@Azzarole spot on!
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Truth.
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I didnât engage in the other thread because it was overflowing with fear and negativity while my personal view on it was very different. Itâs great to see that this interview confirms my view.
The reality is that Elektron has had outside investment since 2016, and their instruments have only gotten better since then. The financial stability point is also easily backed up by their public financial reports. This is far from a company being sold out of necessity, and they had the luxury of choosing who to partner with.
So this reads like more fuel in the tank rather than a change of direction. And honestly, if that means the ability to hire more talent to speed up development, itâs great news all around.
That was very nice to see confirmed too: the firmware updates will continue. It was one of the biggest fear going around in the other thread. Continuously evolving products are clearly a core part of their ethos and it sounds like it stays that way.
Congrats @Elektron! Would love to hear more about what the âmore ambitious journeyâ looks like in practice, but I guess weâll see over time. 
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Research the Bonnier family and make up your mind, I draw the conclusion that weâve had our fun now and itâs time to manage expectations. Bonnier are very influential in politics and industry and youâll find plenty of exciting reads about it, especially their efforts to monopolize the media and spread âthe messageâ. The best case I see is that the founders got well deserved riches and the team really are left to work their magic. Letâs hope.
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This is what I was thinking as well. This potentially means they can actively support multiple products at the same time with firmware updates instead of having to focus on one or two (this is obviously assumption on my end) as it seems to be now.
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Wanna make our research easier and post some evidence of this?
Cos I canât find shit.
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If you want to drop information, please do this with the sources that let you draw the conclusion.
Relaying half-cook rumors doesnât serve anyone.
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Having worked both with various kinds of investment firms as well as in companies owned by them, I can tell you that sometimes these kinds of acquisitions turn out amazing for companies â and sometimes they donât. Itâs not at all guaranteed that thisâll turn out badly for Elektronâs customers if only because no investment firm wants the company they just acquired to fail (and theyâll have done their research and seen the recent mistakes weâve all heard off, too).
We donât yet know how this acquisition will turn out, but itâs encouraging that it seems like both Bonnier and the original management team (since theyâre reinvesting) are in it for the long run. In a few years time, weâll see what kind of trajectory this put them on (but hopefully one that includes an OT3).
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Not to say fine but all I find the bonnier family seems to be more leftwing which is good. All those rightwing nonsense the last yesrs is disgusting.
Nevertheless rich fucks that control lots of media and buy companies for their portfolio are never good.
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Three points to highlight from that media interview, and also from my own experience of this stuff in my previous day jobs (30+ years).
- The acquisition is of a majority stake, not 100% of the company. The fact that the management team have reinvested (and are therefore co-shareholders) is important. This is something being done with Elektron, not to Elektron. Yes, if a contentious issue comes to the board and ends up being decided by weight of votes (unusual IME, but can happen) rather than sensible adult discussion, the management team would be outvoted. But in practice, the owners are in it with the managers. Thatâs a good thing.
- The acquisition displaces some (or possibly all, we donât know) of what was already external investment. Elektron has had external investors for a long time now, during which it has released some of its best instruments. The world did not end⌠they thrived through that period.
- I said this in the other (now locked) thread, and will repeat it here: private capital is not the same as private equity. The difference between the two is not trivial. Private capital uses its own funding to make a long-term bet on a company, and private capital folk (IME) genuinely act as owners. Private equity borrow money to buy a company, focus on ripping out cost, and then flip the shell of whatever is left over to whoever will take it off their hands at a profit. Personally I loathe private equity (Iâve dealt with big PE firms for years). Private capital (especially family-run private capital) is a whole different vibe.
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I feel that the statement about âpurists being pissed about the changesâ is slightly exaggerated. Perhaps it is a task for Elektron to simply not change anything, because all of the existing devices complement it really well. Why change something that works perfectly, but it is no longer manufactured? It is meant to be a reissue, not a completely new iteration.
And hypothetically, if itâs meant to be a new iteration, then the core mechanics should remain the same so they can serve as a foundation to build new functionalities on top of that.
I feel like competitors understood this assignment really well (think TR-1000 or MPCs), so Elektron should take this to heart.
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I think every modern Elektron is more of an iteration of the Machinedrum than TR-1000 or MPCs.
But letâs not argue semantics, my main argument was that I find it weird that people on this forum repeatedly claim that the obvious thing Elektron should do to be as successful as never before is to just rerelease Machinedrum and Monomachine. Because thatâs clearly what people are asking for and for some reason Elektron doesnât seem to hear that and realize this opportunity for an easy cash grab.
That argument doesnât make much sense to me, because my impression is that Elektron used to be a pretty niche company with a small but cultishly dedicated following, until they released the Digitakt. It seems like theyâre selling a lot more machines to a lot more people since, because they found a good balance of how to make accessible seqencer based grooveboxes that are still very powerful. By making decisions like âmaybe each track just has two LFOs instead of letting users wrap their head around assigning 16 LFOs to the available tracksâ. Thatâs the reason they kept on making new digis instead of rehashing the weird and complex machines they started out with.
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Itâs a little bit like the Sega MegaDrive.
Absolutely at its very best when kept as a memory.
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There was absolutely nothing said in there other than corporate blah blah. It seems that it was even written by bonier lawyers. In very corporate language where there are a lot of words with little to none info.
In fact Elektron workers no longer can speak on behalf of Elektron. In other words Elektron no longer owned by Elektron. They canât cough without approval of bonnier.
So going back to the âanswersâ was given in yhr exchange of q&a. They are worrying from the get go. Suddenly company that always speak like human to human speak corporate bs⌠first bell that it ainât going to finish well.
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Theyâve had what you might call âexternal ownershipâ since 2016âŚ
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I donât reckon this is a negative tbh. Itâs too easy to think the worst of something new.
I await my Octatrack 2 and Rytmverk. 
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What about sneezing?
Can they sneeze?
Or yawning?
Tell me they can at least yawn?!
And what if someone farts without prior contractual approval?
No wonder the world needs so many lawyers if business is this complicatedâŚ
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Looking at the Legacy product page, they werenât bad either before 2016.
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Elektron has clearly bit off a lot with their expanding lineup and trying to do updates for it, while developing new products too. Waiting around for Syntakt machines etc that felt teased definitely made it seem like maybe they were spread thin â I hope the private capital helps with that.
Not an expert but feels like they were already on a pretty âsafeâ roadmap with the sequel digis, reusing R&D (Syntakt etc), selling and updating the same hardware for more than a decade, low cost (models), proving that they can sell something like Tonverk - a kind of initially unfinished device at a premium price that incorporates a lot of survey data about what people want from the company (Iâm assuming).
Thereâs already been QC concerns with screens, alignment and more â itâs not like thatâs suddenly going to start happening, itâs already been a thing and can probably be improved if Iâm being optimistic
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My point was rather that their positive trajectory of great product updates continued after 2016 too.
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