
Hardware startups - johns
http://cdixon.org/2013/04/30/hardware-startups/
======
grinich
I wrote a pretty extensive post on Quora about how to build hardware products.
Here's an excerpt...

 _Designing for mass manufacturing is essentially impossible to learn without
actually building several products. The challenges of negotiating with
suppliers, verifying components, orchestrating supply chain logistics, and
maintaining quality standards will swiftly kill a cash-constrained startup.
But there's good news: unless you're on the cutting edge of a specific
technology (like Apple with displays or metalwork), the problems you encounter
at scale have very likely been solved by others. So the task then becomes to
find those individuals or companies and hire them quickly._

 _PCH International is probably the most well-known of these firms. They
notably make Kindle, products for Jawbone, and all the accessories for those
dudes in Cupertino. Because they often work with big players, they're able to
leverage large contract manufactures' (CMs) quality standards and economies of
scale for smaller production runs. Currently PCH is also aggressively going
after hardware startups and recently launched PCH Accelerator, which is
essentially a strategic investment group to fund partnerships with startups._

 _Another option is Dragon Innovation, who works with Pebble, Makerbot,
Sifteo, Leap Motion, and others. They're based in Boston and have recently
partnered with the brand-new hardware accelerator/investor BOLT. They're
certainly less flashy than PCH, but still know how to deliver._

 _HAXLR8R (Shenzhen) and Lemnos Labs (San Francisco) are other startup
"accelerators"-- kind of like a hardware-flavor of YC. They seem to be more
focused on the R &D stages (pre-Kickstarter) than production. For some
personal anecdotes by others, see What startup incubators exist for hardware
companies? [link]_

 _One way to think about contract manufacturing in China is with the "smile
curve" popularized by Acer in the early 90s. It's essentially a graph of a
product's extractable value as a function from creation to sale. On the left
is brand, high-level design (IxD, ID, PD) and any specialized R &D. In the
middle you have component sourcing, supply chain management, manufacturing,
assembly, and shipping. And then on the right you have distribution, retail
sales, marketing, and partnerships._

... it goes on with more examples. Full post: [http://www.quora.com/Michael-
Grinich/Posts/Product-manufactu...](http://www.quora.com/Michael-
Grinich/Posts/Product-manufacturing-for-the-newbie-from-prototype-to-
production)

Funnily enough, Liam Casey actually often calls PCH the "APIs for
manufacturing."

~~~
andyjohnson0
_"Designing for mass manufacturing is essentially impossible to learn without
actually building several products."_

I'm sure that is true. Possibly because the people with experience of this
come from a different community (established consumer electronics) than some
of the new people coming onto hardware via the startup scene.

Bunnie Huang recently wrote a series of detailed blog posts about how to take
prototypes to manufacturing in China. There is a lot of hard-won knowledge in
them.

Part 1: The Quotation (or, How to Make a BOM)
<http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2812>

Part 2: On Design for Manufacturing
<http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2831>

Part 3: Industrial Design for Startups
<http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2850>

Part 4: Picking (and Maintaining) a Partner
<http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2911>

~~~
grinich
I totally meant to link Bunnie's blog posts in that Quora bit! Thanks for the
reminder-- he's awesome. :)

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joshuaheard
I'm doing a hardware startup at the moment. While the article seemed to focus
on electronic hardware, I am developing a product that advances the state of
the art of scuba diving (an automatic buoyancy compensator). I couldn't have
done this ten years ago. I have hired an engineer in a different country on
Freelancer.com, pay him with Paypal, make our designs on Sketchup, am printing
our prototype on a Solidoodle 3D printer, and am ordering various hardware
from manufacturers' interactive websites. I am literally working out of my
basement. I will likely license it to major scuba equipment manufacturers, but
may make and sell the product myself, probably borrowing heavily from Tim
Ferriss’s book, "4-Hour Workweek". Thanks for all the commenters' input. I
have bookmarked a lot of these links for future use.

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aashaykumar92
The inevitable 'competition from lower cost manufacturers' is a likely fear
among many hackers today, but one extremely good point that Chris makes is to
complement hardware with software. Scaling with hardware can seem tough,
especially with competition from lower cost manufacturers, but incorporating
software gives companies an edge AND hopefully the ability to scale.

