Robot Startup Bootcamp, CROs, Apollo, and the economics of autonomy

I love mentoring robot startups! We did the second pilot of the IEEE Robotics Startup Bootcamp today and it has been amazing. I’ve been exploring various entrepreneur programs and designing better versions for almost twenty years - because programs have to evolve to match the current economic and technological landscapes.

Today - right message, right people, and right time.

I’m actually quoting one of today’s superstar mentors, Chris Matthews, robotics startup marketing expert and author of “Start Telling People” . We ran The Business Checklist in the morning with Chris talking about how to create the perfect robot demo. And then in the afternoon we ran The Manufacturing Checklist, continued the mentor roundtables, and Michael Keer explained the 10 best practices for “Agile Hardware Product Realization: Mastering the Journey from Concept to Scale” .

The next IEEE Robotics Startup Bootcamp will be held in conjunction with IROS 2023 in Detroit on October 3rd. Let me know if you want to attend a session in the Bay Area again!

Big thank you to everyone who has become a paid subscriber over on Substack - it makes you an angel investor in the work I do at Silicon Valley Robotics and as a startup advisor, and accelerator. And maybe we can do more to share your experience and expertize with the robotics startup community. Mentor Office Hours, maybe startup profiles. We’ll keep exploring.

Quick Reads:

Apptronik announces its next-gen humanoid, Apollo - Austin Business Journal

NASA experience enables advance of small business’s humanoid robot - NASA

Apollo humanoid from Apptronik designed to transform the nature of work - Robotics 24/7

Healthcare robotics platform Mendaera secures $24 million - Mobihealthnews

University of Illinois launches center for autonomous construction research - Archinect

Robotics Applications Conference Opens Registration for 2023 Virtual Event - Robotics 24/7

Meet PixieDrone, the state-of-the-art aquatic robot keeping Tahoe blue - ABC10

Serve Robotics raises $30m after reverse merger - Axios

New robot searches for solar cell materials 14 times faster - Ars Technica

ARM Institute announces 8 new technology projects - The Robot Report

Silicon Valley is reviving the dream of a general purpose humanoid robot - Singularity Hub

Nauticus receives funding to develop and test its autonomous, subsea robots - Offshore

Xpeng’s former autonomous driving head joins Nvidia - Reuters

Polestar Selects Mobileye to Bring Autonomous Technology to Polestar 4 - Businesswire

Treasure Island Autonomous Shuttle Launches Public Service - SF.Gov

Newsom leans toward allowing autonomous trucking in California - FreightWaves

Autonomous Car Companies Like Waymo And Cruise Involved In Hundreds Of Crashes Since 2021 - Carscoops

GM to start autonomous vehicle road testing in China - GM Authority

More Autonomous Robots to Hit Farms With Manufacturer’s US Expansion - Bloomberg

Autonomous vehicles ready to roll at Farm Progress Show - Illinois Farmer Today

Monarch Tractors: Electric and autonomous - CNN

Autonomy could help with labor challenges - Missouri Farmer Today

The Transition to the Autonomy Economy and China-US Tech Competition - The Diplomat

South Korean tech bosses fret about a flood of cheap Chinese robot waiters - Insider

These autonomous robots deliver students meals while popping wheelies and using unique voices - Electrek

The Rise of the Early-Stage Startup CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) - Earlybird Venture Capital

Guess who’s coming to IROS: The Next Generation of Robots - IROS

How many ways can you teach a robot? Pieter Abbeel interview in ACM

AI researchers are teaching robots to mimic human dexterity - Decrypt

Ugly Numbers from Microsoft and ChatGPT Reveal that AI Demand is Already Shrinking - The Honest Broker

Robotics Events:

September 22 - The New Wave of Robotics: Engineering a Sustainable Future with Synapse and Silicon Valley Robotics

September 19-21 - FIRA USA Salinas: Robotics and Autonomous Farming Solutions - FIRA

September 28 - The Autonomous Systems Showcase - Deep Tech Showcase

October 1-5 - IROS in Detroit - IEEE RAS

October 18-22 - ROSCon + PX4 Autopilot Developer Summit in New Orleans and virtual - Open Robotics (save $100 by registering for both events)

October 25 - The Food AI Summit - Alameda CA - from The Spoon

Interesting Robots:

Deeper Reads:

How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions? - Freak Takes

How Hugging Face and Kaggle bolster the open source machine learning community - The Strategy Deck

A few economists are starting to think seriously about industrial policy - Noapinion

The State of Delivery Robots in 2023 - Ottomate

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