Last Thursday on June 25th, the East Bay Hardware Startups held their monthly meetup in San Pablo at their brand new community center. It was sponsored by Berkeley Sourcing Group, and Solidcon.
This month’s presentation was given by Greg Fisher, the CEO of Berkeley Sourcing Group. Greg recently returned from a six week speaking tour in China and Japan to share what he saw going on around the globe in the hardware space. Upon his return, he gave that same presentation to our members: “The Big Picture and Lessons Learned for Hardware Startups.”
Some of the big questions he addresses are: why hardware is hard, why most fail, and what are the necessary ingredients to succeed. Our takeaway was people don’t often consider how complex running a Hardware Startup is. There are many factors that go into running one and more often than not, a solid team with the right experience is needed to make it work.
He also spoke about the big picture of running hardware startups and how the four main drivers are Marketing, Design, Funding and Manufacturing. Marketing has to drive everything. The question of what the market desire for your product is fundamental, and must be addressed before the other three are considered.
Lastly, Greg spoke about the different products BSG supported in bringing to market. The key takeaways were:
- Be Ready to Pivot
- Complex Products Take Time
- Be Prepared for Manufacturing
- Consider Customization and B2B
- Niche Markets are Great for Startups
Leslay Choy of the San Pablo Economic Development Corporation also came by to thank the East Bay Hardware Meetup for hosting its event in their new community center. She shared the EDC’s mission of educating and training the workforce and business community as well as their future plans of getting into manufacturing.
If you missed the presentation or are interested in more information, we will be posting a video of the presentation; please keep an eye out for it!
Each month, the East Bay Hardware Startup Meetup puts on these events to allow hardware entrepreneurs to network, make valuable connections and hear a hardware industry expert speak about an interesting topic or problem that hardware startups might have.
The OReilly Solid Conference is a 3 day conference, where the new multi-disciplinary community forming around the convergence of software and hardware engineers, researchers, roboticists, artists, developers, designers, founders of startups, and innovators—will gather to explore what lies ahead as software increasingly interacts with the physical world.
