A VC friend once told me that _all_ money coming into VC via LPs represents <5% of their total assets, so even if all the VCs loose all the money their raised from their LPs nobody loses breath - only damage is to reputation. So fund raising is mostly about storytelling and showtime. Fund losing is about back luck. Better luck. Next time.
Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
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Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#52A VC friend once told me that _all_ money coming into VC via LPs represents <5% of their total assets, so even if all the VCs loose all the money their raised from their LPs nobody loses breath - only damage is to reputation. So fund raising is mostly about storytelling and showtime. Fund losing is about back luck. Better luck. Next time.
Huh?
Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#53How do you go from opening a new office in Tokyo to shut down in 4 days? Unless literally no one is looking at the bank balance? Did someone log in this morning, see the balance at a negative, and shut down the company?
Fundraising might have fell through at last moment. Some major customer/partnership might've pulled the deal at the last moment. This all happens at startup level cashflow is tight. And all the investors thought there is no way this business with make sense based on the data they might have had on their hands. So they pulled the plug
Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#54I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…
One other usecase with a lot of potential is inventory control and counting in warehouses. Not small articles, but for industrial warehouses and larger products drones combining bar code scanners and visual artical identification can improve things considerably. Fraunhofer ran some first test like two years in Germany. No idea what came out of it.
I don't know why this is getting downvoted. years ago when we had multiple warehouses our employees would upload pictures of shelves into the cloud at the end of every shift and if a product goes missing we would look at the pictures and inventory record to find out when exactly the real quantity of items on the shelf and inventory level in the system became off.
if a drone could fly thru shelves on schedule and AI could count the items that would be amazing
Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
SV didn't lose to China; everyone lost to DJI. Their competence was staggering (I think they kind of slowed down lately being that they're so far out from everyone; throttling their innovation a bit). If DJI represents the future of Chinese corporations[0], many people on the other side of the ocean should be very wary. [0] edited from "products". In fact what's so impressive with DJI is not just the products themsel…
> In fact what's so impressive with DJI is not just the products themselves, but also the design, marketing and branding, which is kind of an Apple/GoPro hybrid. They are not just creating immense value - they are packaging it the right way. This is what always struck me as so short-sighted about Western corporations offshoring their manufacturing. Japan and the Asian Tigers proved that it's possible for nations to s…
>>short-sighted about Western corporations offshoring their manufacturing
EXACTLY!
While the western corporations think they're taking advantage of cheap Chinese labor, the Chinese are actually taking advantage of our weakness for short-term profits over long-term investment and getting us to sellout IP in the bargain. For western corporations & governments, one of the most historically stupid geostrategic moves ever.
Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
One other usecase with a lot of potential is inventory control and counting in warehouses. Not small articles, but for industrial warehouses and larger products drones combining bar code scanners and visual artical identification can improve things considerably. Fraunhofer ran some first test like two years in Germany. No idea what came out of it.
Does that really benefit from a drone vs a wheeled vehicle with a bunch of fixed cameras on it? I would think a gigantic planar environment is pretty much ideal for an industrial SDV; a lot of things get easier when you're no longer worried about weight— you can carry a full day's worth of batteries, not to mention having higher quality optics and safety lasers. (disclosure: I work for OTTO Motors, which has customer…
wheeled vehicle parked in the isles to take a picture of a space on top shelf would be blocking pallet jakcs and other vehicles that need to move between the isles. may be a railed solution hanging from the ceiling would be better.
Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#57Anyone at Airware looking for a new gig, our aviation team at Uber is holding drones experts -- shoot me an email, ngoel@uber.com.
Presumably you meant hiring drone experts, but the idea Uber is kidnapping flight scientists and keeping them locked up in an underground lair has a certain attraction :-) It might even make the pitch deck - "How we are reducing competition in our space"
Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, never did. We build 2 OS(s): the first was based on linux with a rtos package (2013-14?). That was scrapped and a new fully custom hardware package was built with a fully custom OS (built by a team that never had done this) and was built for a low power arm processor. We were plagued by huge issues most of the time due to that OS being nearly impossible to debug or work with. Also doing that prevented any third…
How do companies raise $10M+ without having a product ready to use? (Real question I run a startup that needs funding)
Please when you find this out let me know as well, as I am also in the market for some free money.
Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#59They spared no expense ever.
Ouch. Sadly, not an uncommon failure mode. Raise more than you can easily be bought out for (> $50M) and spend it faster than you can grow into product fit.
That said, I am a bit surprised that there isn't more demand for a domestically developed drone operating system. Given the issues the Army has with DJI stuff it seems like it would be a natural support a local company that could provide a similar capability.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/army-tells-troops-to...
Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do companies raise $10M+ without having a product ready to use? (Real question I run a startup that needs funding)
Please when you find this out let me know as well, as I am also in the market for some free money.
You need to cast the magic spell. The following spells work well:
"Drone"
"AI"
"Blockchain"
etc.