The round was led by Jon Callaghan at True Ventures and Bryce Roberts of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Both of them will be joining the 3DR board. These are two of the most far-seeing VCs in the Valley, and both are part of the "hardware is the new software" trend, including investments in Fitbit, Makerbot, Littlebits and Instructables. And they share our vision of the power of open source, the Maker movement and personal robotics. Chris Michel, an investor and long-time entrepreneur (and former Naval Flight Officer) will also be joining as an investor and board member.
I'll be opening an office in the SF Bay Area ("3DR North"), which will focus on sales/marketing and community development. Our San Diego headquarters will continue to be the R&D and engineering center, while our Tijuana manufacturing is expanding to handle more and more of our production. My co-founder, Jordi Munoz, will take over the role of President, overseeing operations.
With me joining as CEO and the funding round, we'll be growing the company quickly. We're now at 40 people, but will be hiring more hardware and software engineers in San Diego and sales, marketing and community management people in the Bay Area (probably in the Berkeley/Emeryville area).
The aim of this ramp-up is simple: more cool stuff and a great customer and community experience. As part of this, we'll be launching a new 3D Robotics site/store, new product sites, manuals and tech support communities and a expanded customer support team. And of course a wave of exciting new products, focused on making drones and other aerial robotics technology easier, more powerful and cheaper than ever before.
This is going to be fun ;-)
Comments
Maybe it was this...
3D ROBOTICS Comment by Chris Anderson on March 2, 2012 at 12:54am
Travis: Yes, 3D Robotics (the commercial arm of DIY Drones) has not taken any external funding. By maintaining full control we're able ensure that our top priority is serving the community, not some investor.
Brent,
As the founder of one of the other open-source autopilots, MartrixPilot running on the UAVDevboard (UDB) sold by SparkFun, I have no interest in space on 3DR. I am quite happy with the way things are, I have the best of two worlds. The MatrixPilot community is free to pursue its own interests using the UDB and at the same time we can buy the accessories from 3DR that we have no interest in developing.
Best regards,
Bill Premerlani
CharlieNoFun: Absolutely!
Brent: Just to clarify: DIY Drones is not registered as a company at all. It's a non-profit community, started and run by me, but broadly intended to serve the whole amateur UAV community.
As part of the investment, we are going to building stand-alone sites for 3DR and the various Ardu* projects, including new manuals and well-designed and easy-to-use introductions. We will also create stand-alone forums for tech support for those products there, so we can move them out of the forums here. This will allow DIYD to return more focus to its original mission of news, information and community about amateur UAV development, which I think is what you and others are asking for.
However, just to be clear: I'll still run the site, and my own priorities and vision will continue to influence site design and organization (I'm a former mag/web editor, so you can imagine these things matter to me). I'd be delighted to see more of other projects discussed here, but I'm not promising that all projects will get equal billing in the limited space of tabs and the front page.
3DR doesn't own the source code. Anybody is free to make a branch and modify it to run on competing hardware. I don't think anyone wants to see that happen though.
Therefore it becomes a question of loyalty vs value. People will remain loyal to 3DR so long as there remains value in doing so.
One of the challenges is that 3DR is both a retailer and a manufacturer that also supplies other retailers, this further confuses the waters as 3DR is not only in competition with other manufacturers but also other retailers.
This means, its all a bit of a mess so to sort this out properly, 3DR would do the following....
- Spin off DIY drones as a community owned site, perhaps sponsored by 3DR but with full control over content given to the community. The site costs would be funded by advertising of which 3DR would no doubt be a big customer. Chris would have to give up control over the site for it to be truely independant and hand this over to a group of trusted and independant moderators.
- Ensure that it was clear that the open source code belonged to the community and was driven by the community independant of any manufacturer. The manufacturer may contribute code in order to increase the value of the project and their products, but the manufacturer would not be "in control" of the code if that makes sense.
- Seperate the retail and support arm into a seperate entity from the R&D / manufacturing arm so that the current 3DR webstore was just another customer of 3DR the manufacturer. 3DR the manufacturer would then be retailer agnostic. It might still be owned by 3DR but in theory it would then be free to stock other manufacturers products more freely and would be in competition with the other retailers. This would free up 3DR the manufacturer to pursue more retail outlets for their products and better international distribution channels.
The diydrones site would then list ALL suppliers of hardware compatible with the "DIY drones project" which consisted of the source code controlled by the diy drones project. The "Project" would become hardware agnostic. But obviously people will gravitate to the highest quality hardware product offering the best value for money and service. Naturally 3DR wins on this front (at the moment).
This would eliminate any doubt about who was what and ensure the loyal following of the original core contributors. People would not feel exploited as they would still feel like they have choice. It may also foster increased competition on the hardware front and the possible adoption of additional software / hardware projects under the DIY Drones banner.
Unfortunately now that VC is involved, there is a small conflict of interest between the diy drones community and 3DR in a true open source sense and I suspect until this is addressed, there will be a gradual and growing discomfort as 3DR expands.
