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Hack Chat Transcript, Part 3

A event log for Crowd Supply Hack Chat with Josh Lifton

Crowdfunding and mentoring hardware hackers

lutetiumLutetium 07/24/2019 at 20:060 Comments

Patrick Van Oosterwijck12:47 PM
@RichardCollins It seems like a natural progression of things and it's an approach that has worked for me

Arsenijs12:47 PM
you can use the web client for reading, I suppose https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/#irc://irc.freenode.net/#hackaday

Digicool Things12:47 PM
@Joshua Lifton Understood. Thanks.

Joshua Lifton12:48 PM
@Kelly Heaton we haven't yet, but I've met Habib and others.

RichardCollins12:48 PM
@Patrick Van Oosterwijck Did that go just to you or everyone? I am new to this kind of chat.

raviypujar12:48 PM
I was facing scrolling problem, but if you scroll fast around 10 to 20 chats upwards, it keeps quite and you can scroll down slowly.

Joshua Lifton12:48 PM
And Joi Ito was close to Crowd Supply. I liked his coining of the phrase "transition lab"

Joshua Lifton12:50 PM
As mentioned, Hackaday is a great place to start a project that ends up on Crowd Supply.

Joshua Lifton12:50 PM
Market validation is the name of the game.

Digicool Things12:50 PM
@RichardCollins It's a public chat I believe.

Kelly Heaton12:50 PM
@Joshua Lifton for the sake of clarity only, can you give us a description of the perfect project for Crowd Supply (your dream project)?

Joshua Lifton12:51 PM
@Kelly Heaton even after six years, I'm still pleasantly surprised by which projects succeed and what success looks like to the creators.

Joshua Lifton12:52 PM
For some people, it's just getting it out the door. For others, it's making some money and supporting their transition into a new career.

Joshua Lifton12:53 PM
The most critical common thing across all projects I consider successful is a true passion on the part of the creator for what they are doing. It's necessary, if not sufficient.

Joshua Lifton12:53 PM
I'm also partial to satellites.

Kelly Heaton12:53 PM
@Joshua Lifton thanks!

Joshua Lifton12:54 PM
Check out the updates for this project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/pylo/muart/updates

Joshua Lifton12:55 PM
You can clearly see the kind of attention to detail that only comes from caring a lot about the project.

RichardCollins12:56 PM
It is the microscale and crowd sourcing from people specifically interested in the results that is so powerful. People see these technologies and want to use them, but cannot get past some basics that your designers can provide.

Joshua Lifton12:56 PM
That's one of the paradoxes of this business: niche products do better.

Digicool Things12:56 PM
@Joshua Lifton Good answers. I believe "Passion" is a an essential element to all successfully delivered projects! :-)

Joshua Lifton12:57 PM
This is because a niche product has a well-connected audience, so you only need to tell a few of those people and suddenly everyone knows about it.

RichardCollins12:57 PM
If it fills a specific niche, that is really a specific engineering hurdle that many people are stuck on.

de∫hipu12:57 PM
and the author is usually part of that niche as well

Joshua Lifton12:57 PM
Yeah, without passion it's easy to give up when you hit the inevitable setbacks.

Joshua Lifton12:58 PM
@de∫hipu yep, exactly.

Joshua Lifton12:58 PM
I look forward to seeing what projects you all have going on.

Kelly Heaton12:58 PM
@Joshua Lifton I'll be in touch

Patrick Van Oosterwijck12:59 PM
That's always the biggest problem, getting lost in the crowd. That's why I think a focused crowdsourcing platform like Crowd Supply is a better channel than a broad one like KS.

Joshua Lifton12:59 PM
One of the biggest mistakes of project creators is waiting until things are perfect before revealing them to the world.

Joshua Lifton12:59 PM
@Kelly Heaton great!

Denis12:59 PM
Hi, Josh, any possibility to tell us more about "Field Reports initiative"? It seems that I've missed that or you didn't have a chance to told us about it more.

Joshua Lifton12:59 PM
@Patrick Van Oosterwijck agreed. On the other hand, if you are looking to raise money for an art project, Kickstarter is really great.

Joshua Lifton1:00 PM
@Denis yes, there's a pilot of the idea here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/lime-micro/limesdr-mini/updates/field-report-contest

OK all, we've got an hour under our belts, so I'm going to call official time so Josh can get back to running Crowd Supply. Josh, feel free to stay on if you have time, of course, but for now I'll say another huge thanks for spending your time with us today. It's really been informative.

Thanks everyone! And remember, next week we'll be talking about quick-turn PCB manufacturing with Mihir Shah from Royal Circuits: https://hackaday.io/event/165812-quick-turn-pcb-fab-hack-chat

Joshua Lifton1:01 PM
The basic idea is to give backers the chance to share what they're doing.

de∫hipu1:01 PM
Thank you!

Joshua Lifton1:01 PM
@Dan Maloney and everyone, thanks so much for having me!

RichardCollins1:01 PM
thanks

scott.mcgimpsey1:01 PM
@Joshua Lifton Thanks for your time and responses!

Joshua Lifton1:01 PM
I can stick around for a bit longer, but will drop off in a few.

Our pleasure!

Kelly Heaton1:01 PM
Thank you!

Digicool Things1:01 PM
Also, passion is what gives the successful projects that extra "edge". ie. What makes for creating a better mousetrap. Or, perhaps it's just the perfectionism touch that passion adds, which delivers that extra edge. :-)

Joshua Lifton1:02 PM
Really good questions.

Goran Mahovlic1:02 PM
Thank you!

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