How to Win the High-Risk Gamble of a Hardware Startup

Hardware is harder, riskier, and more cutthroat than software. Here’s how to pull it off.

A Nest Cam is displayed during the Google I/O conference at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on May 7, 2019. Photo: JOSH EDELSON/Getty Images

Nobody likes hardware startups. Investors can’t run away from them fast enough, customers are always hyper-skeptical, and retailers love inventing new hoops for new products to jump through.