The Hardware Reality Check: Why 90% of You Will Fail (And How Not To)
A Brutal Roadmap for the Hardware Founder
If you’re coming from software, you’re already behind. You think "Agile" means you can fix your mistakes on the fly. In my world—the world of factories, steel molds, and supply chains—Agile is how you go broke. You don’t "patch" a physical product once it’s on a boat. You just lose your shirt.
Here is the reality of the journey from idea to market, stripped of the Silicon Valley optimism.
1. Hardware Isn't Software (Stop Pretending It Is)
Yes, we both use versions of Agile. But the physics are different.
Software Agile: You find a bug, you push code, you’re a hero by lunch.
Hardware Agile (MAHD): You find a bug in your tooling and you’re looking at a $50,000 invoice and a six-week delay. * Continuous De-risking: In hardware, "Agile" isn't about continuous deployment; it’s about continuous de-risking. If you aren't iterating wildly in the cheap phases (CAD and Cardboard), you’re just gambling with your investor’s money.
Study the Blueprint of Others
Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Find someone who has built something similar—even if it's in a different industry—and learn exactly how they got it manufactured. What materials did they use? Which partners did they fire?
Listen to the autopsies. Immerse yourself in shows like The Startup Podcast. Watch the cautionary tales of those who let ego outpace engineering, like The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019) or the brutal growing pains of the 3D printing revolution in Print the Legend (2014). If you repeat the same mistakes they made and expect a different result, you aren't an "innovator"—you're just the next person in line to go bust.
2. The "Sales First" Strategy: Don’t Hire Engineers Yet
I see founders hire a team of expensive engineers before they’ve even spoken to a customer. That is a death sentence.
No Customer, No Engineer: Do not spend a dime on professional engineering until you have a customer who has a concrete use case for purchase.
Sell the Vision: If you can’t get someone to sign a Letter of Intent (LOI) or put down a deposit based on a render, you aren't "pre-product"—you’re just unable to sell. If the vision doesn’t move the needle, a finished product won't either.
The Grin-Fuck: Beware the "this is cool" feedback. "Cool" doesn’t pay for an injection mold. Only a check does. If they won't sign an LOI or open their wallet, that smile means absolutely nothing. It’s just noise that will lead you to build a product for a market that doesn't exist.
3. The Inverted Triangle of Cost (Fail Cheaply)
In hardware, every decision you make becomes exponentially more expensive over time. These numbers are just demonstrations—actual costs vary wildly by region and complexity—but the point is the slope of the curve:
CAD Phase: Fix a mistake for $0.
3D Printing Phase: Fix it for $500.
Tooling Phase: Fix it for $50,000.
Mass Production: Fix it by filing for Bankruptcy.
The Cardboard Rule
Before you touch CAD, build it with paper. We have a guide on our site, "Simple vs. Beautiful: How to Cardboard Prototype," about this philosophy. The goal is to build something that looks good enough to convey the "Beautiful" and functions well enough to prove the "Amazing."
If you think paper is "too simple," look at @aidakko_sisyou on Instagram or The S on YouTube. They prove that if you can’t validate mechanical logic with paper, a $100k mold won’t save you. Find your mistakes when they are virtually free to fix.
4. The Manufacturing Trap: Avoid "Yes-Men"
Founders treat factories like vending machines. They want a partner who says "yes" to every design tweak.
The Epistemology of Failure: Know Your "Knowns"
To survive manufacturing, you have to understand the three states of risk:
Known Knowns: Things you are aware you know.
Known Unknowns: Things you know you don’t know.
Unknown Unknowns: The silent killers. (e.g., chemical reactions between glue and plastic you didn't see coming).
Hunger vs. Honesty
Most manufacturers aren't nefarious; they are just hungry for work. If they need the contract, they will nod along to an impossible design. Your job is to know if they actually Know Known what they are talking about. If your partner isn't pointing out your Unknown Unknowns, they aren't helping you—they are just watching you walk off a cliff so they can bill you for the fall.
5. The Verdict: The 2x/4x Rule and Budget Honesty
If you want to survive, apply the 2x/4x Rule to your pitch deck: Multiply your timeline by 2 and your budget by 4.
Don't Starve the Snake
Founders try to "starve" their way to a product, squeezing factory margins until it's impossible for them to care about quality. Starving a snake doesn’t make it less aggressive; it makes it desperate, or it dies. If you underpay your partners, you aren't saving money; you’re increasing the risk of a catastrophic failure. Expecting work to be done "right and fast" without paying for that expertise is a delusion.
Final Word: Building Your Council
Hardware is a game of alliances. You cannot do this as a solo nomad.
Find a Good CXO: You need a technical leader (CTO or COO) who is on your side—someone who has done this before and can smell a bad manufacturing deal from a mile away.
Fiduciary Consultants: Find advisors who have a fiduciary duty to you, not the factory. Get as close to them as you can. You need someone paid to tell you the truth, especially when it’s ugly.
The "Team of Rivals" Board: For a masterclass on how to structure your leadership and board, read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln." Lincoln succeeded by surrounding himself with his strongest critics and smartest competitors—people who weren't afraid to challenge him. In hardware, a board of "Yes-Men" is a death warrant. You want a board that pushes back on your optimism with industrial reality.
Don't Burn the Bridge You're Still Crossing: The hardware world is smaller than you think. If you screw over too many vendors or engineers while building the "v1," you won’t have anyone left to actually produce the product when you finally get to the finish line.
Respect the "brutal reality" of the factory floor, feed your partners fairly, and you might actually be part of the 10% that makes it to the shelf.
Check out this article on Medium: https://medium.com/p/9b01854bac15