How/where to enter into the market with an embedded team

[mrburnzie]

Hi!

It's quite hard to put the subject into a title...
I have a team of engineers, that are focused on embedded. Hardware designers (PCB design, assembly), mechanic (case design, 3d printing) and embedded programmers. It is a team of 5 people.

All of us have experience with large projects which were/are in production and we have worked together before. The team atmosfere is great.

We don't have anything special when it comes to setup, only the basics (soldering iron, oscilloscope, development boards).

My question is, as a small company in the embedded field, how should we approach the market? Go with a product and put it up for crowdfunding (which would probably fail) or go with getting clients to start working on developing products? I even thought about getting an investor for funding good equipment and then bringing in connections for clients rhat need development.
What is the best approach?

[Benta]

I know companies like yours, and it's always a chicken/egg situation getting started
.
You can either try to do a sales job to find a reasonable customer project, or you need to develop special skills yourself.
Either way, you'll need a list of references of the work you've done, which is of course impossible when starting out.

Ask yourself: do we have have skills in this team that stand out, and can we develop them further?
eg, IoT, power, wireless, sensors, optics and so on. Think about areas where most "normal" customers don't have their own expertise, or the entry bar is too high to do it themselves.

And a Hot Tip: seek the distributor FAEs as your allies. Some people have badmouthed them here as "useless", but they're excellent networkers. And if you have special skills, thay're in a very good position to connect you to potential customers, which is a win-win-win situation for all.

Good luck.

PS: I've had excellent results working with Serbian engineering consultants.

[mrburnzie]

Benta, thanks for your kind message.

What is the best way to find clients? Social media marketing? I don't think larger clienrs hang out on that... LinkedIn could be a good shot, but I don't think it's focused enough.

What do you recommend?

[l0wside]

You could try Upwork and the like and offer consulting/engineering services. Having some work samples surely will not hurt.

I am unsure about your background. Either it is "we all just got fired together and want to make the most of the situation" or "fresh out of university, let´s just look what´s possible". The good thing about engineering services is that you do not need to invest large sums of money upfront. The bad thing is: you are completely dependent on your customer.