I was super happy to hear this morning that my friends have officially announced their new company: Misty Robotics. Robots as friends or as part of our families? I think it’s going to be an interesting ride watching them figure this idea out.

I first met Ian Bernstein around 2009 or 10. We had just started Modular Robotics in Boulder, and Ian and his co-founder Adam dropped by our shop with half a prototype robot ball that had a bunch of wires sticking out of it. They were in Techstars at the time and wanted to talk about starting a hardware company. They’d eventually become Sphero.

Since then, Sphero has become a huge success in the toy market, and between sprints, Ian and I have been able to do some bucket list skiing together: Alaska hili-skiing one year, Chamonix backcountry, Retallack… People often seem sort of amused to meet us on these trips and find that we have toy robot companies a couple of blocks apart in Boulder, but we’ve never felt like competitors.

Now, Ian’s continuing to make his vision into reality by spinning off a new company, Misty, and closing a financing.  I’m excited for them.  While companies do indeed battle for space on store shelves, Ian and I are much more interested in the long view; when there will be an entire ecosystem of robot stuff all over our homes and offices. Thousands of tiny robot cubes doing some things, and “personable robots that benefit everyone’s lives” doing others.

That’s why I’m so excited to meet the robots that roll out of Misty.