Example from a real report (our sample on Target): “Target eliminated approximately 1,800 corporate positions, with around 1,000 employees receiving layoff notices and the remainder accounted for by eliminating open roles.” Source: NBC News
We build physical agent harnesses to enable AI to debug, validate, and ship functional hardware and software.
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Read from the page's own HTML and response headers on 10 September 2026, at https://hilstart.io/. Each badge matched a string the site serves about itself — hover one to see which. Nothing here is a traffic, ranking or revenue figure: those cannot be read off a page and are not claimed.
Checked away from the directory entry. What is below does not come from the company's Y Combinator page.
Upload your board. Hilstart builds a specification you approve, writes executable tests, runs them on real hardware once you confirm, and returns a report built from the measurements.
The title and description the site itself served, answering 200. Not a cached copy and not the company's directory entry — what was live when we asked.
William A'court
Founder/CEO
Founder and CEO at Hilstart.
Previously Lead Mechatronics Engineer at Aquila, shooting lasers at drones to charge them.
Also made FSAE race cars and electric jetboats along the way.
Simon Alexander
Founder/CTO
Founder & CTO at Hilstart.
Previously Firmware Engineer at Aquila.
Rahul Bhati
Founder
Trained gymnast. Building hardware since 15. 2x National robotics champion at 18.
Before HILStart: power and thermal systems at Vessev (Flying boats) and test rigs at Halter (NZ's latest unicorn). Founding team at Aquila and built the core tech behind kilometre-scale wireless laser energy transmission across many engineering disciplines. Aquila is now a world-leading powerbeaming company, and the tech delivered the world's first 500W transfer to a drone mid-flight.
Josh Schoeman
Founder
Making hardware easier.
Past adventures all over mechanical and electrical development.
Battle scars from electric motor design, accelerated lifecycle testing, mechanical structures, cooling systems, hardware test rigs, DFM, wiring harnesses, race cars and electronics debugging.
Also, destructive testing (often inadvertent).
Founders, titles and bios as the company published them. Photographs are our own copies of the ones on that record, so they do not break when the original link expires.
One of 163 companies held here in Industrials › Manufacturing and Robotics.
No investor is drawn from a Form D — the form states how many invested and never who. The one investor on this graph is named because a batch has exactly one.
Want the whole picture on Hilstart?
Example from a real report (our sample on Target): “Target eliminated approximately 1,800 corporate positions, with around 1,000 employees receiving layoff notices and the remainder accounted for by eliminating open roles.” Source: NBC News
A Full Report on Hilstart: verified, sourced, every claim cited, ready in a few minutes. See pricing.
What the Full Report on Hilstart covers
The Short Answer
Which Company This Is
What They Do, And How The Money Works
Who Runs It, And How To Reach Them
The Money: Funding, Valuation, Runway
Who Pays Them, And Who They Are Up Against
Warning Bells
Sources
7 cited sources found
Plus the sections for what you are deciding, which you pick after ordering.
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