5 ms·

> Am I missing something? Yeah. The company is three people with practically no money at hand. I can't imagine this being real. Check "full accounts made up to

by chx 4y ago

> Am I missing something? Yeah. The company is three people with practically no money at hand. I can't imagine this being real. Check "full accounts made up to 28 February 2022" https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10602146/filing-history https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... with cash at hand being just 13,887 pounds. How on earth are you making a laptop from that? Framework started with a nine million seed round and had the former head of hardware at Oculus as the founder for expertise in this field. Now, almost eight figures is prolly overkill but I have hard time imagining low five figures being enough. It doesn't mean there's malicious intent here, they just might not be fully aware of the challenges here and will find themselves in way over their head. Note there's no doxxing here, the CRN is on the contact us page: https://starlabs.systems/pages/contact-us https://starlabs.systems/pages/contact-us

bogwog 4y ago
This isn't a new company. They've made and shipped laptops in the past. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6IuzQehsrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6IuzQehsrA
OccamsMirror 4y ago
There's comments in this thread claiming to have already received one. What's your take on that?
wtallis 4y ago
From https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/about-us https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/about-us >In 2017, we started using Clevo as a supplier. The result was; the Star Lite Mk I, the Star LabTop Mk II and the Star LabTop Pro Mk I. There were a vast array of options to chose from in these laptops, from wireless to memory to pre-installed distribution. You may be familiar with Clevo as they have a lot of resellers across the world. It was a step in the right direction but they left something to be desired when comparing them to the competition - the batteries were small, the bezels were big and modern standards such as USB-C charging were not available. >We had to build our own. When 2018 came around, we started working on our very own laptops. We used a variety of suppliers, design houses and factories. It was 6 long months of tooling and testing on repeat until two new laptops were born in December 2018; the Star Lite Mk II and the Star LabTop Mk III. Simply put, they have the same business model as any other small brand for laptops, and that business model does not involve owning your own factories. Now, their small size and limited financial resources certainly casts doubt on their ability to provide ongoing support for their products, but it doesn't preclude getting a product out the door in the first place.
- jnsaff2 4y ago
  > that business model does not involve owning your own factories Apple does not own their own factories.
  - brookst 4y ago
    Apple’s manufacturing story is complex. They design most of the parts, and they often own the much of the equipment in the factories. Apple’s involvement with their suppliers is much much deeper than companies who resell ODM equipment.
- chx 4y ago
  Do they? I was under the impression most small brands simply resell such ODMs as Clevo or TongFang perhaps they add RAM/SSD/such -- but they do not design custom motherboards and chassis.
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    They did exactly that already for a few years. It doesn't seem crazy to me that after a while of that, they advanced to do a bit more. Still sounds like they mostly employed others, just now a level up from before, employing designers rather than buying finished product.
  - ahoya 4y ago
    [dead]
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Wait so they design it in house? That's pretty amazing considering their small size, especially compared to system76.
  - Klonoar 4y ago
    They’re brought up on every “alternative to the Mac” thread as a brand that’s explicitly not a Clevo reseller but they somehow never get much attention.
devwastaken 4y ago
If real, it wouldn't surprise me. A laptop isn't special. The most special part is the motherboard, and those are a dime a dozen designs. The bios soft is the other big component, but given the right partnerships I could see a small company just paying to use one out of a dozen various vendors. The rest of the work is part sourcing.
- chx 4y ago
  What about the custom plastic parts? Aren't those injection moulded? If so, how much is a mould?
  - komali2 4y ago
    Now I'm thinking about whether I could CNC a laptop case from a brick of aluminum...
    - stevehawk 4y ago
      isn't that what apple did/does?
      - wkat4242 4y ago
        It is exactly, yes. However doing this at small scale is very difficult to do cost-effectively.
  - mastax 4y ago
    A mould is anywhere from a few thousand dollars for a small, simple, high-tolerance part, to many hundreds of thousands for a large, precision, complex mould with moving tools.
- ahoya 4y ago
  [dead]
biehl 4y ago
I have the Byte desktop machine from them. I waited quite a bit for the delivery, but the machine is very nice.
tsmithe 4y ago
I have one of their machines (a StarBook that I am typing this on), and it is excellent. It probably helps to have a $9m seed round -- certainly it means Framework can do much more marketing (including such as the Steam Deck stunt) and hire more people -- and I'm sure it's easier to raise those funds from the US, but it is clearly not necessary. I hope that Star Labs does well enough that they are able to expand, raise funding if they wish, and compete with better capitalized companies.
ajb 4y ago
