Hi all, I’m excited to share the first episode of the Core Matter Podcast. This one was recorded live in Shenzhen during my trip back in June. Joining me is Eric Pan, one of the founding figures of China’s maker movement and the AI hardware partner behind many global makers’ products. He founded Seeed Studio in 2008, which provides hardware modules, prototyping, and small-batch manufacturing services to hardware entrepreneurs worldwide. Today Seeed is the company behind Reachy Mini’s production and an NVIDIA robotics partner. He also created the Chaihuo makerspace and brought the first Maker Faire to China. Before all of that, he worked on chipset quality at Intel, so he has seen the hardware world from both sides: US corporate process, and now nearly two decades embedded in the Shenzhen supply chain. We recorded at Seeed Studio’s offices. I wanted this episode to work as a primer on two levels: for entrepreneurs, how to actually work with Shenzhen and how business gets done on the ground; for investors and operators, what makes Shenzhen’s manufacturing base hard to replicate. Most people can tell you Shenzhen’s advantage is cost. With reshoring back on the US agenda and capital flowing into US manufacturing startups, the more useful question is what actually sits underneath that cost advantage, and what it takes to build a robust manufacturing supply chain anywhere. We talked through the Reachy Mini story and how Seeed absorbed a five-fold demand spike for Pollen Robotics, why supplier trust, not budget, is the binding constraint for hardware startups, the distinct mistakes hardware veterans and software founders make in Shenzhen, why Eric now tells founders not to build hardware at all, “design from manufacturer” as a method, the quality-cost-lead-time triangle and what reshoring can and cannot replicate, how a $1,000 open-source robot arm opens up the pan-industry beyond factories, humanoids versus vertical robots, and where Shenzhen sits in the physical AI story twenty years out. Follow Seeed Studio here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seeedstudio/ | Website: https://www.seeedstudio.com/ | Chaihuo: https://www.chaihuo.org/ You also can watch the show on Youtube. Every episode, I sit down with the founders, researchers, and operators building physical AI worldwide, tracing the full stack from components and supply chains to what actually deploys. Chapters * 00:00 Cold open * 00:41 Seeed Studio in 2026: from modules to solution systems * 01:48 The Reachy Mini scale-up with Pollen Robotics * 03:01 Supply chain trust: why startups can’t build it alone * 05:08 Common mistakes: hardware veterans vs software founders * 07:56 “Don’t build hardware”: reference designs and open source * 09:48 Anatomy of a failed Shenzhen project * 11:18 Building trust on the ground: come as a student * 12:20 Reshoring and the impossible triangle: quality, cost, lead time * 14:24 Why Seeed built an open-source robot arm * 16:42 $1,000 arms and the “pan-industry” * 19:08 Humanoids vs vertical robots * 20:38 Reopening San Jose: Bay to Bay 2 * 1:56 Shenzhen twenty years out: innovate with China AI-generated transcript (for reference only) Michelle Sun (00:00) You’ve watched so many Western founders come to Shenzhen to build their dream products. What is the most common mistake that you’ve seen them make? Eric Pan (00:08) We try to convince people not to build hardware. Michelle Sun (00:11) From the surface, Shenzhen’s competitive advantage is cost. But beyond cost, what is the true advantage of Shenzhen’s capability? Eric Pan started Seeed Studio in two thousand and eight selling hardware from his apartments. Today the company behind Reachy Mini’s production, NVIDIA’s robotics partner, and the AI hardware partner banner all over Shenzhen is telling the next generation of Western founders to stop making hardware. We’re in Shenzhen to find out why. Eric Pan (00:35) For a startup to be able to trust over like hundreds of different suppliers is a nightmare. Michelle Sun (00:41) Hi Eric. So from the inside, how would you actually describe the business today in two thousand twenty six? Eric Pan (00:46) So we started with open source hardware and we still do so, but it’s evolving all the way from modules to devices now more into solution systems. And we see ourselves as a platform to incubate more hardware ideas into real products. Michelle Sun (01:00) And you’ve described a business as two thirds of prototyping for early stage startups and a third for scale up production. So can you tell me more how that scale up production part actually works and how would a founder work with a team like yourself? Eric Pan (01:11) I think it’s actually a loop. We provide the open source modules and devices. Devices as the reference design, modules and the core components. So people buy them and they do the prototypings. Try them out to h infuse your ideas, software, data into the creation. Then the best