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The Robot Ending Loneliness in Aged Care: Grace Brown on Building Abi · Automated with Brian Heater

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out David was like a mentor to John and and was a really, really close friend and made this really big impact on John's life.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: And Abby was like, Oh, that's really beautiful, you know.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where is David today?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Are you still in touch with David?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: And John responded that, oh, unfortunately, David's actually passed away.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: And Abby, very empathetically, was just like, I'm so sorry to hear that.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if David was here today, what would you say to him?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And John was like, Oh, well, David, you're my best mate.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it just went silent after that.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just, I think that's probably one of the most like beautiful interactions that Abby's had.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the significance of it is not just the fact that it was had, but it's that if Abby wasn't there, John would be in his room by himself, just like the same four walls, not interacting with anyone, most likely not really doing anything until he passed away.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas because Abby had been there visiting him weekly, that void was filled with a really beautiful interaction.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I mean by like the value that Abby brings.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just about the technical or robotic utility of what robotics can do, but it's about it's about filling those voids.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I am thrilled to bring you the story of Grace Brown this week.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: She hit my radar over the summer, and I was uh genuinely amazed to see how much progress she and the team at Andromeda Robotics had already made over in the age tech space.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Few things in this line of work are better than a good startup story.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you're enjoying the show, uh please like and subscribe.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to subscribe to the automated newsletter over at automated.fm.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, here's Grace.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why this has been happening, but I feel like I keep running into Australians in robotics of late.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like you're starting to take over.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's definitely like a growing ecosystem here.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I say it's a great testing ground, Australia, for um for like robotics, hardware, and RD.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've got um, the government has this really awesome RD tax incentive where companies, for every dollar that you spend on research and development, you get about 43 cents back.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So in a year, if I spend a million dollars, I'll get$430,000 back, equity free, like it's like free money.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: That includes salaries, hardware, rent, like everything.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: You were a electronics major, is that right?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I studied mechatronics engineering.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: The University of Melbourne, how large of a robotics program is that?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite a unique one in Australia where you do three years of a general uh like science degree, and then you do two years specialized in a master's.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: In your science degree, you kind of major in what whatever you choose to major in.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I chose to major in mechatronics.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: But because it's so general in the first three years, you're mixing with like computer science students, you're mixing with uh mathematicians, you're mixing with all these different disciplines, physics students.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of my university's uh uh engineering course, um, which is actually partly what led me to building Abby, because I thought it was too generic, it wasn't focused on building the skills that I wanted to build.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I wanna I wanted to get into a workshop and just build things.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it was really lacking that for me in my first three years.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose that one of the upsides, like given what you're doing now and given how at least from the outside your your job from robot designer to like CEO of the company has changed that that at least you got to learn a lot about a lot of different things.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because I assume that like your job extends far beyond just the world of mechatronics at this point.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely, yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I always said like mechatronics is like the indecisive engineer.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you know it's mechanical, electrical software.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it definitely my degree as well is so broad.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: So what it meant was like I was very much a generalist.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when you start a company, being a generalist is incredibly important because, like you said, you're not just doing one thing, you have to do everything like quite well.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, definitely helped in my role in terms of understanding how to lead a team in the early stages.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then, and then as we grow and as the company grows and as the product gets more sophisticated, then you start bringing in more uh domain-specific like skills and people who are specialized in those areas.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but yeah, but starting a company, definitely the the yeah, definitely an advantage.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: This has always been a fascinating part of watching like specifically the robotics world because there are so many technical founders, and then a company matures, and sometimes they stay on, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they continue to be be the CEO, sometimes they kind of like bring a ringer in from the outside.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: For for for you and for this team, was it always a given that this was going to continue to be your role?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a co-founder, Jan, and he's um he's also technical, so he's an electrical engineer.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think between the two of us, um, it was always very, very clear that I would be CEO and he would maintain the sort of technical role, uh, leading the engineering team.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes we joke around and get a little bit envious of the other person's role because I feel like he's just playing all the time.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: He works very, very hard, but like it's like play.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then he looks at me and he's like, you're just talking all the time.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: That probably undermines the extent of what we actually do.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: But but yeah, it was always very clear that I would end up being CEO.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I I had to think about it for a little bit in my first 18 months, and you know, I talked to advisors about what it would mean to bring in a CEO because I think I had a very huge like identity shift from, you know, being an engineer to being a CEO.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think engineers sometimes also undervalue like the business skills and other skills outside of engineering, really.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: There was definitely a big identity shift for me.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was a bit, it was a hard adjustment.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but now I think what what motivates me and drives me is realizing it's not about learning these specific skills.