Wired Documentary on Shenzhen | Hacker News Reader

Wired Documentary on Shenzhen

bunniestudios.com

178 pointsetiam43 comments

I worked extensively in Shenzhen (though it was a breath of fresh air to get back to the states), and it is a great ecosystem but I do want to address something not covered in the documentary. Their are a lot of things you need to be careful about before venturing into the wild west of electronic parts that is shenzhen. First, knowing some Mandarin or having a native speaker with you is definitely a requirement. Most big companies and vendors have english speakers working for them, but thats the exception.

The work mentality there is to get as much done as quickly as possible. Short cuts are the norm, which is frowned upon in North America, and you have to watch your suppliers and make sure they don't screw you over (ex. replace your requested part with a similar one or get you a cheaper part without checking with you and put the difference back in their own pocket). This even happens in the prototyping stage.

And as cheap as building stuff is there, living is still comparable to most US cities when it comes to good housing (ex. Austin, Portland, Denver).

With all that said, things move crazy fast. You put a circuit board order in on Monday and its on your desk on Wednesday.

It takes 2 days. I was expecting same day delivery. XD

I've gotten components I ordered on TaoBao delivered same day. 12 hours is pretty common.

There are many 24hr turn PCB fab houses too. Usually costs an extra 150-200RMB for that service, which by western standards is still an absolute steal.

> replace your requested part with a similar one or get you a cheaper part without checking with you and put the difference back in their own pocket

This even happened to Bunnie (featured in the video)

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022

Thanks you for that link, it was a fascinating read.

Shenzhen native, local Maker here.

All in all the video is pretty accurate. Like most of these videos they focus on the usual semi-official tourist stops- Huaqiangqei, local accelerators, etc. You never see the Huawei or TenCent R&D departments, or anyplace that the actual real day-to-day innovation usually happens because those are strictly no-cameras and very much off limits to forigners.

If anyone wants a better look around the HCB electronic markets I shot about an hour of 360º video there last week, it's on YouTube if you search.

Well well well, didn't expect you to show up on HN.

Got any new projects going on?

Could you comment on if, as an American engineer, getting to know Shenzhen and learning Mandarin would be worth doing as valuable business skills?

You would need really, really good Mandarin in order to manufacture something without a translator. In conversation I find culture is more of a problem than language. We can always make it clear you will get the part on Tuesday. What Westerners can't understand is why that really does not mean that you will get the part on Tuesday

But everyone who lives here should study enough so they can get around and take care of themselves.

What does it mean? I'm curious as to what the subtext of something like that really is. Will it also mean that local manufacturers there would be more likely to try and pass off something non-genuine to westerners?

>What does it mean? I'm curious as to what the subtext of something like that really is.

Means he'd very much like for you to have it on Tuesday:-) He also does not want to make you unhappy and possibly lose you as a customer by saying it will probably be Wednesday. After all it could be Tuesday so why not have a try? It's a little frustrating for non-Chinese.

>Will it also mean that local manufacturers there would be more likely to try and pass off something non-genuine to westerners?

I think Westerners are more likely to get fake money since we assume they won't know how to check. Most Chinese think Westerner engineers are more technically competent so while they might sell fakes I don't think it's a lot more likely? I can't really say though I don't do sourcing. Also it's about risk. Rip off another Chinese person he will tell others and it will hurt your reputation. Maybe he will tell someone and make trouble for you. This is less likely with Westerners.

Sounds like the advice Scotty gave in TNG, about always giving longer estimates so you appear a miracle worker when you deliver early.

I can't seem to find your video on youtube.

EDIT: nvm here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIwvGxjEKaE

I have been in Shenzhen for 5 years and know my way around. I am available, if anyone has any questions about this place or if someone needs a hand here.

Have you (or anyone reading this) considered selling your services as a contractor / consultant?

In particular, I imagine a web forum where you can discuss what's going on in Shenzhen with interested people from the US, in English.

You can develop jobs and even sub-contract work all using this forum.

Of course, that's just an idea. How would you do it?

I would be very interested in such a thing.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while and your comment has motivated me to follow through. I'm not based in Shenzhen but like you I'm very interested in talking to and potentially working with people who are.

If anyone else is interested in participating in such a forum please email admin@shenzhenconsulting.com and I'll keep you updated.

That quickness with domain purchase. Wow!

well, .com domains are only like $10, assuming you already have your own DNS and httpd, it's not a bad impulse purchase for 1 year considering I see people regularly spend $6 on a fancy coffee drink.

I had the domain registered in around two minutes. It took me a few more minutes to set up the Google apps account, Twitter and Slack channel :P

There is a lot of demand for this. Unfortunately people are often very unrealistic about doing business in China. Being the contact point, translator or consultant means taking the blame for the usual problems. When translation does not get good results the translators are blamed because no one else can understand or really cares if the client is unhappy so they become a “whipping boy". Often very publicly.

If I were not a local I would use a contract manufacturer. Westerners often think it’s a communication issue when it’s an relationship issue. Who you know and have relationships with. If you have established relationships with the people not willing to lose your future business by delivering poor quality then you are a contract manufacturer. You are not going to put anyone else in contact with those people since that is your IP and poor behavior from them would reflect on you and hurt your future business.

But people want to save some money and try to do each little thing themselves. When that does not work there is always finger pointing. And I’ve never seen anyone blame themselves. It’s always the factory, the local Chinese, the translator/assistant etc.

What I want is a platform where entrepreneurs and engineers can interact with manufacturers to create hardware prototypes. I shouldn't have to be in Shenzhen to work with Chinese manufacturers, and trust shouldn't be an issue with a well-implemented feedback system.

