How important is Phil to Adafruit?

[ezekielmudd]

I am a consulting EE and I am contemplating starting my own kit business. I presently earn money working hourly contracts. I figure that I can multiply my work effort by selling my own products.

While working on my website and my business plan, I starting to wonder how Limor managed to get Adafruit going all by herself. I don't know if she's born into money, super-human or doesn't need regular sleep. She must have had a lot of help to get Adafruit going.

Then I started to wonder about the nature of Phil's efforts in this. We see him supporting and cheering on Limor regularly. I know he's a seasoned journalist, promoter and electronics geek. Is there more to his efforts than meets the eye? Is he the one with the business acumen? Is he the one with the start-up capital? Or is he just a well connected journalist and a passionate promoter?

My point is this: for me to become as successful as Adafruit Industries, should I seek out the assistance of an Angel Investor, a Business Advisor, a Cheerleader/Encourager or a well connected sympathetic Journalist? Or should I take on these roles myself?

Phil, what do you think?

[adafruit]

I starting to wonder how Limor managed to get Adafruit going all by herself. I don't know if she's born into money, super-human or doesn't need regular sleep. She must have had a lot of help to get Adafruit going.

why would you assume limor would not be capable of getting adafruit going on her own and why do also assume she "must have had a lot of help"?

i started helping limor 3 years *after* she started the business. there isn't "more than meets the eye" (autobot?) - all the credit goes to limor for building an amazing company, without help or funding, not born in to money, she's a pioneer in open source hardware and her being a hard worker and talented engineer is what makes her successful. when she started out, she lived in a warehouse with 12 people in a tiny room and shipped kits out of plastic bags hanging on her door, she barely ate and made lots of sacrifices. are you willing to do that? she was.

there isn't a hidden, mysterious thing, funding, or connected journalist (i'm not) or person out there that will keep you from being / or allowing you to become "as successful as adafruit" - it's just hard work. the only person that can do it is you, it goes both ways too - the only person that will find excuses on why it's not possible and hold you back, can also be you. we (ourselves) are our own best and worst competition in life.

might not be want you wanted to hear, but it might be what you need to hear

thanks,
adafruit (pt)

[westfw]

I starting to wonder how Limor managed to get Adafruit going all by herself.

You don't just "start a business as successful as Adafruit." You start smaller and (if you're lucky) you BECOME successful. Adafruit was a lot smaller when it first started. There's a "sweet spot" to growth rate where your income from your current size is just about right for adding the next level of growth. Managing that involves a lot of skill, and/or luck.

[adafruit]

You don't just "start a business as successful as Adafruit." You start smaller and (if you're lucky) you BECOME successful. Adafruit was a lot smaller when it first started. There's a "sweet spot" to growth rate where your income from your current size is just about right for adding the next level of growth. Managing that involves a lot of skill, and/or luck.

i don't believe in luck personally, i've never met a "lucky" person who had a successful business, they might appear that way now - but it's never like that at the start. it's always hard work, i think some are fooled when they see a biz from the outside that is successful AND they're having fun. we've all heard people say "well, they were just lucky or in the right place at the right time" - that's never true either, you're in the right place at the right time because you've exposed yourself to risk and the right opportunities.

cheers,
adafruit(pt)

[TheFallen]

"The harder you work the luckier you become" I'm not sure where I heard that one, but it made sense. In addition Malcom Gladwell has this theory that to become successful (riches/fame) you need to spend around 10,000 hours working on it.

With regards to Adafruit I think having the editor for what is essentially the only crafting/hacking/making magazine on your side certainly helps, but this only happened in the last couple of years. Limor started with an excellent website detailing some really INTERESTING projects which got people keen on the idea of DIY electronics, see the mintyMP3, bikePOV and wavebubble. This was then followed by the mintyboost which was semi-advertised through Instructables. I mean that in the sense Instructables was newish, and then Limor stuck up how to design a product from scratch, and then offered the product for sale. There was also a laser etching business although that, like the mintyMP3/wavebubble, has become defunct now.

The core message seems to be start small. Have a website with interesting/ingenious projects. Kit up the really popular one and then expand slowly. Don't be afraid to branch out, but also don't be afraid to withdraw things that aren't worth it.

These are just thoughts from some who's watched Adafruit take off from very humble beginnings to where it is now. Feel free to discount them.

[adafruit]

"The harder you work the luckier you become" I'm not sure where I heard that one, but it made sense. In addition Malcom Gladwell has this theory that to become successful (riches/fame) you need to spend around 10,000 hours working on it.

we've seen that, and we think it's mostly true!

With regards to Adafruit I think having the editor for what is essentially the only crafting/hacking/making magazine on your side certainly helps..

limor didn't get on the cover of MAKE, she was on the cover of WIRED. me having a role at MAKE didn't help limor, in fact sometimes it made things harder for her in my opinion.

