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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

I'm kicking around the idea of forming a hardware startup after a successful proof of concept using off-the-shelf electronics that I assembled by hand. What's really holding me back is that I have no idea where to start with a custom design or talking to manufacturers. The only option I can think of is hiring someone with experience in making customer hardware products at scale, but that's pretty expensive to bootstrap.

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You might consider checking out these companies. They help folks at your stage with all the nitty gritty details of manufacturing a physical product:

http://www.dragoninnovation.com/

http://highway1.io/

http://makesimp.ly/

See, that's why I love HN. There's a huge wealth of information available to help people with an idea and a prototype have a shot at getting to market. Thanks for all the replies, everyone!

I'm only coming from the perspective of a buyer and interested tinkerer.

* It's better to over-deliver than over-promise. Yes, your marketing materials were really shiny but the product didn't really live up to expectations

* After-sales support is so bloody important - don't disappear after you've shipped (MiiPC & Cubieboard I'm looking at you)

* Don't lie to me if you say your product is going to be open source or worse, "hacker friendly" (although this was a problem even before Kickstarter and Indiegogo)

* Tailor your communications to your market - the wonderful people over at Ninjablocks/Little Bird Eleectronics had some issues with writing copy that was aimed at general consumers where a lot of their market wanted real technical details

Of course, you'll have different issues to deal with if you're going the VC/startup route rather than the crowdfunding route.

There are turnkey manufacturers who will build all this for you, but the starting place is a manufacturable design. If you started with off the shelf modules, then one of the first steps would be to get there. So, schematic development and PCB layout to come up with a single PCB that incorporates everything, into an off the shelf plastic housing would be the first step. Then you've got something to build 5 or 10 of, and see if people want to buy them. Bunnie Huang's blog has some good material on this.

"Engineering for manufacture" would probably be a useful, money making, website.

I agree. I once got quite into the console-hacking world (think Ben Heck, and the like), and got thinking quite seriously about creating a successor to the GP32.

I did a lot of research, talked to some finance guys, and realised I was in well over my head if it was to ever be more than a prototype, so I dropped it. Would've loved to get more info than I could glean from the guys I knew who had supply chain and manufacturing experience: their opinion was "don't do it". Probably a good idea that I listened ;)

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