All good problems to have though, it means that things are going very well from a project point of view so congratulations are really due all round for the success in getting to this point. The challenge is moving forward from this point and continuing to be successful.
Toby, wow!
It was THE situation analysis.
Do you really catch essence of Open Source "religion".
But, between geek people and novices with lot of money, has some like me. No lot money. I'm no geek guy, but I lot interested in UAV and your business aplications.
I'm naturally a curious guy. About almost everything that is interesting and with autonomous functions.
I think that only a "project / business" like DIY Robotics and 3DR could offer these possibilities; that with lot, lot of reading, lot of testing, hard work, many frustations, people like me could be an, maybe, become a new professional in this issue.
Helping, in many ways, newest enthusiasts in this issue and business, even novices with lot money.
I think that yours "perfect world" that explains, almost has no more in our time. Or, when someone get the idea, and try doing it this way, is so difficulty to go forward that him give up. Because, everyone, has bills to pay, anyway.
P.S: sorry for my poor, very poor english... I never had a english class, before. Only self taught learning.
I think the problem is when words like "Open Source" and "Community" start being used, they have connotations that imply things that are not a true reflection of what is really happening.
Open Source implies "Free" and "Not for Profit" through historical connotations.
Forget Open Source for a minute and focus on the Business Model of 3DR. If you understand that and are comfortable with it, then there isn't a problem. The problem occurs when the words Open Source are applied to the business model, people start to get uncomfortable.
Basically, here is the model....
3DR is a company that wants to sell products and make money.
As a startup, it didn't have a lot of cash.
It saw a gap in the market in that existing Autopilots were too expensive and saw a way of reducing the cost and making it accessible.
The vast majority of the cost of commercial autopilots is the R&D and ongoing support costs, not the manufacturing costs.
"Geeky" people look at the product at the component level and think "I could build one cheaper than that", without adding up the cost of their time.
Commercial Autopilot companies spend millions of dollars on R&D and Support, paying developers to design hardware and write code and then sending people to train and provide support on the ground.
3DR has built a community of people through DIY Drones who are willing to do this work for free in return for getting lower cost hardware.
3DR also engages in some R&D and support directly, but this represents a fraction of the work that a commercial company has to do.
If 3DR had to pay each member of DIY Drones for each hour they spent writing code or providing support via the forums, then 3DR products would soon cost as much as any outher commercial autopilot manufacturer.
There are two types of people on DIY Drones who are 3DR Customers.
- Geeks with lots of time and not a lot of cash
- Novices with cash
In the beggining DIY Drones would have been all about attracting the Geeks, there were no manuals and little support and everyone was kind of on their own. Things were a bit buggy but people felt like they were contributing to something that was going to be great, they saw the potential.
Geeks have loads of spare time and skills but no cash to splash on a commercial autopilot. Geeks are willing to donate their time to write code to improve the product in return for getting cheap hardware they can noodle with.
As time has gone on, all the hard work of those Geeks has resulted in a better product and improved documentation which in turn attracts the novices. These people are not as technically astute as the Geeks but have cash to burn. They also need a lot more support than the Geeks in order to get up and running.
3DR needs both groups of people to be happy in order to survive, it needs the Geeks to be happy to carry on writing code and providing support for free in return for cheap hardware and it needs the products to continue to improve to attract more and more novices.
Understanding the model answers all your questions.
3DR will never close source anything because that would annoy the Geeks who will simply move onto another project or take the Source Code and use someone elses hardware.
Do that and suddenly their costs will go up as 3DR will have to hire more R&D people to do the work the Geeks were doing for free. This results in increased costs and less profit which VC's do not like.
Now 3DR has to walk a very finely balanced line at this point and be extremely careful.
If 3DR is seen to be exploiting the work of those Geeks and making obscene profits from all their work, then the Geeks will walk.
3DR has to reward people for contributing through Qudos, prizes, competitions etc that encourage contribution. The Geek community behind DIY Drones is the key to 3DR's success and without it they are just another hardware manufacturer.
To date 3DR has done a pretty good job of walking this fine line. However the risk is that by introducing VC, that line is crossed and people start walking. The typical VC response to this is to exploit the assets of the company has as quickly as possible and sell as many units as possible then shut it down. Lets hope that doesn't happen.
The other risk is that the Geeks feel a bit hard done by and just develop code for themselves and don't release it back to the community because they feel that it is just being exploited by 3DR.
So forget about Open Source for a minute and just ask yourself the question...
Are you willing to contribute your time to a project in return for low cost hardware for your own use and if so, do you mind that other people will be making money off any work you contribute.?
Thats the only question you need to ask yourself and answer.
Keep in mind, that at say $100 an hour for a developers time, it doesn't take long for you to 'donate' far more value (in time) than what you would get back from simply going out and buying a commercial autopilot.
In my opinion, Chris has a pretty good thing going and if he gets it right has an opportunity to make a big chunk of change while also contributing to the cause, but I don't envy the challenge he has ahead in keeping the core of this community happy which he will have to do in order to make that money, while also trying to line the pockets of the VC's.
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