I think that's a great idea, it's cool to see someone slice and dice the problem a different way. An alternative would be a remote work variant.

Being an old fart, I've spent 100% of my career working for (or consulting for) companies that actually made and sold physical products. I wonder if you couldn't have a job fair for startups of that type. I suppose that having an embedded systems startup expo or small manufacturers expo might be too specialized, but it would be a neat thing.