Founders Everywhere: Charlie Andersen
Charlie Andersen is the co-founder and CEO of Burro, a first-of-its-kind autonomous workhorse collaborative robot that enhances productivity and combats the challenges of labor scarcity.
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Farming is a tough gig, which is why severe labor shortages and high labor costs are becoming increasingly pressing issues worldwide. Burro is on a mission to solve the crippling labor problem faced by farmers. They’re doing this by making collaborative robots a reality (think Disney’s Wall-E). They’re kicking off with Burro, a vision-based fully autonomous robotic platform that helps people work more productively, while laying the base for ever more expansive autonomy where it’s needed most. Their robots can handle tasks like carrying and towing heavy loads, scouting, patrolling, mowing, and spraying. They’re designed to work safely near people and adapt to various environments. The name "Burro" reflects the robot's role as a reliable, hardworking companion—much like a donkey—capable of carrying and automating tasks that would otherwise burden human workers.
Co-founder and CEO Charlie Andersen grew up on a working farm, and was constantly tinkering with machines and technology. He began driving tractors when he was just four years old and became known as the “machine guy.” He went on to study geology and political science and worked in a few sectors including clean tech and investment banking before entering the agricultural robotics space because he felt the space was slow to innovate, but ripe for disruption. Charlie found both of his co-founders through cold outreach on LinkedIn. Vibhor Sood is the Director of Engineering and known for his exceptional systems thinking and building skills. Terry Scott was a developer who contributed to the company’s early growth and now serves as an advisor. Charlie shares more about how Burro is tackling the inefficiencies that have long plagued agriculture and offering a transformative solution for the industry.
What’s Burro’s North Star?
Our North Star is to free people from tedious work with collaborative robots. We believe that people should focus on higher-level thought and manipulation tasks that are of high value, rather than repetitive and boring tasks. Our goal isn't to replace people with robots but to augment their capabilities by automating the mundane tasks that robots excel at. It’s a win, win because it enhances productivity and job satisfaction.
What sets Burro apart?
We have over 400 robots in paid commercial use, which is one of the highest numbers out there. What sets us apart is our robots' ability to work safely around people, both indoors and outdoors. Unlike many other autonomous systems that stop when people get too close, our robots are designed to handle dynamic environments with various conditions and obstacles, like canopies, vegetation, messy areas, and inconsistent GPS signals. Being able to adapt to their surroundings requires a ton of technology under the hood. We use GPS, precise navigation, scene segmentation, and each robot processes two terabytes of data per hour runtime and we've been doing that for the past five or six years with a continuous improvement process. It would be pretty hard to replicate this for someone starting today.
How does Burro inspire “customer love”?
Our main customers are in two areas: permanent crops and nurseries. In permanent crops (like vineyards and berry farms) our robots help with harvesting and transportation. In nurseries, they assist with moving pots and managing distribution. Customers appreciate that our robots significantly reduce labor costs and improve productivity, benefiting both the growers and workers by making operations more efficient.
Tell us about some milestones that Burro crushed.
Since our start in 2017, we’ve raised around $46 million in equity, and our team has grown to 55 people that spans to almost every continent. We’ve surpassed 100,000 miles of autonomous paid commercial use and 400,000 hours of operation. We have over 400 systems running across the US, Australia, New Zealand, and a couple other geographies of the world.
What motivates you as a founder?
Our family farm is about 40 minutes outside Philadelphia and we grow fruits and vegetables. My father, who has Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s, can’t assist much anymore, and there’s a lack of labor help. That’s one of my biggest motivations for pursuing robotics—solving these labor issues on the farm by automating tedious tasks like mowing and weeding.
Any favorite books?
I love books and tend to read or listen to around two books a week. One of my favorite books is Going Solo by Roald Dahl as I find it fascinating to see how Dahl’s early experiences influenced his later work. It resonates with me because my own upbringing has significantly shaped what I do today. Another influential book for me is The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen; it’s all about disruptive innovation, which is so applicable to what I do at Burro.
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