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Although the market is growing, making robots is hard. In Silicon Valley, venture capitalists like to say software is easy, hardware is hard, and robots are the hardest of all. This is because they require so many different disciplines to build, from mastering the complexities of hardware and movement to develop sophisticated AI. Most startups don’t have the resources or expertise to take on all of these once. Even more challenging than building the robots is building a viable business. Robotics isn’t like software. It’s a costly and difficult business to scale.
Take Beam, the telepresence robot. It looks like a giant iPad on wheels. It can scoot about an office and allow anyone to interact with it or someone else in a remote location. We had several Beam robots at our coworking space, and although they were useful on occasion, it was hard to justify the cost when compared to a $50 webcam. This is one reason Suitable Technologies, the startup that created the Beam robot, ran into trouble.
Scott Moorehead suffered a traumatic brain injury when fell in the driveway, while teaching his 6-year-old son how to skateboard. He recovered from the internal bleeding and concussion but never regained his smell. The connection between the olfactory nerves in his nose and his brain had been severed.
“Until you can’t smell at all you have no idea how emotional the experience can be,” said Moorehead, who fell into a deep depression. “You start to think about these really awful things, like, someday my daughter is going to get married and I’m going to walk her down the aisle and I’m going to give her a big hug, and I’m going to have no idea what she smelled like.”
Mark has been a Mentor with Founders Space since 2015. Mark mentors start-up companies at all levels – from inception to market, and beyond. Mark has met with hundreds of companies during the past five years – helping them prepare pitches and presentations; with understanding the opportunity in respective markets and positioning as such; creating and/or revising targeted plans, providing creative direction/ideas, and much more. If you were to come to one of our mentoring days, you might see teams waiting (sometimes hovering around) to meet with him. On the days Mark is mentoring, it is not unusual for him to spend entire days at Founders Space, having follow up meetings with the companies he had met with prior, that same day. For the companies he has felt were/are on the right track i.e. product/service, team, structure, culture, maturity, passion, etc., he has agreed to join on respective advisory boards. When Mark joins a company as an advisor/mentor, he provides a valuable insight that can help take that company to a new level.
Mark’s entrepreneurial experience extends over 20 years – from Founder to advisory positions, and everything in between. His focus is primarily on consumer related products and services. He has served as Founder/CEO, General Manager, Business Development Head; VP Sales & Marketing; Creative Director, COO, etc. in ventures relating to sports programming, video/streaming technology and content, sports nutrition, events, entertainment, app technology, efficiency products and services, and toys & games. Prior to engaging as an entrepreneur, Mark was an advertising agency executive and manager. He is currently working in financial services as a financial advisor.
Education: Mark is a graduate of UCLA, where he received his BA in Economics.
