{"id":162841,"date":"2023-04-13T18:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T18:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siit.co\/guestposts\/?p=162841"},"modified":"2023-04-13T18:45:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T18:45:00","slug":"survey-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siit.co\/guestposts\/survey-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Survey says!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last fall, Alex and I discussed bringing back the TC+ robotics survey. I gave him the usual caveat: I\u2019m into it, but it will have to wait until I can find the time. You know how these things go \u2014 you wake up one morning and somehow it\u2019s five months later. I\u2019ve got excuses if you need them.<\/p>\n

I got burned out and took a few weeks off in December. And then it was CES and MWC, and suddenly I’m back at 2019 travel levels, wondering if my rabbit will remember my name when I walk through that door.<\/p>\n

So if the survey wasn\u2019t overdue before, it unquestionably is now. The last time we ran one of these was back in February 2020 \u2014 ominous timing, to put it mildly. The world had entered the earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and following the first waves in Asia and Europe, the U.S. was right on the cusp of getting hit hard.<\/p>\n

It was, in hindsight, the beginning of a seismic shift for many industries \u2014 and robotics was primed to help. In fact, one can make a compelling argument that those three intervening years were the most broadly transformative for the category. It was a perfect storm. Growth on the warehouse\/logistics side had its own sea-change moment eight years prior, with Amazon\u2019s Kiva acquisition.<\/p>\n

Retailers that were behind the curve had two choices once the pandemic rolled around: automate or die. It\u2019s a stark framing, I recognize, but remember that anyone not classified an \u201cessential worker\u201d was suddenly grounded. Overnight, companies were attempting to compete with Amazon\u2019s promise of same- and next-day shipping with far fewer people. It\u2019s frankly a wonder that so many came out the other side intact.<\/p>\n

Other industries were desperate to follow fulfillment\u2019s lead. Suddenly, it seemed, a lot more money was flooding in to robotic solutions to categories like construction, agriculture, food service and healthcare, to name a few. Thankfully, robotics had seen profound advances in the previous decade, owing to advances in other fields like consumer electronics (sensors) and self-driving cars (sensors).<\/p>\n

In fact, I don\u2019t think I would get much pushback for saying that robotics has thus far benefited more from autonomous driving advances than the cars themselves. I\u2019m not saying that will always be the case, but there are myriad reasons why it\u2019s far easier to operate a warehouse robot autonomously than it is to automate a 4,000-pound car cruising down a highway at 65 mph.<\/p>\n

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Following this all in real-time, I will say, anecdotally, that the excitement surrounding robotics shielded it from the effect of early macro trends. There was a little while in which investments in the space kept chugging along, but I don\u2019t think any of us expected that to last forever. Ultimately the bad economy slowed things down, and a couple of bank collapses certainly didn\u2019t help matters much.<\/p>\n

I continue to be extremely bullish, however. And I\u2019m certainly not alone in that. External forces were bound to hamper investments for a bit, but it never felt like a regression. In fact, it didn\u2019t feel like the pandemic expanded the industry as much as it accelerated it by a few years. Everything that\u2019s happening right now has felt inevitable for a while, but it\u2019s always been a question of when.<\/p>\n

As you can no doubt imagine, I have a lot of questions after three years. The good news is I was able to whittle them down to a mere nine. I sent out a survey to top investors covering topics ranging from the state of investing, to RaaS, to what automation can do to address climate change. In the end, we had 13 investors send back responses. The answers were thoughtful and candid and \u2014 taken as a whole \u2014 provide what may well be the best snapshot of this moment in robot VC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Image Credits:<\/strong> Bryce Durbin\/TechCrunch<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The list includes:<\/p>\n

Milo Werner, general partner, The Engine<\/span><\/p>\n

Abe Murray, managing partner, Alley Robotics Ventures<\/span><\/p>\n

Neel Mehta, venture investor, G2 Ventures<\/span><\/p>\n

Oliver Keown, managing director, Intuitive Ventures<\/span><\/p>\n

Rohit Sharma, partner, True Ventures<\/span><\/p>\n

Helen Grenier, adviser, Cybernetix Ventuers<\/span><\/p>\n

Kira Noodleman, partner, Bee Ventures<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Barrett, general partner, Playground Global<\/p>\n

Kelly Chen, partner, DCVC<\/p>\n

Danya Grayson, co-founder and general partner, Construct Capital<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Willard, partner, Grep<\/span><\/p>\n

Cyril Ebersweiler, general partner, SOSV <\/span><\/p>\n

You can check out the survey over on our premium service, TechCrunch+. As you can imagine, we got a lot of answers. The good news is that this will really help me write Actuator for the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