That's the reason why you get such good prices. Hire cheap developers and you have to take a gamble on the deliverables. If you're willing to pay a fair or premium price your worries decrease ;)

Sorry but I'm not sure how your comment relates to mine. I'm talking about the challenges involved in manufacturing a hardware product in China without being physically present there.

Trust and a well implemented feedback system cost money and effort and if you're going there it's most likely to get the lowest price and not the best service.

I actually think a "gamified" feedback system will lead to a bad outcome, especially because it builds a false hope that $random_user with $points > big_number will solve all my problems.

A good system would have a few "core people" who work together over a span of years on several successful projects. By a few, I mean 3-7.

If we can attract Bunnie Huang, all the better. :)

I thought about it, yes, but as SexyCyborg mentions somewhere else, there are a lot of unrealistic expectations to what can be done in China for little money. I saw this all too often also and the people trying to get into this consulting business always end up burnt and living very unhappy lives caught between their angry client and a factory, who thinks they delivered already and then some. You usually get what you pay for and that applies to China too.

I wouldn't mind participating in a forum though.

What are you working on in Shenzhen? And how would I go about finding a company to produce a custom shape/size lithium polymer battery for a prototype?

Do you have any local manufacturer sources for things like fiber optic cables (fully assembled with connectors), patch panels, splice enclosures and other fiber-related stuff for physical infrastructure at OSI layer 1? My coworkers and I (an ISP) have found a number of English speaking websites/vendor sources that ship direct from China to the US, but are interested in exploring what is the price delta between the actual manufacturers and our current vendors, the people who have become dealers/distributors of the gear.

I am not based in Shenzhen but have been mostly based in China for 15 years. Some general comments only. Usually cable is purchased in bulk here. Electronics markets in any city will custom-rig cables in your selection of quality (usually across multiple manufacturers), color and length for peanuts. Pre-fab cables from a factory always cost significantly more if you order them individually wrapped, though they can be better quality (though my experience here is mostly ethernet but I had custom-run fiber to premises in a second-tier city as early as 9 years ago / 2007). Fiber is everywhere today in China, the equipment for splicing is widespread and cheap. Patch panels and other primarily metal components are cheap, though you want to check quality before buying in bulk, then find a factory and order direct and in quantity emphasizing future volume expectations. Of course, if you are here you can check quality immediately, if you want to do it remotely you are looking at shipping delays x2. If you just want a quick price delta, go to taobao.com, translate your part name, then get dealer/distributor pricing for consumer or business small-scale China domestic purchasing, usually inc. shipping.

I love the easter egg at 3:13. ("ALL PROPRIETARY AND NO OPEN SOURCE MAKES INNOVATION A SLOW PROCESS") The text is upside down in the video, so it's easy to miss.

But on that note of open source vs proprietary, I'm building a business on open source hardware, yet I have a hard time proving to others (especially other startup founders) that open hardware is the way to go. They fear that their designs will get cloned and they'll get blown out of the water (implicitly at a lower cost by someone in Shenzhen). They want to ensure they can recoup their R&D costs. My point is that if you make a successful product, you're going to get cloned anyway. The counter-point is usually "But why make it any easier for them to clone you?"

What are you making? We went through the same process with the now-defunct-and-sued-by-patent-troll Comingle, trying to make open source sex toys. We'd get all those same questions over and over...

I'm a making a robot for physical testing of devices (phones, tablets, touchscreens, wearables, etc.). I learned tons of lessons and had success in the open source software world over the years (I started the Selenium project), and am now seeing how well those lessons transfer to the hardware world. For now, we make all our custom parts in-house with a bunch of 3D printers and CNC mills.

> My point is that if you make a successful product, you're going to get cloned anyway.

If you're going to get cloned either way, how will you make selling your hardware a sustainable business?

I love hardware (robotics, incidentally) but I'm so hesitant to release a hardware product because of the inevitability and futility of competing against cheaper clones. I've seen it happen again and again in the nascent world of drone racing - somebody comes up with an innovative new design and there's a clone on Banggood three weeks later. Then most people just buy the clone. I don't see how it can be sustainable.

In the short to medium-term, it's a hybrid product+consulting business model with consulting gigs to add features, custom sizes, or integrated with specific testing frameworks. Long term, competition is based on brand, build quality, distribution, ISV partnerships, and the ability to keep innovating. Also, it's a B2B product, so success or failure is predominantly driven by the quality of the sales team and their process as much as anything else.

I guess it comes down to that age old reputation thing. Get the brand out, get it known for quality and service, and stick with it.

Seems like the success of shenzen as a big startup place will also depend on to what degree IoT takes off, since custom hardware is so essential to that. Like the video says, the rest of us just use generic hardware where the only metrics are performance and maybe power consumption.

Imagine how different bay area startups would be if VC backed startups built robotic arms and legs instead of one-click deploy Rails PaaS infrastructure.

The thing to realise it's already that, essentially it's the place you go if you win at Kickstarter - if you went for $10k and got $1M - there's already a western hardware hacker community regularly rotating through the city.

Of course that's not exactly the traditional startup, these are often people bootstrapping themselves without a VC sugar daddy - not needing to have an exit story with 7 0s

this is a puff piece documentary, but take a look at the scale of the consumer electrical goods manufacturing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlSHo61nRWw

I think what we will see is cheap ($5-10 max) IOT-like modules being integrated into all sorts of random consumer electrical goods. Whether your blender needs to speak bluetooth 4.0 and associate to your home wifi AP is sort of a moot point, at some point in time the modules will get so cheap that they're integrated by default into any device that has electrical power. Whether you need it or not.

How useful it'll be is another question. An IOT thing with a relay in every lamp?

Looking for a english speaking contact in Shenzen, contact info is in my profile, hit me up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866581

mevatne@hotmail.com

Thanks for this, hopefully I'll remember to watch the next part.

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