Moving past robotics – it’s all about the market
Eric Close, CEO of RedZone Robotics is adamant: “It’s not about robotics; it’s about business!” RedZone is proving that there is a market for what robots can do. It has taken a long time to get there,...
View ArticleAutomation is now
Many successful businesses today optimize the mix of humans, robots, and algorithms. Robots have been around for years in industrial uses. More recently, robots have found new uses solving real-world...
View ArticleIt takes the military to spawn robotics
Sometimes a company is founded because it stumbles upon a niche that it can fill better than any other company. Such a company is RE2. Founded by Jorgen Pedersen as a contract engineering house to fill...
View ArticleMoving past military applications
A couple of weeks ago, NewVenturist featured a story about how important the military is to spawning robotics companies. The military has needs and money to spur development of the technologies that...
View ArticleA glimpse of the future: Baxter the robot
Rodney Brooks, a thought leader in robotics and entrepreneurship, came to Pittsburgh the other day. Carnegie Mellon, courtesy of Matt Mason and the Robotics Institute, hosted Rod for the public...
View ArticleImportance of Entrepreneurship for African Americans
My mother sacrificed a lot, working two jobs early on in my life to make sure I could have more than she had as a child. She had me at the age of 21 and wasn’t able continue her college education,...
View ArticleCAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA
Computer science professor, Manuel Blum, had been thinking about human computation and authentication schemes for quite some time. So in 2000 when Udi Manber, then chief scientist at Yahoo!, mentioned...
View ArticleFinding the entrepreneur
I make entrepreneurs honest. Yesterday I wished that, instead of offering slots in the Thrill Mill accelerator as a result of pitches by a team for a particular idea, we could just pick by interviewing...
View ArticleCongrats to the Pittsburgh startup community. Oh, and stop congratulating...
Pittsburgh is simply better than it ever was before. Period. This is a guest post by Greg Coticchia, of ENTRA and Entrepreneur in Residence at the Innovation Institute at Pitt. When I look around I see...
View ArticleThe idea, post #2 of “Startup Briefs”
How do you come up with the next big idea? How do you come up with an idea that is worth risking your time, expertise and talent? Your career? Where do ideas come from anyway? Let’s take a look at a...
View ArticleThe customer, post #3 of “Startup Briefs”
What is more important than your idea? More important than your startup? More important than you? You got it – your customer. Most first-time entrepreneurs don’t focus early enough on their customers:...
View Article3×3: Experts on funding
Last week, the University of Pittsburgh’s student accelerator, Blast Furnace (run by my colleague Greg Coticchia) teams heard from three experts on funding early stage companies. The Blast Furnace is...
View ArticleValue proposition, post #9 of “Startup Briefs”
As the school year gets underway, and I prep for practical, outside the classroom entrepreneurial education, I am reminded of the importance of value proposition. Sometimes that term gets bandied about...
View ArticleCompetition & differentiation – Startup Briefs post #14
Few folks come to me having done extensive competitive analysis about their idea/product. What ensues goes something like this: “What do you know about the competition?” I ask. “Oh, what I do is...
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