Endeavor Robotics was recently sold for $382MM. So clearly it was actually valuable.
Are you aware that from an investor perspective, creating a household brand and high IRR though IPO is considered a wild success? All companies eventually decline. By your metrics GE wasn't a wildly successful company either. Or AOL. Or Yahoo. Or Myspace. Every one of those companies eventually declined and your return would be poor if you held on to your investment over their entire arc.
Are you aware you are picking the wrong numbers. $382 is post iRobot when endeavor sold to Flir. Why would you even use that number. PackBot sold for $45mm. That’s a decade worth of work and investment for $45mm. I think you might be narrating a bit too much and putting words into my mouth. I don’t know the IRR for iRobot as I was never part of the funding rounds while private or an insider while public. That said it was a stagnant public company that had a jump around Covid time which has come crashing back down. Maybe those folks like yourself, based on the way you speak, invested early in the 90s in iRobot and were part of that IPO.
I am not attacking the man only a perspective that I am not sure investors would see him as a wildly successful entrepreneur.
Are you aware that from an investor perspective, creating a household brand and high IRR though IPO is considered a wild success? All companies eventually decline. By your metrics GE wasn't a wildly successful company either. Or AOL. Or Yahoo. Or Myspace. Every one of those companies eventually declined and your return would be poor if you held on to your investment over their entire arc.