This was then followed by the mintyboost which was semi-advertised through Instructables. I mean that in the sense Instructables was newish, and then Limor stuck up how to design a product from scratch, and then offered the product for sale.

good information *is* advertising

There was also a laser etching business although that, like the mintyMP3/wavebubble, has become defunct now.

to be accurate - the mintymp3 was not a shipping product, the wavebubble was not a shipping product (and never will be) and the laser cutter business from it's start had two goals 1) have the machine pay for itself (it did) and 2) document everything so others can start businesses (we did not want to make a full time biz out of it). someone we talked to, and who used our documentation did, and sold their laser biz company for over $10m. hundreds of laser cutter owners use our wiki. mission accomplished.

cheers,
adafruit (pt)

[westfw]

I think I had a more subtle form of "luck" in mind. Like "Gee, isn't it lucky that I live in a time when it's possible to go out and buy a laser cutter." Or "isn't it lucky that my interests turned toward embedded software rather than desktop programming."

[lyndon]

I've never known anyone who got Venture Capital or Angel investment and personally, I know I'd feel awfully uncomfortable spending someone else's money. The tech businesses I'm personally familiar with started very small and grew slowly with plenty of hard work and sometimes a lucky break to speed things up a bit.

I think it's a disservice to the founder to say that they must have had help, or must have had something unusual (like free advertising) happen to be successful. Limor/adafruit is a success, but we never hear of all the businesses that did everything "right" and still failed. Or for that matter, all the businesses that are successful, but just stay below our radar.

I guess the real reason I'm writing this is that I don't want people who are thinking of starting businesses with OSH, or anything else for that matter, think that they must have huge investments or be very lucky in order to succeed.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Whether it's from the business or technical aspects, I think it always helps to have at least one other person to bounce ideas off, give reality checks and tell you when you're doing something stupid (or cool) - at times it can be easy to get tunnel vision and lose sight of things if your only critic is yourself.

[scottinnh]

I've never known anyone who got Venture Capital or Angel investment and personally, I know I'd feel awfully uncomfortable spending someone else's money. The tech businesses I'm personally familiar with started very small and grew slowly with plenty of hard work and sometimes a lucky break to speed things up a bit.

I think it's a disservice to the founder to say that they must have had help, or must have had something unusual (like free advertising) happen to be successful. Limor/adafruit is a success, but we never hear of all the businesses that did everything "right" and still failed. Or for that matter, all the businesses that are successful, but just stay below our radar.

I guess the real reason I'm writing this is that I don't want people who are thinking of starting businesses with OSH, or anything else for that matter, think that they must have huge investments or be very lucky in order to succeed.

Venture capital? Avoid it at almost all costs. I don't run a business, but I worked at some small self-funded software/services companies, and some which had VC funding.
All the self funded companies still exist (even the one I started at 20 years ago).

None of the VC funded business are still around and there's a reason for that. In the 5 years I worked at VC-funded companies, the first one blew through 20 million in 3 years... and the second blew through 30 million in just TWO years.

First thing VC folks do is make you hire a bunch of their crew (even Sales people, BTW.. when you hire experience sales crew before you have a salable betaproduct, those sales people will have negotiated a compensation bonus __every week the product is not ready__, to compensate for the inability to sell.. that tends to grate on software developers trying to build the thing, having to pay someone for nothing. On the positive side, I got my salary almost doubled when it was discovered what the VC's people were getting paid.

Both were predominantly UNIX shops, so you can imagine the monetary waste and morale loss when your UNIX IT guy gets pushed out so the VC's new guy can install that $80K powerhouse needed to run Microsoft Exchange, and move the company Intranet to windows-only NTLM authentication, rewrite intranet CGIs as VB ActiveX, forced migration from IMAP to Outlook, etc.

Lots of VC funded shops do make it, but if you look at recent history, a lot of that success is just the investors hyping the IPO then cashing out.

If you ask me, VC funding is the worst way to grow a business if you want it to be stable and long term. Private or sweat equity is totally different. Privately held businesses tend not to gamble, and their head count doesn't move like a waveform. You'll notice also when you read positive news articles about a business that seems almost "human", it is very commonly privately funded. A business model like CueCat (remember them, lol) .. they would never have been attempted with private or sweat equity.

[FightCube]

Well said Scott!

[westfw]

cisco only got about 2.5M in venture funding, and they didn't mess much with the technical staff (in fact, I thought the first "IT guy" we hired did an incredibly good job of transitioning from the self-maintained-by-development-engineers setup; not an easy job!)

But the initial CEO and CFO were immediately replaced ("Not the sort of people needed to take the company public"), and the primary founders were gone (not particularly voluntarily) withing three years.