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OK, so obviously this is not really about barriers to entry for hardware startups at all but is a puff piece written by a VC guy trying to promote something a f
by droithomme 11y ago
OK, so obviously this is not really about barriers to entry for hardware startups at all but is a puff piece written by a VC guy trying to promote something a firm he invests in is trying to sell. No need therefore to discuss actual barriers to entry for hardware startups (which are an interesting topic not covered at all in his article).
Instead let's look at his product, which was his actual article goal, for people to think about and discuss the product. It's a sort of plastic or aluminum wine bottle that has a LCD touch screen on the side and wifi. We can see exactly where this concept came from, it's the IoT model. Put wifi on everything, and if its large enough, put a touch screen on it as well. Plus some sensors, like the temperature sensor and a clock that pretty much costs nothing to add since most embedded chips have a temperature sensor in there already. So for each thing in everything: add wifi and touchscreens. At some point thing is wine since wine is part of everything. Thus this product's provenance is in asking "What can we do by pairing a wine bottle with wifi?" And so they answer this and make a product to answer that pairing. The design process and reason for being has nothing whatsoever to do with what anyone wants or would be or that would sell or be useful. It's about pairing every conceivable preexisting product with wifi and touchscreens and forcing them to do something, anything, and desperately hoping it will somehow catch on, no matter whether it makes sense, no matter whether it addresses any real problem or need.
- dev1n 11y agoI know it gets over-referenced here on HN but the old Henry Ford "if I asked people what they wanted they'd say a faster horse, not a car" quote is pretty applicable here. This obviously doesn't make much sense to us, putting a wi-fi chip on a wine bottle, but I'm sure people back in the 1900's didn't realize why it was important to have a four-wheeled vehicle with an internal combustion engine in it. I think we should be celebrating the fact that technology has come so far that we can feed the data collected from a wine bottle automatically to the computer in your pocket.
- JamilD 11y agoThis is more like asking for a horse with a shiny, touch-screen, IoT saddle.
- techdragon 11y agoExcept an IoT saddle could actually be useful because it could record horse riding related metrics that could contribute to improving the health, fitness and comfort of both horse and rider.
- dooptroop 11y agoExcept in the real world where said metrics wouldn't integrate meaningfully with the dozens of other devices that collect similar "useful" data into their own proprietary little gardens of infrastructure. Obsolesence and device defects - I can imagine a saddle has a useful life of a couple of decades. What are you really going to measure here beyond GPS and accelerometer data? The temperature and humidity of the saddle/horse interface? The strain and weight on the saddle? That'll allow you to report useful stuff like "your horse is tired and about to overheat", "you are to fat ride this horse", and the ever popular "this saddle is the wrong size for current horse/rider combo, please contact a sales representative". All the while taking in the views through the new and improved augmented reality interface on your smartphone, or hmd. I mean why even have a horse at that point, it seems if you don't want to pick up on the communication from the live animal your riding, why not get a mud-bike.
- techdragon 11y agoI never said "very useful". I just wanted to highlight how an otherwise throw away idea might have some merit and wasn't the most stupid idea ever.
- JamilD 11y agoA faster horse is also very, very useful. It's not revolutionary. I can get 90% of the relevant information from my phone.