Hardware is Hard is a meme. But the average person in tech doesn’t know WHY it is hard. 1) cash flow: you usually have to pay your suppliers months or even years before you generate profit from sales/lease. 2) forecasting scale: this might be the number one company killer. Order too much of the wrong thing, you are dead. Too little, you don’t hit your growth. Build a bunch of units with a defect? —> firefighting mode for the next year. 3) talent: if you are building in the US, we have very few people that have actually shipped products at scale. You mostly find hobbyists or academic talent. Or people that have spent their career inside a big company and only have a narrow area of expertise. 4) logistics: your supply chain is global and any one vendor failing to ship can break timelines. You are also exposed to geopolitical risk and tariff fluctuation. And once you get your product to your market, you need to pay to store it somewhere and pay to ship it to the customer. 5) fundraising: VC hates hardware in part bc they don’t understand it and bc of the other reasons on this list. At every stage of fundraising you are being judged against software companies that seem further along. Your one time sales revenue is basically discounted to zero, and you are almost entirely judged by recurring revenue (hope you figured out your saas add-on!) 6) integration complexity: once you actually build hardware, you still have to make the software. You have to get embedded teams to talk to web/mobile fe/be teams and there are always competing priorities. 7) regulatory requirements: most products require a variety of certifications, which require lab time, paperwork, and approval delays. 8) product support: difficult reverse logistics to return and service a product. 9) product commoditization: in order to be competitive, in most cases you have to be in China. But that means you are at risk of products being copied and fast followed. Good software, UX, branding, and continuous innovation is your best defense. 10) Distribution: sell online and you need to pay the Facebook/google/amazon/shopify tax to get awareness. Sell in stores, prepare for fickle buyers and slow procurements. Sell to enterprise, expect egregious payment terms. Operate the hardware yourself, no available capex financing. Hardware is hard, but if you can overcome all of this, you have a competitive advantage and almost no AI disruption risk.

Two possible scenarios, both incredible. 1) guy that’s good at interviewing gets jobs, then sends other people to do the work. 2) guy that’s bad at interviews has someone interview for them in order to get the job.

This morning I visited Songdo, a new smart city outside of Seoul. I have mixed feelings. It is a skyscraper suburb. It is what happens if a traffic engineer is given unlimited budget and creative control. It is the perfect execution of flawed ideas. Here are the highlights.

Traveling in the first year was manageable for us. Years 2 and 3 were dreadful. 4 and 5 it started to get better. 6 is now pretty easy.

Tracks alone don’t make a very good train network. You need…trains. And the op was talking about passenger rail not freight.

The western half of San Francisco should be radically upzoned.

This was a road with cars. Now it is not.

Bittersweet sure is a funny way to say “this sucks”

Im a daily cyclist when I’m in nyc, but I don’t think people should be treating Central Park like a velodrome, especially during busy park hours. Especially true if you are unable to avoid a slowly swerving skateboarder from 60+ feet away.

Is that hell? If I die and go to hell, that is where it will be.

these tariffs are in no way proportionate or reciprocal fuckstick

Tech industry is significantly larger than in 2001. This is a small contraction relative to the total size of the market.

Enjoy your $76.50

Atmosphere remains undefeated

Eh, losing 3% to credit card processing sucks for low margin businesses.

“SF is back!” In about 1 hour of walking around downtown I’ve seen: hundreds of unhoused people, ~5 people using drugs, 1 penis, ~5 shouting in a menacing way, and 1 Walgreens shoplifter who successfully stole at least 2 things even after being searched, laughing on the way out

Hate them all but that Islamic State logo. That one’s a banger.

I love what this guy is doing, but this photo says a lot about US manufacturing. When I visited a factory in China, it was usually clean, new, and gave sci fi vibes. Whenever I visited a factory in America, it was like the cave where Tony Stark built his first suit.

We have two companies operating fully autonomous ridehail networks in a major city, and there has been almost no media coverage and a collective yawn. The average American isn’t even aware that this is a reality. Perhaps it was over hyped in 2017, but opposite is true now.

“Why don’t kids go outside and play?”

Allowing zoning code and environmental review to morph into an obstructive force that prevents almost anything from being built is a far bigger mistake.

Aren’t these the “you won’t make us eat bugs” people? wtf happened

Which one of the children is the wife?

It turns out, people like walking through more intimate spaces with a wide variety of ground floor retail. Which of these Korean retail streets would you find more interesting to walk?

