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From Apple to Oculus-Now Taking On Consumer Hardware | Nirav Patel, Framework

EO16:35Added Aug 31, 2026

The consumer hardware market is often said to be one of the toughest to survive. Yet, Framework has continued to grow steadily, with its DIY laptop as a flag...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. Intro

  2. 00:00So ultimately, fundamentally, I am a
  3. 00:02hardware person. There's like screws
  4. 00:05flowing through my blood or something in
  5. 00:06there somewhere. My parents would
  6. 00:08occasionally complain when I would take
  7. 00:10stuff apart in the house, but usually I
  8. 00:12was able to successfully put it back
  9. 00:14together, so it ended up being okay. I
  10. 00:16want to build the best laptop. I want to
  11. 00:17build a laptop company. framework is a
  12. 00:20company that builds longerlasting
  13. 00:22consumer electronics products so that if
  14. 00:24anything ever happens to the product,
  15. 00:26something breaks or you just need more
  16. 00:28out of it, more performance or more
  17. 00:30capability, you can actually just open
  18. 00:32it up very easily using the screwdriver
  19. 00:35that we include in the
  20. 00:38box, swap out a part and keep using it
  21. 00:41for longer. growing more than double
  22. 00:43revenue year-over-year for the last
  23. 00:45couple of years, which is pretty unusual
  24. 00:47for a consumer electronics startup,
  25. 00:49especially in a pretty tough
  26. 00:50environment. Fundamentally, the mission
  27. 00:52is about empowering the enduser of the
  28. 00:55product, making it clear that this is
  29. 00:58their product, not our product. One of
  30. 00:59the problems that I thought was most
  31. 01:01important to solve was just how hard it
  32. 01:03was for consumer electronics startups to
  33. 01:06be successful. But looking across
  34. 01:08consumer electronics across the entire
  35. 01:09startup space, it was clear that there
  36. 01:12were a number of companies that had
  37. 01:14really interesting and really excellent
  38. 01:16products but failed. Anyway, the thing I
  39. 01:18needed to do is prove that there's a
  40. 01:20better business model for consumer
  41. 01:21electronics. One of the secrets to
  42. 01:23building a successful startup is that
  43. 01:26the CEO needs to

  44. What a Hardware Guy Learned at Apple

  45. 01:34be in school and actually I graduated
  46. 01:37from university in 2009. That was a
  47. 01:41period of great economic uncertainty. it
  48. 01:43was uh the start of a pretty heavy
  49. 01:45recession and so actually there weren't
  50. 01:46a lot of jobs available and there was
  51. 01:49not a single hardware company hiring. Um
  52. 01:52but it turned out that Apple in one of
  53. 01:54their software organizations did have
  54. 01:56this role open that I was able to jump
  55. 01:59into right out of school. And so I ended
  56. 02:01up at Apple for a little over 3 years
  57. 02:03working on software of all things. Apple
  58. 02:06had just released the iPhone 3GS. This
  59. 02:09was like right still at the dawn of
  60. 02:11smartphones becoming the default mode of
  61. 02:13interaction and actually kind of the
  62. 02:15default mode of computing. So I was
  63. 02:17working on FaceTime and uh Game Kit and
  64. 02:20Game Center which was this kind of
  65. 02:21multiplayer games framework that Apple
  66. 02:24was developing from a software
  67. 02:25perspective. And mostly what that

  68. “I Didn’t Want to Work at Apple”

  69. 02:28experience taught me was that I didn't
  70. 02:30really want to work in a company like
  71. 02:31Apple. Um one of the challenges at Apple
  72. 02:34is that it is a very very siloed
  73. 02:36company. as an engineer there, it was
  74. 02:38actually quite frustrating that I would
  75. 02:39see all this cool hardware or see all
  76. 02:41this cool software but have no real
  77. 02:43ability to either influence or even
  78. 02:45understand or speak to the people who
  79. 02:47were building it. So I was working a
  80. 02:50relatively normal number of hours a
  81. 02:52week. So like say like 40 to 50 hours a
  82. 02:54week, a normal number of hours. And I
  83. 02:56would spend another 40 to 50 hours a
  84. 02:59week actually tinkering on mostly VR
  85. 03:02stuff. And this was before VR was like
  86. 03:04actually really a thing. building these
  87. 03:07little gadgets and tools and toys to
  88. 03:10basically just see what was even
  89. 03:11possible and doing it within a community

