Steinn Gustafsson

Bio

Steinn Gustafsson is the founder of Chevin Technology, a leading IP developer of accelerated security and data protocols and compute engines for defence, aerospace, and scientific markets. With over 25 years of expertise in FPGA technology, he has pioneered solutions for communication systems, ASIC design, signal processing, and digital security, earning multiple patents. Steinn leads a team of skilled engineers, fostering innovation and collaboration to deliver secure, high-performance, low-latency solutions. Passionate about both technical excellence and personal growth, he builds strategic partnerships that drive mutual success in tackling complex industry challenges

Awards

Arm Silicon Startup Contest – runner up $150000

Announced at Silicon Catalyst Portfolio Company Update, May 2025

Intro

Steinn Gustafsson, a seasoned engineer and entrepreneur, embarks on a compelling discussion with Jothy Rosenberg regarding the intricacies of bootstrapping a hardware startup in a predominantly software-centric landscape. Steinn, the founder of Chevin Technology, shares his transformative journey from consultancy to innovating patented IP protection technologies, elucidating the unique challenges faced by hardware enterprises, including higher costs and elongated development cycles. He emphasizes the paramount importance of a robust sales pipeline, especially in times of economic fluctuation. The conversation delves into the significance of intellectual property in the realm of security, particularly in safeguarding AI models and sensitive data. Steinn’s unwavering determination, inspired by the tenacity of Thomas Edison, serves as a testament to the resilience required in the pursuit of technological advancement and entrepreneurial success.

Conversation

The conversation between Jothy Rosenberg and Steinn Gustafsson unveils the intricate dynamics of establishing a hardware startup amidst a predominantly software-oriented industry. Steinn, originally from Iceland, recounts his diverse educational journey across Norway, Sweden, and Scotland, which ultimately led him to the United Kingdom. He reflects on the formidable challenges faced in the hardware sector, particularly emphasizing the substantial financial investment and prolonged development timelines compared to software ventures. The dialogue transitions into the genesis of Chevin Technology, a design house that evolved from consultancy to the development of innovative intellectual property (IP) protection technology. This pivot was not merely a business decision; it was a response to the urgent need for robust security measures in a landscape rife with vulnerabilities. The episode elucidates Steinn's entrepreneurial spirit, likening him to the renowned inventor Thomas Edison, whose tenacity and problem-solving acumen serve as an inspiration for Steinn's approach to overcoming obstacles in his entrepreneurial endeavors.

As the discussion progresses, Steinn delves into the methodologies employed at Chevin Technology, particularly the intricate process of developing patented solutions that safeguard various forms of digital assets, from artificial intelligence models to encryption keys. This segment highlights the significant implications of IP protection in the modern technological landscape, where safeguarding intellectual property is paramount for sustaining competitive advantage. Jothy and Steinn engage in a thoughtful exploration of the market's evolving demands and the critical importance of foresight in nurturing a sustainable sales funnel. The episode concludes with reflections on the resilience required for entrepreneurship, emphasizing the necessity of preparation and adaptability in navigating the unpredictable nature of startup life. Such insights resonate deeply within the entrepreneurial community, providing a roadmap for aspiring hardware innovators seeking to carve their niche in a challenging yet rewarding field.

Takeaways

• The journey to establish a hardware startup necessitates a profound understanding of both the engineering and business landscapes.
• Hardware startups require significantly more capital and longer development cycles compared to their software counterparts, making financial planning crucial.
• Effective problem-solving in technology often resembles the medical practice of differential diagnosis, eliminating possibilities to identify root causes.
• Building a robust sales funnel is essential; proactive marketing efforts should not be neglected during prosperous times to avoid future revenue crises.
• The importance of intellectual property protection in hardware startups cannot be overstated, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with security concerns.
• Stein Gustafsson's transition from consultancy to a hardware-focused company exemplifies the challenges and rewards inherent in the startup ecosystem.

