Product management --and managers-- can be, shall we say, interesting.
I was recently involved with a company that wanted us to develop a product that would be disruptive enough to enter an established market, make waves and shock it.
We did just that. We ran a deep survey of all competing products, bought a bunch of them, studied absolutely everything about them, how they were used and their users. Armed with that information, we produced a set of specifications and user experience requirements that far exceeded anything in the market.
We got green-lit to deliver a set of prototypes to present at a trade show. We did that.
The prototypes were presented and they truly blew everyone away. Blogs, vlogs, users, everyone absolutely loved what we created and the sense was that this was a winning product.
And then came reality. Neither the product manager nor the CTO (and we could add the CEO and CFO to the list) had enough understanding and experience in the domain to take the prototypes to market. It would easily have required a year or two of learning before they could function in that domain.
What did they do? They dumbed down the product specification to force it into what they understood and what engineering building blocks they already had. Square peg solidly and violently pounded into a round hole.
The outcome? Oh, they built a product alright. They sure did. And it flopped, horribly flopped, as soon as it was introduced and made available. Nobody wanted it. It was not competitive. It offered nothing disruptive. It was a bad clone of everything already occupying space in that ecosystem. Game over.
The point is: Technology companies are not immune to human failings, ego, protectionism/turf guarding, bad decisions, bad management, etc.
When someone says something like "I am not sure that's a good idea for a startup. There's competition." My first though is: Never assume that competitors know what they are doing, are capable and always make the right decisions without making mistakes. You don't always need a better product, you need better execution.
Replace the C levels with AI. The C suite is am impediment to innovation and progress. They are the office politics mentioned in this entire thread. The person with the vision and the strategy is a random person out there that doesn't even work for your company. Hell, you could have done it.
> The point is: Technology companies are not immune to human failings, ego, protectionism/turf guarding, bad decisions, bad management, etc.
They only accidentally succeed in spite of those things. They have those things more than existing businesses precisely because having too much money masks the pressures that would force solid execution and results. When you have 80% profit margins, you can show up drunk.
The video was likely recovered from local flash memory on the camera itself. These kinds of devices are not uploading raw video to the cloud.
There are several reasons for that. The first is that you cannot rely on connectivity 100% of the time. Second, if you can have the camera run image processing and compression locally, you don't have to dedicate a massive amount of processing resources at the data center to run the processing. Imagine ten or a hundred million cameras. Where would you want the image processing to run? Right.
My guess is that they either went to Google to perhaps connect the camera to a sandboxed testing rig that could extract locally-stored video data or they removed the flash device, offloaded the raw data and then extracted video from that data. This last option could also have the advantage of having less compression (architecture dependent).
Decades ago I was personally involved in recovering and helping analyze surveillance video data for the prosecution in the OJ Simpson case. Back then, it was tape.
One of the techniques that was considered (I can't publicly state what was actually done) was to digitize raw data right off the read heads on the VCR's spinning drum. You could then process this data using advanced algorithms which could produce better results than the electronics in even the most expensive professional tape players of he era.
Once you step away from the limitations of a product --meaning, you are not engineering a product, you are mining for information-- all kinds of interesting and creative out-of-the-box opportunities present themselves.
> I truly do not understand the appeal of proto board.
I didn't understand your comment until I looked at the pictures in the article. To me "proto board" has always meant wire-wrapping. I lost count of how many of my designs back in the dark ages started as wire-wrapped protoboards. CPU cards, drive controllers, memory cards, motor drivers, keypads, I/O cards and myriad other projects.
In fact, I still have my OK Industries wire-wrapping gun[0]. I still have pins, sockets, boards, wire, etc. I probably reach for them once every couple of years these days. On those rare occasions when it's the middle of the night or a weekend and I have to wire-up a small board (nothing substantial). It's fast and works well for the right kind of project.
The problem with wire-wrap (and breadboards) is that, once clock frequencies (or frequencies in general in analog designs) rise the capacitive and inductive effects quickly conspire against you and make it impossible to build circuits that work. This is where the OP's approach can provide a bit of a bridge between a full PCB and wire-wrap/breadboard. I have done hand-wired (just like the article) boards with twisted pairs and carefully routed point-to-point connections. I never used magnet wire, just kynar or teflon wire-wrap wire.