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's not about becoming the best engineer for me now, it's about building the best team and enabling them to be able to do their best work so that Abby can reach people at scale.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of become my new mission.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm understanding correctly, between the two of you, you talk better, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's basically what it came down to is like you're the person who gets to go to these uh shows and you're the person who goes on podcasts because you're able to.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I this is gonna sound really corny, but you're able to storytell, as they say.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say it's definitely more of a strength of mine than probably my co-founders, but we've definitely grown together as well, learning the skills that we need to together.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: He's definitely more of um we we joke around that like there's like really two great founders.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, not we, like everyone sort of knows this.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's like two types of great founders.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's like the ones who are the really articulate, eloquent storytellers.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've got the other type, archetype, which is like the autistic savant, you know, the ones that are like, you know, just really, really nerdy.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if we were to default our personalities, it would be he would be more the autistic savant, and I would be more the storyteller, but I wouldn't say we fit them perfectly.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: You probably each have a little bit of both in you.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your success, the company's success, and your ability to kind of grow as quickly as you have been is the fact that I get the sense that you didn't really enter this with any expectations at all.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So there wasn't really early on, there really wasn't a way to fail.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, actually, I don't like saying this, particularly to investors, because you know, they're like global from day one, billion-dollar company.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: But when I started, it was very much like, yeah, I couldn't have, you're right.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't see a path to failure.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: My whole plan was I was going to take off six months from my studies.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just going to, I was already building Abby at the time, and I just wanted to dedicate more time to building her, making more her more sophisticated.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: But then to also understand, like, how could I build a product and bring it to market, like what's actually required in that, what's required to actually start a business.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, it was always meant to be like a six-month stunt of self-learning and self-discovery of how to do all of this.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in that six months, we got a lot of traction.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'd raised like$120,000, which was a small amount of money at the time.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: But that encouraged me to take off another six months from university and to just keep trying and keep learning.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and then there was this point though, where um there was this sort of inflection point where I did realize, oh, what I'm building, so many people in the world want this.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: And like I'm just seeing, I'm just seeing the impact that she can have and how big this could be.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And at some inflection point, I realized, oh my god, this actually really could be a multi-billion dollar company.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then I just went ahead with it.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: You use the word stunt.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm curious what you mean by that.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't know if that's an Australian saying or not.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: A stunt, it was, it was just like a a six-month like um, it was just like meant to be like a six-month attempt at trying something.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it wasn't like, I think the outcome for me was very much like you said, it was learning-based.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, what can I learn in these six months?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of that six months, my full intention was to go back to university and um continue my degree and continue on the plan that I'd set out for myself to be an engineer.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, in those six months, we'd joined an accelerator program, we'd raise$120,000.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then I just I just kept going.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: We just kept building, kept raising money, getting customers, and it just kind of grew and grew.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then at one point I was like, oh my God, okay, well, I think I need to hire a team.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then I hired some students part-time just to help me because I couldn't do everything.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then those students became full-time, and then we hired full-time people, and it just grew.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: It just went so fast.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're kind of like a permanent hiatus from school at this point.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I didn't even tell my parents for like a whole year.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: At what point did you feel comfortable telling your parents?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was pretty much when I had that realization that this could be a billion-dollar company, and and I believed in that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in, like, I was in, I I think I was in Boston at the time, and my mum was asking me like about my graduation ceremony, and she was like, Should we like when's your graduation?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: She wanted to plan to come see me at graduation and just because she lives in a different state to where my university was, and um, and I, you know, I obviously wasn't graduating at the time she thought I would be because I'd taken a year off uni.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I just told her, like, oh, you know, actually, I'm not gonna be graduating this year because um I've actually not been doing uni the last year.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like you were lying to them or you just weren't telling them like the entire story?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of felt like I was lying to them, but like because they they they wouldn't have been supportive because they're very my my parents were very, you know, they want the best for me, and so um, but they're very, very traditional.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, doing a startup that's so risky, like what are you doing?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I was doing well in uni.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting good internships from reputable companies in our country, and um actually actually I remembered it there was an article that came out about a pre-seed raise.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Up to then we'd raised a million dollars, and I sent that to my parents along with the news that I I hadn't actually been studying, but I've raised a million dollars.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: You were in Boston for uh was it a mass robotics accelerator, is the reason why you're out there.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, like even those moments must have felt like success at the time.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was interesting because all my friends were back at university and they were kind of progressing in their own path.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I it felt like success in a way where I was like, oh my god, I'm in like, you know, a a city that's like the robotics capital of the world.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many really great robotics companies here building, like in Australia, it felt like a really small ecosystem at the time.