Interviewee
Joyce Sidopoulos is a Co-Founder and Vice President for Programs and Community at MassRobotics, where she develops high impact programs for the robotics ecosystem, highlighting startups technology, matching startups with potential funders and customers, engaging with tech sectors who benefit from robotics adoption, connecting students and talent to potential employers and working with academia to commercialize research.
Transcript
Joyce Sidopoulos: So co-founding Mass Robotics was a long task, basically the task of love. I'd say .I like to say my career was in three phases. I worked for the Navy, very technical as a kind of science advisor and stoner expert for the first third, the next third, I did business development for the air force and other government agencies. And then this third is more focused on robotics and then somewhere in there, there's the family piece and that's another like third. So really four thirds, I guess.
Elisa Muñoz: How did it first get into robotics? Because I mean, you have like different paths, I know you studied electrical engineering.
Joyce Sidopoulos: So I did a lot of summer work in computer science, but I went to Cornell for electrical engineering. And I'd say, first of all, robotics starts with star wars. I mean, who doesn't love robots when you watch Star Wars, right? Everybody falls in love with R2D2 and C three PO. So I always loved it, but I think that for me getting started in robotics was more, a lot of things in my career happened by chance. And you have to just take advantage of those chances. And so I had left one job and someone saw that I had put an end date on my LinkedIn profile. And so they said, “Hey, you would be great at running this robotics cluster.”
“Why don't you come over and join us? And so that's basically how I started. So it was kind of by chance, but at the same time, you know, robotics is a combination of so many disciplines, right? It's a combination of engineering and design and human robot interface. So there's a lot of budget, right? A lot of computation and sensing. And you know, I go back to my Navy days when I was working with sonar and understanding waves and sound in water is the same thing as any kind of sensor collecting information from the environment computing and then figuring out what to do with it. And so robotics is the same thing, right? It's sensing your environment, sensing what's around you, collecting information computing using that information to actually do things. So that's kind of how, you know, I started from.
Elisa Muñoz: That's really interesting. But one thing is jumping into the industry and another one is like founding a company.
Joyce Sidopoulos: Right? So Mass Robotics is a nonprofit and we chose to do that because when we were starting the company, we thought there's lots of grants out there that can kind of help us get started. We thought there's lots of companies that could donate to us and they could use that as a tax write-off. So that was one of the motivations to make it a nonprofit. But really it was a combination of a lot of people coming together at the right time, putting together the right plan. So, you know, there are five co-founders that are officially listed, but honestly there's probably 20 people who had a lot of influence on how we started the company.
A startup is always fundraising. Even when you close around, you're still thinking of, “Okay, when is this going to run out? When do I need my next funding?” So you're always thinking. So, really, master bites was founded by a lot of people who had great ideas on how to grow the robotics ecosystem and what does, what does industry need from robotics?
Elisa Muñoz: Another question, Why Boston, why Massachusetts? What's the main reason for that?
Joyce Sidopoulos: So Boston has the highest density of universities than anywhere in the us. So people are familiar with MIT and Harvard, Northeastern Boston university, but there's also a lot of other technical universities like WPI and Wentworth and Olin college. So there's a lot of very technical UMass. UMass has a great engineering school. So there's a lot of entrepreneurship programs and highly technical universities that are putting out engineers. So the talent pool is here. So when you're a startup, really the two things that you're really looking for the most and the challenge I think they have the most are, are funding of course, and talent.
So we have entrepreneurs who have ideas to start companies. Then we have the talent pool to help those companies grow. We also have a very strong venture capital association and the New England venture capital association. And it's a really large group of VCs who are in the group and are investing in robotics and tough tech. So we have that. So we also have the services community. So we have a lot of designers, all of the IP law firms and marketing firms. So we have like that whole kind of ecosystem that helps startups. And then we have a lot of incubators and accelerators.
Elisa Muñoz: How many startups do you currently have or how many startups did you start up with?
Joyce Sidopoulos: So last we checked at our five-year anniversary. We had something like 115 startups who have kind of come through the space. I think now we're at 130 and we have about 65 who are residents. Now, residents are from all over the world. We have Singapore, Israel as far as Switzerland, Spain, and then all over the U S so a lot of states are represented here. They find us and they realize that this is a great place to start a company and to grow a company. So they come and they get networked in. And, you know, we have DC industry days where we invite venture capital capitalism into investors, into our space, so they can see what our startups are working on.
