From idea to gadget. The story of a startup. Part 2

What is the difference between the development of a device to order and the development of its own product?

At first glance - it may seem that nothing at all, just the rights to the product in the second case remain with you, well, and you pay for the development yourself.

In fact, the difference is colossal!
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What is it like - to combine an engineer and a huckster-speculator entrepreneur when developing a technological product? How not to go crazy and finish the job?
The story continues - under the cut.

So what's the difference?

When you create a device to order - in some form you have a technical task, a stipulated budget and terms. You have one single task - to make a product, within the agreed budget, technical specifications and deadlines. If you create your own commercial product - you set your TK yourself, you also determine the budget and terms.

And this is where the most interesting begins - the struggle between the development department and the commercial department inside your head. Fight for your most important resources - your attention and time. The engineer inside will try to make the product as good as possible, shout “it’s impossible for you”, prove that this feature is the most important, etc.

The entrepreneur will reduce the budget, change the terms of reference, constantly rush, say, "yes, you forget about it - just a fake." Staying sane and at the same time releasing a product is still a challenge.

Why am I writing all this?

In our country, as it is not customary, you ***** want to share success, for some reason it is generally accepted to share bile, negative. If you post photos in the social network in the West - if the photo is good - they will write you that the photo is good, if it is bad - then they will not write anything. In Russia, if a good photo is written, that shit will give you some expert advice, if it’s bad, you may have to delete your account) It seems that everything is bad everywhere, hopelessness, wringing out businesses, crisis, nothing to do, it is necessary to throw, etc ...



I do not yet have super results, I need to learn a lot, a lot to do. But I think that I did enough to “say in charge of the bazaar”: “In Russia, you can and should make your own products! And right now is the golden time for this. If at least one person can be torn away from the sofa, sending expert advisors away and doing something - I did not waste a few hours of my sleep.

The focus of my story will be shifted to the business side, most of you are cool specialists in your fields, and you know perfectly well how to do something from the technical side. I would like to share my experience - how to do something in order to sell it later, preferably to more than one person.

So, let's begin

I developed - as mentioned in the first part - an altimeter for parachuting.
To choose one of a million of your “ideas for a million” you need to stop deceiving yourself and ask yourself a simple question: “Would I have bought this thing for myself / my wife / mother, would I buy this price?” If you are honest enough, most of your ideas at this stage will fall off. You can not sell cars for 10 million, if you drive a Zhiguli - you can not make a product in a million, if you do not think in a million and are not ready to solve questions for a million.
Go down from heaven to earth and look around you - what you can do for yourself and your environment.

About parachutes

Not everyone jumps with a parachute - so I will bring a little up to date. The height of the parachutist needs to know at all stages of the jump - the minimum height of leaving the side, the height of separation from the aircraft will be determined by it on the plane. In the fall - the height at which you need to fly apart before the opening of the parachutes, the height of the opening of the parachute. Piloting a parachute is like landing an aircraft without engines - you need to build an approach for certain control points and get on the desired glide path the first time - the opportunity to cut in an afterburner and go to the second round is not. In general, the altimeter thing for the skydiver is mandatory and very important.

What is on the market

At that moment there were 2 main types of devices on the market:

- Inaccurate, but inexpensive mechanical devices (5-9 thousand rubles).
- Quite accurate, sophisticated, but expensive electronic (20-25 thousand rubles).

In the photo below there are both - I (satisfied with the life of a student - a rogue) - mechanical. A friend who keeps me - top-end digital.



My salary was then ~ 80k, 70k was spent on jumping from them, and in order to buy myself a digital altimeter, I would not have to eat for 2-3 months. A precision on the landing is not enough. I thought - why is there no intermediate option - not as tricked as the top digital one, with basic functionality, but at a price closer to the mechanical one?

Since I didn’t want to believe that I had opened a new niche and no one had done it before me. He began to study why this is not - he came to the conclusion that, in fact, manufacturers in this segment are rather small companies, and that most of them live on what they did at the very beginning and modify it a little. Big companies are not interested in this market. That is, this market was created by ordinary guys - enthusiasts, and it is quite possible that they simply didn’t get around to such a product, so what’s the worse for me?

Concept

So - the price segment is determined - much cheaper than 25k, but a bit more expensive than 7k, that is - digital accuracy at the price of mechanical. Since the device initially implies one function in itself - the measurement of height - you need to throw out all unnecessary from it.

The engineer inside at this stage begins to protest fiercely - “how did you get down to tamagotchi ?!”, you did a device on the FPGA, a dozen different controllers, you know, DSP, you need to be better than everyone else!

At that time, I replied to him, “you still will not sell your device either for 20k or 15k, simply because no one knows you — we’ll better do what they’ll buy, and then we’ll show the world what we can do.”

• So - just a simple functional - many buttons are not needed - ideally, leave one - on / off. With a single button, we will borrow the control algorithm from the manufacturers of insuring devices.
  
  
• Once its main function is to measure the height, we make large numbers and remove the buttons from the front panel — why should we look at them all the time?
  
  
• I always strained when at the most inopportune moment the battery sits down and you have to run through underground passages to look for it - we do it on the battery.
  
