“Hardware is hard!”
Carbon Robotics LaserWeeder
Paul Mikesell is a serial entrepreneur. After having built a startup that was acquired for $2.2B he worked on AI at Uber and Oculus. However, it was a chance encounter with a farmer that lead him to quit his day job and go all-in with a new deep tech farming startup, Carbon Robotics.
If you are either running or thinking of launching a hardware startup then here are five essential points you need to understand:
Hardware is hard, but because there have been so many software startups, there is now a deficit in hardware, which represents a great opportunity for innovators and investors. Also, hardware has never been easier!
You don’t need to have ‘lived’ the problem, but if you haven’t, you absolutely must invest sufficient time to fully validate your idea. You need to gain a crystal clear view of the problem and why current solutions are inadequate. Most startups are nowhere close on this. Avoid bias!
With a well-validated idea, a relatively modest initial funding round can be sufficient. BUT, you need a clear plan for what exactly you need build and exactly what this will deliver in terms of proving both technical capability AND proving your market hypothesis. Hardware dev is costly, you likely only have one shot at this.
Your ‘product’ is a combination of different technological components that together form a system designed to solve a problem. Every component represents R&D effort, cost, and ultimately, risk. A properly validated problem-solution hypothesis will enable you to make better decisions about what needs to be developed and retained, as well as what could be dropped if it proves more difficult than expected. This was almost a fatal issue for Carbon Robotics!
The journey sounds straightforward in hindsight. Looking back, it’s easy to identify the one thing that made the difference. However, at that time, there were 20 things happening, and most didn’t work out. It was impossible to foresee which ‘one thing’ would be ‘the thing’.
At DeepTech Commercialisation we have helped hardware startups work through these exact challenges on various projects. Please reach out to us if you feel you could do with some guidance in your hardware or deep tech startup.
Check out https://carbonrobotics.com
Listen to the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/g9hTkaEw
I claim no credit for the original interview, that all goes to The Product Market Fit Show. Im just an interested listener. Check out https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-product-market-fit-show