[0] Mine is exactly like the one in figure 4 in this article. It works with spools of wire and auto-strips as you wire a board. It is very fast. Not sure why the article shows pre-stripped wire, the tool does the work for you auto-magically. I didn't read the article, maybe they are using a bit that does not strip (why?).
I've seen the opposite as well, and at a high level.
In this case it was an incompetent VP of Engineering who was seriously lacking domain knowledge when a new set of projects outside the norm came into the company. Instead of having a professional attitude, understanding his limitations and convening domain experts to help him and the team move forward, he actively opposed and derailed the project.
What's sad is that we, as external engineering consultants, were yelling at the top of our lungs trying to make management understand the serious liability this had revealed. They were absolutely blind to it until even a toddler could recognize the issue.
This cost the company millions of dollars as well as market reputation.
I think he is an Uber driver now, it's been a few years.
Nice concept, yet, this isn't realistic but for a few special cases.
In simple terms, if a company has a continuum of products of a certain category over time, the designs (hardware, software, manufacturing, testing, etc.) are typically evolutionary in nature.
This means that product B inherits from product A, C from B, etc. When product C goes to market, A and B might be EOL. Open sourcing anything related to product C means relinquishing their intellectual property.
Nobody in their right mind would do that unless a unique set of conditions are in place to have that make sense. In general terms, this does not happen.
> I have a SolidWorks Students License and it's the most frustrating piece of software I have ever used.
Yeah, you need to invest time to learn it. I do understand the frustration when learning something new. I get it. However, your sentiment on this isn't leading to the correct conclusion. A piano or or a guitar are frustrating instruments until you get past a certain level of mastery.
Engineering tools do carry with them a degree of complexity. There are reasons for this. Some are, of course, better than others. I started in the dark ages with AutoCAD, then, over time, learned used ACAD 3D, Inventor, Pro-E, Solidworks, Fusion 360, Onshape, Siemens NX and CAM tools like Camworks and Mastercam; all in professional commercial, industrial or aerospace (NX) settings. I would rank Solidworks way up there in usability and functionality.
Of course, this isn't to say that there are lots of things that could be improved in Solidworks (and all of the CAD/CAM programs I mentioned).
Sometimes online resources like YouTube can feel (and actually be) really disjointed. Get yourself a good book on Solidworks and go through it front to back. At some point it will click. From that point forward it will feel like an extension of your brain. This is no different from learning to play the piano. When I use Solidworks I don't think about the UI, I just work on my designs.
> I've been saying it for ages, but a decent easily available western equivalent to the ESP32 (meaning easy WiFi) needs to happen
- Texas Instruments SimpleLink CC32xx (CC3220 / CC3235)
- TI CC3235MODA module
- Renesas DA16200
- Microchip PIC32MZ-W1
- Microchip WFI32 module family
- Silicon Labs SiWx917 / SiWG917
- Silicon Labs SiWx917Y module
- Nordic Semiconductor nRF7001/7002 WiFi 6 IC
- Use with nRF52, nRF53 or nRF91 series SoCs
- STMicroelectronics STM32 with ST67W series pre-certified WiFi modules
These solutions are priced well for commercial and industrial solutions at scale.
If necessary one can use any cheap hobby solution for initial development and then port to an industrial-class SoC solution. We've done this a few times during pandemic era shortages; using the RP2040 to get through prototyping and development and then switching the design to an industrial-grade chip.
What's missing from these parts which makes people reach for ESP32 by default instead? (I don't have any experience with ESP32.)
The TI parts seem a bit expensive in small quantities, but the Microchip and SiliLabs parts are like $6-7 in single units from Digi-Key. Is it just that the dev kits are in the >$50 price range which puts people off compared to ESP32?
> The TI parts seem a bit expensive in small quantities, but the Microchip and SiliLabs parts are like $6-7 in single units from Digi-Key. Is it just that the dev kits are in the >$50 price range which puts people off compared to ESP32?
It helps to separate hobbyist use from professional product development.
The hobby market is driven by quick, cheap, and easy: low up-front cost, abundant tutorials, and inexpensive dev boards. In that context, ESP32 shines, and expensive dev kits can be a real psychological barrier.
For commercial, industrial, or professional products, however, small-quantity pricing is often irrelevant. Sample or single-unit prices rarely reflect real production costs. Without getting into specifics, it’s common for the ratio between sample pricing and volume pricing to be 10× or more.
