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Arduino raises $22M Series B round

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#161

Post by thereisnojesus »

Brusco_RF wrote: post #140
mbanzi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

co founder of Arduino here) actually I hate web3 I think it's a pile of bullshit and it's slowly fading away... We've never been interested in that. We do sell services but we try to avoid bullshit terms like "servitization"

Since I've got you, allow me to apologize for all the knee-jerk cynics in this thread. I trust you will continue to ship great product and that your incentives will remain aligned with those of your users. Just pinky promise me that you won't make Arduino IDE a subscription :)

[flagged]

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#162

Post by nine_k »

marcosdumay wrote: post #55
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…

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.

They want inroads into professional control systems / IoT / etc market. Certainly the hobbyist market can't give enough returns, but it's a hugely important funnel into the pro world.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#163

Post by YetAnotherNick »

crote wrote: post #111
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Where did I say business couldn't exist without VC? I just said VC money generally seems to make product quality better, even if last only for few years. Here is the list of companies I could find which didn't take VC money:

- Oracle

- Broadcom

- Walmart

- MicroStrategy

These companies have most enshittified products than most other companies, so it is not the VC money that leads to it.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#165

Post by gh02t »

jan_Sate wrote: post #120
martin_a wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, but "real" industry users want support for the hardware and software. They will pay for support contracts and customization if it saves them in house labor time.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#166

Post by sergiotapia »

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…

What other possible outcome can there be?

VC funding demands VC results. It's the only path forward.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#167

Post by JKCalhoun »

jandrese wrote: post #104
FredPret wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> super low cost ESPs from China Just checked aliexpress.com. You were not kidding - $1-2 per item!

Cheap boards aren't new, but cheap boards that have a sane development environment and decent documentation are far more novel.

Many of the Arduino libraries have been modified to work with most of the cheap boards (already listed by another user).

If the Arduino IDE becomes a pain point I'm sure an open IDE (or VS Code plugin?) will step in. (There may already be such a thing?)

Edit: another comment suggests PlatformIO + VS Code allows you to avoid the Arduino IDE.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#168

Post by gustavus »

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

The turkey got to the farm. The Chickens all told him to fear the farmer, that one day the farmer would kill and cook and eat him.

When the farmer came the first time the turkey hid full of fear, but the farmer came and instead of death and fear brought food. The farmer took care of the turkey, feeding him well, making sure he had a warm place to stay. All along the chickens warned the turkey, the farmer was going to come and eat him, but the Turkey thought.

"The Farmer is so nice, he takes care of me so much and loves me, these chickens don't have any idea what they were talking are talking about. They are just foolish scared chickens", the turkey thought.

Then one fateful November day instead of a bag of feed the farmer brought an axe....

Many tech people have seen this happen over and over again, they know that when the VCs come, eventually so will the axe.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#169

Post by rasz »

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.

Arduino is not a cool little company. If you start reading about its history you will learn about some Italian dudes running PCB manufacturing for Arduino stealing trademark and registering US company with it. https://makezine.com/article/technology/arduino/massimo-banz... Poor Massimo Banzi got taken advantage of, right?

If you dig even deeper you will find http://arduinohistory.github.io describing how Massimo Banzi stole open source project from one of his students.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#170

Post by rasz »

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…

You innovated the hell out of Hernando Barragán.
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