Rosenthal: Consumer hardware startups face an inherent supply-demand timing mismatch
Jason Rosenthal · a16z Podcast | Startups, Pivots, Culture, and Timing (Oh Shit!) · Jan 2, 2019 · at 18:12
Jason Rosenthal, former CEO of Lytro, explains the fundamental financial risk inherent to hardware startups while discussing Lytro's supply chain liabilities.
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“One of the worst things about doing a hardware company, particularly a consumer hardware company is that the timing and the visibility that you have between your supply and demand curves is a complete mismatch. You know, when you're building something new and exciting and disruptive, you really don't know how it's going to do until you launch it and until you start to try and sell it. But the problem is to even be able to deliver it and bring it to market. You need to make big commitments to the tune of millions and millions of dollars prior to that. And that, that, the sad, cold, hard truth is once you make those commitments, like that money ain't coming back regardless of how well or poorly your product.”
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