Ep 78 | Don't Start With A Whiteboard, Talk To Customers (w/Brennand Pierce)

I talked with Brennand Pierce, founder and CEO of

Kinisi Robotics, where he’s building one-armed mobile manipulators:

Designed to automate warehouse tasks like picking, palletizing, and labeling and many more.

After nearly two decades in robotics, Bren brings a rare mix of academic depth, startup experience, and hands-on engineering to the conversation.

We talk about growing up fascinated by sci-fi and Japanese hobby robots, studying computer science at Exeter, earning a Master’s at the Bristol Robotics Lab, and completing his PhD in humanoid robotics at the Technical University of Munich.

Bren shares what he learned building humanoids, founding three robotics companies; including co-founding Bear Robotics, which shipped over 25,000 service robots, and why he now believes the future belongs to practical, task-optimized robots rather than overpromised humanoids.

We also look into Kinisi’s approach to solving real-world deployment challenges, lessons from past robotics booms, and what it takes to move from flashy demos to robots that actually work in production.