Outlander Spring Showcase Roster
Posted by: Paige Craig
Posted on 03/20/2024
Posted by: Paige Craig
Posted on 03/20/2024
For 14+ years, we’ve invested in unicorns like Lyft, Wish, Gusto, and Scale at the earliest stages. Watch our April 4th Outlander Spring Showcase to meet 5 of our current early-stage portfolio companies: Crow Industries, HavocAI, Lula Convenience, Skyways, and Tryby!
Here’s an overview the lineup:
🎯 autonomy, ML/AI, robotics 📍 Scottsdale, Arizona
🎙 James Crowell, CEO + Founder 📧 info@crowindustriesinc.com
Crow Industries (CI) is a full-stack autonomy startup focused on developing cognitive heavy equipment for the mining industry.
The mining industry is experiencing major production shortages due to a growing labor crisis, precisely when production of critical minerals must dramatically increase to keep pace with the Clean Energy Transition. CI is working to close this labor gap by creating fully autonomous fleets for mine operators that go far beyond the automated equipment utilized today. Rather than one person operating one machine, CI’s solution will allow one person to supervise hundreds of machines at multiple sites, monitoring for problems that may arise in real time. The company successfully completed the Techstars Industries of the Future accelerator last summer, Outlander VC led their PreSeed in the Fall, and Winklevoss Capital joined the round soon after.
Best Outlander VC value-add: Working closely with the Outlander team to optimize our internal business structure and push closer to solving customer problems in the market has been invaluable.
Best advice from Team Outlander: Too many to count! One that stands out is to be relentless in pursuing customer solutions while demonstrating outsized value-add.
🎯 maritime autonomy, USVs, attritible 📍 Providence, RI
🎙 Timothy Rhatigan, CEO + Co-founder 📧 info@havocai.com
HavocAI is a scalable maritime autonomy startup focused on bringing low-cost, high-rate production sUSVs (small Uncrewed Surface Vessels) to the defense and commercial markets by early 2025.
Leveraging the latest in robotics and controls software and combined with established low-cost, high-volume advanced maritime manufacturing processes, HavocAI, through its proprietary HavocOS and HavocCloud, enables large force autonomous USV operations, built an order of magnitude cheaper per unit and within OSD Replicator’s stated goal of acquiring and operating 1000s of attritible unmanned assets within the next 18-24 months. HavocAI’s mission, shaped by real-world operations in the Black Sea, Red Sea, and growing threat(s) in the Indo-Pacfic, is to prove autonomous maritime operations at scale by the end of 2024 – to both ‘control the chaos and wreak havoc’ on our adversaries.
Best Outlander VC value-add: Outlander VC is the ideal early investor and partner for HavocAI – they understand the importance of moving aggressively, even audaciously, fast to market and have authentically supported our efforts here since our earliest days.
Best advice from Team Outlander: Expect the unexpected and be ever vigilant with early burn because the $$$ will go faster than we think.
🎯 SaaS-enabled marketplace 📍 Philadelphia, PA
🎙 Adit Gupta, Co-founder & CEO 📧 adit@luladelivery.com
Lula Convenience helps retailers through their digital transformation journey. Whether that’s getting a store or chain of stores onto all online delivery, pickup, catering, or helping them launch their own website, Lula is the one-stop shop vertical saas solution trusted by several thousand retail locations across the United States.
Best Outlander VC value-add: Access to an incredible network & candid feedback available 24/7.
Best advice from Team Outlander: It’s vital to keep burn low, and while most founders decide to increase burn, they often forget to cut unhealthy fat – something you need to think about every single day (not once a year).
Skyways is creating a new form of transportation to advance our civilization. Starting with fully autonomous cargo drones sold to DoD and B2B commercial markets, Skyways drones allow transportation of parts to complex or dangerous places. Once we operate for our customers with thousands of aircraft at scale, we will then build a larger aircraft to transport people and address traffic congestion issues. Ultimately, we want to become the world’s largest airline and completely rethink how we move cargo and go places.
Best Outlander VC value-add: Proactive and moves fast when needed.
Best advice from Team Outlander: When in doubt, there’s no doubt — fire people immediately.
Tryby AI is building hyper-realistic, advanced conversational AI for businesses that answer and execute on 100% of calls, 24/7. Today, businesses struggle to maximize revenue from leads and spend hours each week on repetitive responses & actions. We help our customers provide exceptional service to their customers with AI, growing their revenue while saving their teams hours on daily tasks with our conversational AI and AI agents.
Best Outlander VC value-add: Exceptional partners who care for you. Foster growth through the extensive Outlander network and provide insightful feedback throughout the startup journey at any point and time.
Best advice from Team Outlander: Move fast, keep an open mind, and pivot fast if needed. I appreciate not only the advice but also the confidence and support Outlander provides to founders to execute on ambitious, ambiguous, but promising problems and tech.
Paige invests in brilliant founders from across the US, using his Outlander Founder Framework to drive returns in the top 5% of VCs globally.
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