[melling]

You're software start-up probably won't make you money either. At least for hardware, people don't have so many free options. The barriers to entry are also higher. Someone won't be developing hardware after a 12 week online course. To me it looks like a great time to build hardware.

Kickstarter has really changed the game. These guys launched today, for example, and they'll probably be funded within 24 hours:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1152958674/the-sensel-m...

[myth_buster]

The barrier for entry (intellectual & financial) and the risk are higher. The upfront investment is perhaps the single most important reason why people moved to software (myself included) as all you needed was a couple of $100 and you can get going. I think Makerspace is helping a lot to even out this gap and I couldn't be happier.

Interesting product... they are almost there and the traffic from here should do it.

[dvt]

I tried to launch a hardware start-up on Kickstarter earlier this year (http://www.pcgamer.com/introducing-gameref-the-anti-cheat-ha...). Unfortunately, it didn't get funded.

I might just suck at PR, but I don't think The Sensel Morph is really representative of your run-of-the-mill funding experience.

[michaelt]

  I might just suck at PR

I don't think it's that. It looks like you did a good job of getting media coverage.

You just picked a really hard product to make successful.

The problem is J. Random Gamer has no reason to buy it, unless enough of his gaming buddies have it that he gets shut out of games if he doesn't have it. If he's the only person in the game who has it, or even if half the people in the game have it, the cheaters are still in the game and he's spent $125 without any benefit. And that's assuming the games support it - if no games support it properly, there's even less point.

There's a chapter about this sort of thing in Thomas Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehaviour, if you're interested. Not cheaters in pc gaming (the book was written in 1978) but the game theory around similar situations.

One option is to make the product known to people who run the competitions, then wait for a major cheating scandal and lobby them to make it compulsory - but obviously that would only give you pro sales, not the much higher volume consumer sales. It might be possible to arrange a bunch of great servers where the device is mandatory, so early adopters get some benefits.

In the longer term I'd also suggest some sort of IP licensing, where something compatible with your product is built right into gaming mice. That way users have one less thing to cart around, and companies who know how to make and distribute hardware can take care of that for you. And you'll have a much easier time getting it made mandatory if it's "$1 in every gaming mouse from a variety of competing manufacturers" rather than $125 with a single source :)

[melling]

These guys raised $650k for their keyboard last month:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keyboardio/the-model-01...

I think a lot of these guys try to build a following before they launch.

[technotony]

Yes, there's a lot of planning that goes into a successful campaign. We prepared for six months. It's not hardware, but similar business/marketing challenges. Here's how we raised $484k on Kickstarter: http://blog.glowingplant.com/post/85922974558/how-we-raised-...

[bsmith]

Looks like a great idea, to me! But I think the appeal of the Sensel Morph is much more broad, and your project seems quite niche.

[misiti3780]

eventually somebody like these guys will come into play too:

https://swarm.fund/

[hacker_9]

New hardware is always easily more impressive to people that software too, and case in point that pressure pad looks amazing.