Mobius Materials has raised $735,000 in a recent capital round. Funding from the round will improve the company’s online electronic components marketplace. (Photos courtesy of Mobius Materials)
A $500,000 problem inspired Margaret Upshur to launch her eBay-like platform for electronic components.
While working for a California-based electronics hardware company a few years ago, Upshur noticed that the firm would get stuck with leftover components when switching to a new iteration of a product.
“That’s where I saw this problem in action,” she said. “We were trying to produce a new product line and some of the parts didn’t translate to the new product line. We had half a million dollars of excess material.”
It turns out that company wasn’t alone and Upshur found that dealing with an overabundance of unneeded electronic components is a common challenge in the industry. Now living in Richmond, Upshur is working to solve that problem with $735,000 in new capital funding to power her Richmond-based company, Mobius Materials.
Margaret Upshur
The startup offers an online marketplace for people to buy and sell used electronics in bulk. The funding from the raise announced this week will go toward improvements to the company’s software.
Components that change hands on the platform include semiconductors and other electronic parts used in everything from consumer electronics to car manufacturing.
Upshur said it’s a common practice for manufacturers to overbuy electronic parts needed for products to stockpile components that can be hard to muster quickly. Sometimes they bet too big and have leftovers.
“It’s hard to reliably buy your parts unless you buy them three to four months in advance. … If you don’t buy that 70-cent part, you might be out that $100 product,” she said.
In other cases, companies on tighter timetables have to venture into the secondary market, which Upshur said can be dicey.
“If you can’t find components on the open market and need them faster than the lead time, you’re stuck going to this counterfeit-heavy gray market. Pretty much all of my clients have been scammed by this market at some point,” Upshur said.
The company’s online marketplace is live but needs the investment to keep up with demand. That’s where the new funding comes in to further improve authentication and price-setting features.
“We’re going to digest this money and really solidify the platform,” Upshur said. “We’re getting more interest in the platform than we can handle.”
Upshur said Mobius Materials has “a couple hundred” regular users. The company handles the inventory, ships sellers’ inventory to buyers and takes a flat fee on sales made through the site.
The lead investor on the capital raise was Los Angeles-based venture firm Undeterred Capital and Richmond-area angel investors also contributed funding, Upshur said. The raise consisted of $640,000 from investors and the remainder in grant funding.
To date, the company has raised $935,000 in investor funds and grants, Upshur said.
The Mobius Materials online marketplace allows users to buy and sell bulk electronic components such as semiconductors.
Mobius Materials was founded in Silicon Valley in 2020. The marketplace itself launched in early 2022. The previous year, the company pivoted into the marketplace concept after it decided to nix an attempt to create a recycling service for electronic chips.
“I wanted to create a way to disassemble boards at the end of life and sell those chips,” Upshur said of the company’s previous iteration. “If there was an easy way to pull them off, they’re very usable. … I think the market is not ready from a quality-control perspective to do full recycling.”
Upshur moved back to her hometown of Richmond for personal reasons and initially worried that the company would suffer for being away from the West Coast tech hub.
The headquarters now are in Startup Virginia, a business incubator located in the Michael Wassmer Innovation Center in Shockoe Bottom. It has two other employees and Upshur is looking to add a third. It has a local warehouse as well as one in Hong Kong to handle customer inventory.
“I moved here to be closer to family and I thought it’d be hard to run this business out of Virginia and not in the heart of Silicon Valley, but I haven’t found that to be the case at all. There’s a really great startup scene here and incentives to take advantage of,” she said.
Mobius Materials has raised $735,000 in a recent capital round. Funding from the round will improve the company’s online electronic components marketplace. (Photos courtesy of Mobius Materials)
A $500,000 problem inspired Margaret Upshur to launch her eBay-like platform for electronic components.
While working for a California-based electronics hardware company a few years ago, Upshur noticed that the firm would get stuck with leftover components when switching to a new iteration of a product.
“That’s where I saw this problem in action,” she said. “We were trying to produce a new product line and some of the parts didn’t translate to the new product line. We had half a million dollars of excess material.”
It turns out that company wasn’t alone and Upshur found that dealing with an overabundance of unneeded electronic components is a common challenge in the industry. Now living in Richmond, Upshur is working to solve that problem with $735,000 in new capital funding to power her Richmond-based company, Mobius Materials.
Margaret Upshur
The startup offers an online marketplace for people to buy and sell used electronics in bulk. The funding from the raise announced this week will go toward improvements to the company’s software.
Components that change hands on the platform include semiconductors and other electronic parts used in everything from consumer electronics to car manufacturing.
Upshur said it’s a common practice for manufacturers to overbuy electronic parts needed for products to stockpile components that can be hard to muster quickly. Sometimes they bet too big and have leftovers.
“It’s hard to reliably buy your parts unless you buy them three to four months in advance. … If you don’t buy that 70-cent part, you might be out that $100 product,” she said.
In other cases, companies on tighter timetables have to venture into the secondary market, which Upshur said can be dicey.
“If you can’t find components on the open market and need them faster than the lead time, you’re stuck going to this counterfeit-heavy gray market. Pretty much all of my clients have been scammed by this market at some point,” Upshur said.
The company’s online marketplace is live but needs the investment to keep up with demand. That’s where the new funding comes in to further improve authentication and price-setting features.
“We’re going to digest this money and really solidify the platform,” Upshur said. “We’re getting more interest in the platform than we can handle.”
Upshur said Mobius Materials has “a couple hundred” regular users. The company handles the inventory, ships sellers’ inventory to buyers and takes a flat fee on sales made through the site.
The lead investor on the capital raise was Los Angeles-based venture firm Undeterred Capital and Richmond-area angel investors also contributed funding, Upshur said. The raise consisted of $640,000 from investors and the remainder in grant funding.
To date, the company has raised $935,000 in investor funds and grants, Upshur said.
The Mobius Materials online marketplace allows users to buy and sell bulk electronic components such as semiconductors.
Mobius Materials was founded in Silicon Valley in 2020. The marketplace itself launched in early 2022. The previous year, the company pivoted into the marketplace concept after it decided to nix an attempt to create a recycling service for electronic chips.
“I wanted to create a way to disassemble boards at the end of life and sell those chips,” Upshur said of the company’s previous iteration. “If there was an easy way to pull them off, they’re very usable. … I think the market is not ready from a quality-control perspective to do full recycling.”
Upshur moved back to her hometown of Richmond for personal reasons and initially worried that the company would suffer for being away from the West Coast tech hub.
The headquarters now are in Startup Virginia, a business incubator located in the Michael Wassmer Innovation Center in Shockoe Bottom. It has two other employees and Upshur is looking to add a third. It has a local warehouse as well as one in Hong Kong to handle customer inventory.
“I moved here to be closer to family and I thought it’d be hard to run this business out of Virginia and not in the heart of Silicon Valley, but I haven’t found that to be the case at all. There’s a really great startup scene here and incentives to take advantage of,” she said.
Another example of American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit! I applaud Ms.Upshur, who saw a need and filled it. Good luck to you!
A great business model that can be applied to almost any industry. Congrats and best of luck!