The Hardtech Podcast
AMVIC Special Episode with Ben Wrightsman (Founding Board Member, AMVIC)
Host: Grant Chapman (Glassboard)

Auto-generated transcript, lightly cleaned for proper nouns.

[0:00] Welcome to the podcast.

[0:09] everyone, welcome back to the Hardtech Podcast. It is just me on this side of the camera. It's call it Hardtech Podcast after dark or at the end of the day on a Friday, putting in a quick episode here. So I got Ben Wrightsman with me from AMVIC and many other things.

[0:23] So Ben, welcome.

[0:25] Absolutely glad to be glad to be on second time around. So apparently I did a decent job. The first. Yeah, yeah.

[0:31] So for too long though, it has been because you were on the we filmed that at the old studio. Oh yeah. Yeah that's right. That was season one. That was a long time ago already.

[0:40] Here we go. Yeah. So Ben and I go way back. I first got introduced to you when I was a bright eyed college student. And your company was beloved, donating batteries to our cause. So you were at EnerDel. Sucker for a good time and some crazy young minds. Yeah. And then we've been through quite a few adventures through your journey.

[0:58] But let's go all the way back. You're Hoosier native. How did you get started in engineering and hard tech? And let's let's go through the the history of what you've touched.

[1:06] It's been 30 years. How do we recap that in, like, three minutes? Yeah, definitely a product of Stranger Things and stranger backgrounds. Who's your native? Born in South Bend.

[1:22] Parents moved to Indianapolis. Probably a great summary for me is a preacher's kid, so that probably explains why I've been is, you know, some would say up to trouble or into as many things as I should or shouldn't be some days. But, you know, really, even from a young age, my parents would tell you and still today, you're probably what sets the tone for it is ADHD and OCD background.

[1:46] Been diagnosed? My parents knew at them but never took me in officially. And you know my mom short story on that would tell you that you know they they did Medicaid me for one overnight. And she said I was a normal kid for the first night ever. Yeah. My bed for the first time and, you know, didn't fight him going to bed and didn't find me up and running around the house, you know, to get up and run around the room.

[2:07] And she said, you did everything absolutely normal. And she said, I cried myself to sleep and realized the next day that's not what I wanted. So she said, hey, whatever, whatever God gave us, we were going to deal with. So and they have and I have two. I think that's that's probably why, as you stated, why kind of getting into everything.

[2:24] It is my self-medication and transparently my mind goes 100 miles an hour. It's hard for me most days for my wife and others. You know me some days, but the OCD that comes out in that two helps me center.

[2:37] I was going to say, having worked with you over the years, the most amazing thing about your ADHD is it doesn't prevent you from seeing something to completion, which most people that have ADHD tendencies are great at starting, bad at finishing, and you are one of the very few people I know that have equal sets of both, that when something is undone or unfinished, you were more uncomfortable than

[2:59] sitting still.

[3:01] Yeah. Which is, you know, that's probably the where the medication might have helped me or could in some days because, yeah, it's a conflict if it's left undone. Anything that I start because of the ADHD says that shalt complete and it's got to be not just done, but it's got to be tied off of the boat done. Right.

[3:20] Yeah, it's got to be done right. So it's a good thing

[3:23] I said, I think that naturally led you into a successful career in hardware, because unlike software where you can push bug updates and fixes later, whatever we ship has to be done.

[3:32] That's correct. So it started with early on, actually, I started tearing stuff apart, and my parents had to tell people when I was going to their place that, hey, by the way, if you got a couch or a sweeper or anything, he's going to tear it apart.

[3:45] And they're like, we're sorry. I don't know if we can put it together, but we're going to try. I'm going to try and got into got into getting to know electrician who's been a lifelong friend. Now Dave Humphrey and Humphrey electric got to know him. And he put that mind to work in the summers working with him on the farms and other places as an electrician.

[4:04] So you got to learn, frankly, the world of electricity and in electronics and connectivity and that kind of stuff as a as an installer and eventually as a as a turnkey electrician, a journeyman. And actually in high school, what caused me from I was considering actually military service because I wanted to serve the country and met Matt Spouse, who had known for a while more officially, and also the electrical stuff.

[4:33] He challenged me even though my my high school instructor told me that most likely I'd either be in prison, I'd be dead or up to no good, or possibly doing something cool. But he wasn't sure that the last one was a reality. Well,

[4:46] you're doing the last two together is what it is. No good and cool at the same time.

[4:50] Yes, I haven't made it to prison yet. I've gotten

[4:52] close to the times it feels like. So, you know, that was what was the start of the trajectory. And so electrician and, you know, one of my, one of my few peer sets that I paid my way through Purdue University and frankly, was it Purdue and love what they did.

[5:08] And but, you know, quickly transferred because they said, hey, we've got this race car thing. And I was a I'm a racer by heart in the background said, hey, we got this other project I was paying working during the days, electrician was taking school midday and then at night was working on vending machines again, back to just didn't sleep.

[5:26] And then they talked about this race program and like cool. And they're like, hey, it's the first time everything like it. And it was electric. It was electric. But the first one at Purdue was the stupid solar car straight. And I'm like, fast, does it go? And then they told me, I'm like, that's so boring. I mean, looking back, I could learn something there.

[5:43] But then owner and I met him on Dean and I met him on campus at Purdue. He was from IEP at the time. And he said, we're going to start this formula Lightning league. And by the way, behind the scenes were working with Delphi Automotive. This project that's called the impact. And I'm like, what's this I love impact.

[6:06] He's like, yeah, it's going to be electric race car. It's a little Lassie that the universities are going to build them, and we're going to race these all over the world. And I'm like,

[6:12] okay, yeah, count me in. I mean, this is I met you racing electric vehicles at a college campus.

[6:18] Yeah. So I mean, you can understand this.

[6:21] The draw is pretty good. I mean, the the racing, the comp, the tech, the like, innovation. The first of its kind, like, yeah, no one knows what they're doing. I mean, that is a big old model of medication right there for both diseases. And it's like all new stuff. ADHD loves that. OCD says I could focus on some really and has to work, and we have to be the fastest and we've got to.

[6:40] Yeah. So so that was there and met my met the company. First of that, the sponsors, Diversified Systems was a sponsor. Stan and Dave and my soon to be father in law Jean Kerry, who were there due alum and deeply worked with Purdue. They were excited about the same program. And so I started now at college and electrician and working at night building test systems for a circuit board manufacturer in Indianapolis, which at the time was well known.

[7:12] And we had some great projects, stuff we couldn't talk about and dragged me into the electronics world. So I had electronics, electrical engineering, and, you know, the practical in the field, starting all of that and paid my college way as part of that. It's the racing really did it for me. And what's funny is that was really if I look back and people say, how did you like electronics, electrician, batteries, race cars, like where that how the heck did that intersect?

[7:39] It's there. Yeah, because it was electric vehicle of its time lead acid. That's a really cool ones. And starting on some early

[7:46] nickel metal hydrides which went into Priuses and that became what the Prius is ran for 15 years. All of Delphi's

[7:52] innovation, which is pedigree for every electric vehicle today, if you look, it's just under the hood, it's just in the background.

[8:00] The inverters, all of their high voltage ecosystems and stuff, everything. I mean, Tesla today, I can assure you their pedigree and what's in their DNA came from Delphi engineers in the late 90s, which is awesome. So that's what was the culmination. And then and then really rapid expanded from there. The electronics took me into the contract manufacturing world.

[8:23] We didn't build any of our own. We built some of our own stuff, but we built for

[8:27] thousands and thousands of other people. I mean, just yeah, you're the next step down the line for what we do at Glassboard. We need contract manufacturers to take the designs we make and make

[8:35] many of them. That is correct. I mean, I think about we we did not have glass boards at that time and we had some engineering centers, but they really didn't understand the design for manufacturing, the manufacturing reliability, the manufacturing readiness level.

