In May of 2010, almost 10 years ago, Ladyada and I gave a presentation called “Million dollar baby – Businesses designing and selling open source hardware, making millions” (video).
Intro text from the event:
“At O’Reilly’s foo camp east 2010 at Microsoft’s NERD center (MIT campus) we presented “Million dollar baby – Businesses designing and selling open source hardware, making millions” at the Ignite hour. 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide – we tried to capture the excitement and great work from just a few of the dozens of open source hardware companies & resellers. Special thanks to all the companies who helped with some data points and to the OSHW workshop group.”
At the time (2010), the companies that were approaching $1m in annual revenue were:
- Bug Labs
- Dangerous Prototypes
- DIY Drones
- Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
At the time (2010), companies OVER $1m annual revenue:
- Adafruit Industries
- Arduino
- Beagle Board
- Chumby
- Liquidware
- MakerBot Industries
- Maker Shed
- Parallax
- Seeed Studios
- Solarbotics
At the time (2010), there was only 1 company that was over $10m in annual revenue:
- SparkFun
The slides are embedded above and on Slideshare. Here’s a PDF. And … photos on Flickr from the event.
Coverage at the time (2010):
- Million dollar baby – Businesses designing and selling open source hardware, making millions – MAKE.
- Million Dollar Baby – Limor and Phillip present on the state of open source hardware and the companies blazing the trail – SparkFun.
- Open source hardware is making big bucks, Drives patent lawyers nuts – The INQUIRER.
- 13 Open Source Hardware Companies Making $1 Million or More – Singularity Hub.
Open source hardware month @ Adafruit:
- Opening Hardware 2010 at Eyebeam in NYC – Day 10, 10/10/2019.
- The Open Source Gift Guide, the early years – Day 9, 10/9/2019 (posted it on 10/10/2019, whoops)
- Before the iPhone, before the Raspberry Pi, before Amazon Echo Show, there was Chumby – Day 8, 10/8/2019.
- Mitch Altman Open-source hardware pioneer – Day 7, 10/7/2019.
- The Open Source logo(s) – Day 6, 10/6/2019.
- Open Source Hardware events all month long, EVENTS! – Day 5, 10/5/2019.
- Open Source Hardware Certifications and more! – Day 4, 10/4/2019.
- Teuthis Open Source MP3 Player 2001 – Daisy by Raphael Abrams – Day 3, 10/3/2019.
- What is the Open-Source Hardware Definition? – Day 2, 10/2/2019.
- Open hardware summit – Limor “Ladyada” Fried keynote 2010 – Day 1, 10/1/2019.
October is open-source hardware month! Every single day in October we’ll be posting up some open-source stories from the last decade (and more!) about open-source hardware, open-source software, and beyond!
Have an open-source hardware (or software) success story? A person, company, or project to celebrate? An open-source challenge? Post up here in the comments or email [email protected], we’ll be looking for, and using the tag #OHM2019 online as well! Check out all the events going on here!
