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How was someone able to raise $14 million by putting a Peltier chip, some batteries, and an ESP32 in a box?
by alnwlsn 2y ago
How was someone able to raise $14 million by putting a Peltier chip, some batteries, and an ESP32 in a box?
- yardie 2y agoSame way someone is able to build a $1B social media network with a LAMP stack. I'm bootstrapping a startup and while the big player are dumping billions into sexy, expensive AI there are fundamental needs that get overlooked everyday.
- rozenmd 2y agoBecause putting the tech together is only a tiny part of building a business. I witnessed a startup disrupt a legacy $40k-a-device business with a raspberry pi and some adafruit sensors (eventually building their own boards after proving it worked), 90% of the success was from the founder's relationships and sales skills, not the tech.
- jgeada 2y agoaka aristocracy and not meritocracy
- jvanderbot 2y agoLet me expand GP's statement a little to show it's not aristocracy, and is indeed meritocracy. Building a $40k device for cheap is amazing, but only part of the problem. After that, you need to salesmanship to get the device in front of customers, and persuasiveness to get them to try it, and business acumen to scale and provide support like the big kids do. Once you do that, you can disrupt a $40k device with a rasp pi and some adafruit sensors.
- morkalork 2y agoSales and partnerships can be more about who you know and have access to though.
- jvanderbot 2y agoEven if you take away that one, there's enough left that's skill over connections and "aristocracy". It's easy to split hairs over what background can or cannot give to a company, but one thing is definitely true: An inept salesman from almost any background isn't going to close (by definition of ineptitude). I think at this point it's a matter of opinion, but I suggest it's definitely not "Just" an aristocracy and definitely is enough of a skill-based game that it's fair to call it a meritocracy.
- TylerE 2y agoThose benefit the company, not the customer. Not buying it.
- jmward01 2y agoAnd yet without the tech the business wouldn't have happened. This is td-lambda credit assignment: the thing closest to the money gets most of the credit even though all the steps mattered. The attitude that xxx is 90% of success is simplistic at best and downplays the immense contributions of the opensource community that fed that easy to build device and the talented builders that put those pieces together in a novel way to solve a real problem. The team matters.
- nerdponx 2y agoAlso hardware R&D is actually pretty hard. What happens if the box is dropped? Can it pass international regulations for air travel? What does your manufacturing supply chain look like? What's your acceptable QC failure rate, and how much would it cost to make that go down? How stable is the temperature anyway? Etc. etc. etc.
- jvanderbot 2y agoSoftware, being free, is the extreme case of this. "How is someone able to combine a few open source libraries, do a little hacking, and disrupt ______". Yet we all know it happens, and so it's worth funding.
- azinman2 2y agoAnd Dropbox is just rsync? You're severely underestimating building a business, let alone the technology required.
- alnwlsn 2y agoNot at all. To be sure, the design is non trivial and rather impressive if it meets the claimed specs. Is it $14M non trivial though? I have a feeling their valuation is overestimating more than I am underestimating.
- signatoremo 2y agowhat is the correct value if not $14 mil, in your opinion, and why?
- ToucanLoucan 2y agoIn fairness they built the product which is farther than a lot of more valuable companies have gotten lately.
- pompino 2y ago$14 mil isn't a whole lot when your company hires software people in the US. Software people in the US are expensive.