Entrepreneurship
Future Founder Challenge
Guided by Rodney Brooks
Every robotics company started with a sketch and a stubborn idea. Pitch yours.
Watch
See it happen in the real world.
Rodney Brooks started iRobot in 1990 in a small office with two co-founders. They tried lots of ideas — military robots, toy robots, exploration robots — before they shipped the Roomba in 2002 and changed everything. Most robotics companies do exactly this: try a dozen things, find the one that people will actually pay for, build that one perfectly. You don't need a PhD to start a robotics company. You need a clear problem and a robot that solves it.
Think
A question worth sitting with.
What's one job people complain about that a robot could actually do well today?
Build
Make something with your hands.
Sketch your robotics company's first product on one page: name, what it does, who buys it, how much it costs, why your robot is the right answer.
Step-by-step
Pick one chore in your house your family complains about. Write it at the top of a fresh page.
Sketch the robot that does it. Doesn't have to be pretty. Has to be specific.
Give it a name. The name is part of the pitch — make it memorable. (Roomba did.)
Decide who buys it: a parent, a kid, a grandparent, a teacher. Write down their name.
Decide the price. Anything under your weekly allowance is too cheap. Anything above a phone is too expensive.
Write one sentence under the sketch: 'My robot helps ___ by ___ for $___.' That sentence is your pitch.
Read your pitch out loud to a family member. Watch their face. Edit the sentence based on what they did, not what they said.
Toolkit
- Paper
Play
Test it. See what it does.
Pitch your company in 60 seconds to a family member acting as an investor. They ask one tough question. Write down your answer.
Challenge
Push it a little further.
Calculate how many of your robots you'd need to sell in the first year to pay one engineer. Is your price right?
Reflect
Notice what your robot taught you.
What would you improve about your pitch?
Also ask yourself
What surprised you?
Reward
Mission outro
+0XP
“Every robotics company started with a sketch like yours.”
Skills advanced: inventing, pitching
Badge
Future Founder