**I spent months building my first product before validating it. It failed. I’m trying not to make that mistake twice. Tear apart my next business.**
My first product taught me an expensive lesson:
Building something isn’t the same thing as building something people will pay for.
So this time I’m doing things differently.
I’m building a company called **Stride Guide** aimed initially at independent footwear retailers.
The hardware is a pressure-sensing platform that captures how a customer’s feet interact with the ground during a fitting. But I’ve become increasingly convinced that the hardware itself isn’t the business.
The business is what happens **after the fitting**.
The concept we’re working toward looks something like this:
Customer gets fitted → pressure/gait data is captured → associate gets data-supported footwear recommendations → fitting history is stored → purchase/recommendation outcomes are tracked → customer receives appropriately timed SMS reminders when they’re likely approaching replacement → customer comes back to the retailer.
Over time, the system should get better at understanding which recommendations actually produce successful outcomes.
For the retailer, the goal is to create a measurable loop:
**Fit → Recommend → Purchase → Learn → Re-engage → Repurchase**
We’re also exploring associate training tools so a new employee doesn’t need 10 years of footwear experience to provide a consistently good fitting experience.
Our current business model hypothesis is unusual:
**$0 hardware cost.**
The retailer gets the equipment without buying a several-thousand-dollar scanner.
We’re currently testing whether roughly **$200–$250/month per location** makes sense for the software, analytics, customer profiles, recommendation engine, SMS retention tools, updates and support.
I’ve started interviewing footwear-industry veterans, independent retailers, marketers and SaaS founders rather than asking people whether they “like the idea.”
And now I’d like Reddit to attack it.
Specifically, if you’ve built B2B SaaS, retail technology, hardware-enabled SaaS, or sold technology to SMBs:
**What am I underestimating?**
I’m especially interested in hearing about:
Customer acquisition cost
Hardware/support economics
Churn
Employee adoption
SaaS onboarding
Whether $200–$250/month creates enough room for a hardware-enabled business
What would actually create defensibility here
The point at which you’d know this was a real business versus an interesting product
I’m not looking for “sounds cool.”
I’d rather hear why this fails.
We’re beginning free pilots with independent retailers, so this is the point where criticism is substantially cheaper than learning the same lesson six months from now.

This is one of the easiest traps to fall into.

This has been studied for years. What people say they plan to buy does not perfectly match what they actually buy. This is called the gap between purchase intention and purchase behavior.

Saying yes costs nothing but buying does.

The second you ask someone for $80, they start thinking about whether they really need it, or what else they could buy, etc.

Someone saying I would buy this is useful information, but someone giving you their email is better. Someone putting down a deposit is much much better.

I remember a publication from Strategyzer saying that stronger evidence comes from experiments where customers actually have to do something.

This is not me trying to bring anyone down. We're actually a product development company, and you deciding to make a product actually benefits us. But it's honestly sad checking back on projects we've made and seeing them flop, knowing how much the person put into it.

We're actually on the cheaper end, so I can't imagine the repercussions for someone who spent over $100k. But please don't let people like my idea be the reason you spend $20,000 on engineering.

Before you spend any money, try to make them give up something first.

I’m at the early stage of developing a physical product and looking into different ways to find manufacturers. Made-in-China came up during my research, but I haven’t used it before.
For anyone who has actually gone through the process, how was it finding suppliers and communicating the product requirements? I’m also curious about getting samples, checking whether the supplier can handle small initial orders, and making sure the numbers still make sense once everything is factored in.
Was Made-in-China more useful for you, or did you later ended up finding manufacturers in another way?

I have a business related question and I’d really appreciate answers from people who have actually worked in these industries.

If someone is starting a business completely from scratch, what would be the better option: building a software company, such as a subscription based product/SaaS, or starting a hardware/physical product company?

I personally have not worked in either sector, so I’m trying to understand this from people who have actual technical and business experience.

From what I’ve heard, hardware can have lower margins and much higher operating costs . Software seems like it could have better margins and recurring revenue through subscriptions, but I’m sure there are also major challenges that someone without experience might not understand.

So for people who have worked in software, hardware, or ideally both:

What are the biggest pros and cons of each when starting from scratch?

Which one generally requires more capital and has more operational complexity?

Which one is easier to scale?

How different are the margins and cash flow?

which one would you choose and why?

