This is what technical debt looks like on the hardware side, missed deadlines and quality issues. Kudos to Cameron and the Lockitron folks for sharing their ex

This is what technical debt looks like on the hardware side, missed deadlines and quality issues. Kudos to Cameron and the Lockitron folks for sharing their experience. I think bravo22 already covered some of the choices they made up front that got them in to trouble. It appears they didn't have the knowledge or experience to put a good plan together when they suddenly had to scale from 1000 or so units to multiple thousands. Here are a few (more) reasons: 1. Unaware of the environment. bravo22 already touched on the existing deadbolt standard and current products on the shelf. Whether they knew about these or not, it sounds like they chose to go in to production with their prototype (buggy) design instead of sourcing or modifying an existing solution. 2. Lack of specific knowledge. They expressed difficulty meshing the electronic and mechanical parts of their system. There are plenty of engineers that have electro-mechanical design experience that they could have leaned on, either hired on to do the redesign or to guide them in the right direction for things like gear-train torque calcs, material selection and fabrication methods (think redesigning a part for injection molding), power consumption calcs, part count reduction... Much of this may only be a Google search away, but if they don't have enough knowledge to know how to apply it correctly then that leaves them at the mercy of either fate or their suppliers. 3. Documentation. "While there is some truth to this, making hardware at scale is still incredibly difficult — if not for the actual physical manufacturing itself but for the compounding complexity of suppliers, tooling and testing." You need good documentation. Part drawings with realistic tolerances that produce parts that make functional assemblies. Work instructions that spell out things like order of operations, screw torque specifications, inline QC checks, etc. The documentation is often your contract with the supplier and if it's poor or not well thought out then the product quality suffers. These guys are going through an awesome trial by fire. They have a well funded, very public, product that they are trying to turn out and they should be commended for sticking with it for that last two years, and for being willing to talk about their challenges. Just like any other start-up, succeed or fail, they're going to be a better position when they do it again.