Carla Gómez Cano, Co-founder at THEKER: Theker Robotics’ generalist robots automate any factory task

0:00Hello and welcome back to Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Johnson. Today on the show, we have got an amazing guest, Carla, the co-founder and CEO of one of the most exciting companies coming out of not just Spain, but the whole of Europe. They just raised an insane$85 million Series A round, the largest ever robotics round in Europe. Carla, thank you so much for joining me today. For those who don't know you or don't know what you've built, can you give a super quick intro into yourself and the company?

0:24Carla Gómez Cano:Well, first, thank you so much to having me here today. And yeah, well, basically super fast. What we do is any kind of manual task at the industry, where people is moving things or assembling things, manual task, we build robots to do all these kinds of manual and heterogeneous tasks. So there are like generalistic robots that can handle any kind of task or material. And you've got some robots that are live working away right now. Can you kind of maybe give some examples of what they're doing? For example, we have robots in pure logistics warehouses for moving packages. The package that arrive at your home, we have robots that are capable of handling them, of manipulating them.

1:11Carla Gómez Cano:Also assembling parts, for example, picking two parts and then assembling. also we work a lot with garments so we are able to manipulate to fold the garments all these kind of super dextrose and heterogeneous tasks amazing look you've just announced raising an 85 million series a not less than a year after 18 million dollar spanish seed that was a record-breaking round you've now raised another record-breaking round can you give us a bit of information about that Series A? Who's coming on board and where did it come from? Yeah, this has been an amazing round. And well, we weren't actually fundraising, but for us, the most important part is we need to have the best possible partners with us.

1:59Carla Gómez Cano:So when we met the different partners and investors that are joining right now, we were like, oh my God, we need to have them on board. So let's do And well, the lead of the round is CRB. It's a San Francisco VC firm. The partner is Reed Christian. And we also have all the team involved. And then several other more strategic VCs have joined the round. Like, for example, Samsung, Henkel, the Aglae is the LVMH VC firm, all of them. So we have this combination of like more classic firms with the strategic ones. And that's great. And so the idea of some of the strategic firms is to, I guess, ultimately try and see if they're actually interested because they see the potential of the company and the robotics for their use cases.

2:51Carla Gómez Cano:Yeah, that's it. I mean, what they want is we need to have robots. I mean, this is what they think. and working with us allows them to have all this super close relationship with a robotics company. So we are showing them all the solutions, all the robots that we have. And that's fantastic for both of the parts. And so what changed in the last year? Because, you know, you raised that CFR, I think it was 18 million euros. That was a record-breaking round at the time. And then, like you said, you weren't fundraising. You've now got this amazing roster of investors. I read that it was significantly oversubscribed, preempted.

3:28It's like everything that you could possibly want as a startup raising a Series A. Yeah, maybe. So what happened? What happened in between the seed closing and we getting preempted that got these investors and these strategic investors as well so excited by what you're building?

3:43Carla Gómez Cano:Well, since the beginning, our strategy has been working super close with clients. so we are iterating so fast because we are not doing toys all the robots that we have even the research team we are deploying the robots on the client's facilities we are testing it we are iterating it so we can go really fast on that adding value to the final customer so that's that's the thing that's super interesting so yeah and i read that you don't like you're sort of i don't know if this is fair but you're like anti-pilot right your view is not really on pilots your idea is like get them in the factories get them in the eye value do the work can you talk a bit about that like what's the thinking there yeah I mean our solution is really rational for the clients because we are telling them look this is working with your material send us the samples this is gonna work so once they see that for them is like oh my god we need we need to deploy we to have this solution in our facilities.

4:45Carla Gómez Cano:So that's how we usually work. And that allows us to go really fast and also to add more value in our portfolio solutions. It's amazing. And let's talk a bit about the brand,$85 million, this huge round, Europe's largest robotic Series A. When people think about robotics, people had to guess where the largest robotic Series A was going to come from. They probably would have said maybe like Zurich. or Munich or like, you know, these sort of like deep tech hubs, but it's not. It's come from Barcelona. Yeah. What's it like building a robotics company from Barcelona? Well, that was a hard decision because at the beginning, both my co-founders and me were like, okay, where should we build the company?

5:32Carla Gómez Cano:Because, I mean, okay, let's go to San Francisco, let's go to the States or let's go to Germany, but not here in Barcelona. And our rationale was, what do we need? And the answer is we need talent, we need the ecosystem, and we need resources. So here in Barcelona, we have a lot of talent, and we are able to import this talent to work here. Then we have also this tech ecosystem that's growing a lot every day. And also we have this ability to have investors, to tell investors all around the world to come here, to invest here. So having all these ingredients, we need to build it from here because we have everything that we need.

