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Need help/idea/advice from Veterans
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Rah_H:
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To skip intro, goto paragraph_3;

A long-time follower of EEVblog but first time posting anything. I will start a little intro.

I finished my EE BSc (electronics major) in early 2017 and got head hunted to a design firm and joined just 2 weeks after I left the university. I ended university with poor grade (2.63/4). I wasn’t one of those students who attends for grade or certificate. In my final year thesis/project, I designed an eight channel datalogger, did multilayer double sided PCB in Altium designer 16 (later in Cadence Allegro as per a senior faculty’s request), C code for AVR in CodeVisionAVR, casing in Solidworks and a program to analyze the datalogger data in Matlab (datalogger records RTC time and ADC data in SD card).

Anyway, I loved the job and the engineering team who appreciated me, however, the firm had also hired a group of douchebags and placed them in a department called Human Resources. I often kind of say things on people’s face without any sugar coating (my professors also told me that I need to be more diplomatic). Long story short, I did not sit well with them and ended up quitting. I checked with my friends in other firms and all of them confirmed HR to be proper dheads.

Paragraph_3:

So, I decided to open my own firm and also enrolled in a Master’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering in Feb 2018. Since quitting job in 2017, I have designed multiple devices to sell. The products include

1. Programable Resistance box: (1ohm to 999999ohm, 1-ohm step min). Up to three resistive modules can be connected to a single control unit. Multiple resistive modules enable options like POT and sweep (sweep can be used with a single module as well).

2. Programable timer module: The module has RTC in it. User needs to provide the time at which the relay activates and the duration of activation. The control logic takes care of the rest. 25 entries on my experimental model. The device can be used as an automated residential water pump controller.

3. Morse code generator: User can place parallel (SPI in progress) 8-bit data on the device and press Play. The device can also record user defined string by using Record and Play the string. Play and record buttons are connected to headers so that an external MCU can operate the whole device.

4. Timer/counter module: A module that can be used as a time/event counter and as stopwatch. Both counter and stopwatch can be in either millisecond (20ms min) to hour(s). Device contains RTC to enable long duration functions. On/Off/Pause/Trigger signal can be provided by an external signal on dedicated input pins. Output pin shows logic 1/0 when it times out.

5. Terminal tool kit : My best creation. A UART command-based tool that generates user defined signals. Tools includes, a 8-bit binary parallel bus that generates user defined bits, pattern generator (128 sets of 8-bit pattern), digital frequency sweep generator, morse code generator, 7-segment display tester, servo/stepper/dc motor drive signal generator, SPI bus generator, random 8-bit pattern generator, digital oscillator (1hz to 70KHz @ 1Hz step, 70KHz to 150KHz @ 10Hz step) and clock generator 1MHz,2MHz,4MHz,8MHz for mcu.

These are some of 20+ devices I made. So, what’s the problem you ask. Here it is. I thought I could get some local investors to help me out. I thought wrong, no one wants anything to do with a startup. I can’t use any of the big-name international crowd funding platforms as they don’t like (or maybe trust) my country, which is Bangladesh by the way. I designed almost everything in through-hole as I intended them to be sold as kit. I optimized all devices in code and in the BOM. I designed everything myself and so the labor cost is literary zero which makes these products cheaper. But I can’t get a start. I opened a Teespring account last month and raised a whooping 0$ USD in like 40 days (feel free to visit https://teespring.com/stores/arclight  , I’m still dropping designs). I don’t use social media as they are a gigantic waste of time but look like they have uses somewhere i.e. teespring.

So like almost everything in my life I am overthinking this and getting negative feedback to a point where I am ready to pop a vent like a 16v electrolytic cap connected in reverse with a 50v source. I can’t get a start and I will be damned if I have to take a job cause I think I will most likely break some HR nose.

Therefore, the problem is I cant get a start due to lack of funds. So any help/idea/waypoint/advice from veterans are highly appreciated. I really need a starting point. Please keep in mind that I m from a developing country.

P.S.1 The devices are not open source. I spent countless hours, days of sleepless nights, soldiered through exhaustions to a point of almost passing out to make these and last thing I need is some Chinese manufacturer selling my sweat and blood at a price I can’t even compete with. Sorry but NO.

P.S.2 And also sorry for the bad English and poor writing format. My writing skill is limited to writing research papers. MSc required original thesis and I published them on IEEE & ACM, not that anyone asked.

Regards,
  H Rahman

fourfathom:
I'm an old-timer and have participated as both design engineer and founder in a couple of telecommunications equipment startups.  These startups had (if I say so myself) ground-breaking products that met the evolving needs of a changing marketplace.  We had no legacy products to support (or worry about protecting), and had no entrenched deadwood employees (staff or management), and we took advantage of new technology.  So, we were able to develop products much more rapidly than the entrenched equipment providers.  We had amazing sales and marketing teams who were well-known and respected by the customers, so we could get our new products considered.  There was a big opportunity for a big return in a big market, and because of all this we had high-profile venture capital.  This also helped to give our customers some comfort that we wouldn't die from lack of financial support (hardly a guarantee, but it helped).  This was in the 1990's (1997-2000 for the last startup), the era of the "exponential growth of the network", so timing was a huge factor.  This is the situation that a VC (venture capitalist) is looking for -- the 10X or 100X return on the investment. 

