How Grasshopper Labs should run their company

[osolx26]

@osolx26What I do doubt is that someone disconnected from the business could somehow do any of that better without being one of the genius' that created it.\

You doubt that someone familiar with manufacturing companies can come in and help a manufacturing company improve it's efficiency? I mean, seriously, what? You don't have to be an expert on the product to know how to run that kind of business. That's what the engineers are there for: To be experts on the products. You don't need to be a chef to know how to run a restaurant. You don't need to be an expert engineer to know how to run a manufacturing company. A friend of mine majored in supply chain management back in college. Now, he runs a manufacturing plant that make steel beams. Do you think he knows the first thing about how to actually MAKE the steel beams? No (well, yes. You need some knowledge of the industry in order to run the company. More often than not, this comes with experience. Also, you pick up a few things over the years), but he knows how to run the company that does and if they didn't have someone like him at all they'd be in some serious trouble.

I think that these still aren't coming off of the "assembly line" very smoothly, to say the least.

Definitely not. It makes me wonder if they fucked up ordering inventory again like they did a few months ago and are just sitting there twiddling their thumbs. Yet another problem that could be solved by bringing in someone that understands all of the intricacies of running a business like this.

 

[pakalolo]

I created this thread from the last 50 51 posts in the Grasshopper thread because the discussion is no longer appropriate. You were not talking about the Grasshopper anymore. This is a vapourizer forum. Speculative discussion about how GHL is run or should be run is a Lounge topic, not a vapourizer topic.

Please try to keep the discussion civil. Some of you have not been as nice as you could have been. Please don't tell people how to behave, or that they should leave. If someone breaks the rules, report it and do not respond. Otherwise, use a PM.

We frown upon company bashing. That means you are entitled to post your complaint but you can't use it over and over again to show how terrible a company is. Some of the posts in this thread come close to doing this.

This is not an invitation for public discussion. If anyone has a comment about this, please use a PM.

 

[Gregori]

Someone suggested they should give a number to everyone waiting. No more optimistic deadlines. That would be more customer friendly

 

[woolspinner]

Pretty sure engineers know math better anyway. And a 5 year old really shouldn't have anything to

Actually...no. Math for engineering and math for accounting are different types of math. The field of mathematics is really large. A CPA and an engineer have become experts at using the tools that work best for their respective fields, but this does not guarantee they will be good using tools from others. Understanding tax law, different methods for calculating discounts, writing algebraic formulas to calculate in Excel...it is entirely conceivable that an engineer could drive a company into the ground when s/he does not have the marketing and business management skills to cover the X% of work at the company that is NOT engineering.

I have great respect for engineers, but they cannot do everything well.

 

[IAmKrazy2]

The fact we even have this thread is hilarious. Haven't read a single post yet, maybe never will but glad that this thread is available

 

[WoodyWeedPecker]

The fact we even have this thread is hilarious. Haven't read a single post yet, maybe never will but glad that this thread is available

LOL

When I first saw the title it sounded like an open invitation for self-righteous know-it-all armchair critics.

 

[Gregori]

As if two différent threads aren't enough for that vape.

 

[MoltenTiger]

If you're a good enough chef you can run your own business, it's not that unheard of. Huge success by doing so is rare though, for sure.
Products can support themselves, maybe it's a bad idea to take orders for more sales than you can deal with... But what if you're a start-up and need to generate massive amounts to buy industrial appliances to be able to make retail quantities successfully?
Without knowing their current finances, but knowing that HL have bought expensive stuff as a young crowd funded start-up, I'm assuming they don't have the ability to hire a business executive yet, else they would have done that if they considered it a priority.
If you think it's so vital for them, well I don't care, continue to think that. I doubt a business person would be able to consolidate complex calibration code, and I have doubt HL could afford that anyway, too many man hours at too high a rate. It is a crucial part of QC though.

Sure, engineers use a different field of maths to business, I've studied both and there's a far cry in difference of difficulty. Engineers like maths, they are more than capable to use financial equations.
Sure it would take time away from their work capacity, but so does training someone, which they've also already had to do.

