Latest / Automated with Brian Heater / Colin Angle on iRobot, Regulation, and the Future of Physical AI

Transcript

Colin Angle on iRobot, Regulation, and the Future of Physical AI · Automated with Brian Heater

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: A robot was never a science project.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we didn't raise venture capital until year eight.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: From the very first day, if we wanted to eat something other than ramen for dinner, we needed to sell robots.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the crucible which birthed me was one where you had to be pretty damn sure that the robot you were building was going to make some money because otherwise you didn't eat.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Heater, the managing editor at the Association for Advancing Automation.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have a very special episode for you this week.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Colin Engel is actually someone I've spoken with uh several times, many times over the years, usually on stage in front of a bunch of people.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually our uh first time speaking on the record since he left his role as the CEO of iRobot, though, given uh everything that's happened in the news over the past several months, we do obviously discuss that part of his life in quite a bit of detail.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Colin also offers a bit of insight into what he's been working on since at uh Familiar Machines and Magic.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So uh thanks so much to Colin, as always, for a great conversation.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks to you as always for uh tuning in.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: It would dramatically improve my day if you liked and subscribe to the show and our newsletter of the same name.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I will see you on the other side of the interview.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we we actually floated the idea of you coming on the show um a few months ago, and you told us you wanted to wait it out until you had some news to announce.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, some some things have changed since then.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: You have some some stuff to talk about right now.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um let me start by asking you what is your relationship with iRobot currently, if at all?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's really not at all.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um about two years ago when I stepped down um as CEO of iRobot and then left the board.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: That team has a lot to do, and it was easiest for me to just do a full step away.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So uh really my under even understanding of their strategy in the last year and a half is basically zero.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly, I read the news like everybody else.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you've do you found out on like Sunday with the rest of us?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: I found out on Sunday with the rest of us.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: On December 1st, there were some other filings that sort of tipped the uh the hand as far as where things going.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: But uh uh yeah, uh it was uh, oh man, uh okay.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's back up again, as we were saying before we started recording.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, like you and I have I was gonna say history, but that makes it sound more sorted than it actually is.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um you and I have have spoken many, many times over the years, um, but we haven't spoken in in quite some time again, because I think you know you you've been keeping your powder dry on on what you're working on.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um certainly we haven't really had much more than a couple of like DMs on LinkedIn since the transition.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when when that initially occurred, when Gary initially took over, you know, again, you had you're you're a co-founder of the company, you had been there for you know like 30 some odd years at that point.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did did you have conversations with him?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Did you give him any advice when he was taking over?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and during the the transition, uh, you know, we definitely had a few conversations.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: There was limited just trying to make sure that uh he understood um uh what I uh was leaving and and my thoughts on um things he should be worrying about or paying attention to.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, really was one, two conversations.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, there was a lot going on, and Gary was eager and and uh ready to jump right in.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it felt like he knew what he wanted to do, and uh it was time for for me, honestly, to go uh step away and and uh let him uh manage the ship.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I think at the time, you know, obviously I was I was still at TechCrunch at the time when that happened, and and I believe at the time um, you know, I I think I tried to interview him, but I'm sure that he was you know really busy and they were dealing with um transition stuff.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to ask him the same thing that I asked, you know, when the new Peloton CEO took over, or um, you know, uh essentially, you know, why obviously like this job, you know, you're stepping into kind of a difficult position.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is a bit this is a bit of challenge, you're coming out at a hard time.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he wasn't handled, he wasn't handed an easy, easy job.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was a difficult task.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was stepping into something pretty difficult already.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: The whole challenge, and you know, one of the reasons why we're chatting today is is that the uh the situation that led to that moment in time was uh one from which I think many should take a lesson, put some eyes against, because coming out of COVID and and um uh really looking at the situation that iRobot was in, um the landscape had gotten much, much more competitive.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, what was happening in Europe, what was happening in Asia, what was happening in the US, much less what had already happened in China uh was to the detriment of the market leadership that iRobot had had traditionally enjoyed uh since uh we launched the product you know way back in 2002.