Stedfast IndustriesCan the inventive core work at all? Prove the physics, not the polish.
Plain Talk
Most hardware ideas never make it to market — and they don't die in the market. They die in development.
The Odds
Industry estimates for hardware projects range 70–97%. Call it four in five.
Protracted development kills more hardware than lack of market fit (34%).
Each loop costs real money — and compounds when the last one answered nothing.
Underestimated cost and timeline — the most-cited cause of hardware startup death.
Sources: MacroFab hardware failure analysis and industry roundups via Cratus Technology; Salitronic; Wharton crowdfunding study via TIME. Loop counts and costs are industry estimates, not guarantees — your project is not a statistic, which is the point.
The Diagnosis
Product design takes skill and a place that can build it. When those live in different companies, the part that gets made isn't the part that was meant.
Outsourcing relays — designer to shop to vendor to assembler. Every handoff loses intent, adds weeks, and bills you for the translation.
Rosy scoping sells the project; reality invoices it. What Mark 1 must prove, and what it must cost, is a conversation most firms avoid.
Three different questions get funded as one expensive blur, so the money answers none of them.
The Billing Machine
We've sat on your side of this table. Here's how a typical engineering-firm engagement unfolds — and where the money actually goes.
Workshops, discovery sessions, a beautiful deck. You're paying senior rates before a single engineering decision gets made.
Weeks gone. Nothing you can hold.
Every call, every email, every status meeting is on the clock — often senior rates for junior work. The incentive runs backwards: the longer it takes, the more they make.
The meter never stops.
Outside vendors — machining, tooling, finishing — get quoted through the firm, commonly marked up 20–50%. You never see the real invoice.
You pay retail on someone else's wholesale.
Reality never matches the deck. Every adjustment — and there are always adjustments — is a fresh line item at full rate.
The quote was the floor, never the ceiling.
The firm designs; a shop somewhere builds; nobody owns whether it functions. When it doesn't, the rework gets billed — by both.
Two invoices, zero accountability.
It arrives over budget and under-tested — followed by the "Phase 2" proposal to fix what Phase 1 billed you for.
This is where most ideas run out of money. (That 42%.)
The Cost-Effective Path
Each rung answers specific questions at the right spend. No skipped rungs. No gold-plated rungs.
Can the inventive core work at all? Prove the physics, not the polish.
Looks, tooling, enclosure, finish. If it's not the invention, it's not Rung 1 money.
Does it function as an assembly — in real materials, at real tolerances, under real load?
Production tooling, volume pricing, scale optimization.
Will someone pay for it — and can we build it repeatably at a cost that works?
Nice-to-have features and premature scale. Earn those with sales.
The Stedfast Answer
Product design takes skill and a shop that can make it. We're both.
What Mark 1 must prove, what it must cost, what it doesn't need yet — said out loud, early.
PoC, prototype, MVP — each scoped to its question, each at the right spend.
Close to every aspect, no outsourcing relay. Our network works under us — one shop responsible.