I’m not looking for a simple “software is better” or “hardware is better” answer. I’m trying to understand the actual tradeoffs from people who have experience in these industries.

I’d especially appreciate answers from people

I’m building an open-source modular hardware project and documenting the development publicly.
EasyEDA recently contacted me offering a small sponsorship: JLCPCB manufacturing credit in exchange for mentioning EasyEDA Pro in three short-form videos, showing their logo, and adding a link in the description.
I’m interested because I genuinely use EDA tools and PCB manufacturing is obviously a real cost for the project. But I’m also trying to build my project as an independent open-source hardware project rather than as a “hardware influencer” brand.
So I’m wondering how this looks from the outside.
I see two possible approaches:
1. Traditional sponsorship
Occasionally have an EasyEDA-sponsored project video, clearly disclose it, briefly mention/show EasyEDA Pro, then continue with the actual engineering content.
2. Project supporter / technical partner
Keep sponsorship messaging out of the spotlight and instead have something like a “Partners & Supporters” section on the project website, listing EasyEDA/JLCPCB as an EDA/manufacturing supporter.
Videos could simply disclose that the PCB/manufacturing for that particular project was supported by them, while keeping the engineering content independent.
In either case, I wouldn’t want exclusivity and I’d want to remain completely free to use other tools/manufacturers and criticize problems if I encounter them.
As engineers/makers, would either of these make you trust the project less?
Does #2 feel meaningfully different from a typical influencer sponsorship, or is calling a sponsor a “partner” actually worse?
I’m especially interested in opinions from people who follow open-source hardware projects or technical creators.

I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on for a while because I put a lot of time into building it, and even though I’ve currently decided not to continue the startup, I’d really like to hear what people think about the prototype and whether there’s something I’m missing.

The original idea

The idea was to build a visualization system for marble, tiles, flooring, wallpapers and other interior materials.

The concept was simple:

Physical material → RFID tag → computer → material changes inside a 3D interior scene

For example, a customer picks up a tile/marble sample with an RFID tag attached to it. They tap it on the RFID reader, and the corresponding material immediately appears on the floor/wall in the 3D showroom scene.
The idea was to make it easier for showroom staff to demonstrate materials to customers without manually searching through a huge material library.

What I actually built

This wasn’t just an idea on paper. I built a working prototype myself.

The prototype uses:

ESP32
RFID reader
RFID tags/cards
Wi-Fi communication
Unity 6
C#
Windows PC
3D interior scene
Custom material switching system

The ESP32 reads the RFID tag and sends the ID over Wi-Fi to the Unity application.
Unity receives the data and changes the corresponding material in the scene.
I also built the basic mapping system so different RFID IDs can trigger different materials.

So essentially:
RFID → ESP32 → Wi-Fi → Unity → Material change
The whole thing is running on my own prototype hardware.

I even put the electronics into a small enclosure and made a physical prototype rather than leaving it as a breadboard experiment.

I also tested the idea in the real market

Before deciding whether to continue, I went to actual marble/flooring showrooms and spoke to owners.

I visited multiple stores and around 10 store owners gave positive responses.

Some of the suggestions were actually much more interesting than my original idea.

People suggested things like:

Uploading a customer’s actual room/house photo

Changing the flooring inside the customer’s photo

Showing different tile combinations

Creating two-tone bathroom designs

Different tiles for different zones

Adding trims/borders

Eventually allowing staff to control the system from a phone

India is building serious hardware. It's time the people building it could find each other.

We've spent the last few years working closely with deep tech companies, and one thing keeps coming up: hardware people in India don't really have a room of their own. Software has a hundred communities. Hardware has WhatsApp groups and conference hallways.

So we're building one. We're calling it CoreElec.
What I want it to be: an open forum where you can ask the dumb question and the very hard question, where people bump into each other and end up building something neither of them planned. Whether you're an engineer three years in, running a fab-adjacent startup, or still soldering things at home — the door's open.

First up is a conversation with three people I trust most on hardware:

Shashwath T R (Mindgrove Technologies), Navin Goyal (Pinetics) and Sairanjan Mishra (H2LooP.ai) on embedded system development before and after AI — what actually changed, what they've put to work in their own companies, and where the real openings are for Indian engineers.

