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Selective Laser Sintering/Melting 3D printer project

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Joshua Dickerson

Wed Jul 15 2015, 04:41AM

Registered Member #54030 Joined: Fri Dec 19 2014, 06:16AM
Location:
Posts: 8

Carbon_Rod wrote ...

@Joshua Dickerson,
The nature of my professional life is isolated from my hobbies,
but I can offer some advice:

* learn how to clearly define a finish line (what you are trying to do) in under 10 seconds. If you can't do this, than there is a 96% probability of failure. i.e. Your video should have had 10 seconds highlighting what the product can do with video proof, than spent the next 20 seconds in showing customers how easy it is to apply to various markets.
* you can't file $30k legal process for pending IP... with nothing unique... it means you have to compete with China labour costs, and due to communist subsidies that is $0 for some companies. Competing for $0/hr is not a business, and hence you'll only have about 2 months of market time.
* if the project does not gain traction, change the message/product/context

The hardest lesson is learning how to fail gracefully:
* mitigate risk, or how many things need to go right for your project to succeed...

* most people don't care about other peoples' problems, because they have problems of their own
(don't take this personally, but try to think about your customers perspective)

Everything you need to know about resource management in 1 page:

Note, this is why I recommended changing your project scope.

Hi Rod,

Thanks for your input. It gives us a better idea of what we're up against. I mean look what you got wrong about us. We're not wannabe entrepreneurs- we actually got interviewed by the majority of top-tier hardware accelerator programs we applied to. So out of thousands of applications, usually they narrow their first round interview pool to about 30. It's probably safe to say the wannabes are successfully weeded out at that point and we usually made it to the second round. We also do have patentable IP, should we choose to go that route but the CEO of SparkFun has doubts to their usefulness that closely mirror our own. It's more a thing investors seem to want, which means we may have to seek them out anyway. In any case, we intend to innovate so rapidly that the copycats will have trouble keeping up. We know how to fail gracefully, but we only give up when the battle is truly over. You won't believe how many battles we won simply by hanging in there one more day. It makes me think we're fighting a perception issue and maybe a PR specialist will help. Your response gives us a pretty good idea of the objections the majority of people in business will bring up. It's in stark contrast with those held by people actively involved in and knowledeable of entrepreneurship. You do have a good point about refining our intro video- we're going to try to get to the point very quickly and spell things out clearly- especially that we frequently employ bootstrapping techniques. It's not a conventional strategy in 3D printing startups, but then again neither one of us are conventional people.

Carbon_Rod

Wed Jul 15 2015, 09:49AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

@Joshua Dickerson
Never assume a title of CEO makes anyone an expert at anything other than lying.
They simply take responsibility for the team under them...

Never assume a VC is actually useful, as most are nothing more than opportunistic lending institutions.
Did they ask you to table your personal assets like your home?
Did they ask you about inventory based rolling credit lines at the bank?

Accelerator groups like to play the numbers, tend to attract people trying to game stock market IPO valuations, and often quickly push-out the principles.

Sparkfun is a large distributer, but tends to repackage already popular parts for the hobbyists.
You need to find sales channels, as a crowd-funding site will dry up fast.

You should check for local tax credits and gov grant programs.

Joshua Dickerson

Thu Jul 16 2015, 02:18PM

Registered Member #54030 Joined: Fri Dec 19 2014, 06:16AM
Location:
Posts: 8

Carbon_Rod wrote ...

@Joshua Dickerson
Never assume a title of CEO makes anyone an expert at anything other than lying.
They simply take responsibility for the team under them...

Never assume a VC is actually useful, as most are nothing more than opportunistic lending institutions.
Did they ask you to table your personal assets like your home?
Did they ask you about inventory based rolling credit lines at the bank?

Accelerator groups like to play the numbers, tend to attract people trying to game stock market IPO valuations, and often quickly push-out the principles.

Sparkfun is a large distributer, but tends to repackage already popular parts for the hobbyists.
You need to find sales channels, as a crowd-funding site will dry up fast.

You should check for local tax credits and gov grant programs.

We try not to assume anything about anybody. I would hazard to say that there are an overwhelmingly large number of CEOs who are great and doing good things for the world, with just a few giving everyone a bad rap. Before approaching someone, we do a lot of research about them before hand from their personal blogs, youtube channel, interview's they've done, articles written about them or by them, you name it. The list goes on. Katie is an amazing judge of character and I've really learned to trust her instincts and impressions. That way we really know what to expect when we approach someone. Of course this strategy won't work when attempting to approach a wider audience- but in a way it's really good because we learn so much this way, especially about people. The VCs we've approached don't ask for anything whatsoever- we can't even get them to ask more questions about our printer our business. I suppose startup accelerators have a bad rap right now, too. I would say their biggest failing is that they no longer appear to be changing the world. With record number of applicants, they're free to cherry pick the lowest hanging fruit, instead of really help the ones that would benefit from the program. The odds right now are tipped in favor of benefiting the accelerator the most- the people that get in right now probably don't need the help as much and they're giving up equity for a relatively small contribution. Still, I think they're really good for promoting entrepreneurship.

And for the record, I think Sparkfun is one of the best things to ever happen to the hardware space- and this is coming from someone who's progressed further than just a hobbyist. They do so much more than just repackage things- they make it incredibly accessible in so many ways. My wife and I have used many of their products in countless projects and even the printer itself.

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