A part that costs $20 in onesies can easily be a $2 part at scale. This doesn’t apply universally, but it does mean that judging a device’s suitability for mass production based on Digi-Key single-unit pricing is usually a mistake.
There are also system-level considerations beyond the MCU’s line item price. For example, the RP2040 could be very inexpensive (around $0.50 in modest volumes when we used it), but that ignores the required external flash, which adds cost, board space, and supply-chain complexity. More importantly for many products, it offers no meaningful code security (the external flash can simply be read out—which can be a non-starter in commercial designs).
Guaranteed long-term availability can be crucially important as well; with design support requirements in commercial/industrial settings often extending past ten year timelines.
Tooling and ecosystem maturity also matter. At the time, the RP2040 toolchain was notably hostile to Windows, and Raspberry Pi support reflected that attitude. In reality, most product development (EE, MCAD, manufacturing, test, PLM/ERP) is Windows-centric. Asking an organization to bolt a Linux-only toolchain onto an otherwise Windows-based workflow just to save a dollar on an MCU is rarely a winning argument.
So while cost absolutely matters, it’s often not the dominant factor in professional design. Security, tooling, vendor support, long-term availability, and integration into existing workflows frequently outweigh a few dollars of MCU price, particularly once production pricing enters the picture.
> What's missing from these parts which makes people reach for ESP32 by default instead?
I didn’t directly answer that question before.
Strictly speaking, nothing essential is missing from many of these other parts. In fact, in professional contexts they often have better documentation, support, longevity guarantees, or security features than ESP32.
One of the biggest differentiators is simply pricing strategy. Espressif has used aggressively low pricing (what many would reasonably call predatory pricing) to capture mindshare and market share. That playbook is hardly new; it’s been used successfully across industries for decades. Ultra-cheap silicon, combined with inexpensive dev boards, dramatically lowers the barrier to entry and makes ESP32 the default choice, especially for hobbyists and startups.
Price pressure also creates a feedback loop: more users means more tutorials, libraries, examples, and community support, which in turn makes the platform feel easier and safer to choose, even when alternatives might be technically superior.
For teams operating in cost-driven markets, this can become unavoidable. If your product lives or dies on BOM cost, reaching for the cheapest viable part may not be optional. I spent several years in that environment myself, and while it’s a valid constraint, it tends to push decisions toward short-term cost optimization rather than long-term engineering value.
So the answer isn’t that these parts lack features, it’s that ESP32 combines good-enough capabilities with exceptionally aggressive pricing and a massive ecosystem, which together make it the default choice in many contexts.
> These solutions are priced well for commercial and industrial solutions at scale.
Translation: they're expensive, and getting them working involves jumping through hoops more complex than simply getting boards off Amazon and launching VS Code. They aren't equivalent, and the sneering isn't helping.
It is failing to understand this that opens the door to DJI and Bambu, who unsurprisingly prioritize user experience and predictability, which is a major factor in why in open competition they keep wiping the floor with everyone.
> Translation: they're expensive, and getting them working involves jumping through hoops more complex than simply getting boards off Amazon and launching VS Code. They aren't equivalent, and the sneering isn't helping.
Who's sneering?
Complexity is a relative assessment. Bringing up 8, 16 and 32 bit MCUs/SoC's has never in history been easier. Decades ago we used to have to bring up our boards from nothing, sometimes even having to write our own RTOS, boot code, firmware update code, etc. Today? A high school kid could do it with most chips. Go check out the STM32 Cube ecosystem for a glimpse.
I do understand that this is still likely daunting for hobbyists. I am not talking about arduino-level hobby users. That is not my world at all. However, understand that the commercial/industrial market is orders of magnitude larger than the hobby markets, and the rules and requirements are different.
> It is failing to understand this that opens the door to DJI and Bambu, who unsurprisingly prioritize user experience and predictability, which is a major factor in why in open competition they keep wiping the floor with everyone.
Are you responding to someone else's comment? This has nothing to do with what I was addressing. I am talking about chips, and, in particular, SoC (System on Chip) solutions for WiFi applications. These are components used by engineers to design products. You are talking about finished products. You might as well add blender and microwave oven manufacturers to that list.
