For professionals developing new electronic products
Build faster and avoid costly mistakes with engineering support
Design guidance and reviews from experienced engineers
Over 3,000 people helped since 2019
Hardware mistakes are expensive.
Way more expensive than software mistakes, because you can't just push a patch.
Your prototype comes back dead, or your certification fails, or your first production run has a yield problem, or customers start reporting field failures once you're shipping.
Any one of those can set you back weeks or months, and every engineer who's done this long enough has been on the wrong end of at least one.
Fortunately, you know enough to know what you don't know.
Maybe it's the RF design, the power supply topology, or the manufacturing side you've never actually taken to scale.
The hardest part is that most engineers don't have senior peers to check their work.
Maybe your team is small. Maybe you're the most senior engineer in the room. So you make decisions, and you hope.
I've been there.
My first week as a microchip design engineer at Texas Instruments, I was terrified of design reviews. A room full of senior engineers would dissect every decision in excruciating detail.
But watching enough of them taught me something I didn't expect.
The engineers who did best in those reviews were the ones who'd already surfaced most of their problems before the review even started, by asking other engineers for feedback throughout the design process.
So that's the lesson I've carried ever since:
Designing in isolation is the single most avoidable source of expensive mistakes in hardware.
That's why I built the Hardware Academy.
To give engineers the review culture I had at TI, without needing to work at a place like TI.
Whether you're responsible for your company's next product or delivering designs for clients, you get a team of experienced engineers reviewing your work at every stage, catching issues before they become expensive.
Introducing the Hardware Academy
Developing a new electronic product is like walking through a minefield.
One bad assumption can blow up your schedule, your budget, or your reputation.
Every decision, from component selection to certification, has ripple effects, and trial and error is the most expensive way to learn.
Hardware mistakes don’t just cost money. They cost time, credibility, and the trust of whoever is counting on you.
What you need isn’t another course. You need a team of engineers who’ve done it before, reviewing your designs, catching what you missed, and keeping you out of trouble.
That’s what the Hardware Academy gives you. A complete support system of experienced engineers who know how to move fast without breaking things.
"Biggest bangs for my buck. No fluff, just honest advice that saves time and money."
Lucas Schulte
Academy member
Meet Your Guide: John Teel
Hey there, I'm John Teel.
I spent over a decade designing microchips at Texas Instruments. My chip designs are in devices from Apple, Intel, and others. In fact, you likely own a device with one of my chip designs.
At TI, no design ever shipped without a room full of experienced engineers reviewing it first. That was just how serious hardware got built.
Then I left to launch my own electronic product from scratch. I got it manufactured and into hundreds of retail stores across the U.S. and Canada, including chains like Walgreens.
But it took longer than it should have, cost more than it needed to, and I made mistakes I could have caught earlier if I'd had the kind of outside perspective I took for granted at TI.
Those experiences shaped everything I do now.
Since 2015 I've been helping engineers develop better electronic products without costly trial and error.
Not just the design itself, but the manufacturing and certification steps that trip people up just as often.
Inside the Hardware Academy, you get direct access to experienced engineers and my honest feedback at every stage, so you're never figuring it out alone.
You can even send me private video messages to get my advice and feedback on your project (see below).
Ask John your question via private video:
Featured In
“John’s track record was the best in our group. His projects always ran smoothly.”
Apple engineer
Jamie Langlinais
(formerly at TI)
- Over 3,000 people helped since 2019
- 28,700 posts in design discussions
- 40+ courses and workshops
- Members on every continent
Expert Engineering Support
Get real guidance and technical feedback to ensure your product is manufacturable, reliable, and ready for certification.
The Academy gives you hands-on support from experienced engineers throughout every stage of development.
Design reviews are one of the most valuable parts of that support because they catch issues early and prevent expensive redesigns.
The level of design feedback depends on your plan:
Community Design Reviews (All Plans)
With the Standard plan, you’ll have access to Community Design Reviews in our forum.
