speaker-0 (00:05.646)
Welcome to the Hard Tech Podcast.

And everybody, welcome back to the Hard Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Deandre Hericus, with my usual suspect, Grant Nielsen.

Hi, everybody, and we're actually friends in person today.

And we have friends in person today from Bailout Systems, Michael and Alex. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for making the trip down from Cincinnati, right? I'm assuming the drive wasn't too bad and all that. That's awesome. Well, I'm excited to dive into. We've got the product right here, and they've been working on it for over a decade. And so Michael would love to get an overview of the company and where you guys are at now.

Yeah, thanks for having us. Pleasure to be here.

speaker-0 (00:28.47)
Now it's close. You guys are close neighbors.

speaker-0 (00:41.158)
Yeah, so bailout systems started like most companies out of a problem. My best friend Archie, we were in the Navy together and he got out of the Navy, became a Covington, Kentucky firefighter. And what he was going through training was related to this story to me called Black Sunday, where a whole team of firefighters in New York City jumped four stories out of a building and three of those firefighters passed away and three...

sustained lifelong injuries. And I met one of those firefighters, the story's kind of horrific, but we had the audio version of that of them just one after the other jumping out of that building. And he told me at the time I was going to the University of Cincinnati for industrial design. He's like, instead of designing toasters and stuff like that, he's like, why don't you take your experience and develop something that we can actually use and carry.

in the fire seat, because my first thing was like, where was the rope? And they left all this stuff in the truck because it's heavy. They got enough stuff to carry. And so over Christmas holiday 2013, I started tinkering around in the basement of DAP, Department, or it was Design, Art, Architecture, Planning, the College of DAP at UC, and just started trying to figure out how do you, and I knew you had to get rid of the heavy rope. the first thing I went, how do you create friction?

on a small rope. And so I went down a bunch of rabbit holes, finally stumbled on the technology that we have now. And I was so young in that program. My first prototype was a wooden box. And I took it to Covington, Kentucky, where they had a drop zone. And these guys would like literally jump off the side of a building and it actually worked. And so we got video of that. then, you know, it was funny because the part of the story I didn't tell is I went to DAP.

I was 37, fresh out of the Navy, and it was like watching Billy Madison. It's like, you know, there's me and I'm taking notes from these kids.

speaker-2 (02:41.55)
I'm high school this point they're going their fresh from your school your freshman year school There's just what 10 or 15 years in between you guys. Yeah

And I mean, these kids are brilliant that go into this program. And then there's me, you know, I'm like, man. And so I'm like taking notes. then, so my whole goal of going to DAP started when I was stationed in Hawaii. I wanted to learn how to make products. And so I, on my break, I went back to Cincinnati, went to UC and I heard DAP was, a program. And I was like, sign me up for that. And they're like, well, hold on, you got to get in this program. And so I was like, I'll get in.

And I applied and I think magically they let me in because I was like military background. Because these kids are, you know, bred for this stuff. So there's me and these brilliant kids and I'm like literally learning from people half my age and taking notes.

And they've been sketching since they were in middle school and doing all the the background skills of industrial design. Yeah. Right. Like making mood boards themselves. That's exactly right. And you're like from the middle. How do I draw a figure again? Exactly.

Exactly. so, but it was funny. So then the business college, they had this pitch competition. And so I joined this club called Bearcat Launchpad. And again, I'm standing up a pitching and these 19 year old kids are like Ragsdale. Like nobody cares about the technology. It's like, you know, what's the benefit to the end user? And so I'm again, taking notes. Well, fast forward, I end up winning this pitch competition, get $5,000.

speaker-0 (04:11.468)
and I take all the money and put it into prototyping. And then I kept doing that and kept winning pitch competitions.

And I want to say how important this is. It's one of the pitch competitions have fallen out of favor in the last five or 10 years. In 2010 to 2015, they were all the rage. Yeah. And they've started to go away because VC didn't like they had to give someone the money at the end. They wanted to choose whether not to invest. Right. We need more economic development, like city, state, like the altruism side of economic development, to go into these low dollar pitch competitions because it's the spark that'll start the ember, that starts the fire.

of a company. That's exactly right. We need more of this. What you just experienced needs to happen more often.

1.3 million I've raised to date, I'd say 400,000 of that is from pitching, pitching competitions. So, I mean, that's a lot of money.