They have 400k of stock, though. It's common for a company not to keep a lot of cash around and borrow as needed against stock, which I would guess they are doing as they have 200k+ of creditors. So, my guess is that they used income to build up stock of their clevo lines in order to reduce delivery times and increase their market to delivery sensitive customers, and now they are leveraging that to invest in the custom versions. If they are doing their own sw and there product is an integration of off the shelf parts, maybe it's doable. Edited to add: Actually I misread the statement, they have 200k falling due in a year and a further 700k of debt. So that's nearly 1M of investment, which seems easily enough to do this development, given it's much less complex than the framework devices.
mihaaly 4y ago
They seem to be real entrepreneurs running the thing from a farm in rural settings [1] where the director lives (same personal address declared). If I read it right they are in ca. 400k debt so far, working it down slowly. I am wishing them quick success as their product looks great. Perhaps if I will be patient enough waiting 5 month for delivery after payment and will not worry about if warranty (or even shipment) could be ever fulfilled by a tiny new company I will make a try myself. On paper this is a quality laptop that is so hard to find in the sea of trash. But perhaps will wait until more experiences are gained by other customers in a year or so (considering the half year delivery lag). I also wish they used less pompous text in the very first two senences of the headline in the style of hustlers with more mouth than content: "exquisitely crafted", "sets a new standard", "groundbreaking technology", "ultimate choice", "users who demand the very best". It is off-putting for me. No need to sugar the honey this hard. I genuinely root for them. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Star+Labs+Systems/@51.1863799,-0.6418627,16.56z/data=!4m14!1m8!3m7!1s0x4875d1e513090c4f:0x2bfb5fb729b7642a!2sGodalming+GU7+2QB!3b1!8m2!3d51.1867418!4d-0.6399349!16s%2Fg%2F1tgfw2my!3m4!1s0x48742d09ff322fd7:0xb4a4ad592f7acade!8m2!3d51.1863755!4d-0.6419441 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Star+Labs+Systems/@51.1863...
- ahoya 4y ago
  That’s impressive, they are really bootstrap. The quality of their hardware and their support has been fantastic I highly recommend them if you can afford the weight
  - mihaaly 4y ago
    It is very promising they are having such good customer feedback.
- brookst 4y ago
  “Sugar the honey” is a great turn of phrase and new to me. Thank you!
  - teddyh 4y ago
    See also “gild the lily”.
perihelions 4y ago
- "Note there's no doxxing here," How on Earth could a customer looking up a vendor's business information be construed doxxing? Do you guys -- I'm asking sincerely, I'm feeling extraordinarily confused and out-of-touch -- think there's some of genuine privacy interest here that you'd wish to respect? Some sort of "right to anonymous business", where you can hide all your sketchiness behind a shell company and people need to *morally* respect your wishes? Because, if I heard someone "doxxed" a company's ownership and financial documents non-consensually, all I'd have to say to them is "good on you, Wall Street Journal".
- gizmo 4y ago
  Having disgruntled customers show up at your office is not the same as them showing up at your home. It's not at all sketchy to want some privacy before you've gotten your office lease sorted. When starting a business you have all these circular dependencies, where you can't get a lease before you register your business, but when you register your business you need an address on day 1.
  - zahllos 4y ago
    There is actually a solution to this in the UK. Directors are permitted to have a service address on the public record instead of their home address, and you can find a bunch of companies willing to allow you to rent one and forward mail. You still need to provide your home address to companies' house but it isn't available to the public at large as easily. This is not just possible it is an extremely good idea. Mobile phone companies in the UK are very lax about opening contracts (UK has an aversion to government identity cards, so defaults to "give us a utility bill" like you can't find templates online) and using a valid name/address combination is what scammers love to do. So if you want to avoid getting "welcome to" letters from every mobile provider in the UK 3x over (and your credit rating subsequently trashed) then using a service address is a great idea.
- wpietri 4y ago
  > How on Earth could a customer looking up a vendor's business information be construed doxxing? I think "doxxing" has in some cases evolved from a sometimes-necessary norm in pseudonymous forums to a context-free knee-jerk reaction to somebody's details being out there. I appreciate the norm when it allows people to safely be themselves among pseudonymous peers. Yes, by all means let's keep each other feeling safe. But like you, when somebody is doing business with the public, I think we should expect to know who they are. It seems insane to me that MrSquanchy69 can take in gobs of money, execute a rugpull, and have people saying, "bUt WhAt aBOuT tHeIr PriVAcY?!?" Public impact and public accountability go hand in hand.
ahoya 4y ago
[dead]
api 4y ago
If that's the case then it must be something rebadged. What is it?
camgunz 4y ago
It's a real company and many people have laptops from them. Here are a couple HN threads about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31034024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31034024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28986767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28986767

by chx 4y ago

bogwog 4y ago

This isn't a new company. They've made and shipped laptops in the past. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6IuzQehsrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6IuzQehsrA

