[I]t’s getting harder to find independent hardware startups that can scale up to something big without getting bought.
From Dieter Bohn on the collective disappointment so many people feel about the Eero acquisition. The rise of product ecosystems is increasing the costs and risks for independent hardware startups in every category. (Perhaps that’s why reMarkable positions itself as the intentionally unconnected alternative to our phones.)
Research by Robert E. Hall and Susan E. Woodward shows that 87% of venture-backed firms exit for less than $10 million (67% exit for less than $1 million). In a world where Instagram can exit for $1 billion with no revenue or monetization plan, anything less than $10 million is an implosion.
A: Because we compare them to the wrong things. I’m in training today for a piece of software used in libraries. It’s the second of three days of training and things aren’t going well. Some stuff doesn’t work, some things don’t work the first (second, third…ninth) time, and other things just don’t make sense. At […] » about 600 words