RedBlue Capital

Open roles @ Pictorus: know any rockstars looking for their next adventure? - Senior Embedded Software Engineer (Rust) - Robotics Software Engineer (Rust) - Full-Stack Software Engineer (Python, Typescript) - Demand Gen Marketer - Solutions/Sales Engineer https://lnkd.in/eURF2pHz

Today I’m thrilled to announce Pictorus (pictor.us) has closed a $3.5M seed financing round, led by Catapult Ventures. Full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/dxe-7-5M After a year in stealth and nearly the same in Beta, we’re excited to use this latest funding to bring Pictorus to the aerospace, automotive, and robotic markets with a formal release later this year. The problem we’re solving is simple: Developing software for hardware is still way too hard. Most hardware startups we’ve encountered end up rebuilding the same core tools and infrastructure over and over again… some combination of makeshift Python scripts, hacky sims and visualizations, and some kludgy infra code.. all cobbled together to design, deploy, and debug the software running on each vehicle. It’s a mess, but it is today’s developer experience. In large part, this is because the engineering tools we all learned back at university (Matlab & Simulink) just don’t cut it for what we need to build and deploy today. And unless Elon is footing the bill, internal engineering tools are really inefficient to develop in-house; both in engineering hours sunk, and avoidable mistakes repeated. Engineers need better workflows for bringing new hardware to life - and at the scale and pace of modern, globally distributed fleets. Meanwhile, large, established aerospace and automotive teams feel trapped by the old Matlab/Simulink toolchain they committed to over 30 years ago, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars annually (each). At Pictorus, we’ve built a solution for this entire spectrum of experience - from scrappy aerospace startups looking to bootstrap their first hardware product, to large automotive OEMs looking to port their legacy Simulink code into Rust. “From the moment I saw what Pictorus had built, I knew this was the future of embedded systems programming. I’ve spent too much time banging my head on my keyboard debugging C/C or Matlab/Simulink while squinting at a screen hunched over a car, airplane, drone, or tractor.” says Darren Liccardo, General Partner at Catapult Ventures. “The aerospace industry is rapidly innovating, yet it lacks the flexible tools to quickly program and iterate,” Marlinspike Co-Founder Mislav Tolusic adds. “Pictorus can fill that gap.” I want to give a big shout out to the investors backing us this round, starting with our original partners at Lux Capital and Webb Investment Network, and introducing our latest partners at Marlinspike, Friends & Family Capital, RedBlue Capital, and Never Lift. We’ve assembled a team with deep connections across the industries most excited about our product, and are eager to accelerate our progress with their partnership. Finally, we’re doubling our core team, across engineering and GTM, so do reach out if this mission resonates with your aspirations!

Today I’m thrilled to announce Pictorus (pictor.us) has closed a $3.5M seed financing round, led by Catapult Ventures. Full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/dxe-7-5M After a year in stealth and nearly the same in Beta, we’re excited to use this latest funding to bring Pictorus to the aerospace, automotive, and robotic markets with a formal release later this year. The problem we’re solving is simple: Developing software for hardware is still way too hard. Most hardware startups we’ve encountered end up rebuilding the same core tools and infrastructure over and over again… some combination of makeshift Python scripts, hacky sims and visualizations, and some kludgy infra code.. all cobbled together to design, deploy, and debug the software running on each vehicle. It’s a mess, but it is today’s developer experience. In large part, this is because the engineering tools we all learned back at university (Matlab & Simulink) just don’t cut it for what we need to build and deploy today. And unless Elon is footing the bill, internal engineering tools are really inefficient to develop in-house; both in engineering hours sunk, and avoidable mistakes repeated. Engineers need better workflows for bringing new hardware to life - and at the scale and pace of modern, globally distributed fleets. Meanwhile, large, established aerospace and automotive teams feel trapped by the old Matlab/Simulink toolchain they committed to over 30 years ago, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars annually (each). At Pictorus, we’ve built a solution for this entire spectrum of experience - from scrappy aerospace startups looking to bootstrap their first hardware product, to large automotive OEMs looking to port their legacy Simulink code into Rust. “From the moment I saw what Pictorus had built, I knew this was the future of embedded systems programming. I’ve spent too much time banging my head on my keyboard debugging C/C or Matlab/Simulink while squinting at a screen hunched over a car, airplane, drone, or tractor.” says Darren Liccardo, General Partner at Catapult Ventures. “The aerospace industry is rapidly innovating, yet it lacks the flexible tools to quickly program and iterate,” Marlinspike Co-Founder Mislav Tolusic adds. “Pictorus can fill that gap.” I want to give a big shout out to the investors backing us this round, starting with our original partners at Lux Capital and Webb Investment Network, and introducing our latest partners at Marlinspike, Friends & Family Capital, RedBlue Capital, and Never Lift. We’ve assembled a team with deep connections across the industries most excited about our product, and are eager to accelerate our progress with their partnership. Finally, we’re doubling our core team, across engineering and GTM, so do reach out if this mission resonates with your aspirations!

Fantastic to see Aerolane emerge from stealth after 2 years with this feature in Bloomberg! A dramatic reduction to the cost and fuel of moving freight makes air logistics incredibly relevant, both from an economic and environmental POV. Favorite quote: “The physics are in our favor,” Todd Graetz said. “Look at the birds. They do it. We can learn a lot from birds.” 🦅 Speed of Air at the Cost of Ground 🦅

A lot of startup building leans on the analogy of flying planes: runway, velocity, etc. Not often do these metaphors relate directly to a technology that is transforming the airline industry. It's pretty staggering what this technology can unlock: 65% efficiency savings. And with such an elegant solution. Why does anyone think VTOL is interesting when you compare it with this! We're so excited to be along for the ride: the tractor plane and the Aerocart being tugged behind :D Congrats Todd, Doron, Gur and the rest of the team for the work so far and excited for what comes next!

With recent news of Superpedestrian, Micromobility.Com, Bird and CAKE, it is safe to say the new mobility industry has been going through a bit of a rough patch. Zag expert Lars Christian Grødem-Olsen (Mobility Consultant) asked Olaf Sakkers - co-founder of global mobility VC firm RedBlue Capital - what have been some of the mistakes he has seen from investors? “It’s a spectrum of errors,” he said. “The market is under-investing now, as a reaction to over-investing. There were a lot of bullshit ideas that got funded during that speculative boom around new ways to manufacture vehicles, forgetting the last 100 years of lessons on how hard it is to build a car company. People will look at Tesla, forget how hard it was for them, and assume everybody else can also do this really quickly.” Read the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/e3vbimvq