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I agree with the wisdom that scaling software is orders of magnitude harder than scaling a software product. However, I would say B2B hardware is much more doab
by Ken_At_EM 5y ago
I agree with the wisdom that scaling software is orders of magnitude harder than scaling a software product. However, I would say B2B hardware is much more doable than B2C hardware. With B2B hardware you might find that you can sell equipment in the $10,000+ per unit range and if you can keep your BOM cost to <$2000, which is usually doable with low volume manufacturing, without needing scale, you can get to a "commercial" product a lot quicker.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago> B2B hardware is much more doable This is a point that usually gets lost in these discussions. The type of market makes a huge difference. My "side businesses" have always targeted B2B or niche B2C services and I have a lot of experience doing that. Businesses are far less price-conscious than individuals. However, I also worked for a company making consumer wearable hardware and the approaches you have to take, along with the minimum viable volumes are night and day. Also, consumer products tend to require certification testing that industrial ones don't.
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoI did this with a COVID screening kiosk; we sold 120 units at $4,000 each, BOM costs of about $1200, about 1600 hours of engineering time and 4 hours each of fab time - you could buy Chinese kiosks cheaper than that by a large margin, but we integrated with customer RFID tags, time clocks, and door lock systems on a per-customer basis. It was helped by the fact that we had an industrial laser cutter and press brake to fab the mechanical aspects, a large network of existing customers, and a team of MEs, CEs, and fabricators to put everything together who were short on our usual B2B automation equipment work.