- Intros
Mortiz, Bengt, Chiu, Andre, Ryan, Greg, Jenny, Harold, Kaspar, Julian, Al Edwards
Greg’s not very complete notes -->
Greg, Ryan: Small companies with low volume (like Ryan and Greg) can’t really effectively do the process of manufacturing and sales. That would let us get hte talent that’s qualified to do it well. Also, it’s the nature of our space that most things are low volume, so combining them. Also, from a marketing perspective, we can co-marketing many products at the same time.
Chiu: Biggest problem they had to do themselves - the machine is too large, so in the end their key is: 1) supply chain (good, consistent, effective sourcing), 2) who’s going to assemble the finished product, 3) QC QC QC!!!
Bengt: building testing and QC jigs to automate tests. Keep serial numbers, etc. etc. Never rely on a single source for a component.
Andre: Tech aspect is pretty easy… but what we’re not good at is the other stuff. Marketing for example, branding, etc. So we should spend our time talking about the things we don’t like to talk about!!!
Is it a good idea to have distributed manufacturing for small - mid scaled products? Help bridging the gap. Are folks interested in that?
Bengt: maybe we only need to collaborate on marketing + branding, but let folks do their own assembly.
Ryan: it can be a sliding scale - like sparkfun does.
Al: for his project, he’s interested in manufacturing, distribution, and branding etc.
Jenny: for bioreactor project, interested in manufacturing, distribution, branding etc. Has a half time MBA marketing person. Also, there’s also just freelancers and knowledge of who to call
Andre: uses freelancers, then it works well.
Greg: so Andre and Jenny, if you already have marketing components down, is there value
Andre: We can do common marketing campaigns.
Greg: What about
Jenny:
Chiu: startups are emotional. Different stages are different problems.
Standardize the manufacturing processes, advertising process, structure, even if things aren’t
share freelancers who have good skills.
standard ways to ingest a new project - tutorial formats, assembly formats, etc.
Actionable steps:
Create a document describing the specific toolchain (software, hardware, information management systems, etc.) we would like to use for new hardware projects. So that includes assembly instructions, tutorials, branding (icons, art, web design), sales + website, distribution, and marketing. Greg will start an editable wiki post with an outline, and we can go from there.
Greg + Ryan: make reflectometers, drop bots, open flexure, maybe spikelings
Andre: 1 person company, service, provisioning company for spikelings. Create standard documentation system for these things.
- Other ideas that may connect.
Jenny + distributed enzyme production
Al has an individual product
Andre is interested, has a new company