This is an excellent comment when it comes to building up a hw/sw company. I went through the same steps with my startup. Knowing most of the details from tooli

This is an excellent comment when it comes to building up a hw/sw company. I went through the same steps with my startup. Knowing most of the details from tooling/cost/inventory/CM I still keep coming back and thinking what other ways are there to build a hw/sw product company without these major investments upfront. The idea is to verify the a product-market fit for a solution before you sink in all the expenses, basically on a smaller scale. So far I have not found a fundamentally different approach other than small cost reductions like not using a polished steel tool etc.