Hardware is hard — but worth it…?
In this piece, I want to reflect on the world of impact startups building tangible, real-world, hard systems. I attempt this through the lens of part-time founder, part-time employee. The challenges, the opportunities, the tears and the smiles, the ups and the downs.
Generally, early stage businesses must get to grips with a given risk profile. There’s an understanding that upfront effort will not always yield immediate results. In the majority of cases even with hard work, dedication, financial backing and early revenue, young businesses never quite make it to stable, long-term profitability. Introduce the complexities and overheads of hardware development and the odds of making it are even slimmer. Yet there are an increasing number of startups who despite the uphill grind, still want to work on real world problems — understanding that this is where true impact lies. There’s only so many more software solutions our over-leveraged developed economies can take after all. Gut feel tells us that if we want to dig deeper and get to the root of major issues, we might actually need to pick up a shovel (replace with your real-world tool of choice).
The farming terminology is no accident. I have first-hand experiences of ‘more than bargained for’ summer work on a family organic vegetable farm. The work was character building — a polite way of saying sweaty, monotonous, physically demanding. Years later, I’ve come to celebrate the ethics developed during those roasting summers. It helped me understand that practical solutions have polarised quality— planning stages are followed by execution — with a lot riding on the how. One without the other won’t yield the desired effects, balancing them with skill and expertise does! Therein lies the promise of positive impact some of the hardware solutions can offer.
Following my gut and switching learning pathways after leaving school, I moved towards engineering, where I could develop skills across design and implementation. This is how I ended up studying and working in electronics for the best part of a decade now. I learnt that computers are actually just a bunch of electrons racing around thousands of switches making up integrated circuits. Without hardware, our software can’t run — the polarity prevails!
Transitioning from large companies to smaller businesses, I now develop electronic systems that leave our environment in a better shape than we found it — at least these are my intentions. When my previous corporate work started turning too abstract and commercial, I had to re-align my priorities. I felt startups could offer the freedom to develop solutions through iterative prototyping, putting theory into practice fast— experimenting in the real world.
I’m privileged to be working with talented teams who build amazing hardware in some form or another — designers, engineers, makers. Collectively, we’re making appropriate technology solutions a reality — connecting, measuring and automating real-world physical processes in our built and natural world. At The Tyre Collective for example, we work on collecting tyre wear directly at source on vehicles, a material we have come to understand is a major source of global microplastics pollution. We use electrostatics to effectively hoover up particulates — improving air and water quality locally and in the wider environment. The company is now on its 4th iteration of the tyre wear particulate and data collection platform — TC04.
At listt.io, my own fledgling venture, I develop appropriate tech solutions for nature friendly farming applications with some enthusiastic engineers — more on that below. Both roles give me a sense of purpose, but it’s not all clear sailing…
Let’s get down to basics. Apologies for stating the obvious economics — hardware costs money. Solutions can be simulated to a certain extent, but eventually a prototype needs to be built — put to test in the real world. Entrepreneurial engineers in this space must be willing to accept a long list of inconveniences — components not showing up, systems not working as documented, plain old human operator errors, thing simply breaking when meeting the real world. Teams need somewhere to tinker, they need transport to get to where they want to test whatever it is they’re experimenting with. They also need to hire a team of people who have a wider range of real world skills beyond keyboard wizardry — all of this requires financial investment.
A good point to return to our earlier point on risk profile. Certain risk appetites will only align with only certain types of activities — software as a service, AI generated lead generation, etc., etc. — i.e. far from the type of hardware-focused, slow-building, long-term impact ventures I’d like to see more of.
Hardware startups need to foster a new community of investors— who can see the long-term, bigger picture and won’t be put off by the long and winding road leading towards the vision. That sounds great on the surface of course, but everyone expects a return eventually — this is totally fair and appropriate.
Before we get too disheartened, varied risk appetites do exist. Let’s think of a traditional farming family who will inherently take the long view — planting a fruit tree is often a 10–20 year return. Building major infrastructure takes decades. Both lead to benefits beyond individual returns — perhaps a wider societal benefit or intergenerational impact?
Could hardware startups tap into this investor mindset — one comfortable with blending the investment benefits of classic technology startups, with more long-term, values-based, perhaps even philanthropic funding angle that we start to see in landscape level regeneration investment for example?
Here it’s important to exercise a healthy dose of self-reflection — as engineers and technologists. I don’t want to generalise, but there’s a collective tendency for superficial user research. We delve into technical details too soon, before we’ve properly researched and formulated a problem statement. Having awareness of this and taking steps to remedy it can be the difference between yet another impressive technical demo and attractive investment case. But what are those steps exactly, I hear you say?
It’s becoming apparent to me that success must come from a team of people with complementary skills — as opposed to individuals. It’s undeniable that for hardware-based technology startups, technical leadership is a core competence. Finding an effective way through hardware product development from fragile prototypes held together by sticky tape to robust, functional, reliable, appropriate products and systems. Clearly though, technical skills alone are not enough to build a business.
Having benefitted from generous business coaching and mentoring recently, I have a new found appreciation for the process and discipline required for business development and sales. Hardware startups require exceptionally skilled, motivated and patient outward facing teams. Skill in communication and management — balancing internal conversations with R&D and external, with constantly evolving stakeholder profiles. The motivation is needed to go out and have often abstract conversations about a shared vision for the future. Patience, for the long, often lonely hours, engineer-coaxing and inevitable uncertainties that come with selling early versions of hardware systems.
///finding and investors
But is it all doom and gloom? The answer is, most certainly not! There’s a steadily growing cohort of startup founders who choose to work on hardware-based solutions to wicked, complex, real-world issues. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from the knowledge of having even a small, but measurable impact on the world around us. I now know that there are individuals and organisations out there who value this type of work and can assist with the right business models and strategy.
As I write this, I’m very aware of the fragile financial health of listt.io despite almost 2 years of activity. But for all of the reasons above, commercial progress is slow. Not quite reaching revenue and not quite ready for classic venture capital investment, we are facing what is often called the valley of death — where available resources have been exhausted and the customer value proposition not quite defined yet. Clearly, these are amplified and extended in the world of hardware — and even more so in agriculture.
That said a we have many reasons to celebrate — real machines taking shape, increasingly commercial conversations with farmers and preparing for farming trials and expanding our team — without whom none of this would be possible.
So as we turn the corner into the darker months, we will be rallying our energies and focusing our efforts to demonstrate — yes, hardware is hard, but it is most definitely worth it!
Originally published at https://github.com.
