For the QuePay pool table device, we had had requests for pool table automation from as far back as 2024
@marvin_hosea remember?
Anyway from the experience I had with deploying hardware, you can’t “ship first and fix later” and also I am very particular with product design. It has to at least look good.
So we sacrificed being first for being right, a terrible choice by the book but we did it nonetheless. The best part about it:
‘The sale is very smooth’, the clients love it, one demo and they are sold. Most don’t even haggle over the price since we are priced slightly higher than most. The installations we have done? No issue whatsoever, someone calls and you are not even worried, they ask how to do something you tell them how that is already in the app and guide them how to.
We actually did real pilots, we still do, for every vertical we address. For the pool table we had it running for a whole two weeks. There were some few issues, that poor pool table owner, she would call and tell us how something was misbehaving and people needed to play. And we’d drop everything we were doing and rush there, about 10kms away 😭😂 and beg to let us wait for that issue to reappear so that we’d know what to fix.
Anyway by the time we were done we had a bulletproof product, tried and tested. Clients can be brutal especially if it starts costing them money. They will simply ask you to “remove this thing, and give me my money” even for a slight issue. Some are not very patient especially since they have access to you as the manufacturer. But most grant you so much grace the guilt of failing them is worse.
So we do our best to deliver perfection, we implemented OTA, so that we debug and then ask them for a few minutes as we push the update and everyone is happy. It has been an incredible journey so far from water and milk ATMs, to pool tables, to coffee machines, to vending machines and now laundry machines.
@QuePayApp is growing!
Anyway I build hardware solutions
@veno_iot and are building an incredible solution called QuePay. Thank you