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Arduino lessons learned

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Bryce Roberts

The document provides lessons learned for starting a project or company, including to make something you would use yourself, know your audience, and have clear goals. It advises respecting beginners, documenting work, and expecting challenges like resistance, complaints, and conspiracy theories. It also notes the difficulties of open source business models, quality assurance, naming, and managing a startup that gains traction.

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Lessons Learned
Don't make something you don't use yourself
Know who you're making it for
Know what you want out of it
Make projects, not platforms
Respect the intelligence of the beginner
Experts are not the best advisors when you want to make tools for beginners
Good hardware, good software, good explanation and generous users make a great project
Document what you make
Change is painful
Expect resistance
...and conspiracy theories...
Never ascribe to malice what can be explained with stupidity.
If nobody complains you¡¯re doing something wrong
Including people is hard (but necessary)
If you are ?ve people in three different countries, you are a multinational company
If you're not prepared for someone else to adapt your work, don't share it online
If you're not prepared for someone else to improve your work, don't share it online
If you're not prepared for someone else to clone your work, don't share it online
If you're not prepared for someone else to trash your work, don't share it online
Organizing a startup is a lot harder once the idea has traction
You can't run a startup part-time
Mistakes will get institutionalized
Pick your name carefully
*duino is not creative
Especially if your board is not even compatible
Register every domain that you can
Hire a lawyer, you don¡¯t know why but she does
Be careful when somebody is just too eager to help you
Even your friends might become a competitor
It¡¯s good to be friends, better if it¡¯s in writing
Open source software doesn't necessarily translate into a business model...
Open source hardware has to.
If a defective board makes it through QA...
...it will be delivered to the most vocal customer...
...who will publish electron microscope pictures of it...
...pointing at every atom that is out of place...
...Twittering that every board you ever made is seriously ?awed...
..whose follower will robotically RT and in 8 hours someone will declare your company doomed.
Your most important customers are not the most vocal ones
You might need to travel the world to meet them
but, most of all
Don¡¯t let the fact that you don¡¯t know what you¡¯re doing stop you

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