

Why No Second Hardware Startups? - apsec112
http://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/07/12/why-no-second-hardware-startups/

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primitur
As someone who has made a living in software for 20+ years, I'd love to be
involved in a hardware startup right now. I mean, the kind of thing where a
small group, say about 5 people, pool their resources together, get some
boards made, develop some great apps for it, bundle it in a box with knobs and
buttons on it, and sell it on.

To me, it just seems like the nature progress of software industry: to make
computers so important that eventually, hardware is cheaper to ship than
software. Eventually.

;)

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durkie
it's not just capital intensive -- it's hugely time-intensive. i work for a
nanotech company that has been trying to scale up its proprietary process in
some form or another for _16_ years. if i'm quick, i can run maybe a dozen
experiments in a day and get results back on 5 of them by the morning.

i also do some work with a company that does plasma coatings, also with a
proprietary process that the owner (co-)invented. and it's a 4 person shop
right now.

both people have done very smart work and made processes that have many
compelling advantages over the existing state-of-the-art, with cost being a
huge one, but it just takes a long-ass time to iterate and get good results
from real, physical tests.

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georgemcbay
Quoted in the article: “Can you name any non-serial entrepreneurs? I can’t
think of any of the top of my head… all entrepreneurs seem to be serial
offenders. Max Levchin, Evan Williams, Justin Khan, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey,
Mark Pincus… (and a dozen other names).”

Isn't this obviously selection bias? Of course you don't hear much about one-
failure-and-done entrepreneurs. Why would you, unless their failure was
somehow exceptionally spectacular? But that doesn't mean that there aren't
plenty of them... there are likely many, many more of them than those that
stick with it.

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apsec112
Of course, but I think it's only talking about entrepreneurs who have already
had at least one success

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georgemcbay
Even in that situation, while that cuts the number down I'd still put good
money on there being a lot more entrepreneurs who had one great success and
then cashed out compared to the number who are "serial entrepreneurs".

I think there's still SV-bubble (not economic bubble, but bubble in the social
isolation sense) logic going on there in assuming the majority are serial.

Of course, I have no data to back this up (but neither does the other
viewpoint -- a list of 8 or so guys is hardly a good argument for that side).

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2bluesc
Where are the hardware start-up happy hours and meetups? I'm from the the DFW
area and the typical meet ups are filled with a bunch of people (including
good friends) doing cool mobile and web apps.

But where do I go to find people doing hardware and wanting to do hardware
startups? Only thing I've ever heard of is Solid State Startups, but that's in
the Valley (maybe I need to move?). Maybe Makerspaces, but those guys seem
more interested in robots and other hobbies then starting their own thing.

I think there needs to be a hardware start-up weekend where hardware guys get
together, hack some eval boards and try to get something they can launch on
Kickstarter or something worth funding.

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smoyer
The article is interesting but I think it misses the obvious (to me)
conclusion. After being successful in a high-margin business (software), why
would an entrepreneur attempt to enter a low margin (hardware) business?

IBM, HP (to some extent) and others have actually been exiting the consumer
hardware market. That's not a business I'd choose to start. And using Elon
Musk as an example isn't really fair ... he's certainly created high-end
hardware but only where there's a market void.

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apsec112
By hardware I don't just mean electronics, but anything that's physical and
requires large amounts of capital. Sorry, clarified with edit.

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westbywest
The capital outlay required for pretty much any hardware product is enormous
(compared to software-based products). Besides needing to sustain development
effort to comply with emissions/safety/etc standards dictated by the
regulatory environment, you also need to fund months to years of Q/A testing
to ensure your physical widget can be reliably mass-produced. And all this has
be done before you have anything to sell for revenue.

Respinning a hardware prototype is generally slow and expensive (i.e. can't
just recompile), with degree of slowness/cost increasing as you tread further
down your development path.

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qq66
Why don't most success software startup founders start cleantech companies,
for that matter? It's probably because they have the skills and interest to
succeed in software, their success further confirms their abilities in this
market, and unless they have a particular reason to, they'd rather stick to
what they know...

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apsec112
I think that's pretty much what the article said:

"So, why no second hardware startups? The most likely reason is probably the
obvious one: after spending a lot of time in software, it’s hard to go learn a
whole new field, especially if you’re already rich and don’t have to work to
pay bills."

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robot
its because %99 of entrepreneurs are not idealists, they are opportunists.
there are opportunities that are simpler to pursue in software than in
hardware.

