11–20 of 20 posts
What is with this bias against bootstrapped startups? "We will be selecting from companies who: Have raised Seed or Series A funding from a VC or established Angel Investors"
This is a cost to them so they want to increase the likelihood that the startup will do something useful that will feed back into future revenue. There are not a lot of indicators that have reasonable validity and are easy to assess, so they've picked something where others have done some heavy lifting.
We've deployed a number of challenging wifi installs over the last few years, trying out a bunch of hardware+software approaches. Meraki is one of the ones we haven't tried, mostly due to their enterprise cost. So if you're interested in this kind of stuff but willing to try out something other than Meraki, try Ubiquiti ( http://www.ubnt.com/ ). They're our current favorite wireless equipment vendor. Very reliable ha…
What is with this bias against bootstrapped startups? "We will be selecting from companies who: Have raised Seed or Series A funding from a VC or established Angel Investors"
What is with this bias against bootstrapped startups? "We will be selecting from companies who: Have raised Seed or Series A funding from a VC or established Angel Investors"
My cat has a bootstrapped startup, maybe she can get some free stuff?
The only good thing about Meraki is that their immoral (and potentially illegal acts) led to the open mesh firmware of B.A.T.M.A.N. and RO.B.IN.
A company that started in an open source MIT project, that initially encouraged hacking their firmware, transformed to retroactively changing their EULA on hardware already bought, making it illegal to run any custom firmware and then they aggressively increased their service fees.
From "happy hacking" to "screw you" - the story of Meraki http://www.virishi.net/from-happy-hacking-screw-you-story-me...
What's the benefit for startups to use this versus a $30 off the shelf router? It seems more for enterprises. Also the title makes it sound like there's a giveaway with 15k worth of routers or something but it's actually 15k per participating startup.
Meraki APs can handle hundreds of clients, while most off-the-shelf APs fail beyond 8 or 16. You can manage them remotely. If someone is hogging your bandwidth, you can boot them off remotely. Clients can roam seamlessly between APs, which is essential when you have an office bigger than a few thousand square feet. I felt it was worth the money.
It's all thanks to Toastman's[1] version of the Tomato firmware. I wrote up a nice article[2] about my experience with the whole deal!
[1]: http://toastmanfirmware.yolasite.com/ [2]: http://www.verdantrefuge.com/writing/2012/toastman-tomato-fi...
It is only for Series-A funded companies. Wish TC had put this earlier in the article.
so its not really for "startups", its more of a trick to get companies with capital to have a sales conversation with meraki.
Its a clever sales trick, but it also pisses me off. VC/Angel funding is not the definition of a "legitimate" tech startups. (to borrow from recent oft quoted phrases from recent political discourse)
As an alternative, check out http://open-mesh.com . The only good thing about Meraki is that their immoral (and potentially illegal acts) led to the open mesh firmware of B.A.T.M.A.N. and RO.B.IN. A company that started in an open source MIT project, that initially encouraged hacking their firmware, transformed to retroactively changing their EULA on hardware already bought, making it illegal to run any custom firmwa…