The Hardware Renaissance
Logged without notes.
Claude
Summary. In this 2012 essay, Paul Graham observes that a surprising number of Y Combinator's applicants were building hardware startups, and that these companies were outperforming their software peers despite investor skepticism. He argues the causes are diffuse: crowdfunding, cheaper tablets and motors, ubiquitous wireless connectivity, easier manufacturing, and accessible prototyping tools like Arduinos, 3D printers, and laser cutters. He concludes that software's edge as the best way to build a fast-growing company only dates to around 1990 and may prove temporary, encouraging founders not to be deterred by investor bias against hardware.
Related
- software's startup advantage as a recent, possibly temporary artifact ↔ server-based software sidestepping OS and hardware fragmentation (The Other Road Ahead) Graham's earlier essay locates software's edge precisely in sidestepping hardware and OS fragmentation, so this piece's claim that hardware is catching up implies the very moat that made software special was a temporary tooling gap, not a structural law.