Could you walk through Arduino's history in terms of their interest in the enterprise space, how that evolved over time, and at what point you stepped in?

Arduino has been around for over 15 years. The company started humbly as a nonprofit. The founders had an idea, and it was very focused on universities. It came from that maker and hobbyist background. In 2020, Arduino launched its Pro line, and at that point, they had an active Arduino community of about 30 million users using the IDE.

Could you walk through Arduino's history in terms of their interest in the enterprise space, how that evolved over time, and at what point you stepped in?

From 2020, there were a couple of milestones. The UNO was their flagship product, and I think over 10 million were sold in 2021. Coming into 2022, Bosch, Renesas, Anzu Partners, and Arm invested in a Series B round. As we came into 2023, and that's when I joined, a leader was brought in to run the enterprise and the whole play for the enterprise. That gentleman pulled me in; he was someone I knew.

I would be curious to learn about what the pitch looked like for an Arduino product to an enterprise client. What was that pitch like? Did you encounter any problems as you were playing out the strategy?

We focused on a set of use cases that larger players were ignoring. Conversations with enterprise customers began with a use case focus. Specifically, I discussed legacy equipment with partners when visiting accounts. A significant challenge in a typical manufacturing environment, especially in the mid-market, is the presence of newer, smart, and connected equipment alongside older, non-integrated equipment.