While some tech companies have lofty goals to transform drug discovery through AI or to mine metals from asteroids, others set out to solve very annoying pain points average people feel everyday. Tennibot falls into the latter category and wants to pick up your tennis balls for you.
Tennibot co-founder and CEO Haitham Eletrabi said on a recent episode of TechCrunch’s Found podcast that he’s been involved with tennis his whole life. Growing up his parents wanted his sister to be a tennis star and gave Eletrabi the roll of her practice partner. Years later, while getting his PhD in civil engineering at Auburn University, he started to play again and remembered his least favorite part: collecting the balls after a session.
“I always, always hated picking up tennis balls,” Eletrabi said. “It was always frustrating for me, whether I’m practicing serve hitting with a board machine, or taking a lesson, spending that time picking up balls was always frustrating for me, so I was trying to solve a problem for myself.”
Eletrabi said that his initial model involved an RC car picking up tennis balls and has come a long way since. The model that is currently on the market uses AI and computer vision to both recognize and pick up tennis balls but also avoid people and obstacles. He acknowledged that this might sound like a tennis Roomba and mentioned that iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner saw the company’s display at CES and became an investor.
“She was super crucial in helping us avoid those pitfalls for robotics companies and AI companies in the early days,” Eletrabi said.
Eletrabi also talked about what it was like developing the tech for Tennibot and how the company navigated the patent process, including deliberately patenting the device for “round shape objects” as opposed to just tennis balls so it can expand into sports like pickleball.
He also talked about why Tennibot has a flat management structure, how he doesn’t lean in to founder mode, and how tennis connects the entire team.