From Academia to Entrepreneurship: Modernizing Robotic Motion Planning (Max Cao of Jacobi Robotics)
Max Cao, co-founder and CEO of Jacobi Robotics, shares with us a bit about his upbringing, time at UC Berkeley’s BAIR Lab (Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab), and inspiration and hope for Jacobi Robotics. Jacobi Robotics provides a software platform to accelerate robotic applications development, with an initial focus on motion planning. The solution allows for efficient programming and reprogramming of robot arms, enabling them to operate effectively in dynamic environments. Get to know the CEO of one of Foothill Ventures’ stellar portfolio companies with some fun personal questions at the end.
Where did your inspiration for Jacobi Robotics come from?
Max: We come from the BAIR Lab at Berkeley, where we were working on algorithms for robot arms, specifically motion planning and manipulation. We found that when we spoke to people in the industry; manufacturers, distributors, machine builders, integrators, robot arm manufacturers, the actual number of deployments in the real world is very low despite all these technological advancements, because the programming approach is very outdated and archaic. The ways most robots are programmed today hasn’t really changed since the 1980s. We founded Jacobi Robotics to make some of these more recent advances in technology accessible to industry, and as a part of that, accelerate the adoption or number of deployments of robots in factories, warehouses, but also other sectors like construction, healthcare, agriculture and so on.
How did your upbringing influence your decision to become an entrepreneur?
Max: I grew up in Norway, a very happy upbringing. It’s still my favorite place in the world, but compared to Silicon Valley, there is not a lot of entrepreneurship, and it’s easy to forget what the rest of the world is like. Initially, I wanted to study abroad in the UK because I wanted to see what else was out there, just to broaden my horizons. I think that it really did — it gave me a really global perspective on things. While in the UK, I decided that entrepreneurship is the way to go for a large impact on a short timeframe, and if you’re going to do it, you should go all the way. And so that is what brought me [to UC Berkeley and entrepreneurship].
How did you meet your co-founders?
Max: We were in the same research lab at Berkeley and collaborated on research projects together. We had all worked together before founding the company, some of us for multiple years, some of us for a few months. Yahav, Lars, Ken, Jeff, and I work very well together. We have very different personalities, but they are complimentary, and so we felt comfortable starting a company together.
What kind of role does your co-founder and advisor from Berkeley, Prof. Ken Goldberg, play?
Max: Ken Goldberg is a renaissance man — he does it all. Jacobi is his second startup company, but he is also an artist, filmmaker, and popular public speaker, and of course a very well-known professor at Berkeley. He was our advisor while at Berkeley and is now a co-founder at Jacobi where he serves as Chief Scientist.
What made you take the jump from academia to starting a company, and how did BAIR support that?
Max: At Berkeley there’s a culture of entrepreneurship — you find a lot of people who think about starting a company, and when they make breakthroughs, it’s often a potential direction. So there is a precedent, a known pathway. The same thing that brought me to engineering in the first place [brought me to entrepreneurship] — the idea of making an impact, and your work impacting people’s lives and the world. We were doing advanced robotics research, but we saw that the gap between our research and the way things are done in industry was just growing, so we wanted to bridge that.
What are some ways that gap could be narrowed?
Max: More companies like Jacobi is always a good thing — companies that take innovations from research and then bring them to industry. Beyond that, I think closer collaboration — for example, between robot arm manufacturers and research, could help. But it’s something that has to happen on both sides. On the industry side, they struggle to adopt cutting-edge technology, because it’s not reliable. It doesn’t meet the requirements. You need super high reliability to put things into production; essentially you need nothing short of perfection. But the purpose of research is not to build reliable systems, it’s to advance the state-of-the-art, and so there will always be some tension there.
What would you like Jacobi Robotics’s legacy to be?
Max: There are currently 4 million robot arms in the world doing different tasks: welding, stacking boxes, different types of applications. If the existence of Jacobi leads to 40 million or 400 million robot arms doing useful work beyond these existing use cases and in new industries, then I will be very happy.
If you weren’t pursuing robotics, what other spaces or topics would you find interesting or would have liked to go into?
Max: I do like archaic industries that have not been disrupted for a very long time. If I was not doing robotics, then there may be something else in the industrial space. There are plenty of breakthroughs and efficiency improvements to be made. I have a passion for these sort of “boring” industries, like stacking boxes onto pallets, that haven’t changed for a long time, but where technology can actually make a difference.
What do you do outside of work in your free time?
Max: I do mountaineering and skiing. My most recent adventure was climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland with my brother. I think being a founder, you have time for one big thing outside of the company, so beyond the basics of sleep, rest, family and friends, you can work on the business and have one other passion, and for me, that’s mountaineering and skiing.
What would you like to tell your past or younger self?
Max: I try not to have regrets, but if I was to tell my past self, it would be asking for help early on. Getting advisors, talking to other founders. I think that’s always a good thing and helps you move forward faster.
Dream travel destination?
Max: Japan — taking a few weeks to see the entire collection of islands.
Favorite past travel destination?
Max: I traveled to Korea last year, Seoul specifically. It’s a really great city, with lots of things to do, a very interesting culture, and of course Korea is at the forefront of robotic automation.
Favorite childhood film? And current?
Max: Lion King — I don’t know how many times I watched that movie. More recently, The Martian.
Max Cao is the Cofounder & CEO at Jacobi Robotics. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley, where he was advised by Prof Ken Goldberg at Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR), and Imperial College London. Max was a former consultant at McKinsey. For more, see his LinkedIn profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-cao/
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/foothillventures
Follow us on Twitter: @FoothillVenture
Foothill Ventures is a $250M technology-focused venture fund located in the Silicon Valley. We back technical founders across software, life sciences, and frontier technologies.
Questions, thoughts, reflections? Let us know in the comments below. We’re always looking for great entrepreneurs and early-stage ideas, and we’re always interested in having a discussion about venture, technology, and anything related. To see more about Foothill Ventures, please visit our website: foothill.ventures.
