Let me remind you of one of the supposed “Geek Business Myths” that I referred to recently.

If you build, they will come (i.e. customers).

This is Exbiblio’s position.

If you build a product that creates real value in the world, then you can’t go far wrong.

But still, I wonder, how is Exbiblio going to sell that product? Here are the main points of the marketing “plan” that I know about.

• The first “target market” will almost certainly be students.
• The primary method for spreading the word will be “viral” – i.e. those who try it will love it and tell their friends.
• Beta testing the product among 1000 people early next year will create buzz.
• The main selling point will be the Exbiblio website.
• Independent bookshops fit in well with Exbiblio’s values, and could help sell its oPen.
• Online bookshops are also potential partners for selling the oPen. They will see the value in linking the paper world to the online world, and so stimulating online book sales.
• There are some publishers who have online versions of their books, and similarly, they will see the value in linking paper with digital, and help sell the oPen.

In the initial months, following the launch of the oPen next Spring, the goals for sales will be fairly modest. All Exbiblio wants to do is prove that there is demand in the market. But are these plans concrete enough for this stage?

by Jeremy Faludi

In addition to contracting for Exbiblio as their green design consultant, I consult for other companies and write for Worldchanging.com, a green design / technology / policy journal. Worldchanging’s mission is to find and share tools, models and ideas which offer solutions to the planet’s biggest problems. We’ve won multiple awards and have hundreds of thousands of readers around the world, and our book–Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century–brings together the best, most hopeful and most effective ideas we’ve found so far. I was just one of many authors who contributed; the subjects include everything from green product design to megacities to international development, from energy to water to culture and politics, from wood stoves to biotech and nanotech.

The Seattle book release party will be October 28, 7:30pm, at Town Hall, $5 at the door. Bruce Sterling and our executive editor, Alex Steffen, will be on stage discussing the future of sustainability; then a reception and after-party will follow. It’ll be a lot of fun, if you like smart green futurists and such, so come check it out!

Feel free to forward this invitation widely. If you don’t live in Seattle, come to our book parties in other cities, such as Portland, Vancouver, New York, San Francisco, etc. (Details here.)

Hope to see you there!

Jeremy Faludi
design, consulting
www.faludidesign.com
www.worldchanging.com

I trust that this blog is evidence of Exbiblio’s openness. I’d just like to point out that the policy goes even deeper at the company. The design agency JMK told us that usually their clients would insist on complete confidentiality: we couldn’t walk around their office and see their designs-in-progress on the wall. Exbiblio is different. There is no insistence on confidentiality. JMK doesn’t have to cover up any Exbiblio materials for anybody. It seems that people who work with Exbiblio really like that policy. Secrecy can be a burden – and it’s over-rated. After all, imitation is flattery, so why fear it?

“Critical Utility” is a phrase that I’ve heard a good deal around Exbiblio. Last time I was in the office, I asked for a definition of this phrase in relation to Exbiblio’s first product, the oPen pocket scanner. Here were two tests that I was told it had to pass:

• If you are reading a book at night, and your oPen is downstares on your desk, will you get out of bed to fetch it?
• If you leave home in the morning, and realise that you don’t have your oPen with you, will you go back into the house to get it?

There are certainly some things I can’t leave the house without – my wallet, my credit card, my specticals, my keys, my mobile. Some people might add their MP3 player to the list. The oPen will be in elite company if it work its way into the exclusive club of the can’t-do-withouts.

This is a follow up to the entry about the electrical shorts in the printed circuit boards last week.

After a few days of “beating [his] head against the wall”, Brian Piquette from Synapse took both the working and non-working circuit boards back to the manufacturer to get them X-Rayed.

The X-Ray revealed solder bridges which caused the short circuits and the manufacturer was able to fix most of the boards in a few hours. The photos below show the solder bridges circled.

Most of the shorts were under the board-to-board connectors and it was determined that the problems were a result of a manufacturing problem, not a design problem.

The manufacturer is going to X-Ray all future boards before delivery to confirm that the manufacturing process is now turning out good boards.

After visiting Exbiblio three times, I’m starting to get to know the crew – and I’m really sorry to hear the news that Damon is moving on, and that today is his last day. That was rather sudden, Damon! I wish you the best of luck in your next job.

Damon joined Exbiblio in June, as I mentioned in my profile of him.

Damon is an extremely nice chap, and I know that his colleagues have a very high opinion of his intellect and abilities. It’s a pity Exbiblio couldn’t hang on to somebody of his caliber for longer.

Exbiblio seems to have a high turnover: Jannine in July, Noah in August, and now Damon in October.

Adam has posted an email from Brian (pictured left), an electrical engineer at Synapse, the consultants working for Exbiblio on its first product, the oPen (pocket scanner). Adam mentions hitting some “challenges” . Over here in England, we still call those “problems”, but you can get a sharp rebuke for uttering that word around Exbiblio.

Exbiblio, once again, is to be commended on its openness – but on this occasion, Synapse deserves credit too. As it happens, I was planning to write an account of my visit to Synapse.

