[qchris]

> Framework will need to step up its game, especially if it wants to sell more laptops to businesses—a lucrative slice of the PC industry that Framework is actively courting.

This line really resonated with me. I own a 12th-gen Framework laptop personally, and have enjoyed using it enough that I wanted to have one at work as my existing machine is aging out. Like many businesses, my org requires some paperwork ("telecom approval") in order to buy computing hardware, which is basically a short questionnaire that I assume to check off some "we're not actively trying to backdoor you" boxes. I've had vendors get this turned around in <24 hours. Framework, however, has not been able to do this. Their reasoning is basically, per the article,

> [..] interspersed with not-untrue but unsatisfying responses from Framework employees (some version of "we're a small company" is one of the most common)

claiming their B2B lead is "swamped". Unfortunately, they've been that way since I started that approval request (with repeated follow-ups) 6 months ago, and can't even give me a timeline for when they might even be able to review it. I'm trying to get approval for an org with high-four-figures employees; not Google-size, but not exactly a small business either.

The initial execution on their laptops has been good, and I'm hoping that it continues. But at least to me, it definitely feels like there's a lot of maturing to do for the company on the process for product support and customer experience.

[nrp]

Hi, we agree that the response time on this is unacceptable. I've dug into it and we've now completed and replied with the form. Posting a comment on HN certainly shouldn't be the path to getting a response on an ask from us, whether for business or consumer support. On the business side of this, we're building a Customer Success team whose sole responsibility is making sure that our business customers have a dedicated and responsive point of contact to work with. The first job req for this team is currently live.

[qchris]

Just want to follow up on this thread to say that Framework (directly via nrp) did follow up with my org and me, and was able to get the aforementioned paperwork back to us.

It's encouraging to see that they've taken this kind of feedback so seriously, and I'm hoping that the organizational steps outlined above will help to make this process smoother for other groups in a similar position looking to buy from Framework moving forward.

[mushufasa]

> Like many businesses, my org requires some paperwork ("telecom approval") in order to buy computing hardware, which is basically a short questionnaire that I assume to check off some "we're not actively trying to backdoor you" boxes. I've had vendors get this turned around in <24 hours. Framework, however, has not been able to do this.

I'm not in this industry but do sell into regulated industries with vendor diligence practices.

I would check your assumption that it's just "checking off some boxes" -- often questionnaires can be hundreds of pages long, and require you to sometimes get esoteric certifications or attestations. The questions are often very sophisticated meaning that not just anyone can fill them out. Big companies have dedicated roles for this type of thing (a lot of CISO at SME is filling out these papers) where the person is specialized in filling out these papers. Also, there is a knack to these types of forms -- you have to be able to hold two opposing ideas in your mind to do this effectively, A) this is important to do quickly and well to enable us to make sales to this company, and B) this paperwork is bullshit and you should focus on checking the boxes versus worrying about, e.g., truly enforcing a floppy disk security policy at your firm (yes, most of these questionnaires get added to over the years and never pared down, so you often have to answer questions about comically obsolete or irrelevant technologies). There's a big catch because often someone skilled enough to answer these questions would be better served actually doing things, e.g. writing code, and the people who can fill out these questions but not skilled enough to do the actual things are a weird middle-ground of mediocre that is hard to find.

Really big companies often solve this by just paying overskilled people to do this for a few years, which is expensive and soul-destroying for the skilled person (I had a CTO quit in large part because of having to do paperwork). And after a vendor is already established with a company, the requirements for updating it year over year are really light, so it's actually not as hard for established companies to maintain versus new vendors.

[rkwz]

> There's a big catch because often someone skilled enough to answer these questions would be better served actually doing things, e.g. writing code, and the people who can fill out these questions but not skilled enough to do the actual things are a weird middle-ground of mediocre that is hard to find. Really big companies often solve this by just paying overskilled people to do this for a few years, which is expensive and soul-destroying for the skilled person.

This is a really insightful comment, how do companies get around this issue (apart from paying overskilled people until they burnout)?

[mushufasa]

I do a lot of these myself (technical founder, willing to do dirty work) but there comes a point where it's not a good use of my time for all but the biggest opportunities, because these things are so time intensive and I need to wear many hats. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's going on at Framework now.

I would love to hear if anyone has different suggestions. For reference, we already employ outsourced ciso/cyber vendors (think of vanta, strikegraph) but, while they can help draft responses to these things, they can't do the last mile of certifying and submitting on your behalf, so in practice we still need some skilled internal resources to accomplish these

[GTP]

I'm not sure businesses would be interested in a modular laptop, I always assumed they prefer to just buy new ones when the time comes rather than having someone spending the time to service them for the needed uogrades. Currently, they don't even bother trying to reinstall Windows, which I think it would solve most of the performance problems that surface after about 3 years of operation of a laptop (assuming it's used for office work).

[bluGill]

My company has been lengthening replacement intervals with every budget cut. In the 1990s it made sense to replace computers as often as every 2 years - the new one would be twice as fast. Around 2000 that slowed down though, and so 3 years made sense. Today computers are expected to last 5 years. If the most common things to break are easy to repair it might make sense for a company to not replace computers are all anymore, just keep the important spare parts on hand. (they still need to keep new ones for weird accidents)

[burnte]

Actually modular ones would be GREAT for repairablity in fleets. I could ship them to my tier 1 guys and have them swap out a part rather than going back to Lenovo or Dell and taking weeks.

[dv_dt]

A lot of the IT depts in medium to large size companies I've talked to routinely do repairs on their hardware, e.g. swapping out laptop motherboards, memory, drives, etc as part of maintenance (on and off warranty). Hardware explicitly designed for changing major components easier would probably save them time and money.

[nrp]

We've been getting a lot of interest and traction from SMBs, especially in the 50-200 person company range. What we're finding is that the strongest benefit to them isn't even the upgradeability (which they do like), but the reduction in employee downtime from being able to swap a part on the spot and get the employee up and running again.

[jijijijij]

Thinkpads are/were basically modular laptops for decades and I think they are as business, as business can get. I am pretty sure modern Thinkpads failing in modularity/repairability is on Lenovo cutting costs, not lack of demand. After all, some models are still fairly repairable/upgradable with good (video) documentation.

[dheera]

> we're not actively trying to backdoor you

What is there to backdoor? Why can't businesses just pay money and get product and not overcomplicate this?

[makeitdouble]

The "not overcomplicate" way is to buy Microsoft, DELL or Lenovo. I'd assume it would need near 0 paperwork for that.

In most companies if you want to buy from a vendor that has no prior business relation you'll need to do the paperwork.

[dheera]

As a former founder and likely future founder, I'd just f it and buy whatever employees need to get their work done.

[pquki4]

It could work very well until there is an employee that intentionally or unintentionally leaks trade secret or customer data, and the police track it down to a laptop without any screening at purchase or any security policy set up by IT (if there is an IT department).

[Mindwipe]

Remind me never to buy anything from said company...

[spott]

Because as companies get bigger they worry more and more about the long tail of risk.

They do this for many reasons, but generally predicting the risk of very low probability events is very difficult, so they don’t understand the risk vs cost tradeoff as well as they think.