Building hardware at a startup is an incurable disease, not a rational choice

I’ll write my answer to a question I often get asked at the end of talks and lectures.

I think readers who follow my blog already understand how many difficulties await when you try to build physical products at a startup. I won’t list them all again in detail here.

For that reason, building physical products at a startup is something I can’t recommend in most cases.

If you just want to get a taste of what starting a company feels like, I think it’s fine to build an app with friends in your spare time, set up a cloud environment using free AWS credits, and launch a service. Even if it fails, all you lose is some effort and a trivial amount of money. Given the experience you gain, you could say you’ve more than gotten your money’s worth.

At this point, it’s fair to say that most problems in the world can be solved with some combination of a smartphone and a cloud service.

“But you’re always the one building physical things, aren’t you?”

I can hear that objection coming. That’s right. There are plenty of problems in the world that can only be solved by something involving a physical presence. I’m the type who can’t help but be drawn to exactly those kinds of problems.

That’s just how I’m built.

I think of this as my own “incurable disease.”

A fate I can’t shake no matter what I do. Something that clings to me no matter how much I try to avoid it. And something that, somewhere in my heart, I’m always comfortably seeking out.

I used to call this “entanglement” using a different word, but “incurable disease” fits better.

Depending on the circumstances, it might even be the thing that eventually kills me, but it’s a chronic condition I’ve lived with since birth, so I have no intention of saying anything more about it now, and no intention of debating it with anyone else. That’s the kind of thing it is.

What’s the incurable disease inside you?

If the disease you carry is one that prizes rationality above all else, I’m almost certain you won’t end up concluding that you should build hardware. That’s because there’s always the option of “having someone else build it” or “using something someone else already built.”

Some people are afflicted by the disease of “entrepreneurship,” and in that case, what I wrote above applies.

If you’re afflicted with the disease of “ambition” or “the desire for honor,” it seems like those symptoms could be eased without going through hardware either.

But if you’re a huge fan of antique guitars, or you love fussing over camping gear on weekends, or you have a habit of buying up the latest gadgets, then maybe the disease of making things really is inside you.

What drives people to start companies is, in most cases, “a sense of necessity born from their own private conviction.”

I’m writing something slightly contradictory here, but what I mean is this: inside the person, there’s a necessity at work that says “I have to do this,” and that necessity isn’t necessarily something the outside world would find convincing or universally agree with.

I have a friend who’s fixated on the wonderfully dreamy theme of “establishing a true means of communication” (wanting to break open a hole in how we communicate today). When I push back with “Don’t things like ⚪︎⚪︎ or ⚪︎⚪︎ already exist?” he launches into a passionate speech pointing out all sorts of shortcomings and inconsistencies in those services and insisting they need to be resolved. Over coffee I just nod along and say “yeah, sure, I see,” but if I were an investor, I think the correct response would be, “Yes, thank you very much. You may leave now.”

An incurable disease sometimes comes with a pain that feels like it’s crushing your chest, but even that, included, is part of what makes life rich. Please, try to find the incurable disease inside you.

And if, after moving faithfully in accordance with it, “making things” comes into view for you, I hope the contents of this blog will work as your supporter.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2021/07/538/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.