On this episode, we sat down with Sera Evcimen, mechanical engineer, hardware startup strategist, and host of The Builder Circle™ Podcast where she interviews hardware founders, investors and other professionals in the hardware startup ecosystem to provide practical takeaways for anyone building hardware. Sera shares her journey from watching "How It's Made" with her hardware-savvy father to working on cutting-edge fusion energy systems at Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

Today, Sera brings that deep technical and operational expertise to hardware startups through her firm Pratik, where she helps founders navigate everything from supply chain challenges to system architecture design. Throughout our conversation, Sera shares hard-won wisdom about the importance of hands-on experience, how understanding material science and failure modes creates competitive advantages, and why boots-on-the-ground verification beats any amount of remote due diligence.

Learn more about Sera, Pratik, and The Builder Circle™ Podcast: https://www.pratikdev.com/

Hackaday Europe 2025: Sera Evcimen - Hardware Startup Pitfalls
Orin Hoffman - S1 E9: Building a Strong Capital Stack for a Hardware Product
Ying Liu - S2 E9: Global Supply Chain Strategy

For more information on the podcast, check out https://tradeoffs.fm