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What I really don't understand is why business owners don't try to use people for the initial scaling attempt. Very good advice. For example just a few years

What I really don't understand is why business owners don't try to use people for the initial scaling attempt. Very good advice. For example just a few years ago there was a startup, Zume[1], that was trying to cook pizzas in vans, en route to customers. When they had problems with that, they pivoted to a commercial kitchen type flow for making the pizzas. As part of that flow, they tried to design some Rube Goldberg robot like device that shifted a partially prepared pizza 90° between two pieces of equipment. But they were a startup with very little revenue. Why invest in expensive equipment that sits idle 99% of the time? Why not hire local teenagers for the initial production? It's not hard to train people to move pizzas between pieces of equipment! Too much dumb VC money sloshing around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zume https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zume

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
I’m guessing turnover in a pizzeria is very high. Robots don’t quit or show up late or get sick. But yeah, you have a great point.
- bsder 6y ago
  Then double their salary and suddenly you will have people who want to show up for work. You can pay a lot of $20 per hour while working out your bugs before a $50,000 robot would have been cheaper. And, in the meantime, you are still making money. Cash flow is good.
  - PhantomGremlin 6y ago
    If anyone is interested, I tracked down the video where the ABB robot arm moves the pizza about 2 ft between stations. It's a short video, just over 1 min, but you will have to sit thru an ad: https://mashable.com/2018/04/25/zume-pizza-robot-delivery-trucks/ https://mashable.com/2018/04/25/zume-pizza-robot-delivery-tr... It's no coincidence that the Zume Wikipedia page says "Zume announced that it was ending pizza production". Edit: found somewhere a headline which explains the source of the dumb money financing Zume. Now it all makes sense: Softbank-backed Zume to shutter robotic pizza business

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

I’m guessing turnover in a pizzeria is very high. Robots don’t quit or show up late or get sick. But yeah, you have a great point.

bsder 6y ago
Then double their salary and suddenly you will have people who want to show up for work. You can pay a lot of $20 per hour while working out your bugs before a $50,000 robot would have been cheaper. And, in the meantime, you are still making money. Cash flow is good.
- PhantomGremlin 6y ago
  If anyone is interested, I tracked down the video where the ABB robot arm moves the pizza about 2 ft between stations. It's a short video, just over 1 min, but you will have to sit thru an ad: https://mashable.com/2018/04/25/zume-pizza-robot-delivery-trucks/ https://mashable.com/2018/04/25/zume-pizza-robot-delivery-tr... It's no coincidence that the Zume Wikipedia page says "Zume announced that it was ending pizza production". Edit: found somewhere a headline which explains the source of the dumb money financing Zume. Now it all makes sense: Softbank-backed Zume to shutter robotic pizza business