
When hardware Kickstarters ship - steven_pack
http://engineering.koalasafe.com/when-kickstarters-ship/
======
polar8
I've shipped one hardware product on Kickstarter [1] and I'm in the process of
fulfilling the second [2]. Lessons I've learned are:

1\. Design with your factory. Finding a good supplier is important but the
real work starts once you've shaken hands. Your factory is your greatest
resource as a presumably inexperienced hardware designer. It's like having an
expert-level consultant work on your project for free, so take advantage of
it.

2\. Keep it extremely simple. MVP applies here. Your project will probably
fail if it does not have the absolute minimum viable number of hardware
features. The majority of your effort should be spent thinking about how to
simplify your designs. Avoid moving parts if possible, and design parts that
can be produced with simple tooling.

3\. Your margins should be higher than you think. Think long and hard about
your pricing before you launch your Kickstarter. Chances are, your MSRP is
optimistically low. Bringing a hardware product to market involves lots of
expensive rabbit holes. High margins will save you from death.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rideye/rideye-the-
black...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rideye/rideye-the-black-box-
camera-for-your-bike)

[2] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/voltus/voltus-mobile-
po...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/voltus/voltus-mobile-power-
expansion-for-your-macbook)

~~~
Taniwha
Yes, I've shipped a hardware project on kickstarter, and (just) on time - the
original article is a tad unfair, as if they were the only ones to ever ship.

And I designed my own hardware ..... the trick is to design your hardware
BEFORE you announce your kickstarter, not after ....

~~~
nootropicdesign
Yeah, I thought the title was a little exaggerated, too. They aren't the only
Kickstarter to ship hardware on time. I shipped my hardware Kickstarter on
time, and I did all the hardware and software design, and made the product in
the US. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/synthino/synthino-xm-
po...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/synthino/synthino-xm-polyphonic-
midi-synthesizer-and-groove)

~~~
steven_pack
Hehehe, yeah admittedly the "actually" part was exaggerated, but it definitely
hit a nerve. There is this sort of tacit understanding hardware kickstarters
are often late, but obviously not all, as all the good folk who have posted
their own on here have shown.

------
gfwilliams
As someone who's now shipped 2 hardware KickStarters on time (both of which
were bigger than KoalaSafe), I find it a frustrating when people post up
'hardware KickStarters never ship'. It's just not true.

It's definitely 'buyer beware', and if you back a KickStarter that shows loads
of renderings and no working finished product then you may hit trouble - but
many people come to KickStarter with a working product, having already done
their homework and made arrangements with a manufacturer. Those people will
almost certainly ship, and it's a shame that other failed KickStarter projects
make them look less legitimate.

But I totally agree with polar8 on this...

1\. Design with the factory has been true for me. I did one KS in China, one
in the UK - and the factories work totally differently. The time it takes to
get things arranged is insane, and you absolutely need to not only have a
manufacturer, but to have a design that they're happy with and can source
parts for before you KickStart if you plan to ship on time (even if you plan
on tweaking the design a bit later).

2\. Sourcing - When you order 1000s of something, suddenly lead times matter.
Generally you can't just go to Farnell and get things next-day, if they're not
in stock, 13 week lead times are not uncommon - and a company can have 4000
items in stock one day, and they'll be gone the next (so checking stock levels
is not enough!).

3\. Features - definitely be sensible. Listen to your backers but be very
careful about adding their suggestions. Changes really set you back, and the
most vocal backers views are almost certainly not those of the majority.
Adding features in software after the ship date is easy and people like it,
but delaying the ship date for features would rarely be appreciated.

4\. Margins. I think people feel bad about adding a big margin, but you've got
to. There are loads of hidden costs, and most backers would prefer to pay a
bit extra and have you still making and supporting devices 2 years from now.

~~~
divisionfurtive
I completely agree. As a hardware maker (e-watches) with KS experience (2
campaigns), I find it frustrating that hardware projects on KS start with a
negative perception from the public. It seems to me that a track record
indicator is missing on KS. Like ebay feedback or a star-rating
system...something that people can quickly look at and determine the level of
reliability of a returning hardware maker. The number of project created is
not enough...it does not speak about level of satisfaction.