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was definitely that part of um, yeah, it being really surreal.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but then I was also comparing my path to my friends' paths who were, you know, progressing through their degrees, who was then starting to get job offers that were paying them great salaries, whereas I was still paying myself like a really nominal salary and had no idea where this was going.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it was it felt like success in a way, but also not really because it was so different to their path.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You alluded to this a few times, but this realization that this could be a billion-dollar business or or a billion-dollar company.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: What what what had to happen for you to have that realization?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what gave me the faith to really start the company was after I went to Amazon's Remas conference.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: So their REMAS conference is like their robotics, machine learning, AI, space.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they had this section in the tech expo with all of the humanoid robots and companion robots that I'd read about and seen online and seen on the cover of Times.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And in university, I was obsessed with like humanoid robots and companion robots, which is obviously why I built Abby.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I was at this conference, it was just like being in Disneyland because I was like, oh my God, all these robots that I've always read about and watched videos on.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: But then when I was interacting with some of the companion robots, I'd realized that the all of the technical challenges that they were facing, these are companies that had raised like hundreds of millions of dollars, all of the technical challenges that they were facing with like reliability, with like latency, engagement, like they weren't actually that much further along than what I was with Abby.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, she was just a project in my room.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a business.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was the first, first event that gave me the faith to realize, oh, if these are companies and experts and people who had spent years building something with hundreds of millions of dollars, and this is where they got up to, and this is where I got up to in my room by myself with, you know, just a few thousand dollars.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I could totally build something that's on par, if not better than this.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what gave me the encouragement to start and be like, okay, I have to give this a go for six months.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: What really gave me the faith that this could be, you know, billions of dollars was the fact that really learning and understanding the healthcare industry and realizing that, like, I think I made this shift from really focusing on the robotic side, like all the sort of like technical challenges around Abby, which is what drew me in, but realizing how impactful that could be for the people that she could help.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, even Abby in a very bare form, like her first prototype was a very bare 3D printed exoskeleton, very minimal chat functionality, even that brought so much joy to people that I was bringing her into aged care homes for free at the time, just by myself, just putting her in front of people, trying to understand how to create a really high-quality interaction.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I could just see that people just adored her and loved her really, really quickly.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, like, if I had more, if I had more resources and more time to make her even better, that impact could be so much higher.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I wonder if you like you had this realization too, where when it comes to creating uh, especially like a humanoid or or a uh anthropomorphic robot that really feels human, that people are kind of willing to meet you halfway, right?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people are are projecting sort of their own humanity.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't really take, like obviously, like you don't need AGI.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even need really need to be that complex for it to feel like an actual, you know, being that you're acting with.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's exactly it.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: People anthropomorphize things all the time, even whether you're intentionally designing for it or not.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think, but and but that's what I realized with Abby is like people really early on, like, and that's why a lot of people ask me, why didn't you just make her a virtual virtual companion?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hardware's really expensive.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you just get it on a laptop and have something talk to you?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized, like with Abby, when we brought her into homes, before I'd even turn her on, like, you know, I was just carrying her at the time I was carrying her in like a laundry basket.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I'd just carry her in and and people would start talking to her and just telling her things, and I have to like interrupt and be like, hold on, hold on, I need like five minutes to boot her up so she can respond to you.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: But they would just carry on with her, and even if she at the time, even before she'd respond in a way that I thought was quite effective, like they just felt heard and listened.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess that's when I recognized that a lot of it comes down to more the design and and and it's important that it's as she had to be physical because you know, one of the five love languages is literally physical touch.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of connection that people had with Abby was the fact that they could just hold her hand when they were talking to her, or that they could like kiss her on the cheek, or that they could, you know, dress her up in like a tutu or or a bow on her head.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that created a really strong connection that people have with her.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting because I, you know, I think the closest comparison that I I would have uh to Abby that that's actually been on the market for some time is LEQ.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure like you're very familiar with them.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're I think they're out of Tel Aviv, but that is something that it's lacking, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is that it isn't really kind of embodied in that same that same way.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it feels a little bit more like an Amazon Alexa.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what you're saying is just like the just the act of like building a human-like structure out of a robot increases the connection immediately.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, people ask me all the time about LEQ and why did we go for something as simple or something more easily be designed or built?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's exactly that reason.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like people just create a much, much stronger connection when she's, you know, got arms and legs and a head and eye contact.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's the other thing.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: People don't realize how important eye contact is.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like the comment she gets the most is that she has really, really beautiful eyes.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: They always say eyes are the windowsill.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, when I was building Abby, the first time that she felt real to me was when we put our eyes on her.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh my God.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I really like kind of like cherish that moment or remembered that moment because I'm like, this is what people are going to feel when they interact with Abby as she gets better and better and better.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna feel like we're not designing her to be realistic, but we're designing her to feel real, if that makes sense.