But playing devils advocate, it may be tough for startups to find the
resources to have a hybrid hardware/software company from the beginning. It
just seems like a daunting idea to start a hardware company. BUT, with
crowdfunding having become so popular, startups may be able to raise enough
money through initial sales from their hardware that they are able to put that
money towards creating unique software.

Sorry for all the back and forth, just was thinking/writing out loud!

~~~
femto
Hardware is nearly always complemented with software, since pretty well all
"hardware" projects include a significant software component by default.

For example, I design and build radio systems in my day job. You'd think an
800MHz 100W radio transceiver would be "hardware". In actual fact, even that
sort of system is largely driven by software. Most of the signal processing is
done on a DSP. The "hardware" is essentially a DAC/ADC, a mixer, a gain
element and a filter, and even then the control is handled by a computer. For
VHF frequencies and below, even the mixer is disappearing.

These days, nearly every electronic device fits the following model:

Transducer > sampling > SOFTWARE > reconstruction > transducer.

~~~
mailshanx
As a grad student working with communication systems i can verify that. In
fact, most communication and signal processing systems involve pretty
sophisticated algorithms, and these are almost always implemented in software.
In fact, the performance differentiator in these products boils down to the
quality and implementation of the signal processing algorithms, and that is
where most of the research effort at university labs is directed at.

An exception with respect to some communication systems would be ones
operating at extremely high frequencies, where it would be impractical to
process signals in software due to memory constraints (higher operating
frequencies -> more samples per second). In these cases, the mixing/modulation
functions get implemented in hardware.

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jacalulu
I'm currently working on a hardware startup. The barriers to being able to do
this have definitely lowered thanks to CNC (moving to 3D printing soon),
Arduino, and lower component costs - not to mention the fact that a lot of
cell phone components now come bundled in modules and eval boards are easy to
play with (all things that were mentioned).

One thing that I think still needs to come a long way is the amount of shared
knowledge on hardware design. My co-founder and I both went to school for
Mechatronics Engineering, and one of the biggest obstacles we have run into so
far is that there just isn't as much shared knowledge on the internet when we
run into problems - unlike software.

~~~
robomartin
Not sure what your specific issues might be, but, yes, in general terms you
are correct. If the information is on the internet it can be hard to find.
This is where experience working at a shop with older school folks can be
invaluable.

~~~
jacalulu
The experience gained from working in the industry is definitely useful. I'm
looking forward to a time when it is as easy to learn hardware design as it is
to learn how to program.

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fixxer
I'm currently doing a hardware start-up. I totally agree with the crowdfunding
strategy, especially if the technology has a mobile angle.

The problem we have is IP... IP management is such a burden for a small start-
up. I'm working with a University technology office. While they are great
people (really), it still adds a layer of complexity to an already tough
situation (IMO, start-ups do not benefit from having more people at the
table). Add in lawyers, and it becomes an order of magnitude more expensive
than your typical software start-up. And the IP you get from a University is
so raw... the cost to develop it into a consumer ready product can be immense.

On the other hand, it has been an education.

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replicatorblog
I'm not sure there will ever be a pure AWS analog in manufacturing, but
<http://www.dragoninnovation.com/> is pretty close to offering "Manufacturing
as a Service." They've helped Pebble, MakerBot, Sifteo, Romotive, and dozens
of other companies make it to the market more efficiently than if they'd run
solo. I wrote this story about them at Wired
([http://www.wired.com/design/2012/06/dragon-innovations-
manuf...](http://www.wired.com/design/2012/06/dragon-innovations-
manufacturing-in-china/))

~~~
andyjohnson0
Interesting.

From the Dragon Innovation home page [1]: _"As a matter of corporate policy,
Dragon Innovation will not accept any job that involves transferring existing
in-house manufacturing from the USA to China."_

[1] <http://www.dragoninnovation.com>

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revx

      "There is no AWS-equivalent for hardware."
    

Someone want to make a few billion dollars?

~~~
siong1987
PCH International comes pretty close. They even have an accelerator program[1]
to help hardware startups to manufacture their products in China.

I usually don't like to comment on rumors. I heard that some people from
Amazon are already working on a AWS-equivalent for hardware too based on their
experiences from manufacturing the Kindle. If you know anyone from Lab126[2],
ask them about it.

