The 7 hires a hardware startup needs to get right: 1. Manufacturing: the talent is in bottling plants and syringe factories, seek analogs instead of job titles 2. Deployments: hire when you can see ten deployments coming, not after one goes badly 3. Supply Chain: the supplier that stops your line is the tier-five one nobody checked 4. Finance: your first hire is a controller, not a CFO 5. Sales: founders own it until they understand why it works 6. Policy: technical enough to understand the product, DC enough to know how to present it 7. Marketing: lead with the hard parts, honesty filters out the hires you don't want "Get these hires wrong and a remarkable product stalls out. Get them right and the rest of the company compounds." Full piece from @zabie_e: https://www.a16z.news/p/the-7-hires-a-hardware-startup-needs(a16z)