72 hours after YC demo day, I moved to Shenzhen for 8 weeks 🤠 I'm headed back to SF with new hardware in hand (sharing more soon), but some takeaways documented below: > If you have even the slightest ambition to found a hardware company, visit SZ. Pre-raise, pre-team, pre-idea, pre-job departure, it doesn't matter. Just go. > Plan your visit according to a major conference that interests you. Use that conference as a supplier meeting springboard - that's your ticket to any factory under the sun. > At the factories, ask about lead times, don't ask about cost (wait on this). Your iteration rate is driven by the lead time on the longest lead time item in your assembly. It pays to identify these parts early to build project timelines. > Visit Huaqiangbei (read: this is a mini-city, not a building). Robotic subassemblies, batteries, chassis's, electronic parts. They all have buildings where vendors are tightly clustered. Plan to spend 4-6 hours walking around before you find exactly what you're interested in. > Business relationships are valuable commodities. Treat them as such. Pay attention to people, learn about them. Bring thoughtful gifts. Wait for them to sit first. With Baiju, fill the glass but with tea leave some room. Cultural customs are fun to learn, but also convey a seriousness towards the working relationship. > Suppliers fit cleanly into discrete buckets. Level of complexity and execution on past projects indicates what is in scope for them. Trivial, but important to level your build expectations. It is easy to design a part with 12 subsequent manufacturing processes, exceptionally hard to find a supplier to fill this order. If you need coffeeshop recs, food recs, or hotel recs I have a few. Move to Shenzhen! Get to building!