ELECTRONIC HARDWARE DESIGN

FOR START-UPS
A MINI GUIDE FROM THE TRENCHES

YOUR UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

TURNING YOUR IDEA INTO A SUCCESSFUL ELECTRONIC PRODUCT

www.sentineo.com
 SOME OF OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

YOUR UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

TURNING YOUR IDEA INTO A SUCCESSFUL ELECTRONIC PRODUCT

www.sentineo.com
Preface

Greetings!

Welcome to this short mini-guide on electronic hardware design. This mini-guide is

specifically aimed at founders of start-up companies that have the need for a custom
electronic design.

If you are a start-up company looking to realize your idea into a real electronic product,
you have come to the right place. I have helped countless start-ups deliver 100+ custom
electronic prototypes and large volume products to market succesfully over the years.

Every stage of a start-up company has a very different way of approaching the electronic
design. In this guide, I want to show you where the focus should be in every stage to
approach the electronic design in a lean and efficient way.

I ran into a lot of challenges that are typically experienced by start-up companies. This
guide is to help you prevent from running into these and enable you to focus on what
counts: launching your start-up product successfully from zero!

Piet Callemeyn
Sentineo founder
The typical stages of evolution
in a hardware start-up
Every stage in the evolution of an electronic hardware startup is different. The focus on
the electronic design priorities will be very different as well.

Here are some major stages in the life of a startup. This is a bit oversimplified, but it will
quickly enable you to see in what stage you are and where your electronic hardware
design priorities should be.

Pre-Seed Stage
Many investors refer to this as the “friends, family and
accelerators” stage. In this stage you are considered pre-
product but have something to show.

There is typically some money invested in the range of 50-

250k. The so-called MVP (minimum viable product) is what will
get things started in this phase.

In terms of electronic design, in this phase it is important to

focus on a proof-of-concept prototype of your intended
product. This should by no means be a finalized product. Even
more so, it is important to keep it lean and simple in this phase.

The main challenge is to not burn too much cash in this stage.
The most important thing here is to get real user feedback on
your MVP and incorporate this in your design specifications.

The main emphasis in the electronic design will

be on:
Feasibility
Product-market fit
Viability
Seed Stage
In this stage, you will typically be raising
anywhere between 500k to 2M. For this you
typically demonstrated some kind of product-
market fit. In this phase it is all about turning
your MVP into a fully-fledged working product.

The main emphasis in the electronic design will

be on:
Manufacturability
Testability
Scalability
Bill of materials cost minimization
Sourcing and logistics control
Compliance testing (CE, FCC, EMC, etc.)

Series A Stage
The typical first stage following a seed stage is
the so-called series-A funding. We are talking
about 2M to 15M investments being raised.

The main focus in this stage of the electronic

design will be about intellectual property held
inside the company and potentially patented
designs. This can be seen as the “final” stage
for the development of the electronics.

The emphasis is on massive scaling of the

electronic product and doing so efficiently and
cost-effectively:

Production cost optimization

BOM optimization
Assembly outsourcing or insourcing in the
company for full control
Logistics control
The typical stages in
electronic hardware design
At first, it might seem daunting to start a Step By Step:
custom electronic hardware design. To
give you absolute clarity on this process,
I want to break it down into a few simple 1. 2.
What do you want? Can it be made?
steps.
Identifying the real needs Is it possible to carry out
and desired functionality in the project within the set of
The process of electronic design is a your custom electronic wishes and requirements?
design. What functionalities Is it feasible and what are
sequence of some logical steps following are a must-have, should- the total costs? A proof-of-
after each other. In every stage, you make an have or nice-to-have? concept can also be made
in this stage for further
incremental step based on the learnings of evaluation.

the previous steps.

3. 4.
Let's make it real ! User feedback?
You will work with 2 iterations where the
This stage is all about the The first prototypes are
user feedback after iteration 1 is extremely development of custom made (both electronics and
electronics and firmware. housing) and checked with
important. You want to make sure that there At the end of this phase, end-users to see if the
there is a fully developed product works as it should.
is a clear product-market fit. This is in most
electronic system with This feedback is important
cases only possible when there is an actual associated firmware to for the necessary updates
make the innovation work. before production.
prototype that can be tested by your end-
users. 5. 6.
Let's test it Time for production
In a “pre-compliance” When the product works as
During this process you will work hand in
check, you evaluate if the it should, you can proceed
hand with industrial designers to make your product is fully compliant to production in larger
with the existing standards volumes. The electronics
electronics fit your final housing. (e.g. EMC, CE, FCC, etc.). are produced, tested,
Afterwards it can then programmed and
more easily pass an assembled by an industrial
inspection for certification. assembly house.

What is a typical lead time?

A typical lead time for a full fledged Want to discuss your design ?
custom electronic design is typically 6 contact Piet: calendar.sentineo.com
months. You should take into account two
iterations of the electronic system which
each take 3 months in lead time. The bulk
of this lead time is due to the assembly
process where you need to take into
account 4-6 weeks.

However! Sentineo will provide your first

feasibility prototype in 1 month or less.
Money-back guarantee.
How to become independent
of supply chain issues
The world has changed...
It is clear that a lot of strategies have shifted in the electronic design world since the
pandemic hit. The time of ordering electronic components “just in time” is behind us and
probably not returning the coming years.

As a startup company, you should have full control on your supply chain. Imagine having
spent years on refining your electronic prototype into a robust electronic product, ready
to go for large scale production, only then to find out that some key components in your
design are not available.

