Hardware Podcasts

Ep. 46 - Deciding What to Work on Next

Open Hardware Manufacturing Podcast · 14 Nov 2025 · 1h 10m

What this episode covers

Steven Hawes and Lucy Che Park of Opulo discuss their framework for prioritizing product development, emphasizing that customer interviews and community feedback are the primary inputs for deciding what to build next. They detail how they use the 'Three Machines' model (customer, product, and company) to categorize decisions, such as addressing support tickets, developing new features like wider feeders, or improving operational efficiency. The hosts highlight specific examples, including the decision to integrate community-sourced mods like the V3.1 update and the strategic pivot into the education market after observing unexpected university adoption. They also stress the importance of a clear mission—'helping people manufacture their products'—as a lens to filter out distractions and focus on the lowest-hanging fruit that aligns with their core goals.

Most relevant to

companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Opulo, Prusa, Recon Tools, Digiki, Mouser, Arrow
Products
Lumen, Controllio
Also
Bill Hader, Death by Meeting, Brad Feld, Eisenhower Matrix

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