Hardware discount: successful financing of at least $ 210,000-it-IT news Hardware discount: successful financing of at least $ 210,000

In the past six years, all the chips have become a hardware startups favorite mode of financing. Of course, those potato salad chips not within the scope of the project. In the past couple of years, we see a lot of successful preparatory projects, these startups ultimately won the favor of venture capital firms like Oculus VR using all chips have been successful after its mega takeover by Facebook. All the chips have changed the pattern of investment in hardware startups without investing too much in the production cost, just raised to verify whether a product can meet the market needs.

In fact, on most hardware startups, all the chip is only the first step, it is also necessary to know what types of products will be raised on a platform to get good grades. Has two of the most well-known raised platforms not belong to Kickstarter and Indiegogo, in product categories however they do bad hardware project types can be separated into a number of very broad product range. In fact, understand the development of chips market is very important, after all, the start-up company positioning through can help refine project category hardware market opportunities.

In the past two weeks, the author has been studying relevant data, the following are my findings:

Data analysis

In order to reduce the scope of work, I work on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, the two raised platforms to raise more than $ 100,000 in hardware projects. Hardware project, I believe that items are those that require the use of electronic components. For example, bike locks can be connected even hardware items, but "pure metals" the lock is not a hardware item. In addition, analyzed data from around June 20, 2014 at that time.

Since Kickstarter and Indiegogo to raise the platform since its establishment, to raise more than $ 100,000 in hardware projects, 443, financing amounted to $ 187.5 million. In 443 hardware project, Kickstarter about 83%, and Indiegogo account for 17%. The average financing amount is $ 423188 for two platforms, is worthy of note that, Kickstarter, the average financing amount is higher than the Indiegogo nearly 40% (most likely due to Kickstarter projects on larger). So, if from the point of view of historical data, hardware startups may choose Kickstarter public financing would be better.

Financing analysis

Hardware items in various forms. If you want to know exactly what type of hardware is to raise raise funds for the project, the only way is to classify each project, this also allows us to use a more complete ecosystem perspective hardware. In order to classify the raise project, I created the 12 main categories, then split the 26 subclasses. Each child I was again classified according to the amount of financing, was this audience and raise the hardware ecosystem diagram below:

Hardware chip project categories, there are four categories accounted for 67% of the total financing, they are wearable, entertainment, household, and 3D printing. Project category that belongs to the family of the most successful 3D printing and wristband/bracelet, wearable device categories, these two categories accounted for 27% of the total amount of financing. Despite the higher average amount of financing of such projects, but poured into these two categories the number of items in a lot.

In fact, the raised 3D printer is a very popular project category, of course, the number of items in this category, no less, a total of 47 3D printing company earned more than $ 100,000 in financing. By contrast, received more than $ 100,000 wrist bands/bracelets can be worn to raise project has 34. Average amount of financing for all the members of the project are the best game category, among them several start-up firms with access to a huge amount of money, such as OUYA ($ 8.6 million), Oculus VR ($ 2.4 million), as well as Virtuix Omni ($ 1.1 million). So, if you can win the hearts of players, will be able to get them to open their wallets.

Poor performance raised several items of medical equipment, children's products, and aircraft. Medical equipment on the Kickstarter more limited due to, therefore financial results have been good, and children's products are often difficult to build a complete business. The most surprising was unmanned, in fact the cost of such projects is very interested, problem maybe in unmanned aircraft companies, due to their excessive focus on commercialization leading to these items in the not very good positioning on a raised platform.

Hardware chip project's long tail is very long, raised all 443 hardware research projects, has 37 projects received more than $ 1 million in financing, accounting for 43% of the total amount of financing. 368 items "carve up" the financing of the remaining 57%.

Summary for hardware startups, herd raised and what can you learn from it? At least you can learn the following several points:

First, if you want your audience to raise project is successful, it needed to raise more than $ 211,290 in funds, because this is all about hardware-chip projects the median amount raised.

Another concern was raised the project's category, in the public's eyes, each project is different. For example, 3D printing project to raise the effect is very good, medical devices are relatively poor. 3D printers and wristband/bracelet, wearable device to raise the effect has been very good, but the number of projects in these categories there are many, this has led to a number of risks, such as consumers of such products of "aesthetic fatigue".

The other hand, stuffed animals and games category at present does not seem to be attracting too much attention. Raise project through data analysis, we can dig out a lot of valuable things, in General, all the chip hardware project ecosystem is very much alive, and in general good.