Introducing Paul Mikesell, Founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics

Sara:

I'm Sara Lindquist from FUSE. We're an early-stage venture firm based right here in the Pacific Northwest. And just like the founders in our portfolio, we are just getting started. We believe that founders deserve more: more urgency, more community, more expertise, more reliability - more of everything. And we aim to deliver. Join me as I introduce each of our portfolio companies in the FUSE family to date.

Today, you'll hear from Paul Mikesell, seasoned Entrepreneur and current Founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics. Prior to Carbon, Paul was the Founder and Director of Engineering at Isilon Systems, which is one of the region's biggest success stories. Join us as we discuss Paul's entrepreneurship journey, key learnings along the way, and of course, why killing weeds using computer vision and laser beams is going to revolutionize the way we grow our food. 

Let's get started!

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Sara:

Thanks for being here, Paul.

Paul:

You bet.

Sara:

Well I appreciate you taking the time and excited for you to share a bit about your story. It's a really exciting one. So to kick things off, it'd be great if you could first share just a quick overview of what Carbon Robotics is and how it serves customers.

Paul: 

Carbon Robotics is an AI and robotics company focused on agriculture. We like to help farmers bring innovation, technology and new techniques to their farms. Our main product is an autonomous laser weed control system. There's a lot of great videos on the internet of this robot driving around killing weeds. It uses a lot of computer vision, AI, deep learning (which is my background), robotics and then lasers. And the reason why this technique is working so well, it reduces the need for labor on farms, particularly for these jobs which are very difficult and it's hot and dusty out there in the fields. And this is one of the most difficult things for farmers to be able to scale up and scale down their labor as needed. So we help reduce reliance on that. Reduction in herbicide usage, which is important for the environment. It's also important for vegetable nutrient content and human health, as well as we're seeing the rise in herbicide resistance in the weed populations in the United States.

Paul: 

So just like any other system, any biological system, you see things respond to what's going on in the environment. When you apply so many herbicides, the weeds are responding to that and learning to live past the herbicide spray. So something like our technology is definitely needed. And then we reduce the need for techniques like tillage and cultivation, which is very damaging to the soil over time. It's part of the reason why there's so much runoff because when you turn up the soil a lot, it reduces the ability for the soil to absorb water so you get a bunch of runoff. It also increases wind erosion and things like that. So we've been very beneficial to the farm and these farmers, pretty cool technology, fun stuff to work on.

Sara:

That's awesome. Thanks, Paul. And I'm curious, when was that light bulb moment for you? When did you know, "I need to build this?"

Paul: 

I just got done working for a lot of years at a deep tech company, working on computer vision, a lot of deep learning neural nets, AI, that kind of thing, and really wanted to see these techniques applied. And so we're more real-world. And I had a bunch of farmer friends and spent a bunch of time exploring the use of different technologies on the farm. And the thing that kept floating to the top of the prioritization list was weed control because of all the reasons we'd mentioned.

Sara:

Right.

Paul: 

And it seemed like we could imminently solve this problem with deep learning and targeting. And the big question was how do we use that technique to eliminate the weeds? And we discovered pretty early on that lasers could do it. And so then it was just a big run to develop the technology to the point that it was demonstrable and then get it out in the real fields. And that's what we've been focusing on. So for us, the benefit to our customers and to the farmers is really the fuel in our tanks that keeps us going.

Sara:

Yeah, love that. And you've certainly built a really stellar team around you. And I'm just curious in your own words, why is your team uniquely positioned to tackle this?

Paul: 

Part of it has to do with the Pacific Northwest. So we have a great computer science community up here built and bolstered by the University of Washington, which has a great computer science department. There's a lot of early stage startup activity up here. We have some great VCs like FUSE to help keep the environment going as well as a history based on aerospace with companies like Boeing, we have a lot of great mechanical and electrical engineering up here also. So really the Pacific Northwest I think helps us quite a bit with finding the right people. And then just generally, the way that we build companies, the way that we build quality companies is focusing on the right people, giving them the freedom to use their skillset to the best of their abilities, as opposed to a bigger, more regimented company where somebody's filling a specific role. So part of our competitive advantage is finding good people and giving them a bunch of leeway and freedom to do the right thing.

Sara:

Certainly. Well we think that there's no better team out there to tackle this problem than the team you've assembled. So I'm curious, just off the top of your head, what is one word that you would use to describe the culture at Carbon Robotics?

