Hardware Startups Popular Again in Silicon Valley

We have seen a significant uptick in hardware related startups in the last two years a the Bootstrappers Breakfast.

For our Tue-Feb-19 breakfast in Sunnyvale we have invited Bob Mattoon of ISC Networks to kickoff our roundtable discussion with a five minute briefing on tips getting a hardware prototype built and managing the transition to production.

Here is a list of other meetups for hardware startups:

Here are four in the South Bay

• http://www.meetup.com/Bay-Area-Modular-Electronics-Meetup/
• http://www.meetup.com/Silicon-Valley-Hardware-Startup-Meetup/
• http://www.meetup.com/The-Open-Source-Internet-Of-Things-Silicon-Valley/
• http://www.meetup.com/SV-Hardware-Startup-to-Scale/

Here are three in San Francisco

• http://www.meetup.com/HardwareStartupSF/
• http://www.meetup.com/SFRobots/
• http://www.meetup.com/RockITCoLabs/

Between open source hardware, extremely low cost micro-controllers, robotic tool kits, 3D printers, and low cost CAD/CAE tools the cost of creating hardware prototypes continues to drop. There are a number of “hacker spaces” that also devote at least some of their working area to hardware, notably

• Hacker Dojo in Mountain View: http://www.hackerdojo.com/
• Techshops in San Jose, Menlo Park, and San Francisco http://www.techshop.com/