Thread

1. Onavo · 1786033732 · focus · HN ↗

   I hate to ask this..but how exactly do you plan to turn this into a scalable business beyond being yet another Oshkosh? Sure it's profitable but there's a reason hardware manufacturing is generally outsourced to the lowest bidder. Outside of targeting specific sectors e.g. defence, how else do you plan to remain competitive globally? Manufacturing hardware (especially if you are not Apple) is generally a capital intensive, low profit margin business that is extremely sensitive to labor costs. The fact that the past two decades of growth in the US is dominated by tech companies is precisely because software and the associated network effects are able to drive disproportionate amount of growth, unlike hardware. The further down the value chain in hardware the more commoditized you are.

   1. tonyarkles · 1786034344 · focus · HN ↗

      I think you’re actually asking good questions!

      > scalable business beyond being yet another Oshkosh

      OSH Park is fabulous for what they do, but they don’t do PCBA.

      I’m not OP, but I think I can provide some insight anyway:

      > Outside of targeting specific sectors e.g. defence, how else do you plan to remain competitive globally

      I think that trying to be competitive globally would be a dumb play for these folks, they’re optimizing for something different.

      Defence is one sector where this model works, no doubt. But there’s a bigger market that doesn’t have a great domestic story yet (I’m in Canada and work with a variety of CA and US PCB/PCBA houses): fast-turn low-volume PCBA, either for prototype iteration or for industrial one-offs. While I work on a specific “sort of defence adjacent” project right now, my past consulting work would’ve benefitted quite a bit from being able to turn around full PCBA work in 7 days. Macrofab end-to-end was usually 3-4 weeks and cutting that iteration time down would’ve had a solid effect on reducing project timelines if it could’ve happened for a reasonable price. There are domestic manufacturers who have optimized for that… but the price was not something my clients were willing to pay to accelerate their projects. If this hits a sweet spot there… that’ll be really exciting for me.

      (I’ve already sent it to my team to start looking at)

      1. willcarkner · 1786034596 · focus · HN ↗

         Defense adjacent work is another place where we're seeing some strong pull.

         > scalable business beyond being yet another Oshkosh

         Yes, OSH Park is awesome. They could add PCBA, but we see the long-term value in owning the full stack (from design to testing of finished boards). Stops us from having a knife fight all the way down.

   2. [deleted] · 1786034688 · focus · HN ↗

      [deleted]

   3. walrus01 · 1786035293 · focus · HN ↗

      > I hate to ask this..but how exactly do you plan to turn this into a scalable business beyond being yet another Oshkosh?

      There are a number of small but very specialized US based defense sub-component manufacturers that support 15 to 20 people with very good paying jobs, building stuff exactly like NDAA compliant UAS flight controllers. Not everything needs to become gargantuan to be a success.

      There can also be very good money in manufacturing specialized things that require the work to be done by US citizens with a TS or TS/SCI clearance if you can get into that market.

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