And is this all non-dilutive? Some of it is also an investment from the VC? Or is this all almost grant-based?

speaker-0 (05:10.05)
All that is grant based. it's most of the lot of my money that I've raised has been non dilutive. But it was through the pitch competitions. And yeah, we and and I was surrounded by kids that understood this stuff. that's what amazes me. And I was coached by kids. And that's how I started winning all this money. And then the university saw what I was doing and they got involved. They're like.

let's let this guy do what he wants. And so instead of going for a co-op in DAP, like most people do, we did a booth here in Indiana at the FDIC conference, the largest fire conference probably in the world.

It is huge. Hotels sell out for like, it's like the 500 all over again. It's But the firefighter conference is enormous here. think it's bigger than PRI, the performance racing industry show that's like an automotive expo here in India. Like I think the firefighters convention is bigger.

Yeah, it's probably bigger than the race.

speaker-0 (06:05.324)
Yeah, it was like 65,000 firefighters from all over the world. Wow. And we had a booth and our advisor, she's like, you guys better not be goofing off this summer. So we came back with a patent. had a $10,000 booth at the FDIC conference. 3M came and visited us in Cincinnati because they're like, you guys are on to something. This is like the next thing, you know. And so that kind of launched.

everything kind of stemmed from there and that was the beginning of all this.

Such a great story. I mean, I love that how you talk so like lovingly about your college experience Which it tells you that they're doing something right again I'm a boy that maker pretty through and through but very rarely do I talk about produce education? Lovingly, but I talk about their freedom and programs what you're talking about the pitch competition and the other things like what Purdue enabled me and my cohort his class board is a effectively a pretty startup Drew and I started this while we were still enrolled like

Yeah, which is amazing.

speaker-2 (07:04.47)
chasing the dreams of things we were doing at Purdue and that became Glassboard. So I love meeting someone else where your school environment enabled you to do the thing.

sounds like you had the same exact experience. That's what I loved about DAP. It was like the military. Military, all that matters is do you perform or do you not? And when I got the DAP, nobody cared about your grades. Like it was all what your portfolio looked like. and I was like, man, this is great. This isn't like typical college where, you know, the person that gets straight A's gets the job. No, it's the person with the best portfolio.

Say that louder for the kids in the Mac all you engineers that are worried about your GPA Please just build a portfolio from the day you're in middle school to the day Yes, never you never stop building portfolio take photos of what you do put it into a Google slides or PowerPoint doc and write three or four bullet points But every project that's it save it and just build it It doesn't have to be like from ID portfolios have to look good, right? engineering ones. They don't they just got to sound cool exactly

An engineer can just get an ID student to do it.

Yeah, and one day you can make AI make this look pretty. Let her iterate. Exactly.

speaker-0 (08:08.91)
But I love that because it's that's what that's what matters and and nobody really I mean if you build something It's like I don't care if you got straight A's look this person took something to market

That's right. And so you start off, that's early days. And then whenever you and I were first on the call, you made this what seemed almost like a textbook grade pivot in the world of hardware. So kind of curious on that journey as well.

Yeah, the so and the reason why I had such a heart for when I heard that mess or the the the emergency call when the firefighters jumped out of that building is when I was 19, I fell off a cliff at Red River Gorge, rappelling fell 100 feet was in a coma had to learn to walk again hospitalized for three months. And so I knew and then when I talked to one of the firefighters that was there that day that made the decision to jump.

that is what spawned all this, but I think we made the, well, we made the pivot, not, I think we did because the, it's a much easier route and a lot less money I have to raise to get to market by going after the Arbor market first.

And by arbor market we're lowering parts of trees. Yes, they're cut off instead of people from the trees

speaker-0 (09:21.432)
Exactly. So it's a lot easier path to market to get there. And then once we get there, then we will have the funds and the revenue to be able to do these other products. Because we have probably, what, 20 products that we want to eventually make for like six different markets. From the same core technology. all the engineering that we're doing now is going to feed all the information we need to make these other products.

from the same core base.

speaker-2 (09:47.884)
when it's one of those things that like it's so much easier to go to market in a beachhead is what you know the VC terms gonna say what's your narrow beachhead that doesn't cost you a lot to break into you're solving a pain point that exists but it's not trying to boil the ocean exactly right how do we go to a point of thing that we can afford to get done to prove that there's a product market fit or a technical solution market fit right and I think this is what Arbor is for you guys instead of having to say hey our device works a thousand percent of the time because I can't afford to drop a firefighter of a building

If we work 99 out of 100 times and one tree branch goes down too fast, probably okay.

