Why hardware is hard — and how to fix it
The thinking behind Fractional Forge. Tristan Fischer writes at length on why building physical things is structurally harder than software, the return of manufacturing, and the physical economy underneath everything. A selection of his essays, on History Future Now.
The hardware thesis
Why building physical products is structurally harder than building software — and what the missing infrastructure layer looks like.
Essay
Hardware Needs Its AWS Moment
Software rents its infrastructure; hardware never could. Why that gap is the defining problem for physical-product founders.
Essay
The Eighteen-Month Trap
Why hardware startups lose a year and a half before they have built anything — and where that time actually goes.
Essay
The Fifteen-Minute Factory
Why proximity still wins in manufacturing, even in a globalised world.
Essay
The Arsenal and the Container
How shared infrastructure, from arsenals to shipping containers, always beats going it alone.
Essay
Platform Technologies
How the foundational technologies of the past tell you which platforms will define the future.
Making things again
The return of manufacturing to the West, why it left, and what it takes to build at home.
Essay
The Return of the State Factory
Why nations that forgot how to make things are urgently relearning.
Essay
The Great Offshoring
How the world's factory moved east — and what it cost.
Essay
The Ladder and the Lie
Why every great economy was built on tariffs, and free trade mostly serves whoever is already ahead.
Essay
Why Cheap Imports Cost More
The hidden price of buying cheap imported products, for individuals and for society.
Energy, materials and the physical economy
The atoms underneath everything — power, storage, critical minerals, food and water.
Essay
The Renewables and Battery Revolution
The shift reshaping power, and why storage sits at the centre of it.
Essay
The Atom Returns
Why the world's most feared energy source may be its best hope.
Essay
The New Oil
Why the race for critical minerals will define the 21st century.
Essay
Vertical Farming: The Electrical Convergence
Where power, transport and agriculture collide.
Essay
The Last Drop
Why every civilisation that ran out of water collapsed.
Practical guides
Straight, useful answers to the questions hardware founders actually ask.
Guide
How to find a contract manufacturer in the UK
Tiers, shortlisting, the questions to ask and the red flags.
Guide
How to cost a hardware bill of materials
Unit vs volume pricing, and the costs founders always miss.
Guide
How to get a hardware startup investor-ready
What hardware investors actually check — and why they pass.
Guide
Design for manufacture, explained
What DFM is, why it matters early, and how it saves cost.
Guide
What an industrial water-treatment plant costs to build
A worked £1.36M breakdown from a real, auditable model.
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