I also appreciated the write up. Rooting for you! I think FAR more startups should be focusing on robotics and basically anything to do with meeting fundamental needs IRL.
You did a great job with the description. Makes me want to get off the sidelines and build robotics on your API. (I have startup hyperactivity lol)
Unrelated: do you have to be a YC company to do a Launch HN?
I was deeply upset to realize I was too broken to do something that "easy." (still, really hard). As a mentor of mine, Boom's Blake Scholl, has said - it's sometimes easier to do "hard" things because it's easier to get the motivation to work on them.
Re:Launch HN - I think so? You can always do a Show HN, though!
I'm personally working on something hard in SaaS (automatic summary video after every Zoom/Teams SaaS demo).
I think truly hard things are in a lot of ways easier for truly inventive engineers because it's an execution challenge but you basically know for sure there's a market after.
Also hard things can be decomposed. If you solve one part (as you are doing) that's enough. So you can really niche down within something hard and still change the world
Completely agree on decomposing hard things.