Yeah, exactly. And the certification is lot easier for a device, for the tree industry, than like the Fire, it's an NFPA and there's a lot of hurdles to go through there. We could get it, but it costs a lot more money.

There's a lot of improvements being made. I the arbor industry is just such a cowboy industry and so dangerous. 15 times the fatality rate of any other job.

Yeah, is that even over my other favorite dangerous job? It's crop dusting. I didn't realize how dangerous that job was My favorite thing is that you can if you're an engineer chemicals or what no, you know fast they have to fly because they're so heavy Their actual ground speed to stall is like a hundred and twenty five or hundred fifty miles an hour or they stall

speaker-3 (10:50.883)
Not sure

speaker-0 (11:05.507)
Yeah

speaker-0 (11:11.054)
25 miles

Actually, God and there's always power lines at end of the field or a forest right or you have to spray up to the edge of the field before you pull up and that's what makes this industry so dangerous is that like It was why is this so hard planes can fly like it's not that hard like no no you have to go fast because you're so heavy and That's funny yes, but sorry digress from dangerous industry jobs that we're all designed for that any amount of safety improvement is a huge improvement Yeah, yeah

You have to go low too.

speaker-0 (11:38.432)
And another unique thing about this industry that drew me there first was they'll buy stuff with a promised delivery later. So I can actually use the money to actually get them their products. that I think really that's why we're only raising the six hundred thousand that we need to get everything to market rather than you a much you would need much more you know in the fire industry to get it there.

I'd imagine it's also more B2B, right? As opposed to going more direct to consumer.

Well, actually the Arbor is both. We have an industry leader that's interested in what we have and they've offered to sell it on their website. Yeah. And then, but at the beginning, it's going to be me going, like I did yesterday, drove all the way to Michigan, spent a whole day dropping a tree with the whole team.

Like on their platform.

speaker-0 (12:34.422)
It's going to be like that. We're doing it in Cincinnati. We got a guy in Cleveland. He's over all the Cleveland parks. He wants to get a hold of this. So it's in the beginning, it's going to be a lot of B2C.

That's a that's a that's a one hell of a go-to-market one call close. Yeah, you go do live demo one call close. That's man. That's

Yeah. So it's, going to be rigorous at first, but, the guy that we went to see yesterday, he, he's a leader in the industry and it's getting, get it in front of people like that. That, you know, if they sign off on it, then you get maybe traction a little faster than you would have just like from one, one team to, to an X that that takes forever.

I mean

speaker-1 (13:17.518)
That's intuitive. And I think from a go-to-market side of things, founder-led sales, truly going through the experience, having the boots on the ground, conversations with those customers to know what is the proper sales infrastructure you need to build so that you can then multiply yourself over and over again. You're going to learn so much by just having those intimate conversations. And you're also just talking to customers, which is also a best practice of any startup.

That's exactly right. And I think a lot of mistakes that startups make is they'll hire like a VP of marketing or sales. It's like, no, you have to sell first. Then you can articulate that better to someone that you eventually hire. But I don't know, I think that's a big mistake for founders to put that off on somebody else. You have to, in the beginning, get to know your customer.

Well, and it's this thing that is similar to engineering. At the beginning, you have to do things that don't scale. Right? You have to do it the hard way first. Like when you're making product at low volume, you use a completely different manufacturing process than when you make 10,000 of them. That's exactly When you're doing your first sales as a founder, you are selling. They're trusting you and they're buying your dream, not the product in front of them. That's right. And as you start to build definition in your product and definition in your value stream and your market, and you'll start noticing the script that you run over and over and over again,

You'll then bring on a sales team and realize they can use 30 % of that script. Sure. Right, because founders sell differently than a sales team. Right. And they go to marketing. It's an entirely different sale. But you need to know what the founder did that worked every time to build a basically playbook and roadmap for, mean, Deandre, you and I worked on this. Like you jumped in and helped me transition from founder led sales to both of us selling different ways. And you know.

