What if the robots are already there — but nobody can get them to actually work, inexpensively and at scale?

In this episode, Ashish Kapoor, founder of General Robotics and former head of the Microsoft Research robotics initiative, discuss how General Robotics is powering the usefulness of robots, immediately and at scale. Ashish has spent his career at the intersection of frontier AI and real-world deployment — and what he found when he surveyed the enterprise robotics landscape was startling: out of 150 large enterprises he spoke with, each having spent north of $100 million on robotic equipment, zero were in production deployment.

The problem isn't the hardware. It's the intelligence layer. General Robotics is building what General Robotics calls the Intelligence Grid — an AI platform that plugs into existing robots across 40+ OEMs, giving them the ability to adapt to unstructured environments, manipulate objects, and navigate dynamic spaces. A power grid, but for robot intelligence.

Ashish walks through his unusual journey, dreaming of being and Indian Air Force pilot, arriving at MIT a quarter century ago where machine learning was everywhere, to flying his own kit airplane, to 18 years at Microsoft Research learning how to take frontier science to commercial scale.

He founded General Robotics in 2023 and now has a 25-person team — 19 of them world-class roboticists — and has already signed approximately 10 large enterprise customers across manufacturing, defense, and logistics, with a target of 100 in the next 12 to 18 months.

"Access to capital is easy. Access to folks (E14) who can really help you is very hard. Optimize for the second, and the capital will come automatically."

"Curiosity, integrity, drive. If I find someone who excels in all three, I would hire them right away. Skills can be taught — but those three things are harder to find."

Key themes in this episode:

- The Intelligence Grid: why robots need an AI power grid, not just better brains

- The deployment gap: $100M+ in idle robots and why zero enterprises are in production

- Research to reality: bridging frontier science and operational deployment

- Hiring for character: curiosity, integrity, and drive over pure technical skill

- Smart capital: VCs as partners — access to customers and talent matters more than money

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What does it take to build a global fintech platform from a small Greek city — and end up powering banks and fintechs across Europe and the Middle East?

Enter Natech, headquartered in Ioannina, Greece. Founded in 2003, Natech builds core banking systems, digital channels, and regulatory technology for financial institutions — primarily smaller, agile banks that need to move fast. Their front-to-back platform deploys in 90 days, future-proofing banks so they can focus on what they do best: serving their clients.

Thanasis shares the full story — from bootstrapped beginnings with personal capital and zero VC ecosystem in Greece, to $35M raised, $11.5M in 2025 revenue, and a bold target of $18M in 2026. With ~200 people across 6 countries, Natech has quietly become a serious global player.

A centerpiece of the conversation is Snappi — Natech's neobank joint venture with Piraeus Bank, one of Greece's largest financial institutions. The story of how a 50-person startup convinced a banking giant to co-found a digital bank is a masterclass in trust, speed, and commitment. Snappi has already onboarded 75,000 customers in under six months, targeting 300,000 by year end, and is now AI-first.

Thanasis also reflects on the culture that built Natech — forged in part by Greece's financial crisis, and defined by a simple but powerful mantra:

"Please test your ideas. You may think better than everybody else. Don't be afraid."

And his advice to any founder starting out?

"Never settle, never be afraid. It will be a really bumpy road."

Key themes in this episode:

• Building a global fintech from a peripheral city — and making it a competitive advantage
• The 'future-proof' value proposition: why banks can't just build once
• How trust closed the Snappi deal
• Culture born from crisis — adversity as competitive DNA
• Bootstrapping for 17 years before raising outside capital

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Jay Rogers is a serial entrepreneur who doesn't just learn from failure — he codifies it. His previous venture, Local Motors, 3D printed autonomous vehicles and deployed 150 of them across 29 cities and three continents. The technology worked. The pricing worked. They raised $100 mm or so in capital. Regulation slowed everything down and they never learned how to sell.

The company failed as an investment, but the genetics survived.

Between Local Motors and Haddy, Jay sat down and wrote out his critical lessons: stay out of highly regulated industries, make products with few components you can build entirely under one roof, and — here's the subtle one — choose assets that are financeable. He wanted a robot he could pay for with an SBA loan, not venture equity. That distinction between capital-intensive and equity-intensive is one of the sharpest insights in this conversation (disclosure: I am an investor in Haddy).

What emerged is Haddy — a 3D printing "world builder" running a robotic micro factory in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. Furniture, boats, molds, lighting, architectural elements, defense products. Jay went from Princeton to manufacturing in China to banking to dropping out of Stanford to join the Marines for seven years — and every chapter shows up in how he leads Haddy today, including a Marine-bred commitment to vulnerability that might surprise you.

Favorite Quotes

– "We've orphaned an enormous amount of tribal knowledge — how to mine, how to forge, how to do tool and die. America has lost a lot of making capability. That's what Haddy is here to address."

– "Double, double, double to me is sluggish."

– "It's a capital-intensive business, but don't hear that it's an equity-intensive business. Those things are often confused. We're a capital-efficient, capital-intensive business — and that's a deliberate choice."

– "With Local Motors, I went out with a technology and built ahead of the market — and we were early. With Haddy, I got an order from a furniture company before I raised a dollar for the business."

– "Vulnerability is being willing to get curious. Are you willing to shut up and listen? That vulnerability is worth its weight in gold."

Key Themes

Reshoring manufacturing through robotic micro factories

• Haddy is rebuilding the "tribal knowledge" America lost over two decades of offshoring, using 3D printing and robots instead of scarce skilled labor
• Failure as a design document — Extract lessons from failure and hardcode them into a new business model, from avoiding regulated industries to choosing financeable assets
• Capital-efficient, not equity-intensive — a deliberate distinction that shapes everything from equipment choices to fundraising strategy, using SBA loans and debt rather than dilutive venture capital
• Customer before capital — Jay secured a furniture order before raising a single dollar, reversing the Local Motors approach of building ahead of the market
• Vulnerability as leadership — learned in the Marines, refined in business, Jay argues that shutting up, listening, and admitting mistakes creates stronger teams and better customer relationships