Sphero

Happy Pi Day everyone. If you love dogs, or robots, or dogs and robots, you’ll love the video below. Two companies we are investors in – Rover and Sphero – have teamed up on Pi Day. Sphero is in the last week of their Kickstarter campaign for their new robot named RVR (pronounced “rover”) and, well, it loves dogs. There’s also a new Pi Day Tier on the Kickstarter that’s available for 24 hours and limited to 314 people. ...

As part of the Sphero RVR Kickstarter campaign, Amy and I have decided to give away up to 200 RVRs as part of a new tier called the 2 RVRs for you + 1 for a Teacher tier. If you buy this tier, you get two RVRs. Then, you get to designate a teacher – any teacher – who you’d like to give a third RVR to. Our foundation (the Anchor Point Foundation ) will be underwriting this. ...

Sphero has announced RVR, a go anywhere, do anything programmable robot. It launched on Kickstarter today and is available, along with a bunch of other fun pre-order options. Over the last eight years, Sphero has made a bunch of different robots. We’ve been discussing the “every-programmer” robot for a while, which is both hardware and software hackable. Watching RVR come together from the inside over the past year has been pretty awesome. ...

Last month, Amy and I matched all of the Colorado first time DonorsChoose.org projects . So far, 103 projects have been fully funded, with a total of $25,722 donated. We still have plenty of matching dollars out there, so we’ll continue to run this match for a while. In the meantime, I started talking to my friends at Sphero about doing something similar for all the DonorsChoose.org projects that have a Sphero as part of them. They got excited about it and have announced a $110,000 gift to Donorschoose.org to match anyone who donates to any of the 200+ teachers on Donorschoose.org who have Sphero products included in their projects . ...

Welcome to Force Friday, one of my favorite days of the year. I still fondly remember watching Star Wars with my dad when I was 11. As I walked out of the theater, I asked him if we could buy another ticket right then and watch it again. He denied me that night, but we went and saw it again a few days later. Sphero just released two new droids, R2-D2 and BB-9E , which now rounds out the family that includes BB-8 and the Force Band (so you can control the droids with the Force). ...

If you’ve been in our office recently, you’ve seen me fiddling around with one of my newest toys – Ultimate Lightning McQueen by Sphero. It’s now available for the world. Based on what I know about robotic toys, I believe it’s the most advanced robotic toy ever made. Owen Wilson is even included in it (well – his voice – as LMQ …). It started shipping yesterday so it’ll probably sell out quickly as Sphero ramps production. If you are into RC cars, amazing robots, or you have children who like the movie Cars (even grown up children like me), you can buy it online from Sphero or Amazon .

It’s National Robotics Week 2017 . Yay robots. I’m doing my best to endear myself to the robots for when they become self-aware. Hint to all robots out there: “I love you.” Last week Fred Wilson posted about a really fun human / robot collaboration called TYWLS Digital Dance . It starred some humans and some Spheros . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpLXHGGJ4nw Today, a few folks from Sphero express their (and their company’s) love for robots. ...

Many cities around the world have bike to work day. We take it up a level in Boulder and have an annual tube to work day which occurred today. The gang at Sphero went all in and decided to make it a Raft to Work day. They tried hard, but ended up with a classic FAIL blog experience. Enjoy a laugh at the end of the week after a troubling few days in the world.

I saw this video earlier today and it delighted me. I love Sphero .