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when uh you know I was looking at our strategic plans, what uh how do we diversify beyond being a single product company, what is our role in the home, all of these really critically important questions required levels of investment that uh were stretched relative to the uh profitability of uh the company at the time.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so when uh Amazon called and really became clear that uh our long-term strategy and Amazon's long-term strategy was quite aligned.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Amazon was willing to lean forward and make it something that really was in the best interest of uh first and foremost, the customer.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: The innovation that it would have unlocked to create uh new ideas and bring them into the smart home was personally very exciting, and I think would have tremendously benefited the customer.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: The investor in the iRobot would have gotten a good outcome, and obviously Amazon was interested.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it felt like one of those rare triple wins uh that should have gone through and perfunctory review and boom, boom, boom, you know, you know, six, eight weeks later, we're off and running.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but that's not what happened, obviously.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Gary's challenge uh certainly was born out of the fact that instead of that, 18 months passed in you know, leaving iRobot in this weird purgatory where we needed to operate as an independent company, but at the same time, uh we needed to preserve the assets that Amazon wanted to buy, and at the same time, our access to capital changed because honestly, the banking relationships, as you would imagine, uh are all the banks are making decisions that, okay, you've been sold.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there is no, if we're not the Amazon bank, there's not a long-term beneficial relationship there for us.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh you find yourself in a difficult situation of just waiting and at the same time spending tremendous amounts of money, uh, which, if the deal fell through, would be unrecooped, uh trying to ensure that the regulators have crystal clear answers to their questions and a true understanding of the situation that iRobot faced.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're in this purgatory for 18 months, paralyzed, and then uh deal gets blocked.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, okay, go on about your lives.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, everything that led us to be looking for an acquire uh or being open to being acquired 18 months prior was still there, but worse.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're right.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Gary got a rugged hand to play and needed to scramble.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: This was a point I was making, you know, because obviously, like, you know, you've you've been discussing um, you know, because I it was ultimately like the EU that really sort of threw it down, but there were discussions here, you know, in the States.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know Helen has been really critical specifically of uh Warren, you know, a local, uh local senator.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I I I also wanted to point out that, you know, there was just so much going on.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you mentioned again, a lot of specifically there are a lot of Chinese companies, the bottom end of the market, um, you know, market saturation that like at the top end of the and uh of the market too.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then like there's a pandemic happening, right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like there's a supply chain shortage, like everything is becoming more expensive.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And since then, you know, there's there's been been terrorists.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're giving me flashbacks, Brian.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was I mean the twitch, the twitch may come back.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, and we were talking about this before because like I, you know, one one of the, I guess one of the last times that you and I spoke was was probably around 2019 at CES when the um the terror uh you know the the uh uh the lawnmower, you you were talking around that.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I think if I remember correctly, that was that was kind of a casualty of supply chain issues already, wasn't it?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it was a difficult time.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um access, you know, the shipping costs uh went up double, tripled, quadrupled.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the first part of the pandemic, everything shut down.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then the second part of the pandemic, we couldn't get parts.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: We were buying, you know, little tiny resistors that were supposed to cost five cents for$25 each simply because we couldn't build product without them.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, it it uh you know, for 17 years, we uh did a we had a great run, and and then it seemed like the world was conspiring against the uh the profitability of the company, and and at the same time, uh we were looking to continue to innovate.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's why this the Amazon deal made all the sense in the world for us to take the tremendous engineering talent, the the vision that was aligned with what Amazon was trying to do, and make make the journey continue, because building a new category, this this robotic floor care category uh in the world is a full contact sport.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's uh something that uh is fragile.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh if this country uh desires leadership, um you know it needs it needs to be attended to.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I should point out obviously throughout the years, um there were other attempts at diversification beyond the Roomba.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and none of them really took off like Roomba.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's not to say that we had run out of ideas, but um, you know, the history is the history where uh consumer robotics in the home is challenging, and there's only so many different wallets that uh well, you know, places where value can be created.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's been a personal passion and journey for 35 years for me, and and I'm continuing that journey with my new company uh to try to crack the equation.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and um there's good days and bad days, and certainly the whole period of time leading up to uh you know the uh uh saying yes to uh joining forces with Amazon uh was a particular sequence of challenging events, and uh it was a very good option for us at the time.