This 21-year-old is using robotics to combat the labor shortage in the hospitality industry
“It is all very exciting to me: the 1970s was the era for personal computing, the Internet in the 1990s, and now robotics for the 2020s.”
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Company Description: Maidbot is a robotics company creating Rosie, the world’s first housekeeping robot (www.maidbot.com). Maidbot’s automated systems provides the hospitality industry with synergies from pairing humans with robots, leveraging the speed and accuracy of machines coupled with human intelligence. Additionally, Rosie serves as an indoor data platform, providing hotel operators with an immense amount of actionable data from the rooms.
Capital raised: Series A
Tell us a bit about your founder journey — what first inspired the idea for a housekeeping robot, and when did you begin working with a team on Maidbot?
Ever since I was 5 years old, I’ve loved putting together robot kits. To me, the process felt just like what you see in the movies. Yet, unlike in “The Jetsons”, robots in the real world have always seemed so…hidden. That was one thing I’ve always found confusing — why robots are not an integrated part of society alongside humans, and thus less useful than they could be. That has always been in the back of my mind.
On the other hand, I’ve always been really excited about building businesses, and the process of getting to start something out of nothing. Growing up, I built a couple of businesses on the side. At first, I sold junk straight out of my basement — things like broken Frisbees, even. I was 7 then. A constant theme in my life has been a love for creating value.
Throughout the years I continued to build out of my basement, then got into making videos for productions, weddings, and over events. Eventually, I became interested in app development, and explored that realm, building an organization tool specifically for students, as well as SharkPuncher, an arcade-style game where you can race against your friends.
This was my background before Maidbot. Knowing that I wanted to continue building businesses, I went to a business school — a specialized hotel school at Cornell — following in my mom’s entrepreneurial footsteps. She had started some companies, and I knew I wanted to be a part of that somehow. At Cornell, the idea for Maidbot first hit me.
Cornell’s School of Hotel Operations is a practical school, and in my “Hotel Operations” class, we did practical work — as a front desk receptionist, and as a housekeeper, for example. While doing that, I was blown away by the reality of the industry, and began constantly thinking about changing things up.
What I didn’t realize before was just how broken the hospitality industry is: the greatest costs for a hotel are for housekeeping, there’s a huge number of injuries, and management is tough since operations are so complex. These were just a few core issues that I saw, and it made me think back to robotics — robots are meant for dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs. All three of these traits are definitely present in housekeeping, and I saw this as an enormous opportunity to change the industry.
It was all very exciting to me: the 1970s was the era for personal computing, the Internet in the 1990s, robotics are the wave for the 2020s. It’s not 2020 yet, but commercial robotics have already arrived. Most importantly, I wanted to be ahead of the curve, through creating something completely new. I was having fun working on SharkPuncher, my arcade-style racing app, and it was a great experience getting to create something — but I wasn’t being a leader. It wasn’t something new at the time.
So, the “Hotel Operations” class was when I came up with Maidbot. Afterwards, I went to Pam Silverstein — an amazing advisor from Cornell — and told her, “I love what I’ve done so far, and I have this idea”. Right then, she kind of interrogated me, asking me a lot of questions. And once she was sure I knew what I was getting myself into, she just told me, “Do it.”
That was around February 2015 and I got to work right away going to one of my friends to make me a logo. We had just 15 minutes to beat the Fedex Kinkos banner printing deadline for a career fair happening the next day. That career fair was when we started building up the team, with just our banner and our ideas. One person quickly led to 4 through their connections, and soon after, Maidbot was accepted to a summer accelerator program. Things really got started from there onwards. By early 2016, we had an Alpha prototype, and very soon after, a Beta prototype.
Entrepreneurship can often be a lonely journey. Who were some of the people most influential to you in taking on this process?
People are definitely the most important — it’s been really awesome to see what we’ve been able to do through others’ support. I’d say for me, my parents and siblings are number 1 on the list along with Moka — my labradoodle partner in crime. People say that entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster, and that’s true on not just a monthly basis, but weekly, and even daily, too. Some days you get great news in the morning, you’re really amped for the day ahead, and then something negative pops up later. Talking with my family nearly every day, and having Moka around, has been so therapeutic and helpful in dealing with the highs and the lows.
Maidbot also has a strong network of advisors, who have been incredible. The truth is our team is a family. And as cliché as that sounds, everyone has each other’s back which makes me personally feel a lot less lonely. David — our CTO — in particular, has been my closest business partner and friend; I honestly couldn’t imagine working so closely with anyone else both on the technical and cultural fronts, as he is a force of nature and just a lot of fun to hang around. I met him through a mentor at Cornell, and 3 phone calls later, David quit his position as a professor at Georgia Tech, and came up to Ithaca. It was crazy that he took that leap of faith — before then, we had never even Skyped. We wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are today without him.
As a Thiel Fellow, you are unable to simultaneously remain a student and work on your company. In what ways was leaving college a difficult decision to make?