------
zrgiu_
As a hardware maker on Kickstarter who is about to ship [1], I can sort-of
agree with what the article is saying. Yes, one of the most important things
is to find THE right partner in China, as that can easily make or break your
product.

However, if you're afraid to build your own hardware (or at least drastically
modify something pre-existent), you're severely limiting your flexibility and
the areas where you can innovate. Maybe it worked well for Koalasafe, which
sounds like could have very well be built as just a modified version of
OpenWRT with a simple installer. But it certainly wouldn't work for more than
half of the other hardware projects out there. Look at the most succesful
projects - Pebble, Coolest Cooler, The Micro, Dash - none of these could have
gotten where they are without custom firmware.

Going back to KoalaSafe - the $100k they raised may sound like a lot of money,
but it's certainly not enough to develop the kind of hardware they are using.
It's enough maybe for the software part and some prototypes. You have to set
your expectations straight too, and I do believe they did the best anyone
could do with that money. Congrats on delivering!

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1635386542/anymote-
home...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1635386542/anymote-home-your-
phone-the-ultimate-universal-rem)

~~~
listic
I remember reading a postmortem about a failed hardware Kickstarter campaign
(some photographic accessory: a flash remote?) and they said they contacted a
professional manager from the industry who told them he wouldn't even try
developing new hardware without a few million in funding, tens of millions
being more common. So there, turns out making new hardware is really
expensive.

~~~
stephen_g
Wow, pretty bad advice they got... The little company I work for does high end
microwave equipment (satellite terminals, RF conversion equipment, 5Gbps
ultra-low-latency terrestrial links used for high frequency trading, etc.) and
only turns over a few million dollars per year...

I would be surprised if a flash remote cost more than two or three hundred
thousand to develop and productise, tool up and do a small production run, but
that's assuming you have a team with the right skills. If you're paying
contract design houses then I guess it would be a lot more expensive.

~~~
listic
As I understood the advice, that's what kind of budget it usually takes, at
least _in the industry of photography_ , to reliably create a new hardware
product _with the level of polish_ that the market is used to.

------
rebootthesystem
As someone with over 30 years in hardware + software + mechanical product
design and manufacturing one thing that always bothers me on Kickstarter is
the dishonesty of funding goals.

Now, I do realize quite a few project owners come at it without the product
manufacturing experience. I definitely get that part. Yet, I don't see it as
an excuse. People need to do due diligence and get numbers closer to reality.

I remember one of the first (if not the first) RGB LED light bulb project
(don't remember the name), perhaps two years ago. I think they went out with a
raise target of $50K. If I remember correctly, they ended-up raising nearly
$2MM.

The instant I saw that campaign I knew that if they raised anywhere south of
somewhere between $1MM and $2MM there was no way in hell they'd be able to get
the project done and delivered. The required iterations covering DFM (Design
for Manufacturing), mechanical, electrical, firmware, tooling, environmental
testing and regulatory testing would burn cash as if it were free. In
hardware, each iteration cost real money --and potentially lots of it. $50K
was not going to make a dent.

If they go into it knowing the funding goal will not be sufficient and are
banking on exceeding it, they are simply not being honest.

My scam alerts go off immediately when I see such a severe project-to-funding-
target mismatch. And that's why I call it "dishonest". It could also be
"naive" but, again, it's the old "ignorance of the law isn't an excuse"
situation. If you are going to go on Kickstarter with a hardware project and
have no prior experience in manufacturing, do everyone a favor, do your
homework and set a funding goal that will not have you scam your supporters
out of money when you burn through it too quickly and can't deliver.

~~~
steven_pack
It's probably the number one question we get asked now rebootthesystem, by
people in our network who considering KS. It's a catch 22. Aim too low, you
can't deliver (unless you get additional capital... which might be the point),
aim too high, people don't believe you'll get there, project fails.

It's because of these incompatible goals that projects will keep going to low
and keep posting eulogies on HN.

~~~
nugga
I don't understand the "people not believing you'll get there" point. The
pledger loses no money if the project doesn't attain its goal so there is no
reason to not pledge just because it might fail.

