How do you make money in long term?

The Spark Core is great. But there is still a lot to do, as we see many feature requests in the community. And it is great that you are working open source, this makes everyting so much easier! Really!

So for me the question emerges: How do you make money in the future? I guess you’ll produce 5+ more Revisions of the Spark Core with improvemnts. And after every geek has a device or two, how do you “pay” for the support and further development?

Or do your sales calculation include a part for X month of support and improvement? Or are you just so experienced in making great business that you are sure everything will be great? :smile:

Hmm, so many questions about your valuable corporate trade secrets. :wink: I am student and now starting with economic/business lessons, and acutally just wondering how to run a business (successfully) with open source.

Cheers! :blush:

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Oh I don’t know, maybe Google comes and snacks up Spark :spark: for $3.2 Billion Dollars?

Could happen just like Nest! :eyes:

Thanks for the heads up @Rockvole!

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Frankly, I don’t know how they’re making money, period. The BOM cost has to be over $20/1k (I mean, the CC3000 runs $10 a pop)!

I imagine the real money will be as system integrators and providing the Spark Core to other OEMs.

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The short answer is that we want to be the platform that empowers the next Nest. The rest is all in the details. :wink:

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Oh my, I was hoping for a more comprehensive answer to this question. I was planning on using the spark to power a device I plan to use as part of my business. But since its core functionality requires the spark cloud, my entire hardware line is dependent on you guys succeeding.

Its not like there aren’t other enabling products out there, most notably, the Electric Imp. But I like the ardiuno/C based programming and simplicity of the spark core far better than I liked squirrel and Imp agents.

But I was about to start a thread titled something like “What happens if Spark fails”. I don’t want you to fail, this looks like exactly what I want to base my hardware on. But I’m a bit skeeved out by your answer there.

Do you have something a bit more…solid, I could read?

This was posted in the Kickstarter:

And in case you're worried about privacy or lock-in, we'll be releasing an open source version of the Spark Cloud designed for easy deployment on local machines or your own Heroku dyno, AWS instance, or private server.

Not sure if it's happened yet!

New Blog Post from The Spark Team! :spark:

I don’t know what I’m impressed by more… what can be accomplished in one day with the right tools and engineers, or the fact that it’s already documented as well!!!

Nice job guys :smile:

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Hi @jhc and @Shandor,

Still working on the local version of the cloud software, hoping to have a version ready for release in the next few weeks. I’ve been working on the command line helper tool first, since switching servers means juggling some keys on the core.

Part of the reason so much about the core (and soon the cloud) is open source is so that you don’t have to worry about us going away, and so you can also hack on it in new ways. I work at Spark and I’m still planning on running the local cloud on a pi at home. :smile:

You also don’t need the cloud at all if you don’t want. We’ve been adding firmware calls and functionality to make it easier to turn off if desired.

Thanks!
David

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Unfortunately due to the ADC inputs giving bad thermistor readings, the pipes froze in the Spark test facility. @zach was last seen chasing another team member around with a plastic lightsaber screaming something about “Staying warm on Hoth.”

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At the other end of the office, Mohit’s new robotic mech suit took on a mind of its own and started smashing furnature

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@Dave , you are severly jet lagged. you must get some sleep. :sleeping:

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Exactly what I was thinking. The next NEST, there are so many things that can be done with such a core, and it kills me that NEST is hundreds of dollars, so lets gear up as a community and make the best out of this platform.

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@Shandor apologies for my tongue-in-cheek response earlier; wasn’t trying to be sketchy. The reality is that we’re still experimenting with the business model when companies want to either order Spark Cores in bulk or purchase their own hardware and use the Spark Cloud. In the short term, we’re working out custom deals for products like Choosatron to help them get to market quickly, and we’ll have a more “official” model for using the cloud at larger scale later this year.

In the meantime, if you’ve got a product that you’re looking to scale and you want to discuss options, shoot me an email at zach at spark dot io.