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This is pretty much an advertisement and the article hardly has any original content. What is this article doing on HN? Raspberry Pi is a well funded start up

This is pretty much an advertisement and the article hardly has any original content. What is this article doing on HN? Raspberry Pi is a well funded start up and the false modesty is really transparent.

jlgreco 14y ago
A startup.... charity organization? I mean, I suppose that could technically be considered a thing, but I don't think it is really in the spirit of most startups considered in HN. It's not like they are a profit driven enterprise.
- johansch 14y ago
  Perhaps sort of like Mozilla are masquerading as a charity?
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    I see absolutely no evidence that the Raspberry Pi Foundation is unsavory in any way.
mayneack 14y ago
Yeah, they totally knew what they were doing. Hence the smooth scaling up to filling the demand for 100,000 on the first day. I remember my personal smooth shopping experience.
- mje__ 14y ago
  Sarcasm? I bought on the first day, and it took 8 weeks for my order to be shipped; friends who ordered later waited 17(!) weeks for their pi
  - krzyk 14y ago
    Yeah, I wonder how much customers they lost because of the supply problems. I was very existed on the day it started selling (or DDOS those two sites), wanted to buy two. But I wasn't able to, so I waited few weeks until I could place an order, but my interest faded with time, and as of now (almost year after they started selling it) I still don't own zero respberrypis.
justin66 14y ago
The "well funded start up" bit is demonstrably not true. (who is it you imagine they're funded by? to what end?) They've benefitted from some extremely skilled people donating a lot of their time and Broadcom selling their SoC to the project at cost for some free publicity/goodwill. There's nothing mysterious about it.
- IheartApplesDix 14y ago
  FTA: from booking factory time to purchasing the chips — fell to the relatively modest resources of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charitable body initially funded by loans from Upton and five other trustees. "That would have been fine at 10,000 boards [...]" So right in the article he admits that they were funded for 10,000 boards yet they are surprised they sold 1,000? Considering how Raspberry Pi has been plastered all over HN from day one, it's not a surprise at all.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    I don't know why you are so insistent having an uncharitable interpretation of the article. "The first inkling of the fervour the credit card-sized board would create came in May 2011, when the first public outing of the Pi in a BBC video generated some 600,000 views on YouTube. Upton and his colleagues revised their initial run of boards up to 10,000, thinking that would be more than enough to meet demand." There initial plans were to produce far less than 10k. They were surprised when they had to adjust their plans up to 10k, and surprised again to learn that their estimations were grossly inaccurate. Also, the earliest story here about the Raspberry Pi was from 2 years ago. "Day one" for them was 5+ years ago.
    - IheartApplesDix 14y ago
      But they went public with it on May 2011 and made their decisions based on that. You're ignoring the fact that they are a well funded startup with industry ties to large chip manufactures.
      - 14y ago

jlgreco 14y ago

A startup.... charity organization? I mean, I suppose that could technically be considered a thing, but I don't think it is really in the spirit of most startups considered in HN. It's not like they are a profit driven enterprise.

johansch 14y ago
Perhaps sort of like Mozilla are masquerading as a charity?
- jlgreco 14y ago
  I see absolutely no evidence that the Raspberry Pi Foundation is unsavory in any way.

mayneack 14y ago

Yeah, they totally knew what they were doing. Hence the smooth scaling up to filling the demand for 100,000 on the first day. I remember my personal smooth shopping experience.

mje__ 14y ago
Sarcasm? I bought on the first day, and it took 8 weeks for my order to be shipped; friends who ordered later waited 17(!) weeks for their pi
- krzyk 14y ago
  Yeah, I wonder how much customers they lost because of the supply problems. I was very existed on the day it started selling (or DDOS those two sites), wanted to buy two. But I wasn't able to, so I waited few weeks until I could place an order, but my interest faded with time, and as of now (almost year after they started selling it) I still don't own zero respberrypis.

justin66 14y ago

The "well funded start up" bit is demonstrably not true. (who is it you imagine they're funded by? to what end?) They've benefitted from some extremely skilled people donating a lot of their time and Broadcom selling their SoC to the project at cost for some free publicity/goodwill. There's nothing mysterious about it.

IheartApplesDix 14y ago
FTA: from booking factory time to purchasing the chips — fell to the relatively modest resources of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charitable body initially funded by loans from Upton and five other trustees. "That would have been fine at 10,000 boards [...]" So right in the article he admits that they were funded for 10,000 boards yet they are surprised they sold 1,000? Considering how Raspberry Pi has been plastered all over HN from day one, it's not a surprise at all.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  I don't know why you are so insistent having an uncharitable interpretation of the article. "The first inkling of the fervour the credit card-sized board would create came in May 2011, when the first public outing of the Pi in a BBC video generated some 600,000 views on YouTube. Upton and his colleagues revised their initial run of boards up to 10,000, thinking that would be more than enough to meet demand." There initial plans were to produce far less than 10k. They were surprised when they had to adjust their plans up to 10k, and surprised again to learn that their estimations were grossly inaccurate. Also, the earliest story here about the Raspberry Pi was from 2 years ago. "Day one" for them was 5+ years ago.
  - IheartApplesDix 14y ago
    But they went public with it on May 2011 and made their decisions based on that. You're ignoring the fact that they are a well funded startup with industry ties to large chip manufactures.
    - 14y ago