This is perhaps a slightly contrarian take on the failure of Humane’s pin. Eventually I believe there will be a successful product like it. It will need to be simpler, though. No laser. Cheaper. Faster.
I won’t judge the team too harshly for being so ambitious. They probably knew 1.0 had fallen short but were expecting to iterate after shipping it, keep improving it. Instead, they had hyped up expectations so beyond what could be achieved at launch that when the first version flopped, it was crippling.
The lesson for me is not that anything resembling this product was doomed to fail. There were interesting ideas in it. There were talented people working on it. The lesson is trying to do too much and not leaving room (and money) to ramp up. Wait for AI voice models to get to where you need to be. Only ship the features you can absolutely nail.
Venture capital also deserves blame. Big investment needs a big return. They were trying to change everything all at once. Contrast with Rabbit, who shipped the R1 around the same time, also poorly reviewed. But Rabbit had a more sustainable approach and they’re still releasing cool things today.
Sometimes you don’t get a second chance. Humane bet the company on a product that needed more time. They shipped a prototype. It is easy to see this in hindsight. More difficult when you’re caught up building it.
