What I look for in robotics founders

I have met with dozens if not hundreds of robotics startups who want to build for industrial operations.

This is what I look for in the founding teams:

• Factory native founders who understand real operations.
  People who have lived uptime, OEE, and production pressure, not just built robots in labs.
  
  
  
• Founders who are deployment-obsessed, focused on install time, integration with PLC/MES systems, safety, and reliability.
  Not demos or model benchmarks.
  
  
  
• Founders think in workflows, not robots.
  They define the manual process, redesign it for automation, and treat the robot as just one component in a broader system.
  
  
  
• Founders who can clearly articulate ROI.
  Cost per hour, payback period, uptime assumptions, and why this beats human labor or existing automation.
  
  
  
• Founders with a strong bias for simplicity.
  Deliberately reducing complexity, constraining environments, and standardizing tasks to make systems reliable and scalable.
  
  
  
• Hybrid teams combining software/data capability, industrial experience, and hands-on deployment experience.
  Not just pure roboticists.
  
  
  
• Founders who think in fleets and learning loops, understanding that value compounds through data, iteration, and scaling across many deployments.
  
  

👉 Bottom line: 

• Founders building industrial-grade systems that deploy, work, and scale.
  Not impressive robots.