In the emerging world of IoT, crowdfunding often leads entrepreneurs in classic pitfalls while scaling their idea out of school project mode.
Many of the products trying to hop on the technological market today are issued from crowdfunding platforms (Indiegogo, Kickstarter and others). Of course, these platforms create new space for out-of-the-box ideas, for proofing concept and products, as well as to find the ultimate targets, features and, of course, funding for their product.
Once a group of entrepreneurs creates a successful campaign, this is where a vast majority of them make their first mistake: “Let’s make the product now! I have a brother-in-law that has been fiddling with technology, he’s a clever guy.”
This business decision, unfortunately, becomes and remains the Achilles’ heel of the final product.
This great friend or brother-in-law will focus on building a working product while the critical questions are in many cases forgotten. Answering these questions would have avoided that a good value product stays in school project mode and failing to answer even one of the following questions drives many entrepreneurs to redesign their product repeatedly. Here are the critical questions inexperienced people will forget to ask:
- Are the selected electronic parts cost-effective for mass production?
- What is the availability of these parts now and for years to come?
- Does the product need to meet standards (Bluetooth, CSA, CE, UL or any safety standards)?
- Are the certification fees part of the development budget?
- Does the budget include the right steps (pilot, test, certification, and others)?
- Is the product designed for sustainability and maintainability? Creating a product with a processor software code that is not re-programmable is the same as shipping a brick to your customers.
- What is the product development road map?
- Can a patch over a patch become a system architecture?
If an entrepreneur forgets to answer one of these questions, it will be like the Groundhog Day.
Redoing the product from the ground up is most of the time the only way out of this loop. Here’s my small piece of advice: avoid the sweet brother-in-law and contact us, redoing products is now our full-time job:
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