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Arduino raises $22M Series B round

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#181

Post by kriro »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #76
rwmj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I understand your concerns, I am just pointing out the general dissatisfaction raised here and the expectation of enshittification being the default. I would also like to point out that you are extrapolating a bit too hard. The claim that backers will want a 10x return is not necessarily correct, nor are the examples of 220/540m valid from a valuation perspective. There are PE firms which do not seek such exorbitant…

Maybe things have changed but the VC model is usually unicorn or GTFO. Of course not every company will turn into one but every company they invest in should have the potential. If I'm a VC I invest in Arduino because of two storylines. It's either the "Coke" of microcontrollers (sticky brand) or the "Github of microcontrolers" (sticky platform via IDE) or a combination of both.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#182

Post by Gud »

gustavus wrote: post #168
mbanzi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe in this case mbanzi will be the farmer?

You don’t know Arduinos master plan.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#183

Post by renewiltord »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #79
renewiltord wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, considering that many HN users seem to be under the impression that this is a loan ("$54 m of debt to service" etc.) I don't think there's much point in assigning any importance to the opinions.

With equity you just have different obligations, I responded to a rather cynical commenter above on my take. I agree, but it's not free either. Equity holders can exercise power in different manners, usually more hostile due to the decisive power they have.

What power they have depends on the terms, the board composition, etc. and yes they can screw you.

You know that, of course, but really the thing is that the sentiment here is information-free and an indicator of that is the inability to tell the difference between debt and equity. i.e. the sentiment and the result are independent events.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#184

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

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

What if I start to make enterprise products called Coolduino, and I say "my products are for the Arduino framework ecosystem" - will you come after me?

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#185

Post by squeaky-clean »

chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #184
mbanzi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What if I start to make enterprise products called Coolduino, and I say "my products are for the Arduino framework ecosystem" - will you come after me?

They have a license page for this

https://support.arduino.cc/hc/en-us/articles/4415094490770-L...

Not-legally-binding tl;dr The "duino" suffix could be a trademark issue. If you rename it and you keep your hardware designs open source you're fine. Otherwise contact them for a proprietary use license.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#186

Post by yetihehe »

Gud wrote: post #182
gustavus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe in this case mbanzi will be the farmer? You don’t know Arduinos master plan.

Maybe we will be the turkeys?

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#187

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #185
chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I start to make enterprise products called Coolduino, and I say "my products are for the Arduino framework ecosystem" - will you come after me?

They have a license page for this https://support.arduino.cc/hc/en-us/articles/4415094490770-L... Not-legally-binding tl;dr The "duino" suffix could be a trademark issue. If you rename it and you keep your hardware designs open source you're fine. Otherwise contact them for a proprietary use license.

Hmmm that's a bummer, maybe I'll just fork it, call it something else and then claim I created it in a weekend.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#188

Post by flaviut »

Dork1234 wrote: post #95
dave78 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was recently a flareup on HN about PlatformIO trying to make money by charging a fee to vendors to be supported ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090536 ). Maybe Arduino wants in on that. I honestly don't see how such strategies work long-term though. As a former embedded SW engineer, the Arduino IDE seems very toy-like - which is excellent for people just starting out, but not something a company develo…

What is the difference between PlatformIO and something you use to develop for an Embedded platform? To me it seems PlatformIO is just a wrapper around the same command-line tools used by other companies.

Installing toolchains on Windows is a huge pain, and installing the a consistent version of toolchains across platforms is also hard.

Platformio is a package manager for embedded systems

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#189

Post by devwastaken »

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.

Yep they're already "going pro" with new pro dev boards. Arduino hasn't been relevant since the release of the original mega.

Now it's doing more damage by continuing to push an "Arduino" ecosystem separated from the realities of building production grade software.

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