• Chevin Technology | LinkedIn
• Steinn's LinkedIn
• Ultimate Performance IP for your FPGA - Chevin Technology
• Who Says You Can't Startup | Full Bundle | Incorrigible Entrepreneur - The online course for startup founders
• Our YouTube channel
• Designing Successful Startups — Jothy Rosenberg | Author | Speaker | Podcaster - Site with all podcasts
• Tech Startup Toolkit book
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Jothy Rosenberg: 00:00:03

Hello. Please meet today's guest, Steinn Gustafsson.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:00:08

One of my inspirations is Thomas Edison, and that's a person who's a scientist, but more an engineer and somebody who's got the tenacity and the. And the resilience to keep working at a problem. I can relate to that.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:00:22

What does it take to bootstrap a hardware startup in a world obsessed with software? My guest today, Steinn Gustafsson, made the journey from Iceland to Cambridge, UK, by way of Norway, Sweden and Scotland to find out.

rting as a solo consultant in: 2003

It's more expensive, takes longer, and when your customers suddenly disappear, you better have been filling that sales funnel. But here's the thing. Stein's not deterred.

He's a problem solver in the Thomas Edison mold, the kind of engineer who tears apart broken radios as a kid just to see what's inside. And recently, he won ARM Startup Contest with $150,000 in credits. Today we're diving into what makes hardware startups different.

Why IP protection is the frontier of security and where grit really comes from. Let's go. Well, hello. Welcome to the podcast, Stein. I'm glad to have you here.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:01:35

Hi, Jothy. Hey. Thank you for inviting me to the podcast. Really, really nice to see you.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:01:41

I always like to start with a context setting question, which is where are you originally from and where do you live now?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:01:51

Originally, I'm from Iceland. I was born in Iceland and now I've made my way to Cambridge, United Kingdom. Bit of convoluted path, really.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:02:01

Yeah, you're the first person I've ever met other than when I've flown through Rezvik. That's from Iceland. That was born on Iceland. It's got to be a small number of people.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:02:17

Yeah, not so many people there. Tiny, tiny little place in the middle of the Atlantic. There's a lot of moss and, you know, just shrubs and stuff.

But yeah, it's a pretty tough climate. My favorite time to go there is summer because it's. You have light. 24 hour of light. It just doesn't go. Doesn't go dark at all.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:02:35

So you mentioned that you've also moved to a whole bunch of other countries. So tell us, what were some of the spots along the way, and why did you go there?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:02:43

I grew up in Norway. My parents immigrated to Norway when I was, when I was very young. And so I grew up in Norway, in Oslo, Oslo area.

And later on I moved to Sweden, so for studies, engineering studies, and then to Scotland or as well to do my engineering degree in Scotland and finally to the south of England.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:03:06

Okay, so you went to graduates, did your graduate work in hardware engineering, electronics, semiconductors. What attracted you to that?

That, because we're going to get into a few, in a few minutes we're going to get into your current company, which is a hardware company. But, but how, what attracted you to it?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:03:24

I was just fascinated by technology and electronics and in science, well, chemistry as well, you know, as a, as a kid. And you know, at the time there was computers where home computers were becoming popular.

You know, the big 20, Commodore 664 and the, you know, Sinclair Spectrum, as well as the electronic kits. You could, you could create a radio transmitter or receiver with only a few components. It was just fascinating.

So that was a sort of the original tinkering with those things as a, as a kid and with that sort of technology sort of formed the basis of where I knew from early time I wanted to go into engineering, electronic engineering.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:04:09

And, and then you, you didn't just dive into a startup, so you did, you worked at a few other companies along the way before you did this, this startup. What, what sort of experiences were you picking up at at these various companies?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:04:29

So I, I worked with, after university, I went straight into a company, it was a small company and we were working with FPGAs. So FPGAs field programmable gate Arrays. These are programmable hardware chips that were quite new at the time.

We used one of the first ones in university, actually. And I thought, hey, this is really cool. You can create your own circuit with the actual circuit.

It's not a software processor, it's actual circuits that run in parallel. And the company I worked first after university was company in Norway.

We were developing some of the first projectors at the time they were mostly used for business, but you know, they're used everywhere now.

But these ones were made with mirror arrays and we were doing all the signal processing in digital logic, basically controlling every individual mirror on this, on this chip.

So that was my first, my first engineering job off the university working with these, with these devices and these devices later on when I moved to uk, working in digital communications, these type of devices used for signal processing and rf, you know, radio frequency, up conversion, down conversion, little filtering.

And that's where my, my, my interest was Turned a bit more towards the, the software side because there's no, there's no, there's no soldering involved apart from, you know, when you. With some of the circuit boards, like with PLLs and things like that, with the soldering.

