Josh Gruenstein of Tutor Intelligence says he watched robot startups die the same way "5 to 10 times in a row," and explains what they got wrong: "We started this company at a time we're seeing all of these very academic supply chain oriented robotic startups get started and then not succeed... One of the big things I think that robotics companies get wrong is they're not actually product companies." "They're like, 'Okay, some really big company has a very specific problem... We're gonna spend two years building a very custom system to solve their problem.'" "Chances are it won't work... doing product requires iteration. Even if it does work, who's to say that customer still has that problem? So boom, the company's done." "Working with a diverse range of customers is this beautiful forcing function for building the right shape of product, which to us is a general robot." "If you can sign a contract in two weeks with a mid-market customer and have a robot running immediately after that... you know you're being successful." @joshgruenstein @tutorintel