Building Deep Tech

This episode holds a special place for me as I sit down with founder & former CEO of Micropsi Industries: Ronnie Vuine, my former boss, and I have had countless private discussions over the years, and now we’ve finally recorded an episode for my podcast. In this episode, we dive into his journey as a computer science student, where he studied under the renowned cognitive scientist Joscha Bach, known for his groundbreaking work on AI, consciousness, and philosophy. We explore the challenge of translating the human mind into computer science, the experience of building a robotics software company, and his take on the current humanoid hype.

Remi Cadene was at Tesla working on Optimus, and now builds robots at Hugging Face: Remi's academic journey took him from Paris, where he earned his PhD at Sorbonne, to postdoctoral studies at Brown University. He later joined Tesla in California, starting as an intern and eventually becoming a permanent research scientist. In this episode, we discuss his time overseas, his unique experience working with Andrej Karpathy at Tesla, and how his passion for open-source projects brought him back to Europe. Now, he's part of Hugging Face and leading Le Robot, an exciting new open-source robotics project.

Today we talk to Robomart Co-founder & CEO Ali Ahmed about their self-driving shops and his early passion for entrepreneurship. We discuss his non-technical background, why he stepped away from a PhD position, and how he followed his passion for building. Follow Ali through his journey of fast-growing startups and various entrepreneurial adventures that ultimately led him to the world of robotics.

Mathias Mantelli is a Robotics Software Developer from Brazil working on Embodied AI: Coming from a non-technical background, we discuss his journey in academia, culminating in a PhD in Mobile Robotics with a focus on localization and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). Today, he helps robots move on their own by creating smart ways for them to navigate and avoid obstacles. He is particularly interested in fleet management for warehouse applications and semantic scene understanding in robotics. He shares more about his journey and offers wise words for those still struggling to find their way, not only in robotics but in life in general.

Today, my guest is Shubham Nandi, the Co-founder of RigBetel Labs, specializing in Robot R&D Services and Consultancy: He oversees the Research and Mentorship department of RigBetel Labs, as they do research for startups and companies in robotics. Passionate about educating and empowering individuals in the ever-changing technology sector, he drives mentorship programs, enabling people to achieve their maximum potential. We discuss how the founders met in college, honed their skills through nationwide competitions, and built a successful company.

Orangewood Labs builds AI-powered robotic arms, simple to operate. Today I talked to CEO and Co-Founder Abhinav Das: Backed by Y Combinator, Orangewood is headquartered in the US, with their R&D team in India. They aim to democratise robots, leveraging the latest advancements in ML and generative AI. We talk about his journey from building affordable cars for rural India, designing wood furniture for co-working spaces, going to the US, and building robots, with all the ups and downs of a young startup founder.

My guest is Matt Freed, co-founder of K-Scale Labs, a machine-learning startup developing an 𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗡-𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗖𝗘 𝗛𝗨𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗗 𝗥𝗢𝗕𝗢𝗧, easily manufactured by individuals using 3D printing. With a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering, and a Master's in Computer Science from Cornell, Matt Freed leads hardware at K-Scale Labs, based in Palo Alto, Bay Area. We discuss his transition from hardware to software, the importance of open-source for society, how awesome & collaborative the humanoid robotics community is, and their business model.

Our guest today is Lingkang Zhang, founder of Red Rabbit Robotics, specialising in humanoid robots. Extensive experience in autonomous robots and self-driving vehicles. Previously, Lingkang founded a company that developed machine vision solutions for drones. He holds a master's degree in Human-Robot Interaction and an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Beijing. We discuss his journey and the challenges he faced along the way.

🎙 In episode #22, we sit down with ROBOTOP's CEO & Founder Dr.-Ing. Eike Wolfram Schäffer: After his double degree in Industrial & Mechanical Engineering, he stayed in academia and finished his PhD in robot-centric automation solutions, before he founded Robotop. We speak about his curiosity sparked early by LEGO, his time as a tutor, educating customers and how 3D / XR technologies can transform the way we work with robots, by virtual walk-throughs & rapid 3D layouting.

Today's guest is Daryl Lim, the CEO and co-founder of Augmentus, an AI-robotics software company based in Singapore. Augmentus offers a no-code platform that simplifies industrial robot programming, making it accessible to non-technical users. I spoke with Daryl (a Forbes 30 Under 30) about the challenges of founding a tech company, the importance of talking to customers early on and their expansion in the US.