How to Validate A Market With Development Boards and SD cards

I came across an article from Cooley Go that I wish I had seen sooner. It should be required reading for anyone thinking about making an electronic device, even though the article is specific to the US market.

Devices subject to the FCC’s rules cannot be marketed until they have completed testing and, if necessary, have been approved by the FCC. Marketing includes selling or leasing a device, advertising that a device is available for sale or lease, and importing a device for purpose of selling or leasing it.

Yikes.

It is possible to market a device without actually selling it. In fact, the FCC has fined companies for displaying unauthorized devices at the CES trade show. These rules apply to all kinds of marketing, including via websites, social media and other online media. The FCC has not provided any guidance on whether offering a device as a premium on crowdfunding sites constitutes marketing, so there is some risk to doing so.

The line about CES, in particular, made my hair stand up.

The testing and certification industry is odd. In theory, it exists to serve the public good and uphold consumer protection laws. On the other hand, its customers are in the private sector. Normally, market forces would dictate that by now it would be straightforward, fast, and affordable to get your product tested as frequently as desired. However, in reality, the labs are “too busy” to respond or reply very late and generally sound less than eager to work with you. Not to mention, the fees that they quote are rarely palatable to a bootstrapping startup. And yet, working with them is generally required to get your product to market.

While some consultants suggest that there are “sales test” exceptions, I remember a person much smarter than me once telling me that “[government agencies] are very unambiguous about [these sorts of things]”.

Variations of the FCC exist in pretty much every developed economy. Putting a poorly tested hardware product on the market immediately puts a target on your back. Maybe you’ll get lucky, but chances are that someone somewhere will report you. And, unless you are operating entirely out of China, it will hurt. A lot. Both your company and maybe even you, personally.

At this point, despair started setting in once more. The way I saw it, I had three options. The first is to give in and pay up. The second is to exclusively sell in countries with weak consumer protection laws. Then there was option number three.

I did not want to spend so much money on testing before I validated the market or gathered a community of believers. The second option made little sense too. So, I started thinking of how to get some kind of sales going while shielding myself from some liability. Then it dawned on me that the Allwinner A20 SoC is the centerpiece of the hardware. It is probably one of the most ubiquitous chips on the market today, and there are countless development boards for it that are already being sold globally. I don’t need to sell the development boards. I just have to tell my customers which boards to buy and how to set them up. This way, the electronic device liability will fall on the manufacturer, and the magic of friendship EULA should afford me enough protection to make this a pure software play.

My significant other would like to take credit here for having suggested this strategy months ago.

This just leaves the OS and the software delivery problem. Fortunately, many of these development boards have one important thing in common. All of them can boot from an SD card, which is usually where the manufacturer puts the OS and software. Flashing the SD card correctly is pretty challenging even for me. I can’t imagine a customer figuring it out. So I will flash it for them!

Now, how to get the SD card in the hands of the customer? Mail it to them! Unlike a bigger bulkier board that would have had to be packaged correctly and go through customs, an envelope should theoretically arrive at your door in the same manner as your new credit card. It would also be far easier and cheaper to create a good strong first impression just by using nice stationery. Incidentally, new age digital banks take advantage of this opportunity to create the Wow factor because it is usually the only point of physical contact they will have with their customers. Old age banks just send a boring piece of paper with some glue because they know you will inevitably have to walk into one of their physical branches.

All of this made me reminisce about the beautiful stickers on floppy disks that were succeeded by jewel cases for CDs. I have a feeling that many people long for the physical these days, and it is making a comeback.

Once the SD card is in place, OS and software updates can then be delivered via a file downloaded to a simple USB drive.

The customer would be able to order the SD card from my e-commerce store.

This means that the new goal is to sell as many copies of the OS as I can. Then, count the number of customers from each country. This will tell me which economies’ certifications should be prioritized when I build my own electronic device around the A20 chip.

I can start selling immediately. Or as soon as the OS is ready. Instant market validation and product market fit with minimal spend. I’m excited.

Keep any eye on my progress by subscribing to the mailing list!

In my next post, I write about how to mail an SD card with gummy glue, and the woes of counterfeit SD cards.

This blog post was submitted to Hacker News. Read the comments here.