Andrew Seddon
@seddonandrew
@CircuitHub CEO. Robots making circuit boards.
In 2009 I designed the facial mocap system Jim Carrey wore to film A Christmas Carol. 4 x 720p60 cameras per actor, logging 2 hours to a portable recorder and streaming live to mission control. About 15 actors on stage wearing duplicate rigs. I had 6 months to go from idea to…
Yes, fellow YC co's, YC is the YC for industrials
In collaboration with @reindsummit and @newindustrials, we are releasing a request for startups motivated by a simple belief: America needs better physical technology, and startups are the best way to build and scale it. We are looking for founders interested in applying modern…
We’ve achieved AGI: Artificial Gastro Intelligence. Today we’re publicly launching Epicure, the world’s most advanced culinary AI, powered by actual science of how food ingredients are paired. Our PhD @jaklerad has refined the dataset and created a 300-dimensional,…
In a 10-step process, making steps 1-5 go from 1s → 0.1s only improves throughput by 10%. But optimizing steps 8-10? That's a 400% gain. Most automation projects fail because they optimize random steps instead of systematically eliminating all the bottlenecks.
PB walked up to us the day before demo day and we shook hands on our first investment outside YC. I’ll never forget it. He’s one of maybe five people I’ve met who can cut through noise and keep things dead simple. If PB wants in—just take the money.
After 12+ years, 25 batches, and the privilege of advising >1,000+ startups, I’m transitioning to Partner Emeritus at Y Combinator. YC changed my life. I’m grateful to the thousands of founders who trusted me with their journeys, my fellow YC partners and teammates, and to Paul,…
🚀 Introducing Workspaces on CircuitHub — a better way to collaborate and stay organized. Workspaces let you seamlessly manage and share projects with teammates, consultants, and contractors — all in one place.
At IPO, Proto Labs (a Manufacturing-as-a-Service business) generated $1.28 in incremental gross profit for every $1 spent on sales & marketing. That’s 3.7x more efficient than Snowflake at $0.35. Manufacturing is capital-efficient — it just routes capital through CapEx instead…
There’s a phenotype of engineer who finds 100x wins behind 1% effort. You can’t build a team of them—but having one or two is a massive multiplier.
The danger of starting a manufacturing service in defense is you’re playing in the little leagues, up against mom-and-pop shops. Commercial forces you to compete with global apex predators. Ruthless competition sharpens the sword. Historically, the industrial base was…
Unprecedented demand at CircuitHub. We've hit max capacity and are pausing new orders for May. It's a tough call, but we’re working around the clock to bring more capacity online. Hang tight 🔥
To scale a manufacturing-as-a-service business fast: Be 3x faster, 3x cheaper for customers, and 3x more efficient on the backend. You need the gross margin to fund the R&D that keeps you ahead. Source: ran a business that didn’t do this — slog. Got there eventually — difference…
Hill climbing is underrated. Just keep moving in a positive direction—execute, adjust, repeat. Life rarely traps you in a local maximum.
Yep working on it. You’d be surprised how manual it is traditionally unless you have a high volume super optimised design. In the US about 90% of the assembly cost is labor.
The pressure to onshore PCB assembly is now pretty high as it’s already completely automated.
Tariffs are about to make reshoring electronics make sense. You used to make a widget in China for $50, sell it DTC for $100—no duty thanks to de minimis. $50 margin. Starting May, a $54 tariff hits. Now it's $154 to the customer. Make it in the US for $75 instead, keep the…