Share your design and receive guaranteed feedback from our experienced engineers and fellow community members. Other members learn from every review too, and you'll learn from theirs.
MEMBER WIN
A member brought a power management board in for review before ordering fabrication, and the schematic looked clean.
Then one of our engineers caught that his current-sense resistors were wired in parallel with the supplies instead of in series. That's 5V across 0.1 ohms, a dead short demanding 50 amps the instant the board powers on.
That same review also caught a shutdown signal wired to the wrong regulator. Both of these fixes cost nothing, because no board existed yet.
Manufacturing Readiness Reviews (Premium only)
The full formal design review. We evaluate whether your product can be manufactured, tested, certified, and scaled, covering roughly 100 checkpoints including manufacturability, reliability, and EMI.
You receive a complete written report of our findings. Premium members also get unlimited private access to our engineers for design feedback and questions throughout development.
MEMBER WIN
A member had two products in volume production, and they came with a costly pattern of failures.
5% of boards were failing at the factory, and about 1% were failing once they got into customers' hands, all on a power circuit that matched the datasheet.
Our engineers went through the design and found no problems. Instead, the evidence pointed at the chip itself, since the chip used gets cloned a lot, and he had no control over where his factory was buying them.
At volume, random failures in a correct design usually point back to the parts. And catching sourcing and manufacturing-scale risks like that before a production run is exactly what these reviews exist for.
Click below to see all of the checks included in our Manufacturing Readiness Reviews:
You get a team of engineers:
Some of the people above don't even work for me...
They're expert members who just enjoy helping others like you.
For example, Dave Millman is an MIT engineer who has helped hundreds of people succeed with their products. He even consulted for Steve Wozniak on a universal remote control, Woz's first product after leaving Apple.
Then there's Renaud Anjoran, who runs his own manufacturing company in China. He also manufactures several members' products.
Or take Bill Whitlock, who spent 25 years running Jensen Transformers, one of the most respected names in pro audio. Members lean on him for analog, power, and audio help.
All three of these guys joined within the first year of the Academy opening in 2019, and they've stuck around ever since.
My staff provide the guaranteed reviews and private support. But the room around them is full of people like Dave, Renaud, and Bill.
How the Academy helps you succeed:
Here's what that team helps you do at every stage:
Make better decisions before you commit...
- Honest feedback on your design direction and feasibility
- Confirm your design can actually be manufactured at your target volume
- Catch critical issues early, before they become expensive
MEMBER WIN
One startup committed to a Bluetooth module that was pre-certified and marketed for wearables.
Partway through development, they found out its FCC grant said it couldn't be used any closer than 20 cm from the body, which left them with a wearable that legally couldn't be worn.
So our engineers reset the whole premise. A module's pre-certification only covers the conditions of its grant, not your product.
From there they laid out the real path forward, including the classification detail that decided whether an expensive SAR test was even needed.
All of it got caught and rerouted before a dollar of certification money was spent.
Ship faster and skip the mistakes...
- Expert design reviews so you can identify design and manufacturability issues before production
- Simplify your design to lower cost and production risk
- Select the right components and technologies for reliable manufacturing
- Reduce or even eliminate expensive certifications
MEMBER WIN
One startup's product failed FCC conducted emissions testing on the very first pass.
The culprit was the off-the-shelf USB charger powering it, which carried FCC and CE markings but had no real test data behind them.
After our finding, they swapped in a properly certified charger with published compliance data, sent it back to the lab, and passed.
A logo printed on a part means nothing without the test report to back it up.
Work with the right people (and avoid the wrong ones)...
- Referrals to trusted manufacturers and specialty engineers
- Learn how to spot and avoid dishonest vendors
- Get honest feedback on quotes, timelines, and designs
Move smarter, not harder...
