How Arduino set the foundation to create an open source movement
👋 Hey, it’s Jaime. Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share how thriving open-source projects grow their communities.
Subscribe to get access to these posts and all future posts.
Pre-S: If you wondered about the lack of newsletter for the past month or so, I took a break to welcome my second son 👶 who arrived on May 2nd :)
Although I know it’s hard, I hope you didn’t miss the newsletter too much ;) I’m back with new content and lots of ideas and energy for the coming months that I think will be pretty exciting!
But enough about me. Let’s dive into this week’s newsletter, part One of a three-part series into how Arduino created a viral hardware product:
Part I: How to set the foundation for an open source community and organisation
Part III: How to organise the community engines behind a successful open source movement
Today in Part I, we’ll cover:
Some achievements from Arduino and why you should care
How to find opportunities by putting your ass where your heart wants to be
How to find co-conspirators
Checking if the people fit culturally before marrying them
TL;DR: How can you replicate some of Arduino’s successes?
Read time: 11 minutes
Some Background on Arduino
Arduino is one of the first, if not the first, open source hardware companies. And it has become the poster child of how you can share your secret sauce and still build a booming business by creating a strong relationship with a community of educators, creatives, and engineers.
You have probably heard about them, but if you haven’t, here are a few of their impressive achievements:
150 million sessions on arduino.cc
30M customers
1M+ registered users on the forum
12M downloads per year (one every 2.6 seconds).
410K users on Arduino Create Cloud
Arduino’s Community members organise 500 events on Arduino Day worldwide
Facebook: 1M+ followers
Twitter: 463K followers
Instagram: 765K followers
Linkedin: 198K followers
Thousands of companies manufacture boards, shields, accessories and develop software for them.
Arduino’s co-founders were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, but what makes this achievements importants is that they reached this unlikely success while being open source. So despite all odds, here are a few of the things they did right that we can all learn from.
Let’s dive in:
From reading thousands of schematics to a strong design philosophy
Arduino has been built by many co-founders without whom it wouldn’t have been possible, but I’ll focus on Massimo Banzi’s journey as he was Arduino’s initial CEO.
As a seven-year-old kid, he used to take apart everything he put his hands on. So his parents gave him a kit from Braun.
The kit was a great combination of little electronic components and magnetic blocks that could snap together, making it easy for a kid to understand how electricity worked.
And this was a turning point for Massimo Banzi as a kid. Imagining how objects were thought out made him appreciative of design.
In high school, this interest led him to read thousands of schematic diagrams in the electronics magazines his father brought home, and by absorption, he learned a tonne about how electronics worked.
But this Braun kit also introduced him to Dieter Rams, which would also later inspire Apple:
Dieter Rams would also inspire what would later be called design thinking by codifying ten principles:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_5760,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe843ca70-28a2-47f2-ab83-cebf203d84d0_1919x720.png)
This design-thinking sensitivity would become crucial to developing the principles that would make Arduino such a beloved product. But more on this in next week’s article.
Having access to these schematics, being able to assemble a Braun kit by himself, and making sense of how things work convinced Massimo Banzi that people should be able to understand and be able to assemble the products they buy.
He is in fact very vocal against the idea that users need to be insulated from their products, and brands should set up protective walls around technology that keep people from messing with it.
Armed with this knowledge about electronics, people around him started offering to pay him for his help. He would buy some kits to solder and install them for people.
For example, he made a flashing light for a small factory with a lathe that was so noisy he wouldn’t hear the phone ringing. When he was 14, he would also build a PCB that would allow people to connect two tape players together to copy the Commodore 64’s games.
In 1993, he would be introduced to open source software through Linux after going through the very painful but rewarding experience of installing Linux after loading 70 floppy discs from the internet. This led to creating webs for a long time, making him move to many different countries and work for a venture capital firm, which he didn’t enjoy that much.
That’s when a friend invited him to a design school in Ivrea, in the northwest of Italy, to help students prototype their ideas with electronics and do interaction design. This was supposed to be a two-week stop. He ended up there for four years.
Finding opportunities by putting your ass where your heart wants to be*
Instead of staying put in a situation that didn’t work for him, he left his previous activities and city and moved to a hub where other creatives and entrepreneurs found themselves.
