3 ms·

Not that I've gone this way, but I'm starting to believe that certifications are like patents - not worth the money if you're very small. The FCC fines are huge

Not that I've gone this way, but I'm starting to believe that certifications are like patents - not worth the money if you're very small. The FCC fines are huge, but are they focused on the little guy? 3D Robotics seems to walk this line, by a talk I saw recently. I'd consider waiting until you know there's demand past Kickstarter, at least. I see some worry about CE and the individual countries like Japan and ANZ, when global domination is a long ways off. You're probably going to have to iterate again anyway in order to get retail-ready margins. A clue that it matters little is that when they need to put your unique product in a government-designated category, it's going to be something like "Computer Peripheral" or "Measuring Device". There is a lot of grey area. Hell, CE lets you self-certify. Another debatable early-stage expense is liability insurance. Technically most distributors require it, including Amazon. But it can be nearly impossible to get for hardware with no track record, never mind what it costs. The best option is sometimes to let your LLC do its job and go bankrupt if someone wants a lot of money.

mkesper 12y ago
Does not sound like a terrific strategy to me. It probably will become very hard to bolt the requirements on after you've finished your product. And for people here in Germany, the pebble missing CE seals was a great deal as the shipped products got lost in customs. Pretty easy to piss off your backers like that.
- jkestner 12y ago
  I'm not saying to ignore the radio requirements at all. If you're diligent, make liberal use of reference designs, etc. your design will pass. I (and Chris Anderson) just question whether the time and expense of getting certifications that no one will notice is the right place for a startup to spend its resources. Fair game, when so many skip arguably more important things like security. I agree on Pebble - the volume they were sending through, and a little inexperience with customs, raised flags that were hard to put down. But by all means, when you've raised $10mil, get your certs. I'm telling the Kickstarters who barely raised enough to execute their hardware, and then think that blowing $20K in order to cross all the t's for international markets, is not putting the cert before the horse.

mkesper 12y ago

Does not sound like a terrific strategy to me. It probably will become very hard to bolt the requirements on after you've finished your product. And for people here in Germany, the pebble missing CE seals was a great deal as the shipped products got lost in customs. Pretty easy to piss off your backers like that.

jkestner 12y ago
I'm not saying to ignore the radio requirements at all. If you're diligent, make liberal use of reference designs, etc. your design will pass. I (and Chris Anderson) just question whether the time and expense of getting certifications that no one will notice is the right place for a startup to spend its resources. Fair game, when so many skip arguably more important things like security. I agree on Pebble - the volume they were sending through, and a little inexperience with customs, raised flags that were hard to put down. But by all means, when you've raised $10mil, get your certs. I'm telling the Kickstarters who barely raised enough to execute their hardware, and then think that blowing $20K in order to cross all the t's for international markets, is not putting the cert before the horse.