Evolution
“This is a watershed moment for Raspberry Pi,” Eben posted on Raspberry Pi dot com that morning. “And the start of a new phase in our evolution: access to the public market will enable us to build more of the products you love, faster. And the money raised by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in the IPO will support its ambitions for global impact in its second decade.”
Philip Colligan, CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation wrote in a post a couple of weeks ago just how that would work: “To date, Raspberry Pi Ltd has donated nearly $50m from its profits to the Foundation, which we have used to advance our educational mission combined with over $60m in funding from philanthropy, sponsorship, and contracts for educational services,” he wrote. “From the Foundation’s perspective, an IPO provides us with the ability to sell some of our shares to raise money to finance a sustainable expansion of our educational activities. Put simply, instead of receiving a share of the company’s profits each year, we will convert some of our shareholding into an endowment that we will use to fund our educational programmes.”
What’s next
There’s been a whole lot of work behind the scenes for this for some time now – I’ve only caught glimpses on my monthly visits to Raspberry Pi Towers – so hopefully some of that pressure has now been alleviated. I’ll find out on my next visit.
Anyway, I thought I’d talk about it here as for various reasons we’ve not had a chance to mention it elsewhere in the magazine [lots of exciting new opportunities to end up in front of a judge – Ed]. Also, my car got returned the following day and now I sort of regret not having got up early for it. Ah well – onwards.
