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I have capital, but little business experience. My product and niche is pretty cool and very research heavy. Sounds like you are motivated. How much of the res

I have capital, but little business experience. My product and niche is pretty cool and very research heavy. Sounds like you are motivated. How much of the research would you be doing yourself? How much do you anticipate needing to spend? If you have both capital and motivation, then consider moving somewhere cheap and investing your own time to maintain complete ownership. You can get all the hand-wavey advice online, YC videos, books, etc. My only advice would be don't discount the importance of marketing. "Build it and they will come" doesn't work. If possible, get a few committed or LOI (potential) customers and some small income guarantee first.

echelon 7y ago
> How much of the research would you be doing yourself? All of it. That's what evenings and weekends have been for awhile now. > How much do you anticipate needing to spend? Equipment is going to be a huge expenditure. The software and the configuration adds all the value. I'll try to self-fund as long as I can, but if/when it catches on, I don't want to be caught off guard without funding while the big players step in. At some point this is going to have to grow fast to stay ahead. If I'm at all right about the market. I suppose I'd better meet some people now that I can start conversations with when I need to.
- contingencies 7y ago
  Equipment is going to be a huge expenditure. As a hardware startup currently spending big on manufacturing equipment, I feel your pain. I've seen a few hardware startups use alternative approaches to this space, which depending upon your target business model may be viable. One option is, if you are selling hardware with your own software and configuration, the hardware manufacturer may gift/loan/discount development hardware to you to facilitate your development work. Another option is leasing or timeshare of the equipment. Finally, vendor financing may allow you to defer payment for 12-24 months without the overhead of seeking external capital. Outside of the above methods, at a business process level having a rapid and well documented pipeline for per-unit assembly that does not necessitate pre-purchase can help to defer per-unit costs (shift from pre-fab to post-purchase fab) without greatly blowing out lead time from the customer perspective.

echelon 7y ago

> How much of the research would you be doing yourself? All of it. That's what evenings and weekends have been for awhile now. > How much do you anticipate needing to spend? Equipment is going to be a huge expenditure. The software and the configuration adds all the value. I'll try to self-fund as long as I can, but if/when it catches on, I don't want to be caught off guard without funding while the big players step in. At some point this is going to have to grow fast to stay ahead. If I'm at all right about the market. I suppose I'd better meet some people now that I can start conversations with when I need to.

contingencies 7y ago
Equipment is going to be a huge expenditure. As a hardware startup currently spending big on manufacturing equipment, I feel your pain. I've seen a few hardware startups use alternative approaches to this space, which depending upon your target business model may be viable. One option is, if you are selling hardware with your own software and configuration, the hardware manufacturer may gift/loan/discount development hardware to you to facilitate your development work. Another option is leasing or timeshare of the equipment. Finally, vendor financing may allow you to defer payment for 12-24 months without the overhead of seeking external capital. Outside of the above methods, at a business process level having a rapid and well documented pipeline for per-unit assembly that does not necessitate pre-purchase can help to defer per-unit costs (shift from pre-fab to post-purchase fab) without greatly blowing out lead time from the customer perspective.