iRobot: Colin Angle. How The Roomba Became a Household Icon
Colin Angle, co-founder of iRobot, recounts the company's journey from a garage startup building military robots to creating the Roomba, which dominated the consumer robotics market. He details the engineering breakthroughs that made the vacuum viable, the marketing pivot triggered by a Pepsi ad, and the strategic failures that led to the collapse of a $1.7 billion acquisition by Amazon. Angle reflects on how regulatory intervention and rising competition from Chinese manufacturers ultimately forced iRobot to sell its technology and assets to a Chinese company.