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: In hindsight, it's obvious to say, oh yeah, well, it it took 18 months and you know you couldn't have seen that coming.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And again, a confluence of things, nobody knew exactly how the pandemic was going to play out, and in a lot of ways, it's still playing out.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you think ultimately that there were just too many eggs in that Amazon basket for iRobot?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly the board believed that the Amazon deal was the uh the best alternative.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And once you commit yourself to the path, uh you're kind of committed to the path.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we had agreed that we were going to do everything possible to preserve the assets that I uh that Amazon had acquired according to the terms of the deal.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, the you're supposed to, again, operate the business as if there is no deal, subject to the terms of uh the operating covenants.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Closing and yeah.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, no, no, the operating covenants would say what you can and can't do, right?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because Amazon bought a thing.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: You have also an obligation to preserve the the value of a thing that Amazon bought.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And typically that works just fine if the regulatory period is you know two or three months, four, you know, six months.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Get to a year and a half, it's just hard.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, particularly in a dynamic environment.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh and so that predictable and well-communic-communicated pain uh uh was being experienced as basically the maximum allowable time period to review a deal or drag on the review of a deal happened.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and that was um uh uh that was hard.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, did we have too many eggs in the Amazon basket?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: From the moment we signed the deal, that was the basket.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly was the case that when the deal was blocked 18 months later, after being frozen in time, uh, you have no choice but saying, okay, what do we need to do?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I you know give credit to the operating team at uh at iRobot uh after I departed of making hard choices to try to do everything in their power to revitalize and give the the company a path forward.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, honestly, entering bankruptcy is not the end.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's another step in you know, a courageous and challenging mission to uh preserve as much of the value as possible.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: To some extent, that's not the core of the conversation, uh, at least in my perspective.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: The core of the conversation is why the hell didn't this just why did this not happen?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because it wasn't because there was a monopolistic threat of abuse, right?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: In the European market, we had a 12.5% market share, which was declining.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: The number one market leader was in the market for only three years, and so it was nearly the perfect definition of a vibrant and competitive marketplace.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: You you feel like Helen does it, that that effectively, like uh the the US and the E were both trying to make points.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you're a sacrificial lamb, maybe I would say, you know, that our situation was clearly communicated, that in my judgment, and uh having been party to uh profound amount of research into market position, as well as the uh uh the duties of the European Commission and the FTC in evaluating these types of deals, that the uh that the situation where somehow Amazon acquiring iRobot was going to create a monopolistic position contrary to the best interests of the customers, uh was just not met.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so everything else is speculation.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you could say, well, if not that, then why?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I think that that is uh, you know, the answer is clearly some other reason.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I uh just just to get back to the the eggs to get it and and you know, you know, we like I'm asking these questions in good faith because I honestly like am not entirely sure of the machinations of uh how boards work in the background.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is is is there a sense in which like you know, if if you know you had really like planned some robust plan B, then that would not have been in good faith when you were dealing doing this deal with Amazon.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you had planned like a you know, some other like entire like getaway or or or some contingency plan.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: The board is, I mean, we have a dual duty uh as an uh company to uh uh continue to operate the business as best we can, yeah as an independent company, uh, which includes making decisions to try to ensure that our product line is as competitive as possible.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we were making those decisions well simultaneously operating under these covenants that that talk about um you know one of the big ones, you know, could preserving the talent that that uh uh Amazon was hoping to acquire and and making sure that the technology that they were hoping to bring on board uh was protected.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: These are these are the types of things that uh you know you can reasonably imagine that that Amazon was interested in.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, a full-scale, you know, the type of actions that ultimately the leadership team of of uh iRobot uh felt like they needed to take on um when the deal fell apart were not uh accessible under the pendency during the pendency period, uh, because that would require dismantling a lot of the uh what iRobot was about.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is good information.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess to sort of distill it, you have to focus on the day-to-day, you have to focus on operating a company, you have to focus on selling Roombas, and then you have to focus on supporting the Roombas that are out there.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other piece of that is insofar as you're able to, you've gotta focus on maintaining that, you know, in a sense, like all of these acquisitions are also aqua hires, right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to make assure that like the really smart people stick around for those transitions.