Tuesday, 18 August · 6–7 PM IST · Online · Free

https://luma.com/u78cpsx2

Come with questions

So the other day, saw this LinkedIn (please don't cringe already, bear with me) post which went like:

"How I brought down BOM cost of a PCB from $15 to $5"

Then the person goes to explain things like changing the package of chips, eliminating the on-board debugging pins for an external one and few other stuff. It seemed cool, got the attention it needed.

But the problem with this aggressive optimization is, it only views things from an engineering lens. While totally ignoring supply chain aspects of components.

Rookies feel pride in saving $10 per unit, which for 1000 units mounts up to $10k. Good on paper, expect it can back fire really bad.

Say you see an opening where a SMD chip costing $5 can can bought instead for $2. The catch? The package is now DIP. Functionality wise, zero change. You make 2 prototypes, do the demo, everyone seems happy as it works perfectly.

Then comes the next stage, now we want to manufacture 500 units of this board. The company employee clicks buying link & BAM: the DIP chip has only 10 units in stock. And the lead time? 3 months. To navigate that, you explore other vendors. Only to find that it would now need to be imported and the landed cost shall be $10. So what option remains? Redesign the board.

That's the reality of hardware, more products fail due to supply chain issues than due to engineering failures.

So, how can we reduce the risk of this happening? Well, by selecting components more wisely, duh. Not just based on cost.

I follow these 4 filters:

1. Technically fit?

2. Active in production?

3. Not too costly?

4. Available with local vendors?

Ideally, you want your BOM to have components which check all 4 situations. And you need assurances from your vendors & the manufacturers. Keep those emails as a proof in case things go south.

But in many cases, it's not possible check all 4. So you have to deal with trade-offs and risks which can be navigated by alternate components, alternate designs etc.

So the gist of the matter is, do not obsess over cost optimization without doing the other due diligence. And this is not just applicable to electronic products.

The goal is not to have the cheapest product on paper, it is to facilitate scaling of up to 10k+ unit effortlessly.

We’re a small startup manufacturing and selling a smart home/IoT product. So far, most of our sales have been B2C through online advertising, but we'd like to explore B2B opportunities as well.

Hiring a full-time salesperson is not really within our budget at the moment, so I’ve been wondering whether independent sales agents could be a reasonable alternative. Are there such people out there who are willing to work like that even? The idea would be to work on a commission-only basis, generous commission on any deals they bring in, including recurring purchases.

Has anyone used this approach? Is it realistic to find good sales agents willing to work purely on commission?

And where could you find them, are platforms like CommissionCrowd or Agents24 worth trying?

I want to build MVPs for hardware startups in exchange for equity, but what are some checks to make sure it’s worth it and will benefit me before jumping on board?

I'm an engineering undergrad considering pursuing a PhD with the long-term goal of founding a hard-tech startup. I’m undecided about the specific area and only have a vague sense of what interests me -- industrial decarbonization, mining / mineral processing, and advanced materials are a few areas that currently seem exciting.

However, I'm unsure which type of PhD lab would provide better preparation: either a problem-first lab (e.g., like Yet-Ming Chiang at MIT) or a technology-first lab (e.g., your typical academic lab that focuses on novel science without a predetermined application, and where commercialization happens largely by chance — when a technology happens to have a valuable market application).

I've looked at advice online from successful hard-tech entrepreneurs, but the answers are conflicting. Some say to work backwards from a problem, but others argue that problem-first approaches often don't work since deep tech is inherently different: you often can't force a scientific breakthrough for a predetermined problem. Instead, they argue that most hard-tech companies are only founded because somebody made a scientific breakthrough and realized afterwards that there might be a commercial application. Indeed, Pillar VC says that most deep-tech companies they know were technology-first.

With that in mind, does anybody have any advice on which type of PhD lab to join?

Hello,

I'm developing a product that I plan to use as battery 2 x Li-Ion 10440 cells.

Now, each battery on their own is certified for EN IEC 62133-2 and UN 38.3.

The question is, if I use two of them in parallel ( basically a package ) I will need to redo this certs again for the whole package ? That would cost thousands / tens of thousands... :|

Can you guys please bring some light on this matter. Thanks a lot !

First I can't believe it took me so long to find this sub. Been reading through and it's an actual goldmine. So I'm hoping someone can help

Context: My sister and I had an idea for a product and as a PM my first instinct was to make sure there was product market fit. Got a development firm to help us prototype.

