Hardware is different.

Throughout my time navigating the lay of the land of startups for the past >10 years (and still doing so!), almost all the advice, books, blogs, and courses that relate to startups are really primarily built for or derived from software startups. It’s not surprising, given that they have been the dominant force in the startup ecosystem for the past few decades.

But, in my time working at both Accion Systems and at CFS, as well as investing and advising many other startups in the tough tech space at The Engine, there are clear differences about the nature of building physical things, and the markets that they engage with, that makes the “playbook” or normal startup gospel often times ill-fitting, needing some caveats, or sometimes just downright not applicable - potentially even leading to failure.

One of my favorite people (who is also quite thoughtful on the topic), Michael Kearney and I put our lessons learned to date into a framework and a curriculum we use to support founders that is purpose built for people trying to build tough tech startups.

We wrote about it a bit here. Perhaps I’ll use this writing space to dive further into more of this sometime. It’s an evolving body of work, so feedback is always welcome.