In the late 1990s, building an electronic product company was a herculean feat. Components had to be designed from scratch. Firmware engineers spent months writing low-level code to control silicon. Communication stacks were written from the ground up. Assembly lines were built by buying capital equipment and hiring manufacturing workers. Distribution was dependent on retailers buying your first 5K units without any prior sales traction.
After 30 years, the story is different. No longer do startups spend months writing communication stacks for radios. They drop in a $3 pre-certified radio module with WiFi and Bluetooth with most of the functionality already in place. Hire a contract manufacturer who is willing to build a 10K unit each month. Similar to software, many hardest technical problems have been abstracted away. As starting a hardware startup has gotten easier, more founders have done so and competitive advantage or barriers to entry are today’s hard problems.
Fitbit and GoPro went public while significantly profitable, having raised only $77M and $90M respectively from VCs excluding capital from CMs. This is far fewer VC dollars raised than the average SaaS IPO. Fitbit scaled from $0 to $1.9B in revenue in 7 years while very few SAAS startups scale that quickly (SaaS public revenue average at 7 years is ~$90M). As hardware startups increasingly adopt software-like business models, it’s more common to see 45%+ gross margin business in GoPro, Fitbit, Dropcam, and much higher on the subscription or data storage product.
The “hard” part of any sector changes as old problems are solved and new problems appear in any startup history. The fundamental difficulties of building any disruptive company remain the same: team, market, distribution, and marketing. These are the problems that unite all companies trying to build value in the world. Our investor panel is going to share their insights in evaluating, assessing, and managing their high-risk ventures.
Building Deep Tech Startups Outside Silicon ValleyHAX
The resources you need can be distributed: for R&D, prototyping, production, financing and customers. Silicon Valley is an expensive option in most cases!
What is 'deep tech' and what is unique about it from an investment perspective? SOSV shares the lessons learned from investing in over 800 startups, many in robotics, IoT, medtech, synthetic biology and more.
What is 'deep tech' and what is unique about it from an investment perspective? SOSV shares the lessons learned from investing in over 800 startups, many in robotics, IoT, medtech, synthetic biology and more.
Deep analysis of the Martech's leading 1461 companies. This reports offers insights on:
- How big is the market
- Where are the investments made
- Who are the top performing companies
- What happened to the Unicorns
And much more.
Building Deep Tech Startups Outside Silicon ValleyHAX
The resources you need can be distributed: for R&D, prototyping, production, financing and customers. Silicon Valley is an expensive option in most cases!
What is 'deep tech' and what is unique about it from an investment perspective? SOSV shares the lessons learned from investing in over 800 startups, many in robotics, IoT, medtech, synthetic biology and more.
What is 'deep tech' and what is unique about it from an investment perspective? SOSV shares the lessons learned from investing in over 800 startups, many in robotics, IoT, medtech, synthetic biology and more.
Deep analysis of the Martech's leading 1461 companies. This reports offers insights on:
- How big is the market
- Where are the investments made
- Who are the top performing companies
- What happened to the Unicorns
And much more.
Where are the Next Googles and Amazons? They should be here by nowJeffrey Funk
Great startups aren’t being founded like they were in the 1970s (Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Genentech, Home Depot, EMC), 1980s (Cisco, Dell, Adobe, Qualcomm, Amgen, Gilead Sciences), and 1990s (Amazon, Google, Netflix, Salesforce.com, PayPal). All of these startups reached the top 100 for market capitalization, but Facebook is the only startup founded since 2000 which has entered the top 100. Tesla and Uber are often discussed as highly successful but they have many times higher cumulative losses than did Amazon at its time of peak losses and neither has had a profitable year despite being older than Amazon was when it achieved profits. Furthermore, few of the recent Unicorn IPOs have experienced shareprice increases greater than those of the Nasdaq (14 of 45), only 3 of these 14 have profits, and only six of them have a
market capitalization over $30 (Zoom), $20 (Square), and $10 billion (Twilio, DocuSign, Okta). America’s venture capital system isn’t working as well as it once did, and the coronavirus will make things worse before the VC system gets better.
