[Matic Robots] Mehul Nariyawala

Yeah, I definitely want to touch on your time at Nest, and I want to touch on Tony Fadell briefly, but I want to save that for the end of the conversation.

I'd love to hear how you landed on the specific problem that you did.

Why the vacuum?

Great question.

So while I was at Nest, this is, I believe, 2015 or 16, that's when I started seriously thinking about getting a robot vacuum for our own home because I already had two kids.

We bought this golden retriever.

We brought home this golden retriever dog.

And our joke was that he sheds twice a year, six months each, and his hair was everywhere.

So at some point I started just we couldn't keep up with it.

So I started looking at robot vacuum.

And Dyson actually released that first robot vacuum just around that time in Dyson 360i.

And I thought Dyson would do a much, much better job.

I had already heard from a bunch of friends that Roombas are not that great.

So I bought Dyson.

And turns out Dyson was probably the worst robot that I've ever had even tried.

And the reason is because nine out of 10 times, it wouldn't even be able to find its own dock.

It had a great vacuuming system, but vacuuming system alone wasn't necessarily the thing because every single time we would start cleaning it and come home and find robots somewhere lost and not have to go rescue it.

The second thing that happened, which was very interesting, is that just like any other Dyson, it did have a great suction power system.

But then with that suction power, it got onto one of our really, really nice rugs and rug shed.

And that robot did not have enough torque in the wheel to match that suction.

So with that high suction, it got stuck on it and kept at it for 45 minutes.

So when we came home and picked up that robot, the entire patch of the rug was gone.

So a thousand dollar robot ruined multi-thousand dollar rug for us.

And that was the end of that robot in our home.

My wife refused to let me buy any other things after that point of view.