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Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

Can you provide some info on how does YC support hardware startups? More specifically, what is a good stage to apply?

We are working on building a demo-quality HW prototype, with the ETA of ~6months. That means we will not be focused on growth, but on tech development. Should we wait until we have a working system and apply to YC when we are ready to scale and grow it (this is our current thought).

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Obviously you should listen to Michael over me, but as a former YC founder with a robotics startup I agree that you should probably wait until you're more focused on growth than prototyping.

Thank you, this lines up with our thoughts. We were invited for an interview in November (did not get funded as a too early stage) but just got an encouragement to reapply email, so need to decide what to do.

We see no need for funding (at least today) to finish our HW prototype; in fact if funded I am afraid a sizeable chunk of those 120k would be spent (wasted?) on moving to SV, getting some lab access, etc. The flip side is getting help earlier to shape the end product.

You want to join YC because you want the money and investors, but your product isn't ready yet so what's the money for? If you only need to pay your own living costs and small development costs for R&D, maybe you should look for an angel investor and a pre-seed round.

Speaking of, there's a void in the VC market for funds that invest in the R&D stage like this.

How would yo go about looking for such things outside SV, LA, NY ie. major places?

I agree with you that there is a void in R&D stage VC funds.

YC has traditionally been seen as provided seed round funding and its investment as being for living expenses and early development costs.

I've never had direct affiliation with YC at all, but I'd check this out:

http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-for-hardware

Just so applicants are aware, YC founders no longer have access to Pier 9.

I am on your same boat. We been working for the past year to get the HW prototype build and at a stage where we can demo it. We are still around 6 months on finishing but lack of funding and advice would definitely accelerate our progress. (Paying for assembled boards instead of hand building each as a example of how it would make it faster.)

Happy to see if I can help. Email is ericmigi@gmail.com.

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