

Underdressed at CES 2013 - jayliew
http://blog.doublerobotics.com/blog/2013/1/15/double-robotics-at-ces-2013

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jayliew
As an additional data point for startups: despite a few people ridiculing CES,
it worked out great for us.

Accounting for flight, employee salary, hotel, food, etc. and the booth space
(about $4,000 for that tiny booth), we're already ROI positive. Everything
that continues to pour in after that is just pure profit (being scrappy
helps!) We're glad we did it.

If you're "making something people want" and you do that 1 thing really
_really_ well, don't fret over the cosmetic details that other companies with
deeper pockets can afford pay for. At least that was true for us at CES, North
America's largest consumer electronics show.

On a final note, we'll reward you with a surprise gift (guess what it is!) if
you give up your embedded firmware engineer friend to join us. We focus more
on merit; the lack of paper qualification is not a problem :)
jay@doublerobotics .com

~~~
petercooper
I came here to ask "How much was it?" and here's the answer.. thanks! :)
Conferences like CES seem to do very well for a reason and I suspect that's
because _they work_ , as you've found. If they can get away with charging
$4000 for even such a small space, a lot of companies there must be getting a
ton of value out of it :-)

~~~
jayliew
Hi Peter, yes - it does work!

But just to elaborate further, I don't want to make it sound like if you cough
out $4,000 and with just a bare-bones booth, you'll get the kind of attention
we did at CES. I do think this $4,000 booth at CES is a good way to amplify
existing "success" (loosely defined on purpose). There are definitely knock-
off and undifferentiated products that didn't see as much success as we did.

Imho, it's a coin-toss if you don't already have some evidence to suggest that
there is some "success" to amplify. CES wasn't a causation of success. But the
right product compensated for a cheap bare booth.

------
pbhjpbhj
==Thought blog home was the homepage, some of this still stands, fix blog
template! Actually I've seen the product before, but didn't realise it from
the blog!!==

IMO "Wheels for your iPad" sounds like a crappy toy (along the lines of the
iArm).

Whilst the product may be a crappy toy (couldn't find a good image/video¹ on
the website homepage) it seems like it's a robot, so perhaps "Make your iPad
in to a robot?" with a subordinate line of "Double, your personal presence
bot"???

Not slick yet but I think you need to work on some sort of change there.

I'm trying not to go off on one but the site looks super-bland too ...

[Perhaps if you know an IP lawyer that likes the lime-light you should
challenge for the iRobot trademark on lack of distinctiveness to generate some
press.]

\- -

¹ I take it back, that's not a terrible image, it's not good by any stretch.
Why not have a 800px cut-out right up the side of the homepage.

~~~
chris_wot
_Perhaps if you know an IP lawyer that likes the lime-light you should
challenge for the iRobot trademark on lack of distinctiveness to generate some
press._

That is a terrible, terrible idea. Don't do that.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Tongue was firmly in cheek (ie it was jokey). You'd get some press though ...

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cocoflunchy
You should link to your website in your blog's header.

[edit] Oh I see now that there is in fact a link that says "Go back to main
site"... well what I meant is that the logo should link back to main site.

~~~
scott_s
I agree. If click on an image that says "Double Robotics," I expect to go to
the main site for Double Robotics, not its blog. The "Back to main site" link
doesn't make sense to someone who arrived at the blog - going _back_ to
anything does not mean anything to me, because I _started_ here. Many company
blogs seem to have this behavior.

~~~
jayliew
Thanks to you and cocoflunchy for the feedback; seems like a valid UX point to
me. I'm still learning my way around this blogging platform software

~~~
scott_s
In this case, I think the important question is, "What if a reader comes to
our blog having never heard of us and our product(s) before?" This use case
is, I think, more common that some assume, particularly when interesting blog
posts get posted on forums like HN.

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derekp7
One area you may want to consider marketing this to: Funeral homes. A lot of
times someone can't make it to a distant funeral either due to financial or
health reasons. Imagine if the funeral home could rent access to these, as
long as it wouldn't seem undignified. (I'm not too good of a judge of this).

Wedding receptions would be another possible market. Or, in general, see if
you can focus on the rental market (i.e., an event thrower could rent a dozen
for remote guests).

~~~
super-serial
"Imagine if the funeral home could rent access to these, as long as it
wouldn't seem undignified. (I'm not too good of a judge of this)."

No... it'd be fine, just hang a suit on it. If you rotate fast enough you
could simulate hugging or patting people's back while they're hysterically
crying. They won't even know the difference, and it will look totally normal
and dignified...

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scoot
"David and I were at the booth for the first 2 days, then he had to cut his
trip short and return to our office to help with our production process."

Why couldn't he just us a _Double_?

~~~
davidcann
The wifi and cell networks at CES are terrible. We ended up using Bluetooth
for the demo.

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andrewdubinsky
Very inspirational.

It's a terrible feeling when you unpack a crappy little booth with those
rented chairs and see all the really awesome booths of "real companies".

It's a feat of strength, no doubt.

Best of luck to you guys.

~~~
jayliew
thanks Andrew! The upside is when we were getting ready to leave, all we had
to do was roll up that 1 banner, and that was it. All the other fancy booths
had to begin the long process of disassembling their schtuff.

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rdl
Wow, I never would have thought of CES as a good place for a startup, but it
looks like it worked great for you.

~~~
jayliew
It sure did. Some people have a misconception that it's old-school (real-life
face-to-face events?) and don't work. Definitely not true, so I'm glad we're
able to share at least 1 data point as a counter-argument.

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clicks
Naturally, the next progression is to get this system working for an Occulus
Rift device. Because I would feel too constricted not being able to
responsively look around as I do in real life. Fun to think about!

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chris_wot
How do you stop it from being knocked over?

~~~
jayliew
It self-balances, and it's made to recover from nudges, people bumping into it
accidentally, the kind of thing you'd imagine in a normal real-life scenario.

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DoubleCluster
The Segway... is back! Cool product!

