Obviously not your own PCB fab. In some of our prototyping, we were "manufacturing" as in placing our own components on the boards we ordered, and cooking them

Obviously not your own PCB fab. In some of our prototyping, we were "manufacturing" as in placing our own components on the boards we ordered, and cooking them in a toaster oven converted for PCBs assembly. We now get our next gen stuff manufactured by a local "manufacturer" who takes our PCBs (which come from China), and puts our components on them. We supply all the "non-passives", simply to make sure the stock is available. They've got all the passives for us. This is our first intro to building hardware, we're a bunch of software engineers, but I've commented on how the "hardware is hard" we feel is a misnomer. It's another point of failure, but as long as you're planning ahead, it seems manageable. My tune may change when we get into production on the scale of many thousands. But we're only at 250 units per batch atm.