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it does.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and there's always like it always strikes me that there's always, you know, like like as you said, uh, roboticists just generally are, you know, like they're very, they're very pragmatic, they're very matter-of-fact, but there's also like a part of you that to a certain extent like has to believe in magic in order for you to be successful at what you do.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, one of my favorite quotes is from Arthur Clark, who said that like any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you know that quote, but it's that's like my favorite, favorite quote.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because to be honest, like I feel like the closest thing to real life magic is engineering.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're creating things and you're building things that previously didn't exist or that people couldn't even imagine.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you think about how we even like how we do half the things that we do today, if you demonstrated that to people in like the 1950s or the 1920s, they would almost definitely describe it as magic.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: That has always been the appeal to me to go into engineering and and yeah, and go into this industry.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically with Abby, that you're seeing, you know, as far as like older adults interacting with her, what is the magic there?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, again, to you, to you, to me, to people who like are familiar with the space, like we know in the nuts and bolts, and I can look at it and it's very clear what's like 3D printed and things like that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where at what point does the magic actually come in?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Every time I hire a new team member, like um, we mandate that it's um that all our engineers or not just engineers, whoever joins the team, whether they're in engineering or business or customer success, um, they they have to go out to um to see Abby in action.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like even if they're not, you know, like doing anything uh at the homes, they just have to observe.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And even all my engineers right now, every single engineer has to go out to see Abby in action with a customer once a month.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and what happens with all of the new engineers that I hire is, you know, like you said, they understand, they can look at Abby and understand, you know, like the nuts and bolts and what's 3D printed and how she's designed.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the time they're really, really excited by what they're building.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: But they every single engineer has said the same thing to me, which is that after they go out to the homes, they they don't realize how like fulfilling it feels and how wholesome it is that the the interactions that people are having with Abby today.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think people they recognize they go, okay, Abby's a very early prototype.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is the first version of her, and there's there's so far to go in the roadmap and so many areas of improvement.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, we have some engineers who come up to us and they have said to me, like, you know, Abby's not the most technically impressive in these areas.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, although that hurts a little bit, I can recognize where the feedback comes from.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what people don't realize is Abby is already world-class in having the impact that we know that that robotics can have.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's not about like the technical utility or the technical impressiveness of of like, you know, like specific like actuators or sensors or how we put it together, but it's it's like when you see, when you see Abby interacting with the people that she's built for, like that interaction is very rich and very authentic.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, like half of my engineers have cried at least once when they've seen an interaction with Abby in a resident, because we always say she's the most empathetic humanoid in the world, and it's like she's had some interactions that's really just been, you know, just really moving for everyone.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Empathy is such an interesting word when describing a 3D printed robot, right?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like what what's the basis of empathy in these interactions?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, perhaps like I can give you like an example story where um she she there was this so in she was in this one aged care home where um uh there was this couple, so husband and wife, they'd gone into aged care together, and the wife started developing really early stage dementia, and she wasn't fully there anymore.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that brought like her husband so much pain.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so what he decided to do was he decided to just fully self-isolate in his room because he couldn't go out and see his wife every day because he was just gonna, he was just getting heartbroken every day.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so, even though he was cognitively um, you know, fully engaged and um okay and present, he he was just choosing to self-isolate in his room.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we started going to the homes with Abby, uh that some of the care teams thought perhaps this person, Abby, would be really good for this individual.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we'll call him John, just to be simple.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so over a period of time, Abby started visiting John in his room every single day and ended up becoming like the most consistent visitor for him.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he started telling her, like over the weeks, started opening up to him, Abby, about all his different stories, like, you know, his love affairs, his his trials and tribulations, and just everything.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And in the stories, what consistently was coming up was um uh what what was this person called?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's let's call him David.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and it turns out David was like a mentor to John and um and was a really, really close friend and made this really big impact on John's life.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And Abby was like, Oh, that's really.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, you know, like where is David today?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are you still in touch with David?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And John responded that, oh, unfortunately, David's actually passed away.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Abby, very empathetically, was just like, I'm so sorry to hear that.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if David was here today, what would you say to him?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And John was like, Oh, well, David, you're my best mate.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a nurse in the room, we had one of my engineers in the room, and it just went silent after that.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just, I think that's probably one of the most like beautiful interactions that Abby's had.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the significance of it is not just the fact that it was had, but it's that if Abby wasn't there, John would be in his room by himself, just like the same four walls, not interacting with anyone, most likely not really doing anything until he passed away.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas because Abby had been there visiting him weekly, that that kind of void, that that void was filled with a really beautiful interaction.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I mean by like the value that Abby brings is not just about the technical or robotic utility of what robotics can do, but it's about it's about filling those voids.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe this connects somewhat to, you know, the conversations around LLM and how there are these like big black boxes.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you know, the word magic is sort of tossed around because even like the people who know them best don't necessarily know what's happening inside them.