In this episode of TradeOffs, Nate and Chris ring in the new year with a look back at some headlines from 2025 and a preview of CES 2026. They discuss the "hardware renaissance" gaining momentum—from the Re-Industrialize conference to renewed national focus on domestic manufacturing—and Chris shares his most memorable hardware story of the year: Samsung pushing ads to smart refrigerators (and what it signals about the economics of connected devices).

The conversation turns to CES strategy, including why the real value isn't on the show floor but in the networking, how to navigate the sprawling venues from Eureka Park to LVCC, and survival tips.

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

In this episode of TradeOffs, Nate and Chris sit down with Narayan Powderly and Ioannis Papamanoglou, co-CEO’s of Atopile, a circuit design tool bringing software development practices to hardware. Narayan shares how his frustration with slow board development cycles led him to question why schematics remained an "impenetrable box" immune to automation. Ioannis traces his path from hacking PlayStation Portables and building Minecraft redstone circuits to studying operating systems and working on smart bike locks for the Dutch railway system. Together, they discuss why their real competitor isn't other code-to-electronics startups but legacy tools like Altium and Cadence, and their vision for a future where full-stack engineers own everything from PCB design to firmware. They also explore how LLMs will transform electronics design and why the open-source hardware community is more collaborative than competitive.

Find out more information about Atopile at atopile.io

Join the Atopile Discord
Check out the Atopile Github

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

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