Originally published in Hypepotamus
Written by: Holly Beilin

“Most of our customers — this might sound a little surprising — they’re not doing it just because there’s cost savings. They’re doing it because they have unfilled positions, or they want to push the envelope and experiment with advanced technology.”

Co-founder and CEO Rob Goldiez, who formerly worked in a number of leadership and operations roles in the manufacturing industry, started Nashville-based Hirebotics out of a garage. Along with Matt Bush, the two self-funded the upfront capital needed to purchase the industrial robots they rent out in order to service their first clients.

The team’s process is a lengthy one. They travel to the client’s facility to take a look at the pain points — what jobs are unfilled, where are the tasks too dangerous or dirty for humans, where can a robot improve efficiency? They not only place the robots in the facility, but provide factory managers with an accompanying app to track productivity data so they know how hard their robot employees are working.

Now, after a $2.4 million funding round which included notable investor and entrepreneur of Shark Tank fame Mark Cuban, the team is hiring and expanding their client roster across the country.

Goldiez explains: “I’m an electrical engineer. I started my career at IBM, moved into business and management roles, and then did an MBA at Duke. After I left the high-tech world, I moved into manufacturing roles and operations. I saw a common theme over and over — small to mid-sized companies don’t do automation. It’s really hard. It takes money, it takes know how.”

“In 2015 I was on vacation with my family and had this idea come to me — you have the Uber and Airbnb model, this whole rental economy, everything getting cloud connected, while automation is really hard. So I thought, why can’t you hire a robot like you do a person? You don’t own your employees, you rent them and pay them by the hour. That’s how I came up with what became Hirebotics.”

“We don’t just rent robots. We tell customers: we charge by the hour, we bill by the second. We get paid to make our customers productive, so we get paid only when our customers are productive and we bill them by the second of productivity.”

The one industry that stands out is automotive. But it ranges — from Dana Corporation, a public Fortune 500 company, to Parker-Hannifin, to Toyota.

On the Mark Cuban investment: “Recently we got a front page story on The Washington Post about one of our customers. Shortly after the story ran, we were contacted by Mark Cuban. He wasn’t part of the original group but he wanted to participate. We made room for him and increased the round so that he could participate.”

“Hirebotics has never been about replacing workers. We hear that a lot when initially we go to deploy the robots. But then, when they realize that they’re not losing a job, the people on the floor are generally asking: when can you put a robot over here to do this task? They see it as a tool, which is what it is.”