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> The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. So I haven't worked at a hardware start-up but it seemed pretty difficult even bef

> The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. So I haven't worked at a hardware start-up but it seemed pretty difficult even before these companies to raise funding versus a pure software play. I'm not necessarily convinced this makes it easier or harder. Is there a specific reason you think it will be harder now? Also, for what it's worth, Fitbit and GoPro are still going. I'm convinced Fitbit can get back on the growth curve as long as they can get a new product out the door that consumers want. Tall order for sure but I don't count them as a failure yet. GoPro want to move to doing software more so than hardware. Considering their software has always considered to be lackluster to borderline terrible I'm less convinced they will turn it around but also not yet willing to say they're a failure.

stingrae 9y ago
In 2014, there was piles of "success stories" for VCs to look at and the market was hot. Most of those successes have turned into down rounds or complete shutdowns in the last year.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  It seems like the problem is whoever pointed them as successful... successful ideas, maybe, but not companies.
Hydraulix989 9y ago
It's so easy for Shenzhen to just copy them though. There's nothing defensible about hardware.
- pcsanwald 9y ago
  honest question: why then did no one copy the iPod, and no one has copied the iPhone with any success? as soon as the iPod came out way back in the day, the criticism was that it would soon be copied. No one ever did, and I worked in the music business at the time and was familiar with everything on the market. nothing ever came close, apple made a ton of money. it's a common thing to say that it's not defensible/can be copied, but I don't see that happening always.
  - x0x0 9y ago
    Because the magic in the iphone and ipod come primarily from software (and for the ipod, the music licensing relationships that apple alone had in the beginning.) Android hardware can be pretty good; the app ecosystem, the ecosystem in general, the clear love that Apple has for the iphone, and the control that is (generally) used in user-beneficial ways all make the iphone superior to android.
    - pcsanwald 9y ago
      in the case of the iPod I'm not sure that was true. remember, these were the days of everyone having a bunch of mp3s on their hard drive. The actual iPod software was extremely rudimentary, and basically barely integrated with iTunes. this was still in the days of windows, keep in mind, and before apple actually launched iTunes for windows. and still, it was immediately a dominant player and not one company was able to launch a competitor _before_ apple built iTunes for windows.
      - throwaway91111 9y ago
        Rhe iPod had demand.
      - untog 9y ago
        The iPod wasn't that popular before Apple launched iTunes for Windows, though. So I imagine competitors were considerably less interested in it as a target. Also, one of the iPod's major interface innovations was the click wheel - IIRC they've patented the hell out of that, so no one was about to launch a competitor.
        valuearb 9y ago
        Samsung cloned the clickwheel within 6 months.
      - dilemma 9y ago
        White earphones.
- tajen 9y ago
  Note that if Shenzen companies started publishing proposals on Kickstarter, they could make a success: Compared to SV products which get delivered in a year or two, they could churn prototypes in a few weeks, build confidence with investors and repeat. I hear people screaming "but they're not reliable/trustworthy!", but you can build trustworthiness by delivering bigger and bigger products, and, actually, Kickstarter would benefit from working in an environment which doesn't entirely rely on the producer's good will.
  - joshvm 9y ago
    They already do, see uArm. At one point they were listed as a US company, but they seem to have updated their page. I have nothing bad to say about the experience - my robot arm arrived on time, it pretty much works, some niggles with the software but they seem to be fixing it. No problems with Shenzhen companies running Kickstarters, after all they can probably have much better relationships with the factories than Westerners are likely to. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ufactory/uarm-put-a-miniature-industrial-robot-arm-on-your https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ufactory/uarm-put-a-min...
