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I bought a pinephone and I've been kind of thinking about the economics of it lately. It's a niche product, you're never going to sell a lot of units, but the c

I bought a pinephone and I've been kind of thinking about the economics of it lately. It's a niche product, you're never going to sell a lot of units, but the customer base is kind of a sweet ride. technical people who will fix their own problems, and in exchange for keeping things open, you don't even have to deal with the software side at all. you just release the hardware and let people figure it out themselves. If you're gonna do low volume, it doesn't seem like the worst market segment to target

AussieWog93 4y ago
It's funny you mention that. I run two businesses with very different customer bases (one selling USB oscilloscopes, the other used video games) and the differences are exactly as stark as you said. The contact I get from the oscilloscope business tend to either be genuine requests for technical support, bug reports/feature requests or just simply kind comments (usually from old, retired engineers). It's not that some of the technical-minded guys don't take up time, but at least they're interesting and pleasant to talk to. I can think of literally two Karens over the course of 6 years since I started the first crowdfunding campaign, and one of the two seemed to genuinely be going through a manic episode, so I just told him he was right (which, to be fair, he was) and moved on. Compare that to the video games business, where we'll have to deal with people who are demanding, unreasonable, manipulative or just simply wasting our time on a daily basis. Probably 30% of the messages we receive I won't even respond to as it's a bottomless pit of frustration. And my God, GP hit the nail on the head when it comes to the low-value buyers being the ones that kick up a fuss. Anything to try and get something for free/discount.