He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before shipping a single one. | Paul Mikesell, Founder of Carbon Robotics.

2024-07-15

Paul built a startup that was acquired for $2.2B. He worked on AI at Uber and Oculus. But when a farmer told him about some of the problems he was facing, he quit and went all-in on farming. He built a robot that attaches to the back of tractors, uses computer vision to identify weeds and lasers to shoot and kill them. He sells each robot for $1.5M. He's sold nearly 100 so far— & generated nearly $150M in revenue.Whether you're working on a hardware startup or not, you'll want to listen to this episode to see how to do proper cu...

Paul built a startup that was acquired for $2.2B. He worked on AI at Uber and Oculus. But when a farmer told him about some of the problems he was facing, he quit and went all-in on farming.

He built a robot that attaches to the back of tractors, uses computer vision to identify weeds and lasers to shoot and kill them. He sells each robot for $1.5M. He's sold nearly 100 so far— & generated nearly $150M in revenue.

Whether you're working on a hardware startup or not, you'll want to listen to this episode to see how to do proper customer discovery, how to raise pre-product, and how to get millions of dollars in pre-sales without having to ship.

Why you should listen

Why hardware is hard-- but easier than it's ever been.
How to tell a story to raise $10M pre-revenue
How to set up milestones for fundraising
How to generate $10M in pre-orders before shipping product
How to get a sense of product market fit even before the product is fully developed

Keywords

Carbon Robotics, deep tech, AI neural nets, deep learning, weed control, farming, manual labor, lasers, research and development, funding, seed round, prototype, Series A, pre-orders, manufacturing challenges, revenue

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:09) A Background in Deep Tech
(00:05:50) Problem and Solution Interest
(00:07:35) Find the Passion
(00:07:37) Get Behind the Mission
(00:09:39) Back to Seattle
(00:11:40) The Epiphany
(00:16:50) A Human Affair
(00:18:00) The Money Flows to the Best Storyteller
(00:21:45) A Farmer's Weed Control Dilemma
(00:25:56) Weed-Shooting Lasers
(00:28:11) Funding the Prototype
(00:30:13) Hardware is Hard But Rewarding
(00:36:46) Why Laser Weeding Works
(00:41:19) Series A
(00:42:51) Robot Autonomy
(00:45:42) Pricing
(00:48:12) Telling the Story After It Happened
(00:51:44) Fighting Through Disaster
(00:54:50) Finding True PMF
(00:55:41) One Piece of Advice