I've worked at a couple companies that build hardware. In my experience you need at least 1 mechanical engineer on the company payroll. I don't think you need t

I've worked at a couple companies that build hardware. In my experience you need at least 1 mechanical engineer on the company payroll. I don't think you need to own the tools or the factory, but building hardware is as difficult if not more so than software. No one would fund a software startup where they didn't have a single FT software engineer, yet for some reason people think that "it's just plastic" so you can contract it all out. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a lot of nuance to getting an injection molded design right.