Either can happen. The root cause is growth of Burkholderia gladioli [0] on certain foods rich in specific fatty acids, which include coconut and corn. This can happen during the fermentation process of fermented coconut and corn products if there's Burkholderia gladioli contamination and the pH, salinity and temperature aren't controlled to prevent its growth, but it is also possible for Burkholderia gladioli to contaminate food containing coconut or corn after it has been produced and produce bongkrek acid while it is being stored (e.g. [1], which is where I first learned about this).
Bongkrek acid [2] is odorless, tasteless and is not destroyed by cooking. Food can show no signs of spoilage and contain a lethal dose, though fermented products that were contaminated during production might show differences in color, texture and smell if the Burkholderi out-competed the normal fermentation process.
I doubt that. Oxide was founded by a bunch of ex-Sun people who have already been burned by the Oracle acquisition. If you read through what they say, their company values, and how they act, it's pretty clear their intent is to grow a sustainable long-term business and they're not looking for an exit.
We are trying to build a sustainable long-term business! It's just that you need enormous amounts of money to get there when shipping this large a product.
The idea behind VC funding generally is that you need large infusions of capital to get to the point where the business becomes sustainable long-term. The first one is the most expensive, and so on. Hardware is capital-intensive compared to SaaS, and especially so in the current environment.
Read the blog post on their series C [0]. It's not long, but the most relevant excepts are:
> So if we didn’t need to raise, why seek the capital? Well, we weren’t seeking it, really. But our investors, seeing the business take off, were eager to support it. And we, in turn, were eager to have them: they were the ones, after all, who joined us in taking a real leap when it felt like there was a lot more risk on the table.
> ...
> Our intent in starting Oxide was not to be an acquisition target but rather build a generational company; this is our life’s work, not a means to an end. With our Series C, customers don’t have to merely take our word for it: we have the capital to assure our survival into the indefinite future.
Maybe you could read that and think its complete bullshit and they're lying their asses off. Considering the people behind Oxide and their history, that's vanishingly unlikely though.
The reasonable conclusion is that they would not have raised yet more money if it wasn't due to being offered very generous terms by investors who wouldn't threaten the long-term future of the business.
It says "they've entirely derisked capital" and now ~6 months later they raised twice as much. Lying is a strong word but that post clearly wasn't accurate at the time.
They've raised a lot of money and there will be pressure for an exit sooner rather than later.
You can be cashflow positive and still benefit from having a larger pool of cash to throw around, particularly in any situation involving hardware manufacturing.
If you tell your investors "our limiting factor is how fast we can spend to deliver on additional requirements for these new customers", then it can both be true that you're not going to miss payroll for 5 years no matter what happens tomorrow and more cash would be beneficial.
Look at how much the components cost 6 months ago and now. That may explain why some calculations shifted considerably. It may be an act of keeping up with the market and having some reserve.
Depends on the VC. Some VC's are happy to own great businesses, even long term. Most are definitely vultures after a quick turn around. Mostly it has to do with where the VC gets their funding. Most VC's get their funding from offering a fund with a 2-5 year time-frame. Some are 10 yr funds, and some are long-term funds or are funded by a family office or two, which can be happy with great businesses long term.
Yes, it matters. I found your comment hard to read and had to re-read it a couple of times to parse it. If you want to use the hyphen because it's more easily typed I suggest using the double hyphen "--", which perhaps doesn't have the correct semantics on a per-character basis, but at least looks mostly right and will be clear in meaning to a human reader.
Bongkrek acid [2] is odorless, tasteless and is not destroyed by cooking. Food can show no signs of spoilage and contain a lethal dose, though fermented products that were contaminated during production might show differences in color, texture and smell if the Burkholderi out-competed the normal fermentation process.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkholderia_gladioli
[1]: https://youtu.be/yXnSYfv6bCA?si=7DTW4J0ahMoWUuLd
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bongkrek_acid
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempeh#Tempe_bongkr%C3%A8k