Browse Case Studies

David Friedberg founded Canna (formerly The Production Board), a molecular beverage printer that allows consumers to create any beverage at home by combining water with flavor cartridges containing chemically-extracted compounds. The device launched pre-orders at $499 for the first 10,000 units, charging per drink consumed (25-50% cheaper than retail) with auto-shipped cartridges. The three-year R&D effort involved analyzing thousands of beverages via GCMS to prove that all drinks are 99% water and only 1% flavor compounds, enabling a long-tail beverage marketplace similar to YouTube or TikTok.

Orangewood Robotics is a hardware startup that trains general-purpose robotic arms to perform high-value industrial tasks like powder coating, painting, welding, and pick-and-pack operations. The company leverages affordable, programmable robotic arms (similar to how the iPhone became a platform) and writes specialized software to teach them different manufacturing processes. They rent their services to industrial clients for around $500/day, offering reliability and consistency that beats manual labor.