We have! And a few larger group buys / enterprise customers in the pipeline. We started out selling more expensive Mitutoyo systems (quality but expensive Japanese optics) and sold a few of those. But feedback from customers was that if we could do 80% of what that system does and get it on a credit card it would be very interesting to them (greatly simplifies purchasing flow). But at the same time distributors don't want to carry them because they loose margin over selling $30-200k comps which means we need to adapt more of a "DTC" approach than we were originally planning. So working on upping our sales / marketing game.
Thanks! Yeah that's roughly inline with our calculations / how we priced things.
If we want to get the final price lower we need to switch to more basic components or tighter integration with suppliers. But we've been avoiding that under our premise having a system that can be purchased with a company credit card (say 5k or 10k limit) is the main requirement. Would love more feedback on how important that is for people's purchasing decisions. And even then if we lowered the cost of the chassis we might instead use that to improve the optics/camera following the "credit card purchase" philosophy.
Hi there! CTO of Labsmore here. We would love to chat with people involved at lab automation / digital microscopy to learn more about what we could do to help their workflows. Currently we are focusing on electronics / semiconductor but are exploring bio / life sciences given we've seen significant interest there.
Its also the first time we've started a company like this and are constantly exploring ways to validate PMF, iterate faster, and improve sales / marketing. Please reach out if you'd be interested to chat about the business side, grab coffee in silicon valley, etc.
Hi there! CTO of Labsmore here. Pricing is hard :) There is a lot that goes into the final price, especially once the other components, calibration, and overhead is factored in. Its our first time selling a product like this and would love input from others on how they arrive at sticker prices and PMF for commercial products.
I've been collecting a bunch of counterfeit chips to hopefully do a write up on at some point. If you are ok they might sit for a while, I'd love to collect them for that project! Feel free to email me JohnDMcMaster at gmail.com
Yeah I do this as part of my consulting work. Typical applications are failure analysis, security research, or re-manufacturing obsolete electronics. Note however these tend to be larger projects and more than a quick die photo. Although I do (did?) smaller die photo commissions if someone is ok with the data being public.
I agree with this. I often get asked to decap + image chips commercially and its not usually worth it unless its a value add / loss leader as part of a larger project.
Looking to curate a collection of chips that are security focused, especially those with hardware security features (ex: tamper mesh). If you have suggestions for chips that are missing from this list that I can get my hands on please let me know! Send me a link where I can purchase them or happy to take (anonymous?) donations. Hope you enjoy!
Some friends and I tried to buy chips from them recently. However, they wanted a relatively significant amount of money for them that more accurately reflected commercial rates than historical collectible prices. Seems like they are operating as a corporation still and may still be protective over their IP
Background: I maintain the largest die photography collection on the internet. I wanted to take some die pictures for historical reasons. Fortunately I was able to get one to image from a third party, although I haven't posted it yet
We are making computer controlled microscopes more accessible: better software and lower cost. We are working on tightly integrating output images with cloud services (ex: AI analysis, data viewers) to make the data more usable. We also have FOSS Python host software that enables a lot of user customization. We rely on a lot more COTS components and software correction than traditional players to keep the cost low (ex: we use mass produced chassis instead of designing our own).
My ask for HN: pricing is hard and I'd love to talk to other hardware co-founders about their experience / advice. One complication is that pricing is affected based on how we make money (ex: are we selling more hardware vs cloud services). Or please reach out if you just like microscopes :) Always great to talk to more people!
The topic has come up a few times and I'm not opposed to changing it. If a good replacement name came up and someone helped with logos etc I'd change it
Mostly yes (ex: through thin film interference as mentioned), but there may be significant color correction for things like halogen light yellow color. There are also techniques to produce colorful images such as DIC and using a confocal microscope (ex: the 4004 ones I believe are confocal)