EP #125 - Gianluca Cesari & Gregory Hitz: The Robotics Startup With 8 Co-Founders

Swisspreneur Show

Timestamps:

2:24 - Gianluca's international background

4:42 - Gregory's academic background

8:08 - Having 8 co-founders

11:47 - The robotics market

27:15 - Getting support as a startup

About Gianluca Cesari, Gregory Hitz and Sevensense Robotics

Gregory Hitz and Gianluca Cesari are two of the 8 co-founders of Sevensense Robotics, as well as CEO and Business Development Lead, respectively. Gregory obtained his PhD from ETH Zurich later continued as Postdoc. Gianluca also received his Masters in Robotics, System and Control from ETH Zurich and afterwards continued as Robotics Engineer at the University's Autonomous Systems Lab. The two worked together with their 6 co-founders on an autonomous robotics project together with two industry partners while still at university. Out of this initial research group, Sevensense Robotics was born. Running a business with 8 co-founders would be a challenge for many. Sevensense decided to mitigate the problem by clearly distributing roles. While some members of the founding team took on managerial duties, others stayed with their passion for engineering and have contributed to developing the product.

Autonomous robots have applications in various industries: Sevensense currently focuses on logistics. By applying Sevensense’s technology, logistics providers can enable their machines to safely and autonomously navigate in dynamic spaces shared with humans, in- and outdoors. To date, Sevensense has been able to work together with several important customers, such as Jelmoli and Wetork.

Memorable Quotes

"Many people are actually really willing to help you — you just have to ask."

Resources Mentioned

Thinking, fast and slow, by Daniel Kahneman

The Harvard Business Review

Venture Kick

Wyss Zurich

If you would like to listen to more episodes on robotics, check out our conversations with Alex Tyropolis and Mina Kamel.

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