Highway 1 Is Ramping Up Their Search For Startups With $50,000 In Seed Money

Brady Forrest’s Highway1 is looking for a few good hardware startups. The accelerator that brought us LittleBits and the Metawatch are working on their Fall 2014 program and they’ve increased their seed investment amount from $20,000 to $50,000. We first spoke to Highway1 in 2013 when they opened a new headquarters in San Francisco and thus far they’ve sent almost a dozen solid hardware startups to store shelves.

“PCH and Highway1 will help entrepreneurs build a company, not just a product,” said Forrest.

Entrants can apply here.

Highway1 is part of PCH International, a manufacturing and logistics firm that acted early to grab small makers entering the hardware space. Not unlike HWTrek and Dragon Innovation, Highway1 is part of a larger manufacturing network that is looking for smaller companies who want to manufacture a few thousand – not million – pieces of hardware, at least at first. By grabbing hardware makers early, PCH hopes to build new and bigger businesses over time and corner the maker market – which they are, by all rights, about to do.

PCH recently made news when they acquired Canadian hardware service Shoplocket. They also partnered with Blaze bike light, a Hardware Battlefield company.

Highway1 has graduated 11 startups and will be holding events around the world to gather applications. The program includes two weeks in China as well as four months in San Francisco at their headquarters. They will hold a Demo Day in San Francisco on June 18.