Deep Tech Without Stealth: Inside Dusty Robotics’ Origin Story

Construction workers spend hours on their hands and knees snapping chalk lines to mark where walls, plumbing and utilities should go. It’s painstaking, back-breaking labor. And that’s how it’s been done for centuries.

Tessa Lau saw an opportunity — and built a robot that does it faster, safer, and with surgical precision.

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, the Dusty Robotics founder and CEO shares some of what she's learned about transitioning from a researcher to a deep tech founder, including:

• How she turned past startup mistakes into a rigorous customer discovery process
• The structured approach Dusty used to land its first paying customer
• Why she says stealth mode is overrated — and how building in public gave them a head start
• How “cool tech” can lead you astray if you’re not solving a real problem
• Smart ways to pivot and iterate based on actual user feedback
• What it takes to build a mission-driven team that scales with you

If you’re interested in robotics, deep tech, or why some concepts fall into the valley of death while others sail over it like a Red Bull stunt team — listen in.

RUNTIME 43:10 EPISODE BREAKDOWN

(3:00) “ I always thought I would be a professor someday, and that was my planned career path.”

(5:39) How a home renovation project led Tessa into making construction robots

(9:16) “ We thought we were going to build a vacuum cleaning robot.”

(12:24) “You have to establish that someone is willing to pay for the technology and that it's doable.”

(14:15) “ We needed to build something that was 10x better than the status quo in order to scale at venture speed.”

(15:41) Finding a deep tech TAM is “ a hard problem, especially when you're creating a new category.”

(19:16) “ You can't try to be everything for everyone.”

(21:00) Their first prototype “could barely do anything,” but fast pilots helped them iterate quickly.

(26:08) How Tessa figured out their pricing *before* they went to market

(29:24)  Why marketing and branding are table stakes for a deep-tech startup

(33:11) “ As the CEO, you are the face of the company whether you like it or not.”

(37:06) “ Our marketing team doesn't need to be very technically savvy.”

(38:22) “ I have yet to see a good reason to be in stealth, ever.”

(40:53) The one question she’d have to ask a deep tech CEO before accepting a job offer

LINKS

• Tessa Lau
• Dusty Robotics
• Philipp Herget, CTO
• IBM Research
• Willow Garage, Wikipedia
• “Savioke is now Relay Robotics,” 5/2/2022, The Robot Report
• Crossing the Chasm, 3rd edition, Harper Books

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Thanks for listening!

– Walter.