Helium - the People's Network
Notes
- Founded in 2013 by CEO Amir Harleem and Shawn Fanning. Aim was to built a network of IoT devices especially in places poor existing wifi or cell coverage.
- Helium only got into crypto in 2019 (i.e. towards the start of the latest crypto boom). This suggests that crypto / token model was not key to their (original) business model (they started in 2013).
Excerpts from Helium, Lime, Web3 and Crypto
https://mashable.com/article/helium-lime-web3-crypto
Helium used as poster child for web3 and crypto
Helium has been written about extensively by cryptocurrency-centric outlets, like Coindesk, but has also received mentions in mainstream press outlets, such as Axios. Most recently, in February 2022, Helium and its COO Frank Mong were the subject of a glowing profile in The New York Times by tech columnist Kevin Roose titled "Maybe There’s a Use for Crypto After All."
Lime was the first of two companies named in the Times article as an example of Helium's biggest clients.
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In the Web3 space, Helium has been held up as a "unicorn," a common VC term to describe a startup company with a value of over $1 billion. The Web3 darling's founding company, Nova Labs, has raised around $250 million to date from venture capital giants such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX Ventures at an over billion-dollar valuation.
Helium struggled as a business until it got into crypto in 2019
While Helium was founded in 2013, its wireless network business model floundered until it introduced the crypto-earning aspect into the service. In July 2019, Helium would start minting its $HNT token and roll out its plan to sell hotspots in return for cryptocurrency rewards.
There was never any relationship with Lime
After June 2019, Li said he was moved to a new team within Lime and his contact with Helium ceased. He also confirmed that no contracts were signed and no payment was exchanged during the testing. Li said he's unsure why Helium would've put the Lime logo on its website.
However Helium generating almost no revenue ($6.5k / month) from its core business (of selling data access to the network)
While Helium boasts on its homepage about having nearly one million hotspot crypto mining devices deployed — devices which were sold to budding entrepreneurs — the actual people using "The People's Network" have yet to materialize. A recent profile from the tech newsletter The Generalist reported that Helium is only making $6,500 a month from data use on its decentralized wireless network.
Almost all of its revenue is coming from onboarding fees to new participants in the network (like an MLM)
Earlier this week, Helium was thrust into the spotlight after a Twitter thread criticizing the company's business model by angel investor and Web3 skeptic, Liron Shapira, went viral. In the thread, Shapira makes the case that its $6,500 a month revenue shows that there is no customer base for Helium's wireless service. Instead, Shapira argues, the company's profit model is actually based around selling the hotspots to speculators who are trying to earn cryptocurrency, thus putting Helium's business much more in line with a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme.
In response to Shapira's thread, Helium CEO Haleem and Helium investor Kyle Samani, a partner at the firm Multicoin Capital, confirmed the revenue details.
"The @helium network generates around $2M/mo in fees. most of this is in the form of Hotspot onboarding fees," tweeted Haleem. He proceeded to confirm the $6,500 per month revenue generated by actual data use.
"I don't dispute the numbers," Samani replied.
This means very low income for network participants (again MLM like)
Along with Helium's issues with getting customers for its wireless network, Helium's token — the reward for its hotspot owners — has taken a hit over the past few months. $HNT has now dropped roughly 83 percent from its previous high of just under $53 in Nov. 2021. On Helium's subreddit, hotspot owners have complained about earnings dropping to as low as $0.10 a month.
"My city is just too overloaded with miners. I make about 0.03$ a day," one user complained.
"I get like .10 a month so I unplugged that piece of crap," one hotspot owner said.