Technology
Startups, here’s how you can make hardware without ruining the planet

TL;DR: Weave sustainability into the product design as early as you can

Nobody starts a hardware company with the express goal of destroying as much of the planet as they possibly can. Walking around the startup hall at CES, however, I noticed that — with a few notable exceptions — there was painfully little attention given to material choice, repairability, ease of disassembly and considerations around the end of usable life.
It’s embarrassing, really — but as someone who used to run a hardware startup, I know it can be hard to prioritize when you have limited time and resources. However, if you can’t make planet-friendly choices as the founder of a startup, when the buck literally stops with you, when can you?
In an effort to figure out how you can create greener hardware, we spoke with Lauryn Menard, a professor at the California College of the Arts, where she teaches the future of biodesign. She’s also an adviser to Women in Design SF and the co-founder and creative director at PROWL Studio, an Oakland, California-based design and material futures consultancy focusing on sustainable solutions.
“As a startup, you have choices. The thing is, it’s such a capitalistic society we live in, and a lot of decisions are made based on time and money,” Menard explained. The startups want to think about sustainability, but they are moving at breakneck speed and trying to get a product to market as soon as possible. “The startups need to hit their target price point and all that good stuff.”
“You don’t have to adopt a new bioplastic, you can instead choose something that already exists: Not everything has to be made from a new freaking material!” Lauryn Menard
But there are some big things moving out there in the market. Consumer demands are shifting, and climate pledges, circularity strategies and environmental questions are all bubbling to the surface. It’s hard to say whether enough customers are making purchasing decisions based on a company’s green credentials to move the needle meaningfully, but product development cycles can take years, and who knows what the landscape looks like by the time your product makes it to market? To some companies, it might make sense to take the risk, but other founders are starting to think differently about how products are made.
“If a startup is being run by solely engineers, that can be problematic: Engineers tend to be worried [about] making sure they’re getting to the finish line. They put all of their energy into making something function and are probably leaning toward materials, ways of making and manufacturing processes that they’re already familiar with,” Menard explained. “What we’ve seen [be] really helpful is working with a design studio that specializes in more sustainable ways of thinking and healthier materials. Or partnering with someone like a materials library, so they’ve already started thinking about the functionality of the materials by the time they are making a prototype. Just in the same way that it takes a really long time to get an MVP product that works and looks the way you want, it sometimes takes a long time to put a new material into an existing manufacturing process.”
Thinking sustainability
One of the big challenges we have with creating more sustainable products is that we are often replacing plastics with something else. The problem is that plastics are deeply embedded in workflows already. Product designers love how predictable, easy to design and repeatable plastic is.
There also isn’t an obvious one-for-one replacement for plastic; depending on the use case and material properties you need, you may have to replace it with wool, paper, wood, plant pulp, carbon fiber, seaweed, hemp, mycelium, lab-grown leather or any number of other materials that are available.
Here’s what founders and product designers can do to think about sustainability and product development in a more conscious way.
Technology
Tesla more than tripled its Austin gigafactory workforce in 2022


Tesla’s 2,500-acre manufacturing hub in Austin, Texas tripled its workforce last year, according to the company’s annual compliance report filed with county officials. Bloomberg first reported on the news.
The report filed with Travis County’s Economic Development Program shows that Tesla increased its Austin workforce from just 3,523 contingent and permanent employees in 2021 to 12,277 by the end of 2022. Bloomberg reports that just over half of Tesla’s workers reside in the county, with the average full-time employee earning a salary of at least $47,147. Outside of Tesla’s factory, the average salary of an Austin worker is $68,060, according to data from ZipRecruiter.
TechCrunch was unable to acquire a copy of the report, so it’s not clear if those workers are all full-time. If they are, Tesla has hired a far cry more full-time employees than it is contracted to do. According to the agreement between Tesla and Travis County, the company is obligated to create 5,001 new full-time jobs over the next four years.
The contract also states that Tesla must invest about $1.1 billion in the county over the next five years. Tesla’s compliance report shows that the automaker last year invested $5.81 billion in Gigafactory Texas, which officially launched a year ago at a “Cyber Rodeo” event. In January, Tesla notified regulators that it plans to invest another $770 million into an expansion of the factory to include a battery cell testing site and cathode and drive unit manufacturing site. With that investment will come more jobs.
Tesla’s choice to move its headquarters to Texas and build a gigafactory there has helped the state lead the nation in job growth. The automaker builds its Model Y crossover there and plans to build its Cybertruck in Texas, as well. Giga Texas will also be a model for sustainable manufacturing, CEO Elon Musk has said. Last year, Tesla completed the first phase of what will become “the largest rooftop solar installation in the world,” according to the report, per Bloomberg. Tesla has begun on the second phase of installation, but already there are reports of being able to see the rooftop from space. The goal is to generate 27 megawatts of power.
Musk has also promised to turn the site into an “ecological paradise,” complete with a boardwalk and a hiking/biking trail that will open to the public. There haven’t been many updates on that front, and locals have been concerned that the site is actually more of an environmental nightmare that has led to noise and water pollution. The site, located at the intersection of State Highway 130 and Harold Green Road, east of Austin, is along the Colorado River and could create a climate catastrophe if the river overflows.
The site of Tesla’s gigafactory has also historically been the home of low-income households and has a large population of Spanish-speaking residents. It’s not clear if the jobs at the factory reflect the demographic population of the community in which it resides.
Technology
Launch startup Stoke Space rolls out software tool for complex hardware development

