Perfect is the Enemy of Good
Why Watch This?
Jeremiah Landi brings a refreshing "no-nonsense" perspective to engineering. He explains how the "show must go on" mentality of Broadway (where failure isn't an option) translates into a business model that prioritizes profit and speed over technical vanity. It’s a masterclass for anyone tired of the slow, siloed nature of traditional product development.
Core Topics
Theatrical Roots: How working on animatronics for Phantom of the Opera taught Jeremiah about high-stakes reliability.
Horizontal Integration: The benefits of keeping mechanical, electrical, software, and fabrication teams under one roof to prevent "handoff" failures.
The MAHD Framework: A deep dive into Modified Agile Hardware Development—bringing software-style speed and iteration to physical products.
ROI-Driven Engineering: Why Landi focuses on market fit and manufacturing costs from day one rather than just "cool" features.
Case Studies: Real-world examples involving professional athlete medical devices and high-density server cooling for Dell OEMs.
Full Transcript
Brian Marshall: Welcome back to the show. I am joined today by Jeremiah Landi, the founder and CEO of Landi Industries. Jeremiah, you’ve had a really interesting path into this field. You didn't just come out of an engineering school and start a firm; you had some pretty diverse stops along the way. Can you tell us about that?
Jeremiah Landi: Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian. It definitely wasn't a straight line. I started out as essentially a "go-fer"—the guy who goes for coffee—at architecture firms. But I was always the guy who wanted to know how things worked. Eventually, that curiosity led me into the theatrical world. I spent a good chunk of my early career working on animatronics and mechanical effects for major productions like The Phantom of the Opera.
Brian Marshall: That’s a huge jump. How does theatrical animatronics prepare you for high-level mechanical engineering?
Jeremiah Landi: It’s the ultimate pressure cooker for reliability. If a chandelier is supposed to fall or a stage is supposed to move and it doesn't, you can't hit "restart" or tell the audience to wait while you debug. It has to work every single time, perfectly. That taught me how to solve complex mechanical and electrical problems with a focus on absolute reliability and simplicity, which is what we carry over to Landi Industries today.
Brian Marshall: So you founded Landi Industries in 2016. What was the "missing piece" you saw in the engineering world that you wanted to fix?
Jeremiah Landi: I saw a lot of "siloing." You’d have a company go to a design firm for a concept, then an electrical firm for the PCB, and then a manufacturer to build it. Every time that project changed hands, information was lost, and the cost went up. We built Landi Industries to be a "one-stop-shop" horizontally integrated firm. We handle the mechanical design, the electrical engineering, the software development, and the actual fabrication in-house. When we design something, we already know how we’re going to build it.
Brian Marshall: You talk a lot about "ROI-driven development." Why is that the focus rather than just "innovation"?
Jeremiah Landi: Because innovation without a return on investment is just an expensive hobby. Most hardware startups fail—about 90% of them. They fail because they spend too much time and money building a perfect product that the market doesn't actually want, or that costs too much to manufacture. We use what we call MAHD—Modified Agile Hardware Development. It’s taking the "Agile" principles from software—fast iterations, constant testing—and applying them to physical metal and circuits. We prove the business case at every step.
Brian Marshall: Can you give me a real-world example of how that looks in practice?
Jeremiah Landi: Sure. We worked on a project involving server thermal management for Dell OEMs. The client had a massive heat issue in a very constrained space. Instead of just "designing a fan," we looked at the entire system—airflow, materials, and power consumption. We iterated through three versions in the time it would normally take a firm to do one. We solved the thermal problem and reduced their manufacturing cost by about 20% simultaneously. That’s the ROI we’re talking about.
Brian Marshall: And you also do work in the sports and medical world, right?
Jeremiah Landi: We do. We’ve developed specialized recovery and performance devices for professional athletes, including some NBA players. It’s the same process: identify the problem, iterate fast, and deliver a solution that is ready for the real world, not just a lab.
Brian Marshall: Jeremiah, it’s a fascinating approach to a very difficult industry. Thanks for joining us and sharing the story.
Jeremiah Landi: Absolutely, thanks for having me.