Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: hardware

  • Pivoting the business of speakers

    Pivoting the business of speakers

    Today I had the opportunity to tour the Santa Barbara headquarters of smart speaker manufacturer Sonos. I’ll be writing up a some more detailed accounts of some of the interesting things this fascinating company does.

    One thing particularly interesting thing about Sonos is how it was established by four veterans of the original dot com era who had no experience in audio hardware or technology but had a vision of how they would like the stereo system of the future to look like.

    That vision hasn’t come without change for the company, the shift to streaming has meant Sonos itself has had to pivot away from its original business model which entailed layoffs for the fast growing company last year.

    How Sonos is navigating that shift, along with fostering a culture of openness and innovation is an interesting story that I’ll be telling over the next few weeks. In the meantime, my head is spinning from information overload.

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  • The Internet of Things runs ahead of standards

    The Internet of Things runs ahead of standards

    A week or so ago we reported why LogMeIn’s CEO, Bill Wagner, wasn’t interested in participating in the Internet of Things industry groups as they are too bureaucratic and slow in a fast moving sector.

    Last week I asked John Stewart, Cisco’s Chief Information Security Officer, about how the networking giant thinks about this attitude given Cisco is a key member of a number of IoT standards groups.

    Stewart’s view is nuanced, “the notion of open operability versus standards is where the world needs to be. We’ve been pushing this notion of open interoperablity knowing that standards might take longer but yet you don’t want to create these islands of operational capabilities that need to be stitched together in weird ways. That would add friction to the world.”

    “There’s not much room for non-interoperable systems as they would have to connect with something else,” Stewart added.

    In this, Cisco’s Stewart agrees with Ericsson’s Esmeralda Swartz who believes device diversity will beat vendor’s attempts to lock customers into their IoT platforms.

    While it may be true that industrial and smartcity technologies will be interoperable in order to work within complex systems, it’s highly likely many consumers devices will be locked into proprietary systems so vendors can monetize them.

    For consumers, users and citizens the questions of interoperability and standards are going to be a pressing question as connected devices become common and in some cases unavoidable.

     

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  • Reverse financing a manufacturing revolution

    Reverse financing a manufacturing revolution

    Nano Dimensions may not have shipped a product since it was founded in 2012 but is worth $49 million dollars and was Israel’s best performing tech stock last year reports Bloomberg Business.

    It’s not surprising that Nano Dimensions has caught the imagination of investors, the company was founded in 2012 to develop advanced 3D printed electronics, including printers for multilayer PCBs (printed circuit boards) and the nanotechnology-based inks those machines rely upon.

    Should the technology prove successful, the application of those printers in fields like rapid prototyping is immense. The company speculates their devices may even get RFID tags down to the magical one cent figure which opens may opportunities in industries like logistics and retail.

    In a GeekMe profile of the company last June, the writer even speculated Nano Dimensions could be heralding a disruption to the electronics industry similar to that the music industry faced when home users could burn their own CDs and stream music.

    While that – and the speculation that 3D printing of electronic devices will kill Chinese manufacturing – may be some way off, it isn’t hard to see the potential of this technology.

    The Israeli aspect of the Nano Dimensions story is interesting as well, with the company receiving a $1.25 million investment from the country’s office of the chief scientist after it was reverse listed onto the local stock market by taking over a moribund company.

    For countries like Australia, Canada and the United States which are likely to have many moribund small mining and energy on their stock markets in coming years, such reverse listings may be an opportunity to spark their tech sectors with fresh capital and talent.

     

    While Nano Dimensions is still very a speculative venture, the company illustrates a number of possibilities for 3D printing, electronics, the Israeli tech industry and the future of fund raising at a time when the Silicon Valley venture capital model seems to be under stress.

    Another fascinating aspect of Nano Dimensions is that it’s one of the new breed of hardware startups, a field that until recently was dismissed as ‘too hard’ by most tech investors. Overall, the Israeli businesses an interesting company to watch for many of the aspects it touches upon.

