The shitstorm of a fallout has pushed the community behind Billet Labs more than they ever would have gotten had they just gotten reviewed properly. It may have sucked what had happened but I think they will be better off in the long term now that people are aggressively supportive of them. Funny twist of fate in my opinion.
It does make one think, if the block was only compatible with such a specific configuration and a fraction of a niche market, what was the intention of shipping a prototype for review?
The only thing I can think of is brand exposure, but even then not many people would have been able to purchase anything. While Linus shouldn’t have handled it the way he did, it does also put into question Billet’s strategy in the first place…
Yeah sure Billet Labs is at fault here… Even if their strategy was idiotic what does that have to do with anything? That doesn’t mean they deserve this.
You send a prototype like this out to a big outlet like LTT at least for two reasons: get outside expert feedback (which they obviously failed miserably at, I don’t expect other small brands trust LTT with their in-development products) and garner interest in the product and the brand. For smaller companies this kind of coverage is critical because they don’t have unlimited marketing budgets like the big brands do.
Certainly not implying that they deserve this treatment at all (no one does, and LMG has no excuse for it).
And again, there’s no cookie cutter ways to running a business. It’s purely on one’s risk vs benefits appetite. I personally wouldn’t risk delivering a prototype for review until a production-ready product is available, especially to a volatile media group like LMG (maybe GN or L1Tech). But then again, I’m not running the business 🤷