Founder of the month: Daedalus
20.01.2022
Daniela Musial-Lemberg
Founder of the month
Our Founder of the Month is Deadalus. The German-American start-up was founded in 2020. The company's goal is to build the world's first autonomous and reconfigurable factories.
What does your company stand for?
Daedalus develops innovative software and robotic solutions that allow the company to build autonomous factories where precision parts are manufactured without human input. These are sold to SMEs and corporations from almost all industries (engineering, automotive, aerospace, medical, etc.). Automating the entire process allows for online ordering within minutes, continuous progress tracking, as well as lower prices, shorter delivery times, and more reliable quality. Instead of ordering by phone or email from a traditional contract manufacturer and then waiting several months with no way to track progress for the parts and hoping everything is delivered on time. Companies can have their components manufactured completely digitally and much more efficiently, and at drastically better rates.
We spoke with Jonas Reineck from the founding team Deadalus about the initial phase, challenges, future plans, and tips and lessons for other founders.
Where and how did you get the idea to found the company?
During his time at the world’s leading AI company OpenAI in San Francisco, our founder Jonas Schneider developed, among other things, a robotic hand that could solve a Rubik’s Cube one-handed. Wanting to use the expertise he gained to solve the most significant industry problem possible, he then investigated potential application areas as part of the Y Combinator Startup Program in San Francisco. Manufacturing proved to be an ideal market, as it represents a gigantic industry that at the same time lags tremendously behind and is incredibly outdated, especially in the precision area.
How did the founding team come together?
Jonas Schneider, who studied at the KIT in Karlsruhe before joining OpenAI and Stripe, started looking for other team members to join him.
to start Daedalus right after his idea. Two other KIT alumni from Silicon Valley and another manager from OpenAI joined the team.
Where do you see the hurdles on the way to a successful company? Where did you get support?
On the technology side, we have to solve enormously demanding challenges, which is why our tech team consists of software and robotics engineers from companies like Google, SpaceX, OpenAI or Cruise. On the manufacturing side, we’re dealing with super tight tolerances and manufacturing-specific issues, which is why we brought on board several manufacturing veterans. On the business side, we need to grow extremely fast to achieve our ambitious goals, which is why we rely on the expertise of our talented growth experts on the one hand and have brought on board Addition and Khosla, two of the world’s most successful technology investors who have scaled countless technology products very successfully in the past.
Three founding members of Daedalus are KIT alumni.
What was your biggest challenge during the start-up phase?
Of course, there are always more than enough challenges *laughs One of the most important lessons for us was definitely how incredibly important it is to learn or know how to build a recruiting apparatus. In order to be able to efficiently get new talented people and convince them to join Team Deadalus in the next step. That’s really something you have to learn to also understand what tools to work with, etc. In the beginning, it’s still good to acquire employees from your own network, but at some point that no longer scales. In other words, recruiting was and is a very important area for us.
Has the Corona pandemic had an impact on your startup or your industry so far, and if so, what?
The delivery times of our suppliers for machines and raw materials are currently increased many times over, which is very annoying. On the customer side, we are in the fortunate situation of not experiencing a drop in demand at all. In fact, demand is currently even higher, which of course makes us very happy.
What qualities do you think a founder should have?
A few. The strong will to build a successful company. Then the technical and entrepreneurial know-how to build and successfully market a technology product. Then there is the ability to scale the company, build a strong network to recruit team members, and an understanding of fundraising – those are a few qualities I can think of off the top of my head.
Do you have any tips for other young startup founders?
Work your way into the start-up field. Those who start up without prior knowledge are much slower and have a drastically lower probability of success.
What are your plans for the future? What are your next big milestones?
Our first factory is growing steadily right now and we are moving more and more from manual to autonomous manufacturing. By the middle of next year, our first large autonomous factory should be fully utilized. We will then launch our next round of financing and build an even bigger factory for the German market and then more factories in the biggest markets (USA first).
Thanks a lot for answering the questions Jonas!
You can also listen to our “Founder of the Month” podcast on the go.
