Interesting history of TV-B-Gone; all the way from inspiration to recommendations of good Chinese contract manufacturers.
Also a good caution about not warning your credit card processor if you are going to be exceeding your stated velocities. When he first set-up TV-Be-Gone website he thought he was wildly overestimating his first years sales when he told them $100k/year. Three weeks later he had orders for almost $300k - good problem to have, right? Well the credit card processor was worried he wouldn't be able to fulfill all those orders so they told him they were holding back the money until he did. The trouble is he needed that money to pay for the shipment of new stock, almost causing the exact problem they were worried about - He was bailed out by a loan from family.
This is actually a lot more common than you would think. I knew a oil prospector that 'struck it rich' but had his line of credit called on him by the Bank of Montreal because they didn't think he could handle setting up that many oil rigs at once. Nearly drove the guy out of business. He ended up suing them (he was successful in an out of court settlement and ONLY because BMO called it within 30 days instead of the 60 days specified in his contract) and to this day refuses to sign any agreement with any financial institution without his lawyer rewriting everything.
Yeah, absolutely, and I thought the same thing when listening to Bruce Sterling's SXSW talk. I don't know the technical name for it - it's the professorial thing where the speaker lowers the tone of the voice at the end of the sentence (like the opposite of what you do when asking a question).
Also a good caution about not warning your credit card processor if you are going to be exceeding your stated velocities. When he first set-up TV-Be-Gone website he thought he was wildly overestimating his first years sales when he told them $100k/year. Three weeks later he had orders for almost $300k - good problem to have, right? Well the credit card processor was worried he wouldn't be able to fulfill all those orders so they told him they were holding back the money until he did. The trouble is he needed that money to pay for the shipment of new stock, almost causing the exact problem they were worried about - He was bailed out by a loan from family.
TV-B-Gone now employees 11 people!