You followed me around for two weeks and wrote down all things that you liked that I did and hit me with bricks and all things I did poorly. But we had to figure out what things overlapped as a Venn diagram and what was the blue ocean that you could go do that I couldn't. And I think that's so powerful.

speaker-0 (15:15.424)
it's nuanced like this industry we learned yesterday we don't use our our technologies hands-free but we learned you don't tell arborist hands-free because they always want their hand on the line sure

they want control. They'd-

Don't want to hear hands for you, but they don't want to use their hands either right once they get used to it They're like why am I holding this rope right?

But when I led with that, you would always get this resistance of like, what do you mean? Like I don't ever take my hand off the...

Awesome.

speaker-2 (15:47.724)
line like friction right you know pun intended for the device yeah

Exactly.

I think he said it perfectly as doing founder-led sales you start to understand what those sales frictions are Yes, and so in just like great mention once you start to really articulate those you understand them You have the pitch even though like whenever you hand it off to a sales team or your first sales hire He might implement like a different aspect of it But those core like pitches angles and things that really resonate with that customer are absolutely going to exist And that's what leads to the growth there So I think kudos to you for absolutely embodying like I'm gonna go lead this

sales effort until we get to the point where we feel like this is true product market.

Yeah, I feel like it's user, it's just like user design. Like you think you know what the user needs until you... Yeah, until you walk in their shoes. You know, I always make the mistake initially, I was like, I know what these people need. It's like, no, you don't. Spend time with these people and listen to what they're telling you their pain point is, not what you think it is. And then you start to really learn like, okay, this is why people are looking at me weird when I'm when I'm speaking this way, because I'm not speaking their language.

speaker-2 (16:32.43)
put it in front of you.

speaker-0 (16:55.662)
So

is wild to see how no plans rise for his conduct with the client. Absolutely none. It's like all the engineers have their best laid plans, this how the device is gonna save everybody and do this crazy new thing. And you go to use like, don't use it like that. And like, this is how I'm gonna use it. Don't use it like that. And you have to engineer products in ways people either can't use wrong or are so obviously in a delight to use correct, they'll do it the way you want them

Right.

Yeah, so either Michael Alex to the degree to which you guys can share about just the core technology You know, this is the hard tech podcast. So we're excited about this thing right here So I'm curious like what is the core aspects of the product you can share and what's like the core innovations? You guys have really discovered

I'm gonna let the engineer take this one.

speaker-3 (17:39.146)
Yeah, so I mean like we were talking about earlier all the climbing devices and this goes for arborist devices to all these rope devices a user has their hand on the rope and that's the input to that system and then you know a friction element allows them to be strong enough to achieve what they're trying to achieve So to try to reduce error or to try to make things easier is we want to basically replace the break hand of the user So that's why that's how Michael came up with the eddy current technology

Which is equipped? It's just like a viscous elements if you're cop dropped a magnet down a copper pipe It doesn't fall down the pipe quickly it falls slowly Anytime you move change magnetic field around a conductor you get opposing magnetic fields So basically the faster we spin it the more it resists and that replaces the need for a break-hand And we still use the friction to amplify that

Right, so basically you're loading down the rope with tension from the eddy current, right? So as the the flywheel spinning faster and faster you're moving a magnet near a metal plate and that's forcing electrons race through the metal and they're bumping into the metal so it's creating heat. Yeah, it's really like atoms here electrons hitting atoms as far as friction goes, but that isn't absorbing a hundred percent of the energy.

about the same amount of absorption as like your hand would be if it was just

If you're like just bling when you're like rock climbing. Yeah, right So I think the like talk to user for everyone listening that can't see our hands It's one of those things that when you're you know, you're repelling down a rope You are letting a little bit of the rope go through friction in your hands. Yep, but it's wrapped around this this loop basically on your carabiner and that friction is what's absorbing the energy exactly right and so that is what you guys are doing that most of the energy is going into the rope and heat but you have a what 10 or 20 percent input from your eddy current technology exactly

speaker-2 (19:24.7)
And the beauty is, if you would just let this freefall, like the eddy current freefall, it would spin up to a certain speed, but because its torque or resistance will increase with speed, you'll eventually steady state. You hit that velocity. Yeah, that's super neat. So it's going to stay at that terminal velocity until you touch the ground.