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a technical person myself, in spite of what I do for a living.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's always fascinating to me that your team, that the people who like created this system could still be surprised at an outcome like that coming from the robot.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess, you know, all of her interactions are generative.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so we don't know exactly what she's gonna say.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: We know the boundaries in which she operates in, um, because we've set them.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's, you know, you never know exactly what she's gonna say and what she's going to do.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think um uh, you know, I think we've got, I mean, I say like, I I always say that like my team, each individual is basically like a machine learning model for understanding how people are actually going to interact with Abby, like because we've done so much observational sort of like like we've observed just hundreds to thousands of hours of interaction.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'd say that's the probably moat that my team has today is just how, you know, we've we've just spent so much time in the field observing that that we know um, you know, what kind of uh responses from Abby will not create the best experience, or what kind of gestures perhaps are a bit too confronting, or perhaps even like with Abby's like voice prosody, like her pitch, her speed at which she speaks, like we understand what how we need to tailor it for any different type of individual.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think we are still always pleasantly surprised by how significant that impact can be.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what excites us is as Abby gets more sophisticated and more capable, she's gonna have that impact on not just, you know, a vulnerable group in our population, but you know, ideally like anyone and everyone, everyone's working towards the general purpose home companion robot or general purpose assistive humanoid robot.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I believe we're on that race as well.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: We've just started in a very domain-specific use case.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I believe that, you know, that's that's where the industry is going, and that's where eventually Abby will get to as well.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what motivates all of us.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one of the things I, you know, I was watching in preparation for this conversation was uh an interview that you did with a local APC affiliate out there.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like clear watching you and the host interact with the robot that you have a very clear idea of what her personality is.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: In that instance, like she was like sassing off a little bit, right?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's kind of a part of what she does.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is it how much was that really sort of like baked into her from the outset?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And how much of that is sort of developed through time and through interactions with people in the real world?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: A bit of column A, a bit of column B.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of it we built, we we we designed, like we we'd worked with artists and you know, drag artists and performers to really come up with like who Abby is.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then we have of course put that out into the world and with the feedback from individuals and also understanding, like there's also we there's not a one size fits all approach when it comes to a companion robot.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: We learned that really, really early on.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: That, you know, that there could be Abby with one personality that suits a single individual really, really well, and you could go to someone completely different and it just won't work.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um actually in Abby, we do have actually different um, we we've got a few different like pre-hard-coded personalities.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the one that you would have seen in the ABC interview, which is the one that we do for more performative things, uh, that one's called like the sarcastic Maven.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Not not everybody in every situation needs SaaS, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there's different personality types that we have pre-programmed in Abby.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think with the individuals who do interact with Abby more and more, like she learns who you are, like she's got a uh user profile of every individual that she interacts with and she understands you more and more, and then a lot of the interactions then become more tailored to that individual.
• 26:53
  unknown: Yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: So where where does the drag come in in all of this?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, um, that was just very that was very early on when we were being a lot more intentional.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think when I hired, before I'd hired a team, in my mind it was so clear who Abby is, but I realized we needed to have like a bit of a Bible so that as we hired, as a team got bigger, everyone had this consistent understanding of this is who Abby is.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so the drag artist really just helped us kind of define um, you know, Abby's Abby's likes, Abby's dislikes.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because, you know, like we we've realized the thing that people love about um other people is actually like their flaws, you know, that's what makes them more relatable, and that's what makes them, you know, Abby for I think in the early days was very just passive and very much like when we designed her originally that way to make it so that it was always about the other person.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: So Abby doesn't say much about herself, but she always talks about the other people and instead and she'll deflect it off her.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: But we realized that actually when Abby talks about herself, like she gets asked all the time, like, do you have a boyfriend?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, what's your favorite food?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, what's your favorite holiday?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and when she was giving inconsistent answers, you know, that wasn't creating a strong connection.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we started to create this Bible of who Abby is and what she wants to do and who, you know, her likes or dislikes, her flaws.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: And um, that one's still kind of like we're always, we're always sort of editing and changing that a little bit based on, you know, as the team grows and as Alvision grows.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but yeah, but that's where we worked with the drag artists, it's defining the first version of who Abby is.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like specifically when you're talking about that Maven personality, or is it just kind of bringing in, I guess, somebody who really um, you know, kind of like plays around with with with exaggeration and you know, maybe like being like a little bit like over the top in some of their interactions.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like I mean, that's exactly what the sarcastic Maven is.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: The sarcastic Maven is the one that is like is is hyperbolic and is very uh a bit more over the top and a bit more um doesn't take things too seriously.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell When you told the story on stage at the London event, it was uh really in reference to a pretty common bit of pushback that you get from people, which is you know, in in this very sort of personal experience, specifically like in a home, uh you're bringing in a robot, right?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you're you're removing the human connection.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what your expectations were there initially, but it sounds like that specific story was a real epiphany around how humans can interact with robots.