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, you Amazon was paying$1.6 billion for an organization that had for decades uh led the world in innovation uh in the domain of the consumer household.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's uh it so obviously that needs to be uh maintained.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so that you know, I think that uh really the again it it it it is true that come the end of that pendency period and the blocking of the deal by the US and and the European Commission, iRobot was faced with a challenging hand to play, yeah, and is and continues to do the best it can to play that hand.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I think the reason why you and I are talking about is why did this happen?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: What is America's commitment to leading uh industries that it helps to create?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look what's happening with electric vehicles, look what happened with drones, look what happened with cell phones.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: The um uh we seem to be a country which is skilled at inventing devices and industries which are going to become industries which command uh billions, trillions of economic value, and then feel little obligation to try to nurture these industries and do what these industries require in order for this country to maintain a leadership position during this whole process.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting deposed uh you know, at the FTC.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and it was a really bizarre process because here's the Federal Trade Commission, whose mission it is to you know protect and catalyze commerce in the country.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: I went into the interview really feeling like the person sitting across the desk from me should be my friend.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Should be, you know, okay, Colin, how how are we going to make this happen?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: What are the what are the challenges?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: What are how what is what is going on here?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it couldn't have been further from the truth.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, between sessions, I was walking the halls and you would see the examiners' offices with their doors closed and posted on the doors like trophies where printouts of deals blocked.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it just felt so wrong, right?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the FTC plays a vital role in helping to police and prevent the biggest abuses of monopolistic behavior.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's incredibly important.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And as a part of their duty, that uh you know, nothing I should say should say, you know, we we should give a real look at it.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: But the goal is the protecting the consumer, protecting the uh interest, the economic interests of our nation.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And are we doing that?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um here we are again with physical AI, the sort of the next chapter of robotics, uh uh where uh humanoids and uh embodied AI is is opening up new economic opportunity, which is predicted to be worth trillions of dollars.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And US companies are in the lead.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they're they're certainly being chased by foreign countries uh and foreign companies.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And what is gonna happen?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, are we going to learn the lesson of irobot and say the question is what can we do to help?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or are we gonna say, well, I don't really like that company.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm uh I'm I I think that um uh uh my mission is the other thing.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm chatting with you today, not so much to complain about.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not to relitigate your yeah, no, I mean it's it's at this point it's history, but what are we taking away as a nation?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Was the outcome of iRobot the outcome that we as a nation would have hoped to have happened?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh was it predictable?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was it right?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: But you you also don't want to speculate on the specifics of why this specific deal was targeted as well.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I think that uh the chairman of FTC is was very outspoken in uh, you know, as to uh concerns and objections.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they had less to do with iRobot and more to do with uh the acquiring company.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can look at the market conditions, which uh you know, iRobot market share and significant decline, the significant uh raise and increase in market share going to other new companies entering the market.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it does not take much of an economics degree to ask yourself is this the the hallmarks of an anti-competitive monopolistic position?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly not.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh again, it it leads to okay, so why did this happen?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, did the right thing happen?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I am not Lena Khan.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I am sure so I don't want to play thought police, but I can say with great conviction, it had nothing to do with iRobust market position uh in the both the North America and the European marketplaces because the facts don't fit.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, ultimately there was all of this FTC regulation, you know, getting caught up in that.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was making the process longer and longer and longer, that was requiring more and more money on your end.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: But also, I mean, it's kind of a tag team effort, right?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, also ultimately the EU kind of put the final nail in that coffin.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and, you know, it's uh you reaching out to Gary Shapiro at the at the Consumer Technology Association, you know, yeah, he was very outspoken at the time around um uh you know evidence he had around the the uh European Commission and the FTC working together.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I was not party to that.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: But um uh, you know, it is uh the case that uh the FTC's track record of blocking big tech deals uh during the prior administration.