Robin Cowie, CEO & Founder of Skillmaker: From Haunted Woods to the Repair Bay
Robin Cowie, CEO and founder of Skillmaker, went from co-creating The Blair Witch Project to building AI and extended reality tools for auto repair technicians, and he did it from Carolina Beach.
Robin tells me how his father's "point of view learning," first developed to train South African gold miners, shaped his films, his work on Madden, and now Skillmaker. We talk about how NAPA paid him to spend two months listening to repair shops before he built anything. That research turned into a platform that assesses technicians, cuts entry-level training from two years to a few months, and uses smart glasses to put verified repair data in front of techs mid-job.
Robin also shares hard-won founder lessons. He explains why distribution is the hardest part of any startup and how partnerships with NAPA and Solera solved it early. He walks through how more than 460 shops paid for a beta product and generated about a million dollars in revenue before launch. And he explains why his goal is for Skillmaker to become boring.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks
00:23 Thanks to our sponsors
01:32 Scot's intro: from Blair Witch to auto AR/VR
03:08 Meet Robin Cowie, CEO & founder of Skillmaker
03:42 Gold mines and "point of view learning"
04:58 Film school and The Blair Witch Project
06:25 Selling at Sundance and crashing the van
09:25 Madden Longshot
10:35 George Lucas, Skywalker Ranch, and Star Wars on a bedsheet
12:00 From London to Carolina Beach
13:50 Finding the problem: healthcare, then NAPA
18:40 Cutting training from 2 years to 30 days
20:20 Smart glasses and shop productivity
22:50 Assess, accelerate, assist
23:35 Quest 3, Unreal, and "teach 5, test 5"
25:50 148 hours of VR content and the pipeline behind it
29:05 Expanding into transportation
30:20 Smart safety glasses and the Pareto principle
33:05 Verified data: NAPA, Identifix, AutoVitals, ASE
35:45 Robin's prior companies and his leadership team
39:05 An agentic company and why distribution is key
40:45 Fundraising: $4.5M on a SAFE
41:20 The paid beta and the Champions Circle
45:00 Becoming "just another tool in the kit"
45:55 Scot's founder takeaways
47:20 Robin on the NC ecosystem
49:15 Wrap and credits
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Where to Find Robin Cowie:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robincowie/
Skillmaker: https://skillmaker.ai/
Where to Find Scot Wingo:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
X: https://x.com/scotwingo
---
This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.
We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:
Platinum:
NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org
Gold Sponsors:
- Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
- EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
- Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com
Silver Sponsors:
- Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
- Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html
Robin tells me how his father's "point of view learning," first developed to train South African gold miners, shaped his films, his work on Madden, and now Skillmaker. We talk about how NAPA paid him to spend two months listening to repair shops before he built anything. That research turned into a platform that assesses technicians, cuts entry-level training from two years to a few months, and uses smart glasses to put verified repair data in front of techs mid-job.
Robin also shares hard-won founder lessons. He explains why distribution is the hardest part of any startup and how partnerships with NAPA and Solera solved it early. He walks through how more than 460 shops paid for a beta product and generated about a million dollars in revenue before launch. And he explains why his goal is for Skillmaker to become boring.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks
00:23 Thanks to our sponsors
01:32 Scot's intro: from Blair Witch to auto AR/VR
03:08 Meet Robin Cowie, CEO & founder of Skillmaker
03:42 Gold mines and "point of view learning"
04:58 Film school and The Blair Witch Project
06:25 Selling at Sundance and crashing the van
09:25 Madden Longshot
10:35 George Lucas, Skywalker Ranch, and Star Wars on a bedsheet
12:00 From London to Carolina Beach
13:50 Finding the problem: healthcare, then NAPA
18:40 Cutting training from 2 years to 30 days
20:20 Smart glasses and shop productivity
22:50 Assess, accelerate, assist
23:35 Quest 3, Unreal, and "teach 5, test 5"
25:50 148 hours of VR content and the pipeline behind it
29:05 Expanding into transportation
30:20 Smart safety glasses and the Pareto principle
33:05 Verified data: NAPA, Identifix, AutoVitals, ASE
35:45 Robin's prior companies and his leadership team
39:05 An agentic company and why distribution is key
40:45 Fundraising: $4.5M on a SAFE
41:20 The paid beta and the Champions Circle
45:00 Becoming "just another tool in the kit"
45:55 Scot's founder takeaways
47:20 Robin on the NC ecosystem
49:15 Wrap and credits
-----
Where to Find Robin Cowie:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robincowie/
Skillmaker: https://skillmaker.ai/
Where to Find Scot Wingo:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
X: https://x.com/scotwingo
---
This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.
We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:
Platinum:
NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org
Gold Sponsors:
- Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
- EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
- Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com
Silver Sponsors:
- Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
- Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html
------
Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:
Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:
- Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
