In effect, contract manufacturers can enable "push button production scaling." They'll source parts, do engineering, pack, and ship--basically whatever you pay them to do. A high tech copy machine. The interface could certainly use some work though...

There were plenty of web app startups long before Heroku and EC2 were available, these just lowered the bar even further.

Things like arduino can lower the friction between hardware and software design quite substantially for hackers.

I wouldn't necessarily expect startups to be rushing out to compete with the dishwasher any time soon but the point is that it now becomes much simpler to think about "hooks" in your software into the physical world.

Aren't lean startup principles based on lean manufacturing principles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing