Eliot Horowitz left MongoDB a few months after COVID started. He had helped cofound the database technology company more than a decade earlier, serving as the chief technological officer and shepherding MongoDB to an IPO and market cap of around $20 billion. But these were the early days of the pandemic, and while searching for his next project, Horowitz began to tinker around with different gadget projects: an automated cat feeder, a chess-playing robot, and a better sprinkler system for his backyard.
Horowitz had a realization: The hardware component of robotics was advanced, but the software was lagging behind. He spent a year trying to understand why there weren’t better platforms for programming practical tools in the physical world and decided to make the project into his next startup. He called up his old investors at Union Square Ventures to line up a seed round, and his new company, Viam, began to grow.
