[soundlab]

--If you want to scratch your head, I won’t stop you. At a time when capital is easy to come by for buzzy startups and valuations are frothy, some will view this news as another signal that the tech bubble is real.--

I find this angle in the article puzzling and something of an indicator of the gap between "startup media" and what real companies do. Both venture firms re-committed additional capital to the venture on the basis that the Harry's model is working well and that tighter control over production, R&D, and supply chain will benefit the business over rivals stuck in white label/OEM.

To me this is the opposite of a "tech bubble" and more an indication of what's supposed to happen to tech startups- they grow out of the startup phase and develop into expansion stage / established companies. This is the goal!! If your goal is to forever remain a startup you're doing it wrong- particularly in manufacturing, where economies of scale rule. If you want indicators of a tech bubble, observe the myriad of seed stage software startups with anemic growth going nowhere. Let's not throw manufacturing companies under the bus for doing what manufacturing companies are supposed to do as they mature. Full disclosure: I have a beard. :-)

[pbreit]

Well, most tech companies go in the opposite direction: figuring out where they can add value and focusing on that. For Harry's that is/was design and marketing. I don't see Harry's having a credible story for being a premier blade manufacturer for a long time, if ever. And even then, their blades won't likely be any better than Gillette or Dorco. Still scratching my head on this one.

[angersock]

It's a company that makes and sells razors.

It's no more a "tech company" than, say, Gillette.

[soundlab]

Have you ever manufactured anything? A shitload of technology, engineering, and creative financing at huge risk is required. I'm not going to debate the semantics of what defines a tech company but I'd say their business model disrupting large incumbents and their rapid growth qualifies them enough for airtime here.

[new299]

Is McDonalds considered a tech company [1]? Toy manufacturers? Supermarkets [2]? Financial services companies?

Pretty much all companies are "tech companies" to some degree...

I'd personally tend toward a narrower definition of "tech company", which would be one in which a new and innovative idea forms the core of the business.

Unfortunately many well known "tech" startups (Uber, AirBNB) wouldn't fit that definition. They are enabled by the widespread adoption of the Internet (in the same way the telephone enabled chat lines), but I don't think I'd consider them tech companies any more than a normal taxi company or hotel...

[1] Can be argued! http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/mcdonalds-a-tech-company/584132

[2] http://blogs.marketwatch.com/behindthestorefront/2013/05/01/...

[angersock]

I'm well aware of manufacturing: I live in perhaps one of the largest heavy and precision machine manufacturing marketplaces on earth (oil and gas represent!). However, manufacturing doesn't scale like software scales, especially when you're just building a new iteration of a product that's been around for a century. Nanojiggers, or robots, or electric cars, or whatever is one thing...this is razors.

I agree that it's fine to mention them here--that doesn't make them a tech company. Lots of businesses that are high-growth and successful aren't tech companies, and that's okay.

It's really annoying dealing with companies that aren't tech companies but think that they are. They seem to have work environments where the tech is driven in the wrong direction, at once both beholden to the business interests and yet still pursued as though it were an end into itself. This is not a good combination.

[warcher]

Well, the question is how they're more a tech company than Gillette, I suppose. I mean, Gillette has disrupted shaving several times over its history.

I'm not precisely sure what Harry's is bringing to the table here (lower costs? online only?), but that's probably due to my old-school unix sysadmin level beard more than anything else.

[bsder]

The question is: in what way is a razor manufacturing startup superior to Gillette?

And the answer is: possible Amazon/Walmart/etc. buyout target--nothing else.

So, the investors are banking on the fact that one of the big boys is going to want to buy this out so that they can demand better pricing from Gillette.

[prostoalex]

I'm the user of the product, and Harry's razors are both better and cheaper than Gillette's.