our angel investor posted their memo and I annotated it with our slides

In 2009, we started Dropcam (now Nest Cam), a hardware camera and cloud recording service, and Bessemer Venture Partners invested in us as an angel investor.

Last month they posted their original memo and why they decided to invest. Here is ours: Bessemer Dropcam Memo: https://www.bvp.com/memos/dropcam.

I thought it could use a founder perspective and what we were really doing here on my Substack: https://aamusings.substack.com/p/bessemers-dropcam-memo-annotated

(They also posted ones for Shopify, Twilio, and others).

I thought their discussion of risks when they met us is pretty good. Here's what they said about our tech:

Technology: While they have developed an early prototype, it is still an open question as to whether than can build a system that is able to capture, encode, compress, and upload a video stream in real-time without unacceptable latency or degradation in quality. The current prototype leaves much to be desired here – although they have only just begun their work. They claim to have identified a codec that will meet the needs of the system and even allow streaming in HD if enough bandwidth is available.

It's funny - the slide here shows that our original hardware cost is wildly off, but the software part is spot-on. Even in 2009!

The investors didn't believe us because they didn't fully get what we were saying about AWS and its pricing trends. But it all lined up as we build in the coming years and you can see how the market is today.

There's more detail in the post so please check it out: https://aamusings.substack.com/p/bessemers-dropcam-memo-annotated

And if you have more questions or ways I can help please let me know.