> do you just write off the money and time spent on the startup as a dream forgotten?
This isn't my first rodeo, but I usually just write off failed start-ups in general as dreams forgotten (and boy do I have a lot of forgotten dreams). I obviously gained a lot of technical knowledge: how USB works, packet formats, some hardware engineering, driver programming, etc. But unless I ever get a job writing low-level code for hardware devices, I doubt I'll ever use that knowledge again.
Who knows, maybe for another hardware start-up?
Is there the same transferability with hardware startups? Do other companies love to hire failed hardware entrepreneurs the way they usually like to hire failed software entrepreneurs, or do you just write off the money and time spent on the startup as a dream forgotten?