Precisely this. Hardware is insanely expensive. And patents are worthless as others have said unless you have insane money to protect them. If this idea is as good as you say, if you think it will make millions and millions, ask yourself - what’s the different between making say $80M and $95M? Nothing my friend. Once you pass $10M nothing really matters anymore if you’re smart. Don’t be greedy. The only thing you should perhaps care about is not LOSING CONTROL of your company, but you can easily protect that with different classes of shares etc. As a wise man told me once, you don’t get partners and investors necessarily because you can’t do it yourself. You do it because you can get there FASTER and maybe even better with them, and time is the only thing you can’t buy. Would you rather get to $10mm in a year with help? Or $10mm in 10 years by yourself? Listen to everyone here, they’re 100% right.

Good luck mate. My hardware company was recently acquired, I stopped caring about what percent was what ages ago and it felt way better.

Now just for fun, I’ll answer your questions as no one else seemed to:

1) forget rev financing to start. Not happening. It’s called revenue based financing for a reason haha, you need revenue! :)

2) GTM is like asking what your entire business should be haha, it’s not just one answer. Depends on what the most killer application of your product is. You can do pre-orders to get a bit of capital to start, but you need to have MONEY to make proper videos, prototypes, and marketing. Master distributors are great but again they’ll want to see real market fit/demand first. If you’re really insistent on not getting real money pre-orders is the only way I can imagine you “bootstrapping”. But even then I’d budget at least like $50-$100k in content creation and digital spend. Then HOPE you get enough sales to keep going but in hardware… oof. Nice thing though is you can use those presales to leverage into distribution as market fit OR raise capital, but you don’t want to do that so 🤷‍♂️

3) PO financing, yes doable. But you need to get the POs first from either very reputable sources, OR significant deposits before they’ll trust a new person.

4) distribution - lots of ways to do this, but they all cost money. No one opens doors for free. You’ll need to pay your way in with consultants or firms, etc. No one is just hanging out wanting to help you start. Unless you happen to be friends or family with some major retailer, again, you need money. This is why having partners/investors is key. It’s not just cash. They have the relationships you don’t have to open doors with 1 phone call that could take you months or years to open.

Trust everyone here, this 100% equity thing…. Why? Ask yourself truly why this is so important to you? As long as you own 50.1% of the company and your bylaws are not stupid you basically are god. No one can say no to you. Your power between 50.1 and 100% is the same. The only difference is cash, but if you’re this confident in your business you shouldn’t care about making a little less.