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It is difficult to follow lean startup principles with hardware products. The feedback loop to design, build and test hardware is long and expensive. Then once
by seddona 14y ago
It is difficult to follow lean startup principles with hardware products. The feedback loop to design, build and test hardware is long and expensive. Then once you've got a workable design you'll need a lot of capital to do a production run.
Before we can have a true renaissance of hardware startups there needs to a be a platform for cheap rapid prototyping with push button production scaling.
Akin to what Heroku did for web apps.
- jiggy2011 14y agoThere were plenty of web app startups long before Heroku and EC2 were available, these just lowered the bar even further. Things like arduino can lower the friction between hardware and software design quite substantially for hackers. I wouldn't necessarily expect startups to be rushing out to compete with the dishwasher any time soon but the point is that it now becomes much simpler to think about "hooks" in your software into the physical world.
- tomkinstinch 14y agoIn effect, contract manufacturers can enable "push button production scaling." They'll source parts, do engineering, pack, and ship--basically whatever you pay them to do. A high tech copy machine. The interface could certainly use some work though...
- jfoster 14y agoAren't lean startup principles based on lean manufacturing principles? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing