Raspberry Pi's CEO talks about the inside story of 'We had zero sales staff for seven years,' 'Why we listed on the London market,' and 'How we responded to Russia's military use of Raspberry Pi'

Raspberry Pi, a company that develops single-board computers, went public in June 2024 and recorded sales of $144 million (about 21.6 billion yen) in the first half of 2024. Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton gave an interview to the Financial Times and told an interesting story.

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'We didn't have a sales person': Raspberry Pi CEO on building a tech start-up
https://www.ft.com/content/2c250887-d0c3-4348-bc11-cfd1898b8fd0

Raspberry Pi is a company that develops and sells single-board computers and microcontrollers, and in 2024 released a number of products, including the small microcontroller ' Raspberry Pi Pico 2 ', the wireless microcontroller ' Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W ', the computer for industrial and embedded applications ' Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 ', and the AI chip module ' Raspberry Pi AI HAT + '. In addition, the single-board computer 'Raspberry Pi 5', released in October 2023, is small but has the processing power to run PC tasks such as browsing smoothly, and is a popular board that continues to be out of stock at the time of writing. GIGAZINE has also reviewed the Raspberry Pi 5 in detail, and the following link summarizes review articles related to Raspberry Pi 5.

GIGAZINE review summary of Raspberry Pi 5 There are plenty of reviews that can solve questions such as 'What power supply is needed?', 'Is a cooler necessary?', 'OS installation procedure?', 'How to connect M.2 SSD?', and 'Details of RTC function' - GIGAZINE

The Raspberry Pi series was initially developed and sold by the charity Raspberry Pi Foundation, but in 2013 a subsidiary company, Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd, was established to handle development and sales. The subsidiary then changed its name to Raspberry Pi Holdings plc and was listed on the London Stock Exchange on June 11, 2024. Since the delisting of Arm in 2016, the London Stock Exchange has noted a lack of prominent technology companies, so Raspberry Pi also considered listing on the New York market, but after an investor he met during a business trip in the United States told him that there was no noticeable difference in the valuation of British and American fund managers, he decided to list in London. However, CEO Upton said that the listing on the London market was not motivated by patriotism but was purely a result of pursuing business interests.

Raspberry Pi developer goes public and finishes first day trading with 38% increase - GIGAZINE

Raspberry Pi recorded sales of $144 million (approximately 21.6 billion yen) in the first half of 2024, up 61% from the same period last year, and profits increased 47% from the same period last year to $34.2 million (approximately 5.13 billion yen). Although Raspberry Pi has shown steady growth, when it was selling the early Raspberry Pi, it said that it lacked the funds to produce products to meet demand. For this reason, Raspberry Pi maintained its business through a royalty model in which it sold its own designs to other companies.

According to CEO Upton, Raspberry Pi did not have a single sales representative for the first seven years after the company was founded. At the time of writing, Raspberry Pi had 134 employees, of which about 25 were in sales.

Raspberry Pi originated from a project at Cambridge University and is based in the Cambridge area at the time of writing. Most Raspberry Pi products are manufactured at Sony's factory in South Wales, which is a four-hour drive from Raspberry Pi's headquarters. This makes it easy to check the production status and quality. Raspberry Pi also had plans to use a factory in Shenzhen, China, but the plan was abandoned due to production management issues.

Raspberry Pi develops not only hardware but also software such as OS and drivers. The hardware and software development teams work on the same floor and communicate with each other while developing. CEO Upton said, 'There is no need to set up a satellite office in Silicon Valley,' and emphasized the importance of working in close physical locations.

In addition, Raspberry Pi is working to address the issue of 'Raspberry Pi being used for military purposes in Russia' and is promoting the introduction of 'a mechanism to identify resellers from hardware.'