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  • Founder therapy and Smiley curves – the tough world of hardware startups

    Founder therapy and Smiley curves – the tough world of hardware startups

    There’s no doubt building a hardware startup is hard, whether it’s sensor networks, smart lights or home automation hubs getting physical products to the market is far tougher than launching an online service or app.

    In a light industrial part of San Francisco’s Inner Mission district, the Highway One incubator is one of the initiatives looking at helping entrepreneurs bring their ideas to market.

    “Our goal is to help hardware startups scale faster,” says Brady Forrest the director of Highway One. “We turn prototypes into products. People come here with an idea and we make sure they can implement it, we bring a lot of design best practices and engineering best practices and make sure they are being honest with themselves.”

    “I also end up conducting a lot of founder therapy.”

    The selection process

    Getting onto the four-month program is competitive with applicants being subjected to a rigorous vetting process, “they fill out a double page application, send in a video of them telling their story and then a video of them using a prototype.”

    “Then we start to talk with some business analysts to check the market sizes, competitors and then we go to an engineering review to check the team has the technical chops and that prototype is what they say it and that it’s achievable.”

    Once on the program the course is an intense immersion on building a product with access to a prototyping lab, support services and a 10-day trip to Shenzhen, China, to learn about global manufacturing.

    The Shenzhen link is important as Highway One is part of PCH International, an Irish company born out of founder Liam Casey’s case work in sourcing Chinese manufacturers. This Fortune magazine profile of Casey and PCH describes how deeply embedded the company is in global supply chains.

    Want investors want

    At the end of the incubator process is a pitch day before potential investors. Right now Forrest says, “I think investors want to de-risk as much as possible. Right now hardware is so expensive and it’s higher risk. Yet in a lot of ways it’s easier in a lot of ways for people to know what they’re getting.”

    smiling_curve

    Part of the challenge in funding hardware startups lies in financing the fabrication phase of the product’s development. Forrest cites the ‘Smiley Curve’, originally described by Acer founder Stan Shih, where the value added is at the beginning and ends of the cycle.

    “The VC’s don’t like to fund the build part, one nice thing for startups is that they can get manufacturers will take on the build part so they don’t have to seek funding for working capital”

    Hardware’s next wave

    For investors, this makes funding hardware startups easier for investors. “It’s still not easy though,” Forrest warns. “It’s become harder for hardware startups to raise new rounds, so they have to watch their burn.”

    While at the moment a lot of the focus is on wearables and the IoT, Forrest sees the Federal Drug Administration’s new rules on medical accessories changing the sort of devices being pitched to the program.  “I now think we’re moving into a new field where the devices will have an effect on the body. The FDA’s new rules around making it easier to make things around FDA approved devices will open that.”

    He’ll find out soon what the next big thing is in hardware startups as applications for Highway One’s May 2016 round of participants is now open.

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  • How long can Intel continue to beat the street?

    How long can Intel continue to beat the street?

    Earlier today chip maker Intel beat analysts’ estimates with an earnings report showing  the company’s income hadn’t fallen as much as expected in the previous quarter.

    As Business Insider explained before the earnings call, Intel’s numbers aren’t look good ahead of the rollout of Windows 10.

    In the past, a new version of Windows has been the time many customers upgraded their PCs with Intel and other computer component makers being the beneficiaries.

    With this version of Windows Microsoft are giving it away free to users of Windows 7 and 8 which means the rush of upgrading customers is going to be subdued compared to previous occasions.

    For Intel, the Internet of Things should be the big opportunity in the post PC world but smart devices require low powered chips rather than the more power hungry chips the company excelled in supplying for desktop computers.

    At the moment Intel seems to be focusing on the data centre market that may well be a suitable market for power hungry CPUs but is still very much leaving the company isolated from the bulk of the industry which will increasingly demand ultra low powered chips.

    For Intel, like Microsoft, the struggle for now is to keep relevant in a dramatically shifted marketplace.

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