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i've actually daydreamed about starting a computing appliance company that would make a variety of services plug and play for consumers and small businesses, fr

i've actually daydreamed about starting a computing appliance company that would make a variety of services plug and play for consumers and small businesses, from email to storage, to networking, to security, and to smart home. it's actually the direction apple is headed, but they're encumbered by the innovator's dilemma, which leaves an opportunity for an upstart. google and facebook are similarly too focused on adtech, while amazon on commerce, to lock up this market yet.

mikepurvis 6y ago
It would be fun stuff to build, but I feel like you'd struggle to make money. Google and Amazon can afford to give away the hardware, and they can smuggle their ecosystem into your house as a thermostat or a smart speaker or a phone app, or whatever. Like, how do you persuade the audience of enthusiasts (think: Unifi buyers) to pay for a subscription to managed software they run on their own computers, raspis, whatever? I would probably spend $10/mo on something like that, but much above that and you'd be fighting against the armchair commentary of users who won't appreciate the effort that goes into stability and will basically have a "no wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame" attitude.
- clairity 6y ago
  there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. it’s mostly tough because of the high upfront capital costs (manufacturing, r&d, and marketing). people still talk fondly about discontinued apple routers and what nest could have been as an independent venture, for example.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    Maybe I'm misunderstanding the pitch from the GP, but Wyze seems like it's pretty clearly a hardware + cloud services play, similar to most other IOT ecosystems except maybe Hue. The (optional) monthly cost paid there is for loosened restrictions on an already existing works-anywhere setup— it's an upsell for power users, not a cost of entry. This seems a lot easier to me than on-prem cloud services, either in BYOH form ("but it's just software") or as a packaged appliance ("another hub to install, really?"). I would say that the closest thing to this right now for paid is coming from the storage side— NAS providers like Synology using hardware sales to support a limited ecosystem of "one click" deployable apps. And for free, it's ecosystems like HomeAssistant, which a lot of people just deploy as a fire-and-forget RPi image, but as expected with a free ecosystem, as soon as you get off the ultra-common use cases, you're reading source code to figure out how it works, and wading through a tangle of unmaintained "community" plugins that only do half of what you want.
    - clairity 6y ago
      the primary value-add is one layer higher than a NAS, a standalone router, or homeassistant but would likely be built on those kinds of things. it's providing a range of hardware devices that can work seemlessly together in a way that you don't have to muck around with config files or programming and yet have it all be secure and private by default. the value is in an ecosystem of safe appliances that require little technical knowledge. home audio/theater from prior to the internet revolution might be a good analogy: a bunch of separate boxes that each provide tailored functionality but all work together seemlessly without a lot of technical knowledge. that, but for all sorts of computing devices.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    > there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. I also think it's still a little too nerd-focused for the average consumer. I'd say I know far more about security, networking and hardware than the average consumer but, compared to the HN crowd, I know next to nothing. I struggle to use a lot of the current solutions because they get bogged down in doing cool technical stuff that is so far outside the scope of the average potential user's wants/needs or the DIY solution will be "easy"... for someone with an extensive CS background and years of experience.
    - clairity 6y ago
      i think you need to go up a level of abstraction from this perspective to see the utility for the average consumer. we each have computers all around us, phones, tablets, tv's, and increasingly everything else. it's so hopeless to manage, much less understand, these mysterious machines for more and more people. what you want is a company you can trust to manage these things for you but gives you the ultimate, yet cognitively bounded, control over them. for instance, plug in a smart device and have confidence that it's not doing surreptitious things behind your back, because it's automatically segregated into its own vlan and given only enough network access to be controlled by you without needing to know much about the underlying technologies involved.
