IEEE Hard Tech Venture Summits: Bridging the Funding Gap for Startups

When IEEE Entrepreneurship launched its Hard Tech Venture Summits in 2024, the goal was clear: bridge the funding gap for hardware startups drowning in protracted R&D cycles and manufacturing complexity. The statistics are stark—roughly 90 percent of hard tech ventures fail due to funding constraints, according to multiple studies cited in IEEE’s own reporting. These aren’t software startups that can iterate in weeks; they’re building physical products requiring up to 50 percent more investor capital, often starting at $30 million just to reach viability. For communities where engineering talent clusters, this funding chasm isn’t just an investor problem—it’s a local economic development challenge with real consequences for job creation and technological sovereignty.

Grab Menlo Park, California, where the first 2025 summit convened in April. Nestled between Stanford’s engineering labs and the venture capital thicket of Sand Hill Road, this San Francisco Peninsula city embodies the hard tech paradox. Home to historic institutions like SRI International—where breakthroughs in robotics and AI have incubated for decades—Menlo Park as well hosts a dense network of semiconductor designers and aerospace contractors along routes like El Camino Real and Ravenswood Avenue. Yet despite this concentration of technical expertise, founders here still report struggling to convince traditional VCs to back hardware-heavy ventures. As Joanne Wong, general partner at Redds Capital and chair of IEEE Entrepreneurship’s summit initiative, explained: “Even though there are a lot of startup investor conferences, it’s hard to find those focused on hard tech.” Her perspective carries weight; Wong founded SciosHub in 2020 to automate biomedical data management, giving her firsthand experience navigating the valley’s funding landscape.

The summit model directly addresses this mismatch. Unlike generic demo days, these two-day events force proximity between founders and investors who actually understand hardware’s long game. Attendees include not just venture partners but also manufacturing engineers from companies like DOER Marine—whose president, Liz Taylor, led the 2025 engineering workshop—and intellectual property lawyers familiar with defending complex tech portfolios. The structure is deliberate: networking roundtables blend three to five startups with one or two investors and a service provider, creating forced collision points for relationships that might otherwise take months to cultivate. Past participants have included i3 Ventures, Monozukuri Ventures, and TSV Capital—firms known for deep tech bets rather than quick-flip software plays. For Mark Boysen, founder of Edina, Minnesota-based Naware (which builds AI-powered weed-removal robots), the robotics-focused connections proved transformative. “The connection with the community was fantastic,” he told IEEE Entrepreneurship, echoing sentiments from over 90 percent of 2025 summit attendees who said they’d recommend the event.

Beyond immediate networking, the summits tackle hard tech’s hidden curriculum. The second-day workshop—held at venues like Boston’s International Microwave Symposium in June 2025—doesn’t just cover pitch decks. Manufacturing engineers walk founders through regulatory filings, supply chain vetting, and production scaling realities that software founders rarely confront. This practical layer matters immensely in regions like Greater Boston, where MIT’s hardware labs and Route 128’s defense contractors create a deep talent pool but where founders often lack guidance on navigating ITAR compliance or FDA pathways for medical devices. By anchoring these workshops in active technical societies—IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society for Boston, IEEE Systems Council for Menlo Park and Toronto—the program leverages existing trust networks rather than parachuting in generic advice.

Given my background in analyzing how technical innovations scale within regional economies, if this hard tech funding dynamic impacts you in Menlo Park or similar engineering hubs, here are the three types of local professionals you need to know:

• Hard Tech-Savvy Venture Associates: Look for individuals at firms like Redds Capital or SOSV who explicitly list hardware, semiconductors, or robotics in their investment theses—not just “deep tech” as a buzzword. They should understand term sheets that accommodate longer R&D horizons and have portfolio companies that have successfully navigated manufacturing scale-up.
• Regulatory Engineering Consultants: Seek professionals with dual credentials—licensed engineers (PE or equivalent) who also have direct experience with FDA 510(k) processes, ITAR registration, or FCC certification for wireless hardware. They should speak the language of both lab benches and government portals, ideally with recent project examples in your specific domain (e.g., aerospace vs. Medical devices).
• University Technology Transfer Liaisons: Target individuals working at offices like Stanford’s OTR or MIT’s TLO who specialize in spinning out lab-based hardware research. The best ones maintain active relationships with both manufacturing partners (e.g., contract manufacturers in Vietnam or Mexico) and investor networks familiar with hard tech timelines, helping de-risk the transition from prototype to pilot production.

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