Not a stupid question at all!
Believe it or not, there’s 6 of us here. I know we may come off as a larger company, but right now we’re a tight knit group that’s just excited about home automation.
Things will definitely change in the coming month (or two) - not the passion, but the size and experience of our company - but for now, it’s just us.
The way it works right now is we outsource the engineering side to the manufacturer. My background is in marketing/business, Nathan’s is in sales, Eric M is in computer science, Brianna’s is in Social Marketing, Courtney’s is in business and Nate’s is in customer service.
To give you an example of how a project comes to life, we kick off what’s called a PRD (Project Request Document). This has all the wishes, hopes and dreams of what we want our project to be. We sketch up a design, tell them what it needs to have and why and they come back with the finished product.
An example of a project from start to finish would be Project Hurricane:
We asked for the firmware and hardware bullet points, and had the manufacturer figure it out. Yes, it comes at a cost, but we don’t have the capital to invest in an engineer at this time.
Hopefully that helps clarify a bit?