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As a HW designer I’d like to contest the title; hardware is hard. Mistakes always happen on any project, but with hardware they’re very expensive to find and fi

As a HW designer I’d like to contest the title; hardware is hard. Mistakes always happen on any project, but with hardware they’re very expensive to find and fix. Test equipment like oscilloscopes and bus analyzers are in the $100k range, furthermore building your hardware will cost $100k++. Hardware is hard. Software tools are generally free and fixes only cost engineer’s salaries. Not that this keeps me from thinking HW ideas, and SW is great too.

wyc 9y ago
Great points. Hardware is definitely hard. There are more variables, abstractions, and processes to worry about. In software, you can write a function that doubles big numbers perfectly until it hits limits of CPU and memory in about one line of code. If you try implementing the same function in an analog circuit, you'll encounter compounding noise depending on heat, ambient EMF, adjacent components, etc. Upon identification of a critical bug in your SaaS product, one `git push HEAD` is all it takes to get the fix to your millions of users. Hardware is not anywhere near as forgiving--your batch is usually lost. These characteristics require a different approach for developing hardware-leaning products. Everything needs to be far higher quality before release, because small hardware mistakes can have several order of magnitudes higher of costs than software bugs. That's why it's harder: you have to land a rocket on a planet with fewer chances to correct your course.
replicatorblog 9y ago
Hey there, I'm the writer and I'm definitely guilty of exaggeration on the title. My goal was to push back against this popular narrative that it's something intrinsic about hardware that kills these startups, not strategic errors or poor execution. Hardware is less forgiving, but I'm not sure it's meaningfully harder to build a new gadget than take on Facebook or Google in social or search. My first job was at an HW startup and I launched a dozen hardware products. It's tough. A screw-up at a single soldering station in Shenzen can screw-up a deal years in the making with Walmart. Overordering materials means you have to lay off friends. But saying "Hardware is Hard" is an oversimplification. When we say that to explain the failure of HW startups, we miss a lot of important nuances. Hardware is hard, but that's not the primary reason most HW startups fail. Almost all of the high-profile failures we see in hardware are companies that are trying to be the "Apple of X." In this post, there are two hardware startups, valued at nine-figures, that are essentially bootstrapped. Hardware was hard for them too, but they managed to win with very little in the way of resources.
- syncsynchalt 9y ago
  A quick note to the author: The article names the company as "Dopplr" but it should be "Doppler". The former seems to be a defunct social networking service.
  - replicatorblog 9y ago
    Thanks! Just fixed!
- jackyinger 9y ago
  A bit of hyperbole in the title is ok; you make some great points in your article. I’d like to see a welcoming environment for HW startups so I appreciate your work to clear up the misconception that HW is a recipe for failure. Also, the idea of taking the B2B route and avoiding consumers is great; consumers have high expectations and are a very well served market.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nicholas73 9y ago
I'd also add that debugging is much harder in hardware. You don't get an error message or have the opportunity to run lots of tests. So you better have a strong handle on the fundamentals.
dfox 9y ago
Anything that has any interaction with physical world is hard in comparison with SaaS-only business, hardware is not special in this. And in my opinion hardware is significantly easier than various shared economy or service startups, because in hardware your problems are still mostly about engineering and can be analyzed, measured and affected in meaningful ways.
gumby 9y ago
Having worked in all three, in terms of managing the technical risk / business risk, SW difficulty << HW difficulty << Life Sciences difficulty But all of these are hard -- it only looks easy in the books.

wyc 9y ago

Great points. Hardware is definitely hard. There are more variables, abstractions, and processes to worry about. In software, you can write a function that doubles big numbers perfectly until it hits limits of CPU and memory in about one line of code. If you try implementing the same function in an analog circuit, you'll encounter compounding noise depending on heat, ambient EMF, adjacent components, etc. Upon identification of a critical bug in your SaaS product, one `git push HEAD` is all it takes to get the fix to your millions of users. Hardware is not anywhere near as forgiving--your batch is usually lost. These characteristics require a different approach for developing hardware-leaning products. Everything needs to be far higher quality before release, because small hardware mistakes can have several order of magnitudes higher of costs than software bugs. That's why it's harder: you have to land a rocket on a planet with fewer chances to correct your course.

replicatorblog 9y ago

Hey there, I'm the writer and I'm definitely guilty of exaggeration on the title. My goal was to push back against this popular narrative that it's something intrinsic about hardware that kills these startups, not strategic errors or poor execution. Hardware is less forgiving, but I'm not sure it's meaningfully harder to build a new gadget than take on Facebook or Google in social or search. My first job was at an HW startup and I launched a dozen hardware products. It's tough. A screw-up at a single soldering station in Shenzen can screw-up a deal years in the making with Walmart. Overordering materials means you have to lay off friends. But saying "Hardware is Hard" is an oversimplification. When we say that to explain the failure of HW startups, we miss a lot of important nuances. Hardware is hard, but that's not the primary reason most HW startups fail. Almost all of the high-profile failures we see in hardware are companies that are trying to be the "Apple of X." In this post, there are two hardware startups, valued at nine-figures, that are essentially bootstrapped. Hardware was hard for them too, but they managed to win with very little in the way of resources.

syncsynchalt 9y ago
A quick note to the author: The article names the company as "Dopplr" but it should be "Doppler". The former seems to be a defunct social networking service.
- replicatorblog 9y ago
  Thanks! Just fixed!
jackyinger 9y ago
A bit of hyperbole in the title is ok; you make some great points in your article. I’d like to see a welcoming environment for HW startups so I appreciate your work to clear up the misconception that HW is a recipe for failure. Also, the idea of taking the B2B route and avoiding consumers is great; consumers have high expectations and are a very well served market.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nicholas73 9y ago

I'd also add that debugging is much harder in hardware. You don't get an error message or have the opportunity to run lots of tests. So you better have a strong handle on the fundamentals.

dfox 9y ago

Anything that has any interaction with physical world is hard in comparison with SaaS-only business, hardware is not special in this. And in my opinion hardware is significantly easier than various shared economy or service startups, because in hardware your problems are still mostly about engineering and can be analyzed, measured and affected in meaningful ways.

gumby 9y ago

Having worked in all three, in terms of managing the technical risk / business risk, SW difficulty << HW difficulty << Life Sciences difficulty But all of these are hard -- it only looks easy in the books.