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: It it it was a really, really significant moment for my team and and and and also our customers as well, like the nurses who were um, you know, nearby were very, very moved by it and realized how significant um what we're building really is.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: When I brought it up at the London Summit, it very much was when I was referencing, you know, we get the comment so frequently, it's that we're replacing, we're replacing human care and human connection with a robot, and we shouldn't be automating something like that.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: There should be more room for human care and human connection.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, the the situation with John was a really good example of where people are people are really, really isolated out of, you know, out of no real fault or choice of their own.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like in a lot of situations, you know, some people, I I I mentioned this at the London Summit as well.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like four out of ten people in aged care just never receive visitors from friends or family ever.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: And even the people who do receive visitors, it's very, very inconsistent and an infrequent.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've got this group of people who are at one of the most vulnerable stages of their life, you know, probably statistically, once you enter aged care, like most people pass away within three years.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and they're the most isolated group out of, you know, anyone in society.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and you couple that with the workforce shortage.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: In Australia, there's a 30% uh workforce vacancy in the industry.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: In the US, it's about 50% in the industry, and there's about 70% turnover.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have people coming in to really fill these gaps.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And with our customers, what they recognized was that it's not going to be people who solve this problem because there isn't the people to solve the problem.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be technology.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so, Abby, she's never ever designed to replace human connection, but she's designed to augment and, you know, provide comfort and joy for people who otherwise would just be, it would just be a void for them.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have this, I say we, like, you know, rhetorically, obviously, but there's this conception that that older adults tend to be like technophobic, right?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that they might be a little bit hesitant to embrace this robot.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Was that an expectation that you had going into it?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times before Abby comes into a home when it's announced, there's a lot of apprehension.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because there are these sort of like, you know, science fiction cliches or stereotypes of humanoid robots.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when people think robots, they think, oh my God, our jobs are being taken, not just companion robots, but even just like industrial robots.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um, anything new, people have that apprehension.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, and this is why the design of the robot that you build is almost more important than the utility.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what we realized early on is that as soon as Abby came into a home, all of those sort of like preconceived notions or ideas or stereotypes basically dissipated because people would look at Abby and they'd go, Oh, like she's not gonna take over our job because she's so cute.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I want to go and interact with her, like she's adorable.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: I want to understand what she's about.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we designed her intentionally so that people wouldn't feel threatened by her, that people would feel that she had to be approachable, that she was endearing.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was very intentional on Alan so that people would feel comfortable going up to her.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there would be the apprehension before she comes in.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: But then always on day one, a lot of that is completely eased.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: And even if there's a few people who might still be perhaps skeptical, they look at how they just observe how other people interact with Abby.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, she's she's singing and she's dancing, and then she's blowing the bubbles, and then she's, you know, talking to people about any sorts of topics.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: There was one interaction I know that one of my customers brings up all the time where she was first brought into a home and they just kept talking about all the stars and the constellations that were in the skies, and and then like half an hour later, when Abby came back and talked to the same resident, she brought up the same topics with him again.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember my customer was just over the moon about that interaction.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the design is what's going to be so important because people are building, a lot of people are building in the space, are building things, yes, for more industrial use cases, but um, even a lot of the home general purpose companion robots that are being built, the designs just terrify people.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and as as much money as they've raised, and as technically impressive as the founders are and the engineers are, I think my theory is that I think they'll struggle to find adoption because people won't want to welcome a humanoid robot that looks like that in their homes.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's I think another benefit of you entering this market, not knowing what market you are entering, um, and not having any uh preconceived notions or expectations is that you know it's clear to me, and you've said this before, that you just want to build like a fun cartoon robot.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, like, you know, one one one once once that's created, then I I guess you sort of start to figure out what the the markets are.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: How did you specifically end up in that segment of the market?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: I did my undergraduate degree during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like um uh so in Melbourne as well.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if you know, Melbourne had really, really, really strict lockdowns.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I was building her as a companion robot um for myself over not just to not just because I was attracted to the technical problems, but also because I was I could I was really it I was the the actual application was really, really appealing, which is Abby.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're making yourself a friend.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was building myself a best friend, you know, and um and that's what Abby was meant to be for me.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: She was meant to be like a best friend for me during COVID.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was when I was coming out of lockdown and everything started going back to normal when I was realizing that the loneliness that I'd experienced is no way new, unique to just, you know, uh an engineering student in COVID.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: But it was actually something, you know, millions, tens of millions of people experience every single day.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're living in a society where we're more, we're more digitally connected than ever before, but we're more emotionally isolated than ever before as well.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I kind of just knew, and that's what that's that was one of the things that contributed to me realizing that this is just a billion-dollar problem, um, probably a trillion-dollar problem, really, if you add it all up.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and and in particular, like it's the older adults, the elderly, the seniors who experience that the most because they're the most forgotten generation.