Drone Startup CyPhy Works Gets $22 Million Boost From Bessemer Venture Partners

Drone startups are beginning to take flight, at least in the world of venture capital.

On Wednesday, Danvers, Mass.-based CyPhy Works said that it had raised $22 million in a round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The announcement is the latest in a series of private investments in companies in China and the U.S. building unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the consumer market.

Led by iRobot IRBT +0.10% cofounder Helen Greiner, CyPhy (pronounced Sci-Fi) did not disclose its valuation following the round, which brought its total funding to more than $30 million. Previously the company had raised $7 million from Lux Capital in Nov. 2013 and concluded a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in June for its six-rotor LVL 1 drone, raising nearly $900,000.

The company is “looking forward to working closely with our new strategic investors to accelerate adoption of drones into public safety, construction, agriculture, journalism, mining, defense, and other fields,” said Greiner in a statement, citing not just Bessemer but also UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, a private investment arm of the shipping company, and Motorola Solutions Venture Capital.

While the likes of Amazon have stoked the public’s imagination of flying robots delivering packages, CyPhy Work’s investment partnership with UPS doesn’t necessarily mean the company will be jumping head on into drone delivery. However, as its previously announced relationship with Motorola shows, CyPhy is using deals with corporate players to gain exposure for its relatively new and experimental technology.

“We have a strategic relationship with Motorola’s public safety division [which covers] most of the nation’s public security,” said Greiner at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in San Francisco last month.” We want to leverage that to get drones into police, fire fighters and others, across the world and not just the U.S.”

CyPhy Works Series B round comes after other companies building drone hardware have raised millions. In May, DJI, the world’s largest consumer drone manufacturer, took in $75 million from Accel Partners at an $8 billion valuation. That was followed by fellow Chinese companies and competitors EHANG and Yuneec, raising $42 million and $60 million respectively, in August.

CyPhy Works biggest differentiator from its Chinese counterparts is that it has built tethered drones, connecting flying robots to users with a fishing line-type filament, which the company said allows for unlimited flight times, improved control and better video processing. Its Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications (PARC) vehicle system, which was initially built for military-use cases, utilizes this tethering technology, and Greiner said that the funding will go a toward the commercial launch of that model. (The company’s Kickstarter drone, LVL 1, does not feature tethering.)

“CyPhy Works has produced the first truly differentiated drone and as we see more industries leverage this technology, we expect they will capture significant market share,” said Bessemer Venture Partners’ Felda Hardymon, who joins the company’s board with the investment.

Other participants in the $22 million round include Draper Nexus Ventures and existing investors Lux Capital and General Catalyst Partners.

Citation from Forbes : http://goo.gl/bq6g8n

Startup Reasons For Establish 'Coopetition'

There are seven reasons in it, and they are smart as important.In business startups there must be growth and it is necessary.

1. It reduces common costs and customer learning curves.

Similar startups, with competing products, almost always have overlapping areas, which cost money to develop and annoy customers with a new learning curve. If these elements are not your core competency or “secret sauce,” why not negotiate a sharing partnership?

2. Complementary advantages can expand both markets.

Every smart startup starts with a focus on a unique advantage, such as owning a distribution channel. A competitor may have complementary strengths. A strategic partnership, sharing common gains, should be a growth opportunity by expanding the market for both.

3. There's an opportunity for follow-on sales to existing customers.

Every business brings a set of existing customers who are great candidates for additional sales from a partner-competitor. That’s the reason why many ecommerce sites feature a house brand, but have partner relationships with logical competitors to attract and cross-sell customers.

Satisfaction Is Your Need 

4. It can create new solutions through integration of competitor features.

In many cases, two competitors are fighting a third one, and both are losing. With a strategic partnership, they can combine their product strengths with minimal cost and time, rather than each funding new development. Both then capitalize on new strengths and bundling for growth.

5. It can establish architecture and industry-interface standards.

Products in the same industry need to talk to each other and share data to facilitate faster customer adoption and faster growth for all players. Competitors can agree on common interfaces without exposing or jeopardizing their intellectual property or customer relationships.

6. It leads to referral agreements and affiliate marketing.

These are simple cooperation agreements, but many entrepreneurs are too proud or busy to consider them as a growth opportunity. Why not improve your customer satisfaction by referring customers you can’t satisfy to someone who can? If they so the same, you both win, along with the customer.

7. Coopetition relationships lead to positive investments and buy outs.

These days, most large companies, such as IBM and Merck, rarely develop new products internally. They invest in complementary startups, through internal venture funds and partnerships, and plan to acquire the best as they show the right traction. Be visible and be proactive.

If you are contemplating a win-lose relationship, hoping to put your competitor at a disadvantage, don’t do it. It's very risky, costs you a lot of time and money and generally backfires, since most competitors are not desperate or stupid. In every case, make sure your intellectual property is protected up front with a two-way non-disclosure agreement. Be cautious, but not paranoid.

Smart entrepreneurs realize that sometimes they have to fight that natural instinct to consider competitors as the enemy. If you keep your customer’s best interest as your first priority, you will know when it’s time to think outside the box. That thinking, including coopetition, will pay big dividends for your own startup's growth, as well as customer relationships.

Disclaimer :- Followingg article is is from Entrepreneur

Global Entrepreneurship & Development Institute (GEDI)

GEDI INDEX

Enterprise is a crucial engine of economic growth. Without enterprise and entrepreneurs, there would be all little innovation, productivity growth and new jobs.

Entrepreneurial success does not take place in a vacuum. Entrepreneurs exist in the context of their particular geography – be that their local, national, or even supranational economy and society.

This mix of attitudes, resources, and infrastructure is known as the entrepreneurship ‘ecosystem’. The Global Entrepreneurship Index is an annual index that measures the health of the entrepreneurship ecosystems in each of 120 countries. It then ranks the performance of these against each other. This provides a picture of how each country performs in both the domestic and international context.

Entrepreneurship With Better Benefits

Institute 

The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI) is a research organisation that advances knowledge on links between entrepreneurship, economic development and prosperity. The institute was founded by world-leading entrepreneurship scholars from the LSE, George Mason University, University of Pécs and Imperial College London.

The main contribution of The GEDI Institute is the GEI index, a breakthrough advance in measuring the quality and dynamics of entrepreneurship ecosystems at a national, regional and local level. The GEI index methodology, has been validated in rigorous academic peer reviews and has been widely reported in media, including in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Forbes (see media tab).

Methodology

The methodology has also been endorsed by the European Commission and has been used to inform the allocation of EU Structural and Cohesion Funds. The theoretical approach of The GEDI Institute has also influenced entrepreneurship policy thinking in trans-national organisations such as United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Further details can be found in the research tab.

The GEDI methodology collects data on the entrepreneurial attitudes, abilities and aspirations of the local population and then weights these against the prevailing social and economic ‘infrastructure’ – this includes aspects such as broadband connectivity and the transport links to external markets. This process creates 14 ‘pillars’ which GEDI uses to measure the health of the regional ecosystem.

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