[8:52] And so we had to do that. I mean, we had some brilliant minds. My father in law, a member, Stan Bentley, who's part of now, you know, a long, long spin off of that diversified DSI devices. I mean, they're still today injecting pedigree into electronics as well. And all of that knowledge that we knew for like IPC and all the printed circuit.

[9:12] But again, back to an intentional intersection met thousands and thousands and thousands of clients. We were doing medical, military, automotive, consumer electronics, you name it, it had circuits in it. You built it. And yeah, I wound up my first major one was the all in one, the undercover darkness of the all in one printer. I mean, this this tells you, you know, how long ago that was, was someone came up with the idea that we'll take the desktop scanner and copier and printer fax machine, and we'll create an all in one unit that users will buy.

[9:44] Will demo it at CES, but they wanted to produce it as an electronic under cover of darkness and then scale it globally real fast, real fast. And so we built that with with the company. Eventually Lexmark was one of the heads of that HP as well. And then drug me to China. And you talk about explosion. That was the early days of Foxconn.

[10:07] One had been in place. We were at Foxconn two and then other electronics companies there. But I mean, the US we saw we had massive contract manufacturing then, but China, even in its early days, was exploding in a matter of a few, a few of a, sorry, a few of a decade. It was within a decade. Yeah, several decades later, they're the leader.

[10:27] When we went there, we got exposed, you know, tens of thousands of more projects and innovations from, you know, again, just away consumer devices that you see in Walmart to the highest in tech that exists in the world that, you

[10:40] know, flies and, you know, controls and and fits in your pocket and is like a supercomputer that we all take for granted that we take phone calls on and send pictures of cats

[10:47] with.

[10:47] Yeah, it goes in bodies. I mean, early I mean early smart devices that became combined with better cell phones than PDAs, than smart, then telephone or then smartphones like anyways, it's that was the intersection for me. And then that really secured me that. I'd say diversified was my key for the importance of manufacturing, importance of manufacturing process and manufacturing readiness level, the amount of work that it actually takes to get a design not just built, but built the right way, built cost effectively and reliably, reliably a global economy, something that has a that is you can continuously improve and it has a life and an iteration.

[11:36] That whole the whole ecosystem for me was absolutely phenomenal. Learning that really built I would say, you know, we'll build into this other event, but why manufacturing has been such a heart for me. So I'm I'm an engineer. Electrical battery, you know, deathly you know, is my is my pivot if you ask me on energy. But then manufacturing and in electronics is is just kind of all that.

[12:02] You know, that's my my on both my medication and my DNA. Right. That will always work with me. Yeah.

[12:08] So so from Diversified Systems you make your way to EnerDel. Yeah. Delphi Delphi was a huge customer for years.

[12:14] I mean that's actually we're Stan and Dave started was I mean I spent time at Delphi as well. They did the first circuit boards for Delphi.

[12:21] That was in kitty litter pans of all things before my time, but built the first multi-layer board. Delphi became a huge customer, and we built everything from navigation to controls to radio to electric vehicles and hybrids. I mean, early systems for Allison, for Toyota, for caterpillar, for Cummins, for I mean, all these things that are still exist today out there.

[12:46] And Delphi had the battery spin off, which was EnerDel. A lot of folks still don't know even today that that company that existed for a long time was the Dell was Delphi. So all these Delphi, some amazing engineers that had worked on the Delphi advanced battery programs through nickel lead acid for years and then hydride, metal hydride and deployed that and then lithium ion in combination with Sony and some others.

[13:13] They brought that tech. But unfortunately the bankruptcy in the in late 90s beginning of 2004, officially they bankrupted certain divisions or restructured certain divisions, and that was a cost center for them. So they kicked it across. That was entered Dell. So some guys who knew me from Delphi drug being and said, hey, you know, you've done this global deployment for us on electronics, where you come over and help us build our supply chain.

[13:38] So I went over as a ironically, Shawn Hendrix, who I've known since Delphi, and Chad drugged me in under again, kind of under cover of darkness. They're like, hey, we need this help to get global manufacturing. We just don't know it yet and help them build along with a great crew, the global manufacturing for battery management systems, electronics controls, and then the entire team of of external contract manufacturers for our battery systems are entered.

[14:07] Yep.

[14:07] And then that's where you and I met. So you first started donating some of your battery to Purdue to help more young kids learn how batteries electronics work? Yes. And then fast forward not that many years. I'm a customer of yours at Indy Power systems were driven. I had dropped out of college and were buying your batteries to put into grid storage.

[14:23] Yeah, that battery theme and electronics and you know, relationships continue. Yeah, yeah. And so that

[14:29] plane doesn't make it. And when I go back to school and start our first business in my mom's basement, and we buy internal batteries to put into our electric go karts,

[14:35] remember that well. And memory visiting the basement and loved it. I'm like, people were like, hey, have you seen their building yet?

[14:41] And I'm like,

[14:42] it's his mom and dad's basement. They're like, really? Yes. Wow, wow. Well, I remember when Angela Knapp and you would come over for sales calls. My mom would have snacks in the back deck, and it was everyone's favorite sales calls.

[14:51] I remember sitting by the pool and joining snacks, and, yeah, she was she was like, what?

[14:56] What? When are you guys going to get your

[14:58] PhDs? And drew? And I was like, we're barely back and rolled for our undergrad. I love that. It's like we're we're upstairs in the conference

[15:04] room a.k.a. the pool. Yeah. Mom, who is the admin host? Yeah, chief of staff. Chief of staff. And then we, you know, go down to the dungeon layer in the basement and they let you convert it over to this

[15:16] workshop.

[15:16] And there's still a black mark on the white drywall ceiling from the grease from the chain being thrown. We spun up the motor once, forgetting we had grease the chain

[15:24] still there. So you gotta have those. I mean, that's that's learning. Yeah. There's a

[15:31] check from you from EnerDel stapled to the wall in that basement. Still, that was our first consulting check.

[15:38] I have it on my phone. I'll send it to you. You guys paid us to consult on the tut tut project? We did. And that was our first consulting client that funded the go cart. Because we didn't raise an adventure, we consulted to fund that business.

[15:51] I knew we needed help. We reached out quickly because and the customer was like, needed a deal.

[15:56] They were underfunded. Yeah. And we just hopped in. By the way, I never knew it was your first, but I knew that we needed you first to help us from that at that

[16:04] point. So yeah, that that check is still stapled to the wall in that basement as a memento for us. That's good. It is. Yep. So so we meet at entered L and then, you know, the Indy power racing for me.

[16:15] And then you you part ways with del for BIC

[16:19] the battery innovation center. Yeah Vic. So EnerDel moving along you know some some changes there with some structuring. And you know you know the battery world has always been a unique world at least here in the United States. And a group that we actually helped didn't found it but helped with BIC.

[16:36] David Roberts, who had had been, you know, a departed interdental a while prior and was doing some stuff in private practice again, you know, got Ahold of me along with the Energy Systems Network and said, hey, we've got this thing that we started intersecting with Crane on critical energy and power, kind of a skunkworks for the DoD down in Crane, which many people still today don't know, don't know what's down there in the world.

[17:02] The only landlocked naval base. You don't have to know Indiana that well. And then just the amount of power and energy excellence that goes on there, plus other awesome things. So we went down there to frankly, it it kind of gotten started. Captain Chuck, amazing guy, got a medium briefly. Unfortunately, we lost him very quickly. That was our that was kind of our call to action because he was he started an amazing thing.

[17:25] He was the catalyst. Yeah. He got unfortunately diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Amazing guy. Like one of those like like why does it have to happen to a person like that. Yeah. And got to meet him briefly. But he had a brilliant idea and an amazing team down there. And a hell of an idea to to go next. But unfortunately, you walked in and, you know, in a mode where they were, they had kind of gotten everything started, but they were underutilized.

[17:53] And, you know, counting on DoD and military and others is good if you're steady state. But it's kind of tough to build a brand new business around.

[18:01] Well, and I'd love to pick up and tell some of the story because from the outside is I think it's more impressive than it was for you doing it. I remember when you left entered Alpha and you told me what you're going to do, and I'm like, wait, you're going to take a place where the DoD just put a bunch of money in to build a lab that's basically a giant hole of capital.