  90. First Meeting with Palmer Luckey

  91. 03:14of other people who were like-minded.
  92. 03:16And so one of the other people in that
  93. 03:18community was probably the farthest
  94. 03:20along in that community was someone
  95. 03:21named Palmer Lucky who of course ended
  96. 03:23up founding Oculus. My name is Palmer
  97. 03:26Lucky and I'm a virtual reality
  98. 03:28enthusiast and the designer of the Rift.
  99. 03:30Where this all started was in my
  100. 03:31parents' garage in Long Beach,
  101. 03:33California. And I was interested in
  102. 03:35stereoscopic displays. I was interested
  103. 03:37in headmounts. And the problem was there
  104. 03:39was nothing that gave me the experience
  105. 03:40that I wanted, the Matrix, where I can
  106. 03:43plug in and actually be in the game. And
  107. 03:45I was sure that somewhere out there
  108. 03:46there was something that I could buy.
  109. 03:48And the reality is there's nothing. I
  110. 03:50set out to change that with the Oculus
  111. 03:52Rift.
  112. 03:53And at the time that he founded Oculus
  113. 03:55back in 2012, there was just one piece

  114. There Wouldn’t Be Oculus Without Nirav Patel

  115. 03:58of the headset that was missing, which
  116. 04:01was motion tracking. And motion tracking
  117. 04:04happened to be the one gadget that I was
  118. 04:07personally the furthest along on. And I
  119. 04:09had sent one of two prototypes of motion
  120. 04:12track that I'd built to Palmer a few
  121. 04:14months earlier just to get his thoughts
  122. 04:16on it and see see if it would be useful
  123. 04:18to him. And so in mid 2012, Palmer
  124. 04:21reached out to me and asked if I wanted
  125. 04:23a demo of this VR headset that he'd been
  126. 04:25building up and said, "Of course, of
  127. 04:27course I want a demo of it." And I ended
  128. 04:29up meeting with him and the rest of the
  129. 04:31early team, the rest of the founding
  130. 04:33team there. And what I thought was going
  131. 04:35to be a demo turned into a job offer.
  132. 04:37And they said, "Uh, you have to leave
  133. 04:39Apple and join us within a week cuz we
  134. 04:42really need your motion tracker." And
  135. 04:43that was just an very obvious choice for
  136. 04:45me of like, yeah, I don't want to be at
  137. 04:47Apple. I want to be working on this cool
  138. 04:48stuff here. VR, let's do it. But
  139. 04:50actually, the move from Apple to Oculus
  140. 04:52was a bit more a bit more of a jump
  141. 04:54because at that point, of course, Apple
  142. 04:56was on its very rapid growth trajectory
  143. 04:59and to leave that very rapidly growing
  144. 05:02company and join this scrappy startup of
  145. 05:04people trying to build VR on on its
  146. 05:07surface seemed crazy. And I think my
  147. 05:08parents at first were like, "Oh, are you
  148. 05:10sure? This doesn't seem like a good
  149. 05:12idea." Um, but I was convinced. I I knew
  150. 05:15that that it was the right team of
  151. 05:16people. I knew it was the right
  152. 05:18technology space to explore at that time
  153. 05:20and of course ended up being a good bet
  154. 05:22to have
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  173. Oculus’s Biggest Mistake

