POV: Ryan Thomas, Chief Operating Officer

Well, in sixteen years, I've seen hundreds of new products and designs have success, have challenges, and also have massive failures. The biggest reason there's either success, or failure is gonna be on how much time you spend on validating the design.

There's this challenge companies have of, how long can I really have a development roadmap where I'm able to compete and not get passed on the technology side of things? But at the same time, how do I actually maintain our customers who are trying the product out? You kinda have early adopters alongside with you that go, "Okay, I'm gonna put it in the field. If it fails, not a big deal. We know it's in this DV stage." That's really been what's kinda helped companies along.

But still, I would say the biggest pitfall is shortcuts, because ultimately, that's gonna have a challenge on manufacturability, have a challenge on part availability and where they are on their life cycle, and really how it works in those extreme environments. Because not a lot of telematics connected devices are just sitting in a car, in perfect conditions, right? So you have to invest, in going through all the right validation steps to prove it's gonna work in the market.