1. Investing in open source
hardware
Bijan Sabet
Spark Capital
MIT Innovation Lab
March 19, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009

2. What we look for
Looking for the best entrepreneurs
•
Change the world
•
Disruptive ideas
•
Capital eficient models
•
Friday, March 20, 2009

3. VC Perspective: Open Source
Software
Capital Eficient
•
Changes the game for web developers
•
Focus
•
Better for users
•
Better for developers
•
New entrepreneurs
•
Scale
•
Friday, March 20, 2009

4. Open Source Media Center
Friday, March 20, 2009

5. Friday, March 20, 2009

6. Consumer Electronics
$71B Market
Friday, March 20, 2009

7. Traditional CE doesn’t do
software
Motorola cell phone
Pioneer Elite Plasma
Rio mp3 player
Friday, March 20, 2009

8. Status Quo
Friday, March 20, 2009

9. Jailbreak !
Friday, March 20, 2009

10. Can we bring a web 2.0
approach to hardware?
Friday, March 20, 2009

11. Users are in control
Friday, March 20, 2009

12. Future of CE
Friday, March 20, 2009

13. Developers
Friday, March 20, 2009

14. Open Hardware + Open Software
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15. Friday, March 20, 2009

16. Open Internet Ingredients
Firefox
LAMP
Peer Production
RSS
Open APIs
Data mashups
Connectivity
Friday, March 20, 2009

17. Opportunity
• Bring open source software innovation to hardware
• Hardware mashups
• Inspire existing developers
• Inspire new developers
• New platforms
• New markets
• New communities
• Who will be the MySQL of the CE space?
Friday, March 20, 2009

18. “I’ve come to really believe
that if you make it easier for
people to share information,
more good things happen”
– Evan Williams, Twitter CEO
Friday, March 20, 2009