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that uh something on the order of seven of eight that she tried to block were reversed uh in court.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so that uh based on the merits of the actual case, uh, we never had that day in court um because we were blocked by the European Commission, which has a three-year appeals process.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so there is a process, it just from a practical standpoint.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, by the time that process played out, uh the world has already moved on.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a um uh it's a process which is much more difficult to scrutinize.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: We get to choose as a nation how we want to support our business.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what happened to iRobot uh is history, right?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's done.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's no undoing those facts, but there are lessons learned as to how can this nation better incubate the next industry, yeah.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I I think that um, you know, Secretary Lutnick is is saying some really interesting things about AI uh that are encouraging to me.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, as we think about physical AI and and generative AI as emerging industries of profound impact, uh they're going to live up to their potential.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: The really the only question is what is America's role in and participation in those industries?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I can tell you things like state-by-state regulation as opposed to a national policy will be a chilling impact on the growth of these industries.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: We need a national policy.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we need to understand where the the rules are.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that we need to ask ourselves um, when it comes to MA and AI companies going public, what is the FTC stance going to be?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is it going to be, hey, this is a good thing, we we want to help?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um because blocking MA for reasons that are difficult to understand puts a chilling uh pale on the innovation economy as a whole, right?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because entrepreneurs and big tech, which is the prime, you know, primary exit for tech companies, is MA.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Primary acquirer is big tech.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is that door open or closed?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the lesson of irobot is that door may not be as open as you think.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: That does not help big tech or investment into technology companies.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: It does not help that entrepreneur saying, Do I jump off the cliff and start hanging my shingle and start a new company?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Or not?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so uh again, these things have ramifications that are extend well beyond a singular instance.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: And iRobot was a tragic singular instance of uh a very unusual and difficult to understand uh situation where the transaction would block.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not do it again.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: The question around iRobot's bankruptcy is you know, Godspeed, please figure it out.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let the customer continue to enjoy the benefits of the innovation that the iRobot brand and organization represents.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: The reason why this conversation we're having is important is because there's a five trillion dollar industry which is going to develop over the next several decades.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: What is America's role going to be?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like we can close our eyes and make it go away.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: That ship has sailed.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it will be there.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Do we want to lead it or do we want to uh say, let's push it offshore?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that would be a tragedy.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you had to project going forward, um you know, what was your sort of, I guess without getting, or as as many specifics as you're kind of comfortable talking about, like what was your kind of five, 10 year plan?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like what did the future look like?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: How would iRobot have continued to evolve?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And how would it have addressed that changing market, you know, with the sort of the bottom-end players and and um obviously like now um we're having a very different conversation around home robotics.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: I laid out a strategy back in 2020 around the role that robotics could play in the smart home.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Amazon was central to that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Alexa was a really big part of that.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: When I say that the interests of iRobot and Amazon were aligned around a strategic direction, uh, you know, that's sort of where I'm talking about.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think that um nothing has changed, uh, at least in my perspective.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: The smart home is still broken.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it is not living up to people's expectations because the complexity of the smart home, the technology world, needs to solve the complexity hurdle uh if the smart home is ever going to reach its its potential.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's it gets at what am I really excited about and working on now?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, in my uh in the world according to Colin, which I am uniquely authorized to speak to, uh, you know, the robotics industry uh moves through uh a number of necessary progressions in order to advance.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the first uh sort of hurdle is does your robotic solution deliver more value than it costs to produce?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, this is the hurdle that trips up 99% of robot companies because robots are really expensive and value creation is really hard.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's one of the things that Roomba got right.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's how you beat Electrolux that first time around, right?