~~~
jkestner
It doesn't seem rational, but it's a real effect. The theory is that people
don't want to back a loser, and perhaps that they are psychologically
purchasing the product at the point they make a pledge.

~~~
rebootthesystem
I wonder if anyone has looked at the idea of not showing the funding goal at
all until it is funded (or not) or some other metric. For example, show it
during the last week of the campaign.

I am trying to think of a way to allow project originators the freedom to set
reasonable goals (a million, whatever) without fear of this one number
becoming a drag on their campaign despite the fact that they are actually
being honest about what it will take to deliver a quality product.

~~~
jkestner
I think that'd be worse because a goal does create a rallying point, and is
also used as a signal for how realistic funding this project is (keeping in
mind that people irrationally want to back a sure thing).

Yes, it's a problem, though not like IndieGoGo's flexible funding. But I don't
take it in isolation - determined creators can make a lot happen with a little
money, I know.

I look more closely at the level of detail of what has been done and what
needs to be done, and judge whether I think these people have few enough
unknowns to complete it. But that's not a metric that most people are able to
judge themselves, which is why it's a problem, and also where the Kickstarter
community of other backers should kick in.

------
Too
Nice clickbait title for advertising their own product concealed as a 3
sentence "retrospective", good thing HN allows submitters to change titles to
something more descriptive and less clickbaity than the original...

On the postitive side, the product itself looks quite sleek. I could use some
of the features myself to limit my own time on HN, or the time my wife spends
on facebook.

~~~
dang
We're always happy to change baity titles if someone suggests a better one.

The post is a bit lightweight, but that's made up for by the substantive
discussion. The author clearly struck a nerve. It's ok for that to be rewarded
with a top spot on HN, even if the post is promoting something.

------
mgraczyk
Congratulations, the final product looks sleek.

I have a comment about the blog post itself though. Your page took 90 seconds
to load on my gigabit internet connection. The two culprits are your high
resolution images of the product DSC_0031.jpg and DSC_0014.jpg. Each image is
around 3MB. I would strongly recommend recompressing these down to something
like 200KB or less.

~~~
yoodenvranx
Hacker News should automatically add the size in MB for each submission. This
would a) act as a warning for mobile users (the BBC article about dark matter
on the front page at the moment killed chrome on my phone because it has too
many images) and b) acts as a wall of shame.

------
logicallee
Hardware fulfillment has improved considerably since kickstarter became a
preorder store for established companies[1] with lots of money[2], rather than
a place to support individuals with project ideas at the prototype stage.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-
time-a...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-awesome-
smartwatch-no-compromises)

[2]
[https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology?r...](https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology?ref=discover_index)

~~~
steven_pack
I know what you mean. Around the time of our campaign these guys [1] were on
every major news website in Australia (paid ads, not stories). Their marketing
budget must have been huge. I've heard Sony launches stuff under different
names too just to test the market.

It does have one positive side effect though - more people come to the
platform.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nonda/get-your-
macbook-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nonda/get-your-macbook-
ports-back)

------
moron4hire
Of all the kickstarters I've funded (and it has been a lot) only two have
failed to deliver, eventually, and only one of those was a hardware project.
It was an attempt to make an open-hardware GPU, and when it turned out way
more expensive than he imagined, he released all the work he had done on
github.

The other failed project was Neil Stephenson's "Clang!" sword fighting game.
We all know how that ended >:(

~~~
tgb
Surely Clang! had significant hardware components, too?

~~~
moron4hire
Oh, yeah, actually forgot about that. It just bothered me that they just
seemed to throw everything away. After burning through several million
dollars, I think they could have at least just done a Github dump or
something.

------
rubbingalcohol
Congrats on shipping! I would be very interested to know more details about
what you learned from your experience with selecting a manufacturing partner.
A former client of mine had his business destroyed when his manufacturing
partner in China basically stole his prototype and cut him out of the picture.
What steps did you take to vet the company you partnered with?

