THE UBER OF PRODUCT MANUFACTURING — HOW & WHY THE VALUE OF THE BUZZ-MAKE-COIN WILL GROW

Making HARDware As EASY As Software

If you have not already heard about it by now, Buzz Technology, a London based robotics and 3D printing firm are planning on launching an ICO in July 2018 that aims to fund the roll out of a solution (patents pending, but ‘Fair Source’) that aims to democratise product design and manufacturing — or at least a subset of it.

They have built a platform that enables innovators to work with skills and resource providers to design products. These products will then be able to be manufactured locally — in local businesses, schools and even homes — using a relatively inexpensive robot that can carry out 3D printing and assembly as well as other home/business tasks.

Unlike the other 3D printers available today, the system aims to produce finished electronics and electromechanical products for mass market consumers rather than just inanimate plastic parts and objects for hobbyists.

Why Support The Project?

The solution also has many other benefits. Most important — in the opinion of Buzz Technology’s CEO, Senake Atureliya — is the ability to fast track innovation. “Today, humanity faces an astonishing number of problems ranging from environmental degradation to looming automation driven mass unemployment. More than ever, we need more people — adults and children — to think innovatively. We also need an efficient way to harvest that innovation and roll out the best solutions globally to solve the problems that we face. People need to be able to become more self sufficient in terms of the basics — food warmth and shelter — with sustainable solutions that minimise environmental damage. They then need to be encouraged to go on from there to add value creating better educational, health and other benefits.”

Senake went on to say “Currently, investment is focused on software which is easy to scale, but if we can make hardware just as easy to iterate and scale, then we will have unlocked — or more realistically, rescued — a major new source of value: hardware innovation.

The Uber of Electronics Product Manufacturing

Extensively built, market tested and iterated over the course of three years between 2007 and 2010, the Buzz Technology platform created an infrastructure — automated revenue sharing and template legal agreements — to allow unrelated parties to share out tasks and rewards. It’s focus was to overcome the main concern expressed by those who were asked to become co-founders in pre-revenue start ups — that they would never get paid.

It was designed to enable the funding of projects with spare time, underutilised assets — in the same way that Uber and AirBNB do with cars and property. The main difference was that rather than earning income immediately, they could potentially earn much more valuable rights to future revenue shares by collaboratively developing a new product or starting a business. Whilst this was fine in theory — as the time or asset use would not have generated income in any case — it was not popular in practice. Skills providers and asset owners often shied away from the promise of even significant potential ‘future’ returns because they needed income to survive and because the system was not 100% complete end to end.

With the passing of the JOBS Act in the US and the emergence of pre-sales crowdfunding, we put our full launch on hold as their offer of money to pay for product development was both simpler and more attractive to product developers. Unfortunately, a number of failed and delayed projects has led to a backlash from crowdfund backers, so we are now back to where we were with the crowdfund platforms asking project teams to have a working prototype before they can run a campaign.

Our intention is to take complexity out of the loop with our global go-to-market delivery channel for hardware products to encourage new products, enhancements and ideally create income and jobs on a global-local level. If they are interested in working with us, our aim would be to still work with existing ecommerce channels and crowdfunding platforms to sell products (designs and modules) as we have a collaborative outlook and do not wish to reinvent the wheel.

Coin Usage

Integrating blockchain and cryptocurrency into the platform will enable the platform to once again lead the way for new product development. Once completed, product teams will be able to use the BuzzMakeCoin to pay their teams if they agree to the revenue share percentages proposed by the platform’s algorithms. The product team members will in turn will be used to trade BuzzMakeCoins with cryptocurrency investors — exchanging some of their rights to future revenue shares from their product for much needed cash.

Valuation will be driven by the potential of the products in the pipeline and supported by revenue shares from launched products.

Although we see it as less beneficial, teams may also be allowed to use the platform to launch their own product specific coin — if they agree to it not competing head on with the BuzzMakeCoin. A percentage of the an new coin’s ICO proceeds would also go to boost the value of the BuzzMakeCoin.

Competing on Price, Functionality, Fit & Finish

Astonishingly enough, for short life products such as toys and gadgets, it also aims to do this on a price competitive basis with centralised mass produced products. This is possible because Buzz Technology’s solution enables the efficient reuse of both the costly elements of a product and its raw materials.

The system works by 3D printing plastic parts, assembling modules that contain non-3D-printable items into those parts, then making the electrical interconnects to enable the manufacture of functional electronic and electromechanical products. At launch, later this year, the available modules will include multiple sizes and types of rechargeable battery, electronic controllers, sensors, touch screens and motors.

Whilst mass production has served us well, bringing down the prices of products and enabling increased sophistications, it’s centralised nature together with the decision to offshore production to low labour cost countries is causing environmental and social issues that cannot easily be ignored.

A breakdown by market research firm IHS — see http://technology.ihs.com/api/binary/595761 — gives the estimated cost of parts in a $649 64GB iPhone 7 as $270.88 and the cost of labour is just $6.78. Whilst the Buzz Technology decentralised manufacturing solution is not aimed at space constrained products such as smartphones, this indicates that if manual handling and assembly tasks could be minimised and major components reused, it would be perfectly feasible for products to be manufactured price competitively close to the point of use or sale.

Other aspects of the solution will be discussed in upcoming posts. In the meantime, please join our Telegram community and whitelist for the ICO at www.buzztechnology.co.uk.