We founded Ouster in 2015 with the invention of our high-performance digital lidar. Since then, we have grown to over 120 employees serving over 475 customers globally. To continue to grow our business in the coming years, we plan to expand our sales and marketing efforts, expand our software development capabilities and accelerate sensor development efforts. We are headquartered in San Francisco, CA and have operated as a standalone, independent entity since our founding.
COVID-19 Impact
Throughout 2020 the worldwide spread of the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus (“COVID-19”) and the measures intended to contain the spread of COVID-19 have resulted in a global slowdown of economic activity and caused disruptions to our business. In particular, our headquarters are based in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has been subject to ongoing government measures and orders such as quarantines and social distancing. During the second and third quarters of 2020 we slowed our operating and capital spending with the expectation that our revenue and ability to raise capital would be impacted by the global pandemic. Though we were able to continue to grow our sales during 2020 compared to 2019 and believe that the pandemic will act as a long-term catalyst for wider adoption of automation and lidar technology, we believe that our overall growth rate during 2020 was impacted by the pandemic.
As a San Francisco Bay Area based company, we were affected by the “shelter in place” order in the first and second quarter. While the majority of our employees were able to work from home, some employees, especially manufacturing employees, were not able to work from home. The “shelter in place” order delayed order fulfillment and revenue recognition during the first and second quarters of 2020. Additionally, we continued to pay employees during the “shelter in place” order whether or not they were able to work. Manufacturing and order fulfillment employees were able to return to work in the second quarter; however, the number of employees allowed on premises at one time was greatly reduced which also affected our ability to fulfill orders and recognize revenue. Some essential employees were paid hazard pay, and the hazard pay combined with underutilized employee pay increased our employee overhead and decreased gross margins in the first and second quarter of 2020. Employees continue to work in a reduced capacity at our San Francisco facility, but we have moved a large portion of our manufacturing to our contract manufacturer in Thailand, which resulted in increased sales activities during the second half of 2020.
Our suppliers are located worldwide, and the suppliers in the Asia and Pacific geographical region were especially affected by the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020. Some of our key suppliers were affected by the pandemic resulting in supply chain disruptions. These issues further delayed order fulfillment and revenue recognition, but were largely resolved in the third quarter of 2020.
While we experienced quarter-over-quarter increases in revenue in 2020, some customers have delayed orders and production schedules due to COVID-19. The pandemic continues to evolve, and the full extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic will directly or indirectly impact our business, results of operations and financial condition, including sales, expenses, reserves and allowances, manufacturing, research and development costs and personnel-related costs, will depend on future developments that are highly uncertain, including as a result of new information that may emerge concerning COVID-19 and the actions taken to contain or treat COVID-19, any resurgence of the pandemic in areas where we, Benchmark or our suppliers operate, and the economic impact on local, regional, national and international customers and markets.
Factors Affecting Our Performance
Commercialization of Lidar Applications. We believe that we are approaching the inflection point of adoption of lidar across our target end market applications, and further that we are well-positioned to capitalize on this market growth. However, as our customers continue research and development projects to commercialize semi-autonomous solutions that rely on lidar technology, it is difficult to estimate the timing of ultimate end market and customer adoption. As a result, we expect that our results of operations, including revenue and gross margins, will fluctuate on a quarterly and annual basis for the foreseeable future. As the market for lidar solutions matures and more customers reach a commercialization phase with solutions that rely on our technology, the fluctuations in our operating results may become less pronounced. However, in the near term, our revenue may not grow as we expect until more customers commercialize their products and lidar technology becomes more prevalent across our target end markets.
Number of Customers in Production. Our products must be integrated into a broader platform by the end customer, which then must be tested, validated, and achieve system-level performance and reliability thresholds that enable commercial production and sales. It is critical that we reach production with multiple customers across all target end markets. The time necessary to reach production varies from six months to seven years, based on the market and application. The production cycle in the automotive market tends to be substantially longer than in our other target markets, including industrial automation, smart infrastructure and robotics. It is critical to our future success that our customers reach production across our target end markets. However, the revenue generated by each customer in production and their time to reach production varies significantly, making it difficult to predict our financial performance.
Sales Volume. Our customers span a wide variety of applications and can generate a wide range of sales volumes for our digital lidar solution. The range of sales volume by customer depends on the end market demand for our customers’ products as well as our customers’ individual needs. This range can depend on several factors, including the size of the end market that the product addresses, market penetration, product use functions, our end customers’ ability to sell their products and the financial stability and reputation of the customer. In addition to end market demand, sales volume further depends on our customers’ progression through their evaluation, integration and production processes.