Hardware companies are hard. That's why they're called hardware. It really is a long, difficult path, but it is so worth it in the end, when you find that customer and someone who can adopt your technology and you see it moving along, it really is so rewarding. So I would say: “Have a purpose and don't give up”.
Elisa Muñoz: Are most of the residents older? Or are they students doing a master's degree or something like that?
Joyce Sidopoulos: They're past that. So most of the residents are, and we are all ages, but most of them, I would say are in their thirties, early thirties is probably the average age. Some of them actually, it's their third startup if they're more my age. So it's, it, it really is a wide range and they have to be a company. So it's post student, once the students graduate and they become a company and we're not really, so we're not what you'd say is traditionally an accelerator or an incubator. So those types of spaces you apply, you get in. And there's like a very focused 12 weeks of heavy mentoring. And for those 12 weeks, you're getting your business plan together. You're, you're putting your pitch deck together and all that. We typically take people from accelerators. So when you finish a program like that, you can come to mash robotics and you have a little bit of funding and we help you kind of escalate, take it to the next level, help you meet manufacturers and help find actual real customers.
Elisa Muñoz: What do you think is the field that it's most relevant?
Joyce Sidopoulos: So I'll tell you what's really hot since COVID is logistics and warehousing, and I'd say in the future, it's going to be delivery.. But, you know, if you think about the pandemic and everybody's home and ordering online, it's going to be picking and putting things in boxes and being able to get them out to the customer. Right. And so, you know, Amazon does a great job at that and they've been doing it for years, but now all of these other companies are having mail orders, right. Online orders. And so how do you get that to the customer quickly? And so a lot of the automation we were seeing is happening in warehousing and logistics and packaging and sending and that kind of thing.
And I think the next wave will be the delivery, the end delivery piece of it. Right. So right now you actually have physically a guy who comes in on your ups truck and he brings it to your doorstep. How can you kind of automate that? And I think that's the next kind of wave we're going to see.
There will be things holding that back, like policy and policy always lacks technology a little bit, or sometimes a lot, but that like, that's the next, you know, drones, drones are making a lot of progress as well. And they're, they're being used for a lot of good situations, like inspecting power lines, right. Helping with forest fires. So there's a lot of things that drones can do and go into dangerous places that aren't safe for people.
Elisa Muñoz: Are there any critical challenges you have faced in the break development part when it comes to the purchasing?
Joyce Sidopoulos: So I think, you know, COVID has really helped us understand where the, where the bottlenecks are in the supply chain. So, you know, things coming out of areas where the pandemic was really challenging, stopped. And so a lot of companies had to, had to figure out how to pivot and use other hardware or had to design a little bit differently or develop new things. So it was definitely a challenge, I think in general, before the pandemic things seemed to be in surplus and it wasn't as difficult. But I think since the pandemic, I think people are really thinking about how they're designing and trying to be more conservative.
Elisa Muñoz: What do you think is the biggest technical challenge you have ever solved?
Joyce Sidopoulos: Funding. It just seems like that's always a chip. That's always going to be a challenge and something you're always going to have to be thinking about, right. It's, it's making good hires, right. Finding the right people to help run the organization the way you envision it being run. That's a little bit of a challenge, but we have found great staff. So we're super lucky here at Mass Robotics. All the staff are, are two feet in, you know, all about helping the startups and helping them succeed.
Elisa Muñoz: Do you have any advice for mature entrepreneurs starting in this field?
Joyce Sidopoulos: Oh, just stick with it, it takes a long time. Hardware companies are hard. That's why they're called hardware. I think it's hard. It takes, you know, really a lot of our startups have been at it for five years and they're still seeking funding. It really is a long, difficult path, but it is so worth it in the end, when you find that customer and someone who can adopt your technology and you see it moving along, it really is so rewarding. So I would say really have a purpose and be following that purpose and don't give up. I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of challenges that come along the way. You know, I just read an article that was talking about what it's like to be a startup compared to what it's like to be in a big company.
Elisa Muñoz: Amazing. Thank you so much Joyce for being in the podcast today.
Joyce Sidopoulos: You are welcome, always happy to talk about Mass Robotics!
