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Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

techcrunch.com

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Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#11

Post by hef19898 »

abakker wrote: post #4

I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…

One other usecase with a lot of potential is inventory control and counting in warehouses. Not small articles, but for industrial warehouses and larger products drones combining bar code scanners and visual artical identification can improve things considerably. Fraunhofer ran some first test like two years in Germany. No idea what came out of it.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#12

Post by flyinglizard »

abakker wrote: post #4

I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…

Back in 2015 Airware was pushing for its own technology stack, coupling an autopilot with mission management/ATC. Only later they pivoted into a software-only solution. Same goes for 3D Robotics.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#13

Post by bmurray7jhu »

gammateam wrote: post #5

Out of curiosity, how much drawdown do the VCs typically deal with during these liquidations? They get whatever's left based on their liquidation preference and preferred stockholder preference, leaving nothing for common stock holders including the founders themselves. Whats a typical drawdown look like?

When VC backed companies shutdown, the logistics are typically outsourced to specialist firms like Sherwood Partners [1]. Instead of a formal bankruptcy in federal court, an alternative process called "assignment for the benefit of creditors" is used to distribute assets to creditors under state law.

Patents are usually sold to patent trolls or companies seeking a defensive portfolio. An attempt is usually made to sell tangible assets as a lot, but if there are no buyers, individual assets are auctioned. Silicon Valley Disposition[2] is frequently selected to manage asset disposition auctions.

[1] https://www.shrwood.com/

[2] https://www.svdisposition.com/

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#16

Post by Fordec »

jakelarkin wrote: post #7

so it seems like Drones is one of the first big nascent industries, SV utterly lost to China b/c of their dominance of manufacturing?

SV is good at Software, UI/UX and, historically anyway, Silicon.

But it can't do end hardware.

And the stuff it has been successful at is designing consumer hardware but outsourcing the manufacturing to another country.

Arduino is Italian. Samsung is South Korean. TSMC is Thai. ARM and RPi is British. Shenzhen is the hardware place to be now. It didn't even steal that crown from SV. It stole it from Akihabara.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#17

Post by jakelarkin »

flyinglizard wrote: post #9
jakelarkin wrote: post #7

so it seems like Drones is one of the first big nascent industries, SV utterly lost to China b/c of their dominance of manufacturing?

SV didn't lose to China; everyone lost to DJI. Their competence was staggering (I think they kind of slowed down lately being that they're so far out from everyone; throttling their innovation a bit). If DJI represents the future of Chinese corporations[0], many people on the other side of the ocean should be very wary. [0] edited from "products". In fact what's so impressive with DJI is not just the products themsel…

this is my concern as well. on the hardware side, a Chinese startup can iterate faster & be the lowest cost producer. if design, UX, software, marketing is on par with SV/US competitors. SV is toast (in that industry)

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#18

Post by [deleted] »

fipple wrote: post #8
bertil wrote: post #6

In cases like this, I rarely see the code being shared open source. Is it because it’s worthless, or because investors sell it to recuperate some costs?

It’s because 1) nobody gives a shit and 2) it would need legal review to make sure that it wouldn’t expose the defunct company to further lawsuits over copyright or patent infringement. That’s expensive and not worth it for a dead company

[deleted]

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#19

Post by sardonicbryan »

Fordec wrote: post #16
jakelarkin wrote: post #7

so it seems like Drones is one of the first big nascent industries, SV utterly lost to China b/c of their dominance of manufacturing?

SV is good at Software, UI/UX and, historically anyway, Silicon. But it can't do end hardware. And the stuff it has been successful at is designing consumer hardware but outsourcing the manufacturing to another country. Arduino is Italian. Samsung is South Korean. TSMC is Thai. ARM and RPi is British. Shenzhen is the hardware place to be now. It didn't even steal that crown from SV. It stole it from Akihabara.

The T in TSMC is Taiwan, not Thailand.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#20

Post by crubier »

abakker wrote: post #4

I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…

Agree with your point, this is the vision we are developing at Sterblue !
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