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So Close

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Re: So Close

#61

Post by solarkraft »

brucephillips wrote: post #52
coldtea wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were trying to sell a $700 custom designed lock based on its “user experience”. And they were succeeding. That was not their problem. And the average penny pinching Joe wasn't their target at first anyway. You'd be surprised what people buy, and how many buy it, for way more than $700. Even smartphone covers.

> And they were succeeding. Were they? Source? How big was their beta? What was their revenue? Beta users will bias toward early adopters, and often not represent the mainstream market necessary to make a company profitable. EDIT: I just read that they had ZERO revenue. So they certainly weren't succeeding.

They took preorders.

Re: So Close

#62

Post by henrikschroder »

mikeash wrote: post #14

Is (was?) there something more to this product that I missed, or is it really a $700 smart lock?

I tried watching the promo videos on the site, I have no idea what the thing does, but apparently when it's extremely freeing for people to not be limited by keys, or something. (Except now they're limited by their smartphone, internet connectivity, and some cloud servers, but you know...)

Re: So Close

#63

Post by grahamburger »

nkkollaw wrote: post #38
twblalock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't even have a proximity sensor -- you have to touch it to make it work. Might as well stick a key in at the same time. If I paid that kind of money I would expect my door to unlock for me when I approached it. It also has no manual override with a key like some smart locks -- it just has some backup batteries that last an unspecified amount of time. Because it has no key, it can't be re-keyed, so good luck c…

It's so awesome when people create problems to fix non-problems. I never once thought my life would be better if I didn't need to put up with those nasty keys...

I think that all the time, actually. Carrying keys in my pocket is one of those minor but persistent annoyances of life. I would not pay more than maybe $39 to be rid of them, though.

Re: So Close

#64

Post by valuearb »

coldtea wrote: post #46
valuearb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were trying to sell a $700 custom designed lock based on its “user experience”. How much sense do you think this management team had?

> They were trying to sell a $700 custom designed lock based on its “user experience”. And they were succeeding. That was not their problem. And the average penny pinching Joe wasn't their target at first anyway. You'd be surprised what people buy, and how many buy it, for way more than $700. Even smartphone covers.

They didn’t succeed, they were utterly failing. Read the employees comment.

They couldn’t raise money because VCs realizes their product was too expensive and uncompetitive in the market. Their acquisition opportunity was a last ditch attempt to save the company.

Re: So Close

#65

Post by bambax »

twblalock wrote: post #10

If I understand the sequence of events properly, the company entered acquisition negotiations and agreed not to solicit other bids during that time. When the acquisition fell apart, the company was out of money and had to stop operations. If that's correct, it seems to me like it's something they should have known in advance -- if they knew they would be out of money by the end of the year, why would they enter acqui…

Yes. Also, the video about the product https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsT5xvoaHBo was kind of disturbing, talking about "those we love".

To the people you love, you don't send a code or some app or procedure. You greet them at the door.

If you need to send people a code to enter your property, you're not loving them, you're running a business. Which is fine -- just don't pretend it has anything to do with "love".

Or if you truly love everyone... then you don't need a lock.

Re: So Close

#66

Post by brucephillips »

solarkraft wrote: post #61
brucephillips wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they were succeeding. Were they? Source? How big was their beta? What was their revenue? Beta users will bias toward early adopters, and often not represent the mainstream market necessary to make a company profitable. EDIT: I just read that they had ZERO revenue. So they certainly weren't succeeding.

They took preorders.

Do you know how many they sold? If they received money from pre-orders, why does he say they were four weeks away from revenue?

Re: So Close

#67

Post by solarkraft »

john_moscow wrote: post #53

>Our signed agreement restricted our ability to solicit other bids or fundraise and targeted a close on December 11th, 2017. It is hard for me to understand the logic of doing that at the end of your runway, without a backup plan and without agreeing on a compensation in case the deal falls through. Unless you are deliberately trying to crash the company and blame someone else for it. So looking more into this, is it…

It seems that they focused on perfection (security, UX) way over a low price and by own claims people were actually willing to buy. Still not sure how they managed to burn through that much money developing it. The IT security parts are likely already available for free as well. Maybe inviting a mechanical watch guru to review their design in person and having the whole team watch him doing it is a good example of their spending.

Re: So Close

#68

Post by valuearb »

solarkraft wrote: post #61
brucephillips wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they were succeeding. Were they? Source? How big was their beta? What was their revenue? Beta users will bias toward early adopters, and often not represent the mainstream market necessary to make a company profitable. EDIT: I just read that they had ZERO revenue. So they certainly weren't succeeding.

They took preorders.

Their preorders weren’t near enough to keep the doors open. Management has sone wealthy people, and it wasn’t enough to even get them to toss in enough money to get to that “imminent” launch.

The CEOs excuses make near zero sense.

Re: So Close

#69

Post by joshuahutt »

michaelt wrote: post #29
tlb wrote: post #6

Ouch. A sadly common outcome of talking to corp dev. http://paulgraham.com/corpdev.html Agreeing to no-fundraising and exclusivity clauses during a long due diligence process really puts your head in their vise. And once it's there, people within the acquirer will start saying, Hey, we could built this ourselves! Let's run the clock out and kill the competition.

Seems strange that anyone would agree not to raise more funds or negotiate with other parties for their entire remaining runway. I mean, it puts you in the situation that you either sell to that company or you go out of business. They could offer you a fraction of the amounts they were talking about before you signed, and you'd have no alternative. Hell, even asking you to agree to such unbalanced terms seems like a…

A greedy one.

Re: So Close

#70

Post by brucephillips »

valuearb wrote: post #68
solarkraft wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They took preorders.

Their preorders weren’t near enough to keep the doors open. Management has sone wealthy people, and it wasn’t enough to even get them to toss in enough money to get to that “imminent” launch. The CEOs excuses make near zero sense.

If this is true, my guess is they didn't actually have any investor interest, and the acquisition offer was really more of a desperation move than a dumb strategy.
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