Bright Machines' Flex partnership struggled after CEO Mike McNamara departed
Lior Susan · His robotics startup raised $400M, his VC fund over $4B—& he ran both at the same time. Here's ho... · PMF Show · Nov 4, 2024 · at 23:13
Lior Susan, founder of Bright Machines and Managing Partner at Eclipse Ventures, reflects on how executive turnover at manufacturing partner Flex impacted their commercial partnership.
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“And it works amazing in the first three years, and then Mike left. It got much harder with the new leadership, nothing about those people, but it's more like, I did not have the same trust I had with Mike, but yes, you a thousand percent right. It was pure trust game.”
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“If you are going to start with two guys in a presentation, none of the largest companies in the world is going to let you touch their mass production product. So actually, if you want to create the transformation, you almost need to have a certain scale out of…”
Bright Machines agreed to un-scoped revenue commitments across Flex factories
“We almost agreed that we will partner an X amount of dollars, and then during the year we will identify through an SOW, what will be the specific needs of each of their factories. They have 200 factories around the world.”
Lior Susan: Robotic assembly generates critical manufacturing data humans cannot provide
“We don't collect data when humans, humans build products. When you start using robots, you collect a lot of data that maybe you never had around how much force you're putting and how that's potentially hurt the PCB and it will fail down the road.”