SF to Shenzhen: Robotics Founders Evening @ Mission Robotics

What does it actually take to get a robot out of the lab and into the real world? Four founders who have done it in four very different ways sit down for an honest panel at Mission Robotics.

Thursday, Nov 12, 5 to 8 pm at Mission Robotics, 3001 19th St, San Francisco

THE PANEL

Anand Lalwani, Co-founder, Cardinal Robotics
Anand worked as a janitor before earning his robotics PhD at Stanford. He started Cardinal as a student, and it has grown to 30,000+ cleaning robots deployed with partners, without institutional venture money. On the panel: what running robots at scale teaches you that a demo never will.

Vatan Aksoy Tezer, Co-founder & CEO, Neuromorphic (YC S26)
Vatan is a maintainer of MoveIt, the open source software behind countless robot arms, and spent the last four years building robots in Tokyo and Singapore. Neuromorphic gives any robot body a brain, starting with robots that run experiments in real wet labs. On the panel: building robot software that works on any hardware.

Abhinav Das, Co-founder & CEO, Orangewood Labs (YC W18)
Abhinav has been building robot arms since 2016, after a first startup making rough terrain vehicles. Orangewood makes affordable arms for small manufacturers that you program in plain English. On the panel: selling robots to customers who have never owned one.

Max Williams, Co-founder & CEO, Axonnic
Max did his research at Oxford on reading the muscle signals in your forearm. Axonnic turns that into a sleeve that captures how skilled hands move and how hard they press, so robots can learn dexterous work. On the panel: why video alone won't teach robots to use their hands.

WHAT WE'LL DIG INTO

• What breaks when a robot leaves the lab, and what you only learn from customers

• Where the data to train robots really comes from

• When to build, buy or rent out your robots

• What each of them would do differently if they started again

MODERATOR
Henri Mäkivirta, ex-Slush CPO, now building his second company. This fall he has met more than 60 robotics founders and builders in SF.

PROGRAM
5:00 pm: Doors open, food and drinks
5:45 pm: Panel with Anand, Vatan, Abhinav and Max, moderated by Henri
6:30 pm: Audience Q&A
6:45 pm: A short intro to our January trip (more below)
7:00 pm: Drinks and conversations until 8

WHO SHOULD COME
Founders and builders working on robots, from first prototype to first fleet, and anyone seriously thinking about starting a robotics company. Spots are limited and every request is reviewed, so add a line about what you're building.

FROM SF TO SHENZHEN
Building hardware sooner or later means sourcing parts and manufacturing, and much of that runs through Shenzhen. We close the evening with a short intro to Delta & Bay, Jan 11 to 17, 2027: company and factory visits, supplier meetings and connections with local builders. Learn more and apply: https://deltaandbay.com/