Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Edit: David is so sleepy
Near Christmas, The IoT unicorn Samsara successfully IPOed, with a market value of more than $12 billion. Behind this is the legendary entrepreneurial road of two MIT geniuses. From the moment CEO Sanjit Biswas was hired by Oracle at the age of 15 as the youngest engineer in history, it was only a matter of time before the technical genius succeeded.
On December 15, perhaps the new York Stock Exchange's last IPO of 2021, came to an end.
IoT unicorn Samsara successfully raised $805 million and pulled its market capitalization to nearly $12.6 billion (about 80.3 billion yuan).
From MIT to 80 billion bosses
Samsara was co-founded by Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket in 2015.
However, their entrepreneurial story begins when Biswas was a child.
Sanjit Biswas has loved computers since childhood and has shown amazing talent. When he was a child, he fell in love with his father's computer books.
In 1996, at just 15 years old, Sanjit Biswas became the youngest computer engineer ever made by database giant Oracle.
According to reports at the time, a colleague at Oracle recalled, "We didn't know how old he was at first, and the only time he revealed his age was because he was in a hurry to get off work one day so his mother could come and pick him up."
Everyone knows that it's only a matter of time before Biswas makes its mark on technology.
In this way, Biswas worked at Oracle for several years, scored a perfect score on the SAT, entered Stanford University, and later studied for a Doctorate at MIT, where he met his classmate John Bicket.
The two MIT students have embarked on a 15-year entrepreneurial road since then.
During their time at the school, the two worked together on the MIT Lab project. The project, called RoofNet Mesh Wireless Network, aims to provide wireless Internet access to the Cambridge community where MIT is located.
Biswas said: "It can be said that this project started my life."
RoofNet mesh network architecture later became one of the industry's most important 802.11b WiFi reference standards.
The duo's mentor at MIT was Robert Morris, a legend in the field of business entrepreneurship who later became the co-founder of Y Combinator, an industry-renowned incubator.
Group photo of the co-founders of Y Combinater, one on the right is Robert Morris, and the second is Paul Graham on the left
In 2006, the two dropped out of MIT together and founded Meraki with Hans Robertson, who is also an MIT alumnus, and RoofNet's technological achievements became Meraki's core technology.
Meraki provides wireless network equipment, security facilities, and cloud architectures for large enterprises, organizations, governments, and schools to help customers build private networks.
Meraki's three co-founders
Meraki was born at a time when wireless networks were on the rise, the company's core technology and business direction were very popular, and investors and technology giants were throwing olive branches.
According to PitchBook, the company raised about $87 million from investors such as Alphabet (then Google), Felicis Ventures and Sequoia Capital.
In 2012, Meraki was acquired by communications giant Cisco for $1.2 billion and renamed Cisco Meraki, maintaining a fairly autonomous operating state within Cisco.
This state of affairs lasted for several years, but the enthusiasm of the duo for entrepreneurship was far from extinguished.
In 2015, Biswas and Bicke left Cisco, and this time, their eyes were on the Internet of Things. They wanted to create a system for the business that would easily connect and monitor multiple devices.
Samsara was born.
Soon after, Samsara raised $25 million from prominent investor Andreessen Horowitz, who joined the company's board.
Biswas was very happy, not only because of the investment, but also because Andreessen Horowitz was an industry mentor with a high spirit of exploration and adventure, which was very much in line with the company's development philosophy.
"We're excited to have him on board, he's never afraid of ambitious BP and appreciates that our company is in its early stages." Biswas said.
With the strong support and clear business direction of the investment community, Samsara had a smooth ride in the next few years. In 2019, the company successfully raised $300 million, with a valuation of $6.3 billion. Biswas and Biicket's stakes are worth more than $1 billion.
In 2020, the epidemic struck, and Samsara was inevitably affected. In May 2020, the company laid off 300 employees and eventually raised $400 million in a new round of funding, with a valuation downgraded to $5.4 billion.
The company is also making business adjustments during this period, turning more attention to a more down-to-earth direction, focusing more on products used to monitor the safety of workers in "basic industries" such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and agriculture.
9 months revenue of 1.9 billion
Fast forward to January 2021, Samsara announced that the company's annual subscription fees have exceeded the $300 million mark.
In September, Samsara secretly applied for an IPO.
On the opening day of December 15, Samsara opened at $24.90, 8.3 percent higher than the $23 IPO price, and finally closed at $24.70, up 7.4 percent.
Samsara's revenue in the first three quarters of fiscal 2021 was $303 million, up about 72 percent from $174 million last year. In addition, in the most recent quarter, its revenue exceeded $100 million.
In terms of total assets, Samsara grew from $631 million in February 2020 to $839.5 million as of October 2021.
Although this is down from $174 million in 2020, Samsara still has a net loss of $102 million in 2021. Total liabilities also increased from $432.4 million in February 2020 to $519.7 million in October 2021.
Even though Samsara hasn't made a profit yet, it's growing faster than the naked eye can see.
In the Financial Times' list of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. for 2021, Samsara came in second, close behind The One FinTech Company, Upgrade Inc. In addition, Samsara is ranked 15th on LinkedIn's list of top startups of 2021.
Behind this, Samsara is supported by a huge customer base of more than 20,000, of which the core customers have reached more than 13,000.
They range from Fortune 500 companies to lesser-known start-ups in areas such as manufacturing, transportation and logistics, field service, food production, energy and construction.
These customers, especially those with annual recurring revenue (ARR) contributions of $100,000 or more, drove Samsara's revenue growth.
As of Oct. 30, Samsara's ARR grew to $492.8 million, compared to just $293.1 million the year before.
A year ago, Samsara had just 390 $100,000 customers, and now it's 715, including an increase of 100 in the third quarter alone, and these customers bring about 44 percent of the ARR to Samsara.
As hinted at by its ticker symbol IOT, Samsara is focused on the IoT industry.
Based on Samsara's cloud platform, businesses can use IoT to connect devices, from video cameras to data collection devices, to help operate and increase productivity.
In addition, Samsara collects data that includes video footage, people and motion detection, GPS location, and energy consumption, and uses this information to improve safety, reduce insurance costs, and reduce the need for manual supervision and judgment.
Samsara's IPO also demonstrated the enormous potential to bring computer vision innovations to industrial customers.
Brendan Burke, research analyst at Emerging Technologies at PitchBook, said: "By moving video processing from the cloud to vehicles, Samsara has become the Tesla for commercial third-party telematics, and this market is estimated to reach $33 billion in 2021."
With its successful listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Samsara's market capitalization after full dilution reached nearly $12.6 billion (80.3 billion yuan).
Biswas and Beicket, two entrepreneurial wizards, have also spent nearly 20 years to walk out of a legendary road from MIT to an 80 billion boss.
Resources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/samsara-ipo-founders-sanjit-biswas-john-bicket-mit-tech-billionaires-2021-12#roofnets-technology-became-the-basis-for-meraki-the-startup-they-founded-in-2006-alongside-hans-robertson-a-fellow-mit-grad-student-4
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-15/samsara-rises-in-trading-debut-after-ipo-fetches-805-million
https://siliconangle.com/2021/12/15/iot-platform-samsara-raises-805m-ipo-valuing-11b/
https://www.indmoney.com/articles/samsara-ipo