Phantoms delivered this afternoon

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I think it's almost as important to look at the founders of the company and their background. John McFarlane (CEO) and the other 4 co-founders had made a ton of money from the sale of Software.com at the height of the dot com boom in 2000. Their background was in selling messaging systems to telcos, so I think it's fair to say their background was in software. As others have mentioned they also had a very clear vision of what they wanted to do and the money to achieve it too. Being near Silicon Valley also probably helped in getting access to the best programming minds around.

Guillaume, that's an interesting point.  If I understand, you're saying that Sonos had the luxury of taking time to build their stuff "right first time" because they had their own funding rather than having to meet deadlines to satisfy venture capitalists, etc.