But the rest of the work was all done on a computer, almost like software.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:06:06

There's sort of two parts to this question. One is where did you get the sort of the bug to go do a startup of your own?

But related to that is where did the idea come from for why the world needed this new company? What problem needed to be solved, in your view?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:06:23

Yeah, so I think I always had a bit of an entrepreneurial mind mind all along running a business and having an idea about doing something. And with electronic engineering, it's. The startup really was just a consultancy.

As an independent consultant, I thought, well, I can start off like that and I can build that with a bigger consultancy.

And that was basically the first startup in engineering was creating a design consultancy to do engineering design services in the fields that I'd gained experience in from years working in the digital communications and signal processing fields. So that of course developed into what we got now.

ou know, the dot com crash in: 2003

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:07:29

And is that was, was it already called Chevin?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:07:32

echnology. So Fast forward to: 2011

After years of consulting, I was getting more and more, more and more work from, from clients and so much work that I couldn't, couldn't take it all on. So it was. The opportunity was, you know, turn, turn down work or scale up. And, and that was a pretty easy choice to make then to sort of.

Right now we can, we can pivot into, into a design consultancy, a sort of design house and scale up a team.

And that's when we sort of created the new name Chevron Technology based on creating a new, new branding, you know, the new, the new look with the new offices and you know, big pivot.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:08:21

You know, it's a, it's a great way to start a company, starting with services and at the Right. Time morphing into more product.

Even if it's not completely self funded, you're going to need a lot less capital from investors who dilute you if you do it that way.

I'm gathering from the way you're describing this that you were a design house for, you know, building whatever your clients came to you and said they needed.

But the way I, you know, first heard about you, because I'm a former, and you're a current member of Silicon Catalyst, an incubator in California around a specific technology which has to do with security in a large, to, to a large extent. So it, you know, can you, can you talk a little bit about what that's all about and what the opportunity might be for that?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:09:12

Yes. So that's, that's interesting.

So we, so as we've pivoted to a, to a design, design house, we started developing, we were developing a lot of code and solutions for our customers and in doing so we, we, we thought some of the, some of the technologies we should develop ourselves and, and then license to our customers as an ip.

Rather than just have paid, paid hours, we, we set aside some investment, some time to create IPs that could be then licensed to multiple times to customers.

And we started doing that with an Ethernet Mac, a low latency Ethernet Mac for the sort of high frequency trading, you know, investment banks, that kind of thing. But with IPs, you, you quickly get into a position that the customer wants to try something out, sort of evaluate, try before you buy.

And you basically have to hand over some code, some, some, some ip. And so the customer can try it. And if they want to use it, then they carry on using it. And if not, they hand it back.

It's quite difficult to hand something back when it's code. Right. Because it's not a tangible thing and difficult to.

We had contracts how the evaluation could be used, but we really wanted to have a way to, a technical limitation to, to make sure that an evaluation was used only on one bit of hardware.

And that's where we were looking for commercial solutions for that, something that would help us deliver software for FPGAs and make sure that they can be used fully functional, but then not be carried on using or using on without adhering to the, to the, to the license agreement. And there were several tools available, but we found that they, they were all protecting the EDA tool vendors more than they would protect us.

Yeah, you know what I mean? The tools, they would sort of node lock it, but it was no locked to the compilation tools for the fpga, for instance.

So that protects the revenue for the EDA vendors. But the IP was not very well protected.

And sort of in: 2018

And that's a security.

It means that we can ship IP to a customer and know that that can only run on their system, you know, on a couple of units, and then we can ship keys that will allow the customer to either continue using it on those units or scale it up and use it on multiple units. But there's actually, that's technical, a limitation of like a lock, their hardware becomes like a hardware lock that we.

And that's the basis of our patent.

And we saw that the method of what we're delivering is, you know, very useful for our needs, but it also can protect, you know, any function that's running on a computer, and not just an fpga, but an asic, a cpu, any kind of hardware. And that's where that security, with our pivot towards security then happened.

Around that time we realized that, you know, this, this is the, the opportunity for us to, to license this as a, as a product in its own right.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:13:01

When you describe it as for you, it was protecting ip and then you, you so sort of saw the bigger generalization. It's really going to be able to protect any blob of bits that are sitting in, in memory.

So it can, it could protect the models used for AI, it could protect encryption keys, it could protect people's private data. It's got extremely general applicability.