OccamsMirror 4y ago

There's comments in this thread claiming to have already received one. What's your take on that?

wtallis 4y ago

From https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/about-us https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/about-us >In 2017, we started using Clevo as a supplier. The result was; the Star Lite Mk I, the Star LabTop Mk II and the Star LabTop Pro Mk I. There were a vast array of options to chose from in these laptops, from wireless to memory to pre-installed distribution. You may be familiar with Clevo as they have a lot of resellers across the world. It was a step in the right direction but they left something to be desired when comparing them to the competition - the batteries were small, the bezels were big and modern standards such as USB-C charging were not available. >We had to build our own. When 2018 came around, we started working on our very own laptops. We used a variety of suppliers, design houses and factories. It was 6 long months of tooling and testing on repeat until two new laptops were born in December 2018; the Star Lite Mk II and the Star LabTop Mk III. Simply put, they have the same business model as any other small brand for laptops, and that business model does not involve owning your own factories. Now, their small size and limited financial resources certainly casts doubt on their ability to provide ongoing support for their products, but it doesn't preclude getting a product out the door in the first place.

jnsaff2 4y ago
> that business model does not involve owning your own factories Apple does not own their own factories.
- brookst 4y ago
  Apple’s manufacturing story is complex. They design most of the parts, and they often own the much of the equipment in the factories. Apple’s involvement with their suppliers is much much deeper than companies who resell ODM equipment.
chx 4y ago
Do they? I was under the impression most small brands simply resell such ODMs as Clevo or TongFang perhaps they add RAM/SSD/such -- but they do not design custom motherboards and chassis.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  They did exactly that already for a few years. It doesn't seem crazy to me that after a while of that, they advanced to do a bit more. Still sounds like they mostly employed others, just now a level up from before, employing designers rather than buying finished product.
- ahoya 4y ago
  [dead]
mardifoufs 4y ago
Wait so they design it in house? That's pretty amazing considering their small size, especially compared to system76.
- Klonoar 4y ago
  They’re brought up on every “alternative to the Mac” thread as a brand that’s explicitly not a Clevo reseller but they somehow never get much attention.

devwastaken 4y ago

If real, it wouldn't surprise me. A laptop isn't special. The most special part is the motherboard, and those are a dime a dozen designs. The bios soft is the other big component, but given the right partnerships I could see a small company just paying to use one out of a dozen various vendors. The rest of the work is part sourcing.

chx 4y ago
What about the custom plastic parts? Aren't those injection moulded? If so, how much is a mould?
- komali2 4y ago
  Now I'm thinking about whether I could CNC a laptop case from a brick of aluminum...
  - stevehawk 4y ago
    isn't that what apple did/does?
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      It is exactly, yes. However doing this at small scale is very difficult to do cost-effectively.
- mastax 4y ago
  A mould is anywhere from a few thousand dollars for a small, simple, high-tolerance part, to many hundreds of thousands for a large, precision, complex mould with moving tools.
ahoya 4y ago
[dead]

biehl 4y ago

I have the Byte desktop machine from them. I waited quite a bit for the delivery, but the machine is very nice.

tsmithe 4y ago

I have one of their machines (a StarBook that I am typing this on), and it is excellent. It probably helps to have a $9m seed round -- certainly it means Framework can do much more marketing (including such as the Steam Deck stunt) and hire more people -- and I'm sure it's easier to raise those funds from the US, but it is clearly not necessary. I hope that Star Labs does well enough that they are able to expand, raise funding if they wish, and compete with better capitalized companies.

ajb 4y ago

They have 400k of stock, though. It's common for a company not to keep a lot of cash around and borrow as needed against stock, which I would guess they are doing as they have 200k+ of creditors. So, my guess is that they used income to build up stock of their clevo lines in order to reduce delivery times and increase their market to delivery sensitive customers, and now they are leveraging that to invest in the custom versions. If they are doing their own sw and there product is an integration of off the shelf parts, maybe it's doable. Edited to add: Actually I misread the statement, they have 200k falling due in a year and a further 700k of debt. So that's nearly 1M of investment, which seems easily enough to do this development, given it's much less complex than the framework devices.

