This lecture was a bit different from most of the course lectures and not because it was hardware focussed. I felt like it was a lot more 'high level' with less tactical startup takeaways as compared to other lectures. His slides were very elaborate, but lacked real actionable content. In many ways, they were what I'd call "business school" or "management consultant" style case study slides geared towards bringing design thinking to a larger organization. He even mentioned a couple of times- the difference between him needing to force people from different disciplines in a room together versus being able to do it sitting at a table when you're just starting out. I think that was a prime example of the difference between 'startup' thinking and 'growth' thinking. I would've loved to hear more about his process for thinking about design when they just started the company.
In any case, I did find value in his lecture and thought process around treating everything as a system (instead of looking at hardware, software, data all discretely). I've tried to capture my takeaways via publishing 22 Quotes that I took away from the lecture here: https://medium.com/@RajenSanghvi/22-quotes-from-hosain-rahma...
exactly my reaction. As someone pretty busy with building connected hardware systems, I made a point of watching this. It was great but I think where this comes into play is when you have an established revenue stream and the ability to move slowly and judiciously. Learned a lot, but 'startup' isn't the word that comes to mind.
Bright guy. Fast talker. Intricate
slides. Astoundingly laborious
detailed, high quality product
development process. High emphasis on
user experience and making the product
a habit in the lives of the customers.
To him, everything is a system;
apparently even
if he were making a five prong garden
weeder, a snow shovel, or a tennis ball,
he'd find a way to make it better by
regarding it as a system.
Gave good
insight into all the work involved.
Good lecture. Likely amazing products.
One of the best people Sam put in front
of the class.
Agreed, I was afraid that this was going to be a lecture that was somewhat "forced" because they wanted to make sure they included some hardware talk in the series. But it definitely wasn't, it was a really nice talk.
Until Startup School, I had no idea that the ideas for Jawbone date back to 1997, the company launched in '99, and over the last 15 years their team have endured some pretty crazy highs and lows - including Jawbone getting shut down and the team being locked out of their own offices by the board in the mid 2000s.
I am super keen to make a hardware product (I know only software), and started watching this with great anticipation. It would have been great to hear the story about their journey from 1995-2001. Thats would have been hugely valuable in itself. I am stuck at : How do I take my hardware idea, and make it real? How do I make a prototype (it requires an e-ink display) to know if someone will actually like it/use it? Since there are a number of HW startups on this page, thought I will ask my question. Specifically, I want to make a photo frame with an color e-ink display.
Edit: in a sense the journey from 1995-2001 was covered in the startup school video (linked in another comment), but that was mostly about the "company". He didn't cover the "How-to" of specifically how they did prototyping, manufacturing and development in the early days. 'how to start' this stuff is what I am interesting in.
I suspect the answer to "will people pay ~$100 for a washed out colour photo frame that is slightly less inconvenient than normal LCD digital photo frames" is "no", but you're welcome to try.
I used to work for a consultancy that did hardware product prototyping as a design service. We were good and very wide ranging but not at all cheap. The cheap DIY end is probably covered by the maker/hackerspace/arduino/rasberrypi movement which has evolved from the older ham/model railway ecosystem.
Another wrinkle is that if you want to sell electronic goods you need to consider FCC/CE/UL certifications, and there is no minimum quantity for the rules to apply. That increases the cost of the MVP greatly.
You make a prototype by cobbling stuff together and show off the user interaction points, not by making a finished product or by dealing with FCC/UL/CE/etc. This will likely cost a few thousand USD worth of parts/assembly/tools/etc if you are counting your time as free (but could be done for less if you already have a decent amount of electronics around).
Once your idea has been validated with potential customers, then you start designing. If you will have low sales numbers (ie: 10k or less/year) then look for having high value and high margins (few hundred dollar price and 50% gross margins). If you will have high sales numbers (100k+ or 1M+ per year) then you can get down below the $100 price point and lower your margins somewhat (but I suggest staying above 25% gross margin).
Expect that your BOM (bill of materials) for the electronics parts, when priced at your yearly volume pricing, will be 1/3 of the cost of your product. Then add your margin to get the sale price. If you're selling retail, account for 25-50% margin for the retailers in addition to your margin (so customer may pay 3x what it costs you to build the product for).
Regarding eInk screens, going to large sizes (ie: Kindle DX range) is going to cost you a lot for the screen. Assume Amazon make very little profit on Kindle devices and you're in the ball park for how much their BOM costs them. Your competition for electronic picture frames are under $100 sale price retail, so I suggest you focus on differentiation so that customers aren't comparing your product to the <$100 picture frames if you want to be successful.
As a HW entrepreneur starting to move into software-enabled devices, his comments about the opposing forces of rapid iterating software teams and slower more conservative release hardware teams is really on point.
For a topic that's been taught many times, like freshman calculus, you should expect a coherent survey. New material being taught for the first time won't be so thoroughly synthesized.
Beware of consuming only content that's well-organized and produced. You'll miss a lot of the most important stuff.
was this in response to rajens or to the [deleted] comment? While I understand commenting rules, if the comment is going to be deleted then it should cascade...
[deleted] means the original author removed the comment. Comments killed by the mods are marked [dead] and are normally invisible, only showing up with the showdead option on in your profile enabled.
as a hw startup founder, its amazing how heavy this feels. Obviously this is a mature, successful business but wow, its almost amazing anything gets built. Granted, what gets built is awesome.
Sorry for being blunt, but this is an MBA-style slideshow with a lot of talk about abstract phases and very little substance. I feel that even for hardware entrepreneurs starting out in the same space this lecture has close to zero takeaways.
In any case, I did find value in his lecture and thought process around treating everything as a system (instead of looking at hardware, software, data all discretely). I've tried to capture my takeaways via publishing 22 Quotes that I took away from the lecture here: https://medium.com/@RajenSanghvi/22-quotes-from-hosain-rahma...