Near the Alewife station in Cambridge, there’s a quiet industrial area with some small-to-medium sized offices. On the southeast end lives Soft Robotics, a company doing great things for the food, beverage, advanced manufacturing, and eCommerce industries.

Soft Robotics’ machines are built from a proprietary and versatile material which, through material science, enables a robot to grasp and manipulate items of varying size, shape, and weight.

These features were initially theorized back in 2008 when DARPA began a robotics research project called Chembot.  

“DARPA asked various research groups across the country, ‘Could you build a robot that can walk up to a door, get itself under the door, and then walk away from it?’” says Soft Robotics CEO Carl Vause. “Several traditional robotics groups, like iRobot, received funding to solve this problem, but there was a group out of Harvard that also received funding.”

Harvard’s Whitesides Research Group began to examine DARPA’s question, not from a mechanical standpoint, but a biological one. Using observations on how an octopus can morph its body to fit underneath rocks in the ocean, the group decided to apply that to robotics. The robot was built entirely out of elastomeric materials, and would undergo a transformation process the group named “morphological computation.” Whitesides Research Group went to work and began experimenting with this new process.

Their experiment proved to be successful, and the group received $400,000 in DARPA funding, to be placed into future projects. In 2013, they spun off to their own company called Soft Robotics.

The robots resemble high-tech claw machines, but their grippers aren’t hard metal, as the company started using the same soft material for their DARPA experiment. A major focus on the manufacturing side was to give the robots a black-and-white vision of what it can and cannot grab. The robots were developed with a sophisticated system to give customers full control of the grip parameters, such as speed, force, gripper spacing, and opening width.

When the company became its own, they initially made prototypes for Boston-area hospitals such as Brigham and Women’s. However, the company realized that their biggest market opportunity was in industrial automation.

“Robots today are great when it comes to hard labor, such as painting or welding a car,” Vause says. “They aren’t necessarily great at grabbing soft objects. We thought, ‘How can you build something that can grasp and package objects like a human hand?’”

Soft Robotics pivoted and started focusing on the automation industry. Vause and the company began to examine the industry at large and found some interesting findings.

Companies like Amazon have a large demand for labor in order to keep up with the thousands of orders they receive. “The average age of a worker in manufacturing is 46 and there is a declining workforce,” the Soft Robotics CEO says. “In the food and beverage industry, there are food safety issues with human-transferred pathogens.”

Many CPG and eCommerce companies are using Soft Robotics for their food products, in packaging applications that range from raw pizza dough to fresh produce. Thanks to the unique manufacturing of the system, the robot’s grippers do not squish or damage the food.

The company is currently a team of 24, but they are always looking for new members interested in the robotics industry.

Colin Barry is a contributor to VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter @ColinKrash.

Entrepreneurs get caught up in the skyrocket unicorn stories which are rare. Most successful companies are not an overnight success story. It takes a great team to be patient and figure out the right product market fit. Then, the market opportunity needs to be large enough to attract the interest from venture capitalists.

The story of Jebbit is one that every entrepreneur should read because it reflects reality.

The company’s founders, Tom Coburn and Jonathan Lacoste, met at Boston College, which has a growing number of successful entrepreneurial alumni who have started companies like WePay, Drizly, and others.

The duo came together to participate in the school’s business plan competition. The original idea formulated from Coburn who saw a need for a new form of interactive advertising targeted towards college students. The company helped brands ensure that consumers understood their advertising by creating consumer experiences where brands paid and consumers were rewarded per every question answered about the advertisement. Jebbit would reward consumers with monetary or exclusive rewards for providing the right answers. In return, brands knew that consumers truly understood their messaging.

After seeing some initial traction, Coburn and Lacoste both dropped out of Boston College to focus on their entrepreneurial endeavors. Jebbit also caught the attention of local angels, like Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot and Jay Batson of Acquia, which might have been a turning point as to why Jebbit still exists today.

“The Boston tech community really came together for us in terms of brands, investors, and mentors,” said Lacoste. “It is a testament of how an ecosystem can help support a startup.”

Fast forward six years later, Jebbit raised their Series A round of funding.

Entrepreneurship and building a company is hard and the path to where Jebbit is today was an iterative process. The company transitioned from a website where students answered questions for brands to an interactive content platform focused on mobile engagement.

Before we get into what Jebbit is doing today, you might wonder how they survived for six years before raising their A round of funding.

Lacoste attributed their survival to an early focus on revenue, an understanding team which has been committed to the long-term vision of the company, and great mentors, such as Katie Rae and Reed Sturtevant, who they met while participating in the 2013 Boston class at Techstars.

Another key aspect to Jebbit success is an obvious one that some entrepreneurs might miss. The company was constantly listening to the feedback from customers and they worked tirelessly to make sure they were addressing critical problems.

These days, Jebbit is still helping brands engage with consumers in a meaningful way, but their solution is now focused on today’s mobile world. Jebbit realized that there was an opportunity to disrupt traditional digital marketing by creating what they are calling the world’s first Declared Data Platform.

“We found a new way to help brands collect the right data through digital experiences,” said Lacoste.

Today, consumers are constantly checking their phones in micro-moments, like when they are standing in line, so it is tough to truly understand consumers’ intent.

This is where Jebbit comes in. They help brands collect the right data or what they are calling declared data through digital experiences.

The problem they recognized is that a lot of companies rely on third party data in an attempt to serve the right ads to you. For example, an airline might think they know you. They will track your browsing behavior and buy information from third party data from companies like Acxiom or Oracle Data Cloud which will tell them things like your age, gender, or even your income.

The problem with this example comes down to the fact that the airline still has no idea what your travel intentions are and the likelihood of you being a customer.

Jebbit helps companies solve this issue with a simple philosophy: Let’s directly ask the consumer these questions.

The company accomplishes this goal through interactive and immersive consumer experiences.  When a consumer “declares” their interest, the value of that consumer has a much higher probability of converting into revenue.

Cathay Pacific Airways is a client of Jebbit and they have created a mobile experience which walks consumers through a series of questions like: “When I travel, the one item I can’t forget is...” or “My favorite way to immerse myself in a new place is to...” After four questions, they finish with the last and most meaningful question “When are you looking to travel?”

Translation… a high value leads with a much higher rate of conversion.

Jebbit’s recent $6.8M Series A round of funding was led by Manifest Investment Partners, a new firm based in San Francisco. The firm has local ties to the Boston area via General Partner and MIT data science professor, Sinan Aral.

The company’s offices are located on South Market Street in Boston. They currently have 36 employees and plans to hire another 15-20 people by the end of this year.

Jebbit is a great example of an ecosystem at its best. Years ago, it was incredibly difficult for first-time founders in the Boston area to get the proper resources and support they needed to launch companies. Thankfully, that is a distant memory.