> Once you exit the software bubble, almost everything, especially new technology, becomes a lot "harder" and takes a lot longer.
I've done hardware in spades, so I'm well aware of the differences. In hardware, Series D was either a Mezzanine round or a something-has-gone-wrong = inside/major-dilution round
Maybe the world has changed, but having no product at D is not a sign that things are going well on the biz side.
If you are a consumer hardware company, yes. If you're on the edges of what we as humans know to be possible, it can take far beyond Series D to get there. If you look at the early telecoms, they were essentially series Z with the government before becoming accessible.
If you're talking about anything that has impact on utility scale power or anything else on a massive scale, series D is just the beginning. LightSail needs to build a product that not only works but is so damn good that someone will be willing to put it into a system that has to last 10-30 years for an ROI.
No I was referring to enterprise, and when it comes down to it, pretty much all VC funded operations. The nuts and bolts of the way VC funds are structured make it necessary to pretty much have the company investment resolved in about 8 years. (Typical funds are LLCs limited to 10 year frames.) Each round should last 1.5-2 yrs. If you are at D with no product, then your A round is up a creek.
No huge change. We decided to aim at a higher quality, product with more vertical integration/custom engineering which is somewhat more expensive from a development cost perspective but less from a unit cost perspective. When you can raise money from amazing investors like this, take a little extra. We were oversubscribed.