  
• Which connector to use? Well, there are always heaps of gooproshek on the airfield - so there is always a miniUSB cable, and it is more reliable mechanically.
  
  
• How to attach to the body? Tying to one type of attachment - losing many segments of parachutists, it is necessary to make universal - we will borrow the idea from other manufacturers.
  
  
• Once there is a USB - God himself ordered to upgrade the firmware. It will be possible to complement the functionality and lay yourself straws in case of undetected bugs during testing.

He blindfolded the paper model, held it in his hands, turned on the fantasy and realized that this was what was needed.

Prototype

It is a responsible business, I will develop a constructive for a long time, because I have never made finished products, so I need a working prototype in the field to test the software, the more time I test, the better.

I corrected the fee with Lut, took the display that was, the sensor, the SD card so that the logs could be written in raw form, it was all soldered, well, that's what happened.

Constructive

Following the example of dear Steve - “Design first”. The design gives technical specifications for constructive, and not vice versa. It is not so easy to do this when all my life I have been making a payment according to the principle, as it will turn out, then I will stick it in a heat shrink. Arguing with yourself is something else.

Here the main thing is to find something to make a start from - first you need to determine the dimensions - no more than competitors. Smaller than the size of the display, the length and width cannot be done - by 1.5mm for walls + tolerances - the length and width are determined.

What about the thickness? Protective polycarbonate + clearance + display + backlight + board + connector + 1mm bottom - less than this thickness will not work.




The engineer grins - “he rolled it up like a lip — he also had to push the battery, and you had a button, tantalum capacitors, the sensor still needed to leave a gap”. So you have to redo the board, find a low profile button - even an extra millimeter in thickness - and the device looks disproportionate, awkward (to understand this - glued several models out of paper) - you need to look for an option to make it thinner. So - what if all the high components are moved to the USB connector line? Then the battery will perfectly fit flush with the usb connector and there will be enough capacity.

Release

In the end, everything was done, dopilivatsya, tested. 3D models were printed, 0.1mm was driven in there, 0.1 here. Added new features in the software. Trips from Dolgoprudny to the industrial zone in Altufyevo by public transport behind a sheet of polycarbonate, then all the same public transport to Lyubertsy for cutting and printing, in order to understand what the result was complete crap and you need to change both the material and the processing method, and the way print, but what is unknown.

But then in the end it turned out this:



By the way, the photos were made in a lightcube of shit and sticks. Even the photoshop was not particularly necessary - manual adjustment of the white balance on the model, closed aperture, minimum ISO shutter speed for a few seconds - the first selling pictures of the product are ready.

If you really want to - you can always find a solution to do well, even with a minimum of resources.


Well, on the hands of a pilot batch of altimeter, a couple gave to friends - potestit, a couple left for sale, but here's the problem - where to get money for the first batch? Credit? Investments? Well, I waited until it was decided by itself, and even there a couple of moments needed to be finalized in the firmware ...

So - you can wait and modify it forever - if you have at least some product that you are ready to buy - sell, do not pull the cat by the eggs . This is the most important moment when the entrepreneur inside has to shout at the engineer, snatch the product out of his hands and say - we’re selling everything, then we’ll see.

Where to get money

At the same time, I (on the recommendation of the director from my last work) began to watch the training videos “business of youth” (which I, by the way, used to be hated and considered charlatans), and found there many solutions to my problems.

The main thing that I learned - if there is no product in stock - it does not mean that you do not need to sell. Your main investor is a client, if the product is good, he will pay for it in advance, the main thing is to make the right offer. The stereotypes inside said “Yes, who in Russia will make an advance payment, but why be dishonored ..” and like that.

At one point, I said to myself, “Well, they won't kill you for the post on VKontakte! If you try - maybe 2 options, if I continue to do nothing - one that you - you will bury 2 years of work because you are afraid? ”.

He estimated the time it would take to make the devices, multiplied it by 2 (and still broke the deadlines). I wrote a post on VKontakte - I presented a product, good photos, I said that there are no devices, but after 2 months, those who are ready to make an advance payment will receive it - they will receive 30% cheaper karma. A week later, it was about 250k for the first batch.

Insight pair

• As it turned out - a beautiful site in general at the initial stage does not matter, do the evening on the designer, the main thing are good photos. And so - do not waste time - it does not increase your sales, better focus on social networks.
• Trust people more - people are mostly good.
• The ability to focus is more important than talent. I used to do a bunch of different cool and complex pieces, but I never brought them to the product due to lack of focus. Enthusiasm will subside when you make 70% - you can finish off 30% to the result only by being able to focus - no communication, no friends, no social networks - nobody is there, just a goal
• The moment “well, everything is ready, now we are rowing the loot” - it does not come, get a buzz from the process.
• The crisis situation is good for you - imported prohibitively expensive - it is easier to enter the Russian market. It is also profitable to export - in the West, people consider money and take a good product with a good price with pleasure.
• Do not be afraid to sell, do not be afraid to declare about yourself - because you are so good with a good product, but nobody knows about it - you do bad things for everyone.
• Do not be afraid to make commitments (and be responsible for their violation) - you will develop, pack up, stumble, but you will not stand still.