So my posting hiatus has largely been driven by my manic state of living of late. After getting back from my Asia-hopping tour in February, I spent about a week sick in bed recovering from some kinda nasty bug, no doubt contracted by bad Taiwanese Pizza Hut, or too much airplane cabin air. Either way, it was unpleasant. I still haven’t quite figured out how to completely avoid the bugs when in Shenzhen or Taipei. Guys at work have taken to call me the Asia-Boy-in-the-Bubble… wishful thinking!
So I barely recovered from my bug, and the jetlag, and then I had to go back to Tokyo for a week. Just returning a few days ago. I love Tokyo. So much great stuff to do there. I miss the big city. My good bud from college lives in Tokyo now, so hanging out there, meeting many smart, cool folks along the way is a refreshing addition to the work. Speaking of the work! Holy cow. So much fun. In and out of some of the largest and most famous consumer electronics giants. Scoping opportunities and generally spreading the word about our company. For a guy who spent most his childhood lusting after gadgets, pulling them apart (and never getting them back together), and definitely respecting the overall design and build quality delivered by the Japanese giants, it was just plain fun to be in there and meet the engineers who make the magic.
It’s amazing how one does business in electronics these days. The marketing models vary so much product to product, company to company, country to country. The involvements to nail down a design win for a chip company today include a mix of retailers, product managers for branded OEMs in North America, development managers for the branded OEMs’ Asia branch offices, manufacturing reps, distributors, contract manufacturers, ODMs and their partner ODMs and CMs… yikes! Each deal requires engagement of a different mix. It’s an education to be sure.
It is tough being a young company in this ecosystem. One should try to identify the big opportunities to try and leverage ones limited resources. But at the same time, one is compelled to diversify opportunities with respect to time-to-market and risk. So inevitably, it’s not long before one ends up touching all the possible parties anyway. Effort elasticity is high.
Some product categories would really benefit from some value chain optimizing. As technology trends have shifted, centers of design expertise tend to get spread among increasing parties. Often the interfaces of these organizations span the globe and are wrought with inefficiencies. I hope to write about some particulars in the future… but for now, I still gotta work a few things out. Which is why I will no doubt be back over there in the coming months.
