4 ms·

A lot of the advice seems to be geared towards B2C startups. Most startups http://www.ycombinator.com/hardware/ http://www.ycombinator.com/hardware/ seem B2C to

A lot of the advice seems to be geared towards B2C startups. Most startups http://www.ycombinator.com/hardware/ http://www.ycombinator.com/hardware/ seem B2C too. A lot of the reports/blogs/opinions of the Interweb suggest that connected hardware will make the most sense in industrial and smart city kind of environments (which are probably more B2B than B2C) in the early days. Would you advise differently for people working on B2B? - Getting early prototypes out there has kind of been decremental for us. Even the smaller bizs are willing to pay higher for a more "field-tested" device. Which seems like a recursive problem ;). Should one spend more time on getting v1.0 done ? - Is there anyone who you'd recommend to handle global shipping and taxes? The way that Pebble had tied up with distributors in different places depending on your country, etc. (We are building talking posters. One's with BLE play prerecorded messages, and you can interact with them, and the one's with WiFi are connected to the Internet and are more interactive.) Thanks !

erohead 11y ago
- stick through it! You should be able to find early customers who are willing to work with early prototypes, even when asking them to pay. Just make sure you give them insanely good customer support. Consider flying out to get them set up! Don't wait til v1.0 to sell, get out there sooner. - I'd recommend sticking to a local fulfillment service that has great customer support for your early shipments. There is absolutely no need to optimize for cost in the early days. Just make sure you have someone you can call to sort out shipment delays, lost packages, etc. You can always expand to more fulfillment centres later. Sounds like a cool idea! Are the posters epaper or static?
- anujdeshpande 11y ago
  Static for BLE as we do a battery pack kind of a thing and don't want to do something very power intensive. The WiFi one's are 2 types, RGB panels, as well as static posters with capacitive touch in certain regions (apart from the voice).

erohead 11y ago

- stick through it! You should be able to find early customers who are willing to work with early prototypes, even when asking them to pay. Just make sure you give them insanely good customer support. Consider flying out to get them set up! Don't wait til v1.0 to sell, get out there sooner. - I'd recommend sticking to a local fulfillment service that has great customer support for your early shipments. There is absolutely no need to optimize for cost in the early days. Just make sure you have someone you can call to sort out shipment delays, lost packages, etc. You can always expand to more fulfillment centres later. Sounds like a cool idea! Are the posters epaper or static?

anujdeshpande 11y ago
Static for BLE as we do a battery pack kind of a thing and don't want to do something very power intensive. The WiFi one's are 2 types, RGB panels, as well as static posters with capacitive touch in certain regions (apart from the voice).