YC Partner Jared Friedman covers hardtech companies and why founders should consider starting one. He also covers a couple of the most common problems hardtech companies face and how to solve them, with examples from seven YC companies.

You can find the lecture slides and transcript here: https://www.startupschool.org/videos/78

Find more Startup School and YC content at https://www.startupschool.org/library.

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chaptermeyc)
00:00 Introduction
00:36 Outline
00:56 What is a Hard Tech Company?
01:35 Market vs Technical risk
02:06 Why start a hardtech company?
02:42 Story about Boom
05:38 Hardtech and Biotech Big part of YC
06:04 Startup School
06:20 How much of YC's advice applies to hardtech founders?
07:05 Two biggest problems specific to hardtech
07:14 Heavy MVP
07:58 Boom Do things that don't cost money
08:46 Solute
08:47 Solugen Start small
09:35 AirX Launch a simplified version
10:22 Notable Labs Bootstrap with a service
10:45 Astranis Start with a proof of concept
11:33 Ginkgo Bioworks Sell it before you make it
12:24 How do you prove people will want your product if it is not built yet?
12:49 Pre Sales
13:27 Letter of Intent (LOI)
14:20 Advice about LOIs
14:43 Fundraising for Hardtech and Biotech companies
15:38 A better fundraising plan
17:26 Q&A
17:40 AI companies
19:36 Hard to get LOIs
20:53 How do you prove that your idea is going to work?
22:15 Sales
23:24 Find founder and early employees for Hardtech companies