We Design & Build Your Hardware

We design & manufacture
Industrial, medical, & consumer electronics
Small enough to fit in an oven

HQ in San Diego, CA. Manufacturing at our wholly-owned factories in Tijuana, Mexico and Dongguan, China.

Connor Bush

36 hours in San Francisco! 

Had a blast cruising around with Kassie Betts & Derek Jackson, MBA 

Great to get some on-site time with:
Dave S Desrochers Intercreate 
Jonathan Thai Hatch Duo LLC 

Super neat to see Optivolt IRL!

Bonus points for this city having some awesome gluten-free baked goods and epic sunrises for my morning run! 

Way too many cool hardware things happening in the bay area. Will be returning ASAP.

Connor Bush 🔋🖥📟

We Manufacture Your Hardware at Scale (USA, Mexico, & China) | Ecosystem, Pipeline & Partner Strategy

My microwave broke today. While shopping for a replacement, I realized it’s a perfect metaphor for the mistake many hardware teams make when vetting manufacturing partners.

Think about it:

The Baseline: It’s a given that a microwave must heat food. If it doesn't, it’s not a microwave. Similarly, a CM must be able to build your device. If they can’t meet the technical floor, they aren't in the conversation.

The Retail Experience: I looked at Walmart, Best Buy, Lowe's, Home Depot, and Amazon. The prices are all within 10-20%. Since the product and price are similar, I’m actually choosing based on the "parking lot" experience...

Is it easy to get to? What is the return policy? Is the customer service helpful when things go wrong? What else is in the neighborhood? Do I like to shop there? What other things are on my list? Do I have a rewards account? 

Here is where most founders get it wrong.

With a microwave, you buy it, take it home, and hopefully never talk to the retailer again. It’s a transaction.

A CM relationship is a marriage.

If you are just "spray and pray" quoting based on the lowest number, you are ignoring the parts of the equation that actually determine if your program succeeds:

The "Parking Lot": How is their logistics agility? Is it a nightmare to get materials in and out?

Customer Service: When a line stops, or a component goes EOL, do they answer the phone, or are you just a ticket number?

RMA & Warranty: How do they handle it when things go wrong? Because in hardware, they will.

Cultural Alignment: Do they actually care about your product, or are you just "filling a gap" in their capacity?

If you're picking a partner solely on the "heating food" part and the sticker price, you’re missing 80% of the value.

In a transaction, the parking lot is a convenience. In a CM partnership, the "parking lot" is your lifeline.

Don't just buy a microwave. Find a partner you actually want to be in the kitchen with for the next five years.

Last weekend I decided to build a storage rack system for the garage.

Drew up the plans.
Bought the lumber.
Cheaper than buying one.
Fun Saturday morning project for the kids and me.

It was step one in a master plan:
* Clear the yard > clear the garage > reorganize the house.

Everything staged. Ready to build.

Five minutes in… I realize my circular saw doesn’t have enough depth for the lumber. 

Facepalm.

Now it’s been a week.
I’m researching new saws.
Spending more than planned.
And the entire project is off schedule because of one 'tooling' oversight.

Too many parallels to hardware manufacturing.
You can have 99% of the components in place…
Missing one “insignificant” capacitor?
Whole build stops.

Tooling costs money.
Tooling takes time.
Test as you go.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
I should have known better.

It’s CNY. Much of the supply chain is paused.

Which makes this your quarterly reminder:

If you want to ship in 2026, you should already be in motion.

Because it’s not just quoting and tooling.

It’s:

EVT / DVT / PVT.
Certifications.
Longest lead components.
Line setup.
Test fixtures. 
Packaging. 
Shipping. 
Tariffs. 

And then the things you didn’t know you forgot.

This isn’t urgency.

It’s math.

Physics and lead times remain undefeated.

Shoutout to the homie Mike Klein for the launch of Lens Lizard!

If you drive a vehicle, this product is for you!

Open article: Lens Lizard: A remote controlled backup camera cleaner by Mike Klein — Kickstarter by kickstarter.com

Lens Lizard: A remote controlled backup camera cleaner by Mike Klein — Kickstarter

One of the most common missteps I see first-time hardware innovators make:

They build their manufacturing timeline assuming everything will go to plan.

Which is interesting ... b/c in almost no other area of life do we assume a flawless first attempt. 

You do not expect to downhill mountain bike the first time you try to ride a bike.

You do not assume you'll set your campsite up perfectly the first time you go out. 

You do not enter a chili cookoff the first time you've ever made chili.

