Flux 2021: A year in review
2021 was a big year for Flux! Two years ago, we set out to take the hard out of hardware and bring electronics design into the future by making it easy to use and collaborative.
Our ambition is large but working on Flux scratches our own itch. Most of us have mixed hardware/software backgrounds and have grown increasingly frustrated with the status quo of design tooling in the space. If you don’t have a fetish for late 80s desktop software, I am sure you can relate!
So instead of building on top of existing tooling, we decided to build from the ground up for the future. Our cloud-based hardware development platform includes collaborative schematic design, a programmable simulator, and an open source Community Library of components and designs.
As we continue to march ahead, I’d like to recap what milestones we achieved in 2021 and where we’re going in 2022.
2021 Highlights
- We grew our actively monthly users by 10x since January. It’s been amazing to get an influx of hardware designers who are excited about this new way of working.
- We hosted 10 User Town Halls with incredible guests like Michael Corr from Duro and Amir Hirsch, the lead digital engineer at General Radar where he develops real-time signal processing systems on FPGAs.
- Announced our $12M in funding as well as the launch of our private beta on TechCrunch
- Added realtime Component Pricing and Availability information to Flux
- Grew our team from 4 to 15 people! Check out our open roles (All Remote!)
And most importantly, we addressed the most common piece of feedback we received.
“This is awesome, but how do I build a PCB?”
Well, since of last week, the answer is, “build it in Flux!”
We’re proud to share that we have added full PCB layouting capabilities to Flux
As you know, PCB design needed an overhaul, and so we set forth to reimagine it from scratch. For us, the ideal PCB editor needed have:
- Seamless collaboration w/ version control & permissions
- Design rules that actually work for users
- Existing building blocks to avoid reinventing the wheel
- A design that stays in sync with schematic, simulation
- Native integration with vendors
- A Github-like repository of reusable components
Needless to say this is only the start (Flux PCB editor is in alpha), and we have plenty of work to do. But none the less we’re all so excited to roll this out to you and start receiving your feedback! If you wanna get the wheels spinning check out our getting started with PCB in Flux announcement.
So whats ahead for us in 2022?
While we made much progress this past year, the reality is that we barely scratched the surface of fulfilling our ambition of taking the hard out of hardware.
Now that we’ve added PCB layouting to our core feature set, we have all the key building blocks in place. We’re going to shift gears from focusing on large epics to getting all the little details right to make Flux your first choice for designing and manufacturing a board.
Whenever someone starts a new project, they’ll want to do it with Flux.
We’re looking for your input and help to make Flux the tool that you want to use every day. We want to make it easy for teams to use Flux and to give them the tools they need to work.
We will address the blockers you’ve told us about!
- Improve performance — We’re constantly investing in quality. Our goal is to make Flux faster and more reliable than any other tool.
- Manufacture projects — One of the main complaints is that you can’t finish a project and get it manufactured. PCB is shipped, and we aim to deliver the remaining necessary features (such as Gerber export) by February.
- Make Part sourcing much faster, more enjoyable, and reliable. We’ve already started to ship deep integrations with Digikey, JLPCB, and Mouser and plan on expanding them.
- Deliver Team spaces — a virtual place where teams can work together easily. Share projects, part libraries, resources, control permissions all from one place. For teams and organizations.
- Accelerate workflows with modules — the key to faster iteration and collaboration is all about making it seamless to reuse battle hardened work from previous projects. We have already gave a sneak peak last week and will double down here in 2022.
- Expand community content — Additional tools to filter through the community library and better tools to search and filter for the “right stuff.”
This Is Just The Start
We know this is a long journey, and we are excited to continue sharing our learnings and thinking as we make progress.
We are grateful for all the support we have received from the community, partners, and investors. Let’s make making hardware feel magical again.
If you are interested in joining our early adopter community and influencing the direction of Flux, sign up here and follow us on Twitter.
We are hiring! Check open roles here
Onward 🚀
