Hilstart launch: what they're building and where to launch next

What they're building

Autonomous Hardware Testing

Founders

• William A'court · Founder/CEO
• Simon Alexander · Founder/CTO
• Rahul Bhati · Founder
• Josh Schoeman · Founder

hilstart.io ↗

See their funding details ↗

Hilstart on the record

What they shipped

• From its YC profile: We build physical agent harnesses to enable AI to debug, validate, and ship functional hardware and software. (source)
• Its own site describes it as: "Upload your board. Hilstart builds a specification you approve, writes executable tests, runs them on real hardware once you confirm, and returns a report built from the measurements." (source)

Who is behind it

• William A'court, Founder/CEO: Founder and CEO at Hilstart. Previously Lead Mechatronics Engineer at Aquila, shooting lasers at drones to charge them. Also made FSAE race cars and electric jetboats along the way. (source)
• Simon Alexander, Founder/CTO: Founder & CTO at Hilstart. Previously Firmware Engineer at Aquila. (source)
• Rahul Bhati, Founder: Trained gymnast. Building hardware since 15. 2x National robotics champion at 18. Before HILStart: power and thermal systems at Vessev (Flying boats) and test rigs at Halter (NZ's latest unicorn). Founding team at Aquila and built the core tech behind kilometre-scale wireless laser energy transmission across many engineering disciplines. (source)
• Josh Schoeman, Founder: Making hardware easier. Past adventures all over mechanical and electrical development. Battle scars from electric motor design, accelerated lifecycle testing, mechanical structures, cooling systems, hardware test rigs, DFM, wiring harnesses, race cars and electronics debugging. Also, destructive testing (often inadvertent). (source)

Other Industrials and energy launches on FoxPlug

• Dreamscale Labs: Running robot brains in the cloud
• Earendil Robotics: Drone swarm defence at a small-unit level
• Edgerun: Military exoskeletons

Where else to launch Hilstart

• Hacker News (Show HN) ↗
  Self-promotion allowed, within the community's rules
  Audience: Hacker News readers; engineers, technical founders, infra-curious people
• Product Hunt ↗
  Self-promotion allowedFree
• Dev Hunt ↗
  Self-promotion allowedFree
• Indie Hackers Forum ↗
  Self-promotion allowed
  Audience: IndieHackers; bootstrapped solo founders sharing revenue and behind-the-scenes
• Vibe Coding Tools ↗
  Self-promotion allowedFree
• BetaList ↗
  Self-promotion allowedPaid
  Audience: Directory listing surface; cold readers scanning categories
• CoFoundersLab ↗
  Self-promotion allowed
  Audience: Directory listing surface; cold readers scanning categories
• Invincible Product Hunters (Global) ↗
  Self-promotion allowed, within the community's rules
  Audience: Telegram channel readers; URL-first, attention-light

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