10-Minute Tech Talks: How Tech Entrepreneurs Fail & How You Can Avoid It
Oct 5, 2026 · 10 min · 6 segments
What happens when the contract opportunity you're counting on stalls? Titan Robotics' Stuart Lawrence shares how anticipated Air Force contract awards ran into resistance—and why the Pittsburgh…
But since then, an interesting story in Titan where that's where we started, right? Focus.
And that's at Carnegie Mellon, working with AFRL, who funded the program originally.
But they had all these other applications they wanted to do, which we also thought were interesting.
And they sold me on working on the project going beyond just laser coating removal.
Once we convinced them that it was a technology that was feasible, something that they could utilize around the entirety of the Air Force.
We're expecting, I think, $75 million in the first year of contract awards to take this forward.
And then some three-star general said, you're going to give how much money to a small, how many-person company? Oh, my goodness.
But since then, an interesting story in Titan where that's where we started, right? Focus.
And that's at Carnegie Mellon, working with AFRL, who funded the program originally.
But they had all these other applications they wanted to do, which we also thought were interesting.
And they sold me on working on the project going beyond just laser coating removal.
Once we convinced them that it was a technology that was feasible, something that they could utilize around the entirety of the Air Force.
We're expecting, I think, $75 million in the first year of contract awards to take this forward.
And then some three-star general said, you're going to give how much money to a small, how many-person company? Oh, my goodness.
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