The Promise and Perils of Optimism
Entrepreneurs, by necessity, suffer from a type of blindness that
allows them to operate in a parallel universe where risk and reality
are merely annoying variables, not hard and fast certainties. Optimism
reigns supreme. No mountain is too high to climb. And so it was when
we set off on this quest to build BUG in April 2006. And while we
suffered our share of setbacks and challenges, I never lost my sense
that hard work and a bit of luck would get us to the finish line -
shipping product by the end of the year as we’ve been promising. The
good news is, I haven’t lost an iota of optimism. We are very, very
close to getting BUG out the door. But there are some realities that
we can’t overlook, and we’d be remiss to ignore them.
First and foremost, we want BUG to be very reliable and durable and capable of getting really USED. So we’ve been
testing it in lots of different scenarios – hot, cold, dropping it,
twisting it, etc. Jeremy almost tried to set one on fire. After the first batch of testing we noticed that we could make some improvements with respect to how the
modules connect to the BUGbase. Those improvements involved adjusting the
design of the plastic housing to better absorb the shock involved when
the unit is dropped. We made those changes and went through another
round of testing and confirmed that our changes did the trick. The
upshot of all this activity is it pushed our ship date back. It wasn’t an easy decision to make but we pulled the trigger
because it was the right thing to do.
It’s never easy to break a
promise. Especially one that you’ve made to many others whom you know
are depending on you. So it is not without a long face that I tell you
we need to postpone our ship date into the first quarter of 2008. But I would hope that you’ll
agree with me that we’re doing it for the right reasons. We want you
to be using your BUG for years and years. The result is a short term loss
for a longer term gain. It’s a moment where reality collides with
optimism. But thankfully it’s just that, a moment.
Thanks very much for all
of your support and enthusiasm over the past couple of months. While we’ve always hoped and dreamed for the best, I don’t think any of us expected such amazing support from so many communities so quickly. It has been a ton
of fun sharing it all with you and we look forward to continuing to do
it. We ask now for a tad of patience while we make BUG the best it can
be. Rest assured we’ll keep you in the loop every step of the way.
Thanks and stay tuned for CES where we’ll get specific with a firm ship date, pricing, and some other fun news!
December 21st, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Peter, I think this is the wrong way to go. Apple makes billions selling easily breakable items.
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:32 am
You don’t even know what STILL lies ahead. Open source advocacy is never going to produce all those modules.
You are in grave danger, more than you realize. You must get good senior HW designers in NOW, or you won’t even make the 1st quarter.
December 22nd, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I saw you on CNBC and watched you plug the modules together. All I could think was, “My god, I hope they have screws to hold the modules in place.”
Based on this comment, it’s sounding like you don’t. Snap-in is fine for prototyping. But I think there should be the option to screw the modules in place for when you take it on the road.
Just my $0.02.
–t
January 1st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
agree with charlie: i went through 4 apple cables before dumping my macbook.
But you guys hopefully are the real deal…