| Hello, I am Usama, Founder & CEO of inventhub.io, a platform for securely managing and collaborating on electronics design data, is excited to announce a set of tools which provide an improved way for hardware companies to manage their PCB design projects and allow early collaboration on the data of those projects. Its been a year since I have posted an early version of Inventhub here on HackerNews (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22476514) with just a visual version control and couple of ideas. Over the year, we were able to work with hardware developers and electronics product teams to get feedback, improve product and add new features. We just recently launched a completely revamped product with a new website. Inventhub started as a git based version control with utilities to visualize ecad design and changes (diffs) in the web. In our new release we introduced a complete electronics product design data management and collaboration to enable true collaboration on PCB design projects. Tools and their benefits include: * Visualization and Discussions on PCB Documents: The design view of a pcb document on the platform helps in bringing a shared understanding where everyone has access to view, discuss and understand the document and its data. Inventhub supports visualization on formats such as Altium Designer, EagleCad, KiCad (more coming soon) * Git based version control and tools: Having one database is a single source of truth which allows everyone to work from the same single database that is updated with every change from everyone who has access to it. All data is accessible in a centralized and secure cloud space. The information is visible to everyone instantly with its history. * Access controls and sharing engineering data: Inventhub wants to help make it easy for the reusability of documents with multiple stakeholders. Organization access controls on the platform enable team based collaboration and sharing the latest version of the document and having access controls on top of it helps in early communication. * Release management and Manufacturer Space: Easily Create, Manage and share a release by marking a point in history of a version controlled project. A manufacturer space is provided in addition for accessibility of project and design data. This helps to communicate production details easily to external stakeholders. * Bill of Materials: Smart BOM brings a design-to-cost development approach. Create, edit and keep your bill of materials updated with every change in your project. With smart supply chain integration, find prices, generate cost estimates, get parts availability all in one place. This synchronized integration lets your team use the right parts and enable your procurement team to have up-to-date information at every stage. * Components Library Manager: Inventhub wants to make it easy to manage components libraries and their life-cycle in centralized cloud storage. This gives teams and organizations easy access to trusted reusable assets and adding supply chain integration on top gives designers and procurement teams to see real-time/up-to-date component life-cycle data, pricing and availability. I would really appreciate if you guys can look at the new website along with new product features and provide us with your feedback. We are keen to hear what do you guys think about the product now? |
First, you should consider IP. People who do this commercially don't want to put all their IP on an unknown platform. If you are hosting, you can make guarantees, you can be transparent about your identity, you can show audits, you can work to increase trust, right now none of that is present. An alternative option is a deployable on-premises solution.
Second, a lot of money flows in this industry through iterative fabrication. You can work to tap that cashflow by integrating with fabricators. There is an opportunity to do the hard work for people in translating their BOM and design files to fabricator-anticipated formats, translating fabricator business process information (fulfillment times, design checks, etc.) in order to become a platform for iteration. This could be an awesome service in and of itself without the whole hosted design iteration thing.
Third, component dealers. You can obtain forward-looking metrics about component selection from switched on component dealers, who can also allow people to secure rare stock through your platform. Some of these deals are very large.
Basically, it's a chicken and egg problem. To get fabricators you need users. To get dealers you need users. To get users you need to add value while reducing risk and presenting a trustworthy and stable platform. Platform businesses are hard to build.
Ultimately you may do well to reconsider your approach and instead of building a platform business just build the visual diff, BOM, fabricator DRC, fabricator order status and other industry-specific software components necessary for someone like Github to acquire you and roll out value to a large user base. This may be much quicker to return and a much larger return.
Good luck.