Here's our Jan 2021 copy of Unicorn Report: rebrand.ly/zcwk1d2
Subscribe here https://rb.gy/3yuosu for free and get Data & Analysis on new startup Unicorns delivered straight to you
Here's our Jan 2021 copy of Unicorn Report: rebrand.ly/6o48gxi
Subscribe here https://rb.gy/3yuosu for free and get Data & Analysis on new startup Unicorns delivered straight to you
Among all the excitement for the Internet of Things and the resurgence of hardware as an investable category, venture capitalists, many of whom new to the space, have been re-discovering the opportunities and challenges of working alongside entrepreneurs to build hardware companies. Combined with a rapid evolution of the venture financing path across categories over the last couple of years, the increasing importance of crowdfunding and a certain frothiness in the market, this leads to a certain confusion, as both entrepreneurs and VCs try to figure out the best way of financing and scaling hardware startups. Some patterns emerge, however: for example, VCs are mostly interested in opportunities that include a strong software and data component; and they are increasingly demanding when it comes to seeing the product actually shipping and gaining early traction.
What Every Startup And Corporate Should Know About ExitsHAX
Startups: prepare -- Corporates: build your playbook!
Talk given at the Hello Tomorrow Summit in Paris in March 2019, inspired by the 50 speakers of the "Exit Masterclass" series we ran in 2018 in SF, NYC, London and Paris.
Where are the Next Googles and Amazons? They should be here by nowJeffrey Funk
Great startups aren’t being founded like they were in the 1970s (Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Genentech, Home Depot, EMC), 1980s (Cisco, Dell, Adobe, Qualcomm, Amgen, Gilead Sciences), and 1990s (Amazon, Google, Netflix, Salesforce.com, PayPal). All of these startups reached the top 100 for market capitalization, but Facebook is the only startup founded since 2000 which has entered the top 100. Tesla and Uber are often discussed as highly successful but they have many times higher cumulative losses than did Amazon at its time of peak losses and neither has had a profitable year despite being older than Amazon was when it achieved profits. Furthermore, few of the recent Unicorn IPOs have experienced shareprice increases greater than those of the Nasdaq (14 of 45), only 3 of these 14 have profits, and only six of them have a
market capitalization over $30 (Zoom), $20 (Square), and $10 billion (Twilio, DocuSign, Okta). America’s venture capital system isn’t working as well as it once did, and the coronavirus will make things worse before the VC system gets better.
Here's our Jan 2021 copy of Unicorn Report: rebrand.ly/zcwk1d2
Subscribe here https://rb.gy/3yuosu for free and get Data & Analysis on new startup Unicorns delivered straight to you
Here's our Jan 2021 copy of Unicorn Report: rebrand.ly/6o48gxi
Subscribe here https://rb.gy/3yuosu for free and get Data & Analysis on new startup Unicorns delivered straight to you
Among all the excitement for the Internet of Things and the resurgence of hardware as an investable category, venture capitalists, many of whom new to the space, have been re-discovering the opportunities and challenges of working alongside entrepreneurs to build hardware companies. Combined with a rapid evolution of the venture financing path across categories over the last couple of years, the increasing importance of crowdfunding and a certain frothiness in the market, this leads to a certain confusion, as both entrepreneurs and VCs try to figure out the best way of financing and scaling hardware startups. Some patterns emerge, however: for example, VCs are mostly interested in opportunities that include a strong software and data component; and they are increasingly demanding when it comes to seeing the product actually shipping and gaining early traction.
What Every Startup And Corporate Should Know About ExitsHAX
Startups: prepare -- Corporates: build your playbook!
Talk given at the Hello Tomorrow Summit in Paris in March 2019, inspired by the 50 speakers of the "Exit Masterclass" series we ran in 2018 in SF, NYC, London and Paris.