And the fact that you've already got an issued patent, and I hope you have that patent in the US as well as the UK and elsewhere. Yes, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm big into patents. There's 13 of them right there.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:13:43

It's very nice. I like the US patent. It's this gold print and it's, you know, it's a. I haven't framed it, but it's. Yeah, it looks great. We got the US patent.

Well, we got the UK patent first and then we got the US patent last year. Granted. And congratulations in the pipeline.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:14:01

I love this concept. This is so needed.

And the environment that you described is, is one where they have to protect and that's, and, you know, and the, and the EDA guys focused on their, their own needs in the business of IP licensing and for, you know, for listeners, ip, we're using IP in the general sense of the word, truly intellectual property. Not. But, but the word is, it's used to describe patents, but patents is just one type of ip.

And when we're talking about IP licensing for hardware, it's really the, the, the general concept is somebody who is making a device has a, a set of things they want to have, have, you know, done inside that device. And for that they need a computer or a few computers and then they need things that, that are augmenting that whatever that computer is.

So they might get the processor from ARM and they might get some security technology from, you know, one, one company and some communications technology from somebody else. And each of those is ip. That all has to be put together. That's a challenging thing.

But you also, when you're, this is where, when you're providing your ip, you don't want somebody who's downstream from you to steal it.

You know, it could happen especially with these, these AI models now because the world has gone crazy around AI, which, you know, maybe is fine, but, but it's, we always go really crazy when there's something, you know, new on the block. Right now it's AI. Anyway, there's, there's a lot that has to be protected there and their models are huge, absolutely huge.

So I think this is just really fantastic. Hi there. I hope you're enjoying the show.

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The QR code will take you where you can learn more. Now back to the podcast.

Speaking broadly about running a hardware company versus a software company, what do you think some of the additional challenges for a hardware company are?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:16:54

It's far more costly, the startup cost and the capital you need to do a hardware to run a hardware business. Even if you're not talking about ASICs, developing your own ASIC, but even, you know, boards and FPGAs.

I mean a lot of them cost, cost a lot of money and startup cost with compared to software we can just you know, spin up some instances and of on Amazon and you know, off you go. But it takes a lot a longer time and also I think, you know, developing hardware, the design cycle is much slower, longer time.

Anyone who's designed anything in rtl, the language of designing circuits knows it's you know, hello world, you know, that's, that's just one line on software. But you know, in hardware, well you have a lot of, a lot of things to, many more things to consider and it takes a longer time.

So it's costly, time consuming and you know, challenging to.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:17:53

Since I'm running a hardware company too, I'll. I'll add another thing. So.

So my company is in the business of licensing IP for securing the main processor that's going to be on a device like an ARM or a RISC V processor.

For us, one of the additional costs we had, all the costs you just described but the one that really finally kneecapped us was how long the sales cycle is. Because when you're licensing IP to somebody and this is where I wish I'd had a consulting business first but that didn't work out in our situation.

But you know, if you had that steady stream of revenue, even if it wasn't enough to completely fund the company, it would give you a base of revenue that you would just, you know, that would keep you going. So here's the for instance. So we had a Lighthouse customer and they were a big one.

You know, it was, and I can say who it is because it's not a problem.

It was N X P and they, they loved our technology and they started to work with us closely to put it into their, to their systems and it and they had to do the integration with the ARM processor that they were using and that was going on and going on. And that as you, as you just pointed out, took a long time to get even a prototype working.

And it's not just because of our stuff, it's because they were still developing theirs. That's when they want to bring in the third party ip.

Well then after a year and a half of working together there was a reorg and the head of the unit that was responsible for what we were doing with them was asked to retire. We were done. We were absolutely kicked out. So that year and a half of my entire team working on and we were just over the moon.

That NXP was our Lighthouse customer. And then the opposite, whatever the opposite of over the moon is, you know down in the doldrums was after they canceled the project and that.

And the timing was, of course, horrible because I was really just about to raise my series A and Covid hit right then. So we really got the hammer.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:20:14

Yeah. Sounds like a series of setbacks. And yeah, that's, that's tough. You know, that's when you get.

If you have one Lighthouse customer, like you say, you know, do that. And they'd say that's a long, long process to replace that and find another. Another one. So how do you solve?

