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Arduino raises $22M Series B round

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#61

Post by marcosdumay »

sgt wrote: post #16
candiddevmike wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you have a 100M business selling cheap, niche microcontrollers to hobbyists? They're starting to pursue a subscription model (Arduino Cloud), I'd expect them to shutter products that won't work with the subscription model and require everything else to use it. It's your standard enshitification play.

By having 10M+ hobbyists that you support and inspire. That's how... easier said than done, but if they play their cards right, it is possible.

That won't do. Your number is way too low.

You need either at least an order of magnitude more (still iffy, people don't buy boards all the time), or to sell into some larger market. Are there 100M electronics hobbyists to sell to over the world? Maybe if you make it into schools...

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#62

Post by londons_explore »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #39
londons_explore wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict they'll go after microcontroller manufacturers first. "Do you want your dev boards supported by the Arduino Ecosystem? Pay us 10% of revenue, and then we'll talk."

I don't doubt that they'll try, but I don't think they have the market position to pull that off anymore, not with ESP32 et al. ascendant. Or maybe I'm just out of touch with that side of the market, hard to tell.

A lot of people still program ESP32's with the arduino IDE.

And there are a good number of devices on the shelves of stores today which contain the arduino bootloader. It turns out the "point and click and get a working IoT product" tends to outcompete hiring a professional embedded coder to spend months to make something bespoke from scratch.

My dumb fridge for example runs on top of the arduino bootloader on an atmel chip - it has the distinctive 1 second startup delay and speaks stk500. And all that chip supports is four temperature sensors, two fans, two door switches and lights, a little 7 seg display and up/down buttons for temperature, a defrost heater, door edge heater, and a relay for the compressor motor.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#63

Post by caned »

Incidentally, and naively, I have to ask: Is there a business model that can promise customers a product that's immune to eventual usurpation? It's a hidden cost to build your world around a product only to see it turn into pay-to-play.

What is the antidote to this trend?

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#64

Post by hoherd »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

Not everybody here is "under the roof of a VC". I recently read a very inspiring article here about a successfully bootstrapped company. It's too bad more companies can't get off the ground without VC funding.

I also think the cynicism hits extra hard when this happens with direct-to-consumer and educational companies. I don't think people care quite so much when a B2B company takes a round of funding because whatever change happens there is not something that will likely hit consumers directly, and of course the whole for-profit educational aspect has been been beaten to death.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#65

Post by marcosdumay »

bombcar wrote: post #48
yard2010 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't "raising funds" just a euphemism for taking a loan you don't have to return in cash? Like a loan which is not regulated as a loan

It's not a loan because it doesn't have to be paid back. But it operates somewhat worse than a loan because the buyer now has some say in how the company is run, and they will want to see a return on their investment eventually. A loan may be better because as long as the company can service it, the lenders have no say in how the business is run, and they get no additional profit from increased income/profit of the b…

Except that if you sell or liquidate the company, you have to pay it all back before you can get any of the money.

So... It's completely equivalent to a low preference loan.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#66

Post by [deleted] »

rwmj wrote: post #46
evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

Why not be negative? They're not being given $22m for funsies. The backers will want a 10x return, so somehow Arduino must now raise their value to $220 million (actually $540 million, since they raised $54m in total). Where's that money coming from?

[deleted]

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#67

Post by [deleted] »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

[deleted]

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#68

Post by ljlolel »

hoherd wrote: post #64
evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

Not everybody here is "under the roof of a VC". I recently read a very inspiring article here about a successfully bootstrapped company. It's too bad more companies can't get off the ground without VC funding. I also think the cynicism hits extra hard when this happens with direct-to-consumer and educational companies. I don't think people care quite so much when a B2B company takes a round of funding because whateve…

He’s talking about how HN is magnanimously hosted by the VC firm YCombinator

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#69

Post by LispSporks22 »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

> funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News

I think it has changed over time. There used to be an absolute jerk fest in the comments section on VC funding years ago.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#70

Post by throwaway894345 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #39
londons_explore wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict they'll go after microcontroller manufacturers first. "Do you want your dev boards supported by the Arduino Ecosystem? Pay us 10% of revenue, and then we'll talk."

I don't doubt that they'll try, but I don't think they have the market position to pull that off anymore, not with ESP32 et al. ascendant. Or maybe I'm just out of touch with that side of the market, hard to tell.

Pretty sure the "Arduino ecosystem" is more than just the boards. It's also a bunch of libraries that provide a standard interface to a bunch of different hardware as well as tooling to build, flash, and monitor those libraries. While I don't love those libraries or tools, they do a half-decent job of papering over the shockingly painful esp-idf (the equivalent libraries for ESP32 boards) which I understand to be one of the better embedded SDKs.
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