Yet, when it comes to electronic device manufacturing -- somthing full of firsts like:

- tooling
- NPI builds
- test fixture development 
- sourcing & procurement 
- certification testing
- packaging
- logistics

... the timeline is often built on the assumption that everything will go off without a hitch.

I see this most often when a founder commits to a lunch date for kickstart, a retail partner, or an investor expectation. 

** A HUGE COMMITMENT. 

Can a product go from greenlight to production in 6 months? 

Sure. 

But in reality, 8-12 months is far more common once iteration, supply chain friction, and testing are factored in. 

We don't plan for perfection is almost ANY other area of life.

So why do we do it with hardware? 

--------
*gets off soap box

Happy Friday 😅

I'm heading to ISC West! 

See you there?

#ISCwest #iscwest2026

We're excited to help celebrate Z-Wave Alliance's 15 Years in Monitored Security during their networking event at ISC West in Las Vegas! 

Will you be at ISC West? You can join in on the celebration too! Grab a cocktail, enjoy some tacos, and connect with fellow industry leaders and smart home innovators at this fun happy hour.

Details:
Wednesday, March 25 from 5 – 7 PM
Cañonita Restaurant in The Venetian Resort 
Free to attend — register in advance here: https://lnkd.in/gaPZP8BW

Sales Expert + Industrial Engineer + MBA

Jorge here from Puerto Rico. I'm an industrial engineer who transitioned to sales. It's funny because my grandfather and dad worked in sales, and I studied industrial engineering to get away from sales, but sales didn't get away from me. 

A few years ago, I grew sales for a startup here in PR from 0 to 3M in ARR (the first Puerto Rican startup in Y-Combinator). Transitioned to working at two venture-backed startups, Reprise and Offsite. 

I just finished my MBA + doing some sales consultancy work for startups in Puerto Rico. 

Happy to talk about how companies' culture affects productivity, Sales, PLG Strategies, GTM Engineering, Team Retreats, SaaS, and LATAM's growing sector for VC.

Right now, I'm happy with my role ias founder of The GTM Engineering Company, which mixes my background in industrial engineering and my 8+ years of experience in tech and sales. 

Looking to connect with startups looking for help with their GTM processes, Clay or CRM work.

Jorge B. Macías 🇵🇷

A while back, I was just hanging out in the Clay cohort and the Slack channels, answering questions, sharing builds, and helping people think through messy GTM problems. No big announcement or strategy behind it. I just wanted to help people out. What i had: lots of curiosity and “let’s figure this out together.” attitude. 

That’s when Jared and Matteo reached out. They told me they’d been watching how I showed up. Not just building systems, but helping others build them too. They wanted someone who could ship, but who was equally passionate about guiding others through the process.

That’s how I became one of the first TAs at the GTM Engineer School Engineering School.

I’m excited to share that I’m coming back!!! 

One of the things I’ve loved most about building The GTM Engineering Company is that I do not just enjoy building systems. I genuinely love teaching them. Breaking down architecture. Explaining tradeoffs. Helping someone build cool GTM things. 

There is a strong overlap between what we do inside The GTM Engineering Company and what happens inside the GTM Engineering School. Both are about thinking in systems. Both are about building things that work in the real world.

I’m going to be advising on the Capstone Project. The goal of the program is to help students work through real go-to-market challenges, build functional systems, and ship REAL projects that actually move the needle for a business. 

If you're part of one of these cohorts, bring me your hardest problems. The messier the better. I'll do my best to help you think through the architecture, grind through the creative blocks, and find ways to turn a solid idea into something that holds up. Really excited about this one!

Let’s build. 🚀

Sales Expert + Industrial Engineer + MBA = GTM Engineer 🤓

I recently helped a 5000 person company cut 2.5 hours of daily research down to near zero.

They said they were handling 100 accounts per month. That's 250 hours every quarter just filling out spreadsheets.

I asked my client what the reps were doing during those two and a half hours, daily.

They were hunting for company data. Trying to figure out if the Director of Sales Operations was actually a VP somewhere else. Scrolling through case studies to find one that might resonate. Copying and pasting into email templates, and then translating some of them into Spanish. It was the worst kind of manual black hole I'd seen in my life.

And in this video, I discuss how I built the system that fixed it by doing two simple things:

1. Enriched company data and standardized job titles
2. Matched relevant case studies to send personalized emails in both English and Spanish

When you see a problem this messy, the instinct is to build something equally complex to solve it. But that's usually wrong. The fix is almost always breaking down what's eating the most time and solving for that first. Then the next thing. Then the next.

Most operational bottlenecks collapse when you just remove the friction points one at a time instead of trying to redesign the entire workflow at once.

