Ivan Kuten's ways of doing business: value, motivation, passion

3 important rules on how to become successful in the hardware engineering business:

1. Value

“Without a real value for clients or partners, you’ll never get great margin. Without understanding the real problem and value of its solution, your negotiations will be longer, more unpredictable with lower rates and efficiency.

Try to find a real problem of your clients or partners before any negotiations. Offer a plan to convert weaknesses into strengths. It’s can be the greatest value ever! Be in trends and roadmaps of chip vendors to create unique offers.

Be fair and clear. Never use weaknesses to increase your prices. A corner is not a place for successful negotiations!”.

2. Motivation

“Always give a possibility to talk. Most people in business are speakers. And remember to listen carefully. Maybe sometimes it’s too time-consuming or boring, but it can help both partners motivate each other. And the easiest way to do it is having talks. For example, lifestyle talks motivate your partners or clients to trust you!

One more important thing to remember. It’s so easy to be lazy. A lot of potential deals failed just because of laziness of one of the parties. So, you always should be a leading partner to push the project forward and motivate others. You will get tangible results in a short-term”.

3. Passion

“You and your business partner may not have an equal point of passion but they should be close. It’s hard to design hardware if somebody is too far away from hardware trends.

A great partner is a person you can call at 2 a.m., a person who will pick up the phone at that hour to listen to your product idea around new IMX8 SoC with nearly the same amount of excitement.

Some of my greatest clients can discuss ideas at any time of the day, and I am really proud to have such relations. Passion in hardware engineering business is not as rare as you might think, but you should carefully collect partners or clients like that. This is the highest level of networking!”

Was it interesting? Have a question or want to ask him for advice? Feel free to write to Ivan Kuten.