A new startup, Rollup, is emerging from stealth today with $5.6M in funding and a plan to streamline the development of complex hardware.
Introducing Rollup: Collin Mickels founded Rollup in 2021 to simplify the design and engineering process with a one-stop-shop software system, unlike existing systems, which Mickels said are difficult to integrate and lack a user-friendly interface, especially for startups.
“There’s inherent benefits that we saw to having everything in one place,” he told Payload. “It’s all natively integrated. All the data is just there. There’s no overhead—set it up one time and you’re done.”
The company is currently based in LA and has 15 employees split between the US and Europe.
The round: The company raised $5.6M to help build the product and bring it to market, Mickels said. The American Dynamism team at Andreessen Horowitz and Thiel Capital led the round, which also included participation from Space.VC, JAM Fund, Space Cadet, and Alumni Ventures.
The why: Mickels, who previously worked at NASA JPL, Blue Origin, and Varda, said he saw different types of engineers, from mechanical to analytical to aerothermal, struggle to collaborate with each other when designing hardware.
“The issue is they don’t have this connective tissue that’s approachable where day one, day two, they can get in there and just start using some system that allows them to transact data, information, and parameters between each other, because that’s where the real pain is,” he said.
User base: The platform is built with aerospace and defense customers in mind—and Mickels said there’s been “a lot of interest” from space companies—though he said it could be applied to any complex design process. He said Rollup is initially targeting customers ranging from early stage startups to large primes—where it could be used for specific projects such as designing a new vehicle.