You're missing the point: the line between hobbyist and prototype now doesn't exist - there is a continuum where devices are made in single digits, tens of units, and progressively scaled up. This isn't the 80s/90s where you make none or thousands. Even those Amazon made wall socket relay things are ESP based after all.
In this universe the old way of doing things makes no sense.
> Who's sneering?
Your comment was, and you still are like:
> However, understand that the commercial/industrial market is orders of magnitude larger than the hobby markets, and the rules and requirements are different.
In fact the hobby market now has _tougher_ requirements (particularly for software support, which Wifi necessitates) than the commercial and industrial one, and would not tolerate the level of random hacks/erratum that are spat out by the major chip providers.
> You're missing the point: the line between hobbyist and prototype now doesn't exist - there is a continuum where devices are made in single digits, tens of units, and progressively scaled up. This isn't the 80s/90s where you make none or thousands. Even those Amazon made wall socket relay things are ESP based after all.
Yeah, no. Sorry, you don't know what you are talking about.
I've gone from self-funded garage startup to millions of dollars in annual sales twice in my life (> $40MM annual with my current business, targeting 10x that within five years). And, yes, I've also had several truly memorable failures (including going bankrupt).
What you are saying might only align with reality at a trivial business level. Even today. Making ten or a hundred gizmos for Etsy with no concern given to the requirements of real comercial/industrial products? Sure. Anything else, no, you are wrong.
> In fact the hobby market now has _tougher_ requirements (particularly for software support, which Wifi necessitates) than the commercial and industrial one, and would not tolerate the level of random hacks/erratum that are spat out by the major chip providers.
Once again, sorry, you might want to stop, this statement shows just how little you know. There's nothing in hobby-world that even remotely compares to the requirements of commercial and industrial products.
Simple example: Nobody producing hobby products worries about setting someone's house on fire or making a device that interferes with pacemakers.
Please go ask ChatGPT what it costs to obtain UL, FCC, TUV, CE and other certifications for a non-trivial electronic or electromechanical product. Depending on many factors, the number is going to be between $25K and well over $100K.
So, if you are doing it legally and with all safety and other certifications, your cost basis starts at around $25K JUST FOR THE CERTIFICATIONS. If you manufacture 100 units, that would be $250 per unit in regulatory costs. So, how do you sell a hobby gizmo for $10 or $25? Simple, you ignore all of that and just sell it. And if it burns down someone's home, interferes with pacemakers or had other negative repercussions you ignore it, go out of business or whatever.
The millions of Chinese products on Amazon in this category are "fire and forget" products. The manufacturers could not care less what happens or what harm they may cause. There are plenty of stories of cheap USB charge adapters that have caused fires, etc. Certifications obtained in China for these products are mostly fake and cannot be relied upon at all (I have seen some truly horrific things).
BTW, there's nothing wrong with not knowing. We don't know everything, nobody does. What is ill-advised is to behave as though we did know.
One way to look at it is that the hobby market is the domain of a range of people spanning a range from kids to adult tinkerers and enthusiasts. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I was a kid designing and building computers (from bare IC's) before I went to university. The commercial, industrial, medical and aerospace markets are the domain of professionals. There's a vast knowledge, capability, responsibility and requirements gap between those two worlds. One does not negate the other and it isn't sneering to say that hobby products rarely measure up to products designed for other markets.
> Yeah, no. Sorry, you don't know what you are talking about.
"OK". This is why your snark is so easily detectable, you're the one that doesn't see how things have moved on.
> Once again, sorry, you might want to stop, this statement shows just how little you know. There's nothing in hobby-world that even remotely compares to the requirements of commercial and industrial products.
> Simple example: Nobody producing hobby products worries about setting someone's house on fire or making a device that interferes with pacemakers.
Yeah, they do. What do you think the 3D printer community worries about? It's a rapidly moving heating element shooting hot plastic, an inherent health and fire hazard if it goes wrong. If the likes of Bambu got this wrong you would absolutely know about it.
If drone control software crashes what happens? It falls out of the sky on to people.
And here you are coping that 3D printers or drones are easy products to develop in consumer friendly form.
I've worked on tablets and cellphones prototypes (things shipping in tens of millions per model variant) we had burn people in testing because of bugs caused by the usual supposedly reputable manufacturers. You can tell by some of the devices that actually shipped that big corp enthusiasm for risk taking can easily exceed what smaller scale producers will accept, and that to the right people it presents no obstacle to certification.
