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No, because you're making a service company. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. The org chart you need for product and the one you need for services are diffe
by tormeh 9y ago
No, because you're making a service company. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. The org chart you need for product and the one you need for services are different. The necessary mindset of the employees are different.
Not only that, but the buyers of product and services are often different as well.
Sure, building up a huge services company lets you squirrel off some funds for product development, but how often do you see this in practice? The only example I can think of is IBM, and they're moving in the other direction.
- ZenoArrow 9y agoTo counter your hypothetical "can't be done", here's a real example of a product company that's grown a single person selling electronics kits from their college dorm room to a product company making $33 million in revenue less than 10 years later: https://www.adafruit.com/ https://www.adafruit.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adafruit_Industries#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adafruit_Industries#History A similar example being this product company, which started out in 2012 with two people and a laser cutter, growing to a product company that employs 30+ people within the space of 5 years: https://shop.pimoroni.com/ https://shop.pimoroni.com/ https://shop.pimoroni.com/pages/about-us https://shop.pimoroni.com/pages/about-us
- tormeh 9y agoSo they started out as hardware product companies.. and remained hardware product companies. I don't see any examples of software services companies transitioning to product.
- ZenoArrow 9y agoWho said anything about software service companies? I said design agency, which is not the same thing as a software service company. Sure, they use software to do their job, but that's not the most important part of what they do. As for examples of design consultancies morphing into manufacturing companies, Cambridge Audio is one such example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Audio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Audio
- ptorrone 9y agothanks @ZenoArrow ... additionally, it's over $42m and we have a free and paid for service, http://www.adafruit.io http://www.adafruit.io and a subscription service, ADABOX, with thousands of customers, http://www.adabox.com http://www.adabox.com ... no loans, no VC, 114+ people, USA manufacturer of open-source hardware in NYC, USA.