I used to work for a company that manufactured hardware (I wrote firmware for them) and manufacturing was a constant headache and bottleneck, from getting all t

I used to work for a company that manufactured hardware (I wrote firmware for them) and manufacturing was a constant headache and bottleneck, from getting all the parts on time to picking, placing and waving the boards with a high yield to finally assembling the end product. Building a successful hardware business is much more difficult than building a successful software business (and thus more risk and less glamour). You have all the same problems in terms of solving a problem, finding a market, and getting traction but you have the additional problems of manufacturing, shipping and retail logistics. Those are probably more challenging to solve profitably than the shared problems. P.S. Mad props for the companies in Asia that so reliably manufacture the computers that we use every day.