WakeMate: The Home Stretch
blog.wakemate.com
blog.wakemate.com
January 22, 2010: "We've tentatively planned for the first batch of WakeMates to be shipped as early as next month."
March 11, 2010: "the first run of units will go out on March!"
March 31, 2010: "This is the last day of Q1 and we will be shipping out the first units today." (Maybe they did ship out a few? but I was a very early pre-order and didn't get one...)
April 1, 2010: "The next batch of units will ship no later [sic] July 30, 2010. Based on your pre-order date, you should expect your WakeMate no later than 07/30/2010, but probably significantly sooner. This is a conservative estimate; we want to provide you with a firm date. We are confident we can deliver many orders sooner and will continue working night and day to ship yours as soon as possible."
July 20, 2010: "We may not hit the July 31st date at this point, but we’ll come close. We’ll post an updated ship date (measured in days or weeks at worst, not months) when we have a better idea of when it will be"
I realize we're not talking about a mission-critical product here. But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.
> But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.
You've probably never built a product before. It's not that Wakemate is "not living up to it", it's that they're thinking, "My God, this was supposed to be out two months ago. Okay, what's the worst case scenario? Four months? No way it can take more than four months. Okay, let's tell people four months and plan to get it out in two months."
All kinds of shit goes wrong when you're building a new product. Now, if you'd said "be more realistic" or "be more pessimistic" or "get better at estimating", I guess I'd agree with you sort of. But one thing they can't do is "live up to it" by willpower - these are young entrepreneurs trying to get their product out and it's a parade of trivial things are stopping them from doing so. At least, that's what I'm guessing, having built stuff before. I promise, they're trying and feeling about 10,000 times more neurotic and disappointed than any cool exterior would show.
> But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.
Nobody stood over them and forced them to make strongly-worded promises about firm shipping dates. They chose to use those words.
They had missed multiple ship dates in the past; they were certainly well aware of the gravity and customer backlash of making promises they couldn't keep. They were also certainly aware that this would take an order of magnitude longer than they thought. Instead of saying "We're sorry, we have no idea when we will ship these", they decided to make an announcement that they would absolutely positively ship me my product by that date, if not sooner.
Also, that authentication chip was probably a major headache.
Imho, they have some pretty good reasons for the delay. They don't have the manpower that a large company has to put onto sudden disasters like this.
WakeMate wasn't, so they shouldn't have worded things that strongly. Never underestimate the number of things that can go wrong.
Edit: Get the name right, idjit
There is no doubt that their overall communication strategy is a bit "rough".
I'm always surprised and bit disappointed at the beating people give these guys here. This is a community of tech entrepreneurs who know how unbelievably difficult it is to ship product and a run a start up. I'm not suggesting everyone should get a free pass. I'm all for pointed thoughtful criticism but the verbal beatings seem unwarranted.
It seems the HN community is all too eager to shoot their wounded.
If not, is the monitoring device removable so I can fasten it to my own elastic wristband? I'm thinking along the lines of a FitBit style component that I can clip to my LiveStrong bracelet?
Luckily, there probably won't be a significant amount of summer left once we get the thing.
How hot the wristband gets was initially one of my main concerns. I haven't had any issues with heat or sweating while wearing mine.
which is still on their site..Is nothing like the final shipping product
http://blog.wakemate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wristban...
I would say its a multiple of degrees less 'designed' or 'professional' ...
I still want my pre-order as long as it will ship working with android.
p.s. You need to use your current iteration on your homepage photo; cause the one you have on there now and your current iteration have very very low correlation imho.
Overall it is a much more comfortable wristband and a much better user experience.
While the original may have been a little "flashier" we did not want to sacrifice UX for looks, especially when you are only going to be wearing this to bed.
As for our homepage - we need to get the final version of the wristband photographed and then we will be implementing a full design change of our homepage.
I'd still like to buy a WakeMate, once it's proven itself, but I'm rather glad I didn't pre-order.
Is this why there is a dearth of iPhone/iPad accessories? How much can they talk about their experiences given the fact that the protocol is under an NDA?
I'm also really interested to know what was learned about working with Apple on a hardware interface.