~~~
stephen_g
It may not be practical for everyone, but we make sure not to use turnkey
manufacturers. For example, one factory might populate and reflow boards and
then assemble it into a case, but they don't have the board or case designs -
we have them manufactured by other suppliers and supply them and all the
components. That way no one factory can just start manufacturing our products
because they don't have enough information.

Yes, they can reverse-engineer but it's harder with four or more layer circuit
boards and they don't have the full BOM information.

This is also a good strategy for not getting counterfeit parts (that may not
work) on your boards - you can use the suppliers and brokers you trust instead
of whoever your factory decides to buy from.

------
pgrote
How would someone begin the process of finding electronic manufacturers?

~~~
steven_pack
For us, it started on OpenWRT blogs, scouring Alibaba and seeing who got back
to us. Later it was email lists and the network of our accelerator.

If I was going to custom design, i'd be going to maker meetups in your city,
or applying to something like Hxlr8. There are also supplier/customer places
that do matchmaking with additional services for a fee (HWTrek for example). I
didn't use any.

Also, if you can find a Kickstarter of someone who did something at all
related, ask who they used. Lots of creators are very happy to tell you!

~~~
_pmf_
Are there any facilitators (i.e. freelancers or consultants that have a proven
track record of having brought projects to production) that are affordable? I
assume most of these professionals end up at a larger company faster than you
can look.

------
cpeterso
Clicking the green "Learn more" button on
[http://koalasafe.com/](http://koalasafe.com/) scrolls the page to the next
section in Chrome and Safari, but does nothing in Firefox and IE11. I filed a
webcompat bug:

[https://webcompat.com/issues/1570](https://webcompat.com/issues/1570)

~~~
steven_pack
Thanks mate. Admittedly we don't typically test with those browser when we
push changes. :|

~~~
kenz0r
Selenium is great for this. For this particular case, it won't access an
element unless its visible, so you can validate that the scroll happens on
button press. Easy to make a quick smoke test that can run in a few browsers

~~~
joshstrange
While this is a technically true statement Selenium is neither easy to setup
nor easy to learn. It's documentation (of at least the libraries I've used,
which were the recommended ones) was atrocious and not at all consistent.

------
amelius
Is it just me, or are most hardware projects on kickstarter easily replaceable
by cheap standard hardware like a mobile phone or a raspberry pi, and the
right software?

It seems strange then, that shipping is such a big problem.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Most of the ones I've seen are. However, all the Kickstarters I've seen are
targetting consumers. If your product is based on something like an RPi, then
your parts costs are already much higher that they should be and your profit
will be close to zero because B2C prices are typically very low.

If you are targetting commercial/industrial customers, then the added cost of
standard hardware is generally not a deterrent IME.

------
norswap
Unrelated to the topic of the article. But I find such devices (kid
surveillance, it's what it is) heinous.

~~~
ohitsdom
Heinous? If you had a 7 year old, would you let them use a device with
unrestricted wifi access?

------
bsbechtel
For those commenting here about working with your factory ahead of time, would
any of you be willing to talk a little about the process of choosing a factory
to partner with? Thanks.

~~~
divisionfurtive
I have a 2-step process.

1 - Are communications easy, fast and meaningful? That's the first step.
Contact more than one supplier (on a initial round, think 10 to 20). Make
small challenges like posting design files on a secure site that requires the
supplier to create an account...you'll get rid of a lot of unworthy suppliers
that won't bother and therefore are not going to be proactive in the future.

2 - Invest in requesting prototypes (or samples if making more than one
prototype does not make sense) from more than one factory ahead of time (top 3
of the step above). The good factories will perform well at this task...bad
ones will deliver half-baked stuff.

With time, the very good suppliers that really want to build a business
relationship with you will become obvious and you can reuse them in the
future...making your life easier. Don't be lazy when looking for
suppliers...that's the biggest pitfall. Invest time and money...it's
important.

~~~
bsbechtel
This sounds more or less like the process I've gone through. I have yet to
explore the option of manufacturing in China....have you done this? Is the
process more or less the same?

~~~
jkestner
Given the importance of good communication, there are obvious additional
challenges to manufacturing in China. Take baby steps and get small
components, small orders first to establish trust. Finding an agent who will
handle sourcing and communication can be a big help.

