Our $100M Series B

Key Actionable Insights

1

Co-designing hardware and software from first principles can yield dramatically better products than integrating third-party components. Oxide eliminated UEFI BIOS vulnerabilities, third-party hypervisor licensing costs, and complex network switch integration by building each component themselves with deep integration in mind.

This approach is applicable when building infrastructure products where integration complexity and licensing costs of existing components represent significant pain points for customers.

2

Radical transparency through open documentation, public RFDs, podcasts, and open source code can significantly shorten enterprise sales cycles. Oxide found that prospects who had already consumed their public technical content moved from first conversation to delivered product surprisingly quickly.

Enterprise infrastructure companies should consider publishing technical design documents, source code, and engineering discussions publicly as a sales acceleration strategy, not just a community-building exercise.

3

When building a deeply technical product, the biggest risk investors may see is market risk rather than technical risk. Oxide experienced VCs saying 'we know you can build this but don't think there's a market,' when the founders believed the opposite—that technical risk was high but market demand was certain.

Founders raising capital for infrastructure startups should be prepared to address market validation head-on, and seek investors who understand the target market's pain points firsthand rather than those unfamiliar with the domain.

4

Building a complete integrated system requires hitting milestones in sequence: board bring-up, networking, control plane, manufacturing, regulatory compliance (FCC), first shipment, first field update, and then general availability. Each milestone unlocks the next phase of customer and investor confidence.

Hardware-software startups should plan for a multi-year development timeline with clearly defined milestones, understanding that each completed milestone de-risks subsequent stages and builds credibility with customers.

5

Eliminating third-party dependencies in infrastructure (hypervisor licensing, BIOS vendors, switch software) not only reduces costs but also removes entire categories of security vulnerabilities and operational complexity for customers.

When evaluating build-vs-buy decisions for infrastructure components, consider not just the direct cost savings but the elimination of vulnerability surface area and integration complexity that third-party dependencies introduce.