I may be naive/ignorant (I do have an Electrical Engineering B.S.), but hardware really seems like it would benefit from an experience / innovation sharing like this. It seems like hardware is at an inflection point w.r.t. large portions of it being backed by shareable / FOS software (e.g., 3D-printing blueprints; hardware/software platforms like Tessel, Beaglebone, Arduino; etc...), and adding a little fuel to the fire like this really seems like a potentially huge payoff. Pardon the connotation, but it's like domesticating a rare, but extremely useful wild flora, and growing it in mass while disseminating the process so others can grow it as well. Very exciting.
Would anyone with recent hardware prototyping experience care to comment on whether the above reflects their own experience?
It does. Hardware startups need more experience than software startups, because there are more moving parts (contract manufacturers, component makers, distributors, standards bodies) and because mistakes are harder to fix. It helps a lot to have one guy (Luke) spend half his time keeping current with everything, and half his time disseminating this to startups as they need it.
Another factor is that when dealing with big companies (like most contract manufacturers and component vendors,) a single early-stage startup has no leverage to negotiate good deals, but a community of startups does.
Would anyone with recent hardware prototyping experience care to comment on whether the above reflects their own experience?