Starting a software company is famously straightforward. With a laptop, a cloud account, and a great idea, you can build a product that reaches millions. Starting a hardware company, on the other hand, has always been a brutal, bare-knuckle fight against the physical world—a world of factories, components, shipping containers, and customs forms.

But in the post-pandemic landscape of 2025, that fight has become exponentially harder. The global supply chain, once a reliable and well-oiled machine that made building gadgets cheap and predictable, has become a chaotic and unpredictable maze. For hardware startups, just getting their product manufactured and delivered is now their single greatest challenge, acting as a “great filter” that separates the most resilient founders from the rest.

The Post-Pandemic Nightmare: A Perfect Storm

Even years after the initial lockdowns, the supply chain remains deeply scarred. The headline-grabbing semiconductor shortage may have eased, but it’s been replaced by a frustrating game of “whack-a-mole.”

• Component Scarcity: One month, it might be impossible to source a specific type of display controller. The next, a common capacitor suddenly has a 52-week lead time. This unpredictability makes production planning a nightmare. A single, cheap, missing component can halt the entire assembly line for a product worth thousands of dollars.
• Volatile Logistics: The cost and reliability of shipping have been thrown into chaos. Lingering port congestion, rising fuel costs, and labor shortages mean that getting a container of finished goods from a factory in Asia to a warehouse in North America can cost triple what it did a few years ago, with delivery dates that are merely a suggestion.
• Geopolitical Headwinds: The ongoing tech and trade disputes, particularly between the U.S. and China, have added another layer of extreme uncertainty. The threat of new tariffs or export controls forces startups to constantly re-evaluate where they source their components and manufacture their products—a massively complex and expensive undertaking.

The New Playbook for Hardware Survival

The old model of simply finding the cheapest supplier for each part on a bill of materials is dead. Smart hardware startups are now forced to become experts in global logistics and are adopting a new playbook built on resilience.

1. Design for Resilience, Not Just Cost: Instead of designing a circuit board around one specific, hard-to-find component, engineers are now designing for flexibility. This means creating boards that can accept several different, alternative components from various manufacturers. It adds complexity and cost to the initial design phase but provides a crucial lifeline when a specific part inevitably becomes unavailable.

2. Diversify Everything (The “China +1” Strategy): Putting all your manufacturing eggs in one basket is no longer an option. Founders are actively pursuing a “China +1” strategy, keeping some production in China while actively developing relationships with factories in other regions like Vietnam, Mexico, India, or Eastern Europe. This diversification is expensive, but it hedges against geopolitical risk and single-point-of-failure shutdowns.

3. Deep Supplier Relationships: The relationship with component suppliers and contract manufacturers has shifted from purely transactional to deeply personal. In a world of shortages, suppliers will prioritize the customers they know and trust. Founders are now spending a significant amount of their time building these relationships, understanding that a good rapport can be the difference between getting a shipment of crucial parts or being told they’re out of stock.

4. Crowdfunding as a Litmus Test: Platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are being used less as a way to fund a dream and more as a pragmatic tool to de-risk manufacturing. Founders will now often wait until their supply chain is locked down and a manufacturing slot is secured before launching a crowdfunding campaign to gauge real-world demand and raise the capital needed for that specific production run.

Building a hardware company has never been for the faint of heart. But today, the hustle requires more than just a great idea and a clever design. It requires a founder to be a diplomat, a logistics expert, and a global strategist. The startups that succeed in this new era will be the ones who master the maze.