This is exactly what happened to a lot of startups after the pandemic hit. It will not be a
surprise that this has a huge impact on an already capital intensive start-up trajectory.
Your main focus should be to have full control on the logistic process. It might seem
difficult but here are a couple of approaches that work well and have proven to be life
savers for young companies.

Life savers
Production on call Work with a "production on call" agreement. This is an agreement
that you set up with your electronic assembly house. You agree to
buy, for example, 4000 pieces of your assembled electronic
design over the coming year. But, you have the ability to have
them delivered on call. For example: 1000 pieces per quarter. This
can heavily reduce the cash flow burden on your startup company
and make the difference between getting started or being stalled.

Allocate stock Another option is to allocate all the necessary components that
you will need for your PCB assembly (chip ICs, connectors, cables,
etc.). The moment that you want to start up your production, you
are then able to take from your own stock and be sure that you
can produce the volume that you need.

The advantage of this approach is that you have full control, the
disadvantage is that you have to spend cash to procure all these
components and have them lying on your shelves, waiting to be
turned into a product that you can sell to actually generate profit.
Life savers - continued
Large batches This approach is especially true if you are 100% sure that your
product has reached a final design stage and does not contain any
flaws. If you can make large batch productions, typically you will
be able to save some money because you are buying components
in bulk. However, note that this advantage typically plays out in
the region of 5000 to 10 000 products being assembled.

There is a lot more to say on this depending on specific situations. I will typically always try to
negotiate the approach of on-call production at assembly houses together with our clients in
an early stage of the startup company. The advantages are highest, and the stress on cash
flow remains low.

Feel free to reach out if you feel lost in this process or want to discuss your specific case.

Always welcome for a visit at our modern and fully automated production facilities:
The common pitfalls in
electronic design
Over the years, Sentineo has assisted countless start-ups creating over 100+ custom
electronic designs and products. There are a couple of recurring pitfalls that I have seen
that can easily be avoided. This will give you an overview of the common ones to avoid
during your design.

1. Focusing on existing
prototyping platforms
I hear this quite often when a new customer
comes to us: “we have designed our prototype
with an Arduino, it works, now we need to scale
up to 1000 products but it becomes costly”.

While it is a relatively easy and quick way to

make a prototype based on existing platforms,
this approach is not scalable. On top of this, you
don’t have any control on the logistic chain.

It is best to quickly evaluate an idea in your Therefore, it should always be the goal to evolve
market using these platforms as a proof of relatively quickly from this verified prototype to a
concept. However, these platforms have too custom prototype that only holds the bare
many extra components on board that are not minimum of components needed to realize your
needed for your design. functionality.
2. Feature creep
This is a dangerous one that I see more
often than not. An idea for a custom
electronic design often starts with some
basis specifications and functionalities.

It is often very tempting to start adding

whistles and bells along the design
process. This is so-called feature creep.

This is especially dangerous in electronic

design since it will quickly increase the
design’s complexity.

In the start of the design work, there

should be an emphasis on defining (a
limited set of) specifications. This should
make it clear what are must-haves and
nice-to-haves. This scope should be
closely guarded during the complete
design trajectory of the electronics.

Want to implement my
approach?
I use a dedicated house of quality
template for this. Feel free to check it out
and use it for your own projects:
hoq.sentineo.com
3. No focus on manufacturing
and testability
A very important point that is often overlooked is
that you should be able to manufacture your
electronic product with a minimal cost.

The choice of components, placement of

components, minimum distances, etc. are all
important factors that determine the total cost of
a project. What might be feasible on a small scale
might be failing on a large scale.

The same is true for testability: an assembled

product should allow sufficient testing
capabilities to ensure that the product that you
are selling will actually work. Quality assurance is
not an afterthought, but it should be incorporated
from day one.

4. No repeatable design process

A random electronic design process will get you exactly what you would expect: random results.

It is paramount to cooperate with an electronic design house with the necessary expertise in-house
for your specific application and a long track-record of design success and happy customers.
Hardware is hard?

This seems to be a well-known expression and assumption in the marketplace. The truth
is: if you are not skilled in an art, performing that art is indeed hard.

Choosing your partners

As a startup company, it is important that
you choose your partners wisely.
Cooperating with people skilled in the art,
with a lot of experience and a decent track
record will make the process viable and
enjoyable.

I have seen hardware design projects

escalate where we had to come on board
and extinguish the fires. This is typically a
consequence of cooperation with people
not skilled in their art. You should avoid
having any fires in the first place of course.

About Sentineo Trust the process

Hardware design should be fun for you, not It's dead simple: you want an unfair
hard. We make the process enjoyable and advantage for a successful design. You
from the get-go we know the road to want a partner with a streamlined process.
follow and the challenges to be tackled Knowing where you start and where you
way up front. end in a given timeframe and budget.

We have senior expertise in what we do Over the years, we have discovered many
and have a track record of happy pitfalls and challenges. We ran into them
customers. They will not tell you that once and then incorporated extra checks
hardware is hard. in our processes to avoid making them in
the future.

Do you want your hardware design process to feel fun, rather than
hard? Or are you currently facing challenges? Don't hesitate to
contact me for a free non-binding consultation:

calendar.sentineo.com
Where to go from here?

Do you have similar needs for electronic

design? Don't hesitate to get in touch
with Piet.

Piet Callemeyn
[email protected]
calendar.sentineo.com

YOUR UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

TURNING YOUR IDEA INTO A SUCCESSFUL ELECTRONIC PRODUCT

www.sentineo.com