27. Hardware/software hybrids. Most hackers find hardware projects alarming. You have to deal with messy, expensive physical stuff. ... There's a lot of l

27. Hardware/software hybrids. Most hackers find hardware projects alarming. You have to deal with messy, expensive physical stuff. ... There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in hardware; you can often do dramatically new things by making comparatively small tweaks to existing stuff. While Nest doesn't fall in the young startup category, Next is still a great example of what you can do with hardware and software, where "the software plays a very visible role." The design speaks for itself, but the magic is in the software---meaning whatever tricks they pulled from AI, machine learning, control theory or other fields. Of course, "small tweaks" might not be the best way to describe it from the hackers POV, but it makes sense if you're using this device.