Determinative loss.

speaker-0 (19:42.122)
Another fun thing too, and this is like the nuance of what we were talking about before is I thought it was going to be that hands-free that they could lower limb hands-free. What we're learning every time we go out with these guys is they like the soft catch. it's not, they said the hands-free is not necessarily what we like, it's the fact that when we cut the limb, especially a negative rig, and I can let you explain.

There's instances when you're cutting a tree limb, like a very heavy tree limb, and it has to free fall for like, you know, five or six feet before the rope can catch it. And now we have this tremendous amount of energy that we need to disperse quickly and smoothly. If it impulses at shock loads, it'll shake and it can injure the climber because these tree trunks can shake violently enough to cause injury or to cause even, you know, the tree could break.

If it's...

speaker-2 (20:33.1)
So this is interesting so basically you've got this is like bungee jumping yeah, you jump with a rope It's not a bungee cord you break every you break. Yeah Whereas with this you could jump off I could jump off a bridge with a rope around my ankles attached to your device And I wouldn't hit tension right away I would slowly work on the tension because the eddy current would slowly relatively slow

back

speaker-3 (20:55.502)
The climbers figured out they got stretchy ropes where they can do that right arborists can't use stretchy ropes most of the time because they need to avoid hitting something at the bottom so they use complete like almost completely static ropes so it becomes even more important to use proper belay technique on these on these catches and our Technology allows that to be much easier and like much lower skill of cap Fresh ground guy can now do a good catch because this technology is helping him

That's right.

speaker-2 (21:23.854)
Yeah, because it's basically your it's like a mechanical computer. It is programmed to increase load up until it's at a state limit. Yeah, right. Like this isn't like human has to slowly start grabbing the rope. again, if you wait too long, that limb's going to have way too much velocity. You're never going to able to load that out of burning your hands. Yes.

It's the same in rock climbing and lead climbing. Everybody in both industries call it a hard catch. So if I fall 10 feet before I get a catch and that person has their hand grasped on that line or doesn't jump up to allow that cushion, I'll slam into the rock and a lot of times you break ankles and legs that way. Arbor is the same way. If that guy just wrenches the rope when that thing

when the limb falls, now you got the arborist up in the tree getting hit repeatedly by that tree. that's how most injuries happen.

because it's anchored at the top of the tree. And the tree is going to impulse like a stretch and it kind of like a slingshot.

Yeah.

speaker-0 (22:19.926)
Yes, and there's some interesting videos online where you see a guy look like a rat. That's right.

They're all saying Yeah, that's crazy so in the going back to the engineering just for because it's fascinating like how you guys kind of did this What is the limiting factor that you guys ran into that was like the hard part of designing this that you didn't see at the beginning? What became like the critical thing you you're?

Well, you know, there's a lot of challenges and the current device we're working on is the device that has the fewest of these challenges. So, you know, if the you we have a signal input from the edit current, but if the rope if the tail end of the rope is really high in the air, that rope has math has weight and you have to pull up. So that's actually another input that's really hard to control.

Of course.

speaker-2 (23:07.776)
Are we in trouble?

To fight that and you know the the rope needs to spin a sheave so it's taking time to find a Pull the or sheave that will bite the rope and not slip. That's obviously very important

and bite the rope and not break the rope.

Break the rope. That's another trick. Another challenge. And then you can go, we can go back to like the beginning. Like I said, we've been working on this technology for a decade and it's frustrating because I don't think a lot of investors understand like we, this technology didn't exist in this form. That's why we have like three patents on it. Eddy currents have been around forever, but the way we were implementing the Eddy current in such a small device, that was the hardest thing because

Eddy current works better when you have a radius. It's in the equation. So when you take radius out of that equation, you have to do something else. You have to figure something else out that's going to add to the ability to lower human.

speaker-2 (24:04.684)
Right, increase torque that the eddy current is resisting, right? The eddy current wants to resist torque at increasing rates and increasing speeds.

goal is to lower a hundred pound person and a 300 pound person and a device that's three inches.

without a user telling the device how heavy they are.

Exactly and that's what took us forever and we had some college students that was working on another device and Ben, one of our engineers, another engineer, he graduated MIT and he did all he spent a month figuring out the math for that.

