Don't build the wrong thing.

Most hardware startups don't fail because the product is bad.

They fail because the founder never stopped to ask the right questions.

Who actually has this problem — and will pay to solve it? Do the unit economics work at any realistic volume? Who makes it, where, and what happens when that relationship breaks? What certifications do you need before you can legally sell a single unit?

These aren't nice-to-have questions. They're the ones that determine whether your company survives the first two years.

The Hardware Startup Canvas exists to force those questions early — before you've burned through your runway finding out the hard way.

This isn't a lecture. It's a working session.

You'll fill out your Hardware Startup Canvas live, with guidance — covering all 12 sections, including the three that most strategy frameworks skip entirely: BOM cost and unit economics, supply chain and CM strategy, and certifications and compliance.

The session follows the Hardware Startup Canvas — a 12-section strategic planning tool built specifically for physical product companies, based on Lean Canvas with hardware-specific extensions.

Shawn O'Keefe has spent two decades helping founders build the right things. He led New Zealand's first hardware accelerator, was brought in by Army Futures Command to run their hardware accelerator at the Army Applications Laboratory, and has launched products across HealthTech, IoT, and beyond. He put together the Hardware Startup Canvas because most strategy frameworks were never designed for physical products.