowdfunded privacy-centric Internet router that’s raised almost half a million dollars—have been accused of lying to their customers and drastically misrepresenting the nature of their product.
Anonabox bills itself as “an open source embedded networking device designed specifically to run Tor,” and promises to allow its users to quickly and easily navigate the Internet anonymously. After months of ongoing global debate about government surveillance and privacy, the product could not have come at a more perfect time, and quickly blew past its funding goals on Kickstarter.
Because despite positive press coverage from the Guardian, TechCrunch, WIRED, ReadWrite and beyond, serious concerns have since been raised about the product, and it now looks likely that Kickstarter will suspend the crowdfunding campaign.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here’s Anonabox 4th prototype with picture of Chinese router:
https://i.imgur.com/dvBjzJO.jpg
YOU CAN EVEN BUY THEIR PROTOTYPE ON ALIEXPRESS FOR 20$
I bet if you order thousands you get each under 10$…
So to keep things short, here’s what bothers me:
They say hardware and software is open source, which isn’t the case
They say they had four prototypes and all are THEIR prototypes. Which is a blatant lie, they are reselling Chinese devices.
They will sell the device for about 50$, while the Chinese ones go under 20$.
I don’t mind having TOR enabled router, but I most certainly don’t want to give money to a campaign that’s making false claims and it can be a scam.
EDIT AGAIN:
Wow, just wow! A lot of bullshit on the AMA. We’re 2 hours in Anonabox AMA and August Gramar has given us nothing else than vague and incomplete answers.
He refused to admit that he’s using off the shelf hardware available from Aliexpress and other Chinese suppliers
He refused to admit that he did not design the anonabox case, board or anything else than the name
Perfect example! and proof that in fact he did get the board from the Chinese and that others may try to sell it?!
This guy basically proved he’s using a Chinese PCB, and all the August could say it’s this, which is lame.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/2j9caq/anonabox_tor_router_box_is_false_representation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Securobods rage over $600k Kickstarter Tor box components
Devs insist: It’s NOT just an off-the-shelf circuit board
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/16/rage_as_kickstarters_600k_anonabox_built_on_borrowed_kit/
The Californian developer told Vulture South Anonabox was an original build and was designed by an engineer friend who sourced materials based on his requirements.
“The engineer who designed the board for us didn’t start with an empty canvas [because] it would take too much time. He used files he had from other customers and projects and modified them to meet our specs.”
“This is pretty normal, and it’s partially why devices such as cellphones all look the same.”
Press outlets which covered the Anonabox Kickstarter campaign were not told of the hardware OEM sourcing, nor of underlying code reliance on the PORTAL project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anonabox: How To Fail Horribly at Kickstarter
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/17/anonabox-how-to-fail-horribly-at-kickstarter/
Late last week, Anonabox hit Kickstarter, glomming on to concerns over security, privacy, and censorship. The project was picked up on the usual tech blogs, lauding this project as the pinnacle of the Open Source, Open Hardware movement and a great investment for the privacy-minded technocrat in a post-Snowden world.
Then, the creator of Anonabox did an AMA on reddit. It was quickly discovered that the entire project was an off the shelf router found on AliExpress with reflashed firmware. The router sells for $20 in quantity one, and the Anonabox Kickstarter is giving them away with a minimum $51 pledge. The new firmware is basically a standard OpenWrt installation with a few changes to the config files. The project claims to solve the problem of hardware backdoors, but ships with a backdoor root password (the password is ‘developer!’), open WiFi, and ssh open by default. The Anonabox also claims to be a plug and play solution to security and privacy on the Internet, meaning if this project ever ships, there will be a lot of people who won’t change the default configuration. That’s rather hilarious in its implications.
As with most Kickstarters that have seen this much negative attention, the project was suspended just a few hours ago, but not before gathering more than $600,000 in pledges at its peak.
Although the Anonabox failed, there is a market for a Tor-enabled router
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kickstarter Freezes Anonabox Privacy Router Project for Misleading Funders
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/kickstarter-suspends-anonabox/
All August Germar asked for was $7,500 to fund his privacy-focused router project. But as the attention and controversy around his Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign snowballed over the last five days, he found himself at one point with 82 times that amount—and now with nothing.
On Friday afternoon Kickstarter suspended the crowdfunding campaign for Anonabox, an initiative to sell a tiny, $45 router that would run all a user’s online traffic over the anonymity network Tor. The idea tapped into an explosive demand for simple privacy technology, and earned more than 10 times its modest goal in hours. But as funders shoveled more than half a million dollars into the project, they also began to pick apart Anonabox’s claims of creating custom hardware, as well as the promised security of its software. Soon, many were calling for the project to be cancelled, and asked others to report its shortfalls to Kickstarter staff, who now say they’ll cancel all investors’ pledges.
In an email to the project’s investors, Kickstarter told backers only that “a review of the project uncovered evidence that it broke Kickstarter’s rules.” Those rules, the email continued, prohibit “offering purchased items and claiming to have made them yourself,” “presenting someone else’s work as your own” and “misrepresenting or failing to disclose relevant facts about the project or its creator.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Circular Marketing
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324340&
Years ago, I tried to describe integrated marketing to a smart and savvy technology entrepreneur. He couldn’t understand what I was talking about.
Integrated marketing? The idea that marketing should have a one simple and straightforward message developed to capture the attention of the company’s target audience — chip designers in this case — was a foreign concept to him. I could see the boredom as I tried to explain that an integrated program ensures that the advertising, direct mail, public relations, website, and signs at events had the same look, feel, and message. When I moved on to describe how effective it could be to balance between the different approaches to each, I lost him completely. It just wasn’t an intuitive concept and, evidently, I certainly wasn’t making it any clearer.
Looking back at the definition of integrated marketing from those years, and comparing it to today’s various marketing programs, there really is no difference.
An example of outbound marketing would be advertising in a print magazine or newspaper. It would be one-way communications
Inbound marketing offers a means for two-way communications between the company and prospects like the engineers and managers who read EE Times, creating a “pull” effect where prospective customers seek out the company.
No matter. Keeping the messaging balanced and consistent is a constant theme through both. Hold on, you’re saying. Twitter and Facebook have different goals than our corporate blog. Nope. The overall goal should be to promote the company in a positive way. The objective would be to effectively communicate a consistent message through all the channels we have available today. The tactics could be to have the website content rich, augmented by tweets, blogs, articles, news releases, and so on. Of course, everyone has a different voice and perspective, but marketing needs to make sure it’s the same message and that everyone’s working toward the same goal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Venture Capitalists’ Confidence Is Waning — or So It Seems
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/10/23/venture-capitalists-confidence-is-waning-or-so-it-seems/
A quarterly survey that gauges the confidence level in Silicon Valley shows that venture capitalists downgraded their enthusiasm in the third quarter. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the Bay Area’s big-spending climate is about to change.
Still, Camnice threw sun on what little dark clouds were gathering over the industry.
“[A] still strong if moderating exit market for venture-backed businesses, healthy levels of investment and fundraising, rampant disruptive innovation, and the ever present belief in the determination of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs kept sentiment at a relatively high level.”
That barely wavering enthusiasm is fueled in part by persistently low interest rates. Pension funds, university endowments and other big investors continue to pump money into equities and venture capital – in fact, venture firms are on pace to raise more money in any year since 2007.
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