It can be hard to express the value proposition. For a lot of people, it's a media server with some really neat torrent related apps. For others it's a photosharing box that doesn't share photos with anyone you don't want it to. Others buy it because it's a tiny Kubernetes cluster, and they want to learn real tech skills with their hobby.

But honestly, it's also a computer. It's the dream machine (1). What was the value proposition of the personal computer? What we're proposing is the personal server. Billions of folks run the client-side of the internet - but only a tiny elite class of us know how to run the server-side?

If I get hyperbolic and kool-aid drunk, just know it's because I'm quite passionate about this. The blockchain folks talk a lot about "distributing the web". We're simply distributing web servers.

For now though - it's a neat box to run Photostructure or a Ghost blog on :)

1. https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine

Neat gadget/site! I think people have concerns around value proposition when you sell the box for hundreds of dollars and say it's good to host a Ghost blog on.

I would probably advertise something bigger because FWIW I host a blog on a $5 pi fronted by Cloudflare (free).

These look really nice and clean though, wish you the best!

Off topic, but I think that stripe.com page you've linked to is the most beautifully designed modern webpage I've ever had the pleasure of scrolling. It's the 3d objects that move ever-so-slightly along with my cursor passing over them that does it for me.

Very cool. How are people clustering with these? Do you know how they are setting up their laptops etc. as control nodes, buying pis as control nodes, or something else? Is there out of the box capability to cluster with nodes from cloud providers?

The pibox runs as a master and worker at the same time - and most folks just use them as individual servers (if they have two "clusters", they're just clusters of one server each). We really want to lean into improving this in the future! Several power users have complex setups with a PiBox acting as the master for a number of other servers (and our UI and software mostly just works even with multiple nodes). Under the hood, it's really just k3s - our software is designed to work with any Kubernetes cluster, so things all mostly fit together naturally!

I'd love to make it really easy for users to cluster nodes together. 100% on our roadmap if we can get there!

Great explanation. Thanks. Very exciting!

> What was the value proposition of the personal computer?

Balance your checkbook and keep recipes!

You can install Actual Budgets and Tandoor Recipes on a PiBox super easily :D

https://kubesail.com/template/erulabs/actual https://kubesail.com/template/PastuDan/tandoor-recipes

What does value proposition mean? I’ve heard the term a lot but never understood it.

Why someone would want to buy the product. Value is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and it’s not always what the maker expected.

A value proposition is the story of why this product or service is worth more to you than the price being asked.

You can think of it as answering the question, "Why does the humankind need this product to exist?"

Very few things can clear this hurdle, and even less so the sorts of things that tend to come up on HN. Very, very few industrial farming topics come up on here for example.

Perhaps a more apt framework would be, "What's the reason someone is giving you money for this product?"

Why don’t people use the word “value” then? Why “value proposition” and not just “value”?

I assume it's because "value prop" is VC lingo which is a prompt to founders to give their customer "elevator pitch", and we're on community forum that's motivated by VC perspectives & lexicon, so those get broadly appropriated by many participants.

"value proposition" is about how you demonstrate the value.

They come back in stock almost every week, keep an eye on https://rpilocator.com - and maybe subscribe to their twitter if you want instant stock alerts.

Chiming in to say that if you're using this to buy a Pi from AdaFruit make sure to register an account with two-factor auth before you get the chance to buy. They require this to deter scalpers, and they'll run out of stock before you're able to finish the process if you haven't already done so.

I just checked and as if by magic, yep, there are some CM4s (in Germany). I've been looking to pick up a couple more Zeros though and haven't seen those in stock in months.

It's my understanding that the Zeros are very low priority for production, so you might be waiting a while for those. Since you're only allowed to buy one per order anyway they're not actually that useful for much.