In each of our podcasts, we ask top hardware entrepreneurs the same 10 questions to better understand the challenges and best practices in starting a hardware company. In Season 3 Episode 7, Lemnos’s Eric Klein speaks with Linda Pouliot, co-founder and CEO of Dishcraft Robotics, a Lemnos portfolio company. Dishcraft is revolutionizing commercial kitchens with robotics, computer vision, machine learning, and innovative design.

I am driven by two different things: I love applying a technology to a problem, and I really love making life better for humans. When I was a kid, I had to do housework. That was one of the tasks that my mother gave me. So when I was an adult and I realized you could use technology to solve vacuuming in this instant that was the thesis behind starting my first company—to make my life better and other humans better. When I started Dishcraft, it was pretty similar, there was someone from the restaurant industry that came to me and said, “I have 22 restaurants, I’m really worried about our labor staffing problem and I’m also really concerned about costs because minimum wage in California is increasing in 2020. Can you use robotics to solve some of the problems for my company?” I was interested enough that I put myself to work in a restaurant because I wanted to experience the problem myself. Then I realized technology could solve some of these issues, and we can make the staff and the workplace better. So it was the perfect calling to the things that really drive me.

My degree is in fine arts. I was a painter, but my first job was as an art director for a manufacturer. I loved seeing how things got made. Then I came to Silicon Valley 14 years ago, and met someone who said I’m going to build a robotics company. I had never had any experience in robotics, but I loved solving problems. This is the classic Silicon Valley story—how you can start as an artist and end up being a CEO of a hardware company.

I was not from the restaurant industry, so we started by analyzing hundreds of hours of time motion studies to see what’s happening today in kitchens and where can we provide the most value. We asked certain questions. What roles are the hardest to fill? Where do operators need the most efficiency? Where could you improve safety and workers comp issues? What equipment exists today and where are opportunities to upgraded or improve it? Are there opportunities perhaps to create something more sustainable? We looked at all this and we looked for the most labor intensive repetitive task that would provide the most value for the kitchen. I can’t discuss yet what we’re building, but stay tuned for that.

I think mentorship is a two-way street, and you’re both looking to learn from each other. I think specific to Dishcraft because it was hardware and in the commercial kitchen industry, we needed to hit the ground running with people who really understood both those spaces. In terms of hardware, I reached back to a lot of people that I had worked with before. So for example, when I started Neato, Giacomo Marini became our first investor and board member, and is a great mentor to me because he had done many of the same things we were trying to do at Neato, and also today at Dishcraft. He had introduced the mouse to the United States, so he knew how difficult it is to create something new