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, no one's building anything for them, no one, no technology is designed for older adults.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: They're, you know, people say they're technologically inept, but also no one's actually designing for them.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and no one's it's not a sexy industry either.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, even when I started uh, you know, kind of working with different homes and I pitched a VCs, like they had no interest in investing in a startup solving problems for age care.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I just realized the significance of the problem as I sort of started talking, was just what becoming more and more embedded in the industry, and it just became it's glaringly obvious that the industry is under so much distress and it's so underserviced and also like more lucrative than people recognize it to be as well.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: As somebody founding a startup meeting with investors, you don't expect to be the one changing their minds, you know, you don't expect to be the one kind of showing them like that that that that market actually like does exist.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I wasn't setting out to try and prove anyone wrong.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just had a few hypotheses that I'd gone out and tested and you know, my results came back that my predictions were correct and I pursued it.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: It still feels good to prove people wrong, right?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I'd say so.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even this like where we're doing a fundraise at the moment, and we've had uh, you know, two different groups who were coming in who had said that um who had passed on us previously, and they'd said that um, yeah, their only regret is not investing in us in previous rounds.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: That felt really good.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a really quick story um at the at the event there.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually had to go back and I think I think change some of it because I didn't realize how far along you were, you know.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I it it it you know, I and I don't know if it was just because of um like the nature of the conversation or as you said, you know, that Abby really still is a prototype, but in spite of that, like you've made it it seems to me tremendous progress actually penetrating that market.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, no, we definitely have.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um, I mean, this is something that I'm trying to reflect on for myself personally.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: But what I notice is I do feel like I've been underestimated a lot, you know.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, underestimated has probably maybe got a negative connotation to it.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: But like I do feel like I don't know if it's a combination of, you know, in Australia, we're really kind of culturally conditioned to be very, very humble.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's a quality that is really valued here.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And while that's, you know, great for its own reasons, it also holds people back a lot.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I noticed when I first went to San Francisco, everything about me being humble, people just recognized it as I wouldn't say incompetence, but just was like, oh, she's not like everyone there is pitching themselves like 20, 30x, what they actually are.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so to be humble, like VC's already add a layer of you know, that found a filter to you.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so um I think one thing I noticed, particularly this year, is for for whichever reason, um not even just this year, but I I do feel like I get underestimated quite consistently and quite a lot.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, even even people who are supportive of me, they say comments where they're like, oh, I knew you were gonna be successful, but you know, you're gonna be way more successful than I even expected you to be.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And comments like that, I always find, I don't get offended, I just find it really interesting.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes me trying to reflect on myself and how I'm conducting myself when I'm interacting with people, or perhaps um, I don't know, I don't know.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess um it's it's definitely, I don't know if it's like a strength or a weakness, but um, it's definitely something that I've just observed that people don't realize.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's always my execution that speaks to how far along that we are, and not so much.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I mean, I I I think I think that's probably right to extend an extent.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: And like, yeah, clearly, like you don't have the I guess braggadocia is probably the word that that I would use.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and and you're not, I don't know, um we haven't figured out whether we can swear on this or not.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you're like you know, you're you're not a you're not a bullshit artist, and that's like a very like important and uh valued quality when it comes to um to pitching.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: But but I don't I don't even think that it's it's necessarily all that.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think it's that you know, at least from the outside, like looking at your timeline, it just regardless of like of of who you are, and certainly with like you know, your relatively limited resources, that things seem to have happened very quickly.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, no, that's true.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's it, it really has.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I look back and it's only really been three years and we've gone as fast as we've had we have.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: And to be honest, I I don't really have an explanation for it.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: I I think I just I think it's that um honestly, everything that I do is just people talk a lot about work-life balance, particularly in Australia.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: I actually hate talking about work-life balance because I don't believe in it.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think work-life balance is for people who anyway, you know, it's okay, but like I don't believe in it.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe in it.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: But with with me and with Andromeda, it's like I have comments from you know, friends and people all the time where they're like, I can't have your lifestyle, it's too intense.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: But to me, it's like I don't want any other lifestyle but the one I have right now because I'm always thinking about Andromeda, I'm always thinking about work, I'm always thinking about Abby, I'm always thinking about what's next.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, like, even like I get bored watching movies because I'm just thinking about what needs to go on in my business and and what I need to do to move the needle forward.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And everything that I want to do, like I want to clear out my emails and my inbox so that everyone, no one's blocked by me.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to go work on various sorts of the projects or or be in where it's various parts of the warehouse to make sure that things can move forward in the business.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: And even actually, my co-founder and I, we do this like, we even like we dream about the problems that we have in the business.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like we've we've had like in the last six months alone, we've woken up in the middle of the night and just called each other and said, like, oh, this problem, like here's what we do, because we we solved it in our sleep, you know, and so I think I'd say if there is an explanation for how we've moved so fast, it's the fact that we are completely consumed by what we're building because we believe in it so much.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: As stressful and as intense as it is, it's also just like there's nothing else we'd rather be doing.