Andrew Ashur, co-founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, joins Scot Wingo for the third episode in our series on North Carolina startups solving hard physical-world problems. Lucid Bots builds drones and robots that clean, paint, and coat buildings, and Andrew walks through how the company got here, starting from a duct-taped DJI drone he built as a Davidson College student after watching window washers struggle against high winds.

The conversation covers the mechanical and business realities of building hardware: the physics of flying a drone tethered to a hundred feet of hose, the economics of a robots-as-a-service subscription model, and why hardware companies are finding it easier to raise venture capital today than they did a decade ago. Along the way, Andrew shares lessons on hiring people who thrive on uncertainty, developing the storytelling skills that founders need to raise money and win customers, and what he learned from roughly a thousand fundraising pitches on the way to a Series B round.

Andrew is a first-time founder who graduated from Davidson a year early to run Lucid Bots full time, and the company has since raised more than $30 million, deployed over 600 units across 44 states and five countries, and grown to a team of 75. He shares where he sees the business heading over the next five years, and the much bigger bet he's making beyond that.

Timestamps: 
00:00 Welcome & sponsor thank-yous

01:31 Scot's intro: NC's physical-world startup series

02:06 Meet Andrew Ashur & Lucid Bots

04:38 How Andrew and Scot know each other

04:59 Origin story: the window washer moment

06:03 Why building maintenance is a massive market

06:42 The duct-taped DJI prototype

07:14 Winning $25K and graduating early

07:56 A broken drone, Christmas, and a book on Arduino

10:05 Why hardware iteration builds a moat

11:44 Inside the Sherpa drone

13:05 The physics of a 100-foot hose

17:05 Building an in-house power tether

18:24 Scale check: 600 units, 75 people, 44 states

19:00 The ROI: 2x to 8x faster than a boom lift

20:03 Pricing: buy it or subscribe to Lucid Refresh

23:01 Pausing the ground robot, adding paint & coatings

25:39 Scaling facilities from 23K to 45K square feet

32:43 Fundraising for a hardware company vs. software

36:39 Hiring for agency over intelligence

40:47 1,000 pitches and the road to Series B

45:03 The next 5 years: giving AI a physical body

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Where to Find Andrew Ashur:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewashur/
Lucid Bots: https://www.lucidbots.com/

Where to Find Scot Wingo:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
X: https://x.com/scotwingo

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This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. 

We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: 

Platinum: 
NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

Gold Sponsors: 
- Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs 
- EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com 
- Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com 
 
Silver Sponsors: 
- Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co 
- Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html 

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Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

• Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/