The Chinese have overtaken the west at actually being good at consumer electronics development, and the denial about this from people is frightening.
If I argue with my wife about medical matters (she is an MD) her response might look or sound snarky to some. In reality, she would be correct in telling me how and why I would be wrong.
You really need to stop, because you are digging a deeper hole with every word. You just said that 3D printers and drone are easy consumer products to develop. You truly do not understand what it takes to develop these products. The vast majority of them are still incredibly unsafe. There's a minority that have greatly enhanced safety. It should not be surprising that the safe systems (with a couple of exceptions) cost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars and address commercial/industrial markets, not hobby. The amount of engineering and testing these systems require is nothing less than massive.
Context: I've been designing, building and flying all kinds of RC planes, gliders, helicopters and multicopters for four decades. I have been designing, building and using 3D printers for over two decades. Our latest 3D printer for internal use is equipped with Teknic Clearpath motors with fully machined structure and parts made on our Haas CNC Vertical Machining Centers.
Again, please, chill, nobody is insulting the hobby world (which you seem to be offended by). These are different worlds. That's how it has been from the start of time. And that's OK.
Here, I'll help you stop. Let's agree to disagree. You are absolutely right and I am wrong.
> You really need to stop, because you are digging a deeper hole with every word. You just said that 3D printers and drone are easy consumer products to develop.
Basically you can't actually read then and are just imagining things to argue with while slinging insults.
I said the exact opposite of what you are claiming - you're the one dismissing the entire hobbyist field, while attempting to deflect otherwise.
I simply started this comment thread to say that there's a substantial, massive, actually, difference between hobby and commercial/industrial products and here you are blowing it up into a fucking ridiculous moronic argument trying to say this isn't true.
The reaction on HN to what just happened in Venezuela is exhausting and revealing. People who have never lived under socialism, communism, dictatorship, or military rule speak with total confidence while dismissing those who have.
More than 8 million Venezuelans have fled their country, one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. They are celebrating. You are being critical. That alone should give pause.
Those condemning this action (and almost defending the oppressors) have never:
- Lived under a dictatorship where dissent leads to prison, torture, rape or disappearance
- Watched the military and police become criminal enterprises
- Seen private property and entire industries seized by the state, as happened under Chávez and Maduro
- Experienced the collapse that follows decades of corruption, repression, and ideological control
Latin America knows this story well. Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Venezuela have followed different paths with the same outcomes: repression, exile, fear, and destroyed civil society. Venezuela didn’t “fail suddenly.” It was dismantled over decades through nationalization, purges, censorship, and military collusion with organized crime.
If you claim to care about migrants, human rights, or the oppressed, you cannot only care after people escape. You cannot oppose every serious attempt to end regimes that jail, torture, and kill their own citizens while calling yourself humanitarian. That is not morality, it’s distance.
Is oil involved? Of course. Venezuela’s oil industry, built with foreign investment, was expropriated, looted, and mismanaged into ruin. But this is also about state-backed criminal networks, narcotrafficking, and regional destabilization that have killed hundreds of thousands beyond Venezuela’s borders.
If you had lived under these conditions, if your family had been broken by fear, disappearance, or exile, you would not be citing abstract “international law” to defend your oppressors. You would be hoping, every night, that someone powerful enough would intervene.
What’s missing here isn’t compassion. It is context.
Before defending dictators from the safety of a functioning democracy, have the self-awareness to ask whether you understand the reality you’re judging. Otherwise what comes through isn’t moral clarity, it’s ignorance dressed up as virtue.
yeah might is right. if you wanna bully citizens like dictators do - now they fear some big bully might come snatch them in the middle of the night like bully does to its citizens
Your comment is completely and utterly disconnected from reality. Venezuelans WANT THIS and have been wanting this for decades.
I lived in Argentina at the time when the military were making people disappear by the thousands, never to be found again. Most commenters on HN have no clue what they are talking about and no context whatsoever.
Give it a few weeks. Maybe a few months, hard to say. You will see people joyfully demonstrating on every street in Venezuela flying both Venezuelan and American flags. Just hold your thoughts and opinions if you can for a a bit of time and you'll see. And, of course, don't get your news from leftist outfits who are angry about a socialist/communist/dictator losing power. You'll be able to watch news directly from Venezuela.
