Husarion: We’re focusing on robots

Husarion was founded in December 2013. It was established by Dominik Nowak and his university classmate, Radek Jarema, 2 years after graduating from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków. Four years after the company’s inception, Filip Kramarczyk joined its management team – a manager with experience gained from working in global corporations such as Rolls Royce and Aptiv, and privately a long-time friend. The potential of this company and its founders was noticed by the KPT Seed Fund, which predicted success for this bold project right from the very beginning.

Good beginnings at AGH

The young entrepreneurs developed their passion for robotics in an AGH scientific circle, where the idea of founding a joint project was born. Initially, the company offered exclusively components for modern devices, wishing in this way to enable people to create their own, proprietary robots. And so after a year, a campaign on Kickstarter was launched, where the business idea was presented for the first time.

Over time, the market verified the company’s business model, and for 3 years now, Husarion has been offering ready-to-use robots instead of selling only components. They are created both to customer order and according to the vision of the company’s engineers. It was precisely in this business model that the startup began to achieve more and more success. As the company’s founder, Dominik Nowak, recalls, it turned out that building robots is such a multidisciplinary and difficult task that the client prefers to receive a finished product, designed according to their expectations, rather than create it on their own.

“When we started our business, we were a completely different company; we focused on different technologies and clients. Currently, we focus on the development of the entire ROS (Robot Operating System) ecosystem, and we take part in industry events related to the development of this system. We have very good contacts and acquaintances in the robotics community, and these relationships translate into sales as well.

 

We have broad experience with an advanced and extensive system, which is why clients from all over the world find us,” adds the CEO.

Robots

In its product range, Husarion has both components for creating robots and two types of finished products. The first, smaller ones are ROSbot 2.0 robots intended for the academic market – for the use of technical universities worldwide. Their main recipients are universities from the USA, which use this type of equipment for research work as well as for teaching students. Thanks to this, young engineers from the United States learn how to program solutions of this type. The robots for universities are sold along with a programming manual, which provides educational value and comprehensive application. These robots are also purchased by R&D teams from many technology companies around the world as platforms for rapid prototyping of autonomous mobile robot solutions and testing them on a smaller scale.

The second product is the Panther platform, which is already a significantly larger construction, intended for outdoor operation with a lifting capacity of up to approx. 80 kg. Panther is a base for custom service robots, i.e., devices that perform specific tasks, e.g., for use in logistics, precision agriculture, or industry. This is a product that adapts to the client’s needs and is also designed for the strictly defined goals and requirements of a given company.

Engineer to engineer

“Almost one hundred percent of Husarion’s clients are people involved in robotics, so we talk to them engineer to engineer, making sure to provide them with a lot of documentation and many examples of solutions. This pays off. Thanks to the fact that we educate our clients and operate within the ROS environment, we are perceived as experts in this field,” comments Dominik Nowak.

 

The team consists of 16 people with broad competencies. It includes specialists in the fields of mechanics and automation, as well as programmers who can additionally connect everything to the user interface via the Internet – thanks to this, the client is guaranteed support at every possible level.

Sales to the Polish market still constitute a very small slice of the company’s revenue – the vast majority of products sold go to the United States. Fortunately, the company managed to win the trust of customers and build a strong position in the industry. Due to working in a hermetic environment, many customers come by recommendation. Very often, such individuals buy one robot, but after some time, they return for more, which is only a confirmation of the professionalism of the Polish entrepreneurs.

“We set up a community forum that serves to solve problems in daily work within the field of robotics and automation. A lot of people from outside land there, looking for solutions to current problems. Our team actively helps these people, and thanks to this, we are creating a community of specialists who support one another.

We are geared towards people who deal with robotics on a daily basis and create new technologies – it is them we try to reach and answer their needs. It often happens that employees convince their bosses to purchase our solutions,” explains the Husarion CEO regarding relations with customers.

Robotics

“When we started six years ago, at one of the startup events, a mentor told us he believed the mobile robot market would grow, but in five years. I think he was right. We had to survive that time of stagnation, but currently, we are experiencing a very dynamic development of the robotics market.

 

Especially now, there is a lot of talk about robotics. In times of epidemics, people do not want to be dependent on supplies from the Far East; there is talk of production returning to Europe and the United States, yet labor is still expensive here, so an alternative needs to be considered. All analyses indicate that there will be more and more robots, but they won’t walk around our homes or drive on the streets like in sci-fi movies (at least not anytime soon – perhaps with the exception of cheap robo-vacuums or lawnmowers); instead, they will revolutionize factories and industry. A lot of new areas of interest are appearing where mobile robots can be applied.

