[throwup238]

The infrastructure to rapidly iterate and manufacture just isn’t here anymore, so everything costs significantly more to the point where we’re noncompetitive. Even VCs with no experience see the top line numbers for hardware startups and nope out.

Contrast this with biotech venture capital which has been doing well for decades, often investing more capital in a year than software VCs. The difference is that all the research, clinical trial, and manufacturing expertise is already here and concentrated in a few localities like South San Francisco, San Diego, and Boston.

[makestuff]

Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Way easier to iterate when you have access to a machine shop vs having to upload a CAD file and have a part shipped from another country.

[mathiaspoint]

There isn't even anyone here competing with eg JLCPCB just for PCBs let alone all the other prototyping stuff. It makes sense, somehow China is able to do it for less than the materials cost.

I think that's why most people just aren't that upset about tariffs. It would be nice to be able to participate in our own economy other than by grifting off real estate or software.