Economic interdependence

Iconic

Just encountered another dockless car obstructing the sidewalk. These things have become such a nuisance since they launched. The city really needs to start regulating private use of public space.

If drivers were paid $20 per push, they would prob take the deal.

This look right here.

Alexa and Siri are both terrible products.

Lil bro just wanted a squirrel pic

Im all for gallows humor, but holy fuck is this terrible.

21st century cave paintings

The original sin of the project was designing insanely wide streets, which according to the architect, was a mandate from the City. The most egregious example is the southwest corner of the project's marquee Central Park, which features an intersection of 9 lanes by 12 lanes.

52 years apart. If we want the pace of innovation in the physical world to match that in the digital, we need to allocate more venture capital to hardware / atoms businesses.

Congrats Mayor @ZohranKMamdani on a well-run campaign and victory. There is one proven way to increase affordability: build more housing. Good news, NYC has hundreds of developable acres in prime locations. It’s time to build on underutilized NYCHA land 🧵1/x.

2 automatically makes this man’s opinions not credible. Moron.

Liberation day means he liberated himself from 20-30% of his support.

Customs won’t release until you pay. And they will start fining you after a certain amount of days in port. This is what I mean when I say tariffs are about to kill a bunch of small businesses. Sorry this is happening.

Same energy

This is just an awful idea and doesn’t make financial sense.

However, due to the equally generous allocation of space and intersection markings for pedestrians & bicycles, it is surprisingly very pleasant to walk or bike in Songdo. [flawed idea, excellent execution] It is even safe for kids!

But the problem with most tower in the park architecture, is that those spaces can often feel empty and dead. This is doubly true when towers are placed with deep setbacks along wide streets. Tower in the park makes for lovely skylines, but often unexceptional public spaces.

imagine this: - American startup spends 2 years bringing a product to market with a Chinese supply chain. They are building a complicated consumer product where realistically China is the only place it can be built. - they are 2 weeks from launch. They preordered their parts over 6 months ago. They’ve done some limited presales at a discounted rate. - They have $5M in the bank. $3M will go to their suppliers upon delivery and they have $2M to support the product launch and give runway until the end of the year. They also need to make their next forecast order in the next 3 months if they want to hit 2026 targets. - Trump introduces a 20% tariff just before the items arrive into port. They now have to pay an additional $600,000 unforeseen expense. Their runway is cut from $2M to $1.4M and their margin for error is slim. And their margin on each unit is cut in half, destroying their unit economic story for investors and/or forcing a sudden price increase for their customers in the pipeline. Oh, and their presales orders are now actually losing money on each sale. These tariffs are going to kill a bunch of small businesses and startups.

It’s almost as if Germany should build more nuclear plants to remain competitive.

Complaining about tall buildings in Manhattan is hilarious.

It’s a clear indication they are morons

Songdo was definitely a major highlight of this trip, and I applaud the ambition and scale of the project. I have trips later this year to Singapore and Dubai, and cant wait to see how they compare.

High risk strategy, might end up without any of his favorite pie.

The difference is that milk replacements are generally worse products. Lab meat has the potential of being the better product: it isn’t fake meat, it is actually meat. Desantis is not an ally to the tech community.

In this case, the negative impact of having car-centric infrastructure isnt bike/ped safety, it is the vibrancy of the streets. Which brings us to our second bad foundational design choice, tower in the park architecture.

He should automatically lose the Julia date.

Central Park is surrounded by dense mixed use neighborhoods. Golden Gate Park is surrounded by crappy 2 story bungalows.

Am I the only one that thinks it is wrong to turn Silicon Valley’s pay-it-forward culture into a transactional marketplace?

But it isnt just that intersection, everywhere throughout the city features excessively wide streets with a negative impact on urban design and placemaking.

I’d love to see photo of family on left 5 seconds after picture is taken.

Unlike you, I have actually manufactured things, both in Asia and in the US. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Sad that mixed-use 6 stories is radical, but here we are.

I think the day is that long primarily to provide child care, not bc that’s the best environment for learning.

It’s extremely aggravating that California fucked up such an obvious high speed rail corridor and now I have to hear a bunch of morons in your comments telling me why it will never work.

If you compare Songdo to cities in the US that experienced significant growth over the last 20 years (Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa, Houston, Austin, Miami, etc), Songdo is an absolute delight!

The entire @solana thesis comes down to whether different applications can share the same chain and if composability is more important than sovereignty. For this to work, memecoin trading can’t disrupt payments, governance, depin, and all the other activities. This is an existential moment as big as the FTX collapse. Sending positive vibes to all the smart developers working to fix this.

