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colesantiagoyesterday at 3:10 PM3 repliesview on HN

I'm confused and saddened on why Oxide has to keep raising money (in substitute for growth) and keep entrenching their business with VCs and letting them control business and ownership.

> "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."

From this of course the VCs will back and support Oxide (they are mentally thinking that Oxide will move into supplying hardware for AI datacenters) eventually want their money back at many many multiples and the pressure is there to achieve this.

Can you even invest in Oxide?

I just wish Oxide wouldn't have to keep getting owned by VCs which would inevitably lead to enshittification to pay back the VCs.

If Oxide followed the model of Valve (100% founder and employee ownership, profitable, vast unlikelihood of enshittification or pressure to get acquired or IPO) then it would be a different situation.


Replies

neomyesterday at 3:23 PM

How could a massively capex business like Oxide scale in the same manner that Valve did based on the current market movement of the industry that Oxide is addressing? I personally cannot see how that is at all possible. The cash required to back downstream capital in a business like this as it scales without it falling flat is surly well in excess of $6/700MM, if they manage to get by with with only selling 300/400 million of equity, that will be a great outcome for the founders.

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Aurornisyesterday at 3:18 PM

There’s nothing confusing about it. Hardware businesses require a lot of capital to build the hardware.

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dcreyesterday at 3:21 PM

Valve is primarily a software company with zero marginal cost to a game sale.

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