• 33:20
  unknown: Yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's like, come on, guys.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, it's what I got wrong with mopping robots.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: The value of the mopping robot was not uh sufficient to to uh make that a commercial independent success.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was it provided enough value to give um a vacuum robot a boost when compared to a vacuum robot without that, but as an independent product didn't work.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, again, all everything I'm talking about, I'm I'm I'm guilty of of uh uh learning the hard way.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: The second hurdle is about trust.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how do we build uh robots that are uh sufficiently transparent and sufficiently controllable that people trust that the robot is going to do what they want it to do.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And guilty, we almost blew up as a company based on violating that one.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because for many, many years, when asked what is the perfect roomba, my answer was, well, it's the robot you never see, you never touch, you just come home every day to a perfectly clean home.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds pretty good, right?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Except if you apply that same logic to a cleaning person who came in and you're interviewing for the job, and they say, Well, actually, you can never talk to me, you can never tell me what to do, just don't worry, it's gonna be good, and just you're gonna come home and everything's gonna be perfect.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: That person does not get hired, and so we had to re-imagine what the cleaning robot experience was gonna be because what the consumer really wanted was clean around the kitchen table.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do a good job, well, then I'll give you permission to clean around the kitchen.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you do a good job, then maybe I'll let you do more of the house.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so that this that was technologically inconvenient, right?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because you okay, now I need to know where the kitchen table is, or I can't clean around it, uh, and that's hard.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: But as a result of doing that, we moved from being enviable and desired by the early adopters to the early majority, and the industry uh continued to grow.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um now, what excites me now is the next step.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: How do we build robots that care about the jobs they do?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Care.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and you know, I'm not in terms of like giving them in terms of giving them rewarding them, giving them feedback for the job, a job well done?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh I'm not building cleaning robots.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um but if you apply this this idea of caring to a cleaning robot, um does my cleaning robot care that it's doing a good job?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning that if it goes over an area and that area is not clean, does it mind?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Does it bother the robot?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Do I feel like my cleaning robot is like Mo from Wally, right?
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: That that is going to go insane if it doesn't do a good job and is going to leave it on the c on the playing field, trying to make sure that my home is meeting the expectations that I signed up for.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: How do we do that?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, I know we're getting really philosophical because what does it mean for a robot to be annoyed or unsatisfied?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're getting philosophical because you can do that now.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe not in a spiritual sense, but we can start giving robots, machines in general, a perspective on how they're doing.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: The technology exists for a lot more awareness and understanding.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the types of and based on that, you can actually imagine more sophisticated interactions with their owners.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: And to incentivize them to improve.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: And to incentivize that relationship to be more effective.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's super interesting.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's sort of a, you know, when we think about okay, there's five trillion dollars worth of value to be created in physical AI based on robots taking on much needed work uh in the uh in the home and in industry and in commercial and and in the world, a huge percentage of that five trillion dollars is not screwing in screws and toaster ovens in in lights out factories.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: It requires interacting with people.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, how do machines interacting with people?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I'm I'm I'm not talking at all about social relations with you know between humanoids and people.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about doing a good job understanding what is being expected of me and taking feedback and uh being deserving of responsibility for uh doing the things that robots are going to be expected to do.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's uh a completely fascinating thing.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, you can you can get to you know these moral ethical issues by picking up a fat football and throwing it as far as you can.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: But far more interestingly and relevant is what happens in the next one year, two years, three years, four years, where the training wheels are on.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, no one's talking about human-human-like relations between robots and people.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, we've we've got giant indices create before that's ever ever relevant.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, going back to the vacuuming example, what is the next frontier of vacuuming robots?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: What is what is, I mean, because I think that's a concrete example of what I'm talking about.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: How do we create a different kind of relationship?
