

Ask PG: Hardware/Infrastructure startups and YC? - moxiemk1

A number of the ideas I've had for new disruptive companies aren't traditional web applications or services, but instead are hardware producers, new takes on systems software, and re-imagining infrastructure. More SpaceX and NeXT than Hipmonk and Posterous.<p>These markets are full of slow-moving entrenched players: a ripe target for disruption in a major way. However, it's probably a harder market to get into, with more capital outlay required to get started.<p>My question is: would YCombinator be interested in such a startup? I imagine that the level of funding YC gives would help a team of founders get a purified idea of what they intend to make, and maybe some very early stage prototypes of software, though probably not hardware. Being successful would entirely depend on getting a funding round once we produce the plans so we can hire talent, purchase materials and start manufacturing. 
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ig1
Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

"27. Hardware/software hybrids. Most hackers find hardware projects alarming.
You have to deal with messy, expensive physical stuff. But Meraki shows what
you can do if you're willing to venture even a little way into hardware.
There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in hardware; you can often do dramatically
new things by making comparatively small tweaks to existing stuff.

Hardware is already mostly software. What I mean by a hardware/software hybrid
is one in which software plays a very visible role. If you work on an idea of
this type you'll tend to have the field to yourself, because most hackers are
afraid of hardware, and most hardware companies can't write good software.
(One reason your iPod isn't made by Sony is that Sony can't write iTunes.)"

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moxiemk1
I had been reading this list; the main reason I still have a question is
because this seems to indicate a scale different than I think we can achieve.

Not so much the next Flip Camera company, taking a market that major companies
think is a toy. Instead, going head-to-head on their products that they've
allowed to become crufty square-holes for your round peg and making great
tools for real problems, not adapting commodity PCs in ludicrous ways.

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misham
I'm working on software/tools for embedded field as well as trying to develop
a wireless driver for 802.11p (automotive "WiFi").

It's actually not that expensive to get a prototype done with many of the
hardware resource available for either free (as samples) or dirt cheap in
small quantities.

Say you want to build a new Gaming Router, you can buy the underlying hardware
to do development on for under $200 in quantities of < 10 and that will give
you all the needed parts (board, radio, antennas, cables, enclosure, etc.)
with the right specs to do just about anything you want. You'd then run Linux
on it (OpenWRT is easy, comparatively) and wright the necessary software on
top of that.

As the Ideas point #27, linked to by ig1, shows, most of the problem solving
is in software.

Give you an example, I worked for a startup, 3 software guys (myself included)
built a router that had all the capabilities of a Cisco small business-class
router in 6 months from getting the hardware to being feature complete. No
hardware people were involved. We used a crappy, 3 year-old platform that
would over-heat (the SoC would start to literally smoke) if we ran more than 2
IPSec connections, but we were able to tune the kernel and our software to
make it a viable product for a lot of businesses.

If you know your way around Linux, building embedded products is unbelievably
simple.

If you or anyone else is interested in talking more about this field, shoot me
an email (it's in my profile).

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HockeyPlayer
GearBox was a TechStars company from this summer that built a robotic ball:
<http://www.techstars.org/companies/orbotix/>

