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Failed Palo Alto Startup Pivots From Trying To Be an 'Android Killer' To Self-driving Tech (bizjournals.com)
A Palo Alto startup that stopped trying to be an "Android killer" last year after raising $185 million has apparently pivoted to developing autonomous vehicle technology. From a report: The company now known as Cyngn has changed its name from Cyanogen and recently got a permit to test its self-driving tech on California roads, according to a report Wednesday on Axios. It's being led by Lior Tal, the former chief operating officer who took over as CEO last fall when Kirt McMaster left. The rest of the startup's current team of about 30 people appear to have joined since the strategy shift, Axios reported, citing LinkedIn records. Some of them are former Facebook people, like Tal, and alumni of automakers who include Mercedes-Benz. No new funding has been disclosed for the reinvented company. It lists on its website investors who backed it before it pivoted, including Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Index Ventures, Qualcomm and Chinese social networking company Tencent. The company was the center of acquisition talk in 2014, when companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung and Yahoo expressed interest in the company.
In most cases investors do now want the money back, especially traditional VC's. In one startup I did we established - after launch - that there wasn't the growth opportunity in the market that we expected. We were offered a price for the existing business that would have returned a high percentage of the initial investment back to the investor which we thought was a 'good thing to do'.
In response the VC said: 'If this didn't work figure out what will and then spend all but the last dollar trying to get there. The last dollar we'll roll into a join and smoke it' ( we're in WA so this would have been a legal activity ).