Yeah, we did an axial flux in Eddie current instead of radio flux which allowed us to package it a lot smaller and save a lot of weight

speaker-2 (24:47.702)
It's amazing how that works right like you can start pancaking those together how much the force goes out for small size all? Conic Zegs new motor I think it makes like 800 horsepower power in like 80 pounds or something stupid like the crazy densest like electric motor It's sustaining Yeah, this is awesome. Okay. Yeah

But I mean these college students they told me this the math is unreal they said we don't we couldn't find the math for any of this and then Ben showed them the math and and they were these kids and they were pretty bright but I mean they struggled because you know there's this the field of eddy current isn't really a big it's getting bigger now because you have these these break the breaking technology and like Tesla is this same principle

you know, but it's not something that a lot of engineers are familiar with.

Well, and most engineers are really familiar with driving motors with electric flux. Yes. No one is used to using it as a uncontrolled braking power. Right. Right. I have a motor controller that can PWM the current. Now I know how to control, you know, slowing down a motor. Doing it with just a big metal plate absorbing that energy. That is a nonlinear equation. Right. Right. And then that thing is humans are so good at guessing math linearly. I think it's about twice as much. I know how thick to make this beam. Right. Things are nonlinear. Our brains don't work that way. No, they don't.

with this, mean, like you get even the thickness of the metal. If it's too thin or too thick, there's a sweet spot. Right. And then speed, you know, the RPMs, there's an RPM that the same really works well. Any change changes everything.

speaker-2 (26:19.492)
for efficiency.

speaker-2 (26:25.452)
And if you use different magnets, that speed changes. Exactly.

It's not like if you get half as strong a magnet you need to spin half as fast. It's nonlinear. It's a point you could have never guessed.

Exactly. It's very counterintuitive. so that was very frustrating for me because we would raise this money. I had this vision of a world I knew existed, but it spent 10 years telling people this existed and it took us 10 years to get to that. finally I'm like, we got it. But, know, investors, they want to see stuff right away.

Well yeah, return on investment's tough.

Exactly. And I understand that. Like nobody wants to say, yeah, here's my money. I'll wait 10 years. Let's see what happens.

speaker-2 (27:06.156)
Yeah, to get my return. Yeah.

I suppose that's the advantage, too, that now you guys have effectively built the house and the foundation. So going and building the add-on to the house or the new garage is now significantly easier as opposed to going back and starting from zero. And the next product's going to take us another decade.

Exactly. I have a feeling it'd be funny if we got out of this without getting any like like series A round like we just because we've been doing this so long that will hit market and then it's gonna pay for the rest of it because we we know a lot more now than you know if we just started this you know going into each different product line it makes a lot easier.

Amazing what tribal knowledge will do right? It's not like what you've learned today couldn't fit on one or two pages of paper But there is no one book to go read 500 pages and get this one page of knowledge you needed no That's what that's what's hard in when you're doing it in a new application Yes, the I can go look at the eddy current physics in the book. They've been well understood forever, right? But how do I set up that physics to make a product that delights users and meets all my user needs right? That's something that you have to like

drive by Braille, bounce off the guard rails with your car. I'm well, that's too much this way. That's too heavy this way. How do we find this balance? But once you get it, once you understand how your technology puzzle pieces, think is the word, into a market, now you can go look at a different hole in different market. I know how to cut that puzzle piece using my technology.

speaker-0 (28:34.414)
Right. Right. I'm glad you said that because that's, that was my exact experience. I've, I've 10 years ago, I just started reading. I, at one point I was reading three books a week because, know, during high school and college, I didn't really read that much. I was, I was like a B plus student for me to get an A. had to kind of like study a little bit, but I was like, you know, you know, I just kind of skirted cornice. did well, but the

Where I really, when I started doing this, what I like is it forced me, I now wanted to read because I needed this information. I wasn't reading for pleasure. I was reading to like, And I felt like I was learning through a fire hose. Because for this type of technology that we did, there wasn't really a roadmap. didn't, all the books I read, was no one that, like, mean, Tesla, that's a great example, but I'm not Elon Musk, you know? I'm not that smart.

But, you know, mean, like there was, I couldn't find anybody that did this type of like invented a technology, put it in a package and then sold it. none of the books told me how to do that.

is a game of just like, you have to almost build your own map and then find, like you have the dot on the map where you're trying to go and then you have to like consume enough information where you can start to see, okay, there's a mountain there, there's a river there, and eventually you figure out the right way to go, but it absolutely is a journey just like that.

