I've seen articles saying that to do a hardware startup you need to sleep in the factory in China![0] [0] http://pioneers.io/blog/hardware-startups-to-succeed-

I've seen articles saying that to do a hardware startup you need to sleep in the factory in China![0] [0] http://pioneers.io/blog/hardware-startups-to-succeed-you-have-to-sleep-in-a-factory-in-china http://pioneers.io/blog/hardware-startups-to-succeed-you-hav... Survivorship Bias There are many success stories of hardware startups (pebble[2], fitbit[3], nest[4]) and as far as I can tell, they all have the same qualities: they are beautifully designed and have done very well on crowdfunding sites like kickstarter. Are these requirements for a successful hardware startup or am I succumbing to an observation/confirmation bias? [2] https://getpebble.com/ https://getpebble.com/ [3] http://www.fitbit.com/ http://www.fitbit.com/ [4] https://nest.com/ https://nest.com/ Knowledge and Resources There aren't that many resources to help hardware startups in terms of product design, manufacturing and marketing. There is a wealth of information available for free on the internet for software startups including design, content marketing, seo and growth hacking but not much for hardware startups[5]. Some VCs appear to be getting in to Hardware Startups (I know pg / YC does a few and Tony Hsieh of Zappos hasthe Nimbus Portfolio) but slowly. [5]: http://www.berkeleysg.com/2014/02/a-great-list-of-helpful-resources-for-hardware-startups/ http://www.berkeleysg.com/2014/02/a-great-list-of-helpful-re... The Little Guys There are many great products out there that get some exposure but perhaps not the amount they should (CubeSensors[6], GetNarrative[7], TinyHardwareFirewall[8] are great examples). Ultimately, perhaps some/most will fail. Is there any hope for the little guy if they have a good product in terms of utility but don't make that 'break'? [6] http://cubesensors.com/ http://cubesensors.com/ [7] http://getnarrative.com/ http://getnarrative.com/ [8] http://tinyhardwarefirewall.com/ http://tinyhardwarefirewall.com/