Chris’s model for his business:
- Give away the bits, sell the atoms. (Give away the ideas, sell the physical goods.)
- 2.6x BOM, which hopefully equates to 10% the price of 90% of the features in a commercial equivalent.
Some of his thoughts:
- Low prices leads to high volume leads to high innovation.
- “How do you protect your IP? You don’t.” You simply innovate faster than the closed source. Your community is greater than the closed source clones.
- Chris provides incentives to contribute to the company, ultimately providing equity to the user who’s provided sustained contributions and leadership.
Advantages to OSH:
- R&D is almost free
- Lower regulations in some cases
- “Natural business model.” I wrote this down but forget what this means. Perhaps instead of enforcing an outdated sales model with DRMs, for example, giving away the bits for free and selling the atoms seems more relevant in this day and age.
Challenges of OSH:
- Clones R unstoppable
- Investors won’t be sure
- It’s hard to keep up.
- There’s no version control for “stuff” yet.
Last word:
It’s OK to have these conversations and it’s OK to stay flexible between an open and closed model. We’re all learning and evolving in this process.
Posted 7 months ago
