Hacker News Reader

Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Is there a single startup success story in the consumer hardware space? The best case scenario is to exist long enough to get a billion dollar exit from a major tech company, who will then immediately gut parts of your product that don't support their own business goals. The more likely one is to be sold for parts (like Pebble) or just cease to exist entirely.

It is sad that there is so much innovation being left on the table in that space because the market simply doesn't allow it.

View on HN

You have to look outside of mass-market consumer products.

The problem with mainstream tech is that it's a race to the bottom. Consumers have extremely high expectations for both the product and the ongoing support. Only the biggest companies can afford to amortize the R&D costs across enough units to compete.

Step into niche hardware and hobbyist domains and there are small companies everywhere. The smaller markets are too small for big companies to play in and the users are savvy enough that they're willing to pay for high margin products instead of picking whatever is cheapest at Best Buy.

We're not there yet, but we're trying :)

Some other companies that are tracking towards sustainable success that we look at are:

* Oura

* Wyze

* Peloton (though they made some growth mis-steps)

All three of those follow a subscription model to get off of the "‘consumer electronics’ release cycle" that Eric calls out in his post. That's not the model that we're following, but we do have an alternate strategy to avoid falling into that same trap.

Also I think these three companies founders are not typical SV founders but have like strong executive background from Amazon, Nokia and Barnes & Nobles.

Wyze isn't doing so hot, after just forcing everyone onto a subscription to maintain the functionality they thought was included with the product they purchased. To their credit, they let you 'subscribe' at $0/mo, but the pressure to pay was quite strong. They also didn't message it well — my brother got email warnings, but I (a longtime customer) received none.

> We're not there yet, but we're trying :)

Thank you for trying! You have an amazing product and provided much needed innovation in this space.

(Written from my Framework Laptop)

I'm surprised to see Oura mentioned here as a success. They don't have a single customer currently paying for a subscription (everyone would still be within the six month free trial) and haven't released most of the features included in their subscription offering. It's doubtful that most of their users would pay for the subscription.

The feedback was presumably so bad that their CEO left the company less than two months after the announcement of the new product and subscription model.

- Home Security systems

- Thermostats (nest, ecobee)

- Home wi-fi (eero)

- Sonos

- I think Whoop and Oura will get there

- Beats headphones

Problem is, there are plenty that don't get headlines because a single-product category company isn't going to generate profits like a conglomerate like P&G. You also can't simply just throw tech into every product category.

A lot of these IoT applications (home security, thermostats) feel like they're re-inventing the wheel over and over again, without any one providing any major benefits over the other - for one, they all want to sell you a subscription to your face, and sell your data behind your back.

I have been doing some covert market testing of IoT devices that are pay-up-front and offer privacy as a feature. Nobody is biting. The market doesn't seem to mind surveillance if they get a discount.

What about teenage engineering. Though it's kind of niche?

For those who have not heard about Teenage Engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Engineering with their primary product being OP-1 synthesizer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Engineering_OP-1

> Is there a single startup success story in the consumer hardware space?

Epiphan Video ([1], [2])? They are fairly successful at selling their hardware to video streamers (both, b2c and b2b). They didn't do IPO as there was no pressure to do so - they primarily bootstrapped themselves. It's not a well-known story, but the market did allow them to exist & succeed.

1. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/epiphan-video

2. https://obj.ca/article/techopia/kanata-based-epiphan-videos-...

Apple is not doing too bad. It has a $2.8 trillion market cap, and is the most valuable company in the world. Started in a garage.

What is success to you? If success means customer success and probable longevity of the company (and growth and valuation are secondary factors) then Niche Coffee’s espresso grinder is a consumer hardware success.

Thinking about it a lot of third wave coffee products fit the bill. The Decent espresso machine is another and makes the “should buy an Italian machine” argument no longer apply.

There are also successful coffee scales. Lots of new stuff!

Fully automatic machines that are better than a great barista are probably coming. Maybe an upstart could do it.

Of course the sales volumes might be too low to be consider a success on HN or even shark tank for that matter. But i would be happy to have that much success in a new product.

- Oculus

- Fitbit

- Raspberry Pi (I suppose this is not really consumer)

- Withings

- Peloton

- Tonal

But the biggest success is definitely Oculus. Definitely a hard thing to get right.

How is Oculus not "The best case scenario is to exist long enough to get a billion dollar exit from a major tech company"

But I would say the Raspberry Pi is an excellent example.

I imagined the second part modified the claim as well. Oculus wasn’t gutted and repurposed - Meta is building itself around it. Oculus was a successful company - selling hella units. Being bought didn’t result in a shutdown or anything. I would call it a huge success.

Then again Apple is the canonical consumer hardware startup and that’s the problem with these things. A successful startup just becomes a big company. No one would call Dyson a startup but it was one.

VR enthusiast here, Oculus was absolutely gutted of its core morals, its core goal, and the majority of its original talent. Oculus insisted they'd never require a Facebook account, and now they do. They've fully rebranded to Meta. They were focused on PC VR gaming, and now they're focused on mobile based social experiences with some garbage laggy interface to get PC VR if you're outlandish enough to want that. They only retain compatibility with other VR standards to appease their customers, but it just results in additional lag and a messy experience.

Facebook purchased Oculus before they sold a single consumer unit. Any headset that wasn't sold by Facebook was a dev kit you had to apply for. (edit: looked up the original kickstarter, they did sell 6-7k dev kit units, which was mostly targeted towards game devs. After the KS the DK2 was sold on an application basis. The consumer versions that moved 10mm+ units were 2 years after Facebook's acquisition.)

I've clocked 10k+ hours with silly screens strapped to my head and I am deathly afraid of what Facebook has done and continues to do to the VR industry. The "metaverse" existed long before Zuckerberg set his sights on it, and he's already killing it.

Yeah, not to mention the promises about Linux support being on the roadmap, which seem to have evaporated by now.

And what looks a breach of contract in selling Oculus Rift with Windows 7 support only to drop it some years later.

As a casual, I love the Quest 2.

It is an amazing piece of tech at a price lower than the BOM. I own one myself and can't blame anyone else that likes it too. The dissonance is still too strong.

I don’t get it. Most people. The vast majority, won’t ever spend $700-ish on any thing that isn’t proven, incredibly popular, and has limited functionality. On top of that, as you stated, the higher priced VRs required a high end PC (maybe Windows?). Then a bit below that I think some were or are available for the latest Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Isn’t very other VR set up not too cheap with no external requirements?

The average person in first word countries doesn’t have a ton of spare money. The majority of people don’t. How is being financially elitist about VR better than what FB did?

Gopro?

Roomba?

Gopro has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for many years now. Its stock fell from $87 in 2014 to $2 in 2020 (has recovered somewhat to $8 now). They started looking for buyers for the company in 2018 but still haven't found one. Hardly what I'd consider a major success.

iRobot has a somewhat better story, but is overall not worth too much more than Gopro (~$1.5B). It is also not a recent startup but has its roots in DARPA grants and defense contracts from the 90s.

Gopro is the default pop-name for what I can only describe as a Gopro form factor camera (tiny, hi res, easy to mount). While their company might not be successful, their brand very much is.

Peloton and Roku come to mind. But yeah, most seem to be acquired at some point, if successful.

Glowforge? Higher price point than most consumer gadgets, but their crowdfunding campaign set a record at the time. (The founding team spent tons of effort on getting the product-market fit right)

eero and meraki come to mind.

"The best case scenario is to exist long enough to get a billion dollar exit"

Sheesh, seems hardly worth it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com