good points. one of the reasons we picked the semiconductor industry is that its less price sensitive than others-companies are willing to pay if the performance is there. Effort is a different story though, and definitely a tradeoff to keep in mind.
We're doing experiments ourselves now at university partner labs (UC Berkeley and Stanford), which helps us get moving quickly. At some point, we'll need a partner though - the equipment and testing process quickly get very expensive.
Semiconductors are also incredibly risk averse, and requires fairly large gains to be worth the risk.
There are domains (or, mems, photonic sensing, high power) where innovation has a bit more flexibility for the early going.
that's true, we've seen examples of many promising startups that are a few years in and stuck because the industry is so risk averse. will explore the other domains you've mentioned!