Regulations differ across different industries and most have an industry association that you can become a part of to do research. Manufacturing is very old-hat

Regulations differ across different industries and most have an industry association that you can become a part of to do research. Manufacturing is very old-hat in North America. Truly rapid prototyping is bringing costs down, like a great dev framework cuts dev time down. There are many possible paths to succeeding in manufacturing, one size does not fit all. It largely depends on A) what you're trying to build; and B) who you're going to sell it to. For example, if you're going to sell to consumers you're most likely going to have to come up with capital to cover your manufacturing costs before you have a single unit sold. If you're selling to businesses you might be able to get a Letter of Intent or a Letter of Credit and then get a bridge loan to cover the costs. If I were building a manufacturing company, this is probably the route I would take. Like software though, you need the right people. Good mechanical engineers are as rare as good software engineers and the programs they use in their craft are far more expensive (SolidWorks, etc.). You'll also probably need an Electrical Engineer. It's kind of like the difference between front-end/back-end devs.