It's really a shame that VCs don't seem to have figured out how to do DD on science based startups.
The same is probably somewhat true in tech generally, but VCs in this area don't seem capable of doing the DD. They invest based on personality, connection or business background.
That's all great, but really what these early stage companies need is a CEO with a strong scientific background and focus.
In my experience, those CEOs often don't come across as strong enough to investors who are generally more comfortable investing in tech, which is easier for them to understand.
So my hope is that high profile failures make VCs wake up, and assess scientific startups differently. However I think it's more likely that they'll just avoid them all together.
The article mentions microcontrollers that use 100 milliwatts as the lower end of embedded CPUs.
There are actually microcontrollers that use around 1milliwatt for very low power applications. For example the msp430. TI have a neat video of one running using power generated from grapes:
It feels like failures on the scale of Segway are now pretty run of the mill. They "only" raised a 166MUSD [1]. Doesn't really compare to modern failures like Theranos, 686MUSD.
I've been reading Cryptonomicon recently. There's an entertaining bit where one of the characters asserts that beards are "totems of the white male patriarchal privilege".
It's a bit silly. But it is interesting to note that every bearded person mentioned in this article is white.
Git's rise to become the de facto standard revision control system has been fascinating to watch.
I think it does provided real benefit over Subversion, but there are also smaller projects where the gain is marginal.
The tooling around (in particular GitHub) and perception that git is the "right" way to do things probably helped it achieve prominence. As well as early adoption by a few high profile projects.
In formlab's case they had a 1.8MUSD seed round prior to the crowdfunding. They raised ~3MUSD from crowdfunding.
This probably helped give them some runway to put together a series A. However they still raised an additional 50MUSD.
So, I don't think they're a great example of a company bootstrapping from crowdfunding. It's more of a traditional play, with some validation (and some runway) from crowdfunding.
Pretty terrifying. I'd love to see a more detailed analysis of the datasets they received. It sounds like both governmental and private surveillance systems in China may be pretty leaky.
I wonder if the information is leaked through hacks or compromised individuals.
The author is essentially saying any API change has the potential to break backward compatibility and that we should define what kind of breakage is ok.
That's kind of interesting, and I'd not considered many of the scenarios mentioned (which apply beyond go).
Perhaps the "correct", but cumbersome thing to do is supply different versions of the API when maintaining backward compatibility and never change the old version.
It's strange how the fact that it has an easily rememberable IP address has driven adoption of 8.8.8.8. I have a couple of other DNS servers memorized from before 8.8.8.8 appeared, I'd likely switch to them.
I guess the predictable would happen. Badly configured systems would stop working. Systems with a working secondary DNS would keep working.
More interesting question is what could you do if 8.8.8.8 was compromised? That could be interesting.
Which is why I said potential rather than actual. Having users terminate their connection at Cloudflare always adds an extra layer, and a dependency on a US corporation and therefore subject to the US legal system.
It's not totally ideal. But I'm glad to hear you're trying your best.
Neat hack! It's awesome that Amazon have opened there API to the degree that you can implement these kinds of things. Hope Siri does the same someday (though I think it's unlikely).
Looks really cool and must have been a fun project.
I guess it's not hugely practical, partically as each Pi has a display attached.
Mythic beasts in the UK are doing Pi based co-location. I think this could be interesting. Not perhaps in terms of performance, but the isolation between users in nice.
The same is probably somewhat true in tech generally, but VCs in this area don't seem capable of doing the DD. They invest based on personality, connection or business background.
That's all great, but really what these early stage companies need is a CEO with a strong scientific background and focus.
In my experience, those CEOs often don't come across as strong enough to investors who are generally more comfortable investing in tech, which is easier for them to understand.
So my hope is that high profile failures make VCs wake up, and assess scientific startups differently. However I think it's more likely that they'll just avoid them all together.