Council Post: Untold Advantages Of Hardware Entrepreneurship

#Discussion(Startup) [ via IoTGroup ]

Headings…
Untold Advantages Of Hardware Entrepreneurship

Auto extracted Text……

The original quote gets credited to Marc Andreessen, whose op-ed, “Why software is eating the world,” outlines the many advantages that software companies hold over physical product companies.
Hardware companies are difficult to start — and even more difficult to scale.
When hardware companies discover a product flaw, they enter the stressful, logistically complex and potentially bankrupting process of recalls and field retrofits.
In spite of the harsh realities, we hardware entrepreneurs get some benefits that our friends in the software world don’t enjoy, particularly when we’re first-movers in our markets:
2. Hardware product lines stay simple.
In order to succeed in enterprise sales, early-stage SaaS companies often have to customize their product for each client.
When an important client demands a modified version of a software product, entrepreneurs often have to agree in order to secure the deal, but this can create problems down the road when many custom features for many clients need to be supported year after year.
On the other hand, in hardware businesses, one-off customization of the physical product is simply too expensive to be feasible, and our clients understand this.
Because the cost of errors is so high in hardware compared to software (since the latter can be quickly and inexpensively fixed post-launch), product development cycles are much longer and require more field testing.
Even giant companies tend to beta-test their hardware products for a year or so before ramping up.
4. Higher switching costs in hardware businesses protect the first-mover.
In hardware, competitors have a much greater challenge than convincing your customers to try a different website.
In order to accept these switching costs and deal with the physical disruption of moving from your product to a competitor’s, your customers will have to believe that your competitor’s product is significantly better or significantly cheaper than yours.
5

Read More..
AutoTextExtraction by Working BoT using SmartNews 1.0299999999 Build 26 Aug 2019