I have made most of these mistakes already.

I work with a small number of founders and teams each year, drawing on thirteen years of running a hardware company.

Work with me See the work

Vijay Raghav Varada in his workshop wearing a magnifier headset, with a tool wall and 3D printers behind him.

Coaching and consulting.

Pixel drawing of a rough hand-built prototype on a bench beside a neat, finished production version of the same device.

Founder coaching

For founders of hardware companies, usually in their first few years.

Turning a prototype into something a factory can make
Making your first engineering hires on a hardware budget
Pricing, margin and hardware unit economics
Choosing and managing a contract manufacturer
Whether raising money will solve the problem in front of you

Monthly, small cohort. Ask about availability.

Pixel drawing of three 3D printed production parts laid out beside a vernier caliper measuring one of them.

Consulting

For teams moving 3D printing from the prototype lab into production.

Designing parts for 3D printing, and knowing when not to print them
An in-house print shop that keeps running after the person who set it up moves on
Qualifying parts and holding a tolerance
Technical due diligence on hardware and manufacturing investments
Workshops for engineering teams, using your own parts

Project or retainer. Limited slots.

How I work

I take on only as much as I can do properly, so there is usually a wait.

I run Fracktal Works full time and am on the founding technical team at Constellation Aerospace, a nanosatellite start-up in Bengaluru. Advisory is the part of the week I set aside for other companies' hardware problems, so I can only take a few clients at a time.

I am most useful between a prototype that works on the bench and a product you can make two hundred of. Many hardware companies fail at that stage, and I have taken products through it several times.

I am the wrong person for polishing a pitch deck, or for persuading a board that 3D printing will fix something it cannot.

Black printed engineering brackets beside a black Fracktal polycarbonate spool, on a dark studio floor. — Brackets printed in polycarbonate, one of the materials we test at Fracktal and publish the results for.

Experience.

Building a manufacturer

Desktop to industrial SLSA full printer range, designed, assembled and serviced in India since 2013.
2,000+ industrial customersIncluding Ashok Leyland, TVS Motor, Godrej, Decathlon and several IITs.
100,000+ partsMade to customers' tolerances.

Difficult projects

Apollo 350 SLSOur industrial SLS 3D printer, built under a Ministry of Heavy Industries programme.
Jhada61 printed pieces, eight feet, installed at Mumbai International Airport.
The Braille moduleDesigned for low cost from the first sketch. Much of my coaching covers the same ground.

Current work

Constellation AerospaceOn the founding technical team of a nanosatellite start-up.
Still on the toolsI run the company I co-founded in 2013, day to day.

Tell me where you are stuck.

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