Bringing a hardware product to market is far more complex than most founders expect. In this talk, Glassboard CEO Grant Chapman breaks down the real journey from early planning to prototyping, development, and manufacturing, and explains what separates the teams who ship from the teams who stall. Whether you're building a medical device, an IoT product, a consumer good, or an industrial tool, the principles are the same: clear requirements, disciplined prototyping, rigorous testing, and a supply chain that will not collapse the first time a component goes out of stock. This session gives a practical, engineering-first view of what it actually takes to build physical products in the real world. This video is for hardware founders, early-stage startup teams, medtech innovators, product leaders, engineers, and anyone preparing to move from idea to prototype to production. What You’ll Learn Why early planning matters and what not to plan in the beginning How to define user needs, translate them into engineering specs, and avoid costly ambiguity The difference between functional prototypes and visual prototypes and why they must stay separate How to de-risk early-stage development and generate investor confidence How DBT cycles (Design, Build, Test) actually work in practice How to structure testing that reflects real-world use and exposes failure points When to involve vendors, partners, and manufacturing teams How timelines, burn rate, and risk evolve across each funding stage What founders often misunderstand about tooling, supply chain, and scaling Why market validation needs to begin long before the product is ready Grant also shares hard-won lessons from a decade of engineering work, including manufacturing pitfalls, when to run or avoid pre-orders, and why beautiful renders can be just as important as early functional prototypes. If You're Building Hardware Glassboard helps founders and product teams plan, prototype, engineer, test, and bring physical products to market. If you’re navigating early development decisions and want an experienced engineering partner, we’re here to help. Learn more at . #hardware #startups #ycombinator #slidebean #ideo #prototype #iot #productdevelopment #productdesign #glassboard #grantchapman #venturecapital