Hard tech involves the combination of hardware and software to solve a problem. As opposed to soft tech, hard tech projects have to be completed on launch with hardware ready to ship. Subsequent new feaHardtech involves the combination of hardware and software to solve a problem.

As opposed to soft tech, hard tech projects have to be completed on launch with hardware ready to ship. Subsequent new features, & patches require new physical components or Over The Air (OTA) updates to the software.

Iterations are expensive. Stakes are much higher.

Patents, IPs, closed schematics, and proprietary code don't help.

Feedback loops are tough to build.

All this makes hard tech a harder space to develop. Even harder to open-source.

In this talk, we share our experiences of the past 3 years:

- Of working in hard tech, pooling the collective expertise

- Painful iterations it took to improve our project.

- Process to open-source hardware projects

- Building a feedback loop with customers

- How to iterate responsibly & not overwhelm your MVP

- Building a community around your project

- Finally, launching your product & still paying the bills

This talk isn't intended to be a silver bullet. A silver bullet rarely exists in hardtech.

We hope to share our insights with the community to motivate more folks to open-source, share and open up the ecosystem for everyone to build!

Check out our project:

https://balena-os.github.io/leviathan