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Franceschetti: Early hardware BOM and COGS projections are usually off by 50%

Matteo Franceschetti · Labour, Engineering, Social Media, GrokBots, Cybercabs: 7 Predictions for How AI Changes the World · Sep 12, 2026 · at 4:22

Matteo Franceschetti, co-founder and CEO of Eight Sleep, advises Harry Stebbings on common blind spots early-stage hardware founders face regarding unit economics.

0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.6s
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“That probably the funders in the first year of the company or in the first probably, let's say three months, they don't fully understand what the cost of producing that device will be. They don't understand the return rate. And so everything they tell you about BOM and COGS will probably be off by at least 50%.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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