He sold AI robots to Walmart & raised $150M. His #1 advice to founders? "Trust your gut." | Daniel Theobald, Founder of Vecna Robotics

Daniel's been building robots for 20 years. He's sold 100s of AI robots-as-a-service to Walmart, FedEx, & DHL amongst others. Last month, he raised a $40M round.

6 years ago, he realized  why robots weren't getting massively adopted. Builders like him were trying to build perfect robots that always worked. But every situation has edge cases. What if you designed robots to work only 80% of the time and use humans for the other 20%?

That one unique insight changed everything and was the reason he started Vecna. His robots can tell when they need help and ask humans to assist in real-time. 

Like most capital-intensive startups, Daniel played on hard-mode. Here's how he built hardware, robotics and AI, sold enterprise contracts, and grew to $10s of millions in revenue.

Takeaways

• Why as a founder you need to trust your gut and stick to your convictions.
• How to be objective and create an accurate model of the world to predict the future and make informed decisions.
• How to bootstrap even a capital intensive company in robotics

Keywords

Vecna Robotics, robotics, warehouse industry, automated forklifts, reliability, safety, customer adoption

(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:05) The Beginning of Early Robotics
(00:06:00) Edge Cases in Robotics
(00:08:15) Robots Shouldn't be Perfect and AI Isn't Intelligent
(00:14:05) Technology Empowers Humans
(00:18:19) When Robots Need Help
(00:21:29) The First Pilot and Customers
(00:29:49) Covid Slowed Everything
(00:33:52) Finding Product Market Fit
(00:34:45)One Piece of Advice

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