Hacker News Reader

Comment by pitchups | Hacker News Reader

> Hard tech companies go through the same 3-month batch format as all of the startups we fund.

Is 3 months sufficient time for working on hard tech startup ideas. The original 3 month batch format was designed for software & web startups - YC's initial focus. It seems to me that the cycle time for iterating and testing different approaches to solving problems in hard tech would be much longer - hence require more time?

View on HN

My personal opinion (not that I have any commercial experience with hardware development) is that it's not.

It can take up to a month to receive a specific part for a prototype, and prototyping takes a lot more time in real space than in software.

I can change a class or a module in some code and 15 seconds later have the new version running. Changing a single part in a hardware system could take a day of work, changing both the software drivers and the actual physical hardware.

You can't just NPM install a new part and see if it works, you have to actually order it and wait for it to arrive in the mail.

The ONLY way I can see this working is if your parts can ALL be 3-D printed in their entirety or milled in under an hour. That then relies on a very very good printer set-up, likely one that you own and have used for at least a year (temp/humidity issues). You can do some electronics and PCB design with a mill and a copper plated proto-board (mill away copper plate and you can make crude PCB 'wires'), but you still need a fully functioning and stocked components chest or you have to wait a week for Digikey. If the zeitgeist is going towards IoT stuff, and I think it is, then you must wait for electronics parts to link the 3-D printed gizmo to the hackers waiting to make it a spam bot. 3 months is unlikely to be enough time to really get anything working without a well stocked lab.

I just don't see it, from my perspective in mechanical design, you are at a minimum of 2.5 months from first concept to getting real parts. Hardware is just slow, and there is not much you can do about it without spending tons of money.

YC companies aren't "done" after 3 months. They keep building and growing for years to come. The 3 months is just how long it takes from first dinner to demo day. Companies of all types are typically able to show some kind of growth, traction, or progress in that time.

Yes, I do know that. However, the point is precisely that even getting from first dinner to demo day in 3 months, will be much harder for "hard tech" companies than your typical web startup. Which is not to say there won't be any progress - but the real question is would there be enough time for the multiple iterations typically needed to get the most out of the incubation time at YC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com