  174. 06:09The first two years of Oculus. So from
  175. 06:112012 until we got acquired in 2014,
  176. 06:14literally every month was some new
  177. 06:17insane occurrence and insane change,
  178. 06:21insane learning. Like the pace of
  179. 06:22iteration that we had across those two
  180. 06:24years, I look back on and think like how
  181. 06:26did we even do that? A normal hardware
  182. 06:30product, a consumer hardware product, it
  183. 06:32takes somewhere between 12 to 24 months
  184. 06:36to go from initial idea of like, oh,
  185. 06:39this is a product I think I want to
  186. 06:40build to being able to do development
  187. 06:44cycles on it, ramp up production, and
  188. 06:46getting it into a customer's hands. the
  189. 06:48Oculus Rift dev kit, the first dev kit,
  190. 06:51we went from the company forming to
  191. 06:54getting it into customers hands I think
  192. 06:56in six months, which is not not normal.
  193. 07:00That's not how you build build hardware
  194. 07:02normally. Working with devs to get all
  195. 07:04this going. There's some really
  196. 07:05incredible and interesting stories
  197. 07:07around that. But that's not what this
  198. 07:08talk is about. This talk is only about
  199. 07:10the hardware side of the story. We
  200. 07:12decided to take a different optimization
  201. 07:14and optimize for getting the virtual
  202. 07:17reality ecosystem seated as quickly as
  203. 07:19possible for the sake of figuring out
  204. 07:21what is VR, what works and what doesn't
  205. 07:23work in VR. And for that we needed help
  206. 07:24from all of you which required us to
  207. 07:27take the risk and build a product really
  208. 07:29really
  209. 07:31quickly. And one of the challenging
  210. 07:33things here, one of the the biggest like
  211. 07:35mistakes maybe that we made is that
  212. 07:37obviously we were a startup. We're on a
  213. 07:38shoestring budget. We were being
  214. 07:40incredibly efficient. We're going as
  215. 07:41fast as we can because we knew we needed
  216. 07:43to make progress before running out of
  217. 07:44money basically. And as soon as we got
  218. 07:47acquired by Facebook 2 years in, we had
  219. 07:49effectively unlimited money and
  220. 07:53unlimited resource and we could hire
  221. 07:55literally as many people as we wanted
  222. 07:56to. There were actually no limits aside
  223. 07:59from how quickly we could physically
  224. 08:00onboard people to how quickly we could
  225. 08:03hire. It actually slowed us down. It
  226. 08:05slowed us to a total halt. basically
  227. 08:08went from iterating on a new version of
  228. 08:10VR headsets essentially every few months
  229. 08:13to not being able to ship another
  230. 08:15product for about 3 years. And so we
  231. 08:18lost the massive iteration velocity that
  232. 08:21we had. And it meant that that
  233. 08:23three-year bet instead of the six-month
  234. 08:25bet had to be so perfectly right
  235. 08:27otherwise the opportunity cost of
  236. 08:29missing those three years would end up
  237. 08:32destroying us. And we kind of got it a
  238. 08:34little bit right, maybe not as right as
  239. 08:35we needed to, but looking back on it
  240. 08:38now, those early years in Facebook, what
  241. 08:41we really needed to be focused on was
  242. 08:43iteration speed, not trying to build a
  243. 08:46big team and build a big consumer
  244. 08:48polished product. And so that's what
  245. 08:50brought me to then start up framework
  246. 08:53and then build an even more incredible
  247. 08:55team, but a very small focused team
  248. 08:58where we have this clear mission, clear
  249. 09:00vision, clear roadmap that we're able to
  250. 09:02execute on.

