Designed by Yves Behar, Edyn (YC W14) Gives Plant Recommendations and Tips

wired.com

Does anyone actually care that it's designed by Yves Behar? Every time this stupid company promotes themselves, they mention Yves Behar. Did you ever see apple say "Designed by Steve Jobs"? Or, "Designed by Jonny Ive" ? No. Stop.

Hi there, Edyn Founder and CEO here-- not sure that's a fair comparison. Most people who care about product design already know that Apple products are designed by Jonny Ive, so to mention it would be redundant. As a new startup, we don't have that kind of name recognition, but we know many of our customers value great design. We must be doing something right if you've picked up on it :)

The vast majority of apple users have never heard of Jonathan Ive.

Edit: No, you aren't doing something right because I've picked up on it. Every time I see it I think to myself "It's stupid that these guys keep doing this, I wonder what other mistakes they are making".

I'm not sure I understand your point, but I agree, most people probably don't follow/research product designers. That said, some people do and they have proven to be early adopters of our product.

I'm sure we've made tons of mistakes... we are a startup :)

This might sound clever to you. But you are selling a product that people want to go in and buy from HD and walk out and have it just work. Nobody who walks into HD cares that you are a startup.

For what it's worth, the product does look good, and sounds good too.

Thanks! Being a startup in Home Depot is actually really exciting. The overwhelming majority of products they stock are from large established brands (rain bird, black and decker, mikita etc). Our big advantage over those companies is that as a small/nimble team we can iterate our product quickly.

Congratulations for your product launch. It must be great to see so much hard work finally pay off!

Could you tell a bit more about the agri-sensor market, how you made your feature choices, and what you learned along the way?

Cheers!

In the case of startups this adds a lot of credibility. Yves Behar has designed some really well known products, and fuseproject is (from what I have read) almost like an incubator for hardware projects with great design. So for a small startup to have Yves Behar working with them is a big thing and well worth mentioning. I'd certainly love to have the chance to work with him.

No, it doesn't. The vast majority of gardeners have never heard of Yves Behar. It's a crutch for having a product anybody cares about.

Other than that, there is a difference between "mentioning" it and working with him, and having it in the title of everything.

I do see your point. Probably from a gardeners point of view this is not really important, I'm maybe biased a bit in that I'd look for a product with good design, that looked like the people cared about what they built, rather than something that looked like it was built to minimise cost.

The article was in wired though, and that's the kind of readership that maybe will care about the company and the people behind the product. It's one of the traps that a lot of startups fall into though, that a lot of their messages seem targeted at the startup community rather than at their actual customers.

Founder and CEO here-- working with Yves has opened a number of doors that we wouldn't have had access to, and has resulted in a well-designed product that our customers love.

No doubt.

But your real customers aren't going to care even a little bit.

You certainly could be right in the long run, but so far many of our early adopters do care.

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