[1]: <http://www.pchintl.com/accelerator/accelerator.aspx>

[2]: <http://www.lab126.com/index.htm>

~~~
dakrisht
PCH is the global leader for supply chain management and manufacturing (they
make some of the most popular products we all use today) and they also have a
new accelerator program launching this summer.

But accelerators are generally reserved for people with little to no
experience in the craft, bare-bones resources and simply just ideas... They
help a lot and bring great resources (connections, labs, some get little
funding) but I've personally never been a big accelerator supporter... Except
YC, which seems to have a 90%+ funding rate once you pass... But this is a
subjective position here.

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ippisl
I wonder , when building a HW product what embedded platform people here use
for manufacturing ? Arduino/Mbed/plain microcontroller?

And if you use arduino , how do you manage the need to release object files
(according to the arduino license) ?

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robomartin
Good article. A few points:

> There is no AWS-equivalent for hardware.

Well, yes and no. Of course, it doesn't make sense to talk about AWS for
manufacturing. Making physical items means that your supply chain,
manufacturing process and channel of distribution have different time
constants when compared to pure software-and-servers businesses.

By this I mean that step changes in supply, production or demand happen at far
slower rated than in pure software products.

If by "AWS" we mean a manufacturing system that allows the entrepreneur to
turn on and off chunks of manufacturing capacity with some immediacy and
granularity, no that does not exist. And, that is so because it is just-about
impossible for most consumer products.

The supply chain for most consumer goods is such that it has to start being
stuffed with components and assemblies weeks in advance of manufacturing. Some
OEM components have lead times measured in months. Others have MOQ's (Minimum
Order Quantities) that can force commitment levels both to product volume and
manufacturing effort/timelines.

As an example, I am currently working on a project --to be featured on
Kickstarter-- that requires a custom aluminum extrusion in order to be able to
manufacture it economically. Aside from tooling and setup NRE's most extruders
have minimum buys that can range up to 2,000lbs of aluminum. In other words,
once you play that game you are all in and committed to manufacturing at a
certain level. Once these processes start you simply can't logon and stop them
from your browser (or spin-up new ones) as you might do with AWS.

> Proper planning is essential because mistakes can be unrecoverable. For
> example, you might create a design that fails environmental tests but only
> discover this years later when you are about to go to market.

Right. And this is why elsewhere in the article he mentions that a lot of
hardware entrepreneurs are older and more experienced engineers. When it comes
to physical product manufacturing, experience can be invaluable. There's a lot
that simply isn't learned in school. You can't recompile your way out of a
design error.

> The build-test-iterate model that is popular in software startups doesn’t
> translate well to hardware startups.

Well, it does in certain domains. For example, every FPGA-based design I've
done goes through extensive simulator testing before actually being committed
to real hardware. The same is true of such things as high speed signal and
power integrity (using field solvers and other tools).

When it comes to mechanical and thermal design a lot can be done with modern
CAD systems through simulation. As an example, we devoted no less than six
months to the design and simulation of an advanced liquid/forced air thermal
management system for a 1,000W (yes, one thousand watt) LED array. The
simulations were good enough that we could go to metal knowing we were going
to be reasonably close.

The same is true with mechanical and plastics simulation.

Now, if what we mean by built-test-iterate means the inclusion of the actual
end-user in a real market situation I have to say, yes, it is much harder.
This is where prototypes are designed to be easy to change and adjust in order
to experiment with form, fit and function.

In the end hardware startups are very different animals. I am not sure they
can be compared through the same metrics.

~~~
danpat
It will be interesting to see if 3D printer tech will change this.

Large warehouses full of 3D printers where you can scale up/down your
production would be a fairly reasonable analog to AWS and what it provides.

~~~
robomartin
We are very far from that in most product categories. As an example, a CNC
stamping machine can ingest sheets of aluminum and produce parts at an amazing
rate. Spend a little money on a set of dies and you can produce parts faster
than you can clap your hands. A similar situation exists in injection molding
or die casting.

3D printing is neat but it is very slow, expensive, limited in materials and
costly. Surely this will change with time. Still, it will be hard to compete
with optimized processes where, as I said, you can produce parts faster than
clapping your hands.

Now, for micro markets where you need just a few of something? Yup, that
probably works today.

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monsterix
Not only these, there are niches in hardware too which aren't immediately
attractive to the big boys - like think of doing a new digital stylus but not
a tablet. Playing it low gives for the necessary time and opportunity and
then, like PG says, startle the world with something nobody ever thought of.