  251. Playbook for the Consumer Hardware Market

  252. 09:14One of the things that works really well
  253. 09:15for us is that the market that we're
  254. 09:18entering, the categories that we're
  255. 09:19entering in each of our products,
  256. 09:21they're just colossal. So for us, we
  257. 09:23look at $200 billion notebook market and
  258. 09:26we see massive, massive headroom to
  259. 09:29continue to grow and succeed in this
  260. 09:31business model that's focused on
  261. 09:32longevity. It actually means that the
  262. 09:35more we grow as a company, the more
  263. 09:37market share we capture, we're actually
  264. 09:39shrinking the size of the notebook
  265. 09:41industry because we're going from a mode
  266. 09:44where consumers and businesses are
  267. 09:46defaulting to replacing a product, let's
  268. 09:48say, every 3 to 5 years to a mode where
  269. 09:50they're using the products for longer.
  270. 09:52And so that's actually a win condition
  271. 09:53for us that we're converting an industry
  272. 09:55from one that is shorter lived to one
  273. 09:59that's more efficient and longer lived.
  274. 10:02And as a startup, of course, we have an
  275. 10:04immense amount of headroom and a ceiling
  276. 10:06that's very very far away that we can
  277. 10:08continue to grow within. But even as we
  278. 10:11capture more and more of that pie, that
  279. 10:13doesn't mean that we would need to then
  280. 10:15change our business model to go back
  281. 10:17into that transactional model that other
  282. 10:19companies are taking today. It means
  283. 10:21that we've grown in an install base
  284. 10:23that's large enough that this network
  285. 10:25effects based re-engagementbased
  286. 10:28business is a massive business in
  287. 10:30itself. And of course, as a company,
  288. 10:32we're not only limiting ourselves to
  289. 10:34notebooks. It's that we're taking the
  290. 10:36success that we've had with notebooks
  291. 10:38and bringing that category by category
  292. 10:40across this just huge consumer
  293. 10:42electronics

  294. Step 2

  295. 10:50industry. You're really thinking about
  296. 10:53the audiences that you're going after.
  297. 10:56We actually have this concept that we
  298. 10:58call terminal audiences. this idea that
  299. 11:01we enter a new product category and we
  300. 11:03lock in an industrial design and a form
  301. 11:06factor and set of features that we're
  302. 11:08defining both the initial set of
  303. 11:10audiences that we can win with most
  304. 11:12efficiently but then also the terminal
  305. 11:14audience basically the broadest furthest
  306. 11:17away audience we think we could still
  307. 11:18win with this product and we make sure
  308. 11:20that we know what those bounds are when
  309. 11:22we reach and build new products for
  310. 11:25example a framework laptop 12 that gives
  311. 11:28us a moment of reset of this is is a new
  312. 11:30category. We're renting a new segment.
  313. 11:32We have to figure out now who are our
  314. 11:34initial audiences for this product which
  315. 11:36actually start from the same core
  316. 11:38audiences as our other products. But
  317. 11:41then who are the terminal audiences? And
  318. 11:43one thing we were deliberate on with
  319. 11:44this new product is we made it simpler.
  320. 11:47We made it much much lower cost and we
  321. 11:50made it more generally appealing to
  322. 11:52people who are not necessarily tech
  323. 11:54enthusiasts. And so as we think about
  324. 11:56this product, the core tech enthusiast
  325. 11:58is still there as an initial audience,
  326. 12:00but our terminal audience is a lot
  327. 12:02bigger and a lot further

