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As more people attempt to turn their ideas for connected devices into actual products, the maker movement is turning into a serious business. And the companies that serve makers are getting their chance to build serious businesses as well. Thus, SnapEDA, a company that provides a design to manufacturing service online has signed a partnership with Octopart, which offers a library of commonly used electronic components.

It’s akin to providing the startup maker community with a more reliable view of the supply chain for the most used bits and bobs they need to build their products where they are designing them. This is obviously handy because it’s it’s time-consuming to design a board on the computer and fit pieces around it, only to find out later when you shift it to a manufacturer that the Wi-Fi radio you chose isn’t in stock. That means it’s back to the drawing board for you and likely means you’ve lost a few hours, or even a few days, of work depending on how complicated your project is.

With the emergence of startups like the Toronto-based SnapEDA or the YCombinator startup Octopart, we’re seeing the evolution of hardware development that aims to be a bit more like software. Faster, more iterative and more responsive to the needs of a rapidly-changing marketplace. We won’t ever get to the speed of code, but it’s awesome to see the agility that’s common in software creeping its way into the hardware world as much as it can.