Empowered Entrepreneurs and Hyper Growth in Mobile EraBess Ho
Investment Panel titled "Empowered Entrepreneurs and Hyper Growth in Mobile Era" at Silicon Vally China Wireless (SVCW) Conference in 2013.
Snapchat evaluated at $800M is gaining 200 million images daily, growing faster than Instagram (130M users), Facebook (1B users) and Twitter (550M users). Instagram hits 5 Million video uploads within 24 hours. In China, Alibaba's gross merchandise volume surpassed Amazon and eBay in Q4 2012. Sina's Weibo, Chinese's version of Twitter, is growing at 2x Year To Year with a 530 million users from zero revenue to $100 Million revenue in a year. Our investor panel would discuss upcoming startup to watch and past successful investment.
Guest Lecture for The Art of Institutes on Mobile Design. Specific target to what design students should learn to become sufficient as mobile designer and to excel in designing for mobile.
JumpyBirds iTunes for Toddlers & Amazon for MomsBess Ho
JumpyBirds is an Entertainment TV app which is going to change the way Toddlers get their favorite songs at home and to change the way Moms shop and buy their child's digital toys. It focuses in solving the traditional problems of how difficult for working busy moms to find and shop quality educational DVDs for children in places where Children's DVD collection in retail stores is limited due to shelf space and inventory.
Our concept design demonstrates the convenience of smart phone to unlock fresh and additional digital content without exiting the app or install additional app. We also significantly reduce the no. of clicks on TV Remote Control from roughly 50 clicks to a single click to request content and offer alternative micro-payment in mobile. Our concept design would offer convenience of purchasing toys from Brick and mortar along with digital content. Mom will be able to buy a teddy bear that appears in the "Teddy Bear" song and surprise their children of the toy as gift on special occasions or act of encouragement of learning.
JumpyBirds's TV app idea is to deliver "Happiness" to both Mom & toddler at their convenience and in the comfort of their home.
About:
JumpyBirds is a Silicon Valley-based startup focuses in creative design and innovative technology in devices.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 5DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 5. In this session, we will cover CI/CD with devops.
Topics covered:
CI/CD with in UiPath
End-to-end overview of CI/CD pipeline with Azure devops
Speaker:
Lyndsey Byblow, Test Suite Sales Engineer @ UiPath, Inc.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
Removing Uninteresting Bytes in Software FuzzingAftab Hussain
Imagine a world where software fuzzing, the process of mutating bytes in test seeds to uncover hidden and erroneous program behaviors, becomes faster and more effective. A lot depends on the initial seeds, which can significantly dictate the trajectory of a fuzzing campaign, particularly in terms of how long it takes to uncover interesting behaviour in your code. We introduce DIAR, a technique designed to speedup fuzzing campaigns by pinpointing and eliminating those uninteresting bytes in the seeds. Picture this: instead of wasting valuable resources on meaningless mutations in large, bloated seeds, DIAR removes the unnecessary bytes, streamlining the entire process.
In this work, we equipped AFL, a popular fuzzer, with DIAR and examined two critical Linux libraries -- Libxml's xmllint, a tool for parsing xml documents, and Binutil's readelf, an essential debugging and security analysis command-line tool used to display detailed information about ELF (Executable and Linkable Format). Our preliminary results show that AFL+DIAR does not only discover new paths more quickly but also achieves higher coverage overall. This work thus showcases how starting with lean and optimized seeds can lead to faster, more comprehensive fuzzing campaigns -- and DIAR helps you find such seeds.
- These are slides of the talk given at IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshop, ICSTW 2022.
GridMate - End to end testing is a critical piece to ensure quality and avoid...ThomasParaiso2
End to end testing is a critical piece to ensure quality and avoid regressions. In this session, we share our journey building an E2E testing pipeline for GridMate components (LWC and Aura) using Cypress, JSForce, FakerJS…
Encryption in Microsoft 365 - ExpertsLive Netherlands 2024Albert Hoitingh
In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
Observability Concepts EVERY Developer Should Know -- DeveloperWeek Europe.pdfPaige Cruz
Monitoring and observability aren’t traditionally found in software curriculums and many of us cobble this knowledge together from whatever vendor or ecosystem we were first introduced to and whatever is a part of your current company’s observability stack.
