1. Ahti Heinla
CEO, CTO – Starship Technologies
Stanford Engineering – Jan 29 2018

2. 3rd Century BC
Automated transport of water
19th Century
Automated transport of energy
20th Century
Automated transport of information
21st Century
Automated transport of matter

3. ROBOTS ARE PRACTICAL, NOW!
Starship robots are entering widespread usage…
l ..before flying cars
l ..before self-driving cars
l ..before aerial delivery drones
..and at lower delivery costs than any of these.
Starship is doing commercial deliveries every day in 10 cities:
l US: Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Concord/Walnut Creek,
Washington, DC
l Europe: London, Milton Keynes, Hamburg, Zürich, Tallinn

4. THE FOUNDERS
Ahti Heinla
Founding engineer, Chief Technical
Architect of Skype, KaZaA
Janus Friis
Co-founder of Skype and KaZaA

5. FIRST, WE NEED TO BUILD A ROBOT.
Tallinn, Estonia, July 2014
Photo by Wikipedia user @khora, CC BY-SA

6. 2014

7. 2015

8. 2015

9. 2016

10. HOW DOES THE ROBOT WORK?
Uses sidewalks and public spaces
Drives at pedestrian speeds, max 4 mph
Equipped with cameras and other sensors
Can intelligently react to pedestrians, obstacles and traffic
situations
Sometimes helped by human operators sitting in control centers
Inherently safe for collisions
Consumers unlock the robot using their phones

11. ROBOVAN
Cooperation between Starship and Mercedes-Benz Vans

13. >15 million people have seen
our robots
80% of them do not react
No robot has been stolen
LEARNINGS ON SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE

14. REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT
Regulators are racing to clarify
legal status of sidewalk robots

15. You do not start a revolution by building a prototype.
You start a revolution by deploying a practical service at scale.
2016 – 2018:
l Safety research
l Ease of deployment
l Urban planning
l Huge amounts of real-world testing
l User experience & delight
FROM PROTOTYPE TO PRACTICAL SERVICE
l Battery charging
l Unit economics optimization
l Standard Operating Procedures
l Certifications (FCC, ISO safety etc)
l Logistics optimization

16. $20M+ in funding, from:
Daimler AG
Shasta Ventures
Matrix Partners
Morpheus Ventures
Grishin Robotics
ZX Ventures
Playfair Capital
Swiss Post
HOF Capital
FUNDING