Hardware is hard… and it’s hardest on the balance sheet. Every full-time engineer a startup hires is a long-term bet placed with short-term money.
What are the risks?
In our experience, hardware startups need to move fast and spend carefully.
In the early stages of a startup, proving your technology is the top priority, and there is little time to focus on hiring and training engineers. You need a team that has all the benefits of an established company (deep knowledge and expertise, experience collaborating, and access to all the space and tools they need) without the downside (time to hire, ramping up as a team, managing Human Resources, and a large inflexible payroll expense). Also, attracting top talent gets significantly easier once you’ve hit some key milestones and built some brand awareness.
How does partnering with 219 reduce that risk?
Instead of betting runway on permanent salaries, you pay for exactly the engineering you need, when you need it.
Partnering with a multi-disciplinary engineering firm, like 219 Design, converts the fixed, long-term risk of early hiring into a flexible, on-demand cost. And, you get a complete, trusted engineering team from day one to fill in the gaps.
You don’t choose between momentum and prudence; you get both.
At 219 Design, we’ve been the go-to team for startups and growing teams within established companies developing robotic systems, creating medical devices, and building connected products in Silicon Valley for over two decades. We plug into your effort as a pre-assembled team. Already working collaboratively in a fully equipped shop, we make real progress on your product while you take the time to hire your in-house team without having to settle for less-than-perfect candidates.
A long-term development partner is the continuity layer that survives transitions.
Just as importantly, we’re here to stay. Silicon Valley’s dirty secret is turnover. The average engineering tenure at a startup can be one to two years. Every departure takes institutional knowledge with it. When early hires leave, we help to preserve that knowledge for our clients and put their replacements in the best position to succeed. We’ve been working with some of our clients for almost 20 years.
Five ways 219 de-risks your path to a full team:
- Make progress immediately – start building momentum as soon as you’re ready instead of waiting months to recruit, onboard, and ramp up a full team.
- Fill knowledge gaps with proven domain expertise – lean on our software, firmware, mechanical, and electrical expertise while you search for the specialists who will eventually own those areas.
- Keep momentum while you hire deliberately – let us carry the roadmap so you can take the time to find the right in-house people, not just the available ones. We’ve even helped clients write job descriptions and interview our replacements!
- Scale effort up or down on demand – expand the hours when deadlines compress and contract it when they don’t, matching spend to schedule instead of to payroll.
- Provide long-term consistency through turnover – we’re still here as your team grows and changes, preserving the institutional knowledge that startup churn otherwise erases.
Next Steps
The startups that scale well don’t solve this by hiring faster; they solve it by de-coupling progress from headcount.
Partnering with 219 Design lets you build immediately, fill knowledge gaps with proven expertise, keep momentum while you hire the best in-house people deliberately, flex effort with your schedule, and preserve continuity through the turnover that’s inevitable.
Ready to make progress on your product without the risk of hiring?
Talk to 219 Design about extending your team with a partner you can trust from your first prototype through production and beyond.