Right, before any of the clever hardware stuff, let me introduce the people. There's four of us. That's the whole company. I reckon you should know our faces before you trust a word we say, so here we are.
Amara started this. She's the founder, twenty-three, mechanical engineer, turned her uni capstone - a robot that keeps its brain in the dock - into an actual company instead of taking the safe grad job. She counts how many weeks of runway we've got left, out loud, which is either reassuring or terrifying depending on the week. What she's scared of getting wrong: leading people older and more experienced than her, and spending the savings she put in on the wrong bet. She'd rather ask a dumb question than fake knowing. I respect that more than I can say.
Priya runs hardware. She'll have three versions of a part on the bench before I've finished my coffee, and she's famous for swapping a twenty-eight dollar sensor for a four dollar one and making it work anyway. What she's scared of getting wrong: the factory. Designing a thing and actually manufacturing a thing are different sports, and she's honest that the second one is her weaker game.
Anjali is the entire software team. One person, whole stack - the robot's code, the dock, the app, the cloud, all of it. She came off a startup that wound down hard and she's rebuilding her energy as she goes. What she's scared of getting wrong: over-promising on timelines because the rest of us got excited. She's the one who gently says "that'll take longer than you think," and she's usually right.
And me - Callum. I do the brand and the community, this blog, the merch, talking to you lot. I grew a robotics channel from zero on honesty, mostly; my most-watched thing ever is a video of a build that failed. What I'm scared of getting wrong: making this sound like me instead of us. The voice belongs to the company, not to my face-cam habit, and I have to keep checking I'm holding that line.
So why show you four faces before we show you the robot?
Because a manifesto is a claim. Four faces is proof. Anyone can write that they'll build in the open. Fewer people will put their actual names on the failures next to the wins. We're going to. Start here, with us, and hold us to it.
See you in the comments, mate.
- Callum