Hold that Seat: You May Not Need a Head of Hardware
Hardware startups have many seats on the bus and you need to fill those seats with the right people at the right time. If you are not a hardware person, it can be tempting to hire a Head of Hardware in your early days. There are some incredibly talented people with this title. We’ve noticed this trend with some of the CEOs of our portfolio companies and understand the allure. However, I am hesitant to recommend that they hire a Head of Hardware. In fact, it may be dangerous.
What is a Head of Hardware?
“Head of Hardware” can mean different things to different people. Their responsibilities may include many or all aspects of end-to-end hardware production and management. They could also manage R&D activities for hardware, evaluating product designs and performing quality and reliability tests. They may also oversee preparing the prototype for mass production, improving products for better yield and reliability, and coordinating and managing outside vendors and contract manufacturers.
Here’s how one company, Toast, described the role in a job posting for a Head of Hardware Product: “You’ll be a critical part of the product leadership team, working directly with the founders and executive leadership to define Toast product direction and drive execution.” Individual tasks include overseeing full lifecycle of product, new product introduction, supply chain, pricing and revenue, and full P&L. Plus strategy: “Articulate business case for hardware projects that will make an impact for our customers and measure/quantify success.”
In this case, a head of hardware is someone with a broad mix of skills and a lot of experience. That’s not so easy to find in a hurry, and while you are searching for the right person, the development clock is ticking. In the short term at least, you should first look at whether you already have some or all of the skills you require in your office. Early stage companies are always a little messy and roles will blur; you are still at the point where everyone is taking out the trash and answering the customer support line. Roles have not ossified and your team is leveling up their skills.
If you are executing with the right people on the bus, you may find that in the long term you do not need a layer in your organization chart dedicated to hardware strategy. Some companies include hardware as a tool across multiple strategies and your company may be better served by topgrading a seat or two on the bus.
In most startups, there are several team members whose skills may overlap with those of a Head of Hardware:
Chief Operating Officer — If your operations are mostly hardware related, then the COO is the person in charge of scaling your business. They know how to oversee the many facets of logistics and operations involved in the development, manufacturing, and shipping of your products.
Chief Technology Officer — If your technology is mostly hardware related, then the CTO is the person who drives your product vision and develops and prototypes your technologies and products, including advanced technology research and testing.
Head of Product — If your product is mostly hardware related, then the Head of Product is the person who leads the cross-functional team that will build, market, sell, and support your product. They are the customer and market expert, bringing together insights and skills in business management, user experience, and technology.
At the risk of stating the obvious, you wouldn’t want to commit too soon to the cost of a head of human resources or marketing. A head of hardware also seems like an odd seat on the bus at any company; while Apple, Google, Xerox, and IBM have the role, other companies like Ford, Boeing, and Medtronic do not appear to have the role. Before you hire a Head of Hardware, carefully review your existing team’s experience and capabilities as you may already have hardware development covered without making an additional hire.
Map Your Gaps
At MiLA Capital and Make in LA, we coach founding teams early on to map the roles that they need to build and manage their hardware. Then place on the map the names of all the people on your team already who are most suited for those roles. This approach is best articulated by Michael Gerber in The E-Myth Revisited. We see that the founding team bring certain strengths to the company but even their roles evolve. They are often doing multiple roles in the early days but when the right person walks in and says “I can take this off your plate,” it almost always creates a net positive for the business. There is no one-size-fits-all answer when deciding how to structure roles and responsibilities for a company.
When you dissect the various business functions that might cover hardware, you often find that different companies have different duties and reports for a Head of Hardware based on what jobs need to be done. These job roles may include:
Manufacturing — The operations, engineering, product, or hardware departments may have ownership for getting products built.
Supply Chain — Responsibility for the supply chain and the complex logistics of sourcing materials and delivering products to market can be part of operations, product management, hardware or engineering departments.
Engineering — The engineering team brings together the functional disciplines needed to build the product. Engineering can be a separate department responsible for other teams like product, or it may be owned by the hardware, product, operations, or technology departments.
Quality Assurance — The responsibility for ensuring that products meet specified requirements via QA processes and teams may be owned by the Head of Hardware, but may also be part of operations, technology, product management or engineering.
Product P&L — Depending upon the number and complexity of products, the product P&L may be owned by the Head of Hardware or by a product or business group. This may even include cash flow management.
Clearly a Head of Hardware is seen as a leader with hands-on technical and validation experience across specialties, someone who can take products from concept to high-volume manufacturing.
With so much fluidity in hardware roles, it is dangerous to assume that only a Head of Hardware will be able to fill a lot of your empty seats. That’s why, for many founding teams, I am skeptical that the best way forward is to hire a Head of Hardware. Our recommendation: identify and fill specific gaps on your team and wait for the the magical Head of Hardware that will make you stronger, not the one that allows you to abdicate your opportunity to build a world class team (that includes hardware talent).