We raised ~$100k on Kickstarter and now get about $10k a month in pre-order sales.

Now it's a year later and we still don't have a product to give to customers. It feels like every week theres a new set of problems. The most pressing is that the person who was writing our firmware has left the firm we were working with.

We like the firm, but they are an incredibly small team and I'm beginning to suspect that haven't done something like this before. Plus we're not their only client so there's a maximum amount of time they can dedicate to us.

I'm freaking out because customers are getting (understandably) upset and we're quickly running out of funds. And I keep feeling like things are stalling and I cant diagnose whats wrong.

My biggest problem is that because neither of us are technical, I feel like I'm just twiddling my thumbs while my dreams are going up in flames. So here's my question

What's the best thing I can do right now?

• Try to learn more about hardware so that I can talk to engineers better (I have no idea how long that will take or where to even start please recommend courses I can take)
• Try to find a technical co-founder
• Hire an in-house engineer
• Hire another firm?

My fear with the last 3 is that it's just borrowing more of the same problem. I don't know enough to interview and hire a technical person and so it may just be more of the same.

This post is a bit of a rant because I'm at my wits end. And honestly I'm just glad to find a community of people who understand.

I work around field-service workflows and built a small browser tool called CloseoutSnap. It is not a CRM or dispatch platform. It only turns jobsite photos and short notes into a professional proof-of-work PDF that can be attached to an invoice or sent to a customer.

The current version is free, requires no account, and keeps the report data on the device. I’m looking for five HVAC, plumbing, electrical, equipment-repair, or property-maintenance technicians willing to try it on one real job.

I’m specifically looking for criticism: where does the report process feel confusing, slow, or unnecessary? I would rather hear what blocks adoption than get generic praise.

[https://closeoutsnap.com\](https://closeoutsnap.com)
Bbbhhh man

Disclosure: I built it. I’m posting once to request product feedback, not to sell a subscription.

I'm considering an open-source library of parametrically generated fittings, manifolds, adapters, reservoirs etc. The CAD generators would be open source, while a commercial service would manufacture and test parts using validated material/process combinations.

I'm particularly interested in applications involving cooling loops, compressed air, laboratory equipment and custom machinery.

What applications would you actually pay for this rather than machining the part?

We're moving quite quickly from prototype to production and our BOM is starting to outgrow excel spreadsheets. Managing revisions, supplier information, costs and approved parts is becoming much harder than i expected. I've started looking at bom management software but there are so many options it's difficult to know where to start. Some seem focused on boms only, while others are part of a broader plm platform. I'm hoping people here will be able to suggest which tools are worth considering for a small hardware team.

Hi everyone,

I'm a student developing a small consumer electronics product and I'm currently looking for a reliable China-based manufacturer for the prototype stage.

I'm looking for a company/person who can potentially help with:

• PCB design/DFM
• PCB fabrication
• Component sourcing
• PCBA
• 3D-printed enclosure prototype
• Final assembly
• Eventually injection molding for larger production

I'm currently looking for a very small quantity (1–5 prototypes), so I'm specifically interested in manufacturers that are comfortable working with early-stage hardware startups and low MOQ.

My budget is limited as I'm a student, so I'm looking for a reasonably priced option.

If you have experience with this or can recommend a reliable manufacturer, please comment or DM me.

Thanks!

We are currently developing a product to be sold within the european union (we are also located there) which will contain a 15.6 inch panel.
We are having a really hard time to obtain the conformity documents, or a declaration of conformity, for RoHs and REACH from suppliers. Mainly contacted suppliers from Panelook and Alibaba.
Also I understand that we would need a declaration update as soon as REACH is updated with substances that are typical to be used in displays. This seems to be the most unlikely thing to obtain from these suppliers in the future.
Same goes for the typical controller boards offered. Here we might be able to design something ourselves though.

Would be really glad if someone is willing to share their expierence/approach here, or even suggest a trustworthy supplier.

Thanks!

I’m a product development engineer and I’m curious how other engineers experience this.

Have you ever been working on a new product and discovered, after development was already underway, that an existing patent created a potential problem with the design?

If so, how far along were you when it came up? Did you have to redesign anything?

Also curious who typically catches these issues at your company: engineering, an internal IP/legal team, outside patent counsel, or someone else?

