Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 145 posts

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#111

Post by st1ck »

roymurdock wrote: post #82
nostrademons wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EOS and Tron. There are probably others. I went to a couple cryptocurrency meetups recently that were sponsored by a startup, 6 months old, which had offices in 3 cities, 2 different product lines, and was launching a venture capital fund. To me, that's a red flag that they have too much money and no idea how to deploy it.

Off topic, but is there anything interesting going on in the cryptocurrency space? I stopped following circa 2015 after seeing Bitcoin/blockchain co-opted by a bunch of hucksters for a bunch of get-rich-quick schemes (including internal projects at more than a few major technology companies). I've heard stirrings about a few "stablecoin" project with more solid economic underpinnings, but am skeptical anyone can come…

It depends on your definition of "interesting". Lightning Network, atomic swaps, sidechains (like Blockstream Elements, Liquid), confidential transactions, bulletproofs, MimbleWimble, Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work etc. are all interesting tech innovations and have nothing to do with get-rich-quick.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#114

Post by jplayer01 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #59

They 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 prov…

Isn't DARPA investing in this space? Seems like the kind of thing they're usually interested in.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#115

Post by rasz »

romwell wrote: post #64
anonairwavedev wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has less to do with the space, and more to do with the odd engineering decisions and multiple pivots. There wasn't a SDK or platform to build on and we didn't take any actual orders for anything (so we had minimal success stories or $$$). The hardware we showed was built by us, and ran a custom OS (not based on linux) that was nearly impossible to work with. We had a very talented engineer rage-quit after spending…

So, a death by NIH?

more like too much easy money to burn

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#116

Post by rasz »

elvirs wrote: post #56
mikepurvis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

other way, you mound cameras ON pallet jacks and other vehicles

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#117

Post by rasz »

ddtaylor wrote: post #49
anonairwavedev wrote: post #47

Earlier 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)

Its all about who you know and how shiny can you look to the outsiders (founders being MIT grads etc).

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#118

Post by rasz »

flyinglizard wrote: post #9
jakelarkin wrote: post #7

so it seems like Drones is one of the first big nascent industries, SV utterly lost to China b/c of their dominance of manufacturing?

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…

>SV didn't lose to China; everyone lost to DJI. Their competence was staggering

If anyone is interested look up "robomasters" for a DJI recruitment competition running with teams from >100 Chinese Universities.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#119

Post by rarrarrarr »

fludlight wrote: post #48
mikepurvis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why not both? A large, wheeled vehicle that also carries a small flying drone for the occasional inspection from above.

This is the approach I've been thinking about recently. The landing pad on the wheeled vehicle could have an inductive charger to recharge the smaller multirotor vehicle(s).

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#120

Post by ianiridium »

anonairwavedev wrote: post #80
roymurdock wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds like a really frustrating experience. sorry to hear about all the pivots, lack of strategy and vision. a good/interesting idea killed by overengineering and tough competition. sounds like you learned a lot of valuable lessons on someone else's dime while the ride lasted

Thank you —- this makes me feel much better about the time I spent there :)

anon: would be interested to chat if you can reach out: https://www.linkedin.com/company/iridium-dynamics/
Post reply on HN