Cobot

There's a type of founder most VCs don't know how to evaluate. They carry technical risk and commercial risk simultaneously for years, Even before they know if the market is real. @bznotes spent $700M on those founders. His best seed bet is now worth $15B. Deployed EP3 is live. Link in comments.

My investor @bznotes told me something that still sits with me: "I'm not judging your smartness. You passed that bar long ago. What I'm looking at is whether you're prepared for what's coming at you." Then: "I don't know what's coming. And you don't know either." That's the real filter in deep tech. Not brilliance. Preparedness for the unknown. Full conversation on Deployed Ep 3 Live Today.

The venture industry spent a decade perfecting SaaS. Meanwhile, the physical world: automotive, manufacturing, construction, logistics, just sat there. Trillions of dollars. Barely touched by software, just waiting. @Bznotes didn't wait. In Episode 3 of Deployed, he breaks down why the founders entering deep tech right now are fundamentally different, and why the returns will be too. In Bilal's vision, for the first time, the caliber of founder who used to default to enterprise software is looking at the physical world and making a different choice: If I'm going to take this kind of risk anyway, I might as well build something that outlasts me. Not a Star Wars future. Not an iRobot future. Something a customer would actually pay for.

Deployed Episode 2 is live. Watch it now @Alfred_Lin's father was destined to be a farmer. The abacus got him a job at a bank. Then calculators replaced the abacus. Then computers replaced calculators. He learned each one. Eventually he ran the bank. That's how @Alfred_Lin thinks about Physical AI. Deployed EP2 drops tomorrow.

Two centuries ago, 80% of us worked on a farm. Today, 2%. We didn't become obsolete- we found other callings. @Alfred_Lin brings that long view to Physical AI in Episode 2 of Deployed. The question isn't whether automation replaces tasks. It's what it frees people to become. Check out Episode 2 of Deployed now.

Zappos was beating Amazon on cost per order. Amazon couldn't figure out how. Turns out @Alfred_Lin's team was running Kiva robots before Amazon even believed they'd work. Amazon later bought Kiva for $775M. Alfred went from operating automation at Zappos to funding the next wave at Sequoia. This conversation covers both lenses. Deployed EP2 with Alfred Lin is live. Link in the comments.

Everyone's waiting for the "ChatGPT moment" in robotics. @Alfred_Lin thinks it already happened. It's the autonomous car. And most of the industry is looking in the wrong direction. Deployed EP2 with Alfred Lin drops tomorrow.

Amazon's drone program started in a garage. Without permission. An engineer pitched Jeff Wilke. He didn't ask Bezos. Didn't ask the CFO. Just funded it. Months later Bezos brought up drones and learned a team was already flying. Full story on Deployed Ep 1: cobot-deployed.com/brad-ep1

A while back @jeffawilke told Jeff Bezos his ideas could destroy @amazon and then rebuilt the org to absorb them. We discuss this in the first episode of Deployed. Also cobots vs. humanoids, lights-out factories, and why the biggest data problem in Physical AI hasn't been solved. Link below.

Deployed Episode 1 is live. @jeffawilke scaled Amazon’s operations from a billion to a trillion dollars. We got into things he's rarely talked about publicly -- drones, lights-out factories, the future of Physical AI. Link below.

Everyone has a Physical AI take now. Most of these folks have never deployed a robot in production. Tomorrow I'm launching Deployed. First guest: @jeffawilke, who spent 22 years building arguably the most sophisticated automation operation on earth. We talk about things you won't hear anywhere else. Watch tomorrow, March 24th. Stay tuned.