mihaaly 4y ago

They seem to be real entrepreneurs running the thing from a farm in rural settings [1] where the director lives (same personal address declared). If I read it right they are in ca. 400k debt so far, working it down slowly. I am wishing them quick success as their product looks great. Perhaps if I will be patient enough waiting 5 month for delivery after payment and will not worry about if warranty (or even shipment) could be ever fulfilled by a tiny new company I will make a try myself. On paper this is a quality laptop that is so hard to find in the sea of trash. But perhaps will wait until more experiences are gained by other customers in a year or so (considering the half year delivery lag). I also wish they used less pompous text in the very first two senences of the headline in the style of hustlers with more mouth than content: "exquisitely crafted", "sets a new standard", "groundbreaking technology", "ultimate choice", "users who demand the very best". It is off-putting for me. No need to sugar the honey this hard. I genuinely root for them. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Star+Labs+Systems/@51.1863799,-0.6418627,16.56z/data=!4m14!1m8!3m7!1s0x4875d1e513090c4f:0x2bfb5fb729b7642a!2sGodalming+GU7+2QB!3b1!8m2!3d51.1867418!4d-0.6399349!16s%2Fg%2F1tgfw2my!3m4!1s0x48742d09ff322fd7:0xb4a4ad592f7acade!8m2!3d51.1863755!4d-0.6419441 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Star+Labs+Systems/@51.1863...

ahoya 4y ago
That’s impressive, they are really bootstrap. The quality of their hardware and their support has been fantastic I highly recommend them if you can afford the weight
- mihaaly 4y ago
  It is very promising they are having such good customer feedback.
brookst 4y ago
“Sugar the honey” is a great turn of phrase and new to me. Thank you!
- teddyh 4y ago
  See also “gild the lily”.

perihelions 4y ago

- "Note there's no doxxing here," How on Earth could a customer looking up a vendor's business information be construed doxxing? Do you guys -- I'm asking sincerely, I'm feeling extraordinarily confused and out-of-touch -- think there's some of genuine privacy interest here that you'd wish to respect? Some sort of "right to anonymous business", where you can hide all your sketchiness behind a shell company and people need to *morally* respect your wishes? Because, if I heard someone "doxxed" a company's ownership and financial documents non-consensually, all I'd have to say to them is "good on you, Wall Street Journal".

gizmo 4y ago
Having disgruntled customers show up at your office is not the same as them showing up at your home. It's not at all sketchy to want some privacy before you've gotten your office lease sorted. When starting a business you have all these circular dependencies, where you can't get a lease before you register your business, but when you register your business you need an address on day 1.
- zahllos 4y ago
  There is actually a solution to this in the UK. Directors are permitted to have a service address on the public record instead of their home address, and you can find a bunch of companies willing to allow you to rent one and forward mail. You still need to provide your home address to companies' house but it isn't available to the public at large as easily. This is not just possible it is an extremely good idea. Mobile phone companies in the UK are very lax about opening contracts (UK has an aversion to government identity cards, so defaults to "give us a utility bill" like you can't find templates online) and using a valid name/address combination is what scammers love to do. So if you want to avoid getting "welcome to" letters from every mobile provider in the UK 3x over (and your credit rating subsequently trashed) then using a service address is a great idea.
wpietri 4y ago
> How on Earth could a customer looking up a vendor's business information be construed doxxing? I think "doxxing" has in some cases evolved from a sometimes-necessary norm in pseudonymous forums to a context-free knee-jerk reaction to somebody's details being out there. I appreciate the norm when it allows people to safely be themselves among pseudonymous peers. Yes, by all means let's keep each other feeling safe. But like you, when somebody is doing business with the public, I think we should expect to know who they are. It seems insane to me that MrSquanchy69 can take in gobs of money, execute a rugpull, and have people saying, "bUt WhAt aBOuT tHeIr PriVAcY?!?" Public impact and public accountability go hand in hand.

ahoya 4y ago

[dead]

api 4y ago

If that's the case then it must be something rebadged. What is it?

camgunz 4y ago

It's a real company and many people have laptops from them. Here are a couple HN threads about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31034024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31034024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28986767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28986767