I will be highlighting a few questions \u2014 and corresponding answers \u2014 here, starting today.<\/p>\n

TC: What is the next big robotics success story after warehouse\/fulfillment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Milo Werner, The Engine:<\/strong> Basically everything around you will become a robot. The most simple example is autonomous vehicles. These are very advanced robots and have been open to riders since 2018. The labor shortages are going to drive significant growth in the service sectors, including cleaning, food and care services. While there are already automated single-purpose solutions in these areas, more general-purpose robots are going to start to take front stage in the next decade.<\/p>\n

Neel Mehta, G2 Venture Partners:<\/strong> I’d say it’s either going to be food or manufacturing. Food: We are seeing restaurants, co-packers, and frozen meal manufacturers increasingly gravitate toward robots. I’m specifically talking about high-mix production, whereby food production is more complex with lots of ingredients and SKUs (automation is already common in low-mix production). We’ve heard that the food industry is 40% understaffed and operating at less than 50% capacity. Working conditions are also poor and worker performance is inconsistent (resulting in waste). It’s still early days for this space, but there are a handful of interesting companies deploying robots at frozen food manufacturers and restaurants (e.g., Miso Robotics, Chef Robotics, Hyphen) Manufacturing: On-shoring of manufacturing due to IRA-related tailwinds is going to have a massive impact on deployment of robotics in the next five to 10 years. There is a growing skills mismatch that will result in millions of unfulfilled manufacturing jobs in the latter part of the decade. Welding is particularly interesting because of the aging population of human welders.<\/p>\n

What categories are the most underserved by robotics startups? What would you like to see more of?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Abe Murray, Alley Robotics:<\/strong> All of them! We believe there should be 10x more robotics startups than there are today. There are gaps and opportunities everywhere. Even in logistics, the most saturated space in robotics, fewer than 10% of warehouses are automated.<\/p>\n

Oliver Keown, Intuitive Ventures:<\/strong> Automation and miniaturization in healthcare. Integration of the robot and biological manipulation. To take minimally invasive care to the next level, there needs to be technology that enables treatment to the right patient at the right time at the site of disease \u2014 from immunotherapy to gene and cell therapy, to novel energy modalities.<\/p>\n

More next week!<\/p>\n

\"Knightscope<\/p>\n

Image Credits:<\/strong> Knightscope<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sometimes you\u2019re uniquely qualified to write a story \u2014 but that\u2019s not necessarily a good thing. Since I’m a longtime New York resident who writes about robots for a living, Mayor Eric Adams\u2019 recent press conference<\/a> was right in my wheelhouse. The city is now piloting two surveillance robots in high-traffic areas: Boston Dynamics’ Spot (referred to as \u201cDigidog\u201d here) and Knightscope\u2019s K5.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve stated this from day one, even when I was on the campaign trail: I\u2019m a computer geek. I believe that technology is here,\u201d Adams noted in his remarks. \u201cWe can\u2019t be afraid of it, and as [NYPD commissioner Keechant Sewell] stated, transparency is the key.\u201d Asked about the de Blasio administration\u2019s decision to pull Spot pilots over public backlash, Adams stated, \u201cDigidog is now out of the pound.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Image Credits:<\/strong> Carbon Robotics<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This week, Carbon Robotics announced<\/a> a $30 million raise to help scale its laser weeding robot, LaserWeeder. The Seattle-based firm says that it has zapped \u201c500 million weeds across 40 different crops\u201d thus far. No specific unit figures, but Carbon is set to deliver LaserWeeder to 17 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis financing round further supports our mission to provide cost-effective and efficient precision agtech tools to growers,\u201d founder and CEO Paul Mikesell said of the Series C. \u201cTraditional weeding methods, including hand weeding and herbicides, are expensive, unreliable and damage soil health. The LaserWeeder uniquely addresses all of these challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Image Credits:<\/strong> Amazon<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Also this week, Amazon\u00a0announced<\/a> the publication of a pick and place dataset featuring more than 190,000 objects. The company notes:<\/p>\n

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The scenario in which the ARMBench images were collected involves a robotic arm that must retrieve a single item from a bin full of items and transfer it to a tray on a conveyor belt. The variety of objects and their configurations and interactions in the context of the robotic system make this a uniquely challenging task.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jobs<\/h2>\n

Trying a new approach to job listings. I’m including a Google form. Same rules as always. Robotics companies only (openings don’t have to be for roboticists). I have no idea why I got so many 3D-printing companies this week\u2026To be included, enter the company’s name and the number of open roles\/positions. Companies not included in the previous list get priority. This form will stop accepting new submissions on Monday, April 17. Godspeed.<\/p>\n