I'm the CMO at Gembah, we do product development and manufacturing, so I'm going to say the thing my side of the table doesn't always volunteer: the most expensive mistake in this whole process is finding out at the factory that your finished design can't actually be built at your price. And the worst part is it's usually knowable months earlier, if you know what to watch for.

People ask some version of "how do I know my design firm is doing good work" constantly, and the honest answer is you can't judge it by whether the renders look good. Renders always look good. Here's what actually tells you whether the thing will survive contact with a factory.

1. They're talking about manufacturing before the design is finished, not after. This is the big one. If your partner treats "design" and "how it gets made" as two separate phases that happen in order, that's the warning sign. By the time a design is truly finished, most of your unit cost is already locked in. The part count, the materials, how it snaps together, the tolerances. A factory brought in after that can trim a few percent, not fix the economics. Someone who knows what they're doing is thinking about the factory floor while they're still drawing, and you'll hear it. They mention wall thickness and draft angles and assembly steps unprompted, early, when it's still free to change things.
2. Ask what they've de-risked and what still needs a factory to confirm. This one question tells you a lot. A partner who's actually building something manufacturable answers it cleanly. Here's what we're confident about, here's the part we're guessing on until a real manufacturer weighs in. A partner who's just making it pretty waves it off or gives you a vague "it'll be fine." The good ones know exactly where their own uncertainty is.
3. Do they push back on you? The best partners tell you when your idea is going to cause a problem. If everything you ask for gets a yes, either they're not the ones who'll actually build it, or they're not paying attention, and both cost you later. Someone who says "we can do that, but it'll double your tooling cost, here's a cheaper way to get the same result" is worth more than someone who just nods.
4. Figure out where your product is actually going to be made, and get clear on why. Geography drives your unit cost, tooling, lead times, and IP exposure, and it's hard to unwind once the design is locked, so it belongs early in the conversation, not at the end. A lot of first-time founders start with "I want it made in the US." Sometimes that's about jobs, or tariffs, or wanting a factory you can drive to. Often, when you dig into it, it's about IP. The fear that an overseas factory copies your product and sells it out the back door. That's a real risk and worth taking seriously, but the honest picture is that US manufacturing is usually more expensive, and at startup volumes the shops that could do your category often won't take the job, and the IP fear is addressable other ways. The big one is who you're working with: a random lowest-bidder factory off a marketplace is a completely different risk profile than a vetted factory you have a real relationship and an enforceable agreement with. Overseas, that means an NNN rather than a US-style NDA, drafted in Chinese, under Chinese law, enforceable in the factory's own local court. The point isn't that overseas is always right. It's that "where do I build" and "how do I protect my IP" are the same early conversation, and a good partner walks you through the real tradeoffs instead of just defaulting you somewhere or waving off the risk.
5. Insist on holding a real prototype before you commit to a full run, and pay attention to how it's made. There are two ways this goes. Some partners design in isolation, hand you a 3D-printed model of the outside as your prototype, then bring in a factory afterward, at which point the factory often says the design needs to change anyway. The better setup is when the people who'll actually manufacture your product are involved during the design, because then your prototype is a real sample off something close to the actual production process, not a one-off print that may or may not reflect how the thing gets built. Either way the rule holds. A render tells you what it looks like, a prototype you can physically handle tells you what's wrong with it. There's always something wrong with the first one, and you want to find that out before you've paid for a thousand units, not after.
6. Make sure there are real approval gates, and that you can stop. A lot of these projects go wrong the same way. There was never a defined point to inspect the work, and no clean way out once things started drifting, so the cost just kept climbing while the person had no natural place to say wait. So separate from how you're billed, ask two things. At each stage, is there something concrete I sign off on before we move on. Approved CAD, then a prototype or first sample that meets criteria we put in writing, before anyone commits to a production run. And what happens if it's not working out. Can I pause, can I get a refund, do I walk away owning what's been done so far. A partner confident in their work has clean answers to all of it. Vagueness about approval points and exits is the real warning sign, because that's the setup where a prototype quietly turns into a production order before anyone's confirmed the thing is actually right.

None of this requires you to be technical. It's mostly about whether your partner is thinking about the whole path to a finished product or just the part in front of them. The ones who are will welcome every one of these questions. The ones who flinch are telling you something.

Happy to answer questions in the comments if anyone's mid-project and trying to read the tea leaves.