Eight Sleep - Building a $1.5B Sleep Company the Hard Way

August 11th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  54 mins 22 secs

Your bed may be the most under-optimized eight hours of your day. Sam Kang, Chief Product Officer at Eight Sleep, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman to unpack how the Pod heats and cools your bed, why cooling is so much harder than heating, and his framework for latent demand and the art of the MVP. It is part engineering deep dive, part product masterclass from inside a company that has turned sleep into a $1.5B category.

ohSnap! - The Engineering Behind Invisible Design

August 3rd, 2026  |  Season 3  |  51 mins 46 secs

Most mobile gaming accessories feel like bulky, clunky afterthoughts, but ohSnap set out to build a magnetic phone controller that feels like a natural extension of your device. Shafae Ali, Head of Engineering at ohSnap, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman to break down the electromechanical craftsmanship behind their products. From mastering tactile snap-fits and magnetic latches to balancing obsessive user experience with cold engineering math, this episode explores what it really takes to build hardware people love to touch every day.

Alenthia Run - From PT Clinic to Wearable Device

June 29th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  43 mins 14 secs

Most runners only get their form analyzed after an injury, in a lab full of motion-capture cameras. Cooper Boydston, CTO of Alenthia Run, joins DeAndre and Grant to explain how his team shrank that lab into a small sensor that lives on your sacrum and reads your running biomechanics on every run. It's part running-science deep dive, part candid hardware-founder story about prototypes, UX, and the long road from "it works" to a product people love.

Venture Declassified - Moats & Multiples in Hardtech

June 8th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  1 hr 4 mins

What actually changes when you raise money for a hardware company instead of a software one? In this Hardtech Podcast crossover with the Venture Declassified crew (Jacob Schpok of Elevate Ventures, Mike Kelly of Start Something Ventures, and Ben Pidgeon of VisionTech), Grant plays the founder and asks three active investors to grill him on how hard tech is underwritten differently at pre-seed, seed, and Series A: the metrics, the moats, the multiples, and why the same traits that make hardware slow and expensive early are exactly what make it defensible later.

Articulate Labs - Turn Everyday Movement Into Physical Therapy

June 8th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  46 mins 30 secs

Most muscle-stim gadgets work best when you do nothing. Articulate Labs built the opposite: a wearable that fires your muscles in sync with how you move, turning a walk or a grocery run into real strength training. Co-founder and CEO Josh Rabinowitz and hardware lead Herbie (Larry) Kirn join DeAndre and Grant for a rare deep-technical episode on the device, the science of recovering properly after knee surgery, and the messy, honest reality of funding and selling hardware.

Fisher Wallace - One Device for Depression, Anxiety & Insomnia

June 8th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  41 mins 28 secs

Kelly Roman went from a Harvard English degree and a graphic-novel adaptation of "The Art of War" to running one of the only brain-stimulation companies on a path to FDA approval. He joins Grant Chapman and Drew Westrick to unpack Fisher Wallace's nearly 17-year journey: designing a sham device you genuinely can't feel, why depression is regulated as a Class III device, and the brutal economics of clinical trials, reimbursement, and IP in prescription hardware.

QCI - Quantum Computing & the Future of AI

June 8th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  46 mins 5 secs

Quantum computing, finally explained without the hand-waving. Cesar Martinez Delgado, hardware engineering manager at Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI), joins DeAndre and Grant to break down how quantum machines actually work, why QCI is betting on photonics to make them run at room temperature, and how 15 years of building things, from 3G networks to drones, shaped the hard-won engineering lessons every hardware founder needs to hear.

OCTO - The Art of the Hardtech Agency

June 8th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  47 mins 7 secs

Justin Sirotin, founder and CEO of OCTO, industrial designer, and the seasoned agency owner, joins DeAndre and Grant for a candid, founder-to-founder breakdown of what it really takes to build a product agency that lasts. From surviving 2020 without firing anyone, to why sales is the hardest job in the building, to knowing when to let a client "graduate," it's a masterclass in the unglamorous economics of relationship-based businesses.

gBETA - Building Hardtech Founders Nationwide

May 18th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  47 mins 18 secs

In this episode of The Hardtech Podcast, host DeAndre Harakas sits down with Davide Dantonio, Director of gBETA Accelerators in Indiana, to unpack what it actually takes to build a successful hard tech startup. Davide shares his journey from Naples, Italy through France, Spain, London, Kraft Heinz, and Amazon Pay, to running one of the Midwest's most active accelerator programs. They dig into customer obsession, the difference between customer discovery and "sales discovery," doing things that don't scale, the Pareto principle for early product roadmaps, and Davide's financing-and-milestones framework for fundraising. The conversation features real anecdotes from hard tech founders building truck-scanning AI, advanced optical lenses, pothole-scanning vehicle cameras, and plant compounds for animal gut health; plus details on gBETA's upcoming Industry 4.0 cohort launching in June.

AliveCor - From Clinician to $100M MedTech Giant

May 6th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  52 mins 20 secs

Dr. David Albert, founder of AliveCor and pioneer of digital health technology, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman for a deep dive into building a regulated medical device company from scratch. From prototyping the first smartphone EKG using a gutted Mophie case and ultrasonic signal transmission to bootstrapping early revenue by selling to veterinarians, Dr. Albert shares the guerrilla engineering and entrepreneurial grit behind one of the most impactful consumer medical devices ever created.

CAIRE Medical - Modernizing Legacy Medtech

March 20th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  42 mins 23 secs

Join hosts Grant Chapman and DeAndre Harakas on this episode of the Hardtech Podcast as they welcome Norbert Leinfellner from CAIRE!

In this conversation, Norbert shares his firsthand insights into the world of medical device development. We dive into the engineering challenges behind hardware miniaturization, the critical role of intuitive industrial design, and how integrating IoT is actively improving patient outcomes. Tune in to discover the unique hurdles, lessons learned, and future trends shaping the medtech industry today!

Electra - Solving Grid Peaks from the Kitchen

March 9th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  42 mins 52 secs

How do we bridge the gap between high-level climate policy and the appliances in our kitchens? On this episode of the Hardtech Podcast, DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman welcome Bert Muthalaly, a leader at Electra who is doing exactly that.

The conversation explores the technical and philosophical journey of moving away from fossil fuels toward a battery-backed future. Bert Muthalaly breaks down the engineering behind Electra’s innovative induction stoves and explains why the safety and efficiency of residential battery systems are the keys to a sustainable grid.

Beyond the tech, Bert offers a candid look at the founder's journey—discussing how to navigate the complexities of power electronics and the importance of fostering a healthy, innovative work environment.