Hardware founder posts a detailed post-mortem on selling 2,500 units
A founder who sold 2,500 MIDI recorders wrote up what they learned and offered to answer questions in the thread. The AMA attracted genuine curiosity, with questions about near-fatal early mistakes, anti-counterfeiting strategy, and supply chain specifics. The title says 'hardware is not so hard', which is both true and a bit of bait given how much can go wrong.
This is a useful data point against the prevailing wisdom that hardware startups are too risky or capital-intensive for indie founders. A niche physical product with a clear user base, careful manufacturing, and realistic volume expectations can actually work. 2,500 units is not a unicorn outcome, but it's a real business.
The counterfeiting question is telling. Once you have a product that sells, copying becomes a threat, and hardware founders have fewer IP enforcement tools than software founders. That's a real structural asymmetry worth going in eyes-open.
So what?
Hardware is viable at small scale if you pick a specific niche and manage manufacturing carefully. The more interesting takeaway for software founders is that physical products can create moats that software alone cannot, especially in markets like music hardware where tactile experience matters. The margin structure is different, but it's not worse.