1/ Interesting thing happening in the LIDAR industry right now. 5+ companies will soon or have SPAC'd. Their value is based on *projected* revenue that comes from *entirely overlapping* potential customers, with very little discount applied to future projections. Is this bad?

2/ And how did we end up here? SPACs aren't subject to the same effective restrictions on future revenue projections as traditional IPOs. It's totally possible the numbers will be correct for one of these companies. But it's not possible for all to be correct.
3/ SPACs may be a good thing for pre-revenue companies or companies that have chosen to go public before they meet the more customary milestones for an IPO ($100m in ARR, for example).
4/ If these companies were to be valued based on earnings today, they would be severely undervalued. But if you look at the market caps for each of these companies, they're each being valued as if they had already realized some of their ambitious future projections.
5/ Of course, it's certainly not unusual for startups to be valued based on future revenue projections, even in a highly competitive space. But I typically see private markets put a much larger discount on these future projections than what we see with these SPACs.
6/ Let's look at the overlap (from public pitches):
* All targeting ADAS or robotaxi market as the top of one of the top revenue sources
* All include value added software for perception
* All counting on today's nascent industry adoption of LIDAR to balloon

In no order:
7/ AEVA
8/ Innoviz
9/ Ouster
10/ Velodyne
11/ Luminar
12/ What does this mean? First, I have great respect for all of these companies. They're each innovating in different ways, and competition is great for the industry. Robotaxis will have an enormous positive impact on society, so it's critical to see progress here.
13/ But we saw a consolidation / collapse of the robotaxi space over the last 24 months (down to a handful of players), and LIDAR is next. This probably means lower market caps for most of these co's, which sucks for everyone involved, but may the best product win!

More from Business

You May Also Like

Хајде да направимо мали осврт на случај Мика Алексић .

Алексић је жртва енглеске освете преко Оливере Иванчић .
Мика је одбио да снима филм о блаћењу Срба и мењању историје Срба , иза целокупног пројекта стоји дипломатски кор Британаца у Београду и Оливера Иванчић


Оливера Илинчић је иначе мајка једне од његових ученица .
Која је претила да ће се осветити .

Мика се налази у притвору због наводних оптужби глумице Милене Радуловић да ју је наводно силовао човек од 70 година , са три бајпаса и извађеном простатом пре пет година

Иста персона је и обезбедила финансије за филм преко Беча а филм је требао да се бави животом Десанке Максимовић .
А сетите се и ко је иницирао да се Десанка Максимовић избаци из уџбеника и школства у Србији .

И тако уместо романсиране верзије Десанке Максимовић утицај Британаца

У Србији стави на пиједестал и да се Британци у Србији позитивно афирмишу како би се на тај начин усмерила будућност али и мењао ток историје .
Зато Мика са гнушањем и поносно одбија да снима такав филм тада и почиње хајка и претње која потиче из британских дипломатских кругова

Најгоре од свега што је то Мика Алексић изговорио у присуству високих дипломатских представника , а одговор је био да се све неће на томе завршити и да ће га то скупо коштати .
Нашта им је Мика рекао да је он свој живот проживео и да могу да му раде шта хоће и силно их извређао
So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.