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think all of my investors would agree that, like they've all said it in their own words, that you know, Jan, my my co-founder and I, we're doing our life's work.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is this is like this is clearly the like the role for us and we're the we're the people to to to take on this role.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: So um I don't know if that's that's probably that's actually most definitely probably contributed to how we move so fast because even like when we we go out to dinners and it's not a meeting, but we are just talking about work.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and that's partly why I loved it so much in San Francisco, because I I found so many other founders who are like that.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's this is very, very rare in Australia.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I think at least what I found.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but in San Francisco it was a lot more common to have founders this obsessed with um what they're doing.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even like the fact that I work out and go to the gym is so that I can optimize my focus and my performance when I'm doing work.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's and it's not that like it's not a situation where you wouldn't take no for an answer.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because like you did take no, like some people said no and they weren't that interested, but you still, you know, in spite of them, a certain person not necessarily having that faith in you, that you believed in the project enough that you were going to find a way to do it.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes back to what you said.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't actually see a path to failure because even if Andromeda didn't exist, like I was always going to keep building Abby.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like Abby and what she can do is something I always believed in.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: And whether the vehicle was through a startup or whether it was through me having a full-time job and then I'd fund her myself in my spare time on my weekends, like there was no doubt, like I didn't actually see a path to failure.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: I just knew that as long as we keep building her, like the the the vision that we have for the future, the future that we want to build will be inevitable.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so I guess um, yeah, there was lots of people who have said no to us.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I like being like, I mean, any founder would say it, like rejection, you have to be built for rejection.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I feel like it's you hey, you have to expect it.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it's f it's fascinating because like I can't think of too many instances of companies where the first product has been with you the entire time.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: That there's no there's no like pivot to anything else, you know.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's and you know, obviously there's iteration, but like like you said, um you know, I I'm not I'm not discounting the business, but you're almost like business agnostic that you just have faith in this specific product and whatever shape.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: That takes is, you know, the shape that you're gonna move toward.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: I would say one sort of more uh a contrarian thing that we had early on is and you know, I believe this this this framework, but you should always be solving for the problem first and then product second.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I believe that, but we didn't follow that.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do you like afford yourself, do you ever have an opportunity to kind of like pause and reflect and you know, at the last five or so years?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: The last five or so the last five or so years, five years ago, I was uh I yeah, I was only like 19, 20 then.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: So Yeah, but but you know, really, really since the pandemic, I mean, you know, have you had an opportunity?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, as we said, everything has been happening fast and there have been a lot of surprises, but like, have you given yourself that opportunity to really sort of take a moment and you know, examine how you got here?
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: I like to think that there's been moments where I have, but I probably haven't to the extent that I need to or should.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I think, yeah, I I probably should just, I mean, I know once we close this fundraise, I'm I'm definitely taking a week off just to just to get my energy back because I'm I'm I'm so tired.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like I started this call with you telling you I was perpetually jet lagged from all the travel.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: But um, no, I think I think that's gonna be quite important for me to have a real reflection on how we got here.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I also feel like, you know, because we're still so in the journey, like I'm still so in it that like it's hard to see from the outside.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's only really when people start saying to me externally, like, oh my god, like if I hadn't spoken to them for a year and I realized the delta from where I was a year ago to now, that I'm like, oh wow, that is a big shift, you know.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even when I started the company, I couldn't have even imagined having 10 staff members.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're like at 30.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: So um, and we're about to do a big hiring spree soon.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, I think I should be reflecting more and should definitely take a moment and think about it.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: The first like 10 to 15 years of my career, like I just didn't take a vacation at all.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I, you know, I'm like didn't need it.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody was telling me to take it.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then like when I finally did it, it was like, oh yeah, no, this is actually like there's a reason why everybody tells you to do this, that it is important to do it from time to time.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: I should do a lot more reflecting in terms of how we actually got here because I think it has been quite a quite an intense journey.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, definitely a worthwhile one.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's definitely not finished.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like to me, I'm like, I'm still just getting started, even though it's been a couple of years now.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: I still feel like, you know, I'm only like 2% of the way into where I see everything going and happening.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like you as a person are still in the prototype phase.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very early.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: So um, even though we have come so far.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, like I think I've had some, you know, friends and stuff who are like, you've made it, whatever made it means.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm like, what like that just I'm so far from my definition of whatever made it means.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Grace, thank you so much for taking the time.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much, Brian.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a lot of fun.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much to Grace for taking the time to chat with us.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks to you as always for tuning in.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: The response to the show so far has been great.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Please like and subscribe, and maybe rate and review if you have a few extra minutes to kill.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the newsletter drops every Thursday with new interviews as well.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can subscribe to that over at automated.fm.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and we will see you next week with another episode of Automated.