Wesley Pitts remembers the first time he saw a robotic mower in a friend’s yard in Budapest, where he lived for most of his childhood. “I was stunned. This family never mowed their grass. And on top of that, they spent $2,000 and they never had to worry about their lawn again.”
The autonomous trend was prevalent throughout Europe, he adds.
“Whenever we traveled to Austria or Germany or The Netherlands or Switzerland or literally anywhere in Western Europe, I started seeing these things being used, at Napoleon’s tomb [in Paris], at the most beautiful castles in Europe. And whenever our family would go back to the States, I’d never see any robotic mowers.”
As founder of KnoxBots, a robotic lawn service that also sells the environmentally conscious machines, the 22-year-old newlywed is on a mission to mow down traditional methods of keeping grass under control. Although he still maintains a few high-end residential customers, he recently shifted his focus to commercial sites, from airports and athletic fields to city parks and universities, and has managed to substantially grow the business in the two short years since it went public.
“Wesley is the kind of guy you root for,” says Jim Lapinska, CEO, founding partner and private wealth adviser at Axiom Wealth Management. He started mentoring Pitts a year ago after the two hit it off at a leadership summit.
“He’s grounded, coachable and thoughtful – someone who asks great questions and listens with the intent to grow,” Lapinska says. “He’s confident but not arrogant … and ambitious without being reckless. He carries himself with integrity and, even at a young age, it’s clear that he’s laying a foundation built to last, not just in business, but in life and relationships. I’ve learned from him as much as I’ve tried to teach him.”
Entrepreneurship began early
One of seven children in a missionary family from Knoxville, Pitts spent the first four years of his life in Belarus before moving to Budapest. The entrepreneurial bug bit in high school when he started his own “white glove” landscaping business for expatriates who returned to their home countries each summer.
“We would manage their full property,” Pitts says, “everything from their lawns to their hedges to their mailboxes to flushing their toilets to moving the cars to make it look like somebody’s living there.”
Like most of his classmates at the International Christian School of Budapest, in 2021 Pitts chose to return to his country of origin to attend college.
“I’d never lived in America,” he admits. “But my family would come back to Knoxville every two years, so I kind of knew Knoxville, and that was the only place in America I really knew.”
Before starting his business studies at the University of Tennessee, he spent a few months at a landscape architecture firm in Houston, learning the ropes with the intention of starting a company that would quite possibly utilize robotic mowing.
“I literally had zero dollars when I made my way to America, and my family was still living in Europe,” he says. “So I needed to make money.”
College was expensive, so in 2022 he joined the Tennessee Air National Guard to cover his tuition and, around the same time, started KnoxBots with a UT classmate, Grant Von Hagen. They spent the first year testing and learning the technology before officially offering robotic mowing services and becoming a dealer for Husqvarna and other brands, chiefly for residential customers.
When the weather warmed in 2023, Von Hagen left the partnership.
“With me doing it all alone that year, we brought in $160,000 in revenue and were profitable,” Pitts says. “That was our first real year of actually doing business and not just testing.”
KnoxBots did so well, in fact, that Pitts dropped out of college to focus on the venture fulltime. He now offers comprehensive grounds maintenance, sales and consulting, mostly for commercial customers, through his new umbrella company, TerraSYNC. He recently launched a second location in West Palm Beach, Florida, and plans to open several more, including one in Nashville, within the next 12 months.
KnoxBots has also expanded to include irrigation, drones and line painting. In addition, the company has garnered a following among golf course managers, who often purchase a combination of robotic services, including pickers that can navigate all types of driving range terrain to retrieve up to 7,500 balls per circuit.
Stacking benefits
Despite his current B-to-B emphasis, Pitts still serves a number of residential clients with estates spanning three to 10 acres.
“These guys don’t want people on their property, and they would prefer to have robotic mowers that are silent and that always keep their lawn looking exactly the same. With the robotic mowers, your grass doesn’t change height, because it mows it multiple times a week.”
Using a “Chick-fil-A model” when establishing new hubs, Pitts sets a 30- to 60-mile service radius for each one, depending on how rural or metropolitan the area.
The largest robot is only about 40 inches wide and 30 inches tall – much smaller than a traditional riding mower. It can also climb “the craziest of slopes,” Pitts says. “We’re talking 45 degrees.
“The benefits start to stack up even more when you get to corporate [applications] because not only are you saving in cost, but you have a bunch of environmental savings, even when it comes to noise pollution, bringing it from 90 decibels all the way down to 40.”
The operational impact of unmanned mowers is even more dramatic, he says. Relying on them frees workers from monotonous tasks so they can handle more complex projects, thereby saving labor costs and boosting productivity.
