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I don't think so. Nest was in the middle of closing a $150M round at a $2B valuation. That doesn't smell like a company going out of business, that sounds like
by cloudwalking 13y ago
I don't think so. Nest was in the middle of closing a $150M round at a $2B valuation. That doesn't smell like a company going out of business, that sounds like a company preparing to scale like crazy.
Fadell has intimate knowledge of Apple's scaling troubles—LaLa, iTunes Store, App Store, MobileMe, etc—and Apple has infinite money. Building truly scalable web services is no easy task, and Google is head and shoulders more capable than anybody else.
Do not look at Nest as a thermostat company. Look at what they could be 10 years from now—the timescale Fadell is surely thinking on—and you begin to understand the real scaling issues they will face.
- codex 13y agoI see a $150M round as a failure: a company that has big dreams but can't make enough cash at what they currently do. Even Tesla only raised $200M at IPO, and that's for a car company with huge overhead and manufacturing capital costs. $150M for a company that assembles products from COTS parts in China is ridiculous.
- cloudwalking 13y agoYou can see it however you want, but that won't change what it actually is. Companies raise huge rounds when they've nailed their product, their production lines, and their sales funnel. They know what they're doing and need cash to accelerate. Venture capital is not charity.