Yeah, you choose you want to build a boat. Do you want to climb a mountain like that's right? Do you think you're good enough at geography to chart that pass? No one one finds the past

speaker-0 (30:07.342)
And that's the cool thing about the startup world. I've had so many people, so many advisors that have helped me just tremendously. And I would say that to anybody that's going into startup, you have to find people. You're not going to do it alone. And I knew that in the beginning. I was like, what I'm trying to tackle is way above my pay grade.

Well, and my favorite story is your next one will be so much easier. No, and this is what's crazy is the younger founders like the early founders is their first rodeo. It's all new and exciting and you're full of piss and vinegar and you'll literally run through brick walls and it always takes longer and it's a little rougher. But you'll do things other people won't try. That's right. Your second or third or fourth startup. You are smarter and you're more cautious and you know where the stove is hot and we're not to touch it. And what happens is you have a higher success rate that you usually don't chase as big of

moon shots the second, third, fourth time. That's what takes the balance of betting on the young founder that has no idea what they're doing, because they're the only blind squirrels that are going to find the unicorn thing. The only one's dumb enough to do the thing that no one's even touched with a 10-foot pole that has huge untapped opportunity. And then when you get the experience around the second, third, or fourth thing, you're like, I'm going to definitely give him a buck because he'll turn it to four, but he might not turn it into 100.

lesson.

speaker-0 (31:22.942)
And I think that's what I had going for me. Even at my age, I had the energy of a 19, 20 year old. And like just went nonstop for 10 years. And I'd also caution people about that too. You got to make sure you don't burn out. Yes, it's exactly, that's exactly what I did. And then it's funny, like you said, trying things that most people wouldn't. mean, like when we were in DAP, we go to the sixth floor stairwell and we would jump our device down to the ground floor.

sprinting marathon is hard

speaker-0 (31:52.098)
You know, like just we'd set up ropes. didn't ask for permission, you know, and we would jump. That's how we test. That's how we test the device.

And you would strap yourself into it? Yeah!

speaker-2 (32:00.686)
Not a bag of sand.

Hey Patrick, I got you man. You know, but I mean it was funny one day the Dean of the college was walking there. He's like guys, I don't think this is a good idea and I don't even know if legally we're allowed to let you do this. So we had to change locations to the climbing gym. But yeah, mean that's that's we literally we would ask for forgiveness not permission and that's how we did everything and it and to me that's fun, you know.

That's it's exciting and it's the thing that will allow you to explore space that no one else did. That's right. You will try the thing with so little resources and so little knowledge or, you know, knowledge or promise that it's on the other side, but you have conviction that it should be.

Yeah, I was too dumb to know that, that, you know, this, isn't probably feasible.

And that your first five grand was a drop in the bucket compared to what you're going to have to take to get there That's right. We had one of our very first podcast episode years ago when it was called the glass podcast We had one of our clients on that did a bike computer and this is you know, basically as smartphone effectively It's a smartphone for your bike, it's an Android power GPS measures your power does all these things and we asked one of the founders Lawrence like Lawrence Would you do this again? Like this is you know, you've lost company's question. Would you do it again? He goes I would never do this again unless I two million dollars cash to start

speaker-2 (33:16.656)
You know their first raise like 200 grand they thought they were like really gonna get yeah We're rich and he's like not unless I two million dollars like that's their experience and that's exactly right And I love that both are valid

You have to have first-time founders to go do crazy and we need experienced founders to do the you know wash rinse repeat like sustainable startup practices right because you need those to feed the VC engine at you know your singles and doubles instead of your home runs to have enough cream at the top that you can bet on 100 home run. That's right. That's right. That's awesome

Right.

Michael, one of the questions I always love to ask at the end is if you had advice for either a younger you or a founder that was up and coming in the hard tech space building a product that may be novel to the world that they want to bring into it, what would be your advice to them?

Watch out for your mental health. This is something that people don't talk about, but a lot of startups, go through, what you have to go through to do this, it's very difficult. And if you're not watching your mental health, watching for burnout, make sure you're not burning your people out, it's...

speaker-0 (34:28.32)
You might get to the top and realize you, you aren't the person that you were when you started and not necessarily for the better.