[18:19] Yeah, and big playground. Butt hole of capital, right? Like the the same problem actually had

[18:24] they got a bunch of government money and grew too big too fast. How? I mean, transparently, you go back and look at the records. It was $20 million local investment. Greene County amazing early partner IDC and others to get it going. And that was that was again on opportunities from training.

[18:40] But anyways keep going. But but it's this thing that you can't wait was not vaporware when it was built. No it

[18:46] was it was the move as hard and fast as possible to help our warfighter. Right. Well, and what's amazing is you build this big thing up. How do you sustain something that big when something grows organically, the scaffolding is built around it to sustain it forever.

[18:58] When you grow too fast, it's growing pains. How do you sustain this big monster? And from the outside, what blew my mind is you're like, all right, this thing is all public, like DoD, military government. How do we make it? Capital? Not efficient, but capital work.

[19:13] That's correct. Yeah. Put it put it to to the work it was intended.

[19:16] And you're like, we can get the private market to pay us money

[19:19] to use our expertise, our equipment and the space to fund the space. So it's around for the public good. So it's here for our warfighter. It's here for our local economy. It's here for the the country to use to innovate in the space that we were at the forefront of that is exactly.

[19:33] And from the day, by the way, and for me, from the outside, I'm an engineer consultant. At the time, it was so cool to see that you took something that was the government lab and turn it into a private facing entity without breaking the public facing trust, and that was incredible. So myself as a consultant, I could bring a client down, get access to equipment we could not afford to rent anywhere else, afford to rent brains that were smarter than we'd ever been able to find.

[19:58] And because you weren't in it for pure capitalism, you got to play matchmaker. Yeah, it was the peanut butter and jelly game. You would meet peanut butter, and you'd meet jelly as two separate clients. And you make. I think you guys should get coffee, but I can't legally tell you what each other work on

[20:12] yet. Yeah, that was always been the unique dichotomy as knowing like, yeah, dang, that is some awesome peanut butter.

[20:19] But you need jelly and you also need bread. So how do you drag those together and make a sandwich with them and then let them take a bite? Yeah. That's fun. And it was the most impressive thing. So a couple credits there. First Dave Roberts long standing friend, brilliant guy, immensely challenging guy as well. As far as challenging the team.

[20:40] When I was in EnerDel loved his challenges. He always had us down on that. Sean and I many times in his in his room, you know, he was a he was definitely one of those. When he walked down there, he called me and said, hey, you know, this is the thing. And while I was invited by again, some of the other members, I'll give credit to the, you know, Dave saying, hey, this is probably going to be a crazy idea, but the state needs this.

[21:06] We know from our background and batteries that people need it. We knew folks like yourself and others that like this is needed. This is important for the public. And it's a it's a, it's a, it's a gold mine for for the state from an outreach perspective. And frankly, again, I'm an innovation manufacturing guy. I'm like, this moves the needle on the industry.

[21:26] It does in Indiana, but

[21:27] globally, it doesn't know why. You guys became a hub in a center for this new technology. It was lithium ion batteries. Going from how good is your laptop battery to how good is your vehicle laptop drone, advanced war system battery like you, you guys were the ones that were able to mix

[21:43] industries to make innovation happen at a pace.

[21:45] It wasn't everywhere else. Yeah. So, you know, the unique one there too is, you know, the the old starving nonprofit, as they say. You know, we came in heavily capitalized again, amazing partners that started up on that stressed though. I mean, when we came in, they made it clear, like, hey, there's some things that we counted counted on.

[22:01] And,

[22:01] you know, I think, you know, the runway was there. That's actually the runway did

[22:08] not exist. We realized when they came in that they were already expecting the plane to be taken off, which, you know, and again, I love me some. Chuck. That was a conversation I wanted to sit down and talk with Chuck. I'm like, clearly he was maybe as crazy as the rest of us to, like, even set this up.

[22:24] And he's going to, again, knowing he's a military guy. Again, not a lot of time talking. So I don't want to say that I know exactly what was in his head, but he struck me as a guy who pulls back hard on the sticks, which I loved. And I mean, if you look at his background and pedigree, there was no doubt that he was as a multi-time nuclear submarine captain and all the others.

[22:44] That's not for the faint of heart. It's not for someone who's reserved at all. And so he did. And I think we we went in with the like, oh, we lost an amazing captain and we got to grab a hold of the sticks that had kind of fallen forward and pulled just as hard back as we could to get this thing to take flight.

[23:01] And so we did that. And really the biggest pivot was going in and convincing the team that, yes, I know there's this there is this tremendous relationship with Crane and the DoD and others. And we got we got to build and grow that as a playground. But even more importantly, the private industry and consumer industry or sorry, consumer, the industrial industry absolutely needs this in the United States and nothing like this exists.

[23:24] And again, I know that Chuck and the team, they knew that it was in it was in was in the it was in the background. Like they didn't just do that for Cray. And they did it because again, I think he had a vision for all that plane. May had some, you know, some first class seats in it, but it had seats for everybody.

[23:40] Right? Is what he did. Well.

[23:42] And I think the thing that was lacking is it was originally a military centric government space intended. Yeah. And that world is different than the world of corporate innovation or industry or consumer electronics. And you

[23:56] those bridges don't cross often. It's a pace of innovation. Everybody loves like military hardened military grade aerospace, aluminum.

[24:03] But they but they don't want it at the pace of bureaucracy.

[24:07] Right. Well and the circles just don't overlap. The Venn diagram is tangent. Right. And I think the thing that impressed me the most about what BIC was able to do as quickly as it did, is you built a business development team that not only had to go develop the clients, right, go get to sales and get customers and to a place they've never heard of.

[24:24] You had to build nowhere. Indiana. Yeah, at a naval base. At a naval base with I mean, we had Westgate Academy there, which again, heavily servicing the base until Purdue took over. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely not a place that you just randomly

[24:38] or ran into someone that worked at. And and so not only are they have to develop this business and get connections and build the network, they had to develop the product.

[24:48] And this is what do we do? We sell training because you guys started doing safety training and how to how to think about battery systems and how do we treat people and meet them where they're at in training. We'll also giving access to our equipment. Hey, do you just need a rent thermal chamber with a cyclone in it?

[25:02] We've got a ton of them. Like, let's put it to good use. It's collecting dust otherwise. Oh, you need a scientist to help you read the data from your cycling test. We have a few of those. And I think that was this magic moment that you build a product that people didn't know they needed.

[25:15] Yeah. The team there, I'll say I have you has to go out my background absolutely blessed and honored that like it diversified.

[25:25] I think about the team there in the absolutely crazy stuff we did that people never expected. EnerDel the same thing. We still talk about that today. And as I see battery systems, the the products that are out there today, we're still bleeding edge in a lot of cases. And that was stuff from the 90s and early 2000.

[25:42] We were talking 20 years later, we're still some of the best battery tech that existed in best deployments and then in the team there. And then you look at the amazing team that was there. Yeah, scientists and engineers. I mean, between I mean, we and the team, but also one of our other things we did is, is we brought teams there and as they the folks connect helped our, our customers.

[26:09] I mean, we went from less than six clients to north of 600. Right. You're biz dev team killed it. Active list of 120 to 150. Again. Another team that understood everybody was in sales by sales was customer service. Selling people was relationships, customer service. Where where are their problems and where can we offer solutions

[26:32] that people haven't thought of?

[26:34] I mean, you were also a co-working space, right? Like you would take your small startup clients and give them office space and rent lab space and you help crawl, walk, run, which is a theme that anyone listening to this has heard me say a million times.

[26:46] Hardware has to crawl, walk, run. Yeah, even if you can, you can't just pump it out and you can crawl, walk

[26:52] on, crawl, walk, run quickly.

[26:55] But you have to do it in that order. There is no jump to the massive scale.

[26:59] No, not with hardware. Anybody who's trying to convince me that is always failed and been wrong. And I know plenty of people that are phenomenal,

[27:05] that can crawl, walk around very quickly. They can do it in a compressed timeline because they have extra if you have the capital and can afford the risk, let's go fast.

