At the University of Waterloo Waterloo, the Velocity Venture Fund (http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/funding/velocity-fund/) awards an additional $10k prize to a hardware team every term to help offset the additional cost, so they could end up walking away with $35k (as opposed to $25k for a software company).
Sure, but that only serves to emphasize the difficulties faced by companies that need to do true R&D. Your typical HW startup has way more than 10k more costs than a typical SW startup.
(Yes, I know the issue is apps vs. tech, not SW vs. HW, but there are parallels)