As a hobby, I also design and build clever little boxes that help me in my electronics design work.  I am considering selling some of these.  I am proud of these designs, in come cases they are more elegant than the equipment I helped design in the startups.  But these clever designs are very unlikely to see an exploding market.  If I were a venture capitalist I would not invest in a company building this stuff. 

The products you describe are probably well done, and worthwhile, but they sound more like my hobby projects than the kind of thing a VC would consider.  You need to have something that *can't* be cheaply duplicated -- simple and off-the-shelf, and mature markets, are not what VCs are looking for.

This isn't to say that you can't successfully build and sell your products, just that they are unlikely to attract VC investment.
coppercone2:
venture capitalist needs insane claims etc (kickstarter). I think you would need to be a good liar to attract one of those. That's going to be about something looking sellable, those guys are hustlers.

show a rich guy a PCB and he thinks something along the lines of 'oh so you used a drill or something'. I.e. treez, 95% of design effort goes into making an appealing shape and size box, no matter if it works for 30 minutes on a street pole, with the overload settings being used for normal operation.
fourfathom:

--- Quote from: coppercone2 on September 20, 2020, 03:43:59 am ---venture capitalist needs insane claims etc (kickstarter). I think you would need to be a good liar to attract one of those. That's going to be about something looking sellable, those guys are hustlers.

show a rich guy a PCB and he thinks something along the lines of 'oh so you used a drill or something'. I.e. treez, 95% of design effort goes into making an appealing shape and size box, no matter if it works for 30 minutes on a street pole, with the overload settings being used for normal operation.

--- End quote ---
You couldn't be more incorrect, at least in my experience.  I've worked with many Silicon Valley VCs; as a member of VC-funded companies, and as an engineer called in by VCs to evaluate potential investments.  I was invited to be "Entrepreneur in Residence" at a couple of VC firms, so I've seen how they operate.  The partners and associates at the big VC firms usually have engineering backgrounds, and if not that's why they work with people like me.  But often they had been founders of successful companies before they became VCs.  The VC who funded my last company was one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, and the other partners in that VC firm had similar backgrounds.  They collectively know virtually everything about the design and manufacturing process (and financing, marketing, sales, etc) and will not be thinking "Oh, you used a drill?" 

Sometimes when things get "frothy" and there is more money available than there are legitimate opportunities, the VC firms will be less selective about who they fund, and the lower-tier VC firms may fund some very questionable companies.  And sometimes VCs will fund a business not because they expect it to turn into a successful independent company, but because the technology being developed will make the company a valuable acquisition for a larger company (or for other strategic reasons).

Coppercone2, you may be right about the "Angel" investors, who usually provide moderate amounts of seed money to early-stage startups (much like the OP "alart", I presume).  I was an angel investor for a few startups (some successful, most not), and I only looked at people doing things I was at least somewhat familiar with.  Other angels may come from a completely different field, having made their money outside of technology, and may invest based on a good pitch rather than a proper evaluation.  I've seen this happen (even when the VC should have known better), and thought "What in the hell is he doing???".  Perhaps the VC thought he would find a "bigger fool" to sell that company to before it ultimately crashed and burned?  I don't know.
Rah_H:
Well, you are right. Some of these devices did start as a hobby project. Take the Programmable Resistance box for example. First version has two ATmega16, one for display and buttons and the other drives all of the 28 relays. But I improved it to use a single ATmega32A, the relays are driven by 4 cascaded 74595, GLCD128 instead of 20x4 LCD and I can control the whole thing from my computer using Putty (I suck at making PC software). I thought it can be a good product for university labs (which EE lab doesn't use any form of POT). If I could manufacture it, I am sure it would sell. Even the manual resistance box costs a lot in my country because the only people buying it are universities.

And you are also right about VC not wanting lab equipment. I can easily make some ridiculous inefficient product like a LED light that requires a cellphone sorry smartphone, Wi-Fi and firmware update to turn ON, or some scam product like batterizer. In fact I do have some products for the gullible general population. My biggest problem is I can't find funding in my country and I can't even go for international crowd funding. The curse of living in a developing country.  If I could make them, I could sell them to shops like sparkfun or local equivalent. Is there any specific way to deliver pitch? Or should I try making a nice box for the general purpose product as coppercone2 suggested and try my luck with some big name manufacturer? After all 98% of the tech products manufactured in my country comes from Shenzhen (they buy the technology no matter how basic).

My University professors always demanded honesty. I had to go through a course named "Society and Ethics" where I had to memorize IEEE canons for EE. Should have warned us that University doesn't match reality.
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