In this week's newsletter, Aaron Moncur has a conversation with Sam Holland, Co-Founder and Product Design Engineer at informal, where he empowers startups to bring hardware ideas to life through CAD modeling and design for manufacturing.
I was working on five projects at once, and that is the difference... that exposure to different industries and project types and speeds and requirements was just like a step change for my capabilities.
In this episode:
How working on multiple freelance projects simultaneously accelerates engineering skill development compared to traditional employment
Why cloud-based CAD eliminates thousands in hardware costs while enabling work from anywhere
How a matchmaking approach beats traditional firms for early-stage hardware development
Why one engineer per role often delivers better results than larger teams
Bonus Content:
S6E39 Sam Holland | Informal Engineering Collective, the Hardware Handbook, & Donut Hole-Der
Sam Holland reveals how informal's collective of 450+ contractors delivers hardware development at a fraction of traditional costs by eliminating overhead and matching specialized expertise to specific projects. From his early days breaking apart electronics as a kid to co-founding a hardware collective that manages hundreds of simultaneous projects with just three full-time employees, Sam shares counterintuitive insights about team structure, the shift to cloud-based engineering tools, and why getting yelled at by machinists taught him more about DFM than any textbook. His journey demonstrates how the hardware development landscape is evolving beyond traditional firms toward lean, specialized teams that can move faster and cheaper without sacrificing quality.
>If YouTube isn’t your thing, check out this episode and all of our past episodes on Apple, Spotify, and all the rest.
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The Power of Parallel Project Experience
When Sam transitioned from full-time employment to consulting, something unexpected happened with his engineering capabilities.
When I was full time at MakerBot and Vimeo, in those seven years I worked on 12-15 projects. When I converted to consulting and moonlighting, I was working on five projects at once.
This shift fundamentally changed how quickly he developed expertise. Working across multiple industries simultaneously exposed him to different manufacturing requirements, timelines, and technical challenges that would have taken decades to encounter in a traditional role.
I got really good at plastic injection molding by making 1000 parts, which you can't really do at a full-time job all the time. You're very much slowly on a path.
The breadth of experience from simultaneous projects creates a different kind of engineer - one who can quickly identify patterns across industries and apply solutions from one domain to another. This cross-pollination of ideas and techniques becomes a competitive advantage.
The exposure to different industries and project types and speeds and requirements was just like a step change for my capabilities.
This parallel project approach challenges the conventional wisdom that deep specialization in one company or product line is the fastest path to engineering mastery. Instead, the variety and volume of challenges faced when juggling multiple projects can compress years of learning into months.
We’re sorry…
Last week, The Wave was hit by spambots that added thousands of accounts, posts, and articles. We caught it early, but some of you may have seen the chaos. We’re sorry about that.
The team is working on beefing up our security and preparing to ensure that this cannot happen again. We are certain that no data has been breeched and this attack was concentrated on flooding the forum with traffic.
No article this week, as we work to strengthen our defenses to give you the best experience moving forward.
If there are any concerns, please contact our team and we will look into it and address anything that comes up.
-The Pipeline Media Lab Team