Prelude to StartWareHK: Why Do We Need a Hardware Startup Community in Hong Kong?

StartupsHK and StartWareHK co-founder Jon Buford, the creative vision behind Makible provides this guest post that leads to next week’s very first start-up hardware meet-up in Hong Kong.

Over the past decade, much has changed in the way that products are brought to market. It used to be the only way to connect with customers was to convince a retail shop to carry your product and then split the profits with 25% of the retail price going to the company that developed the product and 50% going to the retailer. Things have changed with the popularity of crowdfunding websites making that equation closer to 50% of a product price being kept by the developer. But, with that increase in profit usually comes a decrease in volume, which makes it difficult to figure out how to manufacture some products profitably.

Directly connecting with your customers has its advantages of having a much clearer picture of who your customer is, but it also comes with the burden of having to both support your product and manage an active and connected community. For a small startup, this can be not only a full time job, but several full time jobs. There is almost always a point in a project that has been crowd funded where something critical goes not according to plan and that close connection to the community results in some backlash that is overwhelming to the team. It takes everything you have to just keep that dialog open and to get past the trouble.

Technology is becoming more accessible this whole time. With tools like 3D printers, electronic prototyping boards, and online APIs to enable practically anything you can think of, more people are blurring the lines of maker and producer. This is leading to more small companies and individuals getting into trying to make and sell new products. But, this process is much more than just getting a working model up and running.

The start of StartupsHK back in 2009 was just a small group of early stage startup founders getting together and sharing their experiences. At that time, there wasn’t the support network of mentors, advisors, and investors that are in the community now. Hardware startups are a different beast than pure software startup companies. Most hardware startups are building a software startup, with the requisite website and usually an app, but many also are building software to connect with their devices and to run on them as well in addition to developing the hardware itself. We run into issues with purchasing, sourcing, manufacturing, and shipping which no pure software company will ever run into. Fortunately, Hong Kong has a much longer and deeper history with all of these areas than with startups that are focused on signing up as many users to a free app that doesn’t have a clear monetization route.

In the past few years, there has been a growing number of hardware technology startup companies spending time in Hong Kong, such as , so it makes sense to start gathering them together as a community to help make things easier for everyone. It also acts as a contact point for the growing global community of people developing new products that pass through Hong Kong on the way to a factory.

What to expect out of the first meetup on the 5th at WYND and who should come? We plan to mostly just have an open roundtable discussion to get to know everyone that comes and to try to see what people need within the community. This is intended for startup companies doing hardware projects and no so much about investors or people that are just curious about the market. Depending on how the conversation goes, we may have time for one or two people to share in more detail about their journey and experiences in getting their idea shipping in real boxes.