This founder used agricultural experience from his native country to innovate in the US 

Many companies are started because founders recognize a need and want to create change. 

Tom Zhang, CEO of robotics startup Daxo Industries, recognized early in his career that he wanted to do work that mattered and that a startup would allow him the opportunity. 

Zhang grew up in rural China and had an interest in building from an early age. He moved to Singapore for high school, where he joined the robotics team and got his first taste of engineering, which brought him to the US in 2014 to study mechanical engineering and computer science at Cornell University. 

During his time in college, Zhang, 30, also found unique ways to explore his interest in robotics. Zhang took a gap year his junior year of college and did three internships at iRobot, Uber and Rapyuta Robotics. Through those experiences, he learned that he wanted to pursue a career that had purpose and that he could have ownership of, he said. 

The epiphany brought him to Philadelphia, where he still lives today. He pursued a Ph.D. program in computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, specifically studying machine learning for robotics, publishing papers about the topic. However, he still didn’t see the full picture of the impact of his work, so he decided to build a startup. 

After doing extensive market research, Zhang landed on agtech and launched the robotics startup Daxo Industries. The two-year-old company, which landed third on this year’s RealLIST Startups list, has now raised $1.35 million dollars, has six employees and customers all over the world. For Zhang, though, it’s all about the impact. 

In this edition of Technical.ly’s How I Got Here series, Zhang discusses his experience as an immigrant entrepreneur and why he sees it as the best way to make a difference in his chosen industry. 

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

What is your approach to entrepreneurship? 

I have been constantly thinking about who is most suited to be an entrepreneur, I think there are only two types of people. 

The first is, you are born an entrepreneur. Maybe your family are all entrepreneurs, and you grew up just listening to them, learning how to build a company. You are naturally just in a position to build something. 

The other type is when you have no choice. You can’t find a job, there is no place to go. You have to build a company. 

I’m not the first type. My parents are not entrepreneurs. So the way I’ve been doing this is I just gave myself no other options. I applied to nothing. I’m not going anywhere, so I try to force myself into the corner and adopt the mentality of you either build this or you’re stuck.

That’s the only way to squeeze the last bit out of myself to make something impactful.

What kind of impact are you hoping to have with Daxo Industries? 

The problem that we’re trying to solve is the labor shortage and quality issues of apples in the industry, and more broadly in the specialty crop or the tree fruit industry, but our initial focus is on apples. 

Specifically, what we’re trying to solve is called the stem clipping problem. If you don’t cut the stem off, the apples are going to puncture each other when they’re being transferred or dumped. If they cut the stem off, it slows their picking process down by 30% to 40%.  

We came up with the concept of a hands-free stem clipper. Instead of holding a small scissor in your hand, you mount this on the apple picking bag and you can pick with both hands free. When you pick, all you have to do is to press the apple onto our device, and the stem will be clipped. 

The vision of the company is just one line: we want to make labor a choice. There are people who want to do the work. We don’t want to take their jobs away, but if people don’t want to work on this, they should have the option. 

How has being an immigrant impacted your journey as a founder? 

Obviously, there’s a lot of red tape. There is an initial fear of, is this land even accepting of immigrant entrepreneurs? But then looking at a lot of companies, I realized their founders are also from all over the world. 

There are a lot more positives than negatives. It’s a self selective process, so the fact that we came from all over the world to this country, that means there’s a certain aspect, maybe courage or just tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty, in us. 

When we’re building a startup, nothing is certain, everything is ambiguous. You have to make decisions when information is very little. Moving here was the same experience. It really lends to our ability to do something approximately right. 

When I talk to my customers, or when I was trying to find my business partner, when I share my experience of the fruit industry in China, they get super excited. That has helped me to build great customer relations.

What advice do you have for fellow immigrant founders? 

My biggest advice is to seek help. Before you build any company, you really have no idea how. 

For example, when we got the venture capital deal, I didn’t understand the terms. Should I take the money, or should I not? I called 10 people, a VC, friends, entrepreneurs, CEOs of public companies, my mentors from Penn, and asked, “what is your perspective on this?” 

I’m listening to their perspectives so I can better synthesize my own solution. That helped me make my decision and I learned along the process. 

If you don’t seek help, you can’t learn throughout the process.

This story, and all of Technical.ly's immigration reporting, is made possible by the WES Mariam Assefa Fund.

The WES Mariam Assefa Fund supports catalytic efforts to create more inclusive economies for immigrants and refugees in the US and Canada. It works closely with organizations and leaders focused on ensuring more equitable access to opportunity and wealth.