 

The world is unpredictable, so as a starting company, you must always have a plan A and B, sometimes grit your teeth and not be discouraged by failures, because often a failure is not caused by a poor product, but by the fact that the market is not ready for it yet,” adds Nowak.

 

The epidemic has had a minor impact on the development of the company, which has allowed a remote work model since its very beginning, and employees can perform their tasks from any location. As far as sales or orders in this industry are concerned, the metrics have increased.

KPT Seed Fund

Dominik found out about the Krakow Technology Park during his fifth year of studies at AGH. During one of the lectures he attended, he heard about support tools for young entrepreneurs available at KPT, one of which was the KPT Seed Fund. After detailed discussions, the agreement with the Fund was signed – that was when the real adventure with business began.

“Cooperation with the fund gives us a lot of freedom and trust on both sides. I am glad we came across experienced people who realize the variables on the market and that a company at an early stage must change assumptions and be flexible,” says Dominik Nowak about the cooperation.

 

“We make investment decisions very consciously, weighing all pros and cons. In the case of Husarion, an important aspect ensuring the company’s success is its team of qualified experts. These are young engineers with a bold business vision that they persistently implement. For us as an investment fund, cooperation with a company from the robotics industry is a big challenge, but combining our business knowledge with their specialized knowledge in the field of robotics allows us to sleep soundly,” says Marcin Nalepa, President of the KPT Seed Fund.

 

“Husarion was a project that proposed prosumer electronics for a very interesting, rapidly growing robotics market. The team had very strong technical competencies and an interesting business idea. We had a clear strategy for rapid validation of business assumptions through a Kickstarter campaign. Even today, such a mix: a fast-growing market, a strong team, and a credible plan for validating assumptions is a good reason to invest. A few years ago, such project features were even rarer than today.

 

Dominik and Radek were the youngest company founders in the history of our Fund. To this day, I am impressed by their perseverance and ability to adapt to market requirements.

 

Seed or early-stage investments are highly risky, which is why the vision behind the idea must be properly thought out. The founders of Husarion surprised us with their ambition, and since they worked in a fast-growing market segment, their plans were credible,” adds Marcin Nalepa.

An investor comes to a startup and…

“It happens that other companies ask for a recipe for success in the startup world. I know this is probably not the answer they expect, but I think that in investments and investing, the intuition you have about a startup is important – meaning something that cannot be defined. There are certain things that can indicate an idea will work out, but it is almost always a big unknown. A startup is made by trial and error. It is vital to conduct many quick experiments and verify whether the chosen direction sparks interest from (paying) customers or not. Therefore, far-reaching, meticulous plans do not make much sense, because they would have to be updated with high frequency. And that takes up time that is better spent on testing and developing products and the market. If I were an investor, I would certainly base my decisions both on business knowledge, but also on intuition,” comments Dominik Nowak.

The Team

“I am most proud of the team; we have always had the luck to come across the right people. This is a huge, if not the most important value in business. If you have a smart and fast-learning team, you can design, develop, test, and implement new technologies with them quickly and effectively. The most important thing is to have good experts with strong technical competencies. In fact, we have never conducted recruitment in a traditional way; practically every person on the team comes by recommendation from someone else. That is the best reference!”, says the CEO.

On plans for the future

The software project Husarnet has recently spun off from Husarion. This is a network that enables connecting various devices via the Internet directly with one another, i.e., so that the traffic does not pass through any central server, which allows for a significant reduction in latency, increased security, and privacy, while maintaining very low infrastructure maintenance costs.

“Our new project excludes intermediation in data exchange between user devices and allows them to communicate directly, peer-to-peer. We promote this solution in the field of robotics, which we originate from, but also in the areas of the Internet of Things, smart city, energy, and cybersecurity. We have established very promising partnerships, including with an organization developing the key technology on which the second generation of Robot Operating System – ROS2 – is based.

 

We want our product to be helpful in the area of network connections in robotics. Husarnet is meant to connect robots with each other with very low time latency, regardless of whether they connect via Wi-Fi, a cellular network, or Ethernet.

 

Our robot sales are still growing; at this point, managing all requests for proposals is a major challenge. On one hand, we are very happy about it because it shows the scale of our company’s development, but on the other hand, it is a big challenge for us that we must handle impeccably.”

More about Husarion and its products can be found on the website: https://husarion.com/