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:20:33

I'm in the process. In the process.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:20:36

Yeah.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:20:37

I have one offer and I'm hoping to improve on that offer before I have to decide. I want to, you know, publicly, here, give you huge kudos for the award you won from arm that was, you know, really, really great.

Well, I like to think of you as just down the street from ARM in Cambridge. You're pretty close.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:21:01

Yes.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:21:03

And I wanted to know if you're. You're going to be able to use this nice relationship you seem to have gotten started with them and leverage them as a partner because.

Wow, they could be incredibly helpful.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:21:17

Yes. Yeah. And thank you.

We were just totally over the moon about that, about that prize in the startup contest from ARM and the support on that, and that's obviously $150,000 credit towards the tablet, which, with an ARM chip, which is, you know, we need, we need arm. We need the support, we need the. We need the tech.

Well, the technology, all those things to happen for us to be able to create that product and tape it out. But it's incredibly good support and a good starting point.

We, of course, need a lot of other things to happen as well before we can get to utilize that to get to our chip. But that's in our, in our roadmap now, and difficult to say, you know, how much time we need to get there, but we've got plans on how to do that.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:22:15

All of us that built startups have made mistakes. Is there a mistake that you've made? I'm just going to assume for a second that you've made a mistake.

Is there a mistake you've made that you could maybe tell the story of as a potential, you know, learning experience for everyone that hope, you know, can maybe avoid making the same mistake you did?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:22:42

Yes. Yeah. Very, very good. Well, of course, you know, lots of mistakes and, you know, lots of, lots of trial and error and, you know, it's.

You learn from the mistakes, not the successes. Right. You, you know, that's the, that's the way.

But I think I would go back to a challenging time for sharing technology, which happened when one of our customers, or actually several at the same time were scaling back and we were doing a lot of design services and then suddenly our customer hit the buffer and we struggled to sort of compensate for the sales that suddenly disappeared, evaporated at that point very quickly. So I would, you know, looking back, I would, I would like to have spent more time with the sales funnel.

So preparing, you know, preparing for that, for an eventuality like that, you know, maybe, maybe spent more, more on marketing though. I think we underestimated the, the marketing and the sales.

You know, when, when that's, when they're, when you are selling and everything's great, you know, you've got to pre for the next product or the next big sale in advance. I think that was a tough learning experience to go through, but that's what I would like to share with anyone in that position.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:24:10

Well, you made it. Obviously you recovered. You pulled it off.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:24:15

Yes. Well, that also resulted in a pivot.

It's like, okay, I think that's when we sort of doubled down on our IP creation, creating or developing IP and use that time, you know, when we weren't billing customers, then we started developing our own products at that time.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:24:36

My last question. It's going to be simple. Well, it's simple to ask anyway. And that is we all know takes grit to do a startup.

And I want to know what your grit story is. Where does it come from for you?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:24:49

Sorry, what do you mean by that? The.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:24:51

What do I mean by grit? What I mean is resilience, determination, drive, unwillingness to give up. Those are sort of the sub characteristics of grit.

Where does your grit come from?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:25:07

I see.

I think it's just the, you know, one of my inspirations is Thomas Edison and that's a person who's scientist, but more an engineer and somebody who's got the tenacity and the, and the resilience to keep working at a problem. Okay, so that's, I think that's, I can relate to that in solving a technical problem or any sort of problem.

I like to just get to the bottom of a problem and find out the causes of why something's not working and keep working at it until I can solve it. So I'm a problem solver. I like doing that. If it takes a long time, a lot of, lot of work, that's not a deterrent.

So of course, you know, doing a startup and we've been bootstrapped so far. You know, it takes a lot of work. It's a huge amount of work.

But you know, when you have a problem you're trying to solve for, well, for us or a customer or something like that, it's incredibly rewarding. You know, when you, when you've managed to crack a problem that is just seems very difficult at first.

And then of course, in hindsight, you know, you rely on, on knowing that or trust that you, you think afterwards, all right, well, it was a solution to it. And it was pretty obvious when you, when you look back and just have that faith in that you can do the work, you can, you can find a solution to it.

So I think that's, I don't know if that's the great story, but you know, I like it. I like that sort of challenge. I've always liked that. Well, I think it is, I like to learn new things.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:26:40

Yeah, the sort of natural follow on is, do you think you were like this as a kid? Were you just like naturally this focused? Never give up, keep trying. Curiosity is driving you. Whatever.

