<story><title>Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/jawbone-is-being-liquidated-as-its-ceo-launches-a-related-health-startup</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stingrae</author><text>The days of consumer hardware company&amp;#x27;s access to startup capital is over. With so many high profile VC backed (Fitbit, GoPro, Hello, Juicero, Coin, Pearl, ect.) and kickstarted (Lily.ai, Pebble) failures, no one is willing to risk it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>replicatorblog</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d ascribe the failure to the commodification of the fitness tracker and increasingly platform-driven smart speaker space. Here are some companies that have raised big rounds recently:&lt;p&gt;+ SimpliSafe raised $57M from Sequoia&lt;p&gt;+ Ring raised $100M+ from DFJ&lt;p&gt;+ Formlabs raised $50M from Foundry&lt;p&gt;+ Sphero raised $23M in April&lt;p&gt;+ Anki raised $52.5M in PE&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure what the future holds for Anki&amp;#x2F;Sphero, but the first three examples have what GoPro&amp;#x2F;FitBit didn&amp;#x27;t — a clear recurring business model. This is a good blog post on the subject:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.bolt.io&amp;#x2F;the-3-business-models-that-matter-for-connected-hardware-startups-32fbf59506e5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.bolt.io&amp;#x2F;the-3-business-models-that-matter-for-c...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/jawbone-is-being-liquidated-as-its-ceo-launches-a-related-health-startup</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stingrae</author><text>The days of consumer hardware company&amp;#x27;s access to startup capital is over. With so many high profile VC backed (Fitbit, GoPro, Hello, Juicero, Coin, Pearl, ect.) and kickstarted (Lily.ai, Pebble) failures, no one is willing to risk it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BinaryIdiot</author><text>&amp;gt; The days of consumer hardware company&amp;#x27;s access to startup capital is over.&lt;p&gt;So I haven&amp;#x27;t worked at a hardware start-up but it seemed pretty difficult even before these companies to raise funding versus a pure software play. I&amp;#x27;m not necessarily convinced this makes it easier or harder. Is there a specific reason you think it will be harder now?&lt;p&gt;Also, for what it&amp;#x27;s worth, Fitbit and GoPro are still going. I&amp;#x27;m convinced Fitbit can get back on the growth curve as long as they can get a new product out the door that consumers want. Tall order for sure but I don&amp;#x27;t count them as a failure yet.&lt;p&gt;GoPro want to move to doing software more so than hardware. Considering their software has always considered to be lackluster to borderline terrible I&amp;#x27;m less convinced they will turn it around but also not yet willing to say they&amp;#x27;re a failure.</text></comment>