Important point: Venezuela is NOT Iraq or Afghanistan. I've seen people equate events. Again, ignorant. Venezuelans WANT democracy. Latin Americans are culturally and religiously aligned with the west. They want this and they want the socialist-dictatorial nightmare to be over.
As is always the case, most are not thinking past the headlines. Venezuela, once the transition to sanity, rule of law and democracy is completed, is likely to become a major player both in the region and globally.
How?
Well, most go for the obvious: Oil.
That's not it though. Expand beyond that: Energy.
And expand beyond that yet again: Manufacturing.
And yet one more time: AI data centers (which need energy, manufacturing and a stable environment).
Venezuela could become a magnet for investment and development we cannot possibly imagine. This one move by Trump, if executed well, will change the face of the American continent --for the better-- in ways that are hard to imagine today. This is a good moment in history. I hope other nations understand the reign of terror is over and join a coalition to truly make Latin America not only great again, but part of what could become the most powerful association in the world, a new, powerful, integrated and developed American continent. I hope to see this in my lifetime. It would be amazing.
It sounded like a sarcastic comment meaning characterizing the action as unjustified bullying rather than what it was.
The left's position on what just happened isn't only immoral, it is 100% dislocated from the opinion of the 9 million Venezuelans living in the diaspora as well as almost the entirety of those still in Venezuela. The reason I say "almost" is that there's a small layer (politicians, military, etc.) who were making a living or getting rich from the regime that is now evaporating.
Had a few interactions in person over the holidays where the presence of discussion of certain narratives would cause an otherwise normal and talented adult person to almost immediately respond in a repulsive rage.
Yes, that's very much the type of brain virus we've been dealing with for around a decade. Social media did not help. Critical thinking went out the door completely. And the pandemic made is massively worse, driving people into deep dark holes characterized by ignorant resonance with a healthy dose of zero thought given to everything.
Right now you have entire news networks defending --actively defending-- a brutal dictator who exported death in the form of drugs, tortured, jailed and killed his own people. I almost feel like I am watching a primitive primate culture from space driven to rage without a clue or care of where reality lies.
I think this will pass eventually, but it might take another ten years.
I've had the urge/idea to start a maker space in the Los Angeles area on and off for years. My motivation isn't as much as a source for social engagement as much as starting to lay out a path to retirement that will have me busy at a lower level of intensity. My work does have me engaging with thousands of people every year through trade shows and sometimes a dozen trips every year both nationally and internationally.
I own enough equipment to start a very nice maker space with nearly zero cost to outfit the place. What you and the other poster have said is, however, of concern. Have generalized maker spaces died off or turned into something unappealing?
I've had varying ideas about this over the years. I was a mentor for our local FRC (high school robotics) team for about five years. I enjoyed that very much. Yes, my kids were involved. I tried to re-enter that world and was faced with, well, stupid obstacles that very much telegraphed that, at least here, these teams have turned into unappealing political/ideological nightmares --rather than the "let's build cool robots!" feeling from the pre-pandemic era.
One thought was to create a maker space with specific focal activities. Three that come to mind are robotics, auto racing and RC flight. I wonder if that type of focus might mitigate the Etsy crowd effect you mentioned. I have nearly zero interest in having a bunch of people use my Haas CNC machines to mass produce crap for Etsy. One way to mitigate this might be to attach a cost to using the equipment for making anything to sell anywhere. For example, using a Haas VF-2 might cost $200 per hour plus consumables, etc. Not sure if that would work. You could also limit this sort of production-level work to a certain schedule and, maybe, it can only be done by or with staff. Not sure.
The business problem with maker spaces is that the "gym model" didn't work. The gym model is that you pay some fixed fee per month, and don't come very often.
People who bought TechShop memberships showed up too much. Many were using the place as their day job.
There are some successes. Maker Nexus in Silicon Valley pivoted to after-school activities for teens. Humanmade in San Francisco is mostly a job training center, and gets some government funding. There are some library-based maker spaces, but they're mostly basic 3D printing and crafts.
There's also pricing. Techshop started at $100/month and rose to $125 before they went bust. Humanmade is at $250. That's too high for casual users. If you raise the price too much, you mostly have customers who are there all the time, and now you don't have enough capacity.
The financial numbers just didn't work out. Most of the remaining maker spaces have some degree of public financing, as part of a college or work training center.
Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder if a more transactional model might work better.
Perhaps something like FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos). No membership. You go in and you pay to use equipment and resources. Of course, there would have to be levels of qualification someone would have to pass before being allowed to touch certain equipment. I suppose you could have classes (Solidworks, 3D printing, CNC machining, welding, etc.).
Writing that, at some level, it starts to feel complex. I say this in the context of my stated objective, which would be to stay busy at a low stress level after retirement. I am not sure that what I just described fits that model.
There's also a reality most don't want to think about. While, for the most part, dealing with the public is fun and interesting, there's always a very small percentage of people who behave badly. It's the old Tragedy of the Commons story. That's the part that none of us enjoy at all.
Noisebridge was a free, open maker space in San Francisco, and they had too many people just hanging out there. Twice, they had to shut down for over a month, clean out all the crap, and start over. The maker spaces that charge don't have that problem.
At TechShop, the big operational problems were tool deterioration and staff burnout. Tools tended to stabilize at the point where they're just above worn out. The drill bits and milling cutters were dull. The sandpaper on the belt sanders was worn almost smooth. The CNC mill needed a coolant change. The laser cutters had laser systems performing at about 50% of rated power, and you had to halve the feed rate. In a commercial shop, you'd fix things before they got that bad, because you're losing production. The same business logic does not apply to maker spaces.
The staff problem with TechShop was that they paid slightly above minimum wage, which is nowhere near enough to keep people with a broad range of shop skills. The big employee benefit was that you could take classes for free, so it was sort of an apprenticeship program.
Over time, the staff tended to become the ones who couldn't get a job in a real shop.
Those are some of the operational problems you have to beat.
Yeah, this is why I never moved on this idea. There's a lot of potential for it to derail into something that isn't pleasant at all (or self-sustaining/profitable).
That's a really interesting story. Did you really start it with just a single 3D printer? I thought about doing this a few times.
I don't necessarily need it for the social aspect (although I love meeting people), my work has me engaging with people all the time and travelling nationally and internationally 6+ times per year.
In my case, if I had to identify motivation, I would say that I have an interest in attempting to recreate the experience I had for many years as a mentor for our local FRC (high school robotics competition) at an adult level. The other motivation is this idea I have that retirement should not be a passive experience where you go from having a mission and work every day to watching TV and fishing with no purpose in life. I have seen how the latter degrades people and I have zero interest in being a part of that club. I can see a maker space potentially being a way to continue to socialize at some level (even if most of it is somewhat transactional and superficial) and keep busy physically and intellectually.
I own a lot of interesting manufacturing equipment, from multiple 3D printers all the way up to a full Haas industrial CNC vertical machining center, welding, manual machining, etc. In other words, if I contribute all of this hardware, I could start a pretty nice maker space with almost zero investment in tools.
Curious about your experience and, in particular, if there are any negative aspects that you might want to warn against.
I was recently involved with a company that wanted us to develop a product that would be disruptive enough to enter an established market, make waves and shock it.
We did just that. We ran a deep survey of all competing products, bought a bunch of them, studied absolutely everything about them, how they were used and their users. Armed with that information, we produced a set of specifications and user experience requirements that far exceeded anything in the market.
We got green-lit to deliver a set of prototypes to present at a trade show. We did that.
The prototypes were presented and they truly blew everyone away. Blogs, vlogs, users, everyone absolutely loved what we created and the sense was that this was a winning product.
And then came reality. Neither the product manager nor the CTO (and we could add the CEO and CFO to the list) had enough understanding and experience in the domain to take the prototypes to market. It would easily have required a year or two of learning before they could function in that domain.
What did they do? They dumbed down the product specification to force it into what they understood and what engineering building blocks they already had. Square peg solidly and violently pounded into a round hole.
The outcome? Oh, they built a product alright. They sure did. And it flopped, horribly flopped, as soon as it was introduced and made available. Nobody wanted it. It was not competitive. It offered nothing disruptive. It was a bad clone of everything already occupying space in that ecosystem. Game over.
The point is: Technology companies are not immune to human failings, ego, protectionism/turf guarding, bad decisions, bad management, etc.
When someone says something like "I am not sure that's a good idea for a startup. There's competition." My first though is: Never assume that competitors know what they are doing, are capable and always make the right decisions without making mistakes. You don't always need a better product, you need better execution.
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