I'm annoyed. I've had my ChumbyOne for only a few months, but I use it every day as an alarm clock, a radio player, a white noise generator to put the baby to sleep, a newsreader, and my wife uses it as a bedside game player.You should still be able to use it for that, right? Like I said, my first android phone still works fine for everything except phone calls (since there's no SIM card). I assume wifi still works, but the only apps I really use on it now don't even need internet access. Does the Chumby not function without being able to call home?
Engineers love to make decisions based upon available data and high-confidence models of the future. But I think the real visionaries either don’t know enough, or they have the sheer conviction and courage to see past the facts, and cast a long-shot. It’s probably a bit of both. Taking risks also means there’s a bit of luck involved.Heh :)
I certainly have a fact-induced myopia: my recent focus on operational efficiency, schedules, and risk-management has sapped my ability to have creative and audacious visions.
Margin. Everyone in the supply chain has their hand out — the distributor, the merchant, the factory; and beyond that there’s market development funds and other ‘slush money’ that has to be factored in. At the end of the day, the shelf-cost is about 3x of your parts BOM cost. This means that adding a $0.50 part on the BOM turns into a $1.50 retail price impact.Dude!? When I was in consumer electronics the rule of thumb was 10x.
Cash flow. Retailers are notoriously bad at paying you on time. You may negotiate 60 day terms, but often times you’re not paid after 90 or even 120 days. Basically, if your product doesn’t sell out so that the retailer has to place another order with you (at which point you have some leverage to collect outstanding payment), you get strung out.This can be partially mitigated with financial instruments such as factoring insurance — insurance companies will sell insurance on anything, including insurance hedging against retailers not paying on time or going insolvent before they can pay you.posted by delmoi at 11:22 AM on May 6, 2012 [2 favorites]
I think one of the most gut-wrenching realizations that small companies have to make is that they aren’t Apple. Apple spends over a billion dollars a year on tooling. An injection molding tool may cost around $40k and 2-3 months to make; Apple is known to build five or six simultaneously and then scrap all but one so they can evaluate multiple design approaches. But for them, tossing $200k in tooling to save 2 months time to market is peanuts. But for a startup that raised a million bucks, it’s unthinkable. Apple also has hundreds of staff; a startup has just a few members to do everything. The precision and refinement of Apple’s products come at an enormous cost that is just out of the reach of startups.posted by delmoi at 11:35 AM on May 6, 2012 [1 favorite]
Maintenance Modeposted by galadriel at 1:53 PM on May 6, 2012
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posted by slater at 9:25 AM on May 6, 2012 [1 favorite]