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And as the world is thinking about who is going to be the global leaders in physical AI, uh those are the types of questions that need uh companies to help solve and use successfully, use those successful solutions to do things of actual value that builds the next industry.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then we as a nation need to decide are we going to protect and and nurture that industry or are we going to take a different tact?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, would it be fair to say like short-term that familiar machines and magic isn't a hardware company, that it's uh a platform company?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that the building blocks for uh emotionally intelligent physical AI are building blocks that we have you don't hear talked about, uh, and are critically important as we think about what are going to be the first applications of physical AI that I can actually go to the store and buy.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's probably not assembly line robots.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think that assembly line robots are incredibly important.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're coming, I think it's it's a vibrant area of you know intermediate term value creation.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a bunch of chapters to play out before uh that's dominant.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think it will ever become dominant because I think these other areas of interest uh have value equivalent to those types of uh assembly and manufacturing related application.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: So give me an example.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think that how are we going to deal with issues around elder care?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: How are we gonna deal with issues around overcrowding in hospitals and the and the the trend uh to uh create and discover ways of providing care at home uh as a means of of alleviating uh what is increasingly an obsolete method of providing care?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: What are we gonna do?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what about entertainment?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: What about transportation?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: What about the smart home, right?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh all everything I say goes back to the smart home.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: What if I at home that actually, in an acceptably uh uh and deservedly trustworthy fashion, felt like it cared about me.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so that rather than, you know, what if the complexity barrier was solved because I have a familiar type of relationship with the home I live in, and I'm able to outsource all of the complexity that I didn't want, anyways, because I know the house uh appreciates my budget, the house appreciates the levels of comfort I expect, the house appreciates the level of security that I want to live within.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I come home and say, hey house, how's it going?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm having company over, you know, and all of that complexity or all of that sophistication in what I just said is understood by the house and translated into a thousand different uh actions.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, if this node or that node or that light bulb or whatever breaks, either the replacement shows up on my doorstep with instructions around what to do, or someone shows up uh with my permission to go repair, you know, based on my my preferences.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh uh I've abstracted away all of the complexity that is limiting us today.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is sort of where things are going, and it's uh having the world anchor around humanoids um just so profoundly understates the industry which is evolving.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's an important part.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm you know, I'm not anti-humanoid.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I think that it's uh it clearly plays a role, but it is not the story.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've been saying this to anyone who will listen for a little while.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Robotics is not a thing, it's a toolkit.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning that if if you thingify robotics and your personification of that thing is humanoid, you're missing the point.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a toolkit, uh, you know, it's Uh, you know, when I left IRA two years ago, it's like, okay, what do I do next?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, of course I know what I'm doing next because the world's greatest toolkit was just dropped in her laps, and things I could only dream about doing 20 years ago or even two years ago, are suddenly not just possible, they're cut feasible in a in a very short timeline.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that's super exciting.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, uh my morning period over the Amazon deal was held two years ago and rapidly replaced with okay, let's not screw this up again.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: We got this one was self-inflicted.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let's learn the lesson.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's take advantage of the innovative opportunity that we have been gifted or built for ourselves and turn that into value creation, which can help this country remain vibrant and at the forefront of innovation.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a confluence of things, right?
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you read or want to read Joe's book or, you know, around the Roomba, but he talks a little bit about his own kind of like frustrations about it.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of it, I, you know, I think you were saying uh that you learned a lot of things a hard way.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that learning things a hard way probably could is also like a could be a subtitle to, you know, your your your business book that you're writing.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because you were you were a technical founder and obviously like you know, I mean, you know, you know how to be a business person now.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you again, having talked to you many, many times over the years, you've always been excited about the possibility.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: But in addition to the way that these conversations around physical AI are like uh offering a lot of possibilities, suddenly being at a startup and suddenly starting from scratch and suddenly like not having the same sort of not kind of being beholden to shareholders and you know not having like a huge supply chain to deal with.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I can tell that you're enjoying this and there's a lot of excitement and freedom that you haven't really had for years because I mean it's just not possible to have that in a corporate structure.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, except of course you can have it in a corporate structure.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: You have to build the right company.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, I'm but I mean you can't, you can't like you can't be like as flexible like with the ideas and sort of once you commit to like an idea, like you kind of have to follow it through, right?
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: My commitment is to build shareholder, build value for my shareholders, whether they're whether they're investors or or uh you know um the the public uh the public market.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: So what is cool is I have a blank piece of paper and I have 10,000 lessons learned, and I get to do it again.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if things go the way I want them to, and we we all know that doesn't always happen, but uh more often than not, it does.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um my aspiration is for million machines to be a hundred times larger than iRobot ever was.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that the opportunity there is to make that happen, and that would mean that uh I got shareholders again, I'm a public company again, I've I've got, you know, it it that does that's not a downer to me.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is a necessary necessary part of building the dream.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And as you know, because we've chatted many, many times, you know, uh to me it doesn't count unless it's real.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so my goal is to transform the world again and take this pragmatic attitude of it has to deliver more value than it costs to create, it needs to be trusted, it needs to demonstrate that uh it actually can have a more sophisticated relationship with owners and machines I've ever had before.