Each KnoxBot mower runs on one of two types of batteries: those that can be swapped out when they run low and those that return to their recharging stations on their own.
When it comes to customer education and troubleshooting, autonomous mowers generally need more attention than their gas-powered counterparts, Pitts notes.
“When you buy a Kubota or [John Deere] Gator, you buy it and you drive it, and then you take it in for service. But there’s not much management of it. With a robotic mower, it’s more nuanced than just selling a product.
“If you want to buy a computer, you can go on Amazon and buy one and you’re going to be fine. You won’t necessarily understand all the bells and whistles and the full capacity of the computer, but you can set it up, for the most part. It’s very user-friendly.
“But if you’re a company, you’re going to need an IT company to set everything up for you. … When it gets to bigger properties that need more mowers that are more robust, it’s more like we’re an IT company doing IT solutions.”
Mentorship key
David Hamilton, turfgrass manager and horticulturist at the University of Tennessee Gardens, met Pitts two years ago while exploring ways to automate some of his management duties.
“He quickly stepped in and helped me think through every aspect of the process,” Hamilton says. “Once I was ready to move forward, he successfully installed everything needed for a smooth and effective operation. Since then, he has remained accessible and responsive whenever any needs arise.
“Wesley is always forward-thinking and moves quickly. He strikes me as someone who isn’t afraid of failure, but instead uses it as a tool to grow and improve his chances of success. … He’s driven by his passions, yet he’s also mindful that others may be hesitant to embrace too much change at once.”
When asked what makes him a good business owner, Pitts zooms in on a phrase coined by “Shark Tank” celebrity Kevin O’Leary.
“When stuff hits the fan, when things aren’t going well, what is your signal-to-noise ratio? How well are you able to focus in on the signal and not the noise? There’s so much thrown at me as an entrepreneur all the time.
“I have to, effectively, focus in on the signal, the small things that move the needle, the 20% of things that make 80% of the difference. When you get that gut feeling that you need to stick your arm out and do something that’s going to be uncomfortable, that’s going to be hard and is going to suck, that’s the exact thing you have to do.”
That “signal” isn’t the only thing Pitts listens for. Surrounding himself with “wiser, better, stronger, more experienced” mentors has held him accountable for facing tough challenges head-on, he says.
“Wesley is relentless in the best way,” Lapinska says of his mentee. “He’s a visionary with the humility to ask questions and seek out wise counsel. He’s willing to get his hands dirty, but also knows how to lift his head up and think strategically. … Though he’s significantly younger than me, our conversations have always felt like peer-to-peer. He carries a level of maturity, faith and purpose well beyond his years.”
Building the future
Paying it forward, Pitts now speaks to budding business owners at UT and at the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and counsels individual students who reach out to him for help. In 2024, he won the cash prize for best student pitch in the Emerging Entrepreneur category at Innov865; this year, he’s judging.
But Pitts isn’t about to let all this success go to his head. In fact, he says, humility is essential. So is the ability to keep at it even if you can’t see results – yet.
“So few people have that and to be an entrepreneur, you have to have that piece,” he says. “I’ve seen enough people start something and not finish it because they’re not making money right away, and they want to get that get-rich-quick fix. You have to have a long-term vision, a long-term plan. If you’re not willing to go through the suck for, literally, five-plus years, you’re not going to make it.
“Our failure rate for entrepreneurship [in the U.S.] should not be as high as it is,” he continues. “We live in a generation of people that try something and are told that it’s going to be so easy to get rich and it’s just not. … Only 150 years ago, almost every single person in America was an entrepreneur. It’s a way to make a good living, and you don’t have to make a million bucks a year.
“A great entrepreneur is making $150,000 a year, feeding his family, having a small business. If you’re 22 years old, you don’t need to live in luxury. You’re building your future.”
That future, for Pitts, involves growing TerraSYNC nationwide. “We’re going to become the leaders in grounds maintenance automation,” he says matter-of-factly, without a hint of conceit.
He also plans to establish a nonprofit for like-minded entrepreneurs who want to provide sustainable jobs without necessarily depending on venture capital.
“Obviously, we’re in business to make money, but the passion that drives me to do this goes so far beyond making money or being successful. It’s about doing what God created me to do, and that’s to build businesses that impact lives.”
Knoxville wasn’t the ideal place to start a robotic mowing business, Pitts admits. It’s hilly and lawns don’t grow year-round, like they do farther south. “It’s more challenging, for sure. But I think that could be a strength as well, because we learned things we wouldn’t have learned in other places, and we can open more locations in more challenging areas. I wouldn’t change anything.
“I’m learning how to be a better person, how to lead and how to care. I’ve made so many mistakes, but I’ve been able to learn from them and adapt from them. Now I get to impact other people’s lives and help them through the lessons I’ve learned.”