So Altium is bringing out a new lowcost entrylevel PCB design tool. Well, welcome to the 21st century. You're only about a decade late. But hey, better late than never.

So anyway, the original founder Nick Martin has finally been given the boot and there's a new sheriff in town and a new way of doing things they're get now going to focus on their core PCB tools and well, it's only something that the entire industry has been screaming for for the last decade, but it seems that they're finally going to listen. Hallelujah! Praise the new board! Now if you haven't seen Aum's investor presentation which outlines all this stuff, it'll be linked in down below. Check it out. Now as many of you may know, I've been using Al/ Protel for the last 25 years.

It's been my tool of choice because well, basically I think it's the best PCB tool in the IND industry And as most people also know, I worked at Altium for 4 years as well and ironically I was hired at Altium to provide and I quote my expert industry opinion and real world feedback and it just so happens that's what we do here on the Eev blog. So here we go. So here's Dave's top five tips for alum. And yes, I'm talking to the Altium board of Directors here and to the marketing wankers too because we love marketing here on the Eev blog.

Tip: Number one: Drop the Fpga rubbish. You spent over 10 years and the entire company Fortune Following this Fpga dream and it failed massively. It was never going to work. It will never work.

and no professional will ever use it. ever. So leave it to the Fpga vendors where it belongs and don't waste any more company resources on it. But don't get me wrong, Fpga's are very important, so it's important to have good, proper pin swapping integration and all that sort of goodness in the tool.

Keep that up and make it accessible so that users can add that capability themselves. But don't try and be the be All end All One-Stop Fpga Tool: You're going to fail. And I noticed in the investor report you finally admitted what everyone knew anyway that the PCB tool is over 90% of your income. Oh hello, McFly Just focus on the PCB tool and you'll be headed in the right direction.

Everything else is a distraction. It really is. and there's nothing wrong with being the world's best PCB tool. Be happy.

Stop trying to be the Be all end. All Electronics Design tool. You're not going to be able to do it. And that includes the embedded uh software stuff and also that silly modular Hardware dream.

Just forget it. Move on. Tip number two too. You're on the right track with all the 3D integration, the vendor integration, the highspeed tool integration, the bomb integration, all that sort of stuff which goes into producing a physical Electronics product that is the right direction to head in, as well as the high-speed tools of course, which the industry is screaming out for.

That's a must at the high end and those highspeed design tools are very important. The high-end in your industry is high-speed design not chip design or FP PGA design. Remember, you're a PCB Tool Company It's all about that physical layer. You're not a chip designer or IP company and it really is okay to farm out some of this stuff to better dedicated design tools that do the job from other companies.

Things like, you know, field solvers uh, thermal tools, simulators that actually work Auto routers that actually work that kind of stuff. There's no need to reinvent the wheel there, just make it tightly integrated. Remember, you're a pie PCB Design Tool Company You need to focus on that. You've said so yourself.

Tip Number three and this is the big one. Listen up to dominate the entry level PCB Tool Market You must must must have a free version of the tool free. Why? I'll give you three reasons. Number one: Because Eagle and a lot of the other players have a free tool, so there's reason enough right there right off the bat.

And of course, Eagle is now the de facto standard in that entry level. PCB tool space in the hobbyist hacker maker kind of market. and well, yeah, it's crap compared to Alum It really is. and if alium want to crush Eagle then they have to have a competing free tool.

Number two. The entire Open Source Hardware movement is built around these free software tools and often their limitations. The Arduino free, for example, massively popular and is almost driving the entire market. Now, how was designed around the limitations in the free Eagle tool And well, if you don't have that, then you're not going to be able to compete and you're not going to be able to take market share away from Eagle.

It's just not going to work. Number three: Bloggers and other people in the industry like me won't use or recommend your tool unless there is a free version available. Why? Because it's simple. the beginner can't create anything new useful without handing over money.

There are other free options out there, so Alum just won't be an option for people like us to actually promote in tutorials and other sorts of stuff. You've just lost a huge market right there. So why do bloggers and other people and companies like me in the industry matter? Well, Alum have what? maybe around about 50,000 seats or something like that? And as everyone in the industry knows, everyone in the PCB marketing industry knows the number of seats are everything and it's taking you what 25 years to build up those 50,000 seats? If I'm reading your presentation correctly, you're estimating about what 30,000 or so uh, new seats in that uh entrylevel PCB market. And well, that's not bad.

But hey, just consider my blog alone. I've got over 87,000 subscribers and over 8,000 active users on my Forum. It's much bigger than the AL forum and almost every one of those people is going to need or does need a PCB tool. So hey, that's just my blog alone, let alone the rest of the industry.