Well, I want dig into this because everyone actually everyone talks about burnout. No one actually talks about burnout. Yeah. So I'm a founder. I've done startups that were insane. I've done glassboard. That's more of a small business that we bootstrapped. I've done a little bit of everything and I've experienced burnout in more than one way. Yeah. You know, there's the what I call like acute burnout, which is like you and your team and your very exciting early startup and you're working 15 hour days, seven days a week for six months and

Everyone's just getting physically tired. People are getting sick. People are burning out. People are just angry at each other all the time. Yeah. Right? And you get like the grumpy burnout. That's right. There's the different, the apathetic burnout that'll happen slowly without what I'm going to call the right balance. Right? And this isn't just work-life balance, like make sure you go to the movies. Right. This is like joy and work balance. Right? Making sure that the company is moving forward at the rate that gives you return. And not financial return, like...

brings you joy in what your problems are solving, things you're doing, at the rate at which you're pouring into it. You can sustain high rate input if you get high rate output almost forever. I've seen people work insane hours for years because it fueled their fire. was the cup that filled them up, not the one that drained them. And so what has your experience been?

Well, it's about three years ago, I hit a rough patch where it just, we were out of money and what stresses me as a founder is I couldn't pay my people. wasn't me. It's the fact I couldn't pay them. So I wasn't making any money. They weren't getting any money. And what blew my mind is they kept working. yeah, I was like, man, these guys are literally working with no pay.

speaker-2 (36:14.798)
almost made you feel more guilty.

speaker-0 (36:20.618)
And they love it. mean, they, at one point they said, this is our project. And I love that. Cause that's, that's the way I, you know, while was in the military, I was put in charge. That's what I, that's how I led. I never would give orders to people. I learned you get a lot more out of people if they're doing what they love doing. Yes. Yes. And my job almost is to tell them, Hey, you need to slow down a little bit. You know, I had one, one guy with us, part of our team.

Yeah.

speaker-2 (36:38.798)
and they're doing it as a team.

speaker-0 (36:49.102)
He locked himself in his room for three days and worked nonstop and then got sick. And I was like, don't ever do that again. We had to look out for each other. that's the other thing I would say, make sure you're looking out for yourself and the people that are with you because it's not easy. That's why most people don't do it. It's a lot easier to go get a job, nine to five, with a guaranteed paycheck. It's a lot harder to bet on a technology that you are creating with no pay.

Yeah, well it's one thing I'll avoid I'll work 80 hours a week for myself to avoid working 40 for someone else. Yeah, exactly Exactly, but no I think that your last comment on burnout So when I really want to highlight for the listeners that are young founders are doing this for the first or third or fifth time and starting to figure out why they're so angry and stressed all the Make sure someone else is giving you feedback and if you if they think you're burning out. Yeah, it's really hard to self-diagnose It's actually pretty easy to see in someone else. Yes So that is like the accountability system is pretty important in that like I've got some really great co-founders and we're horrible to each other all

Exactly.

speaker-2 (37:46.928)
the time which helps keep it pretty even that if I'm pushing myself too hard Drew will literally call it he goes the rollercoaster is getting to the tippy top again Grant I'm like okay we're about to go down and it's really good that we just call each other out that's good and that's that's how we've dealt with that but I've definitely seen our even Drew and I through our you know ups and downs and trials and tribulations touch the the burnout Sun

melt our wax wings and start falling and luckily there's usually the other one there to pick us up before we you know luckily belay us down before we hit the ground and pull a block.

That's right, that's right, that's good.

Well, that's a great I know I that was one of our most impactful like final questions. That's sure

I think it.

speaker-1 (38:23.18)
by far, lean on the team, avoid burnout, and talk to customers. That was one of the biggest things I took away from this conversation is that you guys are building a product that people want because you kicked off the journey figuring out new technology. And so that's a little bit of the, did they create a hammer or a nail? But the thing that you guys really did that was like by far the most innovative thing was even if you guys experienced friction in the sales process through getting the certifications and said, how can we go find the right application for the right customer?

taking it directly to them, getting in their hands and getting feedback. And that's like the story of hard tech. Everybody, this is the Hard Tech Podcast. I'm your host DeAndre Hericus with my co-host Grant Chapman. Michael, Alex, thank you so much for being on the show.

Yeah, it really is.

speaker-2 (39:04.952)
Thanks for listening, everybody.

Thank you for having us. Pleasure.

been blessed.