Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Interview with Lior Elazary, inVia Robotics
For our interview this morning, we sat down with Lior Elazary, the CEO of Westlake Village-based inVia Robotics (www.inviarobotics.com), which develops robots being used to automate the labor intensive, exhausting work of retrieving items from warehouses for e-commerce. inVia recently raised $20M in funding from such investors as Point72 Ventures, Upfront Ventures and Embark Ventures.
For those who have never heard of inVia Robotics, tell us what you do?
Lior Elazary: inVia Robotics provides robotic solutions for the fulfillment industry. Basically, our robots move items from point A to point B, and are able to work with various workloads, mostly for e-commerce where people order things online and where they want those things picked up, but we can also work in other modalities, such as manufacturing, where you have to move things around. Really, anywhere where item movement is required.
How did you start the company?
Lior Elazary: Our first intuition for robotics was to help with elderly care, to do various tasks like pick things up off the floor, or maybe take microwavable food out of the freezer and put it in the microwave to cook dinner. As we were building it, it was fairly difficult to get the business case to work, and it was fairly challenging because of the cost of the robots. However, as we were ordering things online from Amazon, and getting Prime overnight, we started wondering how Amazon did that. We started looking at the financials, started looking at what other companies were doing, and we noticed that everyone was struggling to do this efficiently. We figured that would be a great opportunity for robots to operate. We looked at various warehouses, and talked to potential customers at that time, and we narrowed it down to a solution where we do most of the gross manipulation, so that you eliminate all the walking, all the stuff inside the warehouse, and have the people concentrate on the higher level stuff, such as QC, checking, wrapping, and that kind of stuff.
And what was your background before this?
Lior Elazary: I'm a serial entrepreneur. The first company I started was Hostpro, now known as Web.com, the other company was Knowledgebase, and Edgecast, the CDN. I also went to USC to get a Ph.D. in robotics, and worked a lot with DARPA related projects. That's where I met my co-founders, Rand Voorhies and Dan Parks. We worked on a lot of really cool technologies. One of those were the Star Wars binoculars, where Luke Skywalker looks through the binoculars and it automatically zooms in on the threat for him. We worked on that project, took it out to the Yuma Proving Grounds, tested that with a sniper, it was really cool. We worked a lot on autonomous drones, trying to understand what's happening below them, such as people and convoys. We worked on the DARPA Robotic Challenge, if you remember that, and worked on autonomous, self-driving cars. We really knew what worked, what didn't in robotics, and knew how to apply that technology.
Where's the company now, and are you shipping those robots, and are they in use?
Lior Elazary: Yes, we have over 300 robots deployed in the field and working, we expect to get to 1,000 by the end of the year. We're actually fully booked for this year with all the warehouses. The great thing is everyone wants to order things online, but no one really realizes when you click on that shopping cart there's a person on the other end who is doing the shopping for you. Now, we're giving the solution to a lot of our customers to be able to support that growth, to support the requirements so people don't have to do that shopping themselves. We provide the whole solution.
Talk about your funding?
Lior Elazary: We're venture backed. Our seed funding was more friends and family, and our Series A was led by Upfront. The latest round was led by P72 Ventures.
What was the hardest of getting the venture funding for you?
Lior Elazary: So far, compared with the other companies, it's been easier. It's because it's in robotics, which is a little sexier. The investors came to us, which was kind of nice. It saved a lot of time from having to go in and raise funding.
You mentioned working on a Ph.D. in robotics, was that before or after the last company?
Lior Elazary: It was actually during the last company. I actually didn't complete my Ph.D., I dropped out with about a year left. My partners did finish theirs. I wanted to start the robotics company right away.
How are you finding customer reception for this technology?
Lior Elazary: Our customers are driving us, they want us to go as fast as possible. I think the one thing they're under a lot of pressure, is finding employees who are willing to do this kind of work. Most people don't want to walk around and do this kind of work. These warehouses are huge, many football fields, and no one wants to be in those warehouses walking all day long. They have a really hard time finding those employees, especially during peak times. They are pressing us to move as fast as we can. That's why this company has been moving so fast.
As an entrepreneur, what's the biggest lesson you've learned so far from this startup?
Lior Elazary: Always remain agile, and be able to adapt and pivot. As I mentioned, we started with a robot that could work in the home, and ended up with a robot that work in a warehouse. Even throughout developing this robot, you constantly have to adapt, and have to change. In some sense, you want to have controlled failures, where you are testing stuff as quickly as possible, and failing quickly so you can adapt, change, and get to the path of success.
What's next for you?
Lior Elazary: Right now, we're super busy trying to deploy our robots. We're working a lot more toward automating the whole process, such as having the robots completely map things themselves, and have the whole setup completely automated, so we can have more warehouses deployed more quickly. In some sense, we want to get to a warehouse-in-a-box, where we can just ship the robots and they'll self deploy. Some of the other stuff is to integrate with robotic arms, which can do that fine manipulation, so we can have a “dark” warehouse and the robots can handle everything from point A to point B.
Thanks!