Over the past five years, there has been an explosion in hardware startups thanks to dramatically lower cost components driven by Google/Apple’s innovations in the smartphone space; the maturing of powerful technology such as computer vision, machine learning and 3D printing; and an on-demand supply chain which has significantly reduced the up-front fixed costs expenses required to build a prototype. When we funded Kiva Systems (goods to person e-commerce material handling solution) back in 2004, there were only one or two handfuls of hardware startups a year funded by venture capital.