#010: From Pebble to Intel: can hardware startups beat the big players?
Kean Wong, former VP of Software at Pebble and current CTO at Igor, discusses scaling hardware startups against big tech, emphasizing that startups can outpace giants by staying nimble and hiring from developer communities. He details Pebble's strategy of using hackathons and community engagement to recruit talent, maintaining a 6-week release cadence to drive evangelism, and investing 10-20% of engineering effort into infrastructure and automated testing. Wong also explains how he applies these lessons at his current company, Igor, by leveraging AI tools for software development while recognizing their limitations in complex firmware and embedded systems.