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Joseph Natoli

Joe Here! 👋 Founder and CEO of LOOFT - AMA about Hardware Products, Startups, or Failing!

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I am the co-founder of an insane new business named LOOFT which is providing insights into and automating your comfort. I am here to answer some questions relating to hardware (scary... I know!), IoT, Building Startups from idea to reality and lots of fails, so ask away!! Speaking of fails... we just launched our Kickstarter (a failing one at that... let's be honest) on Product Hunt today and our marketing company did not prep us early enough for the launch on here (or there), so we are doing our best to make up lost time! Notch another Fail, of many 💪 Looking forward to your questions. :D

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Chris Sarca
What's so insane about your new business?
Joseph Natoli
Launching soon!
@chris_sarca Hey Chris, this is an oddly confrontational question... but i'll answer it! LOOFT, the business we are building, has so many moving pieces that make it "insane", which perhaps was not the best word choice. To start, innovating in Hardware itself is inherently difficult and very expensive. If you aren't, for example, coming from academia where you have access to early funding from the university and access to lab space for testing and prototyping, it makes it difficult to get going (we did not). Insanity+1 The market we are entering into is a very conservative market with established players, who have their own large budgets to compete against us. Truly an uphill battle to get anyone to believe in us because of this, and also for us to communicate this to the consumer to help them understand the full value. Insanity+1 A final, but not the last point I can make, is that the supply chain needed to establish a business such as ours once you get past all the other barriers is daunting. Our business, for example, includes free repairs and upgrades for the customer. Perhaps you have connections to establish this easily, but it's quite an insane undertaking to find a manufacturing partner you can trust, get them to agree to make your product, figure out shipping and containerising, setup a homebase warehouse for logistics to get the final product to the customer, and then provide on going support while continuing to innovate new products. Insanity+3 This isn't even covering any of the software and machine learning involved either. Feel free to disagree though!
Joseph Natoli
Launching soon!
@patrick_sao_e14 This is also a good question. I'll say that when something is not going to plan, everyone has that moment of "why am I doing this?". I am doing this because I believe our product can make a small difference in the world in some way.
Sven Radavics
After four CE startups, I'll probably never do another consumer hardware startup again. Might get sucked into an enterprise hardware startup though.
Joseph Natoli
Launching soon!
@sven_radavics Crazy that you went through 4 CE (I assume consumer electronics?) Startups! If you have some time, I'd love to connect and discuss your experiences there. Mentorship and wisdom is something I look for. Let me know!
Sven Radavics
@joseph_natoli Hi Joseph. I've dropped you a linkedin connection request. Happy to share my experiences. Just to be clear - I wasn't a founder for any of those but part of the founding teams. First time founder, finally, at 50 with my SaaS.