Again, without knowing their finances, it's ridiculous to assume this is holding them back.
What is holding them back, is the inevitable difficulty of making each unit and the fact they have thousands on order. There is no way around that without facility expansion, and certainly assuming they have unlimited funds with which to attempt to get around that is trivial thinking at best.

This whole topic is nonsense and it is a pretty lame time being an arm-chair critic.
All I wanted to do is share some insight from an industry I've become familiar with.

There is nothing any of us can do but wait, or request our money back and support someone else.

 

[zymos]

Sounding more and more like they are prioritizing some large wholesale orders. Or they've been out of backends for 6 weeks, which would just be more "WTF are they thinking when they send obviously impossible estimates?" Or both.

Buzz said on the other thread that they said they are sending out the bulk packs before moving on to preorders. Which is totally fair, because those went to backers.
So that's 200 units to get out the door first...

 

[YungLeaner]

This thread's title is humorous only in the sense that it's intended to belittle people in an online forum discussing shady manufacturer practices. I had huge chunks of my prior post removed despite it being far from the guidelines regarding manufacturer bashing. Some of us don't like being lied to in order to have our money held onto. I'll stop discussing the subject because I appreciate the forum too much to risk being banned

 

[Stu]

I had huge chunks of my prior post removed despite it being far from the guidelines regarding manufacturer bashing.

Which post are you referring to? Your last post in this thread was only edited by you.

By the way, public discussion of moderator actions is not permitted, and you seem to be treading very close to doing just that. I suggest you contact a staff member directly if you wish to discuss these issues.

 

[woolspinner]

Engineers like maths, they are more than capable to use financial equations.

Not being invested in the whole Grasshopper fiasco, I have no opinion on how they run their company. However...I am always astounded as how little merit is given to administrative positions.

Engineers do like math, this does not translate to them understanding how retail accounting, or any accounting really, functions. Can they muddle through? Sure, and it will take them twice as long and 10 times the effort as someone trained. They can organize a supply chain but not as well as someone trained in doing so or who has years of experience doing so.

Furthermore, having spent a lot of time around people with master's and doctorates - obtaining higher degrees, sometimes coincides with a loss of common sense. When your mind is in the clouds, you very often fumble when walking because you miss the roots and rocks in your path. Many engineers are geniouses, who need an assistant to keep them organized and on time.

It is frustrating to me, with 20+ years of administrative experience (accounting, office management, project coordination, customer service) when people do not seem to realize that, much like engineering, administrative functions require a combination of skill, intuitive know-how, training, and experience. While it is not as complicated, it is a skill nonetheless. If you spent all your life studying engineering, when did you have time to study complex accounting, supply chain management, resource management, human resources, customer service, etc?

Do not discount how difficult it can be to administer all the functions of a business when you lack the proper skills, aptitude, interest, and training to actually perform all said functions.

I am not saying this to defend anyone. In fact, it irritates me to no end when businesses are poorly organized. That signals to me that the owners devalue the importance of organizational systems and the people who manage those systems and would, therefore, probably suck as employers because they only value ideas, not the methods of executing the idea, and sustaining the business once the idea is implemented.

My 2 cents on that. Contact the IRS and ask how many companies have gone under because they misunderstood tax laws, or weren't even aware of them, or at least who had such poor file systems they could not find the evidence to support claims they made, and then tell me that organizational management and back office tasks have no merit.

 

[zymos]

I think by "math", people are talking about unrealistic estimates. "it takes X minutes to assemble one Grasshopper, there are Y people working for Z hours/day" - not really the type of thing you need to be an engineer, accountant, or anything other than a High School student to solve.

 

[osolx26]

I think by "math", people are talking about unrealistic estimates. "it takes X minutes to assemble one Grasshopper, there are Y people working for Z hours/day" - not really the type of thing you need to be an engineer, accountant, or anything other than a High School student to solve.