  - m-j-fox 9y ago
    We're still doing Kickstarter? Thought we all got burned on that AR/wifi deal and never went back.
    - nicky0 9y ago
      The what?
- tluyben2 9y ago
  That depends on what you make. Some things are still really hard and have things you cannot copy. In my field the hardware alone is very difficult so just copying will not work but even if you are persistent and get it done, you need a lot of external factors to go along as well which takes years. And explains some of the failures we have seen.
munificent 9y ago
GoPro is still going, but it's not going well. Its stock peaked at $86.97 in Oct 2014 and it's at $8.00 today.
spiralpolitik 9y ago
Fitbit lost me when they refused to support HealthKit. As it stands I'm not sure they can escape their demise as the market transitions from limited function devices to multi function devices like the Apple Watch. They strike me as getting rolled over the same way Diamond, Archos, and Creative got crushed by the iPod. GoPro has a similar problem. Outside of special circumstances most smartphone cameras are now good enough for most consumer needs and will only get better. I think they could survive if they target the extreme sports type niche but otherwise I don't see them achieving escape velocity. Both could be good acquisition targets a la Withings and Nokia. But the number of possible buyers is limited. Microsoft is possibly the only one that comes to mind that doesn't have anything in either space although given the failure of Windows Phone I'm not sure they have the desire to try something similar in a different market.
- brlewis 9y ago
  Actually the iPod was not a multi-function device. Palm Pilot was. But it turned out the specialized device was the one that transitioned into the multi-function device people wanted.
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    The iPod touch is essentially an iPhone without a cellular connection.
    - djrogers 9y ago
      But the iPod Touch didn’t crush Archos, diamond, and Rio. It came about after the iPhone was in the market...
      - spiralpolitik 9y ago
        According to Wikipedia both Diamond and Archos players were DOA by 2005, two years before the iPhone was released. Creative struggled on for a few years post iPhone. 2005 was the year of the iPod Photo and the iPod Video, although the beginning of the iPod as multi-function device started in 2002 with addition of the PDA functionality. By 2006 Apple had 72-74% of the MP3 player market, with SanDisk, Creative, Zune, Sony, Samsung, and other accounting for the remainder. I seem to recall most of the damage was done by the iPod Mini.
EpicEng 9y ago
I worked at a VC funded hardware start up for the first eight years of my career. You'll never read about it here though; we made digital pathology scanners. When I left we had sold the company for ~300M and were bringing in about ~30M / year in revenue. I guess my point is that there is more going on in the VC space then you'll read about on HN.
- pocketsquare2 9y ago
  It would be really fantastic to hear more if you're willing to share!
- jmspring 9y ago
  I'll look at the article at some point, Jawbone had multiple best selling products -- bluetooth speakers being one -- no idea how that covered investment. Hell, A16Z gave all of Skype one of the speakers 6 years ago as a thank you. They did some nice hardware. What I do know, per your point, investment in and around hardware startups is not publicized. I wonder how some of the networking hardware startups that started the carriers of those I know (and benefited me) would be taken now. Cisco / Nokia / etc. hardware acquisitions apparently aren't HN sexy.
- mipmap04 9y ago
  This goes well with the great-grand parent's comment on consumer hardware not being as attractive to investors. I think a lot of it lies in the complexity of the product. A smart watch or rugged video camera seems trivial to replicate and commoditise from an investment and technology standpoint compared to digital pathology scanners.
- Babooster 9y ago
  That's hardly consumer hardware...

