Free courses, taught in public

Operator’s Guides

Complete courses on building products and the standards those products answer to, taught the way they work inside a real company. Free, no login, no gate.

Papercraft workbench with paper calipers, a rolled blueprint, screws, and a gear

Thirty years of getting hard technology out of the lab leaves you fluent in a stack of standards most people only ever skim, and practiced at the product calls that decide what gets built. These guides teach both at full course depth, with one worked example per series and a written article beside every video. Live now: ISO 14971 risk management and product leadership.

The Operator's Guide to ISO 14971 Twelve modules. One worked device. A complete ISO 14971:2019 risk management file, built from scratch in front of you. 12 modules · 6.5 hours · free The Operator's Guide to Product Leadership Four decisions make up the product job: which problems you solve, what evidence justifies them, what you decline, and what outcome you expect. Find out who makes each one in your company today, and how to make it deliberately. 12 modules · 3.4 hours · free

In the queue

ISO 13485 quality management systems. IEC 60601 electrical safety for medical devices. The GHG Protocol and what Scope 1, 2, and 3 actually ask of a hardware company. Each one gets the same treatment: a full course, taught free.

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ISO 14971 and product leadership are the first two Operator’s Guides. ISO 13485, IEC 60601, and the GHG Protocol are in the queue. Leave your email and each new guide lands in your inbox the day it ships. Nothing else, no drip sequence.

Done. You’ll get the next guide when it ships.

The courses are free. If you want help doing the product job, that’s the work I do.

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Dave Saunders

Dave Saunders is the founder of Base Reality Group and a Fractional CPO for product companies. He was a founder and operator at Galen Robotics, where the surgical-robotics platform earned FDA De Novo authorization in 2023, and he managed a 35-patent portfolio licensed from Johns Hopkins. He wrote Founders Who Finish and publishes The Build. More about Dave →