- Alex Bodell, CTO
First, this is a post inspired by & is in response to 7 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HARDWARE STARTUPS by Will Ahmed @ Whoop.
I love to build things. This trait defined me in high school, led me to a Master's in mechanical engineering, and has been at the center of every company & project that I have worked on in my professional career. The truth is, my love for building new things (through new companies), has not made for an easy career. Will Ahmed said it best “It’s hard to understate the difficulty of the v1 launch of a consumer hardware company.”
Below are my 7 learnings so far:
1) Make your own first prototype. If you can’t print it, cut it, glue it, drill it, etc. it’s going to be very difficult to iterate fast, and very easy to delay testing your product’s hypothesis. People tend to focus on manufacturing scale, industrial design, connectivity, way before they know something has the chance of working. You will be shocked at what you can learn from a few basic tools and an Amazon cart filled with breakout boards.
In the case of FormaPath, we started looking for cancer positive lymph nodes with a 3 inch section of steel pipe. It looked terrible, but it was enough for a pathologist to press tissue, test the hypothesis, and give us a positive sign to keep going.
2) Stay focused. Now that you’ve learned you can build fast, it’s tempting to conquer all of your ideas. An idea that works on a bench is a long way away from a product ready for general release. Staying dedicated to one idea is tough, but will result in your idea making it to the world.
3) Know when to call ‘pencils down’. At some point, there are too many prototype iterations. Your development never has to be finished, but if you want your product to support your business, you do need to ship. Your first version will not be perfect, but you will learn fast if other people see the same value / potential as you. Being able to pause development for outside feedback is crucial.
4) Stay close to home (at first). It’s tempting to work with people all over the country & world. Your early users are key to understanding broader reception of your product. Being able to interact with them in person is immensely valuable. If you ship far and wide, you’ll spend more time traveling than working with your customers.
5) Listen Listen Listen. Remember, you’re building a product for others, not just yourself. It’s easy to talk at early users and dismiss objections. When you receive critical feedback, it can be quite painful. But understanding the source and evaluating if you can (and should) make changes, leads to great products.
6) Invest in yourself. A big mistake I made early on was thinking that I should only work with contract manufacturers. They are the experts, they can help me grow. This put my development on other people's timelines & cost structure. If you want to build products, invest in learning how you can do as much as possible on your own. It may not be pretty, but if you need to get it done by tomorrow, you at least have the choice to stay up all night.
7) Build for purpose and impact. Times will get tough. When you build products with purpose, you (and your team) can point to a higher mission to keep on pushing. Healthcare is a perfect example of this. Very difficult to work within, but if you're successful, you can change a person's life.
An example of build for purpose at FormaPath is using our technology to find cancer positive lymph nodes that were missed on manual dissection. It’s a discrete proof point that our technology can add value to a patient’s pathology report. This result is what has driven me to grow the company in good and tough times.
If you’re building a product company, I hope you crush it! But be warned, creating new things is addicting, you may find yourself asking one day “why do I keep doing this?”