- Know where to spend engineering effort and where to save it
- Avoid the redesigns that cost weeks and thousands of dollars
- Get second opinions on the decisions that matter most
Your complete training library:
• Tutorial - How to Design a Custom ESP32 PCB (includes ordering boards and programming and testing them)
• Understanding Certifications and Regulatory Requirements
• Workshop: New Methods for Low-cost Injection Molding
• Tutorial: How to Design Your First PCB
• Tutorial: Designing an ESP32 PCB with a Battery Charger
• How to Design Your Own Custom PCB
• Introduction to 3D Modeling
• Introduction to Power Management
• How to Estimate Manufacturing Cost
• Introduction to PCB Design Using KiCad
• Introduction to Mechanical Design
• Setting Up a Low-Risk Supply Chain in China
• Design Your First PCB Boot Camp
• Product Design Masterclass: From Concept to Prototype
• How to Design Your Enclosure for Injection Molding
• Introduction to 3D Printing
• How to Order PCBs
• How to Select the Wireless Tech for Your Product
• Low-Volume Manufacturing Strategies and Methods
• How to Protect Your Intellectual Property in China
• Introduction to Bluetooth Low-Energy
• How to Build Reliability Into Your Product Design
• 12 Layers of IoT Cloud Infrastructure
• Introduction to PCB Manufacturing
Every question gets an in-depth answer from an experienced engineer!
Inside the Academy community:
"Only on the Hardware Academy can I ask a question and get possibly the most qualified person on the planet answering in under a day!"
- Academy member (see screenshot below)
MEMBER WIN
A member got the fourth revision of his board back, and USB to the ESP32-S3 was completely dead, even though revision three had worked fine.
He posted his layout and said it was "a problem that has me stumped." One of our engineers walked through the things that actually matter for USB: the differential pair widths, where the ground plane sat in his stackup, and the stubs in his routing.
So he redrew the data lines as a proper differential pair, and the next board came back with USB working just like it should.
Is It Right for You?
The Hardware Academy is NOT for everyone, and I'd prefer to help you figure out if it’s not right for you BEFORE you join rather than waste your time. So, let’s cut to the chase...
WHO IT IS FOR:
WHO IT IS NOT FOR:
“I was hesitant joining…but immediately all those worries were gone. Worth every penny. I saved myself tons of headaches.”
Erik Hunter
Academy member
You're not too early, and you're not too late...
Wherever you are right now is the right time to start.
Here's why waiting costs you either way.
Most people tell themselves they'll join once they're further into the design, once the schematic's done, or the prototype's working, or the first boards are back from fab.
And then there are the people on the opposite end, the ones who figure their design works so they're past the point of needing a second look.
The board powers up, the firmware runs, and from here it's just a matter of getting it built.
I get the instinct, but it's backwards in both directions. The people who think they're too early and the ones who think they're too late are usually making the same mistake at opposite ends.
The design decisions that are most expensive to undo get made early, and they keep coming at every stage after, things like your part choices, your power setup, and the core technology you build around.
So every month you put this off is another month of those decisions locked in without a review. And the longer a mistake rides along in your design, the more it costs to pull back out.
"I'm still scoping the design, so it's too early to join."
That's actually one of the best times to join, not a reason to wait.
When you're still weighing architectures and picking your core technology, the right input helps you commit to the approach worth building and flag the risks before you've designed around them.
It's far cheaper to get a second opinion on the architecture now than to discover the problem after the whole design hangs off it. The earlier you catch it, the less it costs.
MEMBER WIN
A member came to us early with an ambitious, feature-packed plan for an assistive sports product.
Two replies from our engineers got him to think hard about the complexity and failure rates he hadn't planned for, and he cut the riskiest part of the design before spending a cent building it.
"Just those two alone were worth several months' worth of the Hardware Academy monthly membership cost, to me, particularly as they helped me identify a number of blind spots."
"I'll join once I've finished my prototype."
There are really two prototype stages: the proof-of-concept you wire up from dev kits and modules, and the custom design that follows.
A lot of people assume the Academy is for that later custom stage, so they wait.