[27:13] But you test the step, check, test the step check, test the step. Check. Now we're now we're in full production. And I think what you guys did at BIC, the other half, the magic the listeners might not know, is you didn't just focus on testing the batteries for the tech. Your huge focus was how to make them. How do you real to real manufacture this chemistry that is coming from an academic lab into the real world?

[27:33] And where I want to kind of dovetail this transition to is I like is set up to mirror this, but bigger than batteries.

[27:41] That's correct. So just rounding off Vik, because there's so much more we could talk on there and what they are even doing today, that education, that innovation and driving that forward and connecting, you know, from from that six to in less than the less than a year, we got to at least, you know, cash operational break even in a year and a half.

[28:02] We went positive. And then several years later we were able to get to where we needed to be. I had to work on our debts and some other stuff. And we had some, some, again, some gracious partners helping us solve for some of that stuff. That was early on, but then rapidly again, the hundreds of clients is really in all of that.

[28:20] All of those clients, I can say, I'm going to say, yeah, I'm a stand on, say, nearly all of them. The next theme is we got to even early on, you know, a year in, as we had helped them from materials through a cell cell development to then some quantity of cells and then putting that into a pack.

[28:39] Yeah, they're like, where do we go with this superset of this system? And we're like, well, I guess we kind of thought you had a plan for that and a company or whatever else

[28:48] it's I'll say this as Glassboard who helps people build products, it is astounding how much we have to help, how far along we need to take it.

[28:57] You'll always think you're like, no, I'm here for my part, right? I'm here. Just do the engineering. Lay out this circuit board, write the firmware we have to help our clients get all the way to the shelf at retail. Yes, because most of them, even if they've done it before, that person may be gone. That that knowledge is lost.

[29:12] And you and they're not sure how this one does different than the and and you have to be people like you and I that are in service

[29:18] businesses that do it every day, that understand every step of the path, every single day to to be the shepherd. Right. And I think that's where our greatest blessing, greatest curse is, is you and I are always the shepherds.

[29:30] Never, never the people that are bringing the new thing to market. Yeah, we get to

[29:34] have small fingerprints on very cool big things. Yeah. Just like you, I loved. I love to tell everybody that when I walk into a room. I know I had a hand in that with a lot of other hands, but it's awesome to see that whether I'm in a battery room, an electronics room or whatever, I know you're the same way.

[29:50] That's that's probably what feels me every day as knowing I don't know. Again, that helps the ADHD. The OCD says I helped with that product, but the ADHD loves that. I helped with 100 of them,

[30:01] right? And I know how to do all the different steps of all the different things we've touched. Right? And that's the ADHD that fuels all of us here at Glassboard.

[30:09] It's never the same day twice.

[30:10] And I think that's what just like contract manufacturing, like Glassboard from getting to know each other at EnerDel. And Ken love that love knowing that, you know, first first first check still staple to the wall. Yeah. Like you said I got a picture of that. But then watching how you guys have grown, it's it's been amazing.

[30:30] You know, post it out there the other night about watching Two Young Minds and I've driven you were just like, we know in contract manufacturing how important that is, the importance of what you guys do that again, a lot of good. I've met a lot of firms that can help you design a product and they can get it released once.

[30:45] But I love your point. Not just that they have it, but on the shelves and they're moving it and they're improving it and they're into the next generation. That is that is few and far between. That is a pedigree and a knowledge and an understanding and a engagement that until someone's experienced it, they don't understand it. Once they do their it's like contract manufacturing.

[31:11] It's like, why would I ever build everything myself in my own company when there's these experts that have this capital and can put it to use, and they've got all the smarts, I just need to bring them the idea and then wait for those checks. Right. Same thing as like, like find the people that will help you make it the best and make it where it can be manufactured in a steady state, and then capitalize on those checks.

[31:32] Because hard tech is hard. Doggone, it's expensive. And you and

[31:36] I have had enough, and you and I have bruises all over our bodies that are the only reason we know how to do this. Don't race hard

[31:42] tech at some point. Also, I hope you would agree at some point you actually crossed the threshold of where you maximize revenue and you you hit a race to a commodity to the bottom and and then margin.

[31:59] Ever build your own company and all your manufacturing and CapEx the dog gone. That's a that's a really, really strategic decision that

[32:07] most just rush right to. Well, my favorite phrase I started to learn how to say is you should do that with house money, right? You should do that when this product is making you so much money that you have the cash to go do that yourself.

[32:20] Yeah,

[32:20] let's go build you a line. Until then, we should rent someone's line. And by the way, I mean anybody listening in is going to be like, oh, you guys are just too in your own horn because you're a kid by background. You're biased as hell. And Grant, you've been doing this is what you made your pedigree off of.

[32:33] Oh my gosh, if I hope that, you know, when this gets out there, maybe this section someone will post and say, this is true. 1,000% exclamation exclamation from an OEM or someone else who knows who's been through that painful struggle or race to that commodity bottom and hopefully save themselves and said no, no, no, no. Like there's a great there's a great pivot point where you continue.

[32:55] And I agree, at a minimum, do that with house money. Yeah. No. And it's please I've helped people build their own company. So I'm not biased to not do it the entire time. I was like, I'll help you with this. You're going to regret this. I'm not going to tell you that until at some point you're going to come and go, wow.

[33:12] Like, you were right. This was a lot of cap sacks. This is a lot of time I probably should. I'm dealing with this with a client right now who started that path. We went in and assessed and even their investors said we thanks for the advice, but we want to build this. We want to own it. Everybody in batteries owns their stuff.

[33:28] And I'm like, oh, do you want to go raise nine figures successful? And have you actually looked at their follow up how many rounds they're in? I'm like, they're in Z rounds of funding. Yeah. They're running out of the alphabet and they're like they're in like back to like AA. And they're like, you know it's like AA, right?

[33:43] Wait, do they, do they miss type? No, it's AA round. They've gone pay to Z. Yeah. And it's not a twice this we gone around and oh by the way they still haven't commercialized. And I'm like because and then it's like oh they've got all this equipment and all these people and I'm like go to a great CM on the sell side.

[33:58] There's amazing go to go to somewhere and get it built. I

[34:01] just want someone to post all the auctions in the comments of all the battery equipment, because that should tell you a story that. But

[34:10] but you know, that's an easy one. My my pick and place line come from a company that shouldn't have own a pick and place line that early in their system.

[34:16] Yeah, I mean, the team of these if TSMC didn't teach anybody about semiconductors, right. Go look at that litmus test on semiconductor and what's happened to what's fab there. Well,

[34:25] and it's no one understands how hard it is to get perfect. And hard tech has to be pretty damn near perfect. And

[34:31] there's an equipment and facilities. Right. It can't be that hard.

[34:34] I just I didn't buy it. Right. My favorite is you need to

[34:37] you need to find the old angry guy. That's the quality manager. And you need to go take him out for a beer. And then you'll understand why you do not want to do this yourself. Because you need someone that anal retentive with that much OCD,

[34:48] right?

[34:49] That's actually good at management. And and in certain spaces, an investor that has a threshold for how many times you're going to come back to the well again to go through that. No, but you should you should do this with house money. E f g h I, you know, z a round and is willing to hang out for a decade or more.

[35:08] Again, I know products that literally have been a decade or more now because of their setup and the investors are so worn out that like, please just just put me like when I'm going to make any money or or just shoot me in the head.

[35:21] No. To take this out back, Old Yeller, let's. It's time to put this one down, guys.

[35:24] Yes. And by the way, there's some breakthroughs, but they're pretty rare. So. But, but but the better ones are. Crawl walk, run. Let's build it in a small lab like last board and go launch a pilot and make sure people like the dog food. Hey, then let's go ahead and contract manufacture to scale you up till you're making really good money.

[35:39] Then let's go find you a high volume contract manufacture, who's likely different than the first one we worked with for the first two years, who can get you even better margin and is closer to your supply chain? It makes all this magic happen because you're going to big for the guy that you started with, because he doesn't even want you of that size.

