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 2 Episode 10, Lemnos’s Eric Klein speaks with Matt Delaney, co founder and CEO; Kevin Peterson, co-founder and software lead; and Jason Calaiaro, co-founder and hardware lead at Marble, a Lemnos portfolio company. Marble is creating a fleet of intelligent courier robots to reliably and securely transport goods people need and want.

Matt Delaney: It wasn’t about hardware. It was about robotics. It was about realizing that robotics is finally taking off and the ability to actually start a company to build robots that solve real problems. Now we live in a world where all these trends have converged to make building complex, mobile robots that can solve interesting tasks for humanity.

Jason Calaiaro: When I was 12, I built a Roomba before there was a Roomba out of a Lego Mindstorms kit. That was really fun. I think that was my first experience in robotics.

Matt Delaney: Yeah, did the same kind of thing. Mindstorms kit, built an electric fish food feeder thing, so my grandparents didn’t have to come over and feed the fish while I was on a vacation. Modding my go-karts and go-peds.

Kevin Peterson: I built hardware for a long time. My dad is a physicist, so I used to work on his telescopes. In high school I built boards, amplifiers, and stuff like that for his telescopes. Then when I got into college it was mostly computer-vision, but making RC cars drive on their own. That transitioned to building self-driving cars for Carnegie Mellon University, and from there, spaceships with Jason.

Kevin Peterson: Marble started out originally looking at hotel robots. That quickly changed to looking at delivery, and we’ve gone through a bunch of different concepts there. I think it’s important to note that it’s a process of discovery. You don’t know perfectly when you start what the outcome’s going to be.

Kevin Peterson: You should talk to as many people as you possibly can, but at the end of the day, you have to make your own decision. In terms of picking the right people, always talk to the best people you can possibly talk to. Run with the most awesome crowd you can. Over time that’s going to be where you find your co-founders, it’s going to be where you find your mentors. If you’re doing interesting things, people will come to you.

Kevin Peterson: We needed to build stuff, we needed hardware incubators, and we wanted to have a network of people around that had done this before. Just seeing the space, raw and open, and everyone moving fast and some of the conversations that we had, it felt like this is a place where we could really get moving fast on building the company. Looking back, having the support in the beginning is just incredibly important out the gate. Then also having that network of people all solving similar things around you. It’s just so valuable because you can just save so much time by talking to people who have actually dealt