🚀 The 7 Hires a Hardware Startup Needs to Get Right
a16z's American Dynamism team interviewed founders from Tesla, Rivian, Hadrian, Anduril and others to identify seven non-engineering hires — manufacturing, deployments, supply chain, finance, sales, policy and marketing — that determine whether a hard-tech company scales into a real business. Examples include Rivian cutting its supplier count from 600+ on its R1 to a more concentrated base on R2, and defense/energy sales requiring founders to build relationships six to twelve months ahead of RFPs. For investors, it signals that go-to-market and government-sales execution, not just engineering talent, are the real differentiators in hardware and defense investing.
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