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Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

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Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#21

Post by yourapostasy »

ReDeiPirati wrote: post #11

Unlike Landing.ai and C3.ai, Element.ai was lacking of a solid go-to-market strategy from day 1.

> Unlike Landing.ai and C3.ai...

What do you believe the go-to-market strategy is of those two?

For C3.ai, my interpretation was they're trying to become the Microsoft of ML, re-packaging the entire ML pipeline into a more consumable developer experience. They seem currently focused more upon the model analytics part of the pipeline than say, training data selection or ETL to ingest raw data (whether to train upon or run in production), or any number of other pieces of the pipeline.

Landing.ai appears to be more tightly focusing their messaging on the operational aspects of the ML pipeline, though not so much the modeling part that C3 appears to emphasize. They also seem to very tightly narrow their focus on machine vision ML.

I'm probably wildly off though, having had no access to the actual platforms and ever used them in anger.

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#22

Post by musicale »

rossjudson wrote: post #19
nrmitchi wrote: post #4

The actual title is "Element AI sold for $230-million as founders saw value mostly wiped out". This is an important difference, since the submitted title here implies they were entirely wiped out. It looks like this company raised ~$250M, and sold for $230M. This isn't any sort of nefarious "founders got wiped out"; they sold for less money than they raised and this is the typical outcome in that situation. Also, fro…

If preferred shareholders gain control, common shareholders are screwed (as in zero value). I speak from personal experience. In our case, the founders and top executives absolutely went down with the ship and lost everything. Briefly, cash was needed and investors were found at an relatively early point. The agreement set a value (V) under which the proceeds would benefit the preferred shareholders (the new investor…

> For their $5 million, they got office desks, a bunch of PCs, and some half-built software they had no idea what to do with.

I suppose when they sold it off it was a good deal for some other startup that needed office equipment.

> I suppose that did not work out particularly well for anybody ;)

Sounds like the staff who quit probably enjoyed their revenge, and also got a great story out of it.

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#23

Post by brutus1213 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #18

It’s funny to see this around the same time as this other thread where people are going through so much mental gymnastics to avoid obvious conclusions of how horrible it is to work for a startup, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25493646

If the start up offers market-rate wages, I am not seeing the downside. Job insecurity vs. chance to get more experience/lottery ticket? Seems reasonable .. but then again, I don't work at a startup.

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#24

Post by JoeAltmaier »

nrmitchi wrote: post #4

The actual title is "Element AI sold for $230-million as founders saw value mostly wiped out". This is an important difference, since the submitted title here implies they were entirely wiped out. It looks like this company raised ~$250M, and sold for $230M. This isn't any sort of nefarious "founders got wiped out"; they sold for less money than they raised and this is the typical outcome in that situation. Also, fro…

This always baffles me. You buy a startup that has made some progress. You want to keep going on the current product? Then keep the employees, let the 'founders' go. The founders have done their thing. But to keep the lights on will need everybody who knows how this unique thing works.

Yet they always do the opposite. As if the founders have a clue how the software/deployment/support system works at all.

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#25

Post by JoeAltmaier »

agentofoblivion wrote: post #10

I don't know anything about this company. But I work at FAANG as an ML scientist and spent about 3 months this year working on a research project that demonstrated big performance improvements of a new tech. It got enough interest that it led to a new project that brings this to production. This has led to countless headaches. The skills needed to solve these challenges are very different. My more academically minded…

TransMeta.

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#26

Post by musicale »

qeternity wrote: post #17
agentofoblivion wrote: post #10

I don't know anything about this company. But I work at FAANG as an ML scientist and spent about 3 months this year working on a research project that demonstrated big performance improvements of a new tech. It got enough interest that it led to a new project that brings this to production. This has led to countless headaches. The skills needed to solve these challenges are very different. My more academically minded…

Really good insight. When I put engineering job posts up, we get loads of PhD applications...a staggering amount. And all of these people look great on paper. It’s only when you start talking to them off script that you understand a career in academia has radically different incentive pressures than the private sector. We end up passing on most, not because they aren’t brilliant, but because they’re very one dimensio…

It must be surprising to find "brilliant" people who are apparently incapable of learning how to do new things.

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#27

Post by musicale »

ignoramous wrote: post #5
yazr wrote: post #2

Paywall copy from reddit https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/khin4c/n_m...

Also: https://archive.vn/evQgH

archive.vn has never loaded for me; a lot of the time it doesn't even resolve

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#28

Post by shuckles »

yourapostasy wrote: post #21
ReDeiPirati wrote: post #11

Unlike Landing.ai and C3.ai, Element.ai was lacking of a solid go-to-market strategy from day 1.

> Unlike Landing.ai and C3.ai... What do you believe the go-to-market strategy is of those two? For C3.ai, my interpretation was they're trying to become the Microsoft of ML, re-packaging the entire ML pipeline into a more consumable developer experience. They seem currently focused more upon the model analytics part of the pipeline than say, training data selection or ETL to ingest raw data (whether to train upon or…

I attended a presentation by Tom Siebel, founder of C3, around 2011 who said the "inspiration" from C3 came from hiring ~10 of the best management consultants from McKinsey who told him that Enterprise IoT was going to be a big deal. My guess is the AI part came later as a way of productizing a data processing pipeline.

The event was strange and really disabused me of many assumptions I had about startup origin stories.

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#29

Post by nrmitchi »

arolihas wrote: post #16
nrmitchi wrote: post #4

The actual title is "Element AI sold for $230-million as founders saw value mostly wiped out". This is an important difference, since the submitted title here implies they were entirely wiped out. It looks like this company raised ~$250M, and sold for $230M. This isn't any sort of nefarious "founders got wiped out"; they sold for less money than they raised and this is the typical outcome in that situation. Also, fro…

It also says ServiceNow agreed to hiring many of the employees in this deal so it’s not that catastrophic. Although yes their options aren’t even worth the paper they were printed on.

Ya, but let's not pretend that most of these employees couldn't haved walked outside and ended up with a full line up of interviews scheduled for the first week after the holidays.

Re: Element AI sold for $230M, as founders saw value mostly wiped out: document

#30

Post by amelius »

throwawayeai wrote: post #13
ReDeiPirati wrote: post #11

Unlike Landing.ai and C3.ai, Element.ai was lacking of a solid go-to-market strategy from day 1.

I worked at Element AI, and that was true from the inside to an extent that was borderline terrifying. On orientation we were told that EAI's strategy was to hire as many smart individuals as possible. There was no focus on delivering an actual product, it was demo after demo of semi-impressive DL models. It makes me sad thinking of all the brilliant colleagues I had that were simply wasting their talent.

> It makes me sad thinking of all the brilliant colleagues I had that were simply wasting their talent.

At least they were not making people click ads ...

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