Glossary / Non-recurring engineering (NRE)
Non-recurring engineering (NRE)
One-time, upfront engineering and setup costs to reach production — design, tooling, testing — that are largely sunk and scrapped if the product fails.
Introduced in Chapter 2 — Where Hardware Startups Trip of Tangibles.
Related terms
- Minimum viable product (MVP) — A bare-minimum build that tests whether the market wants the core function.
- Mockup — A non-functional model made to test a product's look, feel, and desirability with users before committing to engineering.
- Unit economics — Whether a single manufactured unit earns a profit once the cost to source, build, test, and ship it at scale is counted — the make-or-break math beneath any hardware business.
- Over-the-air updates (OTA) — Delivering new firmware and features to a device remotely after sale, turning a fixed product into one that keeps improving in the field.