option is come back to us and to scale that. Because we have all the supply chains, we have all the expertise. We just need to like change design files, remove some components for them, or remix several projects together. to make the into their creations. So it’s very naturally growing from the two thirds of prototyping into one third of a scaling up. So Michelle Sun (01:48) The Reachy Mini story where the Pollen’s demand spiked five times more than they expected. So how did you help the team and how did you work with the founder too? Eric Pan (01:56) Yeah, we know Pollen Robotics for many years and they have been using our ReSpeaker, which is a microphone array from the very beginning. Okay. So it’s very organically they evolve into a device that they want to manufacture, they ask us for help. And we respect this project very much. So why not? And we host them as of our team. So they come to Shenzhen, stay here for three months and in this office. Nice and we s put our engineers to work them together, like side by side. Michelle Sun (02:17) In this office or Eric Pan (02:22) Basically we helped them to re engineer many parts of the design because we know the manufacturing better. Mm-hmm. And it’s more like an engineering process. They do the EVT. We help them to like fine tune the designs. We talk to the supply chain, know the re restrictions. And we had a a lot of injection modings or stampings for different kind of the parts. Because they have very clear goal how many they are going to ship, we how fast they should be doing that, and we put our project management team and engineers in full speed. to support this happen. And it was kinda magic because they have the right team to work with. They know us, they trust us. So even it’s two companies we work as one team. Michelle Sun (03:01) In terms of the supply chain partners, are they all over Shenzhen or do you have like a set, you know, list of people that you go to for like various components? Eric Pan (03:08) Of course we have SRM, like supply chain relationship management, and we have the majority of them are around Shenzhen and Dongguan. But we still buy parts from like the east of China, from all over the world. Michelle Sun (03:20) What would have happened to Pollen Robotics if they didn’t work with you guys? Like how would they meet that demand? Eric Pan (03:24) I don’t know. There can be many folds. There can be like if they go to all the supply chain themselves, because to any of the supplier, they need a long time to trust the customers as well. Yeah. Not not only vice versa, but they need to understand you this is a startup, but they are not nobody. They can pay on time. They know the manufacturer and respect the process. So it’s taking a long time to build a trust. But if for a startup to build a trust over like hundreds of different suppliers, it’s a nightmare. It’s not only about the budget. It’s also about the understanding of each other. Understanding of what’s limitations on manufacturing, why we cannot do this way. It’s also on the quality management. How do I set up the quality to make sure the factories knows what to deliver? Mm-hmm. Also it’s about need time. Need time is actually most of the need time is about waiting. Because the manufacturer cannot be empty until you come. They always have some cues. But why would they prioritize your projects? So it’s a lot of like orchestrations in between and we are doing this job for eighteen years. We have our own product, we have our own supply chains, we have own factories, so that’s making this life much easier. Michelle Sun (04:31) Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you have this like close relationship with various factories that you’ve worked with over the many years and so it kind of builds that trust over time. And when the startups go to you guys and then to the factories, then there’s one layer of support. Eric Pan (04:45) Exactly. We are more like a future or middle ground of the trust. Because we need to understand the customers as well. Like we have selection of our customers very much. We don’t do consumer electronics because we think that’s going to be very fierce compet competitions. Has to be very large scale that corporations might be taking over. So we’re focusing on emerging technology. We’re focusing on more vertical or like industrial oriented stuff. Michelle Sun (05:08) Mm-hmm, for sure. So you’ve watched so many Western founders come to Shenzhen to build their dream products. So what is the most common mistake that you’ve seen them make? Eric Pan (05:17) Well, the mistakes are very uncommon. Each team have their like restrictions. Some of the like Apple experts, they’re working for Ample or Microsoft for hardware, they come to Shenzhen and they are demanding very much like a corporation, but they have very small volume and they have a very small supplier, versus previously they are working for Apple. So their methodology w
