On this week's episode of L.A. Venture, hear lots of insights on equity crowdfunding from Buck Jordan. He's raising $50-$100K a day, mostly on SeedInvest, for the robotics and food companies coming out of WaveMaker Labs.
Jordan also addresses the dramatic changes coming to the food industry, and why WaveMaker is so focused on the application of robotics to this industry in particular.
"The best investments I think come from the really hard problems," he says. "There's not a bigger problem right now or an industry that's more under siege than the food industry is."
Even before COVID struck, he said, the food industry was a very difficult business.
"Restaurants fail faster and more often than startups," he says. "This is an industry that's under massive strain from all areas. There's rising labor costs. There's rising food costs. Real estate costs is going crazy [...] And most of those problems I mentioned are really well served by automation."
Robotics is uniquely poised to solve these problems, he says, because of recent advances in technology, as well as a massive drop in costs. Robotic arms that cost around $100K in 2015 are now selling for $1,000, he says.
" All of a sudden, really only in the past couple of years, the entire problem of automating low-cost labor is relegated to more of a software problem and less of an expensive hardware problem."
Jordan also shares his ideas about equity crowdfunding, corporate innovation and how seed stage companies can take advantage of corporate partners.
Click the playhead to hear the full interview, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts to hear more from L.A. Venture.
- Equity Crowdfunding is Surging During the Pandemic - dot.LA ›
- LA Venture Podcast: A Conversation With Alex Gurevich of Javelin ... ›
- Miso Robotics Is Preparing to Launch a $40M Series D Raise - dot.LA ›
- Inside Wavemaker Labs' Push to Automate Restaurants - dot.LA ›
- Will Robots Save Agriculture—Or Ruin Farm Workers? - dot.LA ›