A 35-year-old recently quit Google to start a robotics company. Now he has raised $16 million. Here's his best advice for building a hot company quickly.

Cobalt

Erik Schluntz and Travis Deyle are the cofounders of Cobalt.

• The security-robotics company Cobalt raised $13 million in a Series A round of financing this year, despite putting together a pitch deck the night before meeting with venture capitalists.
• Cobalt's CEO, Travis Deyle, 35, said the company wowed investors because it was able to deliver on two goals.
• Deyle set out to have a product on the market within the first year and land a paying customer before building anything.

Raising venture capital for a startup is no cakewalk. There are high stakes, probing questions from investors, and an unspoken pressure from your employees to return to the office with a term sheet.

So it's noteworthy that Travis Deyle and Erik Schluntz this year raised $13 million from investors for their security-robotics company, Cobalt, despite putting little time into preparing their pitch.

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"Ours happened so quickly," said Deyle, 35. "That sounds cheesy, but we expected it to be a giant slog. The bar for a Series A is substantial." ...

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