TRADEOFFS

In this episode of TradeOffs, Nate and Chris sit down with Narayan Powderly and Ioannis Papamanoglou, co-CEO’s of atopile, a circuit design tool bringing software development practices to hardware. Narayan shares how his frustration with slow board development cycles led him to question why schematics remained an "impenetrable box" immune to automation. Ioannis traces his path from hacking PlayStation Portables and building Minecraft redstone circuits to studying operating systems and working on smart bike locks for the Dutch railway system. Together, they discuss why their real competitor isn't other code-to-electronics startups but legacy tools like Altium and Cadence, and their vision for a future where full-stack engineers own everything from PCB design to firmware. They also explore how LLMs will transform electronics design and why the open-source hardware community is more collaborative than competitive.

Find out more information about atopile at atopile.io

Join the atopile Discord
Check out the atopile Github

For more information on the podcast, check out https://tradeoffs.fm