      - mikepurvis 6y ago
        "a company you can trust to manage these things for you" "automatically segregated into its own vlan" Aren't these goals fundamentally at odds? I would imagine that Joe consumer (if they care at all about any of this) would be rather more inclined to entrust the role of orchestrating/segregating their home network devices to an entity like Google than to some random startup.
        clairity 6y ago
        the average person doesn't even know what these things are, which is partially why there is a market opportunity here. what they know is that companies like google and facebook are not entirely trustworthy but they have no alternative. it's hopelss, until an entity comes along and gives them some hope in the form of an alternative. basically all of the things we talk about around preserving privacy and security on the internet need to be built into our devices, and companies like google actively oppose such limitations of their reach into our lives.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Maybe it doesn’t need to make lots of money? Just gotta build a strong community.
- Ajedi32 6y ago
  Hardware sales. People will pay for the convenience of a device that works out of the box with minimal setup. On the software side, integrate tightly with your own subscription services (offsite backups, VPS, etc) to upsell to those who want that, and win over the enthusiast crowd by making it possible to host your own alternatives to those services with a little technical know-how. Open source most components to appeal to enthusiasts, but keep the secret sauce that makes everything seamless and easy to use "source available" so you don't unintentionally turn your core business into a commodity. Seems viable to me.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    Isn't this basically Synology?
    - mikestew 6y ago
      Alternatively, it's what Windows Home Server might have become had MSFT kept at it. OTOH, the fact that Microsoft abandoned it might be an indicator of how well such a thing might sell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server
    - clairity 6y ago
      sorta, but synology seems to lack the unifying product strategy and the consumer focus.
  - gsreenivas 6y ago
    this is Helm - check us out at thehelm.com
    - Mandatum 6y ago
      See I see this and it's $349 for the hardware plus $99/year. At that point, I might as well just go with a paid ProtonMail or similar solution. My expectations for self hosted isn't to have annual or monthly fees.
elliekelly 6y ago
I would buy this in a heartbeat. And pay a premium.
zolland 6y ago
I've wanted to make something like this too. After years of iteration, my self hosted setup is now completely automated and the automation itself is super simple and organized. It would be pretty simple to setup a simple web app that allows users to simply apply the same automation steps onto their own VPSs. Hardest part would be setting up a secure process for managing user secrets to be honest. Business wise, I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay for just the automation... in reality you don't use it very often. Could be interesting to try (re)selling tightly knit VPSs, more advanced automation features or support. I think this solution still captures the self hosted ideology while also providing some cool value. I see people reinventing the wheel all the time while trying to automate self hosted processes... but then again maybe that's why we do it, we like the adventure!
- bmh100 6y ago
  I'd be willing to pay for a little consulting time about how to set up everything.
kanwisher 6y ago
qnap and Synology basically already cover this market
jerrysievert 6y ago
in the late 90's there was whistle, that partnered with isp's and delivered pretty much this - router, email, web host, storage space, calendar, firewall, and easy to configure with an isp.
lnwlebjel 6y ago
Having spent the past year frustratingly trying to build these types of things in AWS and spending too much money with mistakes I'd say there is a huge opportunity here. SMB or NFS as a service for example.
- IggleSniggle 6y ago
  https://www.rsync.net/ https://www.rsync.net/ has been selling this solution for years. Price competitive these days. Not affiliated, just looked at it recently and thought it was extremely cool.
bmh100 6y ago
I'd be willing to pay for a little consulting time about how to set up everything.