While the dev and ops silo continues to crumble….many organizations still relegate monitoring & observability as the purview of ops, infra and SRE teams. This is a mistake - achieving a highly observable system requires collaboration up and down the stack.
I, a former op, would like to extend an invitation to all application developers to join the observability party will share these foundational concepts to build on:
GraphSummit Singapore | The Art of the Possible with Graph - Q2 2024Neo4j
Neha Bajwa, Vice President of Product Marketing, Neo4j
Join us as we explore breakthrough innovations enabled by interconnected data and AI. Discover firsthand how organizations use relationships in data to uncover contextual insights and solve our most pressing challenges – from optimizing supply chains, detecting fraud, and improving customer experiences to accelerating drug discoveries.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
In his public lecture, Christian Timmerer provides insights into the fascinating history of video streaming, starting from its humble beginnings before YouTube to the groundbreaking technologies that now dominate platforms like Netflix and ORF ON. Timmerer also presents provocative contributions of his own that have significantly influenced the industry. He concludes by looking at future challenges and invites the audience to join in a discussion.
Pushing the limits of ePRTC: 100ns holdover for 100 daysAdtran
At WSTS 2024, Alon Stern explored the topic of parametric holdover and explained how recent research findings can be implemented in real-world PNT networks to achieve 100 nanoseconds of accuracy for up to 100 days.
zkStudyClub - Reef: Fast Succinct Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Regex ProofsAlex Pruden
This paper presents Reef, a system for generating publicly verifiable succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that a committed document matches or does not match a regular expression. We describe applications such as proving the strength of passwords, the provenance of email despite redactions, the validity of oblivious DNS queries, and the existence of mutations in DNA. Reef supports the Perl Compatible Regular Expression syntax, including wildcards, alternation, ranges, capture groups, Kleene star, negations, and lookarounds. Reef introduces a new type of automata, Skipping Alternating Finite Automata (SAFA), that skips irrelevant parts of a document when producing proofs without undermining soundness, and instantiates SAFA with a lookup argument. Our experimental evaluation confirms that Reef can generate proofs for documents with 32M characters; the proofs are small and cheap to verify (under a second).
Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1886
11. Who else is investing in Hardware
1) Hardware-only VCs
A few funds that work only with hardware
companies - first money in and can follow-on
but not lead future investment rounds.
2) Hardware-friendly micro VCs
A few micro VCs that invests $50K-$500K at the
seed stage but often don’t lead and don’t
focused on hardware exclusively.
3) Hardware-friendly traditional VCs
A few traditional VCs that are active in investing
hardwares.