Paul: 

Well I don't really have one word, but I'll give you three.

Sara:

We'll take them.

Paul: 

We lean a lot more towards "a bias towards action".

Sara:

Yeah.

Paul: 

So you always wind up in these scenarios where it's hard to make a decision on what needs to happen. And we'd much prefer to have a decision be made and run with it and then figure out you're wrong then get stuck and stymied trying to overanalyze. So we definitely have bias towards action I think is one of our primary team ethos.

Sara:

And it actually leads well into the next question I was going to ask you, which is just about the startup journey at large. And Paul, this certainly is not your first rodeo and being the leader of a company and starting something new is hard work. It comes with its own set of challenges. So what keeps you going? Have you ever had moments where, "Gosh, should I just throw in the towel?" What's really kept you going all along?

Paul: 

I don't really ever consider throwing in the towel.

Sara:

I figured that.

Paul: 

Once you find the customers and you realize that you have the technique and the technology, it's really about making it to the point that you can bring technology to market. So I'll tell you about some of the challenges. We started this journey by building just enough of the technology to prove it would work and that it was viable. So then it's a race between building the team and building your technology. And you get to the point where it becomes a three horse race where it's team, technology and then customers. And so at any given time, some of those are out in front of the others. And when we transitioned from just team and technology towards learning how to do sales in this environment, agriculture, which is different than what I had been focusing on before, that was some of the most challenging work we had to do to really understand how to go through a discovery and sales process with a farmer or somebody in agriculture. It was much different than what you might see in something like IT, as you can imagine. So that was a definite discovery process for us, and some of our most I would say challenging learning and deep and also difficult learning. I think we're over the hump on that now. Our demand has outstripped our capacity by quite a bit. We're having to build up as much capacity as we can for the future. But that was one of our most bumpy times.

Sara:

Uh, huh. That makes sense. And I think something that you touched on, but really is probably a driving factor and especially in the technology you're building now is actually, yeah, being on the farm and seeing probably the reaction of these farmers when oh my gosh, this technology is just going to change the entire way we think about feeding the world.

Paul: 

Sure. And I thought, and a lot of people do from tech, they assume that the farmers view us as these computer people who knew nothing about farming or hardware, those kinds of things. But that actually turned out not to be the case. The farmers in large were very welcoming and very I would say appreciative of our efforts to spend the time and really focus on these kinds of problems.

Sara:

Yeah.

Paul: 

And also, once they saw us doing these long hours in the fields along with them, I think they also understood the degree to which we take this very seriously and focus very heavily on providing this value towards these farmers. So I think farmers are a lot more innovative than folks from traditional tech areas might think.

Sara:

Oh, certainly. And it helps having boots on the ground saying, "This person actually gets it and understands what I'm building here."

Paul: 

Yeah, definitely.

Sara:

Yeah, your team certainly proved that. So in closing here, one final question for you, what would you say right now that you need more of? How can listeners help or get involved?

Paul: 

For us, it seems like everybody knows somebody who's got a farm and this is illuminating for me also. So ideas, referrals, pointing folks at us, giving us intros is always helpful, as well as folks who are interested in helping us build the product, electrical engineers, software engineers, mechanical engineers, folks in sales who want to try a new challenge. The most important thing for us is hiring. And then also, just generally I think the Pacific Northwest generally needs more good VCs like FUSE.

Sara:

Yeah. That's great. Thanks, Paul. Well we are so grateful to be a part of this journey as you go on to build a world class company and, yeah, change the way we grow our food and think about how our food is made and gets on the shelves.

Paul: 

Yeah.

Sara:

So I appreciate you taking the time.

Paul: 

You bet.

Sara:

We'll certainly point people to the Carbon website or LinkedIn - best place to find job postings?

Paul: 

Yeah. LinkedIn, definitely. We all also have our jobs on our careers page which you can find at carbonrobotics.com. We're hiring as fast as we can.

Sara:

Well great opportunity to jump on a fast moving horse and work for a great leader.

Paul 

Thanks.

Sara:

Thanks so much, Paul, I really appreciate you taking the time.

Paul:

You bet.

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Sara:

Thanks for joining in on today's conversation with Paul. Be sure to check out Carbon Robotics job postings on LinkedIn or directly on their careers page on their website. You can always go through the FUSE website as well via our careers page or directly in the Carbon Robotics feature on the portfolio page. Thanks for joining us. See you on the next one.