I think you're largely right -- a lot of founders get trapped in mediocrity because they raise so much that they don't feel enough pressure to execute. And that frequent, high-resolution fundraises are much more viable than they were ten years ago.
On the other hand, I'll offer two countervailing observations to keep in mind:
* In well-understood categories (e.g. horizontal B2B SaaS), there has been so much brainpower and cash deployed in the last ten years that customers are overwhelmed by noise and expect much higher quality products before they'll meaningfully adopt and pay. My experience is that founders are spending much longer in the initial build phase getting to an MVP than they were ten years ago.
* The oversupply of venture dollars is not evenly distributed. If you're building something that needs years in the lab (chips, batteries, robots, hardware, etc), the investor herd thins out quickly and many of the folks willing to make a purely conceptual bet are much less comfortable judging whether some-progress-but-no-product is worth continued investment.
Sometimes it can be smart to raise a lot from a true believer to bridge you to the spreadsheet jockeys.
You're spot on with both observations and it has been our experience with the venture circuit. Especially for enterprise accounts, the bar is set significantly higher for what companies are willing to shell out money for. Good high-quality software that enterprises are willing to adopt generally takes 1-2 years of full time development. There's definitely a need for true believers but for founders, without a solid network, it's hard to find.
I bought a System76 workstation last year. Everything about it is great except for one big thing that makes me hate using it: the air cooling is terrible and loud.
My room sounds like a wind tunnel even at idle. The response at the time was to futz around with fan controller firmware and I never got anywhere.
I don't understand why they don't move to liquid cooling.
Water cooled systems will leak over time, as well. It's just not worth it unless you're purely doing it for the "enthusiast" points and don't mind ending up with a system that's going to take water damage at some point.
Perhaps but we’re talking about buying pre-built systems. I have a silent liquid cooled machine from a few years ago and I have not opened the case even once. So it seems possible if a little pricier.
It sounds like a full recap so it's not exactly the sort of fundraise you necessarily want to announce at all. Unless you made your other press release accidentally sound like you were going out of business.
Very cool, congrats guys. I am a Monkeybrains customer with a bunch of their equipment on my roof (I signed up for their enhanced "FTTH" campaign) and have wondered about replicating the service for myself and my neighbors if I were to move elsewhere.
Do you have an operating model for these small ISPs? Specifically I'm curious what the breakeven point is.
Thank you. How many neighbors are you thinking? It really depends on how many buildings they are in / how far apart they are, and what percentage use you as their provider. At smaller scales, it's much better to have an "in" with the building (HOA, owner, etc.) so you can market more effectively, outweighing the revenue risk of having a small number of customers.
Rad. It never occurred to me that some people could nap in the daytime after a poor nights sleep and then struggle to get to sleep and not see the connection. Glad to see I’m wrong as h*ck.
Good question. In my experience there is a danger of over-optimizing, trying to get too much sleep, and then regressing again. Some of the literature agrees with you though.
I would recommend finding some evening activities that you enjoy but are less stimulating. For example, I find it much easier to drift into sleepiness when I'm watching Netflix on the couch rather than sitting upright at my computer actively engaging in a quest for more information.
