Godard Abel

And really, it just wasn't selling at all.

So it was a very painful time, and then we had to cut way back.

I did several layoffs, went all the way down to 20 people.

And it was also very depressing.

I remember I just felt all this failure.

Because my father, actually, I convinced him to become my first customer and investor.

So I'm like, oh, I'm going to lose all my dad's money.

I had recruited my friends from MIT, my best friends.

I'm like, I'm going to ruin their careers.

And we're going to go bankrupt.

That's kind of what it felt like.

So very hard time.

But then I think in 2003, we kind of had our come to Jesus moment because my co-founder and I, Chris, we sat down.

We're like, we have a million dollars left.

We burned through 19.

We only had a million dollars in revenue.

And we're like, clearly, we're not going to raise any more money.

And so it's either do we give the last million back and quit or do we keep going?

And ultimately, we did have about a dozen early manufacturing customers.

They were having success.