How I Tested That Bill Fienup | How I Tested a HardTech Innovation Center
In this episode I’m joined by Bill Fienup. He’s the co-founder of mHUB, one of the world’s leading hardtech innovation centers, located in Chicago, IL.
We explore how he went from building Nerf gun prototypes at MIT to creating a space where thousands of hardware founders can prototype, test, and scale physical products. What started out as a meetup group and a spreadsheet, grew into a full ecosystem with millions of dollars in equipment and billions of dollars in economic impact.
Bill shares how to test hardware ideas without burning capital, why most teams over-focus on feasibility instead of desirability, and how to validate what people will actually pay for before you build.
If you’re working on physical products, or funding them, this episode is a masterclass in how to test before you invest.
Enjoy my conversation with Bill Fienup.
Takeaways
- Start with the problem, not the solution. The biggest risk isn’t building something, it’s solving a problem that customers don’t care enough about to act on.
- Desirability and willingness to pay matter more than feasibility early. Teams often over-focus on building, but the real uncertainty is whether customers value the solution enough to pay.
- Test demand before investing in development. Simple experiments like landing pages or fake purchase flows can validate real interest before committing resources.
- Iterate in spirals, not stages. Move across desirability, feasibility, and viability repeatedly, increasing investment only as uncertainty is reduced.
- Avoid building the wrong thing the right way. Strong execution can’t fix a fundamentally misaligned product, validation must come before scale.
- Use competition as validation. Existing solutions signal real demand and confirm the problem is worth solving.
- Focus on the majority, not edge cases. Designing for the loud minority can increase cost and complexity without improving overall product-market fit.
- Community can be a powerful starting point. MHub began as a meetup and shared spreadsheet, showing how real user pain can evolve into a scalable ecosystem.
Guest Links
mHub’s Website: https://www.mhubchicago.com/
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fienup/
If your leadership team is about to make a big strategic bet, the real risk usually isn’t the idea, it’s the assumptions behind it that haven’t been surfaced yet. A Decision Sprint is a focused 6–12 week engagement where we extract, map, and test those risks so leaders can make a clear Commit, Correct, or Cut decision before major capital moves. Learn more or apply at precoil.com.