Inside Matic: Mehul Nariyawala on building the first home robot people actually keep using

80% of people who buy a robot vacuum stop using it within three months, and the whole category had a Net Promoter Score of negative one. In 2017, Mehul Nariyawala, co-founder of Matic, decided to spend the next nine years building the robot that people continue to use.

Back then, Mehul and his co-founder Navneet had just left Nest. Silicon Valley had 200+ self-driving car startups yet basically zero companies were building robots for the home, even though families spend about 45 hours a week on chores, 3x more than they spend driving.

It turns out homes are harder than roads: There is no Google Maps or GPS for your living room, so the robot has to map itself and figure out where it is.

Matic first launched in April 2023 got mostly ignored. However, by pivoting and sending robots to tastemakers with no strings attached, Wired gave Matic its first 10/10 for a robot vacuum in over a decade, amplifying the robot’s reach and audience. Matic went from about 400 robots shipped in 2024 to 5,000 last year to roughly 13,000 this year.

Now, by learning from thousands of homes, 99% of the fleet hasn’t gotten stuck in 100 days. Mehul talks about continuing to update their active robots, using pre-built sensors to make voice and gesture capable overnight. Even now, he explains why Rosie the Robot won't be one-shotted, why Matic's next robot is a "five to 10-year-old," and why the company offers six-year vesting and wrote "not for sale" on day one.

00:00 — Meet Mehul, co-founder of Matic
03:01 — Why robot vacuums had a negative NPS
04:49 — Why there's no Google Maps or GPS for your home
07:23 — Why Matic took nine years to ship
14:52 — How Matic made robot vacuums cool again
17:23 — Is a $1,500 robot vacuum worth it?
23:02 — The Matic Cues launch that hit 11M views
25:55 — Is robotics overfunded? Mehul on humanoids and demos
34:17 — Why Matic's next robot is a "five to 10-year-old"
37:09 — Six-year vesting and a company that's not for sale

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