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Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

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Re: Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

#31

It's a great time to start a robotics company and I hope this exit will further accelerate the pace of new companies being created! Kiva is also a great example of nailing a single high-value problem even if it's not the sexiest challenge.

Maybe it's just me, but watching all those robots move with purpose across the inventory floors is pretty damn sexy. lol

Re: Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

#33
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a great exit for Bain Capital.

Bain Capital Ventures . Venture Capital, not Private Equity.

I thought Bain Capital was the umbrella for all of their funds? Bain Capital Private Equity for the PE stuff and Bain Capital Ventures for the VC investments.

Re: Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

#36
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix actually can't switch to an AWS competitor at this point because none of them are big enough. (source is some random cloud infrastructure presentation they did) When AWS started they were basically running off the "christmas season" and end-of-life amazon.com boxes with almost no up front expenditures. Everyone else in the "cloud" business is buying new boxes to build out, which means its really hard for them…

This one: http://perfcap.blogspot.in/2012/03/cloud-architecture-tutori... ???

Yup. That is the one. Thanks!

Re: Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

#37
post #6

One interesting question is what will happen to the current clients of Kiva (of which many are competing with Amazon in ecommerce market) newegg. etc ??

I think they will be getting the same service from Kiva. Netflix is one of the biggest user of EWS, yet, Amazon is pushing hard on their streaming service too.

Weirdly, Amazon and Netflix fill different niches for me. Amazon's player is flash so it works for me in linux, so I use that when I'm on my computer. However Netflix has an application for my (non-Fire) android device, so I use that there.

I really wish they would start pushing on each other harder, so I could use only one for both...

Re: Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

#38
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kiva Systems was started with almost no money... It's actually one of the better stories I've heard. The founder basically found various phds that were researching in related fields and convinced them to work for equity.

According to reports, Kiva raised around $33 Million in VC funding [1]. Like I wrote before [2]: I've been tracking venture capital (VC) funding of robotics companies for the better part of two years. Based on my (limited) data, VC funding in robotics exceeded $160 Million for 2011. This is just a rounding error compared to VC funding of Internet (web-based) companies, which hit a decade-long high of $6.9 Billion in…

To me this is another piece of scalable infrastructure they can offer to other companies.

Re: Amazon acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 million

#40
post #38
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to reports, Kiva raised around $33 Million in VC funding [1]. Like I wrote before [2]: I've been tracking venture capital (VC) funding of robotics companies for the better part of two years. Based on my (limited) data, VC funding in robotics exceeded $160 Million for 2011. This is just a rounding error compared to VC funding of Internet (web-based) companies, which hit a decade-long high of $6.9 Billion in…

To me this is another piece of scalable infrastructure they can offer to other companies.

Perhaps, but it seems to me that it is a competitive advantage they might not want to give up. More akin to Google's server warehouse design than AWS.
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