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I get to do it, and so that thank goodness for this innovation economy that exists, it gave me a chance to uh take my blank piece of paper and assemble a dream team of people who have the same crazy optimism that we can build our way uh to uh solutions of problems that need solving.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Again, uh again, I have great appreciation for the Gary's of the world who stepped up or excited to go take on them the mantle of a company that needed some uh heavy steering after uh having the crap beaten out of it through a process that, again, in my mind was undeserved and tragic.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and make the best of it and and help the proud company that still is iRobot find a path forward.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um in the meantime, uh I'm gonna go and try to invent the future that is gonna make people's heads explode and bring more joy to the world.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and because I'm not done.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: So let me let me let me let me reframe that very convoluted question that I just attempted to ask.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, because I know there were a lot of pieces to it.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: My my sort of impression, having talked to again Joe and having read that book, is like their initial frustration is uh, and there were expectations early on.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think he expected joining a a what I uh a company like iRobot was in the early days, is that it was going to be like um more SRI than a corporation, right?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: That it was going to be like a laboratory where there was like more experimentation going on.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it it became uh again, it became a company and it really did become focused on the Roomba.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as as we've been talking about, you know, maybe there was a little bit more over the years there there there had been some difficulty uh diversifying the product line beyond the Roomba.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm asking you now is with this new toolbook and you know, with all these breakthroughs and physical AI, starting from scratch and knowing excuse me, knowing what you know now, do you think that it's possible to build a large robotics corporation in the US, a consumer-facing robotics corporation that is truly diversified from a hardware standpoint?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: Without hesitation, yes.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's hard.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think you need to take a global perspective on how you're going to do it.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm voting with my time and soul that the answer is yes.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm pursuing it with the lessons of the last 33 years.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think that uh you know, a robot was never a science project.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we didn't raise venture capital until year eight.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: So from the very first day, if we wanted to eat something other than ramen for dinner, we needed to sell robots.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, they you know, I went six and a half years at iRobot, never having enough money in the bank at the beginning of the month to make payroll, and we always made it.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so that you know, the crucible which birthed me was one where you had to be pretty damn sure that the robot you were building was going to make some money because otherwise you didn't eat because what we were doing was viewed as so crazy that we were unfundable for eight years.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then uh we turned that around and we created something that created tremendous value to our investors and created tremendous value to uh you know as a public company for many, many years, uh, until the the confluence of challenges that uh came upon us, as I, you know, as as we talked about at the beginning of the conversation around supply chain and COVID and uh you know the rest of it put us in a difficult situation.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: And entrepreneurship is not particularly successful if you forget the business part.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: And at least not for very long.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so that you know, we started with that being a core tenant, and it uh, you know, there's a million ways iRoba could have been more successful or more successful faster.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's easy to go backwards in time and say, oh, gee, if we would only have done this.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I want to make it yeah, and I want to make it clear that I'm not I'm not really getting religigating or in in indicting that at all.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is like uh in order for us to even be having this conversation, iRobot had to do what it did, and somebody had to prove that like there could be robots in the home, and and iRobot did that.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what I'm asking now is like that sort of like glass ceiling or whatever having been broken now, whether there's like now there's that sort of opportunity to really for kind of I guess have the floodgates been opened in such a way where um you know it can really really be transformational as far as consumer robots.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are we really gonna see a sea change in the way that we've been waiting for for a very long time?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: If I have anything to do with it, absolutely, yes.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I'm I'm ambitiously re-entering this marketplace to build a platform which has hardware and software dimensions, and uh, you know, anyone can say they have a platform.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: So your platform is really valued by also the applications or the initial applications you're gonna use to prove it out.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we're moving at startup speed to show the world.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I look forward to chatting with you about that uh relatively soon.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I I was just gonna say, so this is this is gonna end up being like a four or five parter, you know.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're gonna have to do the episode where we really talk about the early days again because uh we didn't really get time for that.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have to talk about what you're working on uh now when you're you're able to talk about that a little bit more.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hell, like I'm happy to do a uh episode about clownfish if you want to talk about that at some point too.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, we I'm it's really it's been really good to catch up with you.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, let us know when you're ready to talk a little bit more about what you're working on now.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, it's it's always a pleasure, Colin.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Brad.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a great conversation.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: Really love that interview.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, uh one of my favorite episodes of Automated so far.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we have finally officially completed the iRobot Founder hat trick.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks to Colin.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks to you for tuning in.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Please like and subscribe and check out our newsletter over at automated.fm.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: We will catch you at the same time next week for another episode of Automated.