Steven King, CEO and co-founder of Blue Sky Robotics, joins me to talk about building a computer vision company that has pivoted twice in three years, from metaverse avatars to warehouse robotics to hospital automation. Steven, a longtime UNC professor, explains how a side project meant to capture realistic 3D avatars for the metaverse turned into a vision system for robotic arms, and how a client's ambitious accuracy target forced his engineering team to rebuild the company's core technology from scratch. That rebuild became the foundation for Blue Sky's current focus: helping hospitals like UNC Health and Mayo Clinic catch operational errors, from mislabeled dining trays to missing surgical instruments, before they become patient safety issues.

Along the way, we cover why the company built its early customer base on paying clients instead of venture capital, how real-world data has become Blue Sky's biggest competitive advantage over synthetic simulation, and why the team turned down deals that wouldn't scale even when it hurt short-term revenue. Steven also shares candid lessons on choosing a co-founder and staying flexible enough to let a company's direction change completely without losing its footing.

It's a grounded, detail-rich conversation about building a hard-tech company in North Carolina, with real numbers on accuracy, team growth, and what's coming next.

Timestamps
00:02 Cold open and sponsor thanks
01:34 Scot's preview: meet Steven King and Blue Sky Robotics
03:34 Welcome Steven King to the show
04:29 Life before Blue Sky Robotics
05:41 15 years at UNC: from photojournalism to computer vision
06:34 The Washington Post years and the trip to Liverpool
08:15 The spark: from innovation lab to startup
08:48 First idea: volumetric capture for the metaverse
09:45 The pivot: turning the camera outward for robots
10:25 Founding day and the first client
12:04 Bootstrapping with paying clients instead of VC
12:42 The 99.5% accuracy bet on fishing tackle
16:01 Edge inference with NVIDIA Jetson
18:18 Why fishing tackle data transfers to surgical tools
21:03 Saying no to deals that won't scale
23:07 Inside the use case: dining trays and dietary errors
24:45 Solving the 20% of surgeries that start unprepared
26:08 Building the "IoT toaster" for hospitals
27:00 UNC Health and Mayo Clinic partnerships
32:39 A 16-person team built on Triangle universities
34:00 What's next: raising capital and scaling to more hospitals
34:52 Founder lessons: pivots, pride, and picking a co-founder
35:40 Credits and sign-off

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Where to Find Steven King:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-king-b93885b/
Blue Sky Robotics: https://www.blueskyrobotics.ai/

Where to Find Scot Wingo:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
X: https://x.com/scotwingo

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This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

Platinum:
NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

Gold Sponsors:
- Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
- EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
- Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

Silver Sponsors:
- Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
- Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html

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Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

• Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/