Rob Dobson, chairman of Robotical, the creator of Marty the Robot, was one of the many tech sector figures at Turing Fest in Edinburgh.
Dobson, originally from Bolton who studied electronic engineering at Southampton, has lived in Edinburgh with his family for seven years, and is a serial investor.
He worked in London for 20 years before moving to Scotland. He is an investor in around 30 companies including Mallzee, the online fashion and analytics business in Edinburgh.
He started in the mobile telecom industry and created Actix in 1991. It was a niche network optimisation company for mobile operators and Dobson sold several businesses in the UK, Germany and the US. He has had four exits, including one worth £15 million and one worth £18 million.
Marty the Robot is captivating school children, encouraging learning and introducing them to the future world of robotics.
It’s a Scottish invention, which can be integrated with the learning tool Raspberry Pi, and is already attracting international attention in China and Japan, where robotics is a way of life for society.
Dobson is obviously enchanted by this tiny pile of cogs, wiring, circuits and movable plastic parts with its cute set of eyebrows.
“I’m an angel investor and Robotical is one of the companies I’ve invested in and one of the companies that I chair. I’m an investor in about 30 companies across the UK, with around 23 of them in Scotland.’’
Robotical is the firm behind the educational robot invented by Dr Sandy Enoch, who has been supported by the University of Edinburgh. Enoch’s charming robot character is blue and yellow and has quizzical eyebrows.
Dobson said: “I heard about Marty first three years ago when Sandy was thinking about doing a crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo. I met him at a school coding club and he came along with a prototype and he showed everyone the robot. All the kids gathered around as he made it do little tricks and wiggle dances.’’
Dobson backed the crowdfunding campaign and went on to support the first funding round. A year later Dobson became the chair of the company. Today it is cranking up production to meet demand for Marty around the world. The basic kit costs £150, with a class pack of 10 costing £1650. Marty uses the block-based program language Scratch while more advanced students can use Python, Javascript or even C++.
Dobson said: “Kids really engage with the robot and that’s the most wonderful thing. When you see young people, who are not the conventional middle class who would be engaging in STEM subjects, and not into maths and coding apps, but they love dressing up the robot and getting him to go through obstacle courses or playing football. It’s a great direct learning tool.’’
For Dobson, Marty the Robot is about engagement and inclusivity.
“You have to get young people to engage with Marty and they are doing this on a number of levels. He’s animated and has a really engaging personality and then they can do what they want him to do. After that, you can get people to learn how to do those things. This is programming, its coding and its STEM and it’s the basis of robotics. It’s the future.”
He invests from £25,000 to £2 million, but the average is around £500,000.
Dobson said: “It’s very personal for me. I like getting involved and I feel people with great ideas and the determination to succeed need to be empowered and I want to help them do that. I hope they can change the world, because it needs changing.’’
What is his involvement as an investor and chairman?
“I’m just trying to steer the business in the right direction as it scales up.”
How did he get into angel investing?
“What I learned over 15 years of building my business was about scaling, how businesses work, and how to build products that engage. So when I sold my business I fell into angel investing because a few of the people who were leaving my business wanted to start their own businesses and asked me for some help financial and as non-executive.”
What does this investment mean?
“It is about early stage and the excitement of new ideas and about the people, many of them younger people who are dynamic about what they can achieve and want to change the world.”
What attracted him to Edinburgh?
“We been regulars at the Edinburgh Festival and came to Scotland to settle here. We looked at the quality of life and my wife and I decided to bring our family here. Brian Corcoran [the Turing Fest founder] was involved in one of the businesses which I invested in and we know each other really well. I know Jamie Coleman too [CodeBase founder], then I met the FanDuel people. It was an exciting introduction to Edinburgh’s vibrant tech life.”
