{"id":5856,"date":"2023-04-03T05:40:43","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T05:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/?p=5856"},"modified":"2023-11-01T09:12:58","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T09:12:58","slug":"oliver-mitchell-of-ffvc-shares-how-robotics-investing-differs-from-the-rest-of-the-pack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/oliver-mitchell-of-ffvc-shares-how-robotics-investing-differs-from-the-rest-of-the-pack\/","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Mitchell of ffVC Shares How Robotics Investing Differs from the Rest of the Pack"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cAt ff Venture Capital, we see everything from a global perspective, and we focus on turning these nascent kernels of ideas into massive global companies.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
Oliver Mitchell, Partner, 2023<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Whether you were born in the 80s or the 2000s\u2014 you\u2019ve probably seen at least one or two films about robots. The wildly popular franchise, Transformers, dominated the early 2000s, generating just above $1 billion in box offices over a period of six years. Just a year after the first Transformers movie was released, robots on the screen appeared to have de-evolutionalized rapidly, at least physically. In Transformers, robots were emphasized for their grotesque and terrorizing nature. Whereas, incoming robots started getting smaller, more nimble, and less <\/span>overtly <\/i><\/b>violent. Wall-E from Pixar was a minute, clean-up robot completed with computer vision, and the ability to perceive emotion. The Netflix cyberpunk series, Love, Sex, and Robots (2020) opened season two with an eerily realistic depiction of robots blended seamlessly into our environment. The coffee that automatically turns on at a specific time, to the machine that cleans the house and delivers the mail\u2014 until of course, it goes through a <\/span>massive and violent<\/span><\/i> malfunction.<\/span><\/p>\n
Robots remain a timeless muse for directors and entrepreneurs alike, while various industries (tech, manufacturing, agriculture, education) continue to invest in robots. The enduring fascination with robots, a unique creation between science and art, has the potential to unlock greater solutions for the human workforce. However, not without some recourse for ethical boundaries.<\/b><\/p>\n
When <\/span>Oliver Mitchell<\/span><\/a> built <\/span>Robot Galaxy<\/span><\/a>, a retail entertainment company back in 2007, never did he imagine it would lead him to start writing about robots in-depth, and then later, invest in them.\u00a0 His story shows despite the popularity of fad investing or short-cycle sellouts in the market; the best investments are often rooted in consistent curiosity in a specific industry, getting into the trenches, and diversification. <\/span>Learning, rerouting, and improving.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n
Oliver was generous enough to discuss some of the key pivots in his entrepreneurial and investing lifespan which has led him to several successful exits and then raising a unicorn in his portfolio. Oliver has been a partner at <\/span>ffVenture Capital<\/span><\/a> for the past four years and resides in New York City, where he also teaches an MBA course at the Sy Syms School of Business.<\/span><\/p>\n
Interviewer: What are some of the key things you look for when you invest in companies?<\/b><\/p>\n
Oliver:<\/b>\u00a0For a bit of background context, I’ve been a founder and an operator of startups, having sold to big multinationals like American Express and ADT Johnson Controls. So, I’ve been in the shoes of a founder during different economic cycles. I think it’s important that regardless of the industry,<\/span> valuations have to be grounded and rooted within the financials of the business<\/b>. For a startup, that’s tough because many of them are pre-revenue, but when going out to professional investors, they should be able to have some early validation, either from pilots or proof of concepts. In other words, they should be able to determine what people will pay for their product.<\/span><\/p>\n
From there, they can figure out what the drivers of the revenue are. Is it through the number of sales reps and the number of accounts they can drive? Or is it through a channel partner? Or is it a license with a bigger OEM? And what does that look like?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
It cannot, and I cannot stress this enough be: \u201cI only want to give up 10, 15, 20 percent of the company, so my valuation should be X.\u201d That’s not a good calculus for determining valuation.\u201d<\/b> But I think this is what the hyperbolic times gave birth to.<\/span><\/p>\n
Interviewer: What\u2019s unique about investing in automation?<\/b><\/p>\n
Oliver: <\/b>With automation, it gets a bit trickier. The reason why is that automation investors tend to belong to a smaller community. At <\/span>ff Venture Capital,<\/span><\/a> the fund I\u2019m a part of, we’re seed-stage investors. We invest in both B2B SaaS companies and enterprise software within FinTech, InsurTech, LegalTech, and applied AI, as well as automation technologies, drones, robotics, IoT, machine learning, and remote sensing.<\/span><\/p>\n