What-if certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Mikesell: Carbon Robotics would have died without ditching self-driving autonomy

Paul Mikesell · He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before ship... · PMF Show · Jul 15, 2024 · at 50:40

Paul Mikesell is the founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics, describing the company's pivotal product decision to build tractor-towed laser weeders instead of self-driving robots.

0:00 / 0:15exact quote · 15.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“If we hadn't decided to decouple the autonomy from the laser weeding, if John May hadn't felt strongly enough about that idea to come tell me why that was important, or I had dismissed his advice on that, and we'd probably be a dead company right now.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Paul Mikesell

Opinion
Mikesell: Uber was more innovative under Travis Kalanick
“And this was in the Travis Kalanick days, which, in which Uber was, I think, a lot more innovative and a lot more willing to try new things, right?”
Paul Mikesell Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 5:04 He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before ship... · PMF Show
Opinion
Mikesell: San Francisco Tech Became Derivative 'SaaS for SaaS' by 2018
“I felt like San Francisco was getting kind of played out. Honestly, I was, I wanted to find something else interesting to do. Everything seemed like it was kind of a copy of a copy of a copy. Some other, you know, SAS for SAS companies doing SAS”
Paul Mikesell Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 9:44 He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before ship... · PMF Show
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mikesell: Future startups will feature a higher proportion of hardware companies
“So I think we're at the point now where everything from now on is going to have to be more of a combination of software and hardware. We're, I'm not saying that there will be no innovative pure software companies. Of course there will. What I'm saying is there…”
Paul Mikesell Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 33:13 He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before ship... · PMF Show
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Mikesell: Carbon Robotics will likely IPO within one to two years
“We seem like we're on the path, you know, where we keep doing what we're doing. We'll probably have an IPO in the next. You're too, you know, we'll, we'll, yes, we'll have a billion dollar outcome here that looks more likely every day.”
Paul Mikesell Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 50:07 He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before ship... · PMF Show
Opinion
Mikesell: Farmers are highly innovative and eager to adopt robotics
“And what I learned through this process was that farmers are a really strong business people. They have to be because all the ones who aren't have gone out of business. And even some of the ones who are really good have gone out of business, right? It's a toug…”
Paul Mikesell Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 15:05 He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before ship... · PMF Show
Insight
Mikesell: Good startup ideas go unfunded due to poor storytelling
“And there are a lot of good ideas that never get funded, not because there's something wrong with the idea, just because the founders never figured out how to tell the story appropriately.”
Paul Mikesell Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 19:11 He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before ship... · PMF Show
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 250 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.