RightHand Robotics: Choosing the First Market

In early 2015, RightHand Robotics’s (RHR) leadership faced several decisions in commercializing the startup’s robotic picking solution. RHR’s central product was the RightPick integrated robotic picking system which featured a robotic arm, a three-fingered robotic hand (also called a gripper), a camera-based vision system, and artificial intelligence (AI) software. Unlike competitors, the gripper could pick up items of different sizes, shapes, and weights without pre-programming. Recent participation in the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program had exposed the RHR team to various markets they could pursue: produce harvesting, subscription box services, e-commerce warehouse automation, assembly manufacturing, recycling, bomb disposal, and prosthetics. A related choice was the scope of the RHR product offering, ranging from selling the entire integrated robotic system to selling one component such as grippers or software. Finally, RHR was contemplating whether to contract exclusively with a system integrator, the party that would manage RHR’s product installation for customers. The RHR team considered which set of decisions would ensure a successful go-to-market strategy.