Ep 88 | Always a Bit of a Generalist, Never Only One Thing (w/ Jon Miller Schwartz)

In this episode, I talk with Jon Miller Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of Ultra, about how to actually get robots deployed in warehouses:

We walk through Jon’s journey from tearing apart electronics on a tiny New York City workbench to Harvey Mudd, early YC startups in 3D printing, and building one of the first highly automated factories at Voodoo Manufacturing.

Jon explains why those painful years with “last generation” robots convinced him to start Ultra and focus on one thing first e commerce order packing as a beachhead for real industrial deployment.

He breaks down how Ultra’s robots drop into existing pack stations, learn from examples instead of brittle scripts, and why he believes in multi purpose robots before truly general purpose systems.

We talk about force sensitive dexterity, what most people get wrong about warehouse automation, and how a small team in Brooklyn already has robots running live for customers.

If you care about turning AI and robotics into shipped systems instead of slideware, this one is for you.