Las Vegas Sun - Startups finding success with boost from Vegas Tech Fund
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Las Vegas Sun
Business:
Startups finding success with
boost from Vegas Tech Fund
By Joe Schoenmann (contact)
Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 | 2 a.m.
Call it the little robot that could — with a little help from its friends.
Romo, a plastic robot on rubber treads operated remotely with a smartphone, is leading its young
developers into new territory, not only for them but for almost any Las Vegas-based business.
Place your smartphone into a jack on top of Romo, and with another smartphone or computer, you
can remotely move the robot — even if it's halfway around the world. So, a grandma in Las Vegas
could operate a Romo being played with by her granddaughter in China. The granddaughter, in turn,
would see grandma's face and hear her voice; grandma would see whatever Romo sees.
Weeks ago, Romotive, which makes the device, announced it had obtained a $5 million investment
from Sequoia Capital and others. Now Romotive is in the process of getting the robots manufactured
in China.
From selling a few hundred robots a year ago and employing a handful of people, the company now
employs 18 in Las Vegas, and the plant in Shenzhen, China, will crank out 4,000 to 8,000 Romos per
week, CEO Keller Rinaudo said.
“We’ve increased by a factor of six from a year ago,” he said.
Rinaudo gives much credit to Vegas Tech Fund, which a year ago invested $500,000, the fund’s
maximum, in Romotive. It wasn’t just the money that helped, Rinaudo said; it was partners Tony
Hsieh and Fred Mossler taking the time to “help us understand where we want to take it and what we
want to do with the company.”
Hsieh also found the early company employees a place to stay in the Ogden. Now the company’s
employees occupy 10 apartments in the Ogden, Rinaudo said.
In typical Hsieh fashion, he deflected all credit, even though the fund’s original investment in
Romotive is worth many times its original amount on paper.
More than this single investment, though, Vegas Tech Fund is quietly becoming one of the
foundations upon which several tech startup companies are building their base of operations and
planting roots in Las Vegas.
Hsieh said the fund is just one more way “to accelerate the tech startup ecosystem in downtown.”
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