What sort of Hardware Startup are You?

Everybody seems to agree that it’s never been easier to start a hardware company than it is today.  After years of being eclipsed by software and services, hardware is sexy again.  However, that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to be successful.  Over the past few years I’ve mentored a number of startups and realised that their expectations often don’t match the reality of what they are.  That doesn’t mean they can’t succeed, but it does mean that they’re probably wasting effort trying to be the wrong sort of company.  There are lots of different models which can be successful, but a company is most likely to work if it knows where it is going and what it wants to be.

Hence this article.  If you’re contemplating a hardware startup, or have already taken the first steps, you need to think seriously about what you want to be doing in five or ten years’ time and how you’re going to get there.  It’s every bit as important as getting your product out.  Recognising that gives you the best chance of achieving your goal and minimises the risk to your investors and employees – considerations which should be at the top of your priority list.  It still won’t be easy, but if you can reduce some unnecessary pain by getting the right model, it will certainly be a lot less stressful.

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Use More Energy. Towards a UK Energy Policy

Three years ago, in a utility conference in Atlanta, I sat through a keynote by Tom Fanning, President and CEO of Southern Company – one of the largest US utilities.  In a typically Texan barn-storming style he argued that “to improve human existence let’s use more energy where we should”, going on to promote the message that every Texan in every trailer park was equally deserving of air conditioning and a 60″ TV.  It wasn’t what the audience expected, many of whom had come with concerns about smart meters, energy efficiency and outages.

Earlier this week I sat through the IET’s annual Mountbatten lecture, given by Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford.  The subject was The New Energy Landscape – low fossil fuel prices, decarbonisation and new technologies, based on his updated book – “The Carbon Crunch: How we’re getting climate change wrong – and how to fix it”.  Much to the surprise of the audience, this time mainly engineers involved with the energy industry, he gave much the same message – that’s it’s time to stop worrying about the cost of energy or energy efficiency.  Instead we should be planning a future where we can use as much as we want.

I urge you to watch his lecture, which is available on the IET website.  At the risk of oversimplification here’s my very abbreviated take on it, as well as some of the potential problems in changing Government policy. 

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