6:17Carla Gómez Cano:So let's do it. And what about looking forward? So you've raised this money, huge round. You've obviously got a lot of capital now. How are you investing that, spending that? And are you thinking about expansion at all? Yeah, I mean, our objective since the beginning is we need to solve 100 % of physical tasks in the industry. So we have this super career in our minds, and this capital is just accelerating the process to reach our big milestone. So with all this new capital, what we're doing is growing a lot in terms of team, in terms of machinery, because we're doing here our own production. So we're able to produce more robots.

6:58Carla Gómez Cano:We're able to deploy more robots. So all this combination is accelerating us a lot. Yeah, it's phenomenal. Can we talk a bit about the robots themselves? So when you look at people like Figure or Boston Dynamics, Neuro 1X There's like a It seems like there's two things going on You can either be building humanoids So robots are kind of Look and behave a bit like we do Or what you're going to build Which is like reconfigurable So it's a very different bet Which is like Actually can you explain it? Like how different is reconfigurable To the humanoid bet? Yeah if you're But for me, it's important to take into account that we have two gaps.

7:39Carla Gómez Cano:The first gap is the generalist gap, because you need to be able to have a generalistic software and also a generalistic hardware. So, combinating this, you have everything that you need. In our case, what we're doing is both all the software, also all the grippers, the hands of the robot you need to manipulate, and then the arm itself. So that's really important. And then you have the deployments gap, because it's really important to be able to deploy and make useful all your technology. So if you are able to solve these two gaps, you are going to win. And about the form factor, of course, there's a lot of humanoid companies that are building this lookalike person robots.

8:31Carla Gómez Cano:Right now, there are no humanoids robots working at full speed, full requirements in industrial sites, but it will be. So, I mean, what we're constantly thinking is what can kill us. If something can kill us, let's do it. So we have these two teams, the product one, the research one, And we are constantly working on this kind of different form factors of different technologies that allows us to solve the 100 % of the task. So, I mean, we need everything in order to solve this 100%. Yeah, that's really interesting. And yeah, okay. So do you feel like there's a world in which you move towards humanoids if that's the gap?

9:22I mean, yeah.

9:27Carla Gómez Cano:because humanoids right now the problem is that they are weak i mean you cannot be fast you cannot be resilient you you need to have this strong hardware in order to to solve task industrial grade task with humanoids so what we're doing is this to have like all the software but also all the hardware and we are like discovering which is the best form factor for each of the tasks and each of the industries and what are the biggest bottlenecks that you're facing right now is it sort of is it talent i mean it's what if you like the capital is it manufacturing what are the things that are like slowing you down or holding you back today well about the talent i I mean, it's insane the big numbers that we have in terms of applications.

10:20Carla Gómez Cano:Right now we have 15 ,000 applications. So the hiring team is working so hard. And also the acceptance rate of the care is 0.1%. So it's really hard to work here. At the same time, we have a lot of positions regarding to engineering operations, everything. So, I mean, that's great. So that's not a bottleneck. The bottleneck probably is like we are building 10 startups at the same time because we are not just doing the robot part, the software part, but we're doing the hardware, the electronics, the mechanics. Then we have the deployments team who is actually deploying the robots. Then we have the maintenance, the support team, the hotline, then the operations, then the supply chain, then the commercial part.

11:16Carla Gómez Cano:So that's crazy. And the bottleneck is to coordinate everything and to accelerate everything at the same time in order to go fast. Where do you spend most of your time then? Well, that's a good question. I mean, right now, me personally, I'm in the middle with the customers and the product team. So aligning that, that the products that we are deploying right now are okay and are aligned with the client's needs. And then my co-founder, Gia, he's in the research part. So he's doing all the technology, all the roadmap that we need in order to solve that 100 % of tasks. So we have like all of this.

11:56Carla Gómez Cano:But I mean, all the team is working super hard and all the departments are working together and literally together here in our offices in order to achieve this. And what does it take to get a deployment live? You know, this is very different to a software company where you can just sort of sign up, log in, download an application or whatever. Like, what does it really take to sell this product and to get the robots up and running? Yeah, that's a really good question because, I mean, of course, you need to physically deploy a system into the client facility. So that's hard. The good part about us is that we are not doing like projects, specific projects for each of the clients.

