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Fantastic post, love the transparency. Funny how you managed to find success in hardware coming from a software background. Until recently, I was on a similar p

• mtlynch 6y ago
  Thanks for reading! >Is there a way to add a software layer to your hardware idea to bring in recurring revenue? Yeah, I've thought about that a lot. The most obvious way to do it would be to add cloud access, so customers pay me $5/device/month or something, and they can access their device over the Internet through a web gateway I manage. But then that gets me into the territory of "it's A Big Deal if this goes down," so I'm not sure. I also sell a premium version of the software with some extra features. Customers get it free when they buy a device. They keep the software forever, but after 1 year, they can pay some amount every month to continue receiving updates. I'm still kind of iffy on my strategy here, though. The first renewals aren't up until January 2022, so I might do something different by then.
  • dopeboy 6y ago
    Awesome, glad to see you're thinking about it. I understand the concern around the responsibility but also remember, that's an engineering problem that's been solved many times over. Here's the fear that's driving my thinking: (1) the moment word gets out you have a hotcake on hand, others will clone, particularly in China and (2) unsteady revenue for you, as a business.