Insights
What we have learned building connected hardware, ourselves and with clients, rather than from a content calendar. Written for founders deciding what to build next, and for investors deciding what a hardware plan is actually worth.
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Seventy-eight terms a hardware founder meets in quotes, inspection reports, customs entries and compliance emails, defined plainly.
17 min read
Read the glossaryHardware is fundable again, but under different labels and against different evidence than in the last cycle. These pieces cover how the money actually moves: which demand signals a serious investor treats as real, why the deep tech rebrand changed who gets funded, and why a round sized to reach the next gate tends to stall at it. The recurring argument is that evidence and money have to be sequenced together, because a hardware programme cannot pause cheaply.
3 articles
The work between a signed spec and a pallet of sellable units. These pieces cover the requirements document as the cheapest prototype you will ever build, what running a hardware programme involves once someone has to own the calendar, and where the difficulty in hardware moved now that prototyping is nearly free. The through line is irreversibility: hardware decisions harden long before anyone tells you they have.
4 articles
What it costs to be allowed to sell, and what it costs to keep selling. These pieces map EU and US certification for connected hardware with the 2026 deadlines that are already live, count the two thirds of the company that is not the device, and read the post-mortems of the hardware companies that died between 2023 and 2026. Most of those deaths were commitments hardened before the evidence arrived.
3 articles
Funding and validation
12 min read
Why programmes that raise only to the next gate stall there, what a development phase costs, and how factories treat stop-start customers.
Compliance and economics
13 min read
The app, the returns desk, the channel, the packaging register and the liability all outlive your launch. Budget for the two thirds nobody demos.
Funding and validation
12 min read
How to test demand for a connected product in 2026, which signals count, and why a working prototype stopped being evidence.
Building and shipping
14 min read
What running a hardware programme actually involves once the spec is signed: gates, cost walks, remote factories and a calendar you do not control.
Funding and validation
12 min read
How hardware startups get funded in 2026: the deep tech rebrand, what a seed has to prove, and the European stack outside VC.
Compliance and economics
14 min read
What certification costs for connected hardware in the EU and US in 2026, and which deadlines are already live.
Compliance and economics
14 min read
What Humane, Northvolt, Moxie, Arrival and Cana died of, and the practical way to avoid each cause of death.
Building and shipping
12 min read
Why the requirements doc is a hardware startup's cheapest prototype, and what regulation, security and sunset policy now force into its first draft.
Building and shipping
14 min read
Prototyping a connected product is nearly free in 2026. Tariffs, memory allocation and working capital are where hardware breaks now.
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