Brady Forrest, Highway1 // A Case Study on Hardware Best Practices

From The Startups: Core Team

May 19, 2015

Brady Forrest VP, Highway1

●2

@brady

Case Study

13

Orion Team at Launch

Core Team

Hardware: ME, EE, FW

Software

Design: UX, ID

PM/PD

MKT, Sales, BD, etc.

Overhead (HR)

Onyx Core Team: CEO - PM/BD CTO - SW Product - ID/Marketing 1st Employee - EE/FW

  Junior Senior

ME 88 112

EE 90 --- (115)

FW 91 122

$ (salaries = burn rate)

“Engineering Manager” - $145K

Equity…

Source - glassdoor.com

From The Startups:Hiring

28

“In general, start with generalists and work into experts.” - CEO 1

29

“Find one combo EE plus FW person to build the guts of it. One full stack dev who can give you a little web, little backend and a little app. One design that is killer at one discipline and can manage the other two (ID, graphic, UI/UX) Contract ME Contract out board design. Your EE supervises.”

30

“in house is best when there is full time work.  .”

- early employee

31

CEO - BD/PM CTO - EE/FW First hire: ME Second hire: UX Consultants: ID, FW, SW

32

“Your Industrial Design firm will define your brand” - Brady

33

Founding team: ME, PD, Business

Contractors: FW, ID (Ammunition Group) app development (though not design, UI/UX, architecture)

Hires: SW, FW, Supply Chain Ops Engineer, additional ME and PD

From The Startups: VC Questions

35

“Best: how much do you need and where does it go?” - CEO 2

36

“Worst: What is your go to market, how do you plan to reach $1B ... specifics on how you get there.” - CEO 2

37

“Best (hardest to answer): Are you a SW or HW company and when will your revenue/team/R&D reflect the switch?” - CEO 3

38

“Worst: Why don't you just do a Kickstarter right now?” - CEO 3

Thank you! Our Applications Are Open!

highway1.io/apply brady@highway1.io