[35:53] You're too much of a client concentration risk for him. So now we're at your giant global CM, right? You're probably building it at more than one factory to get better shipping rates across the planet and all this cool stuff. When we hit that scale now, there's now you can go get the cream on top of taking the CMS margin by building your own.

[36:09] This is where then your bookies can sit down and look at the calc for what's next, because usually they do it on the front end. They're like, I can do that. I've looked at the equipment, I've done the couch, so I looked at the timeline. I can do that for a third of what it takes to do it in industry.

[36:22] I'm like, no, you'll do it for 3 to 4, five x what? It takes them at 3 to 5 x the amount of time. But go on ahead. Yep. If you want to, if you want to get those stripes and scars and tattoos and horrible lashings, you go right on. Well, the

[36:36] answer is in ten years you will get the margin you wanted, but it'll take you ten years to learn those lessons.

[36:41] You should you should scale with them.

[36:43] And again, there's unicorns. But you know, most people get the horn. Occasionally there's a unicorn. Yep, yep. So so many so

[36:51] and so we we got on a manufacturing. But but that's why it's it's why we're here. The reason we can talk about anvil because you're passionate enough about this. And that's why I'm here I also am

[36:59] I'm a sucker for a for a for a stranger thing.

[37:03] So yeah Vic was we heard about this subset or the superset of like now where all does this tech go. Yeah. The batteries go into a thing. Where do they go. Yeah. It started with where do the batteries. And so it had a lot of conversations and over the and a lot of years and we Dave. Dave and I and before Dave moved to you know, it was helping the state of India to do some amazing things and grow their.

[37:24] I mean, first time to really focus on innovation as a pillar versus like just another, you know, parentheses in our, in our, you know, and what we're trying to do. Yeah. Should be intentional on that as you look through that. We heard about that. And so I actually departed Vic for just like some of our other employees for a couple initiatives that we were working on and was doing some stuff in the critical river space with actually helping alma mater produce some tech in that space, which great tech, great to see that tech, you know, you know, working to come about, you know, nothing more to say there except for awesome to see the tech

[38:02] that we prove that, you know, couple of pieces were were viable. And I had David Glass, who was again was on the board and helped advise Vic who came round and said, hey, I got this idea for the Vehicle Innovation Center. He was like, for the Vic. And he's like, you know, there's some sounds a lot like the Vic.

[38:23] Yeah, like the big. And I was like, well, that's too close to pick. And by the way, he said that big like this and he went through it. He's like man the like the super set with like the systems and the product and like we've got customers that are doing this.

[38:34] He's like I there's like no place for this even for us.

[38:37] And there's more area under the curve from the private side. Like this is a bigger, bigger pie.

[38:41] Yeah. He's like, but this isn't a this isn't a US thing. He goes, what do you think? And so I'm like, well you know insider baseball Dave I'm like, I love it because we've gotten beat over the head with I said, we never we never get it.

[38:57] He's like, he's like this. This doesn't make sense. As a for profit, as a nonprofit, because of the ways in which that can engage the community, it can engage, you know, fundings that are available to nonprofits, which help move innovation. They tie to training and others. So he threw that idea. And so we sat down on it, brought in Kathy Choi, you know, into that fold and started reaching out to to parties and the early I wasn't there for the founding of of.

[39:28] So I can't say what all Chuck had to go through, but I will say we had people who came to us from everywhere that had worked with BIC, and when we started talking about it, they said, I know what you guys did at BIC. I know your impact to us as an OEM, as a startup, at the university, as individuals, they're like, this was huge.

[39:50] You guys have connected us globally. You've helped us scale fast products. I mean, we were responsible for we couldn't ever publicly say them. But I now can say one like one of the critical acquisitions that Tesla did for some silicon and battery technology was a group. Tyler, you know, we'll give too much info on that. But Tyler, that was technology started at big.

[40:14] I didn't know that Tesla bought Tyler's business. Yes. So that's awesome that it was in all their other announcements, you know, quite a few years ago. Yeah, that was in there. There's like a footnote, entire credit to Elon and the team for putting him on the map. In fact, they were in a competition with Milwaukee. Milwaukee power like yeah, power to tie was was in the front running of the bid and last minute Elon and Tesla Elon himself swooped in, swooped in and made a stalking horse offer on them and bought out Tyler in their work.

[40:48] I love that. So and there was others I mean stuff with Cummins and acquisitions

[40:53] but but I love this is startup. Yes. Enterprise public. Yes. In the mixing pot enjoying living together which nowhere else in the world they do

[41:02] they they they're always like it's funny how many OEMs want to talk to startups and they're not sure how.

[41:08] And I'm like, you're so big, just call them. They'll pick up the darn phone. And of course, small companies are like, hey, someone like, that's never going to pay attention to us. How do I connect? So, so this ambit thing is why why this has come about is because we've seen that in the superset stage is already like some of our critical stuff.

[41:25] So the the advanced machine, event machine and vehicle innovation Center, we also have the MV which is the Advanced Machine and Vehicle Institute. So we have both our 501 and 5016. One of those obviously membership led and we're glad to have some early partners there. And then we have the other that's our, you know, our fee for service operational, you know, side that's doing R&D and testing and the like.

[41:49] That's what we've heard is we've got OEMs that we're working with on. And these are things that don't fit anywhere yet. But they are they're in a fast pace. I hope everybody's heard about, you know, AI and data center infrastructure. But that is rapidly deploying. And the next generation of hard tech for data centers to maximize power usage, to maximize performance, to reduce and eliminate waste, their water and waste.

[42:18] Yeah. I mean, I would say that what they need to to drive the innovation world today and for the US to succeed in our in our AI race and our innovation race, AI is I'm hearing one says it's a critical part of that. Data is a critical part of that.

[42:33] Well, and it's my favorite part about the AI data center build.

[42:36] And like the problem that it is an engineer of the puzzle, it hits all spectra. You are but the data center you are massive civil engineering problem. Oh man. How do trade? How do I how do I pull as much copper? How do I run this thing? Oh, we have to transmit this much data across what used to be a record of you.

[42:53] Now it's like a building bigger than some cities. We need enough fiber in this thing to, like, basically light up the night sky. So we've fiber, and now we need to cool this thing. Wait. We need can't just do evaporative cooling because that will actually, like, boil the ocean. How do we get these, you know, closed loop cooling systems to reject enough heat fast enough.

[43:11] And then where do you get the power to generate that powers and makes the like? It is this entire systems problem that feels very big macro civil. You know, amps are in how many megawatts, right. But you also then have the data rates and the high speed electronics and the networking and the systems and the it. And then you have the cooling and the measurement and controls.

[43:30] It is a problem for everybody.

[43:32] Yeah. And the pin in that is I mean again preaching to the choir for those listening in, you know, AI and data centers, they give you thought it was like create your cool images and jump on Facebook and do your, you know, your AI research and others. The amount of data I talked to, I mean, again, friends in the industry at everything from insurance to health to manufacture, the amount of shear data that we use today, just my daughter's school to go and look, I did a parse on the amount of data that they use as a high school today, versus what they used even two years ago.

[44:05] Demands a data hall in its own. And that's you go to a hospital and the amount of patient data, the insurance amount of data that they're processing, you know, people, again, can throw shade at like the cameras and, you know, AI tools and cartoons and all the others. Those are, frankly, those are on the fringe. For me, the critical use of data every day is driving data centers.

[44:26] And the data center. Companies know that their systems of we'll call it yesteryear, but only in the last year or two have to critically advance and innovate to be more robust, higher performance, lower cost, faster to deploy. And they have to reduce their their load on our critical infrastructure because they're getting ready to hit that wall in a lot of cases.

[44:48] Oh,

[44:48] and what I think the most amazing part about this entire narrative is we were all worried that EVs were going to crash the US grid. And yeah, no, I remember you and I debating this in like 2014. Like, you know how many people will have to adopt EVs for the grid, get stressed.

