Deep Dive with Hive — Paul Chen, CPO of Botrista
Paul Chen
Questions for the Deep Dive with Hive Series
- Short Introduction of yourself and your startup：
Ans:
Botrista is a food robotics company focused on providing RaaS (robot as a service) solutions for drink automation. We have the most deployments of any food robotics company, and are backed by strategic investors such as Middleby (global leader in commercial kitchen equipment), La Kaffa (food conglomerate of boba tea brands) and Hive Ventures.
Prior to joining Botrista, I spent the last 20 years in the technology industry in various functions including software engineer, ASIC designer, business development, and product management, and also founded three failed startups. My interest has always been in the intersection of hardware and software, and finding business models that can turn hardware platforms into a subscription model.
2. What inspired you to develop your idea into a startup?
Ans:
I was not one of the original founders, but I had a product vision to help the original team transform their product concepts and core technology into a highly scalable business model. I pitched my idea to the founders and convinced them to bring me onboard as a founder, and essentially pivot the startup to our flagship product today.
3. What’s the biggest challenge you faced when starting a company and how did you overcome it?
Ans:
The biggest challenge we faced in the early days was trying to find the magical product-market fit. We would be very excited whenever a customer was willing to pay for our product and even more, when the key metrics looked good, but we always questioned whether we got lucky or if other customers would show similar results. Less than a year into the startup, the F&B industry was decimated by the pandemic, and essentially left us with a handful of customers who were struggling to keep the doors open and halted all new business opportunities. We had no choice but to reduce our burn and focus our limited resources on what we could control, namely making our products and operations more scalable for when things get back to normal. Ultimately, it was that blind conviction, grit and perseverance that helped us to navigate a global pandemic and allow us to flourish today.
4. What is your dream and aspirations for the company going forward?
Ans:
My dream is for the company to be a dominant player in the food robotics space, and expand into other automation solutions for the F&B industry. We believe that craft drinks are the killer app today given that it is cuisine-agnostic, but we also see tremendous opportunity in automating many other back-of-house (BOH) functions such as cooking and ingredient preparation. As the industry continues to struggle with labour shortages and retention, there will be enormous opportunities for automation. By leveraging technology, we hope to build out the largest distribution channel for drink ingredients and help food service venues automate their operations.
5. Who is your role model, or Which public personalities have you been inspired by in your startup journey?
Ans:
My role model is Elon Musk, in the sense that he turned an electric car startup into the most valuable car company in the world by focusing on building the best product and product experience, while maintaining affordability. We are also very product experience focused as a company. Our industrial design reflects a futurist design philosophy and our DrinkBots features a large LCD display, a similar emblematic of Tesla cars.
6. What keeps you awake at night?
Ans:
Being part of a startup, I am always paranoid, especially of large companies with endless resources such as Coke or Pepsi discovering our gold mine and competing with us. But realistically, I think what keeps me awake is whether we can deliver on the lofty goals promised to our investors. Receiving capital and investment is both a privilege and responsibility, which creates pressure to constantly meet targets.
7. What is your motivation that keeps you going every day?
Ans:
I want to make an impact. I think everyone has their own ways to improve society or change the world, but I believe mine is through building a company that helps restaurants take home more profit, and offer customers enjoy healthier drink options or better food safety control. The F&B industry is notoriously known to have razor-thin margins and requires an enormous amount of work to run (worst of both worlds), yet it is considered an essential business that many take for granted. By helping foodservice operators offer specialty drinks that are not feasible without automation, we are democratizing premium menu items but more importantly, giving low-skilled workers a chance for professional development and job advancement.
8. What is your strategy when things don’t turn out the way you expect?
Ans:
We don’t get everything right, so we need to always think ahead and be agile if something changes. The best strategy is to always test your assumptions and validate them, even if things are going right. The market can change on a dime, or you can become blinded by success, so you cannot stop understanding the market. What is constant is change.
9. What is the biggest difference you see from the start of your journey to where you are today?
Ans:
We are now in a stage where we focus on growth versus survival. It is very different to build a company to grow and to figure out how to build the right product. Right now, we don’t worry about whether we can find customers, rather how fast can we deploy to new customers. The mentality of being scrappy and building something from nothing is now replaced with defining standard operation procedures (SOPs), constant cross-department communications, and refining processes for scalability.
