COREDUMP #010: From Pebble to Intel: can hardware startups beat the big players?

Hardware is hard, especially if you are a startup with limited resources. How do you compete with the big players? How do you set up engineering teams, tools, and processes to beat the odds and deliver a market-leading product? And what can the enterprises learn from their fast-moving competitors?

In this episode, we sit down with Kean Wong, an engineering leader who’s seen it all. From scaling the Engineering team at Pebble from 6 to 90 and shipping hundreds of releases to the field, to leading 200+ engineers at Intel, building wearables at enterprise scale.

This conversation dives into the realities of developing connected hardware products across radically different environments and what lessons leaders can carry between them.

What You’ll Learn:

• What changes and what doesn’t when scaling engineering teams across startup and enterprise
• How hardware startups can outmaneuver enterprises and what can enterprises do to capitalize on their resource advantage
• How to align hardware, software, and firmware engineering to deliver great end-to-end connected products
• What engineering leaders need to prioritize at each stage of company growth

Whether you’re working to launch your first product or maintaining an expansive fleet in the field, this episode delivers grounded insights from someone who’s shipped at every scale.