"Hardware" is not any one thing. In startup land, it's a catchall for "that which is not just software.” VCs don't say "I invest in software," they say "I invest in SaaS”, mobile, social, local... you name it. There's specificity in software.

The fact that we still talk about hardware as a monolithic category is indicative of how new the space still is.

So this talk aims to do break the hardware sector into component parts. We’re going to walk through the trends driving the hardware renaissance, and then delve into the sectors that investors and consumers care about.