Hardware is Feeding the World

Hardware, the Ugly Stepchild of Venture Capital, Is Having a Glamour Moment | Wired

Steve Schlafman a principal at Lerer Ventures agrees, saying that seed-level investors are warming up to the idea of hardware, “And that will create a wave of new startups that big, monolithic companies, like Sharp, can’t keep up with,” he says.

Hardware is owning the buzz these days: 3D printing, the new Industrial Revolution, Kickstarter’s popular hardware projects, hardware is the new software, makers are the new hackers, etc.

And the buzz is deserved. Software might be eating the world, but hardware is feeding the world with creative inspiration and interesting innovations. Hardware is where all the cool toys are these days. While most of the emerging hacker hardware innovation today may look like tech toys for niche markets, big ideas start as toys because innovation starts with fun.

We don’t invest in hardware (unless there’s a hardware-based adtech startup out there), but it does bring a question to my mind: where is the “fun” in adtech?