I have an office set up that keeps me wired all day long, with convenience sitting right at the center of my unhealthy relationship with productivity.

This might sound superficial as you read this, but I do think a well-organized setup can change how you work. The care and effort you put into assembling it becomes an extension of how seriously you take your output, and it weirdly just makes everything click faster. Here's how I've set mine up:

(1) 34” LG Monitor - Lets me keep multiple things open at the same time without alt-tabbing my way into insanity.

(2) Trackpad - A friend gifted me this after watching me rage at the Apple mouse, appreciate you Christian 🫂 

(3) Apple Keyboard with number pad - The number pad matters more than I thought it would when I'm flying through spreadsheets or expense reports.

(4) Blue Yeti Nano Microphone - Makes me sound crisp on calls, which apparently matters when you're trying to sound credible while working from home in sweatpants.

(5) Logitech Webcam - I look good on camera now, or at least better than my laptop's built-in option, which is worth the investment for client calls alone.

(6) Desk Mat - Protects the desk and somehow makes the whole setup feel intentional instead of thrown together.

(7) Standing Desk - I stand during conversations where I want to be more creative or energized

(8) Hand Rest - Hopefully delays carpal tunnel by a few years, which feels optimistic but necessary.

(9) Apple AirPods - For music, calls, or drowning out the world when I need to focus.

(10) Alexa - Turns on the coffee machine, plays music, and occasionally interrupts my calls if i ever talk about [exa.ai](http://exa.ai) (one of my fav GTME tools)

(11) Air Purifier - I sneeze less now, which is critical because I have allergies year-round and used to sound like I was dying on calls.

(12) Chargers for everything - Because nothing kills momentum like a dead device (watch, airpods or god forbid… my phone) 

(13) Water - self explanatory 😅 

If you work from home, invest in your setup. You'll spend thousands of hours at that desk - might as well make it work for you.

PS: Considering a vertical monitor to place in front of the laptop holder (inspired by Kellen from GTMCafe.com), any reasons why i should or shouldn't?

My second name "Batu", as my friends call me, has biblical significance. My family were devout Catholics, so at birth they named me after Babel: the tower where humanity spoke one language before God scattered them and made communication impossible. But it was my sister who made that nickname stick.

As a toddler, she couldn't pronounce the full word: “Batuel”, so she shortened it to a version she liked. Everyone in the family noticed she was different from the beginning. Her speech patterns, her unfiltered-ness, the way her brain organized and saved information; they all signaled something was off, yet no one could name what they were seeing. I wouldn’t go as far to say that we shrugged those signals off, but we did feel deep regret when she shared something 34 years later.

She'd been diagnosed with autism, and suddenly every confusing moment from childhood and adulthood w. her made perfect sense. The signs had been everywhere, completely obvious in hindsight, but we weren’t able to interpret the pattern.

I'm both glad and devastated that the nickname she gave me stuck. It's a reminder of how much I love her and how badly we failed to understand what she needed for decades.

As I share this here publicly, I’m thinking there’s a deeper lesson here about faith. My name has significance in it, but names endure through the people around you. The voice that coins it, and the bond that keeps repeating it.

PS: Reading the book to get more familiarized with autism, my wife also works with kids that have autism so reading this is also going to help me understand her work better.

I was recently invited to host a Clay Bootcamp 🥾 (Office Hours) where I shared the scaling "secrets" behind my GTME Agency. It was so refreshing to share every growth hack I pulled from my back pocket during the 1 year I've been here. One of the lessons I really enjoyed sharing was about managing unrealistic client expectations before they become project nightmares.

I recounted an incident from a recent discovery call. The prospect opened with a laundry list: they needed a client implementation partner to build an outbound workflow that assigns deals to SDRs and AEs across a huge sales organization, help with inbound lead routing, use Clay to write and publish content on their socials, and deploy a chatbot that qualifies leads and books meetings with AEs. All at once. All in the first conversation. 🤯

I stopped them halfway through. Not because the ideas were bad (they were actually brilliant ideas) , but because they were treating Clay like a magic wand instead of a tool with specific use cases.

This happens constantly. Influencers and LinkedIn "thought" leaders create false expectations to generate leads. They talk about intent signals, holistic scoring, ABM orchestration; and founders hear all of it and think everything is equally achievable in one/two months. 

The gap between what sounds impressive in a post and what actually works in production is enormous, and most clients don't have a framework to distinguish between the two. Which is sad TBH. 