12:37Carla Gómez Cano:What we have is a single product. and we are deploying that single generalistic product. So in a couple of weeks, we can set and deploy the first unit and then the scaling part, it's really fast. And that's also one of the other advantages that we have because we can focus on a specific product. And can you talk about the model itself? Because I read that it was like, is it like robotics as a service? Is that the model? And how standard is that? So my understanding is that they then like essentially pay a fee. they're not paying for any of the upfront hardware costs and then you take care of the maintenance.

13:11Is that the standard model within robotics?

13:15Carla Gómez Cano:It's not the standard. I mean, actually, most of the companies work in a CAPEX model. I mean, paying the hardware and then the maintenance. Yeah. Whereas what we want is the client needs to focus on their operations, on their product, but not on their robots. So what we offer is you pay a monthly fee and you have everything included. I mean, all the maintenance, all the installation, the updates of the software, of the hardware, whatever you need, the robot will work. So for our clients, this is really important because they just want the solution. They don't want to take care of the robot. And that must be complicated to scale because I guess like the more customers you get, the more clients you get, you're still responsible for the maintenance and the hardware.

14:01How do you foresee that? Is that like a whole team that you're going to have to grow, which is just dedicated to servicing maintenance?

14:08Carla Gómez Cano:Well, of course, we have a team that's dedicated to that. And it's 24 hours, seven days of the week, focusing on that. So that's, of course, intense. But it's really good to have the team because we can control at every moment all the robots. And also, as the robots are always the same, it's not that complicated. I mean, we have the team that knows really well the product, that know how to solve the different incidents that we may have. And that's all. Of course, we are scaling that. And when you pitch it to clients and you're saying, like, we're going to become a monthly fee that you're going to pay us indefinitely.

14:49What is the value to them? Like, what is it that they really want to get out of it? Is it like speed being able to deliver more? Is it cost being able to reduce costs? Is it risk or liability? What are the biggest selling points to clients?

15:04Carla Gómez Cano:For them, it's like the return of investment is made instantly. I mean, because they can, from day one, they are paying a monthly fee, but they are recording this money. so they don't need to spend capex in order to do the installation and in order to do the deployment because it's like everything in the in the fee and and that's really good for them because they don't need to think in anything and i guess for you it ends up being stick is well i guess is it stickier revenue you kind of you're able to get the sort of retention that SaaS companies have but do it on a on a robotics level yeah i mean in general robotics is it's really sticky because you are deploying hardware on the client facilities you have all the layouts you have all the material there so that's sticky and also considering that the solution is is key on the process the product is is really really sticky interesting okay well let's just take a step back and let's look back at the journey that you've done so far.

16:14You've been on this phenomenal growth curve, scaling like crazy. When you look back, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you've made?

16:24Carla Gómez Cano:That's a good question. Probably focus. Focus. Oh, really? Okay, so there were things that maybe you chased or got distracted by? I mean, as we're building like these 10 startups at the same time, sometimes it's difficult to know which are our priorities so of course everything is important because everything is important but you need to be able to identify which are the key operations which are the key tasks that you need to focus on so i mean probably that's it but it's it's not a mistake because i mean we are here we We have achieved a lot of things, but for us, the speed is important. And we need to consider every decision really well in order to maximize this speed.

17:14And when you look to the next 12, 18 months, what are the things that you really need to focus on or get right?

17:22Carla Gómez Cano:Well, of course, scaling the product, scaling the deployments, scaling the team so fast, but in a controlled way. but it's also a challenge. I mean, we're hurting a lot and it's important to keep this strong culture, to keep this strong mindset of each of the members. So we are working a lot on that. But we are really happy with all that we have because we are seeing the things moving so fast. Everyone is super happy. The clients are happy. The system is happy. So we need to keep pushing really hard and to win. And where do you think that balance lies at the moment? Is it more on the research side?

18:02You need to do more research. You need to fine tune the product. Or is it more so on deployment? We need to focus on scaling up production, getting in more live situations.

18:12Carla Gómez Cano:It's really difficult to tell. I mean, it's really difficult because we need to do everything at the same time. And that's also one of the challenges that we have. Because we need to scale all the company at the same time. we need to amplify each of the aspects at the same time and it's for that that hiring right now it's key for us amazing well look carl what you've done is what you've achieved is absolutely extraordinary and you think you're building this phenomenal business from spain and uh and europe i look forward to like catching up again in probably nine months or a year when you've achieved your next milestone in your life and even more places but thank you so much for taking the time it's uh it's been great to chat oh thank you very much

18:59Thank you.