[45:04] Yeah. No one cares about that now.

[45:07] Right. The data center is how much infrastructure is out there. And you know, we solved the we solved the range anxiety because it was always an infrastructure anxiety problem. Yeah. Keep going. No.

[45:16] But my favorite joke about that is like we used to worry about that. Like, oh, can this area move enough current if that neighborhood all moved to either.

[45:22] Right. Oh we might need to upgrade that. Now these data centers like no, we need to figure out how to make power to scale the continents. Didn't used to think about. But we need to do that within a city now. And the the scale of innovation that's happening, like the micro nuclear that's the West Coast is lighting up about like there's ten micro companies that all got what insert n number of billions of funding to go race the same race.

[45:46] So I think this is coming together. And this is where the advocate really lights up

[45:50] for me. This is the same race as the battery race when BIC was important. We are the battery race is still going. We are still. Nobody has led up. It's shifted a little bit, you know, with light duty pass car, but it's probably being overshadowed by AI and data.

[46:04] It's just not the new thing. Yeah, it's probably not the sexy political topic. Is someone saying, yeah, I mean, I,

[46:10] I drive an EV, you have a few like we all have stuff that use it. It's coming. It is just now that's 5% gains compound year over

[46:17] year. We're not in the commodity but we're in the ongoing deployment.

[46:21] It's called compound interest. It's great. It's a hell of a drug. They're going to get

[46:23] really cool in ten years. You won't read about it in the headlines tomorrow again, because the data center on the AI thing is, ironically, AI will likely drive the innovation that finds the chemical innovation that does the battery thing. I agree, but going up to the superstructure of what AMVIC wants to touch versus one subsystem that was batteries, you guys are building a place in space and a team to tackle what I'm going to call the holistic problems, the way the Glassboard does for what I'm gonna call product, that you can either write in or hold.

[46:51] You guys are doing both at the right in level and some of the hold level, but also up to the large like enterprise and infrastructure scale problem,

[47:00] enterprise and infrastructure. Yeah. So infrastructure. Yeah. So I think that this is what why I think it's important is you guys can have

[47:06] equipment at a scale that most people don't have.

[47:08] And you're going to have small, medium and large scale. So you can touch your consumer electronics, do some cool stuff there, and power and energy and critical safety. You can go to your vehicle medium skill level

[47:19] things, platform level, you know, a small scale platform, but big stuff. And then you're going to

[47:25] have the equipment, the really big stuff that they're probably single digit number of places to test.

[47:29] Right. Like this is where you're scaling to. That's

[47:31] correct. Yeah. So, you know, our open house was a few weeks ago folks got to see our early. We really, you know big as one like on battery. We kind of built on top of what Vic has to add battery but also again for hybrid and electrical infrastructure. That's still continuing.

[47:45] I mean, the large scale busses and trucks and all that stuff are deploying. We've got planes, trains, automobiles now grid with the with the infrastructure that's needed for their and you know where they're putting batteries inside Iraq. So yeah, our scale today is you know starts at kind of walk in. We've got some stuff smaller than that. But most of its kind of walk in through transport in through drive through, you know, scale perspective.

[48:11] And again, whether that's on a tractor trailer or it is the tractor trailer itself or a bus. And then just like we found, like there's some places so, you know, that's data center, that's AI hardware, next generation infrastructure. Again, I want to put a pin in that. That industry knows the load that they need, the load that they put on our infrastructure to be able to employ what they need today.

[48:35] But for the future, they have to get more efficient and they have to build some of their own, be self-sufficient. Yeah. By the way, electrician comes out of me. I'm jonesing because for trades, for electricians and others, it is a it is a trades renaissance right now for critical infrastructure from utilities, batteries, utility plants, distribution and others. Watch what's happening and we're behind I mean the US is 25 years behind in deploying these critical infrastructures.

[49:04] We didn't we didn't invest. We didn't need to. Yeah, we were worried about EV. And if frankly, if we got EV we probably would have been stretched and like oh that was a little tough. Yeah. AI and what we need there to, to be out there is, is going to cripple us. And actually if we don't act. And so I'm glad to see, you know, the utilities and others coming forward and the big OEMs, you know, the, the Amazons and the meters and others of the world recognizing their role in a critical infrastructure, just like Tesla.

[49:31] You know, they were brilliant on the EV side because they recognized not just build an EV. They didn't make the charge network, but then also build the infrastructure, the charging network. They knew critical infrastructure. And so our data center folks are not dumb. They're actually very, very brilliant. They're going to enable what we all need daily. And I do believe we need and use that.

[49:52] They're going to help with the critical infrastructure. But but I'm going to add a couple others on him. Vic is then just like Vic there's some there's some edge cases that again, maybe got overshadowed by like humanoids and and again sort of like data center and AI. Do we need that? Humanoids are like, hey, are these going to take away all our jobs?

[50:09] We've got an event where we talked about here in a moment but aren't coming event. You're going to see humanoids in play and doing some stuff. Humanoids enable so many things for the human race. There are, as a trades guy who started as a guy who's done some really, really dumb and dangerous jobs and even some of the work that we have, you

[50:27] and I are, you and I are both happy.

[50:28] We still have all these digits, and neither of us should. All of we have safety regulations.

[50:33] For some of those. I'll mention one just right off the bat. High voltage in art flash and what it takes for me to enter as an electrician. An area that, frankly, with all of that no human being should actually ever be in.

[50:44] But we have to. Someone's got to build it. But if I'm if I'm the guy who knows what to do, and I can sense send a humanoid in to do it, and heaven forbid, I don't want to blow up an expensive asset. But dear God, I don't want to put any human in harm's way. That is where for me, the humanoid role is.

[51:00] I don't see them taking over everybody's job tomorrow. It just. Well, well.

[51:03] And it's it's a crawl, walk, run. You're going to start with very specialized systems, doing one thing that's really dangerous because that is worth a lot of money.

[51:12] And then you're going to get to stuff that's dangerous and no one wants to do, and you're going to see some commodity things that, frankly, people love and hate.

[51:19] People hate the the turnover is so high because it's just, no, it's a bad job. Nobody wants no one likes it. And they do it for a bit, but then they get out of there. That's where you can put some smart people, or you can put the people that are like, hey, I want one level up job, but can, can I, can I, can I delegate this to the new guy or gal?

[51:37] Why don't you take it to the humanoid and we'll put you to even better use from a plus

[51:42] up. Well, and I think everyone forgets the internet didn't kill the world. Everyone thought the internet and computers were going to take away all of the jobs.

[51:48] Well, and I was when I entered, it was Y2K. That was what I was prepping everybody for.

[51:54] That didn't happen,

[51:55] but everyone's worried the secretaries were not going to have jobs. That, you know, that all these parts of our American culture, we're going to disappear when the computers and the internet took over

[52:04] has always been the big boogeyman. Boogeyman. It's been a big but guess what happened? Everyone actually got better jobs, right? Like

[52:11] the secretaries are now like chiefs of staff or office manager.

[52:14] There's they have more responsibility and more roles and not less people are working. Ironically, more people are working than ever. And it's two reasons. There's people produce more so that people can seem more yes and yes. American consumers may be going a little on the extreme side, but yeah, but I have a robot lawnmower that moves my lawn, and I can afford to buy that because I produce cool stuff here at Glassboard and everyone gets new, cooler jobs so we can do less time in the jobs that aren't as cool, which makes everyone come up.

[52:46] And I think that the concern everyone has about the humanoids and the AI is actually just a time variant problem. If we are going to compress the timeline, things are moving fast and it's going to get bumpy. Yeah, the long run it'll be good. And if the right if we all look at this with the right lens of oh, we need to work together to get through this weird, bumpy zone of jobs will be displaced in the short term.

[53:08] How do we take care of everybody? And as a society, if we band together to get to the other side,

[53:13] I think it gets really cool. Yeah. I mean, we've got we also have, you know, national races as well is that China is advancing rapidly and continues, I mean, not advancing. They are way out front in a lot of cases.