stingrae 9y ago

In 2014, there was piles of "success stories" for VCs to look at and the market was hot. Most of those successes have turned into down rounds or complete shutdowns in the last year.

throwaway91111 9y ago
It seems like the problem is whoever pointed them as successful... successful ideas, maybe, but not companies.

Hydraulix989 9y ago

It's so easy for Shenzhen to just copy them though. There's nothing defensible about hardware.

pcsanwald 9y ago
honest question: why then did no one copy the iPod, and no one has copied the iPhone with any success? as soon as the iPod came out way back in the day, the criticism was that it would soon be copied. No one ever did, and I worked in the music business at the time and was familiar with everything on the market. nothing ever came close, apple made a ton of money. it's a common thing to say that it's not defensible/can be copied, but I don't see that happening always.
- x0x0 9y ago
  Because the magic in the iphone and ipod come primarily from software (and for the ipod, the music licensing relationships that apple alone had in the beginning.) Android hardware can be pretty good; the app ecosystem, the ecosystem in general, the clear love that Apple has for the iphone, and the control that is (generally) used in user-beneficial ways all make the iphone superior to android.
  - pcsanwald 9y ago
    in the case of the iPod I'm not sure that was true. remember, these were the days of everyone having a bunch of mp3s on their hard drive. The actual iPod software was extremely rudimentary, and basically barely integrated with iTunes. this was still in the days of windows, keep in mind, and before apple actually launched iTunes for windows. and still, it was immediately a dominant player and not one company was able to launch a competitor _before_ apple built iTunes for windows.
    - throwaway91111 9y ago
      Rhe iPod had demand.
    - untog 9y ago
      The iPod wasn't that popular before Apple launched iTunes for Windows, though. So I imagine competitors were considerably less interested in it as a target. Also, one of the iPod's major interface innovations was the click wheel - IIRC they've patented the hell out of that, so no one was about to launch a competitor.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        Samsung cloned the clickwheel within 6 months.
    - dilemma 9y ago
      White earphones.
tajen 9y ago
Note that if Shenzen companies started publishing proposals on Kickstarter, they could make a success: Compared to SV products which get delivered in a year or two, they could churn prototypes in a few weeks, build confidence with investors and repeat. I hear people screaming "but they're not reliable/trustworthy!", but you can build trustworthiness by delivering bigger and bigger products, and, actually, Kickstarter would benefit from working in an environment which doesn't entirely rely on the producer's good will.
- joshvm 9y ago
  They already do, see uArm. At one point they were listed as a US company, but they seem to have updated their page. I have nothing bad to say about the experience - my robot arm arrived on time, it pretty much works, some niggles with the software but they seem to be fixing it. No problems with Shenzhen companies running Kickstarters, after all they can probably have much better relationships with the factories than Westerners are likely to. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ufactory/uarm-put-a-miniature-industrial-robot-arm-on-your https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ufactory/uarm-put-a-min...
- m-j-fox 9y ago
  We're still doing Kickstarter? Thought we all got burned on that AR/wifi deal and never went back.
  - nicky0 9y ago
    The what?
tluyben2 9y ago
That depends on what you make. Some things are still really hard and have things you cannot copy. In my field the hardware alone is very difficult so just copying will not work but even if you are persistent and get it done, you need a lot of external factors to go along as well which takes years. And explains some of the failures we have seen.

munificent 9y ago

GoPro is still going, but it's not going well. Its stock peaked at $86.97 in Oct 2014 and it's at $8.00 today.

spiralpolitik 9y ago

Fitbit lost me when they refused to support HealthKit. As it stands I'm not sure they can escape their demise as the market transitions from limited function devices to multi function devices like the Apple Watch. They strike me as getting rolled over the same way Diamond, Archos, and Creative got crushed by the iPod. GoPro has a similar problem. Outside of special circumstances most smartphone cameras are now good enough for most consumer needs and will only get better. I think they could survive if they target the extreme sports type niche but otherwise I don't see them achieving escape velocity. Both could be good acquisition targets a la Withings and Nokia. But the number of possible buyers is limited. Microsoft is possibly the only one that comes to mind that doesn't have anything in either space although given the failure of Windows Phone I'm not sure they have the desire to try something similar in a different market.

brlewis 9y ago
Actually the iPod was not a multi-function device. Palm Pilot was. But it turned out the specialized device was the one that transitioned into the multi-function device people wanted.
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  The iPod touch is essentially an iPhone without a cellular connection.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    But the iPod Touch didn’t crush Archos, diamond, and Rio. It came about after the iPhone was in the market...
    - spiralpolitik 9y ago
      According to Wikipedia both Diamond and Archos players were DOA by 2005, two years before the iPhone was released. Creative struggled on for a few years post iPhone. 2005 was the year of the iPod Photo and the iPod Video, although the beginning of the iPod as multi-function device started in 2002 with addition of the PDA functionality. By 2006 Apple had 72-74% of the MP3 player market, with SanDisk, Creative, Zune, Sony, Samsung, and other accounting for the remainder. I seem to recall most of the damage was done by the iPod Mini.

EpicEng 9y ago

I worked at a VC funded hardware start up for the first eight years of my career. You'll never read about it here though; we made digital pathology scanners. When I left we had sold the company for ~300M and were bringing in about ~30M / year in revenue. I guess my point is that there is more going on in the VC space then you'll read about on HN.

pocketsquare2 9y ago
It would be really fantastic to hear more if you're willing to share!
jmspring 9y ago
I'll look at the article at some point, Jawbone had multiple best selling products -- bluetooth speakers being one -- no idea how that covered investment. Hell, A16Z gave all of Skype one of the speakers 6 years ago as a thank you. They did some nice hardware. What I do know, per your point, investment in and around hardware startups is not publicized. I wonder how some of the networking hardware startups that started the carriers of those I know (and benefited me) would be taken now. Cisco / Nokia / etc. hardware acquisitions apparently aren't HN sexy.
mipmap04 9y ago
This goes well with the great-grand parent's comment on consumer hardware not being as attractive to investors. I think a lot of it lies in the complexity of the product. A smart watch or rugged video camera seems trivial to replicate and commoditise from an investment and technology standpoint compared to digital pathology scanners.
Babooster 9y ago
That's hardly consumer hardware...