iRobot co-founder Colin Angle explains how three MIT roboticists spent 12 years failing at business models before creating the first practical home robot.
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The company survived by partnering with Hasbro on toys and learning that injection moulding could replace expensive machined aluminium and reduce costs dramatically.
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Early Roombas used mine-hunting algorithms from DARPA to ensure floor coverage, running until batteries died rather than mapping rooms intelligently.
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Consumer testing forced a pivot from sweeper to vacuum when people valued vacuums at hundreds of dollars but sweepers at only fifty dollars.
"We were a technology looking for a solution, which is amongst the worst strategies for entrepreneurship." - Colin Angle