[53:27] And, you know, everybody's like, hey, do we really need to win the race? Okay. But as an ex racer I'm like, we at least have to be competitive. Well and we must be competitive. We okay, fight over who's one, 2 or 3. But if we don't, we're going to be beholden. We're I actually think that is a risk that we're more beholden to more dominance out of China without a core amount of competition and independence.

[53:51] Well, and I think this is the the American way to anti-monopoly what we should not allow to happen, whether it's inside our borders or outside, is a monopoly on any one industry where where some power nationally, a national power or just a corporation does everything for one industry. I think that it's healthy competition. This is why open source models are useful and needed.

[54:12] Local compute is. I think we should all learn about. Right? I'm running local little models on my MacBook Pro and it's great. And I'm learning what they're good for. And AI is getting smaller and faster and better. And, you know, a year or two from now, the current size models might fit on my laptop for fun. And I think this is the American competition spirit that you and I

[54:32] both love.

[54:33] Yeah, right. It's not I want to be global and global engagement. It's not that I want to beat them into the ground. It's

[54:38] not that I'm afraid of them. It's that no, we all want to see who can do what when. Because this is important to everybody. Yeah. Again, back to that racing. It's a competition. There is collaboration to.

[54:46] Yeah. It is what the phrase. I heard an event last night. No one had broken the four minute mile in like forever. And the year that had happened within the next six months before people did it because they saw someone could. And this is what healthy competition looks like. You're pushing the forefront of the field for everyone to now push forward.

[55:05] And yes, you have these breakthrough moments, but it moves everyone up. And I think this is this is what the American dynamism is about. What you guys are trying to do at Vic is build the center of collaboration within this healthy competition.

[55:19] Yeah. So that humanoid. So we we talked AI did a center humanoids. You know what's happening with vehicles there as well.

[55:28] It's funny autonomous you know helping with getting the Indiana Thomas Challenge going. A ton of different autonomy work on top of me everywhere. Now, as you look at mining vehicles underwater in the air, self-driving and all the others, that is a as a guy who loves to drive, I've also realized the value of that. So we've got, you know, the ability to do that stuff there as well.

[55:50] So we've got these, you know, these things that probably make sense to a lot of people. But then we've got these, you know, we use Don's word that he told me the other day, these stranger things that just don't have a place to fit. And that was just like, because they'd come in with ideas and they're like, I don't know where this fits.

[56:03] And it's like, come

[56:04] home, we'll help you. It's the it's the snowball thing I told you about. Everyone asked, can you do one more thing? And us, as the consultant picks up one new skill because no one knew how to do it on the team, us, the client, any of our vendors. And we go, I guess we'll try.

[56:17] And then we now know that skill and we can offer that skill to the next person we work with. And our team grows with both people and talent and skills. I think this is the this natural evolution of your journey is culminating these things together and leading into the event that's coming up, because we need to get to that before we run out of time, is I'm just really excited to get involved and be a part of putting the bullhorn on this that you're working to build the center again, not alone.

[56:43] There's a great team with, with and around you. Yeah.

[56:45] Kathy Choi, CEO you know, former Cummins executive. Brilliant. Brilliant lady. Love her again. Reminds me of Dave in a lot of ways critical, challenging, pushing, but also agile and flexible, which I love. And having the rest of the board members with Dave. Dave, glass, Canal Tail, Tom, Rosie, Katrina, Kaj, Shin Maciel.

[57:11] We've got this mix of, you know, some nonprofits, some some private folks, some founders, some big OEMs, big OEM, previous I mean, that's what is about that's what the nonprofits are about is this public, private, nonprofit ecosystem. And the rounding of those founders is is critical. So yeah, now circling how we came up with the event, what we learned at BIC back when is we did all that cool stuff for everybody and the people who worked with us, again, those hundreds and hundreds of clients and the ones that still work with them actively today, a huge list, know what they did.

[57:48] But then we realized, like, we got to tell that story, like around, not like to go out and like, here's what BIC can do for you. It's like, we need you to come out here as, as this industry and tell people what is possible when we get you all together. Like, we'll take credit for getting you all together.

[58:06] But you guys are doing the cool stuff. We're just we're just we're just matchmaker. This peanut butter jelly man. This is what. This is the magic.

[58:12] We are just here. We didn't make the peanut butter, the jelly, the bread. We just said that is a great combination. We should get you together. And so this the AIM IN Summit and that, you know, again, it's it had a couple of different names in itself.

[58:26] But it was a for us to say early on, we have already seen with some of these technologies and stuff around data center, humanoid electrification, hybridization, manufacturing, autonomous vehicles. How many people have reached out within our current client list and member list and said, you know, thanks for letting us be a part of the start of this thing.

[58:49] Can you like, connect us with like, this company? And we're like, again, I'm back to like, I mean, I can just give you the phone number, like have your admin call them and they'll pick up the phone and they're like, no. Can you make it a warm introduction? Yeah. And so aim in is a way for us to do that for everybody to get in the moment.

[59:08] Just a client that comes to us and pays us and says, you know, your grant and says, hey, Ben, I need can you introduce us to Glassboard because we need this help. I'm like, I'll just send you the message. We do that in that open environment is aim is around. And I'll say we stole from the the build up that Dave and I did of the first lunch unit because we borrowed from that pedigree.

[59:29] Because the feedback hopefully you would I, I went to everyone and it was an event I would not miss. We went from 25 in a restaurant with a crazy idea that we had like 30 or 40 more people waitlist, and it was like last minute to the next year, 100 that we got a small space and we went and had 70 had nearly double, for instance, to the following year, sold out in the hundreds to then having the demonstrations where nobody wants to come in and see a sales pitch, but they want to see the cool stuff you're building for others and the stuff that those people have coming to fruition, and then they want

[1:00:06] to hear about the tip of the spear again. They don't want another board deck or a, you know, a website pitch. They want to hear what, like this year? Yawn from Amazon. I want to steal his thunder. But he's coming in talking about an industrial renovation renaissance as it relates to an innovation of AI and data centers.

[1:00:24] And it's going to be awesome.

[1:00:26] And my favorite is the renaissance in AI and data centers isn't actually about the silicon in the chip and the thing and TSMC, which we already know is cool. It's actually about, oh no, this is how we're cooling better. That's how we're moving power faster. This is how we're pouring concrete more efficiently. It is all this stuff that is like old school but is now new again.

[1:00:44] And it's it's now it's we use the peanut butter and jelly, you know, it's it's taking those and putting peanut butter and jelly on pancakes and kind of things. It's like whole new mixed mass. And people are like, oh, that's darn good too. Well and I think jelly on the burger I had that the other day and I'm like, I've Purdue peanut butter.

[1:01:03] What the heck am I not doing peanut butter jelly on the hamburger floor. Triplex got to do it. Kill you with diabetes you know. But but once in a while you deserve a sweet treat. Yeah. So so this again, these stranger things. So that's the intersection of the AIM IN Summit is and why I know I'm glad to have Glassboard.

[1:01:17] As you said, you guys have been a critical part of helping us. You know, at BIC, those first crazy ideas that if we get all these people together, sparks are going to fly, like, we'll we'll bring all the sparklers in the room and bring a lighter and see what happens and let them rub together to

[1:01:32] and exploded. And it's already happening pre-event right now, right.

[1:01:36] Well, you and I connected on this, what, three days ago? And I've already got, I think every email I sent out got a response with a big green check box like I'm coming. You know, tag me in. And it's not because you're you're or my network are special.

[1:01:51] We've got some great people. But yeah, there's some of those that are going to show up just because they want to see what we're up to.

[1:01:56] Right? But it's the kind of things that we're up to and what that's what it is. Network is up to what this is. Again, that is like, I don't even know what that is over there. It's jelly looking over 100. What even peanut butter is.

[1:02:10] Right. And it's this is the you and I have this magic part of our career that we aren't the people.

[1:02:15] And the one thing that this is our thing. We are the people with our fingerprints on a little bit of everything all the time. And this is one of those experiences at the summit where you bring it all together, and the superpower of a Glassboard or of a device, or of a bike or of an AMVIC, is that I have been in that other industry and they do this one really weird thing that works for them really well.

