A lot of comments here have focused on implementation details. Let's ignore FPGAs, startup costs, etc... One huge advantage of hardware, is that you actually

A lot of comments here have focused on implementation details. Let's ignore FPGAs, startup costs, etc... One huge advantage of hardware, is that you actually have something you can sell. As an interesting hardware startup archetype, consider Body Bugg: http://www.bodybugg.com/ http://www.bodybugg.com/ Long story short, they built a device to monitor health, but realized, only after being harassed by clients, that the real market was weight loss. Like ebay, they literally had clients begging them for a product. Personally, I'd love to work at a hardware startup :)