and increase this stupid limit of 120 notes per pattern 
Hopefully the roadmap for updates is a long one. Hopefully in 2 weeks they might reveal their next steps
Would be nice
When I was doing engineering, we always had a roadmap. The degree of flexibility in that roadmap depended on long term staffing levels for the project, budget, time considerations, and value to prospective customers. for small enhancements, we could often just slip them in as side projects, time permitting. The general term for such things was “feature creep”, and that could adversely affect a schedule if not controlled. I have no idea what goes on inside TE, so they may have a completely different approach to this sort of thing.
That’s interesting hearing from someone with an engineering background. I suppose it’s easy for me and others to say “oh why can’t they just add this” without actually thinking about the work involved or any roadmap plans in place.
a new oplab or something like that
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You should continue to say “oh, why can’t they just add this”. I would think TE would want to hear from users so they can make decisions about value to prospective and existing customers. That is a good thing and it increases (however slightly) the possibility of getting something you want. You can’t really know, without being very familiar with the code base, how difficult a given requested enhancement would be to implement.
One other consideration I forgot to mention in that framework is testing. There is individual component testing done by engineers as they complete a piece of code, but then there is system testing at the end of the coding phase when all the pieces come together. The more enhancements/features added, the longer the testing process. Testers usually work from a test plan that is being constructed in parallel with the development process. Documentation is also being written in parallel with development. The documentation must be proofread to insure accuracy and readability.
There is a lot that goes into development and bringing a product to market, and of course the risk that it doesn’t sell well enough to even cover R & D costs. The company who wants their product to succeed must build something that people will want/ Advertising goes a long way to developing the desire to purchase, but then the product must fulfill that desire on an ongoing basis. Customer feedback to vey important to that process, so don’t stop wishing. 
Phew, sounds complex when you list all of that. Maybe that’s why Sonicware went down the Kickstarter route with some of their products, to raise the capital from the actual people who would also be their customers.
I have worked for a few early startups and they all had the same trajectory for funding. They first start with “angels”. These are friends and relatives who invest in the company at the very beginning. Such investments represent stock. Next, are the venture capital people. This is where the investment in the company will be typically $5 million or more and involves still more stock issues.
From here, the company needs to show revenue sooner than later or the VCs will start to lose interest. The hard part is getting the first VC to invest. Once one does, usually the next round of funding will involve at least one more, assuming the company has been able to show revenue or at least real progress toward that with a real product.
The problem for the early investors is that as more shares of stock are issued, the value tends to become smaller per share and all that stock is simply paper until something real happens to make it worth converting to cash, such as going public.
The general idea is to get product to market as quickly as possible without having to issue so many shares that the stock essentially becomes worthless before any real valuation.
So it is a real balancing act to make all this come together. There isn’t a school, book, or youtube video that can teach you how to get such a business off the ground. They can hint at it and provide useful advice, but it still comes down to the “school of hard knocks” in which you learn by doing. This is the reason so many startups fail - the failure is simply the learning process. It can take a few startups before the entrepreneur has learned enough of what not to do, to eventually become successful. Soetimes, a startup will go all the way on first try, but more often than not, the success is really due to being acquired by another company. I have been involved in those too.
The person starting the business will usually get a second mortgage on his or her house, invest all his or her savings, etc. It is a huge risk. I am talking about tech startups that involve significant investment to get hardware built as well as software to run on it. There are plenty of business one can start with little overhead and low risk, so those are not the focus here since we are talking about TE type companies.
Kickstarter seems like a nice means of avoiding the “angel” aspect of involving friends and relatives. But the kickstarter route is a risk for those investing too since many of those never come to fruition or die on the vine soon after the first iteration of the product is delivered.
To do this sort of thing, one has to be a risk taker. The rest of us are the customers who come along when things are moving along pretty well. I had little risk in buying the OP-1 Field or the OP-XY beyond whether the annoying bugs would be addressed in a timely manner. Wait a few years for the dust to settle and the risk of even that is really low because by then, you will know how pleased users are before you fork out your money.
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It sounds like you’ve had an interesting career and seen a lot of start-ups.
Reading all that, and about what you say about there being no book or YouTube video, you sound like you could produce such a thing.
I get the school of hard knocks though, and I guess there really is no better school than experience.
I remember reading about how Apple started, and there was a 3rd guy, as well as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who put some cash in and then got cold feet quite soon and cashed out. If he’d have stayed in he would have made millions. But I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing and at the time Apple might have failed. I think they got venture capitalists in when they wanted to produce the Apple 2.
The whole Apple story I find fascinating, especially how Jobs was sacked from the company he founded, to kind of fail with Next, although Apple acquired Next for their OS and to bring Steve back to Apple, and how he, and others, turned Apple back into profit.
Yes, Apple is/was one of the big stories of a startup going all the way. Microsoft is another. There are many that you never hear about because they either failed or were acquired before they could become a household name.
I doubt I could write any instructions regarding startups because I was never the risk taker other than being an early employee. If the company failed, I could walk away from the wreckage and find another job, while the business owner would have to contend with the cleanup, any debt repayment, and all the legal entanglements.
May I side track and ask how you incorporate guitar into your op/1 work ?
The only thing I have used my guitar for with synthesizers is to figure out melodies and chord progressions I want to make. I also use it to tune my analog modular synthesizer VCOs and sequencers. I don’t have my guitar connected to anything as it is an acoustic instrument. I suppose one of these days I might record a guitar part into the OP-1F as a track and then have the other three tracks played from the OP1 Field.
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Anyone else notice they’re posting oplab videos on their YT channel? Maybe they’re bringing that back?
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That’s fair enough. It wouldn’t be nice to be able
just walk away knowing someone else had lost it all after taking your advice. Thanks for the insights
into some of the things which go into launching products. There’s a ton of things that have to happen before we get to enjoy the latest gadget. I certainly wouldn’t want the stress of putting my house up as collateral.
I saw that. I thought at first it was a re-launch of the Op-lab. Maybe it’s a hint for next month. Only 2 weeks today until we find out their plans.
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But, but, … didn’t we have to do that to afford the OP-1 Field and OPXY? 
I hope they are brining back the OP-Lab rather than introducing something along the lines of the OP-XY. I have no interest in those little pocket operators or the OP-Lab, but would probably be sorely tempted by a new addition to the Field eco-system.
Of course I would be greatly surprised if they introduced another serious device along the lines of the OP-XY because it would be too soon for them to have recouped their development costs from the OP-XY, which is still early in its lifecycle, so no worries about that.
A revised OPLab that got the Field system working really well together would make a lot of sense. The one USB slot per device can make things a bit difficult sometimes - a hub could be an interesting concept
Haha yeah 