In Robots Podcast episode 119, reporter Per talks with Ian Bernstein about the hugely successful Sphero robot and the company he co-founded, Orbotix. A hardware tinkerer from a young age, Bernstein became involved with BEAM Robot Games. First attending New Mexico Tech then Colorado State University, he decided to start his own company after the options available at a career fair all bored him. In 2010, realizing the technology in smart phones far surpassed that being used in most consumer robots and wondering why those phones couldn't be used to control robots, he and cofounder Adam Wilson participated in an intensive, three-month program sponsored by startup accelerator TechStars, which helped them define and design their product, and helped them establish contacts through which they were able to find funding and a production facility they could work with. Sphero, the result of this process, is not just a product by a platform with its own growing ecosystem.

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