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."
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Even before COVID struck, he said, the food industry was a very difficult business.
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"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."
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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.
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<em>A</em>ll 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.<em>"</em>
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<em></em>Jordan also shares his ideas about equity crowdfunding, corporate innovation and how seed stage companies can take advantage of corporate partners.
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<em>Click the playhead to hear the full interview, and subscribe on </em><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/la-venture-venture-capital-vc/id1471701230" target="_blank">Apple Podcasts</a><em>, </em><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/la-venture" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Stitcher</a><em>, </em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2syPj1jttbIHjHIEwSrApH" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Spotify</a><em> or wherever you get your podcasts to hear more from L.A. Venture.</em>
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Elementary Robotics, one of Los Angeles' top robotics startups, announced Tuesday it has raised $12.7 million in Series A funding to continue developing and deploying its automation products at scale.
Co-founded in 2017 by Bill Gross of Idealab and Arye Barnehama, a Pomona College dropout and former head of design at Daqri, the company says its mission is to assist people by "automating day-to-day repetitive tasks" but it adds cryptically on its website: "We can't detail too much about the technology because we're still in stealth mode."
<p>"I'm extremely excited to go public with what we're building, continue to support more companies with their quality and traceability needs, and grow the Elementary team to expand and deploy our innovative platform," said Barnehama.</p><p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/19/elementary-robotics-raises-cash-to-expand-in-los-angeles-growing-robotics-hub/" target="_blank">In 2018, Gross described to TechCrunch why he was bullish on the company.</a> "Up until now, robotic actuation was mostly about super rigid, super stiff, super strong, repeatable actuation, mostly for manufacturing. But with the recent advances in computer vision, machine learning, and adaptive learning, now you can have a robot that is gentler, less stiff, but MORE (sic) accurate using vision as your feedback system," Gross wrote in an e-mail. "This is a game-changer, and opens up a new frontier of lower cost, easier to program, easier to use robotics for more mainstream operations."</p><p>This latest round was led by Menlo Park's Threshold Ventures (formerly DFJ), an early-stage investor in disruptive technology companies and also had participation from existing investors Fika Ventures, Fathom Capital, Ubiquity Ventures and Toyota AI Ventures.<br/></p><p>"Elementary Robotics is one of a handful of 'new wave' intelligent automation companies contending that the application of AI and robotics will enable a novel set of functions that legacy providers are ill-equipped to address," said Mo Islam, partner at Threshold Ventures. "We were immediately impressed with Elementary's true software-first approach and its ability to deliver on it."</p><p>The valuation was not disclosed but the company last raised $13 million of funding in November at a $48 million post-money valuation, according to Pitchbook data. </p>
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The creator of the emotive robot called "Moxie" sees a new wave of machines that recognize human emotions and will change how business is done.
"We are seeing a future that's a lot better than the dystopian future of robots taking over the world," Paolo Pirjanian, founder and chief executive officer at Embodied, Inc. told dot.LA in a virtual strategy session on May 5.
<p>The session, featuring Pirjanian and <a href="https://www.calibratevc.com/#home" target="_blank">Calibrate Venture</a>s co-founder Jason Schoettler, featured discussion of Los Angeles' role in making the next wave of emotionally intelligent robots, the ethical dilemmas of having machine companions and how social robots will change people's lives.</p><p>Watch below, and <a href="https://dot.la/st/newsletters" target="_blank">sign up for our newsletter</a> to be notified of new strategy sessions.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1ea7cf5aa3f8488698e55aace5660ded"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_eVNjtYLzjM?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Strategy Session: The Rise of Robotics</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eVNjtYLzjM" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzIwNjI1MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTM4MTU4Mn0.V-ehTHqqAZhkJlFhOYvDco6Qn-w0ZYPqssfQ8FWWY9k/image.jpg?width=980" id="b219d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="749b25953d0d88a5915a59a55296f29a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Dr. Paolo Pirjanian, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Embodied, Inc." />
Dr. Paolo Pirjanian, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Embodied, Inc.
<p>Dr. Paolo Pirjanian oversees technology, research and advanced development. Prior to joining iRobot, he served as chief executive officer of Evolution Robotics, Inc. for seven years. Before that, Pirjanian was the company's chief technology officer. Earlier in his career, he worked as a lecturer in the computer science department at the University of Southern California and as a researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he received the Technical Leadership Award. Pirjanian is the former U.S. chairman of IEEE Robotics and received the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award in 2004. He holds a Ph.D. in robotics from Aalborg University.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzIwMjA5My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTQyMTgzNX0.uAdNR1CAgavnhTNQWT_BIA0yuoygukA_-6wRXzNYNzw/image.jpg?width=1500&coordinates=1954%2C0%2C446%2C0&height=2000" id="d2502" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="733081f159c4dd204a2658a1eac1f8ca" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Jason Schoettler, Partner at Calibrate Ventures
Jason Schoettler, Partner at Calibrate Ventures
<p>Jason Schoettler is a partner at Calibrate Ventures, a venture capital firm he co-founded in 2017.</p><p>He leads investments for Calibrate Ventures across its areas of focus: advanced automation, B2B SaaS, and managed marketplaces, including its investments in Alpha, Built Robotics, Embodied, FarmWise, Pared and XStream Trucking. </p><p>Jason has a proven track-record of identifying disruptive businesses and facilitating their development while generating outsized returns. Before forming Calibrate, he served as a Managing Director for over a decade at Shea Ventures, where he was responsible for numerous investments with notable exits, including: Dollar Shave Club (acquired by Unilever), Evolution Robotics (acquired by iRobot), Osmo (acquired by Byju's), SI-BONE (SIBN), and VictorOps (acquired by Splunk). </p><p>Prior to Shea Ventures, Jason served in an operating role at Oak Grove Systems, an enterprise software spin-out from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech, and as a management consultant at Ernst & Young. </p><p>Jason grew up in Central California and holds a BA from University of Notre Dame and MBA from Claremont Graduate University. </p>From Your Site Articles
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