Nirav Patel

Standing offer: If you’re building consumer hardware and want advice on anything (business strategy, building a team, finding suppliers, go to market, design/architecture decisions, fundraising, etc), send me a DM and I am happy to have a call with you.

@jukan05 You’re getting tourist/IG/tiktok recommendations on burritos. Skip those and go to Al Carajo, Chuy’s Fiesta, or El Patron in the Mission.

In San Francisco, what food is good? I kind of want to try Chick-fil-A.

@Tancrededib Chinatown and Sunset/Richmond D-tier means you’re missing out on half the good food in the city.

SF neighborhood tier list S: Hayes, Mission, Dogpatch / Potrero A: South Park, NoPa, Duboce, Castro, Noe Valley B: Marina, FiDi, Jackson Sq, Embarcadero, Nob Hill C: SoMa, Mission Bay, East Cut / Rincon, Haight, North Beach, Japantown, Bernal D: Union Square, Sunset / Richmond, Ocean Beach, Chinatown F: Tenderloin

@lizwandersworld What’s the Hello Kitty device?

daily carry, also wow i am not on twitter much but i do have a collection on 100+ crazy expressive devices ❣️ so much to learn and be inspired by in the history of consumer electronics

@kodjima33 @omidotme Awesome to see the growth!

[DON’T DO MARKETING] When I started @omidotme I’ve set marketing as my top-1 priority, which was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made as a founder Marketing was by top priority since May 2024 till November 2025 and we didn’t grow much but then everything changed: In ~November I met @cmonkey, founder of @FrameworkPuter who gave me a simple advice: focus only on product Back then I thought that advice is retarded cuz how can you grow the company if you don’t do marketing But I still decided to try: Framework is doing incredibly well with 0 marketing - I was curious, how? So I made the product my top1 priority: and stopped all growth activities except instagram which I do for fun (same username) Fast forward, 3 months later, we are making 3-4x more revenue per month ($230k) than in November ($70k) - with no marketing 80% of our revenue comes from word of mouth and revenue grows because people see improvements in quality The biggest lesson I learned: marketing isn’t actually a top driver of growth. The top driver is a great product I told this advice to a few of my friends and was surprised how many people still prioritize distribution over a great product Why everyone was surprised: we all want to grow fast but most think that to grow you need to sell a lot, and to sell, marketing should be a top priority Reality is that to grow very fast, you need to build something incredibly fucking good and it will market and sell itself This is how you unlock real growth

Not that the restaurants in the quote aren’t good. I am going to Penny Roma again today. There’s just a lot more to SF food than what makes it to the Michelin Guide.

Everyone is posting the most normie SF restaurant recommendations. Where’s lengua tacos at El Patron? Chicken feet from Good Luck Dim Sum? Biang-biang noodles from Terra Cotta Warrior?

Biblically accurate mini pc

@mehul @maticrobots Congrats! Awesome product and awesome company!

Announcing $60M for @maticrobots. We didn't ask "What's the most impressive robot we can demo?" We asked "What's the most useful robot we can ship? What comes after Roomba?" Customers answered with their wallets: It's Matic.

@signulll @girdley Probably the 409A valuation, which sets the fair market value of private companies for tax purposes already. (note: I also think taxing unrealized gains is a bad idea)

yeah that makes sense, would there be a board to assess value of private equity or would that just at the last private round? what if the business is tanking since then? how do you value private companies in that case? how does someone who owns $1b equity in a private company find a way to pay this?

okay let’s say you are okay with this tax, can someone smarter than me tell me how does a government even tax *unrealized* gains?! like how is this possible?! does the government force you to sell? what if there is no buyer for private equity? what if there isn’t liquidity in the public markets? if ppl are forced to sell at certain times esp those with concentrated positions, wouldn’t that asset predictably lose value?

Physical goods startups get the added benefit of: 1. 2020 - international lockdowns preventing visiting suppliers 2. 2021 - extreme silicon and air cargo crunch 3. 2022-2023 - inventory hangover from supply/demand whiplash 4. 2025 - tariff chaos 5. 2026 - an even bigger silicon crunch

@cmonkey Lmao this applies to any startup that is *not* AI

Building a consumer hardware startup from 2020 into 2026:

@_abbie_watson_ @DanielleFong Any splitting that has Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, and parts of Japan together is unbeatable. You have to center on Taipei or something with a line separating Korea and Japan from each other.

@DanielleFong Significantly more difficult….

how is this even a choice? ragebait gets me every time

This place in Chinatown, with the best noodle soup I’ve had anywhere in the US: spicycloudrestaurant.com

I take it back.

@hwnation Congrats on the launch!

Hardware Nation enters a new chapter. - Live product launches - Rapid fire pods with founders - Daily hardware coverage |||| |||| ||| | |||| | ||| | | |||| |

@Immersion6241 I think it’s seratonin vs dopamine

@cmonkey Doesn't that say more about who you choose to follow on this app?

I forgot how much more fulfilling it is to read a short story collection than it is to scroll on this app. Posting here to remind you too.

@jimmycushnie Currently: subterraneanpress.com/belladonna-nig… If you’re looking for a recommendation of what to start with, pick up Exhalation by Ted Chiang

@cmonkey What collection are you reading? I am interested in your fiction recommendations

@thesobercoder The shortest stories

@cmonkey I read short stories in here

@mirandanover Bringing the hard and the wear to consumer hardware

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