N8ECH Business Model

N8ech was created to be a slightly different form of company.

A Non-Goal

The ultimate goal of N8ech is not to generate shareholder value. As the only shareholder, I’m frankly not interested in obtaining as much money as possible. If I wanted to do that I’d be a lawyer or a financial analyst/real estate guy by now. I do like the idea of having more resources, and profit is certainly a good thing, but it’s not the driving force behind what I want to do beyond the utility it provides to live my life.

The True Goal

Ideally, N8ech will eventually grow to become a research development firm that produces products and services to the benefit of it’s customers and the world at large. The sorts of things N8ech will build will be things that “should exist” but aren’t on-their-face going to be profitable for any major corporation to pursue. N8ech will then manufacture and sell the product to see if it’s viable in the marketplace, and depending on it’s viability, sell the rights to a larger, more well-equipped manufacturer, or continue making it for the small audience that want it.

Growth Limits

One of the things that kills innovation faster than anything else is unnecessary organizational overhead. As such, N8ech, even in the case of unimaginable success and profitability will not grow as large as possible. To me, the ideal company that does what I want is around 5 engineers, an accountant, a graphic designer, a marketer, and probably a couple more people I’m not thinking of right now. The manufacturing aspect is not as important to the main goals of the company, but if suitable external partners aren’t available, there may need to be a separate manufacturing staff.

What This Will Mean For The Customer

The customer should expect N8ech to be producing high-quality and interesting products, though not every product will have mass appeal. There will be efforts to keep prices as reasonable as possible, but N8ech is not seeking to manufacture and sell mass-market products. In the case that a product does turn out to have mass market appeal, N8ech will attempt to sell manufacturing and sales rights to another company better equipped to handle mass marketing.

Open-Source Policy

As previously stated, N8ech is mostly focused on bringing interesting and new things into the world. This naturally means that N8ech will not pursue patents or other strict intellectual property ownership beyond securing and defending a N8ech trademark. In the course of business, it may be necessary that we acquire a patent or the rights to use one, but N8ech will not waste time and energy in a legal process to withold intellectual property from the public. If that means someone will scoop us and start making and selling our products at a lower price or a higher quality, then so be it. The goal is to bring ideas into the world, and if someone is better equipped to do so, then they should go ahead and do so. N8ech will do it’s best to publically produce documentation, designs, and code in open formats in as many cases are reasonable. All that being said, N8ech does still want to make idea takers work for it, so N8ech will not release designs for products prior to launching them. (N8ech officially recognizes the irony behind discussing taken what is freely given.)

CYA

This document outlines the ideals of the company, but reality being what it is, anything herein is subject to change based on the business landscape and other factors N8ech must operate within. This is a snapshot of the model at the time of writing, and may be less accurate as time goes on.

Inspiration

This document and the company it describes are inspired by the following (not in any particular order)

• Linus Torvalds, Creator of the Linux kernel
• Bell Labs, a research organization that brought us many of the technologies we have today
• The Free Software Foundation, One of the most impactful technology advocacy groups in history
• Teenage Engineering, A neat company that also makes niche high quality equipment
• Apple Corporation, Another neat company (though slightly less niche than Teenage Engineering)
• Rory Southerland, Author of “Alchemy”, a book that describes that the “smartest” option may not always be the best
• Sway from Sway in the Morning, An interviewer who once explained to Kanye that the best way to do things is independently, only to be proven right years later