Where Do Magical Hardware Experiences Come From?

No matter where you live, or who you are, everyone gets excited when they see a rainbow.  Why?  Because rainbows create emotionally appealing connections between the real world and the clouds.Great hardware products leverage that same concept of cloud connectivity to the real world we all live in.  Companies like Eero use the cloud to make their products better on every dimension: performance, features, and security.Over the last year, Eero has been collecting the world’s largest network topology dataset in real time.  This allows them to rapidly test and fix interoperability issues, and inform Eero’s routing algorithms.  Every Eero network learns and adjusts to perform against its local environment.  Every Eero adapts to things like walls, furniture and interference.  This is how network effects develop in hardware.  More homes and happy users, leads to more consumers interested in the product, and then those customers buy hardware that further accelerates the overall performance gains of every other Eero user.  Mining and learning from customer data was a key factor in Eero’s recent software release that increased the speeds of existing Eero routers dramatically.  As Ars Technica put it, “Eero [used the world’s] “largest consumer mesh network dataset” to boost Wi-Fi performance.”Equally interesting is how cloud connectivity allows Eero to add key features over time.  Recently, every existing Eero user received an update that adds Alexa integration, the ability to find a lost iPhone in your home, on top of advanced parental controls that were rolled out (for free) over the summer.  Can you think of many products that get this much better, for free, after you buy them?  That’s the magic of cloud-based software updates.Finally, think about security.  A recent well-known, huge, and recent internet attack that was based on Internet of Things devices was based on devices that didn’t receive regular security updates.  Great cloud-connected hardware devices like Eero receive regular software updates to close any potential security holes.  When’s the last time you updated the firmware on your non-Eero WiFi router?  Hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities on old devices.The very best hardware companies understand the power of cloud connectivity.  That’s why they build strong, positive bonds with their customers and users.  After purchase, the products get better and better with time, not worse.  This is why the best hardware companies are the ones that leverage cloud connectivity, build network effects, and deliver experiences that lead to customer love.  Just like rainbows.