Stoke Space, a company that’s developing a fully reusable rocket, has unveiled a new tool to let hardware companies track the design, testing and integration of parts. The new tool, Fusion, is targeting an unsexy but essential aspect of the hardware workflow.
It’s a solution born out of “ubiquitous pain in the industry,” Stoke CEO Andy Lapsa said in a recent interview. The current parts tracking status quo is marked by cumbersome, balkanized solutions built on piles of paperwork and spreadsheets. Many of the existing tools are not optimized “for boots on the ground,” but for finance or procurement teams, or even the C-suite, Lapsa explained.
In contrast, Fusion is designed to optimize simple inventory transactions and parts organization, and it will continue to track parts through their lifespan: as they are built into larger assemblies and go through testing. In an extreme example, such as hardware failures, Fusion will help teams connect anomalous data to the exact serial numbers of the parts involved.

Image credit: Stoke Space
“If you think about aerospace in general, there’s a need and a desire to be able to understand the part pedigree of every single part number and serial number that’s in an assembly,” Lapsa said. “So not only do you understand the configuration, you understand the history of all of those parts dating back to forever.”
While Lapsa clarified that Fusion is the result of an organic in-house need for better parts management – designing a fully reusable rocket is complicated, after all – turning it into a sell-able product was a decision that the Stoke team made early on. It’s a notable example of a rocket startup generating pathways for revenue while their vehicle is still under development.
Fusion offers particular relevance to startups. Many existing tools are designed for production runs – not the fast-moving research and development environment that many hardware startups find themselves, Lapsa added. In these environments, speed and accuracy are paramount.
Brent Bradbury, Stoke’s head of software, echoed these comments.
“The parts are changing, the people are changing, the processes are changing,” he said. “This lets us capture all that as it happens without a whole lot of extra work.”
Technology
Amid a boom in AI accelerators, a UC Berkeley-focused outfit, House Fund, swings open its doors


Companies at the forefront of AI would naturally like to stay at the forefront, so it’s no surprise they want to stay close to smaller startups that are putting some of their newest advancements to work.
Last month, for example, Neo, a startup accelerator founded by Silicon Valley investor Ali Partovi, announced that OpenAI and Microsoft have offered to provide free software and advice to companies in a new track focused on artificial intelligence.
Now, another Bay Area outfit — House Fund, which invests in startups with ties to UC Berkeley — says it is launching an AI accelerator and that, similarly, OpenAI, Microsoft, Databricks, and Google’s Gradient Ventures are offering participating startups free and early access to tech from their companies, along with mentorship from top AI founders and executives at these companies.
We talked with House Fund founder Jeremy Fiance over the weekend to get a bit more color about the program, which will replace a broader-based accelerator program House Fund has run and whose alums include an additive manufacturing software company, Dyndrite, and the managed app development platform Chowbotics, whose most recent round in January brought the company’s total funding to more than $60 million.
For founders interested in learning more, the new AI accelerator program runs for two months, kicking off in early July and ending in early September. Six or so companies will be accepted, with the early application deadline coming up next week on April 13th. (The final application deadline is on June 1.) As for the time commitment involved across those two months, every startup could have a different experience, says Fiance. “We’re there when you need us, and we’re good at staying out of the way.”
There will be the requisite kickoff retreat to spark the program and founders to get to know one another. Candidates who are accepted will also have access to some of UC Berkeley’s renowned AI professors, including Michael Jordan, Ion Stoica, and Trevor Darrell. And they can opt into dinners and events in collaboration with these various constituents.
As for some of the financial dynamics, every startup that goes through the program will receive a $1 million investment on a $10 million post-money SAFE note. Importantly, too, as with the House Fund’s venture dollars, its AI accelerator is seeking startups that have at least one Berkeley-affiliated founder on the co-founding team. That includes alumni, faculty, PhDs, postdocs, staff, students, dropouts, and other affiliates.
There is no demo day. Instead, says Fiance, founders will receive “directed, personal introductions” to the VCs who best fit with their startups.
Given the buzz over AI, the new program could supercharge House Fund, the venture organization, which is already growing fast. Fiance launched it in 2016 with just $6 million and it now manages $300 million in assets, including on behalf of Berkeley Endowment Management Company and the University of California.
At the same time, the competition out there is fierce and growing more so by the day.
Though OpenAI has offered to partner with House Fund, for example, the San Francisco-based company announced its own accelerator back in November. Called Converge, the cohort was to be made up of 10 or so founders who received $1 million each and admission to five weeks of office hours, workshops and other events that ended and that received their funding from the OpenAI Startup Fund.
Y Combinator, the biggest accelerator in the world, is also oozing with AI startups right now, all of them part of a winter class that will be talking directly with investors this week via demo days that are taking place tomorrow, April 5th, and on Thursday.
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