Interviewee
Juan Necochea, Director of Strategic Partnerships at MassRobotics, the largest hub for robotics commercialization in the US leading a cluster of 400+ robotics/AI companies on the East Coast and helping scale 65+ resident startups.
Transcript
Juan Necochea: So I am director of partnerships at MassRobotics. That means that we, I, create connections with the large corporations to create symbiotic relationships between what their agenda is, what their strategy is, and what the innovation hub and the innovation ecosystem needs. And so creating that communication and moving forward robotics.
Elisa Muñoz: Thank you so much. How long have you been at the company?
Juan Necochea: No. So I've been with MassRobotics, actually I'm coming up on a work anniversary. So this is my first year here. But I've been involved in, in the ecosystem of innovation here in Cambridge, Massachusetts before with m I t and, and before with other startups and, and, and nonprofit organizations for about eight years. So not a stranger to space.
Elisa Muñoz: And I know that you guys recently announced the participants in the Catalyst program. I think that's really interesting because in the last interview we, Joyce, didn't have the opportunity to talk about it. So maybe you can share a little bit about what the program is?
Juan Necochea: Sure. So the Catalyst program is part of the programming we do with our partners around specific working groups. And if you'd allow me just one step, we'll repeat the same things that Joyce said without a doubt. But with this, within the symbiotic relationship that MassRobotics has with corporations, we create a conversation with the ecosystem around specific verticals that are happening that may not have gotten the attention that they need, or maybe they have a great potential and therefore there's a lot of interest around them. And so around these specific topics, we create working groups and that means that we stretch our, our, an invitation further than our partners who are the companies we directly work with, the large corporates we directly work with and past our residents who are our startups that Joyce May have mentioned before.
And so we reach out to the larger community and, and identify which ones are these kinds of big verticals that really need our help or as a community, as a robotics community, really need our help or as I mentioned, are really thriving. And so we, you know, just for examples, we have the interoperability working group. We have a drones working group. We have an electric vehicles working group. And among those we have a healthcare working group. And the genesis of that, as many other kinds of markets or, or folks just kind of turned to during covid, is that we all kind of asked ourselves like, what are we doing to help?
And so we began inviting the larger community. Right now we are in the second cycle, so we had one very successful cycle with four startups in the first year. And now we are our cohort. This second year is made up of seven companies. And interestingly enough, first year only with FESTO leading us and then this year FESTO as well as MITRE, Novanta and Mitsubishi are all involved mentoring these startups and helping them develop whatever technology they're out there. Now, this comes out, you know, as a catalyst program, as a, you know, specific programming around, you know, what we thought was needed within the healthcare community or how we could be at the service of the healthcare community. In this case, it's a catalyst program, which basically we match these startups that, you know, we, we make a call to the entire world. Actually, we had really interesting applicants from across the globe. It was really, really cool just seeing what folks are, you know, first of all how they understand, you know, robotics and how they understand healthcare. Right. We set some parameters, but you know, we looked at the landscape and saw what was happening and we saw, you know, everything from assistive exoskeletons to, you know, automated lab spaces.
And we chose the champions that we thought were best suited to our companies. And then it's a year long, it's a six month long program, sorry, where we help them develop to, or to specific goals and then showcase those goals in the robotic summit that's coming up in May here in Boston.
Elisa Muñoz: Wow. Thank you so much for the background. Are there any specific requirements in order to participate?
Juan Necochea: Well, sure. So in terms of the application, we've, we've already closed out this year. So we're looking at the next year, which will open up in the second semester for applications. Really we are, we're constantly reshaping what those parameters are in terms of, you know, where you are in terms of technology. What we usually are looking for is for you to have some kind of working prototype. So not ideation phase and not something that, you know, you may have thought may work, but rather something that you are already actively kind of looking into for legal reasons as well for you to be kind of, you know, instituted as a company. And within that, you know, the working prototype where you're kind of not falling heavily into software and it's kind of not a wearable or like an iot ot, we've set those parameters for it to be more focused on robotic things. And especially, you know, it's not, it's not to discriminate against other efforts within that space, but rather it's more about, you know, what we as the robotics community can, you know, really strategically add value to it's gonna be those like more hardcore robotic initiatives. And so that's why we have things like lab automation or surgical robots that are allowing a certain kind of mobility within the, you know, surgical process or whether it be, you know, exoskeleton as well as like I mentioned, so a little bit of everything.
We match these startups with these corporations that are dealing with real market needs. It's real market experience. And so when they're looking for investors, they can point towards the work that they've done with P&G, Mitsubishi Electric, with Amazon Robotics, etc.
Elisa Muñoz: Wow, I'm shocked. Everything regarding this program sounds really amazing and exciting at the same time. And you talked about value, right? Adding value that it's the key to the program. So how do you think MassRobotics is making an actual difference in the industry?
