hardware startup

“It was a no-no or no-go or no investment zone for the other VCs.”

“One of the things about when you're building, say, raising money for hardware on Kickstarter, for example, is that You can raise money so easily for if you lay out a compelling product vision that it actually takes away some of the constraints that would force…”

“I find as I'm an investor, a seed investor in a lot of these and talking to later stage investors, Their hurdle is shipping. If you haven't shipped your product and you can't talk about metric and how customers are engaging with your product, you're, they don'…”

“I don't think we think of it in terms of crowdfunding. I often think of crowdfunding as a bit of advertising. I mean, it's great to have that money, but chances are they probably raised around a seed round before that. So it's more about validating the custome…”

“Whenever I talk to people starting these things who are so focused only on the product And getting it out the door, and you know, whatever it's going to be named, that they forget that in order to build something, you need to communicate your values, and it ne…”

“And so the big, Problem with hardware being quote unquote hard is, is not the inherent nature of hardware. It's the fact that most people that are in the startup community have never done it before. And so they don't know what to look for when they're trying t…”

“You almost have to grow one stage ahead of where the business is.”

“And we started to talk to some other people and really found out that, you know, no one was interested in funding hardware startups. And so we asked around, we said, well, why? And they said, well, it takes too long and it's too expensive.”

“Today, any 500 dollar computer can run incredibly sophisticated CAD. And on top of that, the software is Free. And then you kind of add in rapid prototyping like three D printing, and you're kind of timing for your first unit, plus things like Arduino, make it…”

“You're looking at 18 months, probably minimum from start. That's like from prototype to mass pro or mass production, 12 months, maybe if you're great at it and you know exactly what you're doing.”

“In hardware, you've got a lot of pain up front. It might take you a year to get out the product. The product has to be perfect before you get it out the door, because once you get out the door, you can't get it back, and it takes a lot of capital to get going.…”

“Building hardware requires having a lot more conviction early on, you know, before you even build your view one. If you're wrong in software, you take feedback and iterate quickly and move on, you know, in a matter of days sometimes. If you're wrong in hardwar…”

“They are justified 98% of the times.”

“And so, okay, what is your gross margin, which comes after the bomb and the cogs, right? And what is included? And after that, that needs to be Really be above 50%. Yeah. And probably the best is 55, 60.”

“So a lot of companies, they will tell you, oh, okay, I don't know, my gross margin is 30% and then I spend 40% because then I have a subscription and in 12 months I get the payback. That most of the times doesn't work. And the reason is, substantially, you nee…”