Who am I and what do I do?

Absolutely nobody. I don't have any successful startups under my belt or any of my own products out for sale. But this is what I'm trying to change. I'm just a simple electrical engineer who's always wanted to build my own company and grow the HW space.

What's the problem here?

I find that there's large barriers to doing a startup, and even more so if you're doing a hardware startup. If you have the technical knowledge, you have little idea how to get your product out into the hands of your customers. If you're more of a business guy with an idea, you have little idea about if it is design-feasible unless you find yourself a technical co-founder. And probably most people are confused about how to mass production and distribution. I want to create a community where we exchange advice, experiences, and contacts (optional) to try and create a better network for all hardware startups.

Why can't we just use the Reddit search function or Google?

Yes, we can all definitely do that. I've been doing it for years, but it's only really gotten me so far. Sometimes you just need to be able to message someone and say "hey, I need to do this thing, do you know anyone that can help?" and be responded with "hey, yeah, let me get you intro you to this guy" or even "hey, yeah my company/product/service can help you, let's chat more" Or maybe you just want to ask a question and not be answered with "lolol that's never going to work" without a reason why it won't work

Let me know what you guys think about this in the comments.

The auto-invite to Slack is here: http://hwstartup.herokuapp.com

The link to the Slack community is here: https://hwstartup.slack.com