But the choices you make at the proof-of-concept stage carry straight into the custom design, things like your component selection and the power architecture you build around.
Getting experienced eyes on it before you've locked those in is how you avoid carrying a design flaw forward into your schematic and PCB layout.
Earlier is always cheaper regardless of the prototype stage.
"I already have a working design, so I'm past the point of needing this."
A working prototype is where the next set of expensive problems begins, not where the risk ends.
Getting a board to work on the bench is a long way from a design that's actually manufacturable and reliable at volume.
Things like DFM, DFT, certification, and ESD protection are where designs that run perfectly on your bench fail in production, or rack up costs that should have been engineered out earlier.
Having someone experienced review your schematic and layout before you commit to fab, tooling, and a production run is how you catch the issues that cost the most, the ones that show up last.
And catching a problem in design review is always cheaper than finding it on the bench, or worse, out in the field.
No matter which stage you're at, your membership covers all of them.
Can't I just use AI for this?
You should be using AI. We use it every day ourselves.
AI is extremely useful where being wrong is cheap, things like learning concepts, drafting code, or summarizing datasheets.
But in hardware, the expensive decisions are different. A confidently wrong answer means a board respin, a failed certification round, or a production order you can't undo.
And AI only answers the questions you ask it. The most expensive mistakes in hardware live in the questions you didn't know to ask.
Even the AI design tools are just assistants, not engineers. They catch some issues, but you have no way of knowing what they missed.
So that's where our engineers come in. They review your whole product and catch those mistakes before they cost you months.
MEMBER WIN
A member's CO2 sensor kept acting flaky, and a ChatGPT debugging session confidently told him to power it at 5V instead of 3.3V.
The problems seemed to go away, so he built his next board revision the same way.
Then the flakiness came back, and the AI's fix had added a second fault of its own: a 5V-powered sensor with 3.3V logic on its data lines.
Two board revisions went into chasing that ghost.
When the design finally came in for review, our engineers tracked down the problem and suggested the correct fix.
The real cause was routing. Power lines for an ultrasonic piezo ran right beside the sensor wiring and coupled noise into it.
So the voltage was never the problem, and the datasheet had allowed either one all along.
A fix that works for reasons you can't explain is just a failure waiting to come back.
How the Academy Is Different...
"The Hardware Academy has built in vetting of people you can go to for help and was truly a life saver for us."
Elliot S.
Academy Member
To get a product into production, you'll deal with consultants, contract manufacturers, test labs, component vendors, and more.
But here’s the problem: most of them get paid whether you succeed or not.
In many cases, their incentives reward complexity instead of real results.
- A contract manufacturer quotes to win the job, not to protect your yield.
- A test lab charges for every retest, pass or fail.
- An engineer earns more by over-engineering your design.
The Hardware Academy is different.
Our engineers don’t just give advice, they review your actual designs to make sure your product is ready for manufacturing.
I don’t sell design services or take commissions on referrals. My only incentive is to help you succeed. If I don’t, you’ll just leave. Simple as that.
Your Academy membership gives you honest, unbiased advice from someone who’s been through it and genuinely wants your product to succeed.
| Do It Yourself | Hire Consultants | Recommended Hardware Academy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Low upfront, but costly mistakes | $150+ per hour, adds up fast | One low monthly fee, paid for by the mistakes it prevents |
| Risk Coverage | No experienced eyes on your design decisions | Each specialty needs a separate expert | Design reviews plus manufacturing and certification guidance |
| Incentive Alignment | You care the most, but lack the experience | Paid whether you succeed or not | Recurring model keeps us invested in your progress |
| Speed | Slow trial and error, likely with rework | Fastest, if your budget allows | Fast async help, not a full-time hire |
If you're like me you've already spent endless hours scouring the internet for answers. It's tough to know where to even start.
Now I'm surrounded by talented ambitious individuals who love to help others. They help motivate you and hold you accountable.
