danrecht

David McKay was a great public speaker as well: https://youtu.be/GFosQtEqzSE?si=Gyrcep1VDae6xDo1&t=110

Fun fact: Hollerith did his initial work on this during his brief stint as a mechanical engineering instructor at MIT so (if you squint) this is the first MIT compute hardware spinout.

Do you have lots of contacts in your industry? If so, consider solving their problems with existing tech for now. Most unloved corners of the physical economy will pay a give-a-darn premium to smart people who genuinely care about doing good work and satisfying their customers.

If it’s new tech or bust, build the most honest techno-economic model you can and use that to make your go/no-go decision.

Collecting small things from many sources over meaningful distances is hard.

Separating things made of many materials is hard, especially when some components are hazardous.

Purifying materials drawn from waste is hard.

These aren’t impossible challenges, but physical facts of the problem that have kept costs too high for electronics recycling to be widespread.

Longer lasting electronics that can be repurposed or reused is the lever I’d be most excited to pull here.

I'll take any opportunity to thank devjoe who maintains an index of all MIT Mystery Hunt puzzles as a labor of love at: https://devjoe.appspot.com/huntindex/