The era of open voice assistants

A group buy for an existing product makes sense. Want to buy a 24TB Western Digital hard drive? It’s $350. But if you and your 1000 closest friends get together the price can be $275.

But for a first time unknown product? You get a lot fewer interested parties. Lots of people want to wait for tech reviews and blog posts before committing to it. And group buys being the only way to get them means availability will be inconsistent for the foreseeable future. I don’t want one voice assistant. I want 5-20, one for every space in my house. But I am not prepared to commit to 20 devices of a first run and I am not prepared to buy one and hope I’ll get the opportunity to buy more later if it doesn’t flop. Stability of the supply chain is an important signal to consumers that the device won’t be abandoned.

> I am not prepared to buy one and hope I’ll get the opportunity to buy more later

As long as this thing works and there's demand for it, I doubt we'll ever run out of people willing to connect an XU316 and some mics to an ESP32-S3 and sell it to you with HA's open source firmware flashed to it, whether or not HA themselves are still willing to.

Kickstarter shows that a lot of people feel different.

> But for a first time unknown product? You get a lot fewer interested parties. Lots of people want to wait for tech reviews and blog posts before committing to it.

I used to think so too. But then Kickstarter proved that actually, as long as you have a good advertising style, communicate well, and get lucky, you can get people to contribute literal millions for a product that hasn't even reached the blueprints stage yet.

I agree! I mean, just look at the market for Meshtastic devices! So many options! Or devices with WLED pre-installed! It'll take a Lot for Esp32 to go out of style

Kickstarter isn’t a group buy. Similar, but not the same.

Kickstarter isn't a group buy.

Kickstarter is often basically a group buy. Project owners make MVPs and market/pitch it, get funding from the public, and then commission a large batch run.

>> I want 5-20, one for every space in my house.

I don't have a small house, but I'm trying to think why I would need even 5 of these, let alone 20. The majority of the time my family spends together is in the open layout on our main floor where the kitchen flows into the living room with an adjacent sun room off the living room.

I'm genuinely curious why you need so many of these.

I do agree that if you do have a legit use case for so many, buying so many in essentially a first run is a risky thing. Coupled with the ability for this to be supported for more than a fleeting couple of years is also a huge risk.

Just using where I might want it in childhood home as an example - master bedroom - master bathroom - grandma's room - my room - brother's room - upstairs bathroom - upstairs loft? - office room - living room/diningroom - kitchen/kitchentable/familyroom - garage?

9-14 devices for a 5 person household. May be a stretch since I'm not sure if my grandma could even really use it. Bathroom's a stretch but I'm imagining being in the shower and wanting to note multiple showerthoughts

I have four bedrooms, living/family room, study, office, rumpus room, garage, workshop, and trying to build out a basement with three more rooms. Each of these rooms have some form of smart lighting or devices like TVs or thermostats that people have a much easier time controlling with voice than phone apps. Granted this may sound extravagant but I have a large family so all this space is all very well utilized hence the need for a basement expansion. Again, at $25/room and bought over time the Echo Dots are a really simple way to add very easy to use controls that require almost no user training. We pause the living room TV and “set condition two throughout the fleet” at the end of the day with these devices.

A group buy is when you want to buy a bunch of existing product at wholesaler prices. Kickstarter is about funding new project that don’t exist yet. Like if the wholesaler refuses to sell you 1000 video cards, just give the money back. If you spend the Kickstarter money and can’t land a product there isn’t much you can do for refunds.

What's condition 2?

There are two types of "group buy". The one that you illustrated, but also one not only focused on saving bucks but also helping small, independent makers/producers to sell their usually more sustainable or more private product (which is also usually more expensive due to the lack of economies of scale).

It’s a reference to Battlestar Galactica. They would say that phrase to mean that the fleet is on standby. Condition one meant under attack. For us here it means turn off the lights.

It's both, I think, depending on the conventions around the thing being group-bought.

What you describe is unquestionably a group buy, but in, for example, the mechanical keyboards community, a "group buy" is paying the designer of a thing (keyboard, keycap set, etc.) for the expense of third-party production up front. It's really more of a preorder that requires a certain volume to proceed. But regardless, they're called group buys in that hobby.

(With expected mixed results, I should add -- plenty of keyboard "group buys" never come to fruition, and since they're not backed by a Kickstarter-like platform, the money is just gone. The /r/mechanicalkeyboards subreddit has many such stories.)

Hah I was recently looking at that subreddit and yeah that’s why I don’t like the idea of that kind of group buy. It’s a gamble on everything working out and everyone doing the right things. I also would argue that requesting a known designer/manufacturer to make N of a specific item is different than asking an unknown designer to do so for the first time. Terminology aside, this is my original point: that is a risky way of doing things and communicates to the consumer that the product is unlikely to just get made and be available.

Absolutely. If one was uncharitable, one might suggest the reason that some of those group-buy-powered companies run their own storefront instead of Kickstarter is so that their customers associate them with "buying" and not with "funding".