For me, dropping out definitely wasn’t on the roadmap, but we got to a point where it made a lot of sense. I feel as if I’ve backed into it, more so than actually planned for it going into college. I think the biggest catalysts in that decision were David and Steven Whitehead, who quit their jobs, completely uprooted from Atlanta, and came to Ithaca for Maidbot. And that huge risk they took — their willingness to do that — meant everything to me. I would never be able to live with myself if I had to say “Hey, I have class, I’ll talk to you later” while they were working on the company. It needed to be mutual, I thought, and this is the time to do it.
Cornell has also been really lenient, which was great. I spoke to a few people, and one guy told me to go for it, even though I feel that the administration is typically supposed to discourage you from leaving school. It’s been incredible to see that people shared my belief that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
We had a few investors at the time, which was also a huge factor: my parents always told me I needed two things — a team, and investors — in order to have a chance at sustainability. Robots are expensive to build! So once those were both in place, the decision to leave school was a lot easier.
My parents have been super supportive — and even they were hesitant at first with me dropping out of Cornell. Still, they saw how much I cared, and once I had some traction, there were no questions asked from then on. They’re always introducing me to new people, and coming up with ideas. My siblings have also invested in Maidbot. My family definitely makes everything feel less scary: their support is one of our unfair advantages.
What are some of the challenges in the hospitality industry that Maidbot is seeking to mitigate, or even eradicate?
In addition to injury prevention and reducing operating costs, there’s also a huge labor gap — there just aren’t enough people willing to take housekeeping roles. Hotels are in a nightmare situation where sometimes, the managers are left to clean the rooms when there’s nobody else.
As context, one of our partners, a third party housekeeping business, had only 75% of their positions filled, with hundreds of vacancies.We’ve gotten a lot of valuable validation from our customers, telling us that they just aren’t getting enough demand to fill those spots.
Can you run us through some of Maidbot’s focus points going forward? What are some of the features unique for serving the hospitality industry?
Rosie is a cleaning robot that has vacuum capabilities more powerful than a tradition plug-in, but really you can look at Rosie as a mini self-driving car. Maidbot’s systems support algorithm efficiencies behind the navigation, and are intelligent enough to react to different environments and dynamic obstacles, like people — algorithms that we will leverage for our future indoor mobile robots inside and outside of the cleaning space.
On the features front, Rosie is the first robot catered to housekeeping for commercial spaces — we don’t focus on residential areas, or anything like that. Floor clean is a huge problem, especially for such large spaces. We have full vacuum features now, and are getting into wet cleaning as well.
While we market ourselves as the world’s first housekeeping robot, we are also the first comprehensive indoor data platform. Having a computer navigate every square inch of the floor means that it can collect a ton of information — everything from room temperature and humidity, to WiFi signal strength, and much more.
Although we have primarily worked with hotel rooms, the range of “commercial spaces” can go as broad as airplanes, airports, office buildings, universities, and even stadiums. Some more examples are retail spaces, such as malls and large shopping centers, as well as hospitals and other areas dedicated to healthcare. We’ve also looked a bit at Airbnbs and the travel industry more broadly.
As a young founder, do you have advice for other students interested in entrepreneurship? Did you ever feel as if your age was a limiting factor in recruiting your founding team, finding advisors, and growing the business?
If I could talk to myself a few years ago, I’d say it’s super important to do what you love — entrepreneurship sounds sexy, and it seems cool to be your own boss, but it also really sucks a lot of the time! Through it all, you learn a ton. To be an entrepreneur, you have to be addicted to learning — or you learn to be. And then underlying absolutely everything, you have to love where you’re headed, and you have to really care. The “how” doesn’t become a question when you are obsessed with the “why”.
For me, age was definitely less of a problem than I thought it was going to be. In many ways, it was actually an advantage for me — the network I was able to form, the people who were willing to help, and the connections through school have all been huge. I think that being underestimated can be a valuable thing. People look down on you, they perceive your potential to be lower than it really is, but then you throw a curveball — and then all they can think is “this guy knows his stuff.”
There were definitely also times when it was challenging, such as in some investor meetings. Those experiences can vary widely, depending on who I’m meeting with. We’ve been fortunate to have some of the most supportive investors ever on board right now, who told us from the start that they loved our ideas. But that hasn’t always been the case. David, our CTO, is older than I am, and he comes to nearly all the pitch meetings. There have been times I give the pitch, and then the investors mainly directed questions to David — even though I’m still there at the table as well. Not that they’re trying to be mean, though. I think their subconscious just tells them to talk to the “more experienced” people for the best answers. This isn’t just with David, either, but with other people on the team as well. Overall, this scenario is still pretty rare, and I think that the world is shifting towards understanding that young people have so much potential.
One last fun question! If you could have dinner with anyone in the world — living, dead, or imaginary — who would you choose and why?
Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert). He was a psychology professor at Harvard many years ago, who took a completely different path thereafter. Long story short, he began experimenting with psychedelic chemicals, working closely with Timothy Leary at Harvard.
He left teaching to travel and find his guru, ultimately writing Be Here Now — one of my favorite books. It talks about his story and his spirituality. I’ve always been amazed that he could go from tenure-track Harvard professor, to have a “whatever it takes, I want to change my life” mentality.
Ram Dass pioneered a few areas of research, and is a spiritual teacher. It would be pretty incredible to get more details and hear his insights, beyond the stories he’s included in his books.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with the Gen Z Report — we wish you the best of luck with Maidbot!