There he found interesting problems to solve, friends, potential cofounders, mentors, and partners with similar dreams.
In Ivrea’s interaction design institute, Massimo Banzi and the students had to use the BASIC Stamp microcontroller that was imported from the US and cost around $100, which was way too expensive for students to make multiple prototypes.
So he built a platform called Programmer 2003, and one of his students, Hernando Barragán, created the development platform Wiring, and Casey Reas and Ben Fry created the Processing development platform for designers and artists.
The co-founders of Arduino implemented these technologies in a different way by using very small microcontrollers and boards that people could solder themselves. This would be the foundation of what would become Arduino’s first product.
And after experiencing open source as users of Linux for their careers, all the founders became very driven by the idea that it could help change the world positively and felt their work would have to be open source. They wanted to extend and replicate that concept on hardware, as they saw how the Linux community was so successful.
So they released the files for the PCB under a Creative Commons licence, probably making it the first time someone would explicitly say that hardware was open source.
But later they would realise that providing the files was not enough, as people wanted to buy the boards already assembled. That’s how Arduino started as a company.
They found a lot of very good open source software available, and their contribution, given their design background, was adding a nice user experience wrapper around it to make it easy to use.
Entrepreneurship is not a solo sport: How to find cofounders
There is a myth that individuals start companies. This is entertained by the narrative of the lone hero, but research shows that the bigger a team is, the bigger the odds of success.
After making the first prototype, Massimo Banzi shares in an interview that he started looking for people. Two years before, he had made something like Arduino, and he realised that working by himself is very complicated. So he wanted to have a team and a community.
To start gathering a team, he started showing the prototype around to the people he knew and, if they were interested, asking them to join the project. He asked David Cuartielles, a visiting teacher from Sweden, one of his students, David Mellis, and Tom Igoe, a teacher from New York who was teaching the same kind of students at NYU, to provide their ideas and help.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fefedc5e0-897d-43c0-8b61-7d05405b7875_620x410.jpeg)
Massimo Banzi first showed the prototype around. He organised a workshop with Tom Igoe from NYU, and there Tom realised that this could work for more schools and that more people would want to use it. So when Massimo Banzi asked him to join, he said yes.
David Cuartielles was hired to design two plug-in boards and help by debugging and improving the project. David Mellis joined to write the software; Tom Igoe came in as an advisor; and Gianluca Martino came in as the person who was able to manufacture the board.
So before he knew it, Massimo Banzi had assembled a team.
Check if the person fits culturally before marrying them
Building an organisation can be a roller coaster, and for Arduino, there were some serious bumps along the way. One of the most common causes of startup failures, co-founder issues, ended up happening to them.
In early 2008, the five co-founders of the Arduino project created the Arduino LLC company to hold the trademarks associated with Arduino.
This means that the Arduino board is open source, so anyone can make an Arduino compatible board, or even an exact copy of the board.
However, the Arduino name, logo, and graphics are protected by trademark only Arduino can use. And even if this trademark never stopped the flow of cheap counterfeit boards, it made it possible to show the logo on a board and reassure Arduino’s customers of its provenance.
The manufacture and sale of the boards were to be done by external companies, and Arduino LLC would get a royalty from them.
And the founding bylaws of Arduino LLC specified that each of the five founders transfered ownership of the Arduino brand to the newly formed company, but at the end of 2008, Gianluca Martino's company, Smart Projects, registered the Arduino trademark in Italy and kept this a secret from the other co-founders for about two years.
This was revealed when the Arduino company tried to register the trademark in other areas of the world (they originally registered only in the US) and discovered that it was already registered in Italy.
Negotiations with Martino and his firm to bring the trademark under the control of the original Arduino company failed, and he also used his power over the brand to veto bringing in other manufacturers or getting external investment. Finally, in 2014, Smart Projects began refusing to pay royalties.
To make a long story short, in 2016, Arduino SRL (formerly known as Smart Projects) and Arduino LLC (the original company) merged, and the dispute ended, but it was a difficult episode for the team, which highlights the importance of picking the right co-founders.
