I’ve always had poor impulse control when it comes to buying electronic toys. Amazon hasn’t helped, as I can satisfy my cravings with a single click. While I was listening to Daily Source Code from a few days ago on my run, I heard Adam Curry talking about how the Amazon affiliate feeds from the ad on his site for a Senseo HD7810/65 Single Serve Coffee Machine was making him enough dough to buy his whole family a cup of joe each day ($300–ish / month). The combination of partially subsidized toys, daily coffee, and the idea that all my really cool toys have a story inspired me to start a “toy of the month” category on my blog.
July’s toy is a Roomba 4210 Discovery Floorvac Robotic Vacuum Cleaner from iRobot. Amazon delivered two of them to my house in Homer on Wednesday and I set them up the other day (one upstairs / one downstairs). We named them after our dogs (Denali is the upstairs one / Kenai is the downstairs one). We had an old model at our house in Boulder which – like the one Tom Evslin has blogged about – would do its thing and then eventually run out of batteries and fall asleep wherever it happened to be at the time. No longer – the new ones are super smart and come with a docking station. When they get tired, they simply find their way back to their docks and recharged themselves (and do a funky robot wiggle dance to get lined up to go into the dock.)
The best part of getting my new robotic pets is watching Amy play with them . She misses our golden retrievers a lot (ok – I do also) and she’s obsessed with vacuuming so what could be better than watching my wife watch a robotic vacuum cleaner do its thing (very effectively – I might add)? She even jumped up and down with happiness when the little blue dirt detect light came on and Kenai spent more time getting the dirt I tracked in cleaned up.
iRobot will go down in my history as one of those companies I was too stupid to invest in. I’ve had plenty of chances to invest in successful companies that I’ve passed on. David Cowan has a great list of deals Bessemer chose not to do (their anti-portfolio) that went on to be huge winners. The phrase “Robotic Vacuum Cleaner? – c’mon” comes to mind. However, I don’t have any excuses here – Colin Angle – the CEO of iRobot – is a frat brother and a friend (when we are old and gray, at least I’ll still be able to say “I was Colin’s pledge trainer.”) Colin even called me for advice when they were raising a round a few years ago and said “hey Brad – would you guys have any interest in taking a look?” I thought to myself – “robotic vacuum cleaners – now, my partners will NEVER support me on that one – remember Feld, you’re a software guy” and – after a short discussion with several of them – decided to pass on taking a serious look.
Dumb dumb dumb. iRobot has sold over 1 million vacuum cleaners, has announced Scooba – the robotic floor washer (er – mop) and – well – is just kicking ass as a company. Congrats Colin and gang. Maybe I can contribute a little to helping keep the world cleaner by helping sell a few robots. If you have poor impulse control, a wife that likes to watch robots vacuum, or just want to play with a robot (it comes with a serial port and the rumor is that an API will be released soon), buy yourself a Roomba .