mikepurvis 6y ago

It would be fun stuff to build, but I feel like you'd struggle to make money. Google and Amazon can afford to give away the hardware, and they can smuggle their ecosystem into your house as a thermostat or a smart speaker or a phone app, or whatever. Like, how do you persuade the audience of enthusiasts (think: Unifi buyers) to pay for a subscription to managed software they run on their own computers, raspis, whatever? I would probably spend $10/mo on something like that, but much above that and you'd be fighting against the armchair commentary of users who won't appreciate the effort that goes into stability and will basically have a "no wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame" attitude.

clairity 6y ago
there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. it’s mostly tough because of the high upfront capital costs (manufacturing, r&d, and marketing). people still talk fondly about discontinued apple routers and what nest could have been as an independent venture, for example.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Maybe I'm misunderstanding the pitch from the GP, but Wyze seems like it's pretty clearly a hardware + cloud services play, similar to most other IOT ecosystems except maybe Hue. The (optional) monthly cost paid there is for loosened restrictions on an already existing works-anywhere setup— it's an upsell for power users, not a cost of entry. This seems a lot easier to me than on-prem cloud services, either in BYOH form ("but it's just software") or as a packaged appliance ("another hub to install, really?"). I would say that the closest thing to this right now for paid is coming from the storage side— NAS providers like Synology using hardware sales to support a limited ecosystem of "one click" deployable apps. And for free, it's ecosystems like HomeAssistant, which a lot of people just deploy as a fire-and-forget RPi image, but as expected with a free ecosystem, as soon as you get off the ultra-common use cases, you're reading source code to figure out how it works, and wading through a tangle of unmaintained "community" plugins that only do half of what you want.
  - clairity 6y ago
    the primary value-add is one layer higher than a NAS, a standalone router, or homeassistant but would likely be built on those kinds of things. it's providing a range of hardware devices that can work seemlessly together in a way that you don't have to muck around with config files or programming and yet have it all be secure and private by default. the value is in an ecosystem of safe appliances that require little technical knowledge. home audio/theater from prior to the internet revolution might be a good analogy: a bunch of separate boxes that each provide tailored functionality but all work together seemlessly without a lot of technical knowledge. that, but for all sorts of computing devices.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  > there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. I also think it's still a little too nerd-focused for the average consumer. I'd say I know far more about security, networking and hardware than the average consumer but, compared to the HN crowd, I know next to nothing. I struggle to use a lot of the current solutions because they get bogged down in doing cool technical stuff that is so far outside the scope of the average potential user's wants/needs or the DIY solution will be "easy"... for someone with an extensive CS background and years of experience.
  - clairity 6y ago
    i think you need to go up a level of abstraction from this perspective to see the utility for the average consumer. we each have computers all around us, phones, tablets, tv's, and increasingly everything else. it's so hopeless to manage, much less understand, these mysterious machines for more and more people. what you want is a company you can trust to manage these things for you but gives you the ultimate, yet cognitively bounded, control over them. for instance, plug in a smart device and have confidence that it's not doing surreptitious things behind your back, because it's automatically segregated into its own vlan and given only enough network access to be controlled by you without needing to know much about the underlying technologies involved.
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      "a company you can trust to manage these things for you" "automatically segregated into its own vlan" Aren't these goals fundamentally at odds? I would imagine that Joe consumer (if they care at all about any of this) would be rather more inclined to entrust the role of orchestrating/segregating their home network devices to an entity like Google than to some random startup.
      - clairity 6y ago
        the average person doesn't even know what these things are, which is partially why there is a market opportunity here. what they know is that companies like google and facebook are not entirely trustworthy but they have no alternative. it's hopelss, until an entity comes along and gives them some hope in the form of an alternative. basically all of the things we talk about around preserving privacy and security on the internet need to be built into our devices, and companies like google actively oppose such limitations of their reach into our lives.
Robotbeat 6y ago
Maybe it doesn’t need to make lots of money? Just gotta build a strong community.
Ajedi32 6y ago
Hardware sales. People will pay for the convenience of a device that works out of the box with minimal setup. On the software side, integrate tightly with your own subscription services (offsite backups, VPS, etc) to upsell to those who want that, and win over the enthusiast crowd by making it possible to host your own alternatives to those services with a little technical know-how. Open source most components to appeal to enthusiasts, but keep the secret sauce that makes everything seamless and easy to use "source available" so you don't unintentionally turn your core business into a commodity. Seems viable to me.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Isn't this basically Synology?
  - mikestew 6y ago
    Alternatively, it's what Windows Home Server might have become had MSFT kept at it. OTOH, the fact that Microsoft abandoned it might be an indicator of how well such a thing might sell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server
  - clairity 6y ago
    sorta, but synology seems to lack the unifying product strategy and the consumer focus.
- gsreenivas 6y ago
  this is Helm - check us out at thehelm.com
  - Mandatum 6y ago
    See I see this and it's $349 for the hardware plus $99/year. At that point, I might as well just go with a paid ProtonMail or similar solution. My expectations for self hosted isn't to have annual or monthly fees.

elliekelly 6y ago

I would buy this in a heartbeat. And pay a premium.

zolland 6y ago

I've wanted to make something like this too. After years of iteration, my self hosted setup is now completely automated and the automation itself is super simple and organized. It would be pretty simple to setup a simple web app that allows users to simply apply the same automation steps onto their own VPSs. Hardest part would be setting up a secure process for managing user secrets to be honest. Business wise, I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay for just the automation... in reality you don't use it very often. Could be interesting to try (re)selling tightly knit VPSs, more advanced automation features or support. I think this solution still captures the self hosted ideology while also providing some cool value. I see people reinventing the wheel all the time while trying to automate self hosted processes... but then again maybe that's why we do it, we like the adventure!

bmh100 6y ago
I'd be willing to pay for a little consulting time about how to set up everything.

kanwisher 6y ago

qnap and Synology basically already cover this market

jerrysievert 6y ago

in the late 90's there was whistle, that partnered with isp's and delivered pretty much this - router, email, web host, storage space, calendar, firewall, and easy to configure with an isp.

lnwlebjel 6y ago

Having spent the past year frustratingly trying to build these types of things in AWS and spending too much money with mistakes I'd say there is a huge opportunity here. SMB or NFS as a service for example.

IggleSniggle 6y ago
https://www.rsync.net/ https://www.rsync.net/ has been selling this solution for years. Price competitive these days. Not affiliated, just looked at it recently and thought it was extremely cool.

bmh100 6y ago

I'd be willing to pay for a little consulting time about how to set up everything.