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Radicand Is a Radical New Collaboratory for Hardware Startups

18 points by fictivmade 11y ago

msandford 11y ago
It's a great idea, but I doubt it'll scale. That doesn't mean I don't wish them the best, and really hope to be wrong. But they face an uphill battle to make it as a startup-startup. If it works there'll be a bunch of competitors that will pop up. Sure a bunch of them will just cargo-cult and not understand why they're supposed to do things a certain way, but plenty of them will understand. The other problem is that these guys could make their own product and once they do that, they're probably out of the "helping other people create products" business. Finally if competitors don't spring up and they do somehow manage to capture enough mindshare to keep people beating a path to their door it's going to be tough to keep hiring VP-product kinds of guys and employing them and not having them get poached. It's possible to do this of course, just look at Bill Gross' Idealab: http://www.idealab.com/ http://www.idealab.com/ If you compare the track records of Idealab and YC, I suspect that YC is coming out ahead at least in terms of financials. Idealab might have happier employees versus the difficult grind that founders face and that's not necessarily good or bad, just different. But I really do suspect that YC is a better model if you're in it for the returns. http://www.idealab.com/our_companies/show/all http://www.idealab.com/our_companies/show/all http://yclist.com/ http://yclist.com/ I suspect that while difficult they could make something like Idealab work for hardware, but I have no idea how they'd make something like YC work for hardware. But I think you have to if you want to make a real business out of it, or else just making your own product will be way, way more profitable than continuously doing it for other people.
mcantelon 11y ago
TLDR: Radicland is a makerspace run by a hardware incubator? Too many buzzwords and passionate endorsements of the obvious to make this a compelling interview.
trevyn 11y ago
Wow, it took way too long to figure out what I wanted to know: Radicand is in Redwood City, CA.
RadicandLab 11y ago
Hi all, thanks for your comments. To address a few of your questions: (1) we are opening a new facility in SoMa, SF next month. (2) we are actively scaling our team & resources to meet demand. (3) we work actively with teams in YC, Highway1, StartX, and others. These are valuable partnerships for us & our portfolio start-ups. (Not competitors.) (4) we are more incubator than makerspace. But we do have shared unrestricted access to prototyping tools & eqpt for our portfolio companies.

18 points by fictivmade 11y ago

It's a great idea, but I doubt it'll scale. That doesn't mean I don't wish them the best, and really hope to be wrong. But they face an uphill battle to make it as a startup-startup. If it works there'll be a bunch of competitors that will pop up. Sure a bunch of them will just cargo-cult and not understand why they're supposed to do things a certain way, but plenty of them will understand. The other problem is that these guys could make their own product and once they do that, they're probably out of the "helping other people create products" business. Finally if competitors don't spring up and they do somehow manage to capture enough mindshare to keep people beating a path to their door it's going to be tough to keep hiring VP-product kinds of guys and employing them and not having them get poached. It's possible to do this of course, just look at Bill Gross' Idealab: http://www.idealab.com/ http://www.idealab.com/ If you compare the track records of Idealab and YC, I suspect that YC is coming out ahead at least in terms of financials. Idealab might have happier employees versus the difficult grind that founders face and that's not necessarily good or bad, just different. But I really do suspect that YC is a better model if you're in it for the returns. http://www.idealab.com/our_companies/show/all http://www.idealab.com/our_companies/show/all http://yclist.com/ http://yclist.com/ I suspect that while difficult they could make something like Idealab work for hardware, but I have no idea how they'd make something like YC work for hardware. But I think you have to if you want to make a real business out of it, or else just making your own product will be way, way more profitable than continuously doing it for other people.

mcantelon 11y ago

TLDR: Radicland is a makerspace run by a hardware incubator? Too many buzzwords and passionate endorsements of the obvious to make this a compelling interview.

trevyn 11y ago

Wow, it took way too long to figure out what I wanted to know: Radicand is in Redwood City, CA.

RadicandLab 11y ago

Hi all, thanks for your comments. To address a few of your questions: (1) we are opening a new facility in SoMa, SF next month. (2) we are actively scaling our team & resources to meet demand. (3) we work actively with teams in YC, Highway1, StartX, and others. These are valuable partnerships for us & our portfolio start-ups. (Not competitors.) (4) we are more incubator than makerspace. But we do have shared unrestricted access to prototyping tools & eqpt for our portfolio companies.