Hardware & IoT

Hilstart

Website

Overview

We build physical agent harnesses to enable AI to debug, validate, and ship functional hardware and software.

Company description As recorded 2026-11-08
Hardware & IoTInfrastructureBusinessesMid marketSubscription

Founders & team

Previously HILStart, HILstart

Company history As recorded 2026-11-08

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.

LinkedIn
Founder profile As recorded 2026-09-15

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.

LinkedIn
Founder profile As recorded 2026-09-15

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).

LinkedIn X
Founder profile As recorded 2026-09-15

News & product activity

Sources & observations

Y Combinator

Profile depthverified profile
Website observationwebsite reachable
Last website check2026-11-11
Location · source statedSan Francisco, CA, USA
Pricing evidenceNo pricing page confirmed
Maturity: Not assessed · 3 of 6 areas documented

Source-based assessment · automated evidence rules

The retained text does not establish product availability or customer use.

Maturity is an evidence-based assessment, not a success rating. It may understate the current stage where evidence is limited. Coverage records documented areas, not a complete or independently audited company history.

Stage definitions
independent websitesource corroborationreachable websitedescriptive evidenceclassified market and modelsourced people
startup.observe Directory coverage · Sources & method