And things like my PCB Design Tutorial for example been downloaded countless hundreds of thousands of times and uh, PCB Design Tool Videos get you know, hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube And if you aren't giving us a free version that we can work with and actually promote, eh, you've just lost it all. And if you don't get the beginners, the hobbyists, the hackers, the makers, and uh, bloggers, and everyone else using and recommending and becoming that de facto standard tool in that entry level market, then well, you're not going to get those, uh, further sales up the pyramid there to your mid-range tool and your highend tools. It's just not going to happen These people, even people in their backyard. And now getting you know, millions of dollars crowdsource funding they need proper PCB tools.

Which, Which one are they going to use? Well, if they didn't use Altium to do the free version, they're not going to use it to design their you know, million Dooll widget. Forget it. Tip Number Four pricing. Now the free tool can have a whole host of restrictions.

and of course you know that eagle. Uh, do that in terms of board size, uh, number of layers and also a non-commercial clause and that's just fine. It'd be very wise to copy that. And if you don't think that Eagle having a free version is the sole reason why they're now the Deao standard down there.

At the low end, you're kidding yourself and don't try and match. Eagle Pricing: Nobody pays over $11,000 for that professional Eagle License The I Think the sweet spot is in that $250 to $500 range. Then it pretty much becomes a no-brainer from people who are going to just pirate the thing or people will go oh, that's not bad. I'm going to upgrade to that, sort of, you know, mid sort of that entry level tool.

Have no problems paying that under 250 bucks. Probably not worth your while unless you have a free unless you have like Eagle the same free version which then just removes the uh, noncommercial uh, license restriction or something like that. So don't give people reasons to. Pirate Your software make it affordable, make it become a no-brainer for them, and they'll support you anything in that four-digit range.

Forget it, you've lost the plot, and none of these entry level or free tools need any support. or uh, work on Alim's part. Just make you know automated website stuff PayPal Uh, automated license key download You don't have to involve or you shouldn't involve your sales or marketing team at all in this. It'll just sell at work itself.

Money for jam and people are happy just to go to The Forum for support. So you guys don't even need to have technical support at all for this entry level tool. Don't bother, don't waste your resources. keep it cheap and taking that free version and charging 50 or 100 bucks for it just to remove a non-commercial clause for example.

That's a complete no-brainer that really is money for Jam Trust me, people ultimately want to be legitimate in this software. just give them a no-brainer reason to do it. and your investor presentation seems to imply that you're almost working on a separate entrylevel PCB tool instead of doing the sensible thing and actually just having your proper Alum Designer 2013 or whatever it is and then just having license restrictions to take away some of the features. And if that's the case, then that's the dumbest idea since your stupid marketing campaign of turning the world of electronics design upside down and making the PCB tool optional extra.

Oh, double face P Tip number five: The free and entry level tools have to include all of that goodness which makes Alum fun. It's got to have that killer feature of 3D It's got to have the full component libraries. It's got to have the full schematic. It's got to have the interactive routing and things like that that you know make the tool a usable PCB design tool from Go to Wo and bomb integration and supplier integration and all that sort of stuff should be in the free version.

You need to differentiate your high-end Tools in other areas, other stuff like simulation and high-speed design and things like that. Yeah, keep those for your professional tool. But all that 3D stuff and supplier integration and the full Parts library and stuff like that, people have to be impressed with the free version to continue to use it. Don't make the mistake of not including that stuff or crippling it.

Just make sure the low-end version just limited in terms of uh, board size, number of layers, component count, pad count, whatever. There's various pros and cons to those different methods. Not too fussy on how you do it, just make sure it includes all that goodness. So ultimately to be successful in this whole idea of New Direction with the entry level tool, the user, be it free, entry level, or up at the professional end, really shouldn't see any major usability difference between the tools except for a couple of those high-end features I Talked about.

It's not rocket science. really. the PCB industry and what people need is very, very simple. Just don't screw it up up, please.

But hey, don't listen to me. I'm just that crazy evev blog guy who you ironically hir to give my professional opinion which I just did. There you go, but hey no, don't listen to me. listen to the thousands of comments.

Down Below on my forum and on my blog website about this because people know what they want and they know how the industry works and what you need to do here to succeed. Don't listen to your stupid internal marketing. so I really do hope you don't screw this up. Alum And well, your track record hasn't been that great so I'm a bit concerned but hey I love to be proven wrong.

Catch you next time.