You can't make a business doing that, quite correct. If there is any other merit to what you're looking to do, and you can float the cost, you can make a thing

You can't make a business doing that, quite correct. If there is any other merit to what you're looking to do, and you can float the cost, you can make a thing happen and see if it's too niche for Behringer: if it's that popular, you'll get a knock-off for pennies on the dollar and your best bet is to position yourself as the original, and accept your market got ate. I don't think Moog is ONLY selling out because its Minimoog got cloned by the Behringer D, but I've owned a Behringer D and soundwise it wasn't half bad: many decisions made were in the service of the thing actually sounding good, at least in the revision I had. I own a Moog Sub Phatty and swapped out the side panels for aftermarket wood ones, because it had the 'sticky plastic' issue, and the octave switch for octave 1 ain't working. The flagship Moog One synths have had some issues. This sort of thing is brutal on a small business… they're paying more for their parts and labor, but they'll run into the same issues that Behringer or any manufacturer will. You won't out-Behringer Behringer. It's exactly the sort of T-Rex you don't want to battle directly. There is nothing stopping you from being a small mammal scurrying about making stuff. Come up with a business model that bootstraps and does what you need, and don't attempt to get capital that would demand a 10x return while knowing Behringer exists, as you can't have a 10x return at all, ever. You can probably still make stuff but you have to design the business, not just the product.