The #1 Podcast for Hardware Founders and Inventors
Practical guidance for taking a physical product from invention idea to store shelves.
Join Kevin Mako and experienced founders, investors, engineers, manufacturers, retailers, and growth experts for candid conversations about validating, funding, building, launching, selling, and scaling hardware products.
Hosted by Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and MAKO Invent, who has advised more than 1,500 founders and built MAKO through an eight-figure acquisition.
Sponsored by TriMech, offering a comprehensive range of design, engineering, and manufacturing solutions backed by expertise that is unrivalled in the industry.
What You Will Learn
A great product idea is only the beginning. Every episode goes inside a real decision that can shape a product’s cost, timeline, market potential, and chances of success.
Test the opportunity, define the customer, and choose the right path before making expensive commitments.
Plan and manage product development, testing, specialist teams, and intellectual property strategy with fewer blind spots.
Prepare campaigns, approach investors, protect cash, and match the funding path to the stage of the business.
Select partners, improve quality, understand costs, and prepare a product and team for production.
Build demand, sharpen the offer, reach the right customers, and turn attention into product revenue.
Strengthen operations, expand channels, grow enterprise value, and make better long-range decisions.
Experience Behind the Microphone
Kevin Mako is one of North America’s leading experts in hardware startup strategy. He founded MAKO Invent, grew the company across four offices, helped more than 1,500 founders, and led it through an eight-figure acquisition by TriMech Group. Each conversation combines Kevin’s operator perspective with direct lessons from people who build, fund, manufacture, market, and scale physical products.
From Listening to Action
A podcast can give you the playbook. Product Startup consulting helps you apply it to your specific product, market, budget, and next decision. Work directly with Kevin to pressure-test your product strategy, validation plan, funding path, development priorities, manufacturing readiness, launch, or scale.
If the next decision matters, get experienced guidance before time and money are committed in the wrong direction.
233 Expert Conversations
Browse practical lessons from the people building, funding, manufacturing, launching, and scaling physical products.
Will Ford of LaunchBoom explains how product founders can use crowdfunding to validate demand, improve campaign conversion, preserve equity, and build momentum for growth.
David Brown explains how 3D CAD video renderings turn product data into compelling demos, exploded views, and investor-ready stories. He also covers storyboards, virtual environments, lighting, and post-production.
Hamdy Albana explains how a hardware brand can start selling on its own website, test audiences and creative with Meta ads, and use first-party customer data to scale. The episode also covers ad metrics, retargeting, and the point at which campaign automation becomes more useful.
Elizabeth Corbett explains how packaging can protect a hardware product, communicate its brand, support the sales channel, and improve the unboxing experience. She also covers cost, sustainability, shipping, influencer kits, and ways packaging can strengthen the customer relationship.
Patent attorney Tom Dunlap explains the main forms of intellectual property protection available to hardware startups. The conversation covers utility and design patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, provisional applications, international filing, and claim scope.
Jon Davids explains how product founders can build a community before they have anything to sell. He covers belief-led positioning, authentic content, consistent messaging, trust, and giving prospective customers a reason to follow the journey.
Jeff Lerner explains how a product startup can sell directly to larger companies as a promotional or operational solution. He covers internal champions, organizational value, customer education, local networking, and the advantages of a genuinely new product.
Valentin Radu explains how customer research, unit economics, and outcome-focused messaging can raise a product’s perceived value. He also discusses customer lifetime value, acquisition cost, emotional buying decisions, and why features should support a larger customer promise.
John Conafay explains how hardware teams can give designers, engineers, manufacturers, customers, and investors the right information at the right time. The episode covers communication boundaries, real-time change tracking, a single source of truth, IP protection, and lower administrative overhead.
Danny Angers explains how VOSKER used customer behavior and direct feedback to discover new verticals and scale internationally. He shares how to interview early users, prioritize broad-use features, adapt selectively, and validate each market with a focused MVP.
Tim Uys explains the different jobs of mechanical and pre-production prototypes for plastic products. He covers mechanism validation, material and process choices, design for manufacturing, injection moulding, feature control, and the risks of taking concept CAD directly to production.
Micki Vandeloo explains how US hardware companies can prepare for state and federal grants, from proving market traction to building a credible project plan. She also covers funding levels, grant purposes, budgets, post-award requirements, and the risk of overpromising results.
Never Miss a Practical Lesson
Subscribe wherever you listen so the next useful lesson reaches you before your next major product decision.