Comment by tyre
2 months ago
I don’t know who needs to hear this but raising a ton of money is not success.
Also interesting from their Series C press release from earlier this year:
> With this large Series C, we have entirely de-risked capital going forward, which in turn assures our independence.
> I don’t know who needs to hear this but raising a ton of money is not success.
You don't raise this much money this fast without having some success to show the investors.
Oxide raising this much money is a big accomplishment.
> You don't raise this much money this fast without having some success to show the investors.
I’m pretty sure the dotcom bubble had many counterexamples
If you follow Oxide (perhaps just by reading their Blog[1] and RFDs[2]), I think you'd find a more rigorous engineering and business culture than most case studies you're referring to from the 90s/00s. Of course it's not impossible that Oxide is getting themselves in trouble, but there is more evidence supporting a successful case, in my opinion.
[1]: https://oxide.computer/blog
[2]: https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/
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oxide is a hardware company, not a Dotcom
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pets.com has entered the chat.
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Good points.
>I don’t know who needs to hear this
Plenty of people on this forum need to hear it. Because they think otherwise.
>but raising a ton of money is not success.
Yes. It's not even an accurate predictor of future success.
>With this large Series C, we have entirely de-risked capital going forward, which in turn assures our independence.
Independence from whom?
If they mean from everyone, they left out two important categories:
The Series C givers.
The other big C. Customers.
They mean is that they are much harder to acquire. Their goal is to become an independent public company.
> "independent public company"
But they are not independent though, they will be owned by Wall Street should they go public.
Instead they remain in the private markets for a long time and sell secondary shares, just like what Stripe is doing.
I hope they never go public for the reason that Wall Street would own them.
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Taking money means they literally are losing control with every dollar. Do you really think that the terms on a $400M+ round don't include influence?
It’s success compared to the other possibility: not raising money and going out of business. We still cheer when a rocket separates from the first stage and ignites the next. Things going as planned during a risky and challenging endeavor is still a good thing.
And it is not success compared to another possibility, earning enough money to not need further fundraising. Of course some businesses are more capital intensive and have longer time-to-money timelines due to factors outside the control of the company, and in that case fundraising is an essential tool for a long time.
Yeah they're doing a hardware play, which means it's really capital intensive. That kind of cash means they can afford to do a larger production run, which gets them better economies of scale, which means more profit per unit sold. investors are being given private access to see that the demand is there to justify further investment.
It's success, just not what you consider success.