14. Failure Reasons
1) Lack of consumer demand
2) High burn rate
3) Lack of interest after initial
crowdfund
4) Product Strategy mistakes
Other failed funded startups including
Electric Objects, Lily Robotics, NJOY,
Pearl Automation, Coin, Plastic, Inq
Mobile, Bia Sport, Electroloom, Narrative
Clip camera, Angel Sensor wristband
15. 56% of 382 consumer hardware
startups analyzed raised their first
fund on a site like Kickstarter or
IndieGogo
The median size of those
crowdfunding raises was $210K
Hardly a small seed round,
incubator/accelerator deal or
crowdfunding raise can take a
startup’s product beyond prototyping
phase
17. Strong Exits Ring
Raised $204M from
Shea Ventures, True
Ventures, Upfront
Ventures
Acquired by Amazon $1B in 2018
Los Angeles founded in 2012
18. Nest Beats
Acquired by Apple $3B in 2014
Raised $800M
Los Angeles founded in 2006
Acquired by Google $3.2B in 2014
Raised $230M
SF founded in 2010
19. Oculus Dropcam
Acquired by Google $555M in 2014
Raised $48M
SF founded in 2009
Acquired by Facebook $2B in 2014
Raised $98M
Menlo Park founded in 2012
20. MakerBot SmartThings
Acquired by Samsung $200M in 2014
Raised $19M
Mountain View founded in 2012
Acquired by Stratasys $403M in 2013
Raised $10M
NY founded in 2009
21. LIFX Blink for Home
Acquired by Amazon $90M in 2018
Raised $6M
Boston founded in 2012
Acquired by Buddy $51M in 2019
Raised $16M
Redwood City founded in 2012
22. Xilinx (VIE: XLNX) ARM (LSE:ARMH)
Acquired by NVIDIA $40B in 2020
Raised $80M
Cambridge UK founded in 1990
Acquired by AMD $35B in 2020
Raised $862K
San Jose founded in 1984
23. Modcam Meraki
Acquired by Cisco $1.2B in 2012
Raised $80M
SF founded in 2006
Acquired by Cisco in 2020
Raised $8M
Sweden founded in 2013
24. SaaS-like Metrics
Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS)
IoTs
Devices
Sensors
Equipment
Benefits
Businesses shifts from having to capitalize
expenditures on thee balance sheet (capex) to
expensing these costs on a profit and loss
statement, or operating expense (apex)
It results in a higher Lifetime Value and
predictable streams of revenue. Customers
are “locked” to longer term service contracts.
27. Hardware + Software
= Software company
Three Business Models
These startups have
recurring revenue and more
software engineers than
hardware engineers.
Software services are harder
to copy. It increase switching
cost and offer more customer
engagement to build brand.
Hardware = enabler
1) Hardware-as-a-Service
The recurring fee is a software license or
service fee
Particle, Karma, DipJar
2) Hardware-enabled Services
Freemium model add margin on the
sales of each unit
Dropcam (acquired by Nest), Fitbit
(acquire by Google), Meural (acquired by
Netgear)
3) Consumables
One-time hardware sales but repeatable
purchase on consumable supplies
Nespresso, Keurig, Amazon Kindle
29. InPhi
IPO $12 in 2010 NASDAQ: IPHI
Raised $258M
San Jose founded in 1998
Acquired by Marvell $10B in 2021
Lead
30. Intellon
IPO $9 in 2007 NASDAQ: ITLN
Raised $95M
Orlando FL founded in 1989
Acquired by Qualcomm $244M in 2009
31. Techwell
Acquired by Intersil in 2010
IPO $10 2005 NASDAQ: TWLL
Raised $20M
San Jose founded in 1986
Continuous Computing
Acquired by Radisys in 2011
Raised $36M
San Diego founded in 1998
Lead
32. Athena Semiconductor
Acquired by Broadcom in 2005
Raised $15M
Fremont founded in 2001
Teknovus
Acquired by Broadcom $123M in 2010
Raised $63M
Petaluma founded in 2001
33. Pure Digital Coin
Acquired by Cisco $590M in 2009
Raised $68M
SF founded in 2001
Acquired by Fitbit in 2016
Raised $16M
SF founded in 2012
Lead
44. HW: Find your Lead Investor
Must have: HW experience
45. HW: Exit is your founder’s
responsibility
Don’t assume it’s magic. Don’t
assume it’s falling on VCs’
responsibility.
46. Innovation Event Series: Part III
Get inside the head of investor
saying YES to high risk
Apr 21st 2021 Wed 7pm
Meetup Silicon Valley Builder
Zoom Live
Edward King
VP of New Ventures
Inventec
Jing Ge
Founding Partner
Vectors Angel
Joseph Wei
Managing Director
Technology Ventures Group
Jay Eum
Managing Partner
GFT Ventures
Bess Ho
Moderator
Silicon Valley Builder
47. HOSTED BY Silicon Valley Builder
Innovation Event Series:
Q&A
Part III: Investment Panel