Observation due to current venture: not much of the strategy content applies to hardware companies (particularly hardware companies not manufacturing consumer or IOT widgets). Similarly, not much of the funding and regulatory advice applies to cross-border startups.
Regarding deep tech hardware, on the one hand you have PG stating his support for from-scratch thinking[0], on the other hand you have this de-facto "ship and iterate" model from the SaaS world which just doesn't apply to nontrivial hardware projects.
I have to say this problem isn't specific to YC: the vast majority of advice liberally distributed to founders by VC and early stage investment world actors can range from irrelevant to dangerously misleading for founders in some of these spaces.
The lesson here is: take what you will and treat nothing as gospel.
Regarding deep tech hardware, on the one hand you have PG stating his support for from-scratch thinking[0], on the other hand you have this de-facto "ship and iterate" model from the SaaS world which just doesn't apply to nontrivial hardware projects.
I have to say this problem isn't specific to YC: the vast majority of advice liberally distributed to founders by VC and early stage investment world actors can range from irrelevant to dangerously misleading for founders in some of these spaces.
The lesson here is: take what you will and treat nothing as gospel.
[0] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1172430190401572864