AlleyCorp Robotics | September Newsletter
September 2023
Hi friends - September’s AlleyCorp Robotics newsletter is all about community! 🤖 🤝
We’re closing out the month with three ideas focused on our smart hardware community, followed by our usual portfolio update. Our next news rollup will come out early in October.
Idea #1 | Let’s build our community! 🤖 ❤️
Let’s build our smart hardware community! I’ve been posting and engaging on this topic and meeting great folks on LinkedIn and Twitter. We’re building fast - amazing energy as folks like Cameron at Rangeview rebuild American manufacturing while others ask how to create more creators and Viam Robotics builds a platform to unleash them.
Tag in your friends, help bring more of us together. If you’re getting this newsletter - you’re part of this community! Let us know how we can help - this community can and will grow 10x, 100x in the years to come. Let’s do it together!
Idea #2 | Communities come together 🤖 🎉
It is deep tech event season! Brannon was in the Bay Area last week for TechCrunch Disrupt, FIRA, and to catch up with new and old friends. Especially fun to have our portfolio company Appetronix on the Startup Battlefield! Always great to go west - thanks to folks who hosted! We were in Georgia before that, TX & PA coming up!
Lots of deep tech, smart hardware, robotics and AI events coming up this Fall:
Viam recently joined NVIDIA to talk about smart hardware and AI
Speaking with Hod Lipson at a Columbia Business School event this week
Joining the CMU Swartz Center demo day at RISE in NYC this week
Joining the The Engine’s Tough Tech Summit in October
Speaking on a panel with ff Venture Capital in October
Viam at ROScon in New Orleans - more on this below - Oct 18-20th
Hosting an AI Event with Viam Robotics on November 6th
Hosting our annual AlleyCorp Robotics Event at Viam on November 29th
Let us know if you want to join any of these - or want to promote other events!
Idea #3 | Communities share stories 🤖 🎙️
We enjoy our podcasts at AlleyCorp - its amazing to go on a run / drive / or commute while listening to inspirational stories from amazing folks. We appreciate everyone who makes these happen - sharing knowledge so others can learn and succeed.
We loved Kevin on My First Million! AlleyCorp founder Kevin Ryan was a guest on My First Million last week. Among other topics, he covered why he’s excited about robotics and automation! The full episode is here.
We loved Renovate CEO Andy’s latest pod! Renovate founder Andy Stulc joined the Roofing Tech Think Tank podcast last week to talk about their approach to automating roofing. Full pod is here.
Our robotics + climate pod is up! Our latest podcast with Glacier co-investor VSC Ventures covered robotics and climate - full episode here. 🤖 🌤️ 🍃
Our earlier pods are up too - talking GTM and sales on The Startup Blueprint, robotics opportunities on The Robot Revolution, and more thoughts with While I Build This.
What are you reading and listening to in this space? Let us know and we’ll highlight them in All The Places! 🤖 📰 🎙️
Idea #4 | Insert idea four here. 🤖 🚧
Idea four is that four ideas is too many ideas. Three things is the right number of things. It’s time to call this email done! Thanks for reading - you’re amazing.
As always, enjoy! 🤖 🦄 💥
~Abe
PS - If you have a moment of energy left - after all this fun - please help us find new friends - forward our newsletter to five friends 💌, send us ♥️ on Twitter / X - abemurray / alley_corp and LinkedIn - Abe / AlleyCorp Robotics ✨
AlleyCorp Robotics | portfolio update
We invested in Glacier - “next generation robots for recycling”
We invested in Koop Technologies - “insurance for robotics & autonomy”
aescape raised another $25M - “intelligent massage therapy”
Portfolio company aescape announced another $25M in funding from our friends at Valor. Our new team member Brannon received his first robotic massage recently and was as impressed as we are!
Appetronix partnered with Donatos - “fully autonomous restaurants”
Portfolio company SJW Robotics has renamed to Appetronix while partnering with Donatos Pizza and its sister companies Agape Automation and the Grote Company to launch a fully autonomous pizza restaurant while scaling its existing RoWok restaurant.
ARIX Tech was in Saudi Arabia - “robotics inspection and analysis”
Portfolio company ARIX Tech was recently in Saudi Arabia handing off a few VENUS robots to their partners in the region. VENUS has also been showcased at recent trade shows, when not actually crawling pipes and preventing environmental (and economic) damage for happy customers!
Earth Force was in NYC for Climate Week - “reimagining forest management”
Portfolio company Earth Force was in NYC for Climate Week talking about how they apply AI and automation to reduce the impact of forest fire at the scale society requires. Abe shared some thoughts on this here.
Civ Robotics announced faster surveying - “automating construction layout”
Portfolio company Civ Robotics has had a lot to say recently as they’ve hit up trade shows and shipped more robots around the world to help scale solar buildouts and fix our infrastructure. Most recently, they announced a huge speed increase to deliver even more value to already happy customers!
Mapless at the Detroit Auto Show - “one stop solution for remote car operation”
Portfolio company Mapless was in Detroit giving demos at the Detroit Auto Show last week. If you listened to Kevin’s podcast above, you’ll hear his thoughts on why their approach to driverless cars is exciting!
Viam will be at ROSCon in October - “the software platform for smart machines”
Our friends at Viam will have a booth at ROSCon October 18th -20th in New Orleans, demonstrating how Viam can extend and enhance ROS capabilities with code deployment, data capture, mobile app-based remote control, ML modeling and deployment, and more. If you can’t attend, explore how Viam can extend ROS by visiting their website.
Our companies are hiring - come build the future! 🤖 🛠️
aescape, ARIX, Civ Robotics, Earth Force, Glacier, Koop, Mapless, and Renovate are all looking for great folks!
Have news & events to share? - Let us know!
Email us with your announcements, open roles, opinions, and/or cute animal pictures.
Great read!