Colin Angle

speaker

113 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2025 last heard 19 Dec

Colin Angle’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 1.

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Hard Fork · Why Roomba Died + Tech Predictions for 2026 + A Hard Forkin’ Xmas Song · 19 Dec 2025 podcast

You know, it's a

Complicated question.

Simple to ask, hard to answer.

And we led the world.

We invented the category of consumer robotics back at the launch of the room in 2002.

And for 17, 18 years, really grew the category.

And then as it got more competitive and the world changed, we had to change with it.

So ultimately, bankruptcy is something that happens when you need some external help to take the next step in the chapter of development.

You know, it's certainly the advent of this new type of competitor, the Chinese fast follower who had access to the Chinese marketplace, which iRobot effectively did not for various pragmatic and political reasons, gave a protected market to cut your teeth on for the competition.

I also think that the marketplace was not a level playing field, as I described.

Yeah, iRobot was, for a small period of time, iRobot was the leading manufacturer of vacuuming robots in China.

Then it stopped because China decided that this was a market of interest

And they were going to ensure that Chinese companies were advantaged to succeed there.

You know, the Chinese government provided subsidies, direct subsidies to our competitors, and we had to overcome that as well.

So, you know, in an emerging marketplace, you know, it's a cage match and it certainly got hard and it, you know, it got increasingly competitive.

So, you know, companies need to adapt.

And ultimately, we were open to other strategies to enable us to continue to innovate.

which is why when Amazon came and said, hey, we think we have a vision that is compatible with your vision, it made a lot of sense and we were excited.

You know, I'm entertained by the question.

Because it's wrong.

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