Jen McCabe

Building a hardware company presents unique and significant challenges. The path to manufacturing is often far more demanding than securing venture capital. Unlike software startups, hardware ventures must secure manufacturing partners who are accustomed to dealing with established corporations rather than agile startups. These partners require substantial performance and assurance, making the manufacturing deal itself a monumental hurdle. Securing a manufacturing partner can be compared to an elite athlete signing with two major professional leagues simultaneously – it requires an exceptional level of performance and validation. The focus must be on demonstrating value and reliability to these crucial partners. #Hardware #Manufacturing #Startups #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship

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Colin Masson visited the #KramerTalk studio to share his perspective on how customers and vendors have overcome the early challenges of AI adoption in manufacturing. AI has been in manufacturing for some time. The interesting part is that we now have more technology to leverage, and we're finally seeing AI surface long-standing problems. Data quality. Legacy systems. IT and OT. Tribal knowledge. All of the things companies have lived with for years suddenly matter a lot more when you want AI to make decisions. We also had a great discussion about ERP. I don't see ERP disappearing. I see it becoming one of several centers of gravity in a larger ecosystem connecting the enterprise, supply chain and factory. And that's where things get really interesting. What happens when you have multiple AI agents making decisions across those environments? A procurement agent makes a decision. A supply chain agent makes another. A factory agent responds to something else. They're all doing their jobs but are they actually working together? I think that's going to be one of the big questions in enterprise technology over the next few years. Check out the trailer: https://lnkd.in/dQ6JaaBB Watch the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/dJ4zdi_k KramerERP #KramerTalk #IndustrialAI #Manufacturing #ERP #SupplyChain #Data #AI

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Something I keep coming back to in my M&A work right now, particularly in the Semiconductor sector... SHRM's latest research confirms what I'm seeing, the low-hire, low-fire environment that defined 2025 isn't temporary. Measured hiring is the new baseline. What that means for anyone working a deal: the talent already inside an acquisition target is often more valuable and more fragile than it's been in years, and that's particularly true in Semi where organizations are fighting to hire and retain a limited pool of top engineering talent. You can't assume you'll backfill if people leave. I see this play out in integration planning all the time. Companies underestimate how fast key people decide to go, which makes retention considerations even more important these days. And in this market, when someone leaves, they're often walking toward a competitor who's been quietly courting them since the deal was announced. The deals that protect value treat retention as a business continuity issue and frankly, a competitive advantage, not an HR checkbox. And that work has to start well before Day 1. #MergersAndAcquisitions #TalentManagement #HRStrategy #ChangeManagement https://lnkd.in/eWGyfHUF

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#ObsessivelyEnthusiasticInvestor at REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund. "Good automation design is about more than drawings and spec sheets." I love this explainer video about Athion. According to xAI and Grok: Athion is a SaaS platform for operations-focused design in process automation, targeting heavy process industries like Pharmaceuticals, Chemical, Oil & Gas, Pulp & Paper, Food & Beverage, and Metals & Mining. It provides a no-code tool to turn static P&IDs and control narratives into interactive prototypes and animated simulations, enabling teams to: - Dry-run and stress-test designs early, - Validate logic, catch issues, and align engineering/operations before coding begins, and - Improve collaboration, reduce rework, protect schedules, and ensure smoother plant startups. Founded in 2024, Athion is an Industrial DesignOps solution — moving "beyond documentation" to functional prototyping, change management, and automated deliverables like code, docs, and digital twins. The Video: https://lnkd.in/gBcrEbPi #IndustrialTransformation #Technology #ArtificialIntelligence #Data #DecisionAnalytics

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There’s a big difference between building something complex once and building it consistently. The latter requires process discipline that’s easy to underestimate. This short MDDI discussion gives a real look at what it takes to manage complexity as programs move toward scale.

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