Rountree: Early Cantos investment failed due to long Ford and Toyota sales cycles
Ian Rountree · The VC case for 'full stack deeptech' · Jan 8, 2026 · at 8:50
Ian Rountree (founder of Cantos) explains why Cantos avoids startups that sell software or technology to automotive OEMs and other slow-moving incumbents.
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“And one of my very first investments at Cantos in 2016 was a startup that had incredible machine learning and interoperability software that it was selling into the automotive industry, into industrial robots. Absolutely best in class, and we would hear this time and time again from their reps at big automakers, and the company died despite having some flashy investors and incredible talent behind it because Ford and Toyota's sales cycles were too long to raise the next round.”
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