To prevent situations like this, Gloria Lin shares some thoughtful advice on how to go about it in her great Founder Dating Playbook:
“The advice on how to tailor your search depends on what you’re looking for. If you already have a vision for your startup in mind, then you might want to skip straight into getting to know your potential co-founder on a deeper level. If you’re going to work with someone you already know, you may want to spend extra time making sure you’re aligned on how you want to build the company,” - Gloria Lin.
Takeaways:
Put your ass where your heart wants to be.
Where should you be physically, mentally and spiritually committed to finding the right creative peers and opportunities?Envision your team member and write down answers to the following questions:
Whom do I need on my team?
What skills should they have? What are the opposite skills of mine?
What is their temperament? What are opposite and complimentary temperaments to mine? What values should we share?
Once your ass and your heart share the same location, where should you look for these co-founders?
You can go to your personal network, to relevant communities (like Meetup groups or online forums), to the people teaching those you’d like to recruit, or to other excellent professionals working for big companies but bored at their job who might be excited by the possibilities your vision and prototypes open for their field.How can you approach potential co-founders?
A great way to approach potential cofounders is to develop a strong vision, share a first working prototype, and ask for their advice.
For example: “Hey David, I heard about you, and you’re very talented. I’m working on this problem; here’s my vision and what we’ve done so far, and I’d love to take your advice on how to take this to the next level. You’re really smart at this, and here are some of our challenges. Would you mind meeting me for coffee or talking for 15 minutes on the phone?” If they get excited, then you’re on the right track.Spend a few weeks prototyping together to see if you enjoy the project and each other’s working styles.
Make sure the cofounders you consider are the right match.
Here are some mindsets and questions you can consider:Take things slow and date before getting married, but realise the clock is ticking. Expect to invest time in this. It can take over a year to work on something before deciding to go after it full-time, but you might have to balance things out with each other’s financial constraints.
Be open and transparent about how aligned you are.
Make together a list of the important questions you want each other to answer, and explore them together.Don’t let the mountain of work ahead of you blind you to the other person’s well-being. Take time to appreciate one another and celebrate successes.
Is this person entitled, or willing to do what’s needed? Do they think, "I'm only going to do one job," or are they open to being a Swiss knife at the beginning of the company?
It's important to start with passionate people who want to get their hands dirty, but it's also important to find passionate people who also have a really good heart.
How can you replicate some of Arduino’s successes?
Arduino’s approach helped them grow to 30 million customers despite sharing their products in open source and even encouraging others to replicate their designs.
Here are the key takeaways you can borrow, modify and adapt for your business based on Arduino’s real life strategy and tactics:
1. Master an in-demand skill
Learn something that’s useful. And apply and practice your learnings to problems you come across or to situations you’re interested in until you find your originality.
Massimo Banzi stumbled onto electronics as a teenager, found some customers, and taught it to others, setting the foundation that would allow him to understand what was needed to create Arduino.
2. Put your ass where your hearts wants to be and commit to it*
Where should you go to be physically and “spiritually” close to the right creative peers and opportunities?
By going to the Ivrea Interaction Design Institute, Massimo Banzi found the right problems to work on, as well as the relationships and resources to prototype what would first become a product and later a mini-multinational.
Credit
* The expression “Put your Ass where your heart want to be” comes from the excellent book with the same title, by Steven Pressfield
Sources:
Keynote: Arduino & Linux: A Love Story - Massimo Banzi, Co-founder, Arduino Project
The Untold History of Arduino, by Hernando Barragán
The History and Evolution of Arduino, by Arthur Wang
How did it begin? The history of Arduino, by Device Plus
Story and History of Development of Arduino, by Circuits Today
Interview with Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino, by Arsenio Spadoni
Interview: Massimo Banzi, Codeveloper of Arduino, by Circuit Cellar
Interview with Massimo Banzi: cofounder of Arduino, by Postdigital Node
Arduino’s Massimo Banzi: How We Helped Make The Maker Movement, by Lauren Orsini in ReadWrite
Why open source hardware is(n't) working | David Cuartielles
On Finding Cofounders:
The Founder Dating Playbook – Here’s the Process I Used to Find My Co-Founder, by Gloria Lin in FirstRound
What we look for in founders, by Paul Graham
How to find that special someone: Your co-founder, by Pejman Pour-Moezzi in GeekWire