Jeremy Conrad
Co-Founder and CEO, PitPro Automation. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Conrad co-founded Lemnos, an early-stage venture capital fund and incubator that backed hardware companies including Airware and Swift Navigation. He later served as CEO of construction-technology startup Quartz and co-founded PitPro Automation, a robotics company developing automated tire-servicing systems.
1shows
1appearances
19statements
3resolved
2supported
0contradicted
67%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Jeremy Conrad said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Core AI and machine learning in 2017 is mostly just nifty tricks
“So I really don't think it does, and I would also argue that what people consider a core AI ML today is a bunch of nifty tricks, and so you see lots of nifty demos, but in terms of actual production AI or ML actually out there, a lot of it's a little bit mecha…”
Selling standalone hardware without recurring revenue is no longer viable for startups
“So for us, when we look at consumer electronics, one, we think that single cell hardware is probably not viable right now. So there has to be some sort of recurring revenue model.”
Commercial satellite imagery lacks high-frequency daily demand, making it a bad bet
“And so like, I'm pretty bearish on the kind of imaging side of it”
LEO satellite communications startups are a terrible fit for venture capital
“There are groups trying to do this with these LEO constellations, but the first thing they do is spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars on spectrum, and that's not a good fit for the startup ecosystem.”
Robotics startups cannot bet on locomotion and motor costs dropping rapidly
“The two things that I don't think are really that you can't bet on that will get better are locomotion and manipulation. So if your robot needs to drive around, you can't assume that, oh, like three years from now, my motors will cost a lot less.”
LIDAR sensor prices will drop fivefold between 2017 and 2020
“Whereas if you have LIDARs in your robot today, You can assume that they're going to drop five X in price in the next three years.”
Consumer electronics is venture capital's hardest sector due to massive capital needs
“So I think consumer electronics is one of the hardest things to do in the venture ecosystem right now, partially because at some point you need a huge slug of money to go big.”
VCs will stop funding consumer hardware companies before product-market fit
“But I think we're going to see a lot less of things like Juicero or Pearl, where they raise significant amounts of capital before finding out if they had product market fit.”
People misjudge exponential S-curves when worrying about killer AI
“I'm not at all worried about killer AI. I think that people love to talk about, you know, when you're on the early part of the exponential, you can't tell. And I would argue that when you're on the exponential part of the S curve, it's hard to tell as well.”
VCs refused to fund hardware startups in 2011 due to high costs
“And we started to talk to some other people and really found out that, you know, no one was interested in funding hardware startups. And so we asked around, we said, well, why? And they said, well, it takes too long and it's too expensive.”
Cheap computing and 3D printing drastically reduced hardware startup costs by 2011
“Today, any 500 dollar computer can run incredibly sophisticated CAD. And on top of that, the software is Free. And then you kind of add in rapid prototyping like three D printing, and you're kind of timing for your first unit, plus things like Arduino, make it…”
Advances in sensors and compute drastically reduced robotics startup costs
“All of those things conspire to make the cost of starting a robotics company a fraction of what it used to be.”
Shorter hardware stacks make robotics accessible yet defensible for startups
“And hardware, the stack for a hardware company is shorter than it's ever been. And so that's why I think it's a great time to start a robotics company, because it's hard enough that it's defensible, but easy enough for a startup to do.”
The best new robotics startups focus on a single obvious ROI
“I think the best robotics companies started today will have like a singular use case where the ROI is obvious and apparent.”
Series A and B investors will back hardware if the business scales
“The reality is, is that they just want to invest in great businesses, and if you can convince them that this is a scalable, venture-backed business, they'll look at anything.”
Series B hardware investors now demand proven revenue rather than hype
“I think that two years ago, the ecosystem was in a place where you could go raise a big A or small B on like kind of hype and, you know, good team and like that, the idea that there was going to be a market there. But right now, you know, we're seeing a very m…”
Hardware startups must narrow scope because 90 percent functionality is completely useless
“I think it's about making sure that you really narrow your scope for your first product, because if 90% of your product works in its hardware, you have nothing.”
Social media companies unfairly dominate mindshare over Silicon Valley's hardware firms
“And there's dozens of incredible hardware companies here, but they just don't have kind of the mindshare that I think some of the social media companies do.”
The other half of the tape: Jeremy Conrad's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jeremy's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, PitPro Automation | 1 | 19 | 67% 2/3 | full record on 20VC → |