Cameras, Robots, and Bikes Boom in San Mateo

In the span of just a few weeks, three San Mateo-based companies have popped up in the headlines as they continue to innovate in technology. Unlike much of Silicon Valley’s cloud-based tech, these three very different businesses are all about manufacturing hardware.

GoPro – While the company known for its revolutionary wearable video cameras has seen a dip in adoption over the past year, stock analysts are abuzz with the anticipated arrival of the company’s Hero 5 Black action camera. According to leaked news, this next device boasts 4k video recording capabilities

Wonder Workshop – The robots from San Mateo’s own Wonder Workshop are among many educational robots that are designed to get kids to understand computer science and grow up prepared for careers in the digital economy.

Three years ago, the company released Dash and Dot. This week, Wonder Workshop added two smarter robots to its growing “family.” Cue and Dot. The $200 Cue is designed for kids 11 years old and up, while the $80 Dot Creativity Kit is targeted at ages 6 and up.

Both robots have natural language capabilities. Cue has its own personality, and it can communicate in a variety of ways. You can send text message commands to it from your smartphone, via Bluetooth connectivity. The robot can send text messages back to you. Cue’s chat library includes 30,000 responses with a vocabulary of 170,000 words.

LimeBike – While not the company behind the City of San Mateo’s bike-share program, the new dockless bikeshare company LimeBike is headquartered. It made a splash in the growing bicycle-sharing market, rolling out in 8 cities across the country.

“We’re trying to open one market every week, and our goal for this year is 70,000 to 100,000 bikes,” said CEO Toby Sun. “We want to have 4,000 or 5,000 bikes per city.” The company is one of the startups that hopes to make transportation in cities cleaner, more efficient, and affordable — all in the name of urban sustainability.

An ideally located community, Bay Meadows is only 10 minutes from Palo Alto, 20 minutes from San Francisco, and has 3 airports (SFO, OAK, SJC) within 30 miles. Bay Meadows is also located on Caltrain, which makes travel and commutes that much easier. Talk about convenient! Bay Meadows is the centralized place to reduce commutes, meet friends and play.  Looking for ideas of where to ride? Check out our bike map here.