Synapse is based in a former tram depot in a suburb of Seattle. Immediately I walk in, I get a different feel from Exbiblio – it’s open-plan, chatty, but business-like. The depot makes me think of the Google Garage. It has some of the make-shift romance of a start-up, though Synapse was founded in 2001 and employs around 40 people. Exbiblio, as I have mentioned before, is in the center of town, and has a bookish, intellectual feel, with the workers dispersed in offices along corridors, where they beaver feverishly away at their projects.

On its website, Synapse says it does technology- intensive product development. Since June, it has been working with Exbiblio to develop the oPen. Its other clients come from all over the world and include Microsoft, Samsung, Philips, Intel, Logitech, General Electric – well you name it.

The five-strong engineering team working on the oPen is managed by Dave Zucker (holding the notepad in the picture). You will often see Dave and other Synapse people around Exbiblio. Exbiblio’s Ian MacDuff (in the middle of the picture) is often at Synapse. It all seems very well integrated. They seem like a happy team, though I hope Ian won’t mind me saying that he looks a little stressed now that the project is behind its ambitious schedule.

I’ve heard Dave say a couple of times that the Synapse way is to “fail early, and fail often” – in other words to go all out for rapid development of prototypes, see what works, what doesn’t, and then quickly do another one, and then, if necessary, another one.

That is what has NOT happened with the oPen. Dave told me:

“We had said at the beginning that this was a two month project.”

I interject, “Was that possible?”

“It was possible. But Martin and I had discussions along the way where we made conscious decisions to push out the schedule in return for something – either we learned more, or got a design that we liked better. When you shoot for a prototype in two months, you definitely are going to make some compromises. You certainly couldn’t design something for production that was exactly for final version in two months.”

And so the deadline slipped, partly as a trade-off for more features and knowledge, and partly just because it slipped a bit.

The first prototype – videoed last week – is about one and a half times bigger than the desired size of the final version (this was planned). The idea of this prototype is to learn about memory, processor, and battery-life requirements. The engineers are also looking for ways to cut the size down.

Dave told me about one of the problems – er, challenges – already uncovered. When the first circuit boards came back from the factory they noticed some funny behaviour. Some diagnostics showed that two pins on the layout had been connected by a mistake in the design. It sounded as if this could be fixed quite easily.

I don’t really understand all the technicalities of Brian’s email but it doesn’t sound like the end of the world to me. I’m sure these glitches can be put right. But as we used to say back in my school days, Tempus Fugit.

It would have been nice to have a perfect prototype first time, but I think we all live in the real world and realise that “right first time” would require a lot of good fortune. It’s not really what Synapse promise (“Fail early and fail often”).

Tactless as ever, I asked Dave who pays for any delays. The answer is Exbiblio.

We’ve hit a few challenges in the hardware project. Here is an e-mail that Brian, the Electrical Engineer on the Falstaff project sent to our internal mailing list yesterday:

Well…The build of 20 units has not gone as cleanly as I had hoped.

There has been pretty low yield on the two PCBs. Less than 50% on the Main board and ~75% on the Button board.

For the Main PCB there are a lot of boards that have processor bus data lines shorted to each other.

For example one of the boards looks to have D8 and D10 shorted together.

If you look at the layout of the board, you’ll see that D8 and D10 are adjacent to each other at the board to board connector and under the SDRAM BGA. See the image below.

If you look at the left side, you’ll see two pins on the connector that are colored yellow. These are D8 and D10.

I suspect that they are shorted either under the J2 connector or under the U7 BGA.

I’m taking 10 boards over to PCA to morrow to have them x-rayed to see if we can locate the shorts, then fix them.

The fallout on the Button board seems to be a bit more random. On one board, the Left Illumination LED doesn’t work, on another the SM Bus data line is shorted to ground.

That being said, I’ve give 7 working board sets to Dave to get assembled into units. We’ll work on getting more working and assembled ASAP…

Ron Garret, a Venture Capitalist, has written up his Top Ten Geek Business Myths. He says the following are classic mistakes. Which ones are Exbiblio making?

1. A brilliant idea will make you rich.
2. If you build it they will come. (i.e. customers).
3. Someone will steal your idea if you don’t protect it.
4. What you think matters.
5. Financial models are bogus.
6. What you know matters more than who you know.
7. A Ph.D. means something.
8. I need $5 million to start my business.
9. The idea is the most important part of my business plan.
10. Having no competition is a good thing.

Special bonus myth (free with your paid subscription): After the IPO I’ll be happy.

I don’t think Exbiblio is guilty of the last two ‘mistakes’, including the special bonus. As for 1-8, well I’m not quite so sure…

Once upon a time (roughly last Spring) Exbiblio was a bright and bushy-tailed young software company. It was also a very democratic place, where decisions were made as the result of lengthy brain-storming sessions. Its ideal was a ‘flat management structure’ without any job titles. In fact, when I read the ‘people page’ on the website as it stands even now, it’s hard to tell what anybody does at Exbiblio. Most seem to grow organic vegetables and ride bicycles to work. You certainly get no idea of who the CEO is (apparently they are still looking for one).

Read the rest of this entry »