As someone who's raised for a hardware firm, but not gone big, a few ideas to consider: •Investors invest in the team first, product second. If you're bright a

As someone who's raised for a hardware firm, but not gone big, a few ideas to consider: •Investors invest in the team first, product second. If you're bright and clever, you'll have a lot harder time raising money than if you're connected and pedigreed (What, no Ph.D. from Stanford? Don't tell me that doesn't make a difference. Pass!) Theranos didn't get funded by being bright and clever. If you don't have the pedigree, acquire it with stock options (really hard to do right) or be satisfied with having it be 10X harder to raise money. •A solid core of investors like software to the point of irrationality. They got rich in software, they feel comfortable with software, and they think software scales far better than hardware (often true). Expect more doors slammed in your face for this reason. •Hardware doesn't have much use without a software component, so without looking like you're reaching, try casting your hardware product as a software product first and foremost, with some hardware IP added on which you will label as "open source hardware" for somebody else to mass-manufacture for you at their own risk. •Nothing succeeds like success. You need to have traction in the market, which is way harder to "fake it until you make it" with hardware than with software (you can get "users" by giving software away, but I can't think of a hardware startup that did the same since CueCat, and that failed miserably). Investors will give you a kidney if you don't need them. If you're at the idea stage, you'll be as welcomed as a methhead at the Oscars.