Apparently destroying SMB and manufacturing companies isn’t enough. They are trying to destroy tourism.

He can say it all he wants. His employer doesn’t have to keep employing him. That is how freedom works.

Yup, while cheerleading every other move. And they put out a rumor he is leaving the day the tariffs were announced.

I'm excited to announce the launch of Spectra, an open-source project to build cities for the future. After 18 months of quietly building, today we launch our website, VR scenes, and library of CC0 assets. The project was developed in partnership with @andreeavr and @numenavr.

Can you imagine explaining to a time traveler from the 19th century that you can no longer build apartment buildings with shops downstairs? Or you can’t build anything at all if it casts a shadow onto your neighbors property? It would be more shocking than seeing the iPhone.

Popularized in the 1920s by Le Corbusier, the idea was to build tall towers with parks and landscaping on the ground floor. The concept had a major impact on 20th century architecture, and was notably implemented in NYC's public / coop housing and in cities throughout Asia.

Also, American optimism is undefeated. Guys are building out of dilapidated 70 year old buildings and are like “fuck yeah, game on”! I am very skeptical about American dynamism as a movement (bc of politics and finance), but very bullish about the crazy bastards trying.

Tower in the park is still a very tempting idea, so much so that it is the image of choice for the popular 'the future if...' meme. Hey, who wouldnt want to live in a modern tower and walk outside into a beautiful park! Thats got to be the future, right?

Overall, Songdo feels like perhaps the best execution of a 20th century, American-influenced, Asian city. It even has a Costco! It took the US highway design handbook as the starting point, and then everyone tried really really hard to make that work. And they mostly succeeded!

Check out our new North American distribution warehouse in Sacramento. That's a lot of bikes.

2030s, one more @boringcompany tunnel will fix it

Of for fucks sake, foreign governments don’t pay tariffs, Americans businesses that are importing do!!! We are several months into this, time to get it right! @andrewschulz

So, literally NIMBY?

Over its history it has been described as feeling dead, with even residents referring to it as Songberia (Songdo+Siberia). In early years, this was mostly due to the pop size relative to the scale and remote location. But today, it is mostly due to a few urban design choices.

20% for delivery is a very new norm, and I don’t think that is universal across the country. Also, why is delivery tipping based on the % of the order?

What’s crazy is that trump and his inner circle also seem to have these same unrealistic expectations about onshoring

@Aella_Girl checking the comments like:

They shouldn’t sell that seat

The amount of positivity in the comments of op is shocking and refreshing.

Wtf, that is the weirdest elevator I’ve ever seen.

Dont get me wrong, some of these little pocket courtyard parks are absolutely magical. Incredible public amenity, particularly for families. And this in addition to Central Park and other large public parks throughout the city. [Again, awesome execution]

That was one of the best movies of the last 20 years. This guy doesn’t deserve it.

I’m 46 with a kid and find trad American suburbia deeply unappealing. Many such cases.

...and wide sidewalks with abundant bike lanes.

“Well I don’t go down there” real global cities don’t quarantine their entire CBD and hotel district as no-go zones.

Very excited to launch @jump_rides by @Uber in #Lisbon today with the deputy mayor's support. Thanks to this amazing city for embracing innovation and a future with less personal car ownership. @CamaraLisboa

Appliances. Light bulbs. Toilets.

So instead let's use the government to prevent other people from eating it?

This person wouldn’t even see this as an inconsistency. Everything should just be free to plunder.

Patrick, you are sending out smelly guy vibes right now

I agree China won’t back down. And Trump prob won’t. But I think this causes more pain in the U.S. than you are suggesting, and there is a chance Congress challenges it before midterms.

But the amount and quality of non-manufacturing jobs has greatly expanded since 1988. Just bc the opportunities for factory work in Peoria have declined or stagnated doesn’t mean our overall economy isn’t better off.

Ample parks and playgrounds...

It a lovely place, and I think it would be great for a family with small children. I also think it is fixable. The road capacity is significantly overbuilt, so much so that they could actually redevelop some streets, adding street kiosks or maybe even lower density housing

But outside the courtyard, the streets feel empty. Granted, I was there early on a Saturday morning, but even if you were there at a busy time of day with many people, it likely would still *feel* empty because of the wide streets, building heights, and placement of retail.

It’s not nice. It’s boring, ugly, and contributing to a housing crisis.