

Ask HN: Are you building a hardware startup? - mmanulis

I&#x27;m working on some ideas for hardware products and I&#x27;m curious what people have learned in their attempts to build hardware products.<p>To this end, I have two questions:<p>* What are the biggest challenges you&#x27;re facing outside of finding a manufacturer?
* What did you need to learn on the technology end that helped you the most?
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tlb
Iteration is slow and expensive. With web software you can iterate (change -
release - get user feedback) daily. Hardware takes weeks or months to iterate.

You always need more iterations than you think to get to a great product.

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mmanulis
Good point about iteration. Outside of using a 3D printer have you found any
tools that increase iteration speed, even if that increases cost?

I understand you can have a PCB fab house build a 4-layer board and have it to
you in a couple of days for a large price, but I'm wondering if there are
other alternatives.

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tlb
GetScale and Upverter are both working to make the PCB iteration process
faster and cheaper.

Sourcing components turned out to be a big source of delay for us at Anybots.
It was hard to communicate with vendors, and some parts had 8-week lead times.

It's important to have a process for iteration. For example, trying a new
component requires:

    
    
      - calling vendors
      - getting samples
      - doing mechanical integration
      - doing software integration
      - testing
    

Each of these steps required our engineers to focus on the issue for a while.
Without someone managing the timeline, projects could easily stall.

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mmanulis
Those are really great resources, thank you for sharing them.

One more question, did you build a multi-disciplinary team or did you teach
yourself mechanical, electrical and software engineer?

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tlb
My background is mostly software, but I taught myself enough electronics and
mechanical engineering to be dangerous.