[1:02:35] I think it could work in yours even if it's not. Introduce you to someone like we need to go steal like for us. Take the medical device process, which sounds burdensome and terrible and lots of paperwork. Hell yeah. But if you steal the titles of the documents. But put that in development. Holy cow, you can go so fast.

[1:02:52] You can cut

[1:02:53] out all this risk hierarchy with some heretical. Right. And it's this, you know, you can be the chef that tastes

[1:02:59] all the ingredients because you're Indian chef and Asian chef and, you know, American savory chef and a European chef. Oh, no, I know that these things are both savory. I should mix those two together. Fusion.

[1:03:12] And I think that's the part of that I'm most excited about is it's going to be weirder sets of the hard tech space,

[1:03:18] the big parts that all need the little parts to work, that you're spot on. And I feel like I should hire you for a sales person. I mean, we're here right now, you know, we'll work together, so I'm sure we'll be helping each other.

[1:03:32] Network. Yeah. That's. Yes, that that is the thing is these pieces and parts all going to how does that support the greater. And then as we look at those greater things back to you, as you said, drawing correlations, it's it amazes me still at this point that, you know, you walk into everything from the OEMs to the startups, and there's so many playbooks out there that that I do wonder sometimes, like, you know, that's that's an industrial Renaissance piece for me.

[1:03:58] And I think for the United States right now as I look at it. And what does that mean is, when I came into my career, we had at least maybe because I stand what he did call me. You can look on my LinkedIn. It's still there was just a kid in the ball cap. Yep. Just a crazy kid in the ball cap than I was.

[1:04:18] I still warm ball cap in like business meetings early on. It was stupid. But you're still a crazy kid. But yeah, I have taken on, you know, growing the hair out sometimes where ball cap all the time, but.

[1:04:30] That was I believe that was then as well. I'd have to ask him for sure. Or at least he instilled in us. That's what everybody else did, was borrowing from the pedigrees and learning of all the products we built. And how do they take that playbook or that menu yet? I mean, look at whatever it is and create a fusion of that for the next person that moves them faster.

[1:04:54] And you just you just iterate that for everyone and it's holy crap. Like, yeah, I look today and it's like, it seems so simple to me. Back then, it seemed like the coolest thing in the world, and it still does today. And but it also seems so,

[1:05:09] so kind of fundamental, like basically blocking its first principles. At the end of the day, all what we do and what most jobs should be is look at the first principles of the problem.

[1:05:20] It's not always physics and math, but there are there's a first principle to, oh, we need to meet this code in accounting. Like just go all the way down to this is the code, this is the end and the out. Then later the nuance on. But a lot of people skip first principles go straight to nuance because that's their job there the the expert.

[1:05:39] And when you forget to write down first principles and just tackle it there first and then expand out, you miss some really cool fundamental differences. I think that in manufacturing, first principles like looking for quality like, oh, I can either make this to the precision it needs to be, or I can make the whole it goes in bigger, right?

[1:05:56] Like there's these simple problems that you can solve way with way less money, way less

[1:06:01] effort that end up a product that fits together perfect every time. Yeah. To your, you know, you made the note about the running and breaking the record. You know, for the four minute. I think it's the same thing there. And I actually wonder, you know, is it because so many companies and it's not just startups again, you know, you can say startups, everybody wants to run their and their, their investors are pushing them like crazy to instantly go to run.

[1:06:23] But as I look at even at OEMs, forgetting what it took them to get to run and or new companies looking at others and they see them running back to if you and I want to want to do that methodology, you read up what it took to get to the four minute. It didn't start, it was it was fundamentals.

[1:06:39] They didn't. Someone just didn't go out and try to run harder now or to be the next one. I mean, they aspired to run harder to beat that. Like I just saw Grant do it. So I'm going to but I've looked up on it as well. Cole Hacker, who attended my daughter's school and is now multi-time gold medalist, talking to him and his coach like the things they did on like tuning of how you like lances feet or the like the kinematics of his knees and Cole, run harder, run faster, push yourself.

[1:07:09] It was all the first principles. Crawl and crawl better. Walk and walk faster. And then run and run harder and more efficient like so. Yeah, I think that's it's a great one that it does apply. And people just got to realize, go back to those basic principles. You can move them quicker, but if you skip them, you're probably going to trip over your own shoe

[1:07:29] strings.

[1:07:30] And it's the thing that's funny, like, you know, circle of life. You start in college, in high school, earning first principles and drawing free body diagram and doing math. You just want to go to the easy part. And then you get so excited about design, right? And you're you're in sketching or drawing CAD and you know, it's cool.

[1:07:46] And then you go take it to get made and someone tells you they can't make that. And you're like, well, why? I drew it. And you know, every Purdue Engineers first experience sorry. That is like Boilermaker special.

[1:07:55] Oh, man. Yes engineer. But quick, quick interruption. There is. We had 30 year electronics engineers doing that at diversified. I'm like Ron Sandel is like they've been doing this for 30 years.

[1:08:07] So anyway yeah.

[1:08:08] And so then you learned how to make it a little bit as a designer and you're like, all right, cool. Now I know how to do this. And you get obsessed with process. Oh if we do A and then B and then see in this order design build test it'll work will fail less often good things happen.

[1:08:22] And then you get all the way to the end and you go all the way back to first principle man, before I even put a pen to paper, if I like on the product, if I just go write down the first principles of the problem with the units that are involved, like what's and volts? Oh, the solutions become much more apparent much faster.

[1:08:37] I didn't even solve the math. Right. I'm not good enough at math these days to to do that by hand. But I know, you know, is that square is that term squared. Is that a linear term? And this isn't just about the math. Like we can go to the supply chain are foam. You actually can't ship the foam.

[1:08:52] If I want styrofoam around my TV. That has to be made within X number of miles from the factory, or it's more expensive to ship it than to make it correct. And no one knows this. And

[1:09:03] it's most people never understand. But that's a squared term, like the the distance from

[1:09:09] your phone factory to your electronics factory is a squared term of cost of your phone, and it's not linear.

[1:09:14] So you have to figure out all these things. Oh, that's a nonlinear term. Oh that's a linear term. That one's fine. We can solve that one later. And

[1:09:21] it's such this magical engineering. So we're way off topic. Yeah. By the way I'm going to loop that back though. That is people would ask, you know, what is doing this so special is bringing those basic blocking and tackling that that core fundamentals into innovation.

[1:09:39] So reminding them that while you're out on the tip of the spear, if you use those, we can get, you know, under that for a minute. Yep. And you can't train harder. You have to learn how to run better. And you can't just shove hard. You got to shove hard through those processes

[1:09:54] and, well, it's in the right way.

[1:09:55] It's like you can't run harder. You have to run harder the right way. That is correct. Yeah. You spot on again. It circles back to that, you know, to tie off that point. Yeah. No, Ben, thanks for joining again for for round two on the podcast years later.

[1:10:07] Yes, absolutely. I feel so much older, probably look older if you look at the original one.

[1:10:11] So yeah, we'll touch you up post. It'll be fine. That's right. Maybe maybe look good with AI. So yeah.

[1:10:15] Yeah. Well everyone listening. Thanks so much for joining. Please join us at the AIM IN Summit. Yes. Amen.

[1:10:21] September 23rd. Hardy Plug, September the 23rd. Downtown Indianapolis starts at 8:00. Networking. You will not want to miss it. The keynotes and the panels.

[1:10:33] We've got Critical Energy Panel an OEM and innovation panel. We've got a human element and policy and what's next for training. And then we rounded off with a great dessert session and networking. There will be live demos. If you have something on that count on your calendar to that day. Cancel

[1:10:48] it. Trust me, you won't want to miss it and I'll be there speaking, so you'll definitely want to be there.

[1:10:52] Absolutely. Yeah. But no. Ben, thanks for coming. Great. Thank

[1:10:54] you very much, as always. Awesome.