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Arduino raises $22M Series B round

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#111

Post by crote »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #54
londons_explore wrote: post #7

Oh :-( Every time a cool little company gets VC funding, you know that the free and opensource projects will dry up, and before long they'll be making premium high end products and suing anyone who tries to compete.

I think you got it all wrong. VC funding makes things cool because they could afford to loose money and make product better. Enshittification starts when they stop receive VC funding like reddit or docker. Reddit was founded 18 years ago and for the first 10 years it was good because they don't have any pressure to make money.

You seem to forget that some businesses exist before VC funding.

Arduino started out as an open-source project, with further development funded by the sale of physical hardware. They did not need tens of millions of VC funding for that, and they independently developed the "cool stuff" people here care about. Unlike most startups seen here, they were not selling stuff at a loss in the hope of conquering the world and somewhere along the way hopefully figuring out a way to make money. Arduino could've probably continued doing this for decades, but instead they stagnated and were leapfrogged by their competitors.

They only need to raise VC funding in order to expand into new markets because they want to pivot towards "professional engineers with enterprise-scale applications".

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#112

Post by malfist »

mbanzi wrote: post #107
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."

Hi (co founder of Arduino here) We're not doing any of that. Our partnerships based on products and whatever processor is the most useful for what we're trying to build. We're mostly working on robust industrial products that maintain the ease of use of the Arduino framework and we sell those to enterprises. very simple

Not doing any of that _today_.

VC's don't like to leave money on the table, and there's a long history of companies going back on their promises to their users in the years following accepting VC money.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#113

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

It's disappointing because we know exactly what's coming afterwards: the "monetization" which will ruin something that was once great. How many times have we seen it happen? Investors want their returns, they want them now and they will make them turn the screws until all remaining value is extracted.

We may be under the roof of a VC but the site is called Hacker News. Not everyone is gonna be a fan of startups.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#114

Post by mbanzi »

londons_explore wrote: post #87
throwaway894345 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I forsee they'll make all those libraries and tools free for hobbyists - and maybe even 'less than free' - ie. "We'll send you a free dev board if you download the IDE!". But if anyone tries to ship arduino code in a commercial product, they'll want royalties. Or if any microcontroller maker wants to be supported by the ecosystem, they'll also want royalties. And the royalty levels will be low because there are compe…

If you respect the open source license , you're free to use the Arduino code in products. We offer a licensing scheme for companies that want to license the hardware designs to use in proprietary products. The IDE is there, it's free, it's more powerful than ever and it supports any architecture the community wants to work on. Free, no royalties no licenses etc

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#115

Post by nextaccountic »

mbanzi wrote: post #101
frollo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Arduino's origin and first history this is especially depressing. Good old Adriano is now well and buried.

Hi (co founder of Arduino here) Good old Arduino is still here, we're still releasing a ton of tools for the community, we're still innovating every day. We're using most of the funds to develop our professional offering. I believe this is a natural progression for companies like us. Our investors leave free to work on whatever technology and let us open source anything we feel can contribute to the community. They n…

> They never interfere

They never interfere today, but we all know what happens when money dries up and VCs want some return on their money.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#116

Post by leros »

mbanzi wrote: post #101
frollo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Arduino's origin and first history this is especially depressing. Good old Adriano is now well and buried.

Hi (co founder of Arduino here) Good old Arduino is still here, we're still releasing a ton of tools for the community, we're still innovating every day. We're using most of the funds to develop our professional offering. I believe this is a natural progression for companies like us. Our investors leave free to work on whatever technology and let us open source anything we feel can contribute to the community. They n…

Glad to see you chime in here. Just curious, is Arduino setup so that the community could takeover if you did somehow go pure enterprise and abandon hobbyists? If I recall, things are pretty open source.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#117

Post by raincole »

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…

> 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.

It's a very interesting usage of "despite".

- People who know HN are more likely to know Y Combinator.

- People who know Y Combinator are more likely being following news about startups or working for one.

- People who follow news about startups are more likely to witness things going bad after receiving VC funds.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#118

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

jes5199 wrote: post #32
trollied wrote: post #28

Given it all started in 2005, I'm very surprised to see they're raising capital. I guess I incorrectly assumed they would have been very profitable by now with such a large user base & number of units shipped. 18 years is a long time. The market has moved on significantly from when they first started (Raspberry Pi having launched things like the Pico etc), and there is a large amount of competition, so I do wonder if…

Raspberry Pi has found enough use in industry that it’s gotten hard for hobbyists to find boards. Maybe someone convinced Arduino that there are commercial applications

Supply has increased significantly in the last couple months. Rpis are now readily available. https://rpilocator.com/?instock

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#119

Post by mbanzi »

datpiff wrote: post #94
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 think this likely. In professional environments no one uses the Arduino IDE. Hobbyist projects don't move the needle in chip sales.

Actually there are 21000 companies that have bough our products and 2000 of them just the professional tools... so the situation is very different

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#120

Post by jan_Sate »

martin_a wrote: post #81
marcosdumay wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge difference between a company with a business model capable of taking over the world getting some investment, and one with a business model that is necessarily niche. What kind of market does Arduino expect to get into with that money? I can't see any.

> What kind of market does Arduino expect to get into with that money? I can't see any. Maybe professional users like Raspberry Pi did (with the known consequences)? Getting out of that hobby/tinkerer niche with lots of counterfeits from China is probably something to strive for.

The problem with Arduino is that, whatever microcontroller they're using can be easily sourced by anyone else. That's why it's so easy to clone them.

For Raspberry Pi, those mobile phone SoC are rather difficult to source. You need to have contact with the SoC vendor to get a hand on them.

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