About TUFF
Meet Our Team
Our team came together to help businesses adapt to increasingly unpredictable labor challenges after our favorite establishments started closing one after another over the last few years.
Coming from diverse professional backgrounds with complementary strengths, we've joined forces to make reliable automation solutions accessible to everyone.
Kyle Dou is the CEO of TUFF, which he cofounded in 2022 to channel his passion to help service industries survive growing labor challenges.
Kyle brings vast experience with cross-cultural relationships, supply chain management, warehousing, and logistics from the previous companies he’s built from the ground up.
He was previously the founder and CEO of HIXIH, which he grew to a $60m/year revenue business before going back to his entrepreneurial roots and starting over with TUFF.
Yajun Zhang, Co-Founder and CTO of TUFF, oversees TUFF’s vast engineering organization which drives the core technology innovation and R&D activities for the company. Before joining TUFF, Yajun served as a founder and CEO of KasaSmart which sold an array of smart home products that brought in over $100M annual revenue. Yajun brings a whooping 20+ years of IoT development experience within the tech world, from companies like Cisco. Yajun holds both Master and Bachelor degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, and PhD in Computer Science from Melbourne University.
Our Story
Founded in California in 2022, TUFF Robotics set out on a mission to make work fun again.
Labor challenges and looming recessions have created uncertainty - hiring, training & employee retention continue to create a massive burden in every industry.
That’s where TUFF comes in: our supplemental, autonomous workforce reduces redundant tasks, making it easier for you to attract new talent, retain staff, and improve team satisfaction.
The best part? - We only win when you win!