Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

Your current market seems to be "niche toys for rich tech people" and the future market seems very uncertain. I am impressed that you were able to get funding for this idea. How do you get around the "solution in search of a problem (SISP)" objection from VCs? In fact, your founding story indicates that you just liked the technology meaning you had to work backwards to find the business case.

I'm asking because I think many of us would like to get funding for ventures in areas of technology that we are passionate about, but for which the future market potential remains extremely speculative. How do you do it?

I'm disabled, and one thing I'm really interested in long-term for humanoid robots is disability support work. Disability support work involves a huge variety of individual tasks, as many as a typical person will do in their life, so it's a good fit for an extremely general platform like a humanoid robot. Motorised wheelchairs and dishwashers exist, but a support worker might need to push a wheelchair, do sensitive dishes, do laundry, accurately open and place medications without destroying them, weigh & dose powders, help someone with going to the toilet, cook meals, drive a car, control pets, manage the level of noise/light/smells in the environment to stop someone from being overwhelmed, sanitise surfaces including themselves, navigate confusing interfaces on a phone or computer, help someone drink from a bottle, remember what sort of activities helped a disabled person in the past to be able to do them in the future, help someone with physical fitness activities like punching or kicking a pad, talk to people for someone, carry someone safely in the event of an emergency, make coffee in the morning, monitor intake of various drugs/nutrients/macronutrients, be able to reach and catch someone before they hit the floor if they pass out, help someone walk if they're unsteady on their feet, etc etc. It makes sense to me that it would be cost effective to have one platform which can do all of that with similar performance to a human, rather than automating many of those tasks individually in ways that might not be accessible to some disabled people.

In terms of TAM, absolutely huge amounts of money are spent on disability care (keeping in mind that elder care is also disability care), by both governments and private citizens, and this number is forecasted to continue growing as more people become disabled by COVID-19 and demographic changes increase the elderly population relative to working age adults. As well, there are constantly scandals about how bad conditions are in some area of disability care, almost always due to underpaid, untrained, or unmonitored staff, so there's a lot of demand for both more reliable quality & lower prices; that demand is only going to grow with time. Various government bodies are very large sources of funding that are very concerned with value for money and would pursue any option that could do the job without costing as much - in my country (Australia), there's the NDIS, National Disability Insurance Scheme. They are always looking for ways to consolidate care for less money.

I strongly suspect that any humanoid robot which was good enough to do disability support work would be in extremely high demand in the general population for obvious reasons, as well as being useful as a platform for labour automation, but those are much more speculative. Disability support work is a lot of money for incredibly varied tasks being spent right now. Something to think about.