Programs Special One-Day Events

Thursday September 15th | 6:30 - 7:30pm | Venture Cafe, One Broadway, Cambridge, MA (map)

TCN UpStart Roundtables are monthly gatherings at the Venture Cafe that bring together Boston-area early-stage startups and seasoned entrepreneurs. This free series with The Capital Network, Venture Cafe, and Silicon Valley Bank is a great opportunity for you to ask burning questions about starting a company and meet other like-minded entrepreneurs in a casual cafe setting.

Joe’s passion is to create practical robots. Robots that interest him are machines that do work people want done at a price people are willing to pay. A pioneer in the field, Joe was IRobot’s 1st full-time hire back in 1992, as their Senior Roboticist and is the co-inventor of the Roomba Vacumming Robot. After 14 years at IRobot Joe went on to co-found Harvest Automation, a company focused on creating mobile robots for industrial productivity in agriculture. Joe’s current venture is Franklin Robotics, a mobile robot used for gardening by consumers themselves.
“An area of acute need where practical robots could provide great benefit is agriculture. To feed the growing world population, food production must be expanded quickly and substantially. At Harvest Automation we adopted a top-down approach to the problem—there I worked to create robots for commercial agriculture.” At my new venture, Franklin Robotics, we follow a bottom-up strategy developing robots for gardening. In a few years we will, hopefully, meet in the middle.”

Pete is the Relationship Manager the Emerging Technology Practice at Silicon Valley Bank.
Pete has over 20 years of experience working with startups and works primarily with early stage Technology and Life Science companies. Pete moderates The Capital Network’s Upstart program which is a series of fireside chats with entrepreneurs held at the Venture Cafe (CIC Cambridge) once a month.