Saro Robotics is going to Techstars, and they never applied

Saro Robotics came through 6AM’s tenth cohort. We wish Daniel, Celine, Kristian, Ingeborg and Oscar the best of luck.

Saro Robotics is spending three months in Ohio at Techstars. The invitation came to them, not the other way around.

“It’s wild that we’re in. The accelerator is ranked number one in the USA. We didn’t even apply, we were contacted and offered a place,” founder and CEO Daniel Kjøle Skogland told Shifter.

As far as the team knows, they are the only Norwegian company among the hundred selected for this year’s program.

Robots that climb pipes so people don’t have to

Saro builds autonomous inspection robots that climb pipe structures, rotate a full 360 degrees and get over obstacles on the way. The point is to take humans out of dangerous heights and confined spaces, and to replace the occasional manual inspection with continuous data that lowers both risk and maintenance cost. Process plants with large pipe constructions are the most immediate customers.

Five founders from the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship are behind it: Daniel Kjøle Skogland, Celine Rønquist Slåttelia, Kristian Willeke Romen, Ingeborg Sofie Bogen and Oscar Lae. Three of them travel for all or part of the three months. The product team holds the fort in Norway.

Why Ohio

“It’s mostly deep tech there, and a lot of companies with production facilities, and a lot of industry in general. That’s very relevant for us to plug into, given that we develop fairly advanced hardware,” says Skogland.

What they are actually going for

Not the technology. The selling.

“If there’s one thing we’ve understood lately, it’s how much the commercial side matters. We’ve been really inspired by hearing how Cognite succeeded with value-based selling,” says co-founder and COO Ingeborg Sofie Bogen.

“Robotics is cool, but it’s when you get the lasting customer relationships that you really create value. Nobody in the world is better at selling than the Americans. We hope to bring home a proper sales engine.”

Slåttelia puts it plainly: “Commercialisation is one of the hardest things you do, and something companies struggle to get right. We hope we can get good introductions to the big network Techstars has.”

That is a mature thing to say this early. Plenty of deeptech teams spend years polishing the hardware and treat go-to-market as something to figure out later.