AngelList Weekly - Robots are coming to deliver your food

Pandemic increases adoption of delivery robots

A mysterious service called TacoCopter appeared in 2012. Its offer to Bay Area residents: press a button on your phone, and a flying robot will deliver you a fresh taco.

The internet went wild. Every major tech blog covered it. There were technical feasibility posts. A competing service called UberTaco launched. We wanted to believe.

It’s 2020 now, and the future is here. Meet your delivery bots:

From left to right: Starship Technologies’ robot, Postmates’ Serve, and Refraction AI’s REV-1

Okay, so they don’t fly, and they look like driving boxes. But all of these robots are real and already making deliveries.

Starship Technologies. With its stormtrooper-like delivery bot, Starship Technologies, created by the founders of Skype, will expand to over 100 university campuses by the end of the year.

Postmates. Named Serve, these autonomous strollers look like a cross between an icebox and a Minion. They’ve already been sighted around San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Refraction AI. The REV-1 is already delivering food around Ann Arbor, Michigan. According to Axios, Refraction AI was struggling pre-COVID. They’re now dealing with a surge of demand from restaurants.

Why don’t any of the delivery bots fly? Technological complexity, for one. Safety, for another. Regulation as well; it’s illegal to fly a drone around most cities because of air rights.

But regardless, autonomous delivery is here to stay with COVID-19 accelerating its spread across the world.

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Brianne Kimmel, Managing Partner at Work Life Ventures, says six types of builders will thrive in the post-pandemic world:

* The designers who code
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Drift CEO David Cancel provides advice from his experiences running companies in downturns:

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The long-term implications of extended work from home

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Many companies are not going to return to pre-COVID-19 work patterns. Here are a few of the long-term implications:

People are not going to return to offices five days a week, which will crush commercial real estate and adjacent businesses.
A competitive flattening curve for jobs, opening opportunities globally.
A shift toward more structured work processes and documentation, so that it can be done effectively from anywhere.
Changing patterns of access to talent and job standardization will lower wages, making firms more profitable.

The 5 skills needed to move fast in the new world

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Career coach Michael Thompson shares skills to double-down on while you stay at home

Focus on being the most empathetic person in the room
Become a master at building online relationships
Improve your writing skills
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Sentry - Monitoring tool for software teams to prioritize errors. Explore 10 jobs.

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Chapter - Personalized retirement solutions. Hiring engineers.

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Funding and Acquisitions

Commission-free stock trading app Robinhood announced that it raised $280 million in Series F funding at around $8 billion valuation. The funding comes at a time when Robinhood is seeing a spike of new customers and trading activity during the pandemic. It added 3 million funded accounts since the start of the year and trading volumes are up 3x since Q4 last year.

Intel has bought Israeli public transit app maker Moovit for about $900 million. The acquisition will help Mobileye, Intel's automated driving subsidiary, expand from self-driving vehicles and automated fleets to on-demand robo-taxi services.

Interface design startup Figma has raised $50 million in Series D funding at a $2 billion valuation. Figma is among a cohort of work collaboration tools to benefit from the shift to work-from-home amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mobile app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which provides data-driven insights about the app economy, has raised $45 million in new funding. As reliable app data becomes increasingly critical for any brand strategy, demand for app intelligence firms like Sensor Tower has been high.

Mojo Vision announced it has raised more than $51 million to propel the development of the first true smart contact lens called Mojo Lens. During the annual CES event this January, Mojo Vision showed off a prototype allowing people to see text, sports scores, weather and other information in a lens held just in front of their eye.

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AngelList Weekly - Robots are coming to deliver your food

Pandemic increases adoption of delivery robots

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Hot startups hiring now 🔥

Funding and Acquisitions

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