How to approach physical design resourcing without blowing your burn rate
Early on every semiconductor company faces the same dilemma:
Should we build an internal physical design team, partner with specialists or both?
Tarun has seen the models up close.
Here’s the reality:
WHEN TO PARTNER
✅ You are pre-revenue or pre-series-A
✅ Your differentiation is not in physical design
✅ You need silicon fast (customer or investor driven)
✅ You are on a leading node
✅ You cannot attract or afford tier-1 PD engineers
✅ You don’t have 6–12 months to hire, train and stabilise a new team
✅ You want UK/EU-based leadership with scalable engineering depth
WHEN TO BUILD INHOUSE
✅ You have stable revenue or series B+ funding
✅ Your competitive moat is physical implementation
✅ Your tape-out cadence is predictable
✅ You are a high volume product company
✅ You are standardizing implementation flows and methodologies
THE ‘HYBRID’ APPROACH
Commonly seen amongst the most successful startups. Its VC friendly and execution proven:
🔹 1 or 2 internal senior PD specialists to own floorplan strategy, power architecture, foundry interface etc
🔹 Engage a partner for detailed implementation: PnR, Timing closure, ECO’s etc
Hybrid enables owning the knowledge and controlling the quality whilst avoiding fixed ‘burn’ and de-risks schedule.
NextGen has acted as the complete PD organisation for multiple startups — from flow creation to constraints, synthesis, floorplanning, P&R, CTS, STA, IR-drop and final signoff.
“They stayed focused on their core IP.
We handled the RTL-to-GDSII journey.”
In today’s talent market, agility matters more than ideology.