Built for liftoff. Designed to separate.
Engineering consulting that takes hardware startups from concept to production.
Most of the fuel burns before you ever leave the ground.
First Stage works with hardware startups through the heaviest part of the climb: defining the architecture, designing the product, standing up the line, and building the operation to support it. Then we separate.
A first stage is designed to be left behind.
It carries the majority of the propellant, pushes it through the worst of the atmosphere, and does the work that decides whether anything reaches orbit at all. Then it separates, and the vehicle reaches orbit.
That is the shape of the work at First Stage. We support you for the early days when you need engineering horsepower and the most decisions per week. We help you build it so your team can thrive long after we are gone. A finished engagement is a highly efficient team and operation that no longer needs us.
We help companies figure out how to build, not just what to build.
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01
Product design
Early architecture definition and napkin sketches. Concepts turned into hardware that can be manufactured, tested and qualified, with build constraints written in from the start rather than discovered at the vendor.
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02
Engineering analysis
Rigorous analysis, design criteria development, and systems engineering with a SpaceX-minded approach: designing everything from the ground up and challenging every assumption.
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03
Manufacturing
Process plans, tooling and review gates sized for a team that is still changing the design, not for a factory that froze it three years ago.
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04
Supply chain
Sourcing strategy, vendor qualification, part numbering and the systems that keep the flow of parts legible to everyone who touches it.
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05
Facilities
Standing up the physical space and equipment a hardware team needs, sequenced against how fast the team is actually growing.
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06
Operations
Org structure, program cadence and the single source of truth that keeps day-to-day decisions from disappearing into chat threads.
Four phases, one handoff.
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Phase 01
Ignition
Two weeks inside the company. We map where your designs stand, what you are actually building, what is blocking it, and where the schedule is lying to you.
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Phase 02
Ascent
Design and process work in parallel: drawings that can be built, a supply chain that can feed them, a floor that can hold them.
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Phase 03
Max Q
The ramp, where every weakness shows up at once. We stay hands-on through the first real production rate. We help you make sure parts fly off the line.
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Phase 04
Separation
Documentation, training, and an owner named for every system we built. We leave, and nothing stalls.
Rooted in aerospace, useful anywhere hardware is hard.
We’re already working with startups across aerospace, clean energy, manufacturing and AI.
First Stage is run by its co-founders, Maral Abbasinik and Logan Hicks, engineers who have been through the development cycle hundreds of times on elite engineering teams.
Aerospace
Launch and spacecraft programs, from avionics and structures through propulsion.
Clean energy
Production scale-up for companies building energy hardware at volume for the first time.
Industrials
Helping redefine legacy industries and accelerate the companies revolutionizing them.
AI
Operational grounding for AI companies whose product has to meet a factory floor.