Mario Mendez

Road to Seed Round

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Lessons from a successful(ish) mvp startup launch

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In August of 2022 we launched the Evotrux 2.0 MVP. The new shipment-matching platform was built from the ground-up after a couple years of learning what customers actually wanted through Evotrux 1.0.
After a couple funding rounds, a couple people and myself were hired to build the new version of the Evotrux platform along with the remaining team after a pandemic-induced downturn period. This (not so brief) blog post is my attempt at writing down what I wish I’d known before this project. I hope this is helpful or at least somewhat entertaining :) . Here we go.

The first Canadian robot rock band

Sun, 10 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

During October I was tasked with creating a 15-minute musical experience using two of our robots. Two of our lab members would then take the experience to Macau and compete in IROS 2019 (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems). Along with lab members Christian Melendez, Li Borui and under Dr. Lau’s supervision we set out to create an experience that combined technical and artistical. Scroll down for videos of the robots playing!

Qualification video for FIRA 2019 ready!

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

After plenty of trial and error (and figuring out last year’s competition code) the qualification video for FIRA 2019 is ready. This year’s competition will be held in Changwon, Korea. I will not be able to attend the competition due to time constraints with my work, but I wish the Snobots team the best of luck this year!

fixmynotes.com, make studying easier!

Sun, 16 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When studying for my courses, I found myself performing the same task over and over: Opening slides,and zooming on each in order to be able to read it. This became tiring very quickly, and I wondered if there was anything I could do about it (besides creating a change.org for profs to change their slides), and so this idea became my first ‘solo’ project.

FIRA 2018 Robotics Competition

Sun, 12 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

FIRA (Federation of International Robot-soccer Association) 2018 has concluded and I am very happy to have participated! Participating in this competition was an incredibly challenging situation, as well as a very rewarding one. Robotics competitions are like hackathons, except they go on for 5 days :) .The Snobots Adult team earned the following trophies:

RoboCup 2018

Sun, 08 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

RoboCup is the largest and most challenging competition I have been to. It was very fun to work in such a big team with so much going on. The following article was written by the University of Manitoba Faculty of Science. You can find the original article in the archived original

AUTCup 2018

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This article was written by the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Science after AUTCup. The original article can be found at the archived Faculty of Science article.