Editor's note: In our 2023 Startups to Watch feature, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times present startups and founders doing unique things in the Bay Area. Foxglove is one of 15 we profiled this year — to read more about our mission and the other startups we're featuring, click here.
- Founded: 2021
- Founders: Adrian Macneil, CEO; Roman Shtylman, CTO
- What it does: Developing software for logistics robots
- HQ: Fully remote, but leadership based in S.F.
- Employees: 19
- Total funding: $18 million
What was the “aha” moment behind your startup? I spent five years working on self-driving cars at Cruise in San Francisco. I led the infrastructure and developer productivity teams, and we had to build a lot of in-house tooling to support the autonomous vehicle development. After talking with others in the industry, it became clear that these tools are needed not just in the self driving industry, but across other types of robots: self driving lawn mowers, tractors, forklifts, industrial automation, and more.
Describe what your business does to someone from Mars. We build developer tools and infrastructure for the robotics industry. As someone from Mars, you will be very familiar with robotics and automation. Software developers working on those robots need tools, and we build them.
Who are your customers? Small startups to large public companies developing robotics, automation and autonomous vehicles.
What other businesses and business leaders give you inspiration? Hashicorp and Databricks are two companies that come to mind who have successfully scaled a category-leading open source business.
