Very interesting, just finished it. Though I must say, your card is one of those "very different" projects he speaks of, and I doubt you'd want to sell via a distribution chain given the low volume of cards you're likely going to produce. That's especially true when giving chip availability a quick thought; VSA-100's aren't going to be available at a significant number I suppose, and they probably aren't right now? Thus, you're not even remotely going to come close to a batch of a 1000 units, just my assumption of course.
I allow myself to further assume that it just comes down to bill of materials, transport logistics (very smart of him to mention that), manufacturing, your own hourly wages (R&D, testing, administration, support) as well as failure rates & RMA. Taxes I suppose, if it's going to be an official business (at wich point I'd be a bit wary of nVidia shitting on your cake, so branding should be considered wisely).
Naturally, if you do everything yourself, you'd need to invest a LOT more time into the whole thing (and it'd be mostly mundane and boring tasks), but given the supposedly low volume we're dealing with here, it'd probably be fine to not rely on additional parties? No?
*Mind you, I've never been into this business, so I may be overlooking quite a few things here.