Juan Necochea: So MassRobotics as a whole, I think there's three kind of main variables that we, we we add value to and, and we distinguish ourselves in the seven years we've been around, you know, we, we have other, there's other folks out there kind of offering the same model that we have. I think we've been, we've been a little bit ahead of the curve and we base our model on three main things that we provide. One is that within mass robotics, we have the physical infrastructure to all the startups that come into our, into our space. We call them our residents, which Joyce also may have pointed out. It's great, great terminology. And you know, we provide basically every robotic technology that they might need. And then when we don't have it, we lean on our partners, we lean on the ecosystem to acquire that technology. So whether it be folks that are testing drones within our space, and so we have to create some kind of drone testing nets and, and things of the sort, or whether it be, you know, one of the 32 robotic technologies that we have within the space provide, that's the first thing we provide. And it's great value because if you consider, and let me take a step back, but basically what you see in the landscape is, you know, when startups go out of their universities or when they go outside of their, you know, garage or wherever they kind of reach that working prototype and wanna scale up, they're faced with basically two options where they can go into VC funding or they can go into government funding. You know, I'm, I'm of course dumbing this down and simplifying it in favor of, of course how attractive we are to the network. But you know, in both scenarios, you know, sometimes the VC, when you give equity of your company to a VC, you'll also be forced back into the market rather quickly. And maybe you won't be able to develop exactly the prototype or scale your prototype to the kind of full potential that you feel it can. If you go down the route of grants, grants have a different rhythm to things and then you might miss the market altogether, or it might be simply just less attractive to meet the demands of a market. The second pillar, and the second kind of value that we add is this kind of more of a, a network value where, you know, we work directly with 40 plus corporate organizations that are either leaders, leaders within the robotic industry or, you know, getting to know us or getting to know the robotic industry.
And so we match these startups that are within our, with, we match these residents, right, with these corporations that are dealing with real market needs, right? So immediately and they begin that work and that conversation and that communication and that testing and that, you know, maybe creating a user case, whatever it might be that they wanna develop together, it's real market experience. And so when they're looking for investors, they can point towards, you know, the work that they've done with P&G, they can work with the work that they've done with Mitsubishi Electric, with Amazon Robotics series of our, our startups that, sorry, of our, of our corporate partners that really are out there kind of in frontier technology or spearheading the markets.
And so that's the second variable that I think adds value to all the residents, but also to the corporates because as the corporates work with these startups, you can also see them developing new use cases or just seeing how, you know, innovative next generation applications of that robotic arm that you thought, you know, was always for A to B. Well now let's add, you know, everything from C to Zed, you know, whatever it might be. And then finally is, you know, we, the other value that we add really to this, this equation is, you know, we, we stretch across, as I mentioned before, you know, across our partners, our residents, but then in the entire ecosystem, more and more we have become kind of a reference point to what's going on in the world of robotics. And so a lot of companies turn to us, whether it be from our programming of events, whether it be from, you know, everything that's online in terms of the news we manage, or whatever relationships we harvest with PO or whatever events we attend.
So we're out there connected to that larger ecosystem. And so we're guiding and kind of developing or co-developing with everybody what the conversation around robotics is. And then for example, going back to the working groups, that's something we can pull from the ether of, of this larger community and just say, you know, hey, what's happening in health? Like why isn't there more in healthcare? Why aren't there more robotics in construction? And why, why are we kind of stumbling or why is there so many standards around interoperability? Like, why can't we just settle down on one? You know, like, what, what's going on? And these are very, I said here, you know, I can make that kind of wild, you know, it's, why, why aren't these things simpler?
They're incredibly complex and I think we are kind of that neutral point for that larger ecosystem to come together and have conversations. And so we become kind of this facilitator for the conversation to move forward in a really collaborative way. And I think collaboration of that network is something that's really, really essential to our model, but also very important for the role that we play within the ecosystem.
Elisa Muñoz: I can just say that you guys are making a huge difference. Thank you so much for explaining everything. Do you have any advice for, I don't know, future startups, entrepreneurs in the robotics industry, maybe CEOs?
Juan Necochea: So other director of partnerships, I say just simply, Hey, I'm here, reach out to me. That's, that, that would be an easy one. But no, I think in, in everybody, who am I to, to tell what your path might be, but I would, I think it's something that, that comes from the ecosystem here in, in, in Massachusetts in general. I think it's, you know, I've touched on it before, but for you to never underestimate the power of collaboration and for you to never underestimate how, you know, truly together you go farther and, and how there are people out there who are willing to help and not in a transactional way of that help, but rather in a transformative way for you and for your company, for your objectives. Because we can never assume that, you know, our objectives are only to our own means and, and, and, and, and benefit, you know, there's, there's gonna be folks out there that want you to succeed, find them either, whether it be mentors or collaborators or partners, whatever it might be. You know, there's, there's a lot of richness in that collaboration.
There's a lot of richness for you to open yourself up to that, that opportunity and for you to trust it. Be mindful of who you're trusting, be mindful with whom you're collaborating with. But you know, there are spaces like, you know, welcome to MassRobotics where you can find a lot of that collaboration and kind of learn how to, how to develop that collaboration gene. So that would be my suggestion to all.
Elisa Muñoz: Thank you so much Juan. Thank you so much for sharing and for being here today.
Juan Necochea: Thank you very much. I'm a big fan.
