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Edit: I'm awful at this reading thing. Please see the replies to this comment for a correct definition of "hard tech". My original comment follows. . I think

Edit: I'm awful at this reading thing. Please see the replies to this comment for a correct definition of "hard tech". My original comment follows. . I think "hard tech" in this instance means "technology in the form of hardware" or "technology that is physically manifest" and not "technology that is difficult."

nhaliday 10y ago
I think the latter is the intended meaning actually. AI/machine learning seem to be thrown into the "hard tech" bucket in VC jargon.
tedmiston 10y ago
There's a definition from Sam in the footnote: > [1] I use 'hard tech' to mean a startup is whether there is doubt that the technology can be built at all. Edit: I'm glad he defined it for this post. In general though, there's definitely ambiguity around the term.
throwaway729 10y ago
No. From the footnote: " I use ‘hard tech’ to mean a startup where there is doubt that the technology can be built at all."
tjalex 10y ago
From the footnote in the original post: [1] I use ‘hard tech’ to mean a startup where there is doubt that the technology can be built at all.
- roymurdock 10y ago
  This conflicts with the way he uses the term "hard tech" to differentiate from software startups, as if the two are mutually exclusive: It’s relatively easy for a software startup to take short cycle times and low-costs to an extreme, but hard tech founders are often surprised by how effectively they can do this, too. What I think he is really referring to as "hard tech" is the move from the consumer electronics and office automation markets to the grittier, less-visible industrial verticals: Automotive, industrial, energy & utilities, aerospace & defense, etc. Verticals which have generally been dominated by a GE/Siemens/Boeing/ABB/Schneider etc. due to the high R&D costs needed to realize a certified, generally safety-critical solution in a highly bureaucratic environment. Dropbox is down for a few hours? We'll have a few pissed customers. The ADAS system in a customer's car failed momentarily? They'll be lucky to survive and massive lawsuits/loss of business could ensue. As an aside he should really define key terms up front to avoid this sort of confusion and to allow us to focus on his main point: YC is trying to move into and disrupt this lucrative but hard-to-broach space.
  - throwaway729 10y ago
    Exactly. I think that itself actually an interesting "hard tech" problem: how do you move fast, iterate, and be first-to-market without killing anyone?
    - mountaineer22 10y ago
      I don't think you do. You want to be number 2, and swoop in when the time is right.
    - haimez 10y ago
      You do not move fast and iterate if you care at all about the cost of failures. Period.
      - throwaway729 10y ago
        I did say it's a hard tech problem... :) (But seriously, at least in theory, there are sort of obvious things you can do to isolate anything failure-critical behind statically or dynamically checked contracts, which then allows rapid iteration outside of the small set of things that are truly failure-critical. But you need those contracts trustworthy enough that you can iterate without worry, flexible enough that you can iterate on economically important sub-components, and applicable to a system or set of systems where this iteration gives you the trump card in a billion dollar(s) industry. As I said, it's "hard tech" -- which almost by definition means some people will think it's impossible.)
hoodoof 10y ago
The first line of the post explicitly makes a distinction between "software" and "hard tech". I really challenge the accepted wisdom of "build something tiny and iterate" as being the only way to build software.
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  Games can be really complex 'hard-tech', but compare Elite Dangerous's small+ iterative to Star Citizen's big+all-at-once approaches. Even with things like nuclear energy and particle colliders I'd guess those who succeeded probably started small and iterated.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Of course there are many approaches to build software [1]. I also read that comment as more of a philosophy for product development than software development. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process#Approaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process#A...

nhaliday 10y ago

I think the latter is the intended meaning actually. AI/machine learning seem to be thrown into the "hard tech" bucket in VC jargon.

tedmiston 10y ago

There's a definition from Sam in the footnote: > [1] I use 'hard tech' to mean a startup is whether there is doubt that the technology can be built at all. Edit: I'm glad he defined it for this post. In general though, there's definitely ambiguity around the term.

throwaway729 10y ago

No. From the footnote: " I use ‘hard tech’ to mean a startup where there is doubt that the technology can be built at all."

tjalex 10y ago

From the footnote in the original post: [1] I use ‘hard tech’ to mean a startup where there is doubt that the technology can be built at all.

roymurdock 10y ago
This conflicts with the way he uses the term "hard tech" to differentiate from software startups, as if the two are mutually exclusive: It’s relatively easy for a software startup to take short cycle times and low-costs to an extreme, but hard tech founders are often surprised by how effectively they can do this, too. What I think he is really referring to as "hard tech" is the move from the consumer electronics and office automation markets to the grittier, less-visible industrial verticals: Automotive, industrial, energy & utilities, aerospace & defense, etc. Verticals which have generally been dominated by a GE/Siemens/Boeing/ABB/Schneider etc. due to the high R&D costs needed to realize a certified, generally safety-critical solution in a highly bureaucratic environment. Dropbox is down for a few hours? We'll have a few pissed customers. The ADAS system in a customer's car failed momentarily? They'll be lucky to survive and massive lawsuits/loss of business could ensue. As an aside he should really define key terms up front to avoid this sort of confusion and to allow us to focus on his main point: YC is trying to move into and disrupt this lucrative but hard-to-broach space.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  Exactly. I think that itself actually an interesting "hard tech" problem: how do you move fast, iterate, and be first-to-market without killing anyone?
  - mountaineer22 10y ago
    I don't think you do. You want to be number 2, and swoop in when the time is right.
  - haimez 10y ago
    You do not move fast and iterate if you care at all about the cost of failures. Period.
    - throwaway729 10y ago
      I did say it's a hard tech problem... :) (But seriously, at least in theory, there are sort of obvious things you can do to isolate anything failure-critical behind statically or dynamically checked contracts, which then allows rapid iteration outside of the small set of things that are truly failure-critical. But you need those contracts trustworthy enough that you can iterate without worry, flexible enough that you can iterate on economically important sub-components, and applicable to a system or set of systems where this iteration gives you the trump card in a billion dollar(s) industry. As I said, it's "hard tech" -- which almost by definition means some people will think it's impossible.)

hoodoof 10y ago

The first line of the post explicitly makes a distinction between "software" and "hard tech". I really challenge the accepted wisdom of "build something tiny and iterate" as being the only way to build software.

paulryanrogers 10y ago
Games can be really complex 'hard-tech', but compare Elite Dangerous's small+ iterative to Star Citizen's big+all-at-once approaches. Even with things like nuclear energy and particle colliders I'd guess those who succeeded probably started small and iterated.
tedmiston 10y ago
Of course there are many approaches to build software [1]. I also read that comment as more of a philosophy for product development than software development. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process#Approaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process#A...