PS. If your criticism were right my coding cave is a 1000m2 factory, which has to be some kind of record. /s
> not much of the strategy content applies to hardware companies
While it's probably a good idea to not blindly follow every single piece of advice (by YC or anyone), saying that not much of the content applies is probably a bit of a stretch. Considering how many successful companies YC has funded in the hard-tech space, I'd be receptive to at least some of their advice / insights.
You also mention:
> you have this de-facto "ship and iterate" model from the SaaS world which just doesn't apply to nontrivial hardware projects.
Again, it may be a good idea to question the advice of "ship and iterate", but saying _it just doesn't apply to nontrivial hardware project_ is again a bit of a stretch. As the above commenter mentions, the success of Cruise is a good counterexample.
I'm wondering if there isn't also a big opportunity in selling this imperfect produce to food factories? Consumers have to be on board with big/small/misshapen veggies, but if I'm buying a strawberry jam, where the strawberries were chopped up in a factory, then it really doesn't matter what shape they had originally. Frankly, I'm kinda surprised if an obvious optimization like that isn't already in place - let those who care about the shape pay more for the pretty ones, and let those who don't save by buying the rest. But I'm guessing the existing supply chains that you are bypassing just isn't very conducive to that sort of thing?
Oh but that's exactly how it already works in existing supply chains: "imperfect" produce gets allocated quite well with food manufacturers, restaurants and food halls, or gets donated to foster homes, hospitals, etc. And many supermarkets do in fact stock up with "imperfect" produce.
"Reducing food waste" makes for good marketing. Except it's not that true.