What should have been

The setup#

We set out to create a simple hub. The remote wasn’t even in the picture. We wanted to use an existing SoC platform on existing boards with a cute little case around it and software that should make it much easier to manage devices. That was the entry point for everything that followed.

Then came the dynamic that got us successfully hyped but also put the first nail in the coffin: the remote.

One thing you need to understand: compared to other startups at the time, our funding was severely limited. 10 times less than your average Silicon Valley smart light bulb startup. 10 times fewer people working on it. Yes, there was a Kickstarter campaign with “incredible amounts” of funding. But all that money is nothing compared to the actual cost of production and development required to finish the scope as advertised.

We had no experience producing consumer hardware. We learned everything on the go. Too little funds, too little manpower — a rocky start at best, an impossible situation at worst.

Scope vs. reality#

Building out a software solution to manage devices and keep a stack operating is one thing. Building two hardware projects at the same time plus embedded software and cloud APIs with a team of 5 is something else entirely. There’s struggling while swimming against the current, and then there’s struggling to stay alive in a vortex in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle.

More and more features and requirements were added. Manufacturing tolerances, product design, functionality — all piled on without considering the big picture. The last 20% on the way to perfection are 80% of the total work. But with the scope that built up over 2–3 years and the same limited manpower and funding, even the first 80% became less and less realistic.

I voiced my concerns on many occasions. They were either not listened to or simply ignored.

Would it have received the same amount of hype if we’d left 50% of the scope out? Honestly, yes. Maybe a little less. But still enough to get the wheels turning. Reducing scope would have cut a serious chunk of BOM cost, production cost and time to ship. It would have pushed certain incredibly hard — and, frankly, dumb — features out of the picture entirely. The thing was spiked with high-risk features.

Culture#

The thing that still disappoints me the most is the constant belittling of critical voices. Most concerns were simply overruled. Not just mine — even concerns of experienced people brought in specifically for their expertise.

Some people get fueled when someone tells them “that’s impossible.” They want to prove the world wrong. But you can only do that if you have the funds to support your ambitions. You need to know what is realistic and focus on what matters from a consumer perspective. Trying to create your magnum opus as your first product is not the smartest idea.

A concrete example: packaging. If there aren’t enough resources, why would you desperately over-engineer the thing that gets disposed of instantly? It could have been half as complicated and half as expensive and still looked more than fine for a first product. Things like that drove me nuts, because the dissonance between ambition and reality was constant.

Self-imposed, nearly unreachable quality expectations caused the bar to rise to a level that should have been clearly noted as unrealistic. We lost self-perception along the way and got caught up in details that 80% of users wouldn’t even have noticed. It became a self-realization project. Just because we manifest things in our minds doesn’t mean they’re possible within a constrained set of variables.

My part in this#

I should have voiced my opinions more forcefully. As a co-founder, I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself — much more than employees did. That was fine. Startup and stuff. But at some point I realized that no matter how much pressure I applied, it would simply get neutralized. That realization was the beginning of the end for me.

In retrospect, my place as a co-founder was more for show. I happened to be the first person in the project other than the front man. I should have known better. But I was deliberately naive.

I left before the roll-out, so I can’t speak to the last stretch before the acquisition. And no, the acquisition didn’t make me a millionaire. I’d like to say I don’t care about the money, but I don’t trust anyone who says “money isn’t important.” It is. That’s a fact of life.

Looking back#

Some hype is great. Of course you want to make a product that people are longing for, and you should set your goals on the brink of what’s possible. But you should not fall for the idea that anything is achievable just because you walked the first 100 meters of a 10-kilometer hike.

Whether you have good or bad memories of NEEO depends on your position, your involvement, and your risk awareness. For me, the bad memories outweigh the good ones. I was bitter about it for a while — more than I needed to be. If I try hard enough, I can push the bad memories aside and cozy up in the feeling that “we accomplished great things.” But that’s not the entire story.

What I miss most is the humble self-assessment. That, more than anything, is what this project lacked.