Odense, Denmark is on a journey to becoming one of the world’s leading robotics industry hubs. The small city has a population of just over 200,000 people but is home to as many as 130 robotics companies, from solopreneur startups to multi-million-dollar leaders such as Universal Robots and OnRobot.
To learn more about the robotics business taking place in Odense, engineering.com recently attended the Odense Robotics Investor Summit, where we caught up with Lasse Kieffer, a Danish engineer, entrepreneur and now investor. Like many engineers, Kieffer is dynamic and engaged when he talks about his ideas. He talks with his hands, and he tends to put things bluntly.
Background
Kieffer studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering at University of Southern Denmark, the alma mater of many of Denmark’s leading robotics talents, including Esben Østergaard, founder of Universal Robots and Niels Jul Jacobsen, founder of Mobile Industrial Robots. Kieffer joined the fledgling company just two years after it was officially founded. In fact, Kieffer was involved in constructing the very first Universal Robots. These first robots had a very different design, using flat motors, than what was released since.
"The first 5-6 robots we made were using partially homemade/modified motors. We bought Maxon DC motors and refitted them with a circuit board I made, so that they were synchronous AC motors instead. This allowed us vector control of the motors, which is a lot more precise than a simple DC control. The refitting happened in my kitchen in my one-room flat some 10 years ago! Damn... it smelled bad... as I used the stove in the kitchen to heat up the DC-circuit-board to be unmounted," Kieffer recalls. "That happened by putting the motors on the red and fully heated stove, so that the PCB was burning underneath for 5 seconds, so that the solder on the topside melted and I could lift the raw motor off the unused PCB. It smelled bad and toxic in my flat for days."
Shortly after UR was bought by Teradyne in 2015, Kieffer left the company and took a year off. He spent the time developing a long list of ideas for possible companies or ventures to explore. “I took my twenty best ideas and put them in a spreadsheet. I rated them on about twenty different parameters, such as my relevant knowledge, or the cost to execute,” Kieffer said.
Purple Robotics
The idea he chose to develop was for an electric vacuum gripper, aiming to disrupt the vacuum-based gripper market. This led to Purple Robotics and the VG10, which Kieffer demonstrates in this video.
After just 364 days of operation, OnRobot made an offer to buy Purple Robotics for an undisclosed amount. “I'm good friends with Bilge Christiansen and Ebbe Fuglsang, founders of the original On Robot,” explained Kieffer. “So, I was a bit worried that my company was stepping on their toes. But now, because it's one company, we all have the same goal. Now, it might be time for me to look into my spreadsheet again.”
After the acquisition, Kieffer spent some time at OnRobot helping to transition the products, patents and technology. However, he’s once again struck out on his own. “I'm not a person that works very well in a big company. I had the same feeling in Universal Robots, it just took me a longer time to realize. There are just too many people to work around and decision making is different in a big organization than it is in a small one. There’s nothing wrong with big companies, but some people fit in one place and some people fit in another,” he explained.
Robotics Investor
Today, Kieffer is an active investor in the Danish robotics industry. He’s come full circle: first a Danish engineering student; then part of the poster child of Odense’s robotics industry, Universal Robots; then entrepreneur; and now, investor and board member.
One of the companies Kieffer has invested in is Nord Modules, another Danish company which makes tooling and accessories for mobile robot platforms, specifically Mobile Industrial Robots.
“It's fun seeing the same scene from both sides of the table,” he said. “I don't know yet what I'm going to do. I'm part of an investment environment, and I'm looking at companies, but I'm not sure if I have the personality to help others achieve their dreams and be part of the board of directors. I like to do stuff hands-on, but on the other hand, it's also fun to be part of stuff where you're not there on a daily basis. So, I’m trying to find my place in it.”
Serial Entrepreneur
Because of Odense’s intense focus on building the local robotics industry, the city has plenty of support for engineers like Kieffer who prefer to keep developing new innovations and ideas. Kieffer still has his spreadsheet of ideas in his back pocket, although they aren’t all strictly viable. For example, one idea is for a spherical hotel which floats on the atmosphere.
“It’s one of my most crazy ideas, and I've been telling a few people about it. It's a flying hotel. If you take the math for a sphere, and you make it bigger and bigger, the surface area and volume increase according to the square cube law. So, if you find a way to make a sphere with a strong enough exterior, maybe it’s possible to make it big enough to float on the atmosphere. It would just have to be very, very big and then it can float by itself. I envision these hotel rooms being with glass on the floors, so you can look down on the city. This would be the most luxurious hotel in the world and hopefully popular, but also expensive. You would be able to actually move the hotel from one location to another, maybe once a year. That was the craziest idea. It wasn't one of those that had a very good score in my spreadsheet. Believe me, it was bad!”
Advice for New Entrepreneurs
I asked Kieffer what advice he would give to other engineers considering entrepreneurship. He said that focused execution is the key to success.
“As a startup, if you have three good ideas, and you want to be the best in all three, it's going to be one blurry mixed-up thing, and you're probably not going to succeed with any of them. But if you make one thing and you just tunnel-vision focus on going in that direction, that’s focused execution. That's really what it takes. It's not just a matter of being lucky, it's not just a matter of having the best idea. I actually believe there are many good ideas, and it's not a matter of having the best idea,” he said.
“People say, ‘Oh I never got the ideas, I never did it.’ Maybe you never had the guts to just pull the plug, sit down and look for the idea. At home in your bedroom, staring into a white wall or something like that—that’s not where ideas come from.”
“For example, let’s say you have an interest in sports. Okay, golf. People who golf have money and it's a sport. Okay, that's interesting. Maybe that's a good place to do a business. Then you go out and talk to golfers, talk to the golfing places to ask, "What are your problems?" Gather a bunch of ideas. They might be very, very bad ideas, but you only need one good one. Then you have it. You already know your customers. You have a basis for doing something. You can search for the idea as an active part of the beginning of your start-up.”
While not every engineer dreams of building new products through the high-pressure world of startups, Odense, Denmark is proving to be a great place to bring robotics ideas to the market through the triple-helix support of government, industry and higher education organizations.
To learn more about the Odense Investor Summit, which is where Kieffer and I had this conversation, read Investor Summit Supercharges Danish Robotics Innovation.