Was that there all the time or did that develop later?

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:27:00

I think it was there all the time. You know, to problem solving, you know, to learning new things, you know, referring to a TV or a radio apart and see what's inside it.

And then, or if something was an amplifier or something was broken. All right, so I'm going to swap out the transistors, you know, or the capacitors.

Find the problem, you know, kept going at it until, until I'd found the, you know, the issue, which usually is something super trivial, you know, I mean, stupid. Like a single transistor or capacitor is tough and needs to be replaced.

You know, it's rarely anything very, very complicated, but it just seems complicated at the beginning. The more you look into it, at first you go, this is very complicated. What is it called? Like this bathtub curve.

You look into it and then there's like a can of worms. But then you sort through it and you see. Well, it's actually not that difficult once, you know, like everything, it's easy once, you know.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:27:56

I come from a medical family. Both parents were doctors, brother became a doctor. I married a. What's in this country called a physician assistant.

And she's trained basically the same as a doctor up to a two year degree. The way you and I think about it, because I come from also an engineering background, but it's computer science.

The way in which we diagnose something is almost identical to the way they do it. And they call it differential diagnosis. And what they do is they. They start trying to eliminate things.

They say, okay, well, let's see, what are some of the really bad things this. These symptoms could mean? And they try to eliminate those quickly and eventually, oh, okay. So it's. It's this. And this is how we solve this problem.

And I. I hear her going through all this, and it's like, wow, that's exactly how I do it. When there's a. When there's a problem in a computer program or. Or, you know, for me nowadays, it's like something around the house.

I try to figure out, well, what is it not.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:29:05

Yes.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:29:06

And it's a great way to, you know, solve problems.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:29:12

Well, yes. Yeah, I agree.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:29:16

I want to thank you because I think this is very interesting stuff. The way you've. The business models that you're using, the technology you've developed, I think it's. It's a.

It's on a great trajectory, and of course, you still have to work extremely hard, and there's a lot of hurdles to get over, but it's. It seems, you know, really good. And I'm going to see if I can help just a little tiny bit if I can. And I'm. I'm. I'm excited for you.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:29:52

Thank you. Thank you, Jothy. That's. It's been really great and excited to hear about. About the. The technology you're working on as well. And, you know, we've.

We seem to be in similar kind of lines of lines of work and.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:30:08

A little bit and.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:30:09

Yeah. Excited, excited. Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's very exciting. And thanks for inviting me to the podcast, Andrew. And you've got a book. Signed copy.

I'm really.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:30:22

I do. It's excited about. It's going to. It's going to be coming your way in just a few days.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:30:28

Yes. All right.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:30:29

Well, it takes a little bit longer to get over there, but it might take a little over a week, actually, to get to you. It'll be on its way. So. Thank you for being on the podcast.

Steinn Gustafsson: 00:30:40

Thank you for. Thank you for the. Thank you for inviting me to the podcast. It's. Yeah, it's been great. Thank you.

Jothy Rosenberg: 00:30:46

Here are your toolkit takeaways. Number one, Feed the funnel.

When times are good, when you're billing customers and everything's humming, that's precisely when you need to invest in marketing and sales. Stein learned this the hard way.

When several customers scaled back simultaneously, don't wait for revenue to evaporate, build your pipeline when you have the bandwidth, not when you're desperate. Number two Hardware math is different. Plan accordingly.

Hardware startups need more capital, longer development cycles, and have slower sales processes than software. You can't just spin up AWS instances and iterate.

Every board costs money, every FPGA costs money, and your Lighthouse Customer might take 18 months to integrate your IP only to reorganize and cancel the project budget for all of this. Number three Solve problems like a doctor Use differential diagnosis. Start by eliminating what it's not.

Whether you're debugging code, fixing an amplifier, or diagnosing why customers aren't buying, systematically rule out causes until you find the real issue. It seems complicated at first, but as Stein says, it's always easy once you know. Now, go audit your sales funnel today, not next quarter.

If you're busy. That means you have time to prevent tomorrow's crisis. Start now. And that is our show with Stein. The show notes contain useful resources and links.

Please follow and rate us@podchaser.com designingsuccessful startups. Also, please share and like us on your social media channels. This is Jothi Rosenberg saying TTFN Tata for now.