Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1411055
Pawela: Actually, component distributors are not competitors to Octopart but are really cus- tomers. Octopart doesn't sell anything, to be clear. It's just aggregating the information, and customers can purchase from Digi-Key, from Arrow, etc. ey're in a business relationship together. But distributors are another set of stakeholders who we are trying to work within this ecosystem. It's interesting because oen the distributors and component manufactur- ers are highly interested in what I would call intelligence about what people are designing and manufacturing. ey can see that these are the components that sell the most or the chips that sell the most. But what would be highly valuable to them is to get a sense of what people are designing for next year or six months, or three months from now. And what things are people searching on? Where are their interests? Component distrib- utors are all highly interested, and we want to make that available to them in ways that don't compromise IP security. Johnson: e semiconductor companies used to get that from their direct sales force, which now they no longer have. Pawela: ey can't continue to scale. ere's not enough margin in the business to have armies of salespeople out there doing that re- connaissance. In fact, the information is there in CAD tools and the bill of materials; it's just a matter of whether you can aggregate it and put it together in ways that tell the tale of what's re- ally happening. Johnson: If I were CEO of a fabricator, I would ask you, "Can we get information from Nex- ar on just exactly what designers are ordering