Kris Christopher
Academy member
31-Day Money-back Guarantee
Why 31 days? Because I'd rather give you an extra day, so even a monthly rebill is fully covered. I take the risk out of joining, like the Academy takes the risk out of your product.
Two ways to get engineering help with your product:
Both plans give you the full training library and the community.
Standard is where you get your questions answered and your design reviewed by experienced engineers in the community.
Premium adds unlimited private engineering support throughout your development, plus unlimited Manufacturing Readiness Reviews, priority responses and full design confidentiality.
STANDARD
Pay only
$147
per month
Support from a team of experienced engineers
Answers typically within 24-48 hours
Personal advice from John Teel
Community design reviews
All courses and workshops
Masterclass: From Concept to Prototype
Thousands of design discussions
Resources and referrals
Active member community
PREMIUM
Pay only
$997
every 3 months
(that's about $332/month)
Everything in Standard plus:
Unlimited private engineering support
Unlimited private Manufacturing Readiness Reviews
100+ checks covering manufacturing, certification, EMI, and reliability. These also sell separately for $997 each.
Priority responses (typically within 24 hours)
Full design confidentiality
Recurring payment. Cancel anytime. 31-day money-back guarantee. Your rate never increases while you're an active member.
In hardware, one caught mistake can pay for years of the Academy:
- Redesigns: Thousands of dollars and months of delay
- Failed certifications: $3K to $30K, plus a redesign cycle
- Field failures at volume: Returns, scrap, and rework in the thousands
- One year of the Hardware Academy: $1,764 (12 x $147)
An engineer costs $150+ an hour. The Academy gives you a team of them for $147 a month.
One recommendation cut his PCB prototyping quote from $850 to $100:
"Joining the Hardware Academy just paid for itself! Thank you for your advice, expertise, and encouragement."
Steve K.
Academy member
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I get a design review?
Does it matter where I'm located?
Can I get private one-on-one help with my project?
How far along do I need to be with my product?
What type of products are right for the Hardware Academy?
How do you handle confidential information?
How is the Academy community area different?
How are courses structured? Are courses live or recorded?
How do I cancel my subscription? Can I rejoin later?
Can I participate anonymously?
Is all of the content available straight away or is it time-released (drip fed)?
Can I upgrade and downgrade between plans?
Our team has multiple engineers, can we share the same account?
Does the Hardware Academy make any claims to my intellectual property?
Once I join will the price ever increase?
How long does it take to get a reply?
How much time does this take each week?
31-Day Money-back Guarantee
Why 31 days? Because I'd rather give you an extra day, so even a monthly rebill is fully covered. I take the risk out of joining, like the Academy takes the risk out of your product.
Two ways to get engineering help with your product:
Both plans give you the full training library and the community.
Standard is where you get your questions answered and your design reviewed by experienced engineers in the community.
Premium adds unlimited private engineering support throughout your development, plus unlimited Manufacturing Readiness Reviews, priority responses and full design confidentiality.
STANDARD
Pay only
$147
per month
Support from a team of experienced engineers
Answers typically within 24-48 hours
Personal advice from John Teel
Community design reviews
All courses and workshops
Masterclass: From Concept to Prototype
Thousands of design discussions
Resources and referrals
Active member community
PREMIUM
Pay only
$997
every 3 months
(that's about $332/month)
Everything in Standard plus:
Unlimited private engineering support
Unlimited private Manufacturing Readiness Reviews
100+ checks covering manufacturing, certification, EMI, and reliability. These also sell separately for $997 each.
Priority responses (typically within 24 hours)
Full design confidentiality
Recurring payment. Cancel anytime. 31-day money-back guarantee. Your rate never increases while you're an active member.
In hardware, one caught mistake can pay for years of the Academy.
Still wondering if this is for you?
Send me a message below and I'll reply by video.
This video chat feature is also available inside the Academy.
Already a member? Here's the login page (please bookmark it): https://thehardwareacademy.com/login