In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Duro Labs founder Michael Corr revealed hard-won lessons from bringing innovation to the hardware industry. After spending 20 years in the trenches before launching Duro, his experience offers valuable insights for founders navigating the unique challenges of hardware go-to-market strategies.
1. Time Your Market Entry Around Cultural Shifts
The hardware industry’s transformation wasn’t driven by technology alone – it required a cultural shift. “It started to change about five years ago with people starting to recognize that hey, there’s more value of joining a hardware product and a software product and offering them as a complete solution,” Michael explains. The lesson? Watch for cultural indicators that signal market readiness for your innovation.
2. Build Trust Through Domain Expertise
Michael’s background proved crucial in winning customer trust. “Myself and my co founder Kellen are engineers. We’ve been in this space respectfully for 20 years each. We’ve lived through the pain. We know exactly what our customers are going through and in many cases we know more than they do,” he notes. This deep industry knowledge helps them “build a rapport with our customer base where they trust us and they know that we’ve seen these issues.”
3. Segment Your Market by Innovation Appetite
Rather than trying to serve everyone immediately, Duro identified a specific segment ready for innovation. “We do best is teams who are going through what’s referred to as NPI new product introduction,” Michael explains. “That’s where teams are trying to move fast. They’re innovating, they’re trying to get out of their competitors, trying to get their own products to market faster.”
4. Balance Innovation with Legacy Support
One of Duro’s key insights was recognizing the need to support both traditional and innovative approaches. “We have to be able to support both for a certain amount of time,” Michael notes. “While we wish we could only focus on this burgeoning market and gives us more flexibility and freedom to innovate, we still have to support some of the legacy customers.”
5. Position Around Pain Points, Not Features
Instead of focusing on specific features, Duro positioned around fundamental industry problems. “Basically because of the inefficiencies of these software tools, it required a whole secondary labor force just to manage those inefficiencies,” Michael explains. This approach helped customers understand the value proposition beyond just comparing feature lists.
Applying These Lessons
For hardware startups, these lessons suggest a strategic approach to market entry:
- Look for cultural shifts that signal market readiness
- Leverage deep domain expertise to build trust
- Focus initially on segments most ready for innovation
- Create transition paths for more traditional customers
- Position around fundamental problems rather than features
The hardware industry is entering what Michael calls a “renaissance,” with more young engineers bringing software development practices to hardware design. For startups entering this space, understanding these go-to-market lessons could mean the difference between being too early to market and catching the wave at just the right moment.
The key insight? Success in hardware isn’t just about building better technology – it’s about understanding and navigating the cultural and organizational dynamics that determine whether your innovation will be accepted. As Michael notes about the industry’s future, “We’re kind of only like a couple of chapters ahead of the history books where the culture and shifting.” The winners will be those who can read these shifts and position themselves accordingly.
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