  328. Step 3

  329. 12:10away. Audience expansion is definitely
  330. 12:13the key to success in consumer startups
  331. 12:17in general. We have a set of core
  332. 12:20audiences that we kind of layer outwards
  333. 12:22on top of one by one as we go. And of
  334. 12:25course like it's easy to come up with
  335. 12:27personas like define these discrete
  336. 12:29personas of like DIYer and we have Linux
  337. 12:32user and we have like IT manager and we
  338. 12:34have environmentally conscious consumer.
  339. 12:36We have these very clear personas. But
  340. 12:38obviously in real life people are more
  341. 12:39complex than that. Like everyone is some
  342. 12:41combination of a million different
  343. 12:43things. And so it's not that we
  344. 12:45necessarily have this like clear set of
  345. 12:47like layers where it's like a discrete
  346. 12:49layer, discreet layer, discreet layer.
  347. 12:50It's that we're slowly growing the reach
  348. 12:53and awareness and credibility of what
  349. 12:56we're doing as we go and then pulling in
  350. 12:58those people whose personas match to the
  351. 13:01things that we're delivering value or
  352. 13:03interest around. So we took that tech
  353. 13:06enthusiast gamer persona and the various
  354. 13:09subpersonas within it and thought like,
  355. 13:10okay, how do we win that audience? And
  356. 13:12we thought they want latest and greatest
  357. 13:13graphics. Like graphics upgradability is
  358. 13:15huge for the audience and they just
  359. 13:17can't get it out of a laptop. And so we
  360. 13:19thought, okay, when we build our next
  361. 13:22laptop form factor, the thing we should
  362. 13:24prioritize is graphics upgradability so
  363. 13:26we can go win that audience. And so this
  364. 13:29goes back to fulfilling our mission. We
  365. 13:32have this long lasting repairable
  366. 13:34upgradeable product but doing it in a
  367. 13:37way that also expands our audience reach
  368. 13:39by being not just a new version of our
  369. 13:41laptop in a different form factor but
  370. 13:44enables this functionality that is
  371. 13:46actually the key thing that was holding
  372. 13:48back a specific set of consumers out
  373. 13:50there in the world.

  374. Step 4

  375. 13:55One of the biggest things that I've
  376. 13:58learned actually and I've actually tried
  377. 14:00to share with other people starting
  378. 14:01consumer hardware startups is that
  379. 14:04critical fundraising roadmap. And of
  380. 14:08course, if you're building hardware,
  381. 14:09there's typically a 2-year ramp from
  382. 14:13coming up with the product you want to
  383. 14:15build to being able to ship the first
  384. 14:18version of it and collect revenue for
  385. 14:20the first time. If you can't fund your
  386. 14:22way to escape velocity, you're going to
  387. 14:26fail anyway. So, what you need to do is
  388. 14:28think through what is that path? What's
  389. 14:30the high assurance path that you have as
  390. 14:33a company with the product and business
  391. 14:34model you're building and the audiences
  392. 14:36that you're going after to reach escape
  393. 14:38velocity? Meaning the point in time
  394. 14:40where you're able to self-fund your own
  395. 14:42product roadmap and your own growth. And
  396. 14:44so one of the most important things for
  397. 14:46consumer hardware especially because
  398. 14:48those development timelines are so long
  399. 14:51is to make sure that you have funding in
  400. 14:54the loop almost this idea that you're
  401. 14:56talking to investors very early and very
  402. 14:58regularly to make sure that at the right
  403. 15:01points in time when you're going to need
  404. 15:03funding that you're going to be able to
  405. 15:04show the right kinds of traction and the
  406. 15:07right kinds of metrics for those
  407. 15:09investors to see the signals that
  408. 15:10they'll need to see to be able to put
  409. 15:12funding into you. that even though we
  410. 15:14have a product time horizon that's two
  411. 15:16years away, we have a vision time
  412. 15:18horizon that's 20 years away, that we we
  413. 15:21look out 20 years and we see a world and
  414. 15:24a consumer electronics industry that's
  415. 15:26fundamentally different. That this
  416. 15:28business model that we've adopted at
  417. 15:30scale is just so fundamentally more
  418. 15:32efficient than the traditional business
  419. 15:34model and so much better as a model for
  420. 15:37both us as a company and for the
  421. 15:39customers buying the product that we
  422. 15:41know it's a winning model. And so we see
  423. 15:43that as this north star for us that we
  424. 15:47continuously move ourselves towards as
  425. 15:49we go down this road

  426. The Most Important Secret to Survive

  427. 15:52map. The key lesson is don't give up.
  428. 15:56That resiliency is the single most
  429. 15:58important trait and you're going to have
  430. 16:01to pull rabbits out of hats over and
  431. 16:04over again in a startup. And as long as
  432. 16:07you are still willing to reach your hand
  433. 16:09into the hat and find another rabbit,
  434. 16:11you should keep going.
  435. 16:21[Music]