Felipe Chavez, Kiwibot | Building Robots Out of LatAm, Moving to Silicon Valley With Nothing, and Raising Without Contacts

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Felipe Chavez moved to the US with no contacts and without English, with the goal of raising capital to develop robots from Colombia.

Today, Felipe is CEO of Kiwibot, a delivery startup that works through robots and has the mission of “showing the world that robots are good”.

In this episode we talk about:

How the Kiwibot idea comes about and the conviction to develop robots from Latin America.
The challenges of moving to Silicon Valley, building a network of contacts from scratch, and raising capital in a competitive market,

Felipe also told us how he managed to convince the University of California to invest in Kiwibot, despite not being a student there.

Youtube Timestamps*

[1:22] - Intro to Kiwibot

How did he arrive at the fascinating world of startups?
What is the background of the Kiwibot idea, and where does the conviction come from that you could create a robotics company from Colombia for the world?
What was the most formative event in Felipe’s childhood that he believes has shaped who he is today as a founder?

Felipe moves to the US because of the difficulty of obtaining resources to finance Kiwibot in Latin America. In the process he received incredulous comments about building hardware from Latin America.

How does he overcome those limiting beliefs? And more importantly, how has he passed that on to your team?

Kiwibot’s mission of “showing the world that robots are good and will allow us to live in a better world” is one of the most beautiful and futuristic I have heard from a startup.

Was that his mission from the beginning, or was it more a result of the process of building his company?

[14:00] - How to Connect and Raise Capital in Silicon Valley

Felipe moved to Silicon Valley with limited English and with a tourist visa.

What went through his head when he made that decision?
What would Felipe recommend that someone thinking of moving to the US to build a company should evaluate?
What things worked best for him to build his network of contacts from scratch in Silicon Valley?

When meeting new people who can be important contacts:

What has Felipe learned about how to ask for help effectively?

Felipe closed Kiwibot’s first investment round in 3 weeks, without a prior network of contacts or experience raising capital.

What are his secrets for raising capital?

Felipe’s first investor was the university of California Berkeley

How did he manage to convince the University of California to invest?
What have been the hardest challenges of raising capital for a hardware company, being a foreigner and without the competition’s resources?
What is your relationship with the competition? Do you follow it closely, ignore it… what is the right mindset in your opinion?

Felipe mentioned in an interview, “everyone talks about unicorns, we are a cockroach”.

How can you keep that “cockroach” culture as the company does well and obtains more resources?

[36:03] - How to Build in Hardware

In hardware, it is more costly to get feedback and validate the market, unlike software, where it is a matter of changing lines of code.

What has Felipe learned about how to make MVPs and validate the market in hardware?
How do you think about what to build yourself, versus buying from other hardware suppliers?

From 2017 to 2019, there was a boom in drone startups. But it was a market that quickly became commoditized, and these startups were forced to charge their customers very little.

What lessons has Felipe taken about how to choose the best business model for hardware?

Many founders building hardware look for Felipe to ask him for advice.

What other pieces of advice does he most often hear himself giving them?

[52:27] Rapid-Fire Round

If Felipe looks 10 years into the future, what is the most extraordinary vision of Kiwibot?
What has been the most influential book on his path through the world of startups?
What would he like to change about the world of startups in Latin America?