I'm still surprised there isn't a popular company to help these hardware startups with all the myriad choices you have to make in hardware. There's so much that can screw you up in component choices, board printing, plastics, etc. that have no mirror in software.
There are many companies currently doing that. One of them is HWTrek, an ecosystem with a community of mentors helping hardware startups from product development to mass production to shipping. The platform has elements of Alibaba and LinkedIn, and hardware developers can search for supply chain vendors, manufacturers, software/cloud vendors, VCs, etc. on it.
My company, GetScale, offers cheap fixed-price contract work in design-for-manufacturing (identify and avoid the kinds of mistakes mentioned in the article) and going forward my overseas employees can find and monitor suppliers to make sure things run smoothly (like enforcing your quality standards). We only charge a few dollars per unit for that.