No, you don't need to be a genius to figure that out, but is that really the only thing you think someone in an administrative position does? I bet you if they brought in an expert, not as a full time employee but as a consultant to get them on track, he'd find a ridiculous number of inefficiencies in their processes, whether it's in how they re-order inventory, how they have the manufacturing line set up, how they put everything through qc, etc. An administrator organizes a business so it runs smoothly and efficiently. Just because you're an expert in how to wire a vaporizer does not mean you know anything about how to properly value the vaporizer, how to properly value your inventory (so you know when to reorder more), how to set up your assembly lines in the most efficient way possible, how to put controls in place to help ensure that faulty products don't get delivered to customers (seriously, not a single person here should even think about arguing with that point. HL has no idea how to do that), how to figure out if you can actually afford to buy that expensive piece of machinery (just because you have the cash on hand doesn't mean you always should), hire that new employee, etc. These are just a few things that someone that's studied engineering his/her whole life simply wouldn't know how to do. Yeah, you can learn how to do all of this stuff, but not while you're focusing all of your energy into running a business that you don't fully understand how to run.

 

[zymos]

No, you don't need to be a genius to figure that out, but is that really the only thing you think someone in an administrative position does?

No, of course I don't think that.

I'm addressing literally the only things we, the customers, know about the business end of their operation- their output and their customer service.

Seeing as we have absolutely no idea of the financial and business side of the operation, there is no concrete reason whatsoever to be positive that they just need a better business manager and everything we would so much smoother. Every single issue that us outside observers can point to could be entirely down to technical issues- a bad batch of parts, a bottleneck caused by a vendor, whatever.

 

[lwien]

When I first saw the title it sounded like an open invitation for self-righteous know-it-all armchair critics.

 

[osolx26]

No, of course I don't think that.

I'm addressing literally the only things we, the customers, know about the business end of their operation- their output and their customer service.

Seeing as we have absolutely no idea of the financial and business side of the operation, there is no concrete reason whatsoever to be positive that they just need a better business manager and everything we would so much smoother. Every single issue that us outside observers can point to could be entirely down to technical issues- a bad batch of parts, a bottleneck caused by a vendor, whatever.

Well, their output is shit and their customer service sucks. They also ran out of inventory at least once in the past and even ordered a whole batch of inventory in the beginning without checking to make sure the parts actually worked as designed. These are just the fuck ups they admitted to in their updates or, in some cases, e-mails to customers. Who knows how many other major fuck ups there were that they didn't tell us about.

 

[MoltenTiger]

Not being invested in the whole Grasshopper fiasco, I have no opinion on how they run their company. However...I am always astounded as how little merit is given to administrative positions.

I definitely said more than I should have, and I didn't mean to devalue admin staff.
So for the record, I'm sorry if I offended anyone by saying something stupid.

We all have absolutely no idea how GHL have managed their finances, and their business. We only have access to so much information about who they are and what their days consist of.

It's really not worth discussion, because it is totally lacking in facts.

They're a small business, and their biggest downfall is the difficulty of scaling this product to mass production.
I don't think they've tackled the business side too badly, it seems they've had some assistance/experience doing this (just on a much smaller scale). So yes, aspects could be better.
But without huge funds, I think they've handled those challenges accordingly.

I definitely think they'd benefit from having more staff in more areas, but they are a crowd funded start-up working in a niche market.
Being able to produce bulk quality products is their current challenge, and I think they're doing okay.

They're a small team with a lot of work to do. They're flustered, and probably stuck doing this in a make it or break it situation. Adding one more member doesn't fix this.

My pointless rants have meant to be about how the development of automated production is actually money well spent, that has more than likely restricted them in other areas. I'm not saying that every admin worker is useless and anyone could do their job. Some people are useless, and some can manage, but they can't afford to gamble both ways.

On the customer service side, people should consider this is basically one person serving 5-10,000 people. It also has its limitations, so expect them.

...

Without a similar product in existence, it's blatantly ignorant to suggest their output is "shit". It's amazing they're still around for reasons discussed thoroughly, their output is phenomenal in most respects.

 

[woolspinner]

So for the record, I'm sorry if I offended anyone by saying something stupid.

No offense taken, at all. I did not mean to give any offense, either. I always like to point out the importance of the "little people" who support those reaching for the stars. Seldom is it that any one person can be truly skillful in every role necessary to run a successful business. And, as you point out, there are monetary limitations to being able to fill the gaps.