If you're going to build a business around selling a hardware keyboard, finding a middle-man account manager for your primary manufacturer is just plain lazy.

If you're going to build a business around selling a hardware keyboard, finding a middle-man account manager for your primary manufacturer is just plain lazy. The real takeaway is that these founders seemed happy to simply have an account manager "who had influence within the company", "spoke english"... A good scammer gives you what you want. If you are building hardware, you should not want to be able to outsource such an important aspect of your business. Take for example "we sent 20 defective units back so they could study and improve xyz". It turned out they were in an unopened box. I don't get how they didn't follow up to work on why they were defective, what is being done, and the lessons learnt. Just saying "nobody speaks chinese" is just a plain lazy out. The founders seem genuinely nice and passionate, but they have to get their heads out of their aes. They really should NOT be looking for a middle person because there is so much to learn by directly working with relevant people in a factory. It's a really bad sign for people who buy these keyboards to know that the actual manufacturing part- where quality control is done etc, is not a priority.