So I paused the conversation and reframed. I told them that the workflows they were asking for are technically possible, but trying to implement them without proper infrastructure is like using a hammer as a drill, it could in theory work but is not the right tool for the right problem. I also explained the sequencing that makes those workflows sustainable, and showed them how to approach the project in stages instead of all at once.

The education process happens before you sign the contract. Once a client has committed and the project has started, backtracking becomes nearly impossible.

Setting realistic expectations upfront protects both sides from wasted time, frustration, and failed implementations that could have been avoided with better scoping & education from the beginning.

I've been posting on LinkedIn for a while now. My usual process involved writing things, hitting publish, watching the little numbers tick up. Most of the time, it feels like I’m throwing thoughts into a machine that sorts them by relevance and reach.

But recently, one post did something I didn’t expect.

I’d written a Christmas post that came from a very personal place. After it went live, my dad reached out, and he told me it made him tear up a little. I stared at that message for a while, trying to remember the last time he’d said something I wrote affected him like that. He doesn’t text much, but that post was enough to pull him into the conversation.

Then a friend from Texas called and said the same thing. I could hear it in his voice before he even finished the sentence. We talked about the post for a while, and then the conversation drifted into something we both happened to be living through: fatherhood.

That post was about my own experience as a dad. How life shifted after my son was born. How responsibility, fear, and gratitude started showing up in places I didn’t expect. I wrote it as a way of processing that change, never imagined it would land so closely with anyone else.

On this platform, you post things hoping they land somewhere. Hoping someone reads them and feels less alone in whatever they're figuring out. But you never really know if that's happening until your phone rings, until someone reaches back across the distance and says "I felt that too.”

LinkedIn taught me to think about audience and positioning and strategic content. But sometimes you just write something true about being human, and it reaches other humans being human right back at you.

Over the last few weeks, multiple solo consultants have reached out to me after already selling GTM engineering projects they didn't know how to deliver which TBH is pretty common. In each case, they were looking for cheap talent to push their deliverables through.

As more people start selling GTM engineering as a service, it's no longer safe to assume execution capability from the title alone. If you're evaluating someone, here are a few things worth pressure-testing in the very first call.

(1) Real execution experience

Pay attention to whether they can describe real systems, real constraints, and real trade-offs. Someone who has done the work will naturally talk about sequencing and dependencies. Vague outcomes and high-level frameworks usually mean they've never been in the weeds.

(2) How they scope before committing

Strong GTM engineers tend to slow this part down. They'll talk about discovery, data quality, existing tooling & processes, and internal readiness. If someone jumps straight to pricing and timelines without grounding it in your setup, that's a red flag.

(3) Ask what parts of GTM engineering they won't take on.

Experience shows up in what someone is unwilling to do. Real GTM practitioners know which projects are fragile, so if everything they say sounds easy, doable and universal, that's usually distance from execution.

I hope these checks help you spot real practitioners early.

CRM data has a reputation for looking incredibly useful. But without an engine to enrich them, and eventually made useful for sales teams, they can turn into a liability. I recently helped a Series A B2B company untangle this exact problem: they had rich data that was completely unusable for their sellers, and we mapped a path toward real-time insight.

I'll share a little more about the problem now, because it's important for understanding how I solved their challenges. The company faced several issues:

(1) Duplicate and missing data was littered across their CRM.
(2) There was no clear way to prioritize accounts.
(3) Inbound leads required heavy manual research.
(4) They had no historical view of the website or account growth.
(5) CRM automation was tangled and undocumented.

Essentially, they were sitting on a pile of valuable, non-operational data. This is a familiar mess, with only one solution that can actively fix it: rebuilding their entire GTM data system.

It had to be organized, so I first designed a sequence of three pillars: Creating a master enrichment layer > activating inbound intelligence > and lastly, a thorough, super-granular CRM audit.

90 days after putting this system in place, I started to see a cohesive story of incremental improvements:

(a) Data quality improved dramatically.
(b) Account prioritization became automatic.
(c) Inbound meetings required almost no manual prep.
(d) Sellers gained visibility into account momentum.
(e) CRM became scalable and easier to maintain.

None of this would’ve been remotely scalable without the right strategy. Rich data without structure creates the illusion of sophistication, and blocks real execution.

If you’re looking for top-notch phone enrichment to power up your workflow, BetterContact is a best-in-class tool to make that happen.

On top of astonishingly accurate connect rates, the tool is an ace-in-the-hole if you’re running multi-channel campaigns. Better coverage, solid data accuracy, and seamless integrations, just everything your outbound engine needs.

I humbly suggest my fellow GTM engineers give this a try for cleaner lists, higher pickup rates, and tighter sequencing. Your enrichment waterfall might just send you a thank-you note.

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