Latest / Glovisor Podcast / He Invented a Rescue Device Used by SpaceX. Then Shark Tank Said No | See Rescue Streamer [Ep 82]
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: We've included it in the spacecraft, and now it's under
- 0:03Speaker 1: the seat of the astronauts, which is really cool.
- 0:08Speaker 2: Welcome to the Glowvisor podcast, where we explore business growth, communication,
- 0:12Speaker 2: and personal development through real conversations with people who make
- 0:16Speaker 2: an impact. Our guest invented Sea Rescue Streamer, a signaling
- 0:21Speaker 2: device used by the military and SpaceX. And he even
- 0:25Speaker 2: took his invention to the stage of ABC's Shark Tank.
- 0:28Speaker 2: Glowvisor welcomes Dr.
- 0:31Speaker 1: Rob Yonover. Thanks, Joe. Great to be here. I appreciate that. Pleasure.
- 0:36Speaker 2: All right, Rob, so tell us a little bit more
- 0:38Speaker 2: about the SeaStreamer.
- 0:39Speaker 1: Yeah, SeaRestStreamer. Basically, when you're lost at sea or on
- 0:43Speaker 1: the mountains, your head's a little speck. So it's a
- 0:46Speaker 1: proverbial needle in a haystack. So the people that are
- 0:50Speaker 1: lucky enough to live through it always say the same thing.
- 0:53Speaker 1: You flew right over me. Why didn't you see me?
- 0:56Speaker 1: And the reason is your head's a speck. It's like
- 0:58Speaker 1: a size of a coconut floating in the ocean or
- 1:00Speaker 1: a rock on a mountain. So I came up with
- 1:03Speaker 1: a simple device, a long orange piece of plastic that
- 1:06Speaker 1: trails you. And I patented struts in it like spreader
- 1:10Speaker 1: bars so it doesn't twist up and curl up. I
- 1:13Speaker 1: like to go to very much the biomimicry, mimicking what
- 1:16Speaker 1: nature's done. So by putting those spreader bars in there,
- 1:20Speaker 1: That's what a centipede does, a caterpillar, your vertebrae. Segmentation
- 1:25Speaker 1: gives you strength for things that are elongated. So it
- 1:29Speaker 1: started a long time ago, 40 years ago, I came
- 1:31Speaker 1: up with the idea. And I've been working it ever since.
- 1:34Speaker 1: And it's been a slow process because I'm basically disrupting
- 1:39Speaker 1: an industry. Flares, smoke signals, water dye. even EPIRBs, electronic devices,
- 1:47Speaker 1: no one had a visual continuous signaling device like the Streamr.
- 1:52Speaker 1: And to be a guy at the time, I was
- 1:54Speaker 1: a young guy from Hawaii, surfer, scientist, come to the
- 1:58Speaker 1: military and say, this is a better way to do it.
- 2:01Speaker 1: I wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms. So it's kind
- 2:05Speaker 1: of an uphill battle trying to launch something new and
- 2:08Speaker 1: so new and so simple. Most people in the technology
- 2:12Speaker 1: world don't want to hear about simplicity. I mean, they do,
- 2:17Speaker 1: but they don't. So I don't know if it was
- 2:19Speaker 1: an insult to them or anything, but ultimately they gave
- 2:22Speaker 1: it a shot. And when we did head to head tests,
- 2:26Speaker 1: this was my favorite part. You go in a raft
- 2:28Speaker 1: and we test flares, smoke, sea dye. You put that
- 2:31Speaker 1: in the water and it's gone quickly. put the streamer
- 2:34Speaker 1: out and I go, I'm going to take a nap
- 2:36Speaker 1: and my streamer's still working for us because it's, the
- 2:40Speaker 1: Navy called it the only passive and continuous signaling device.
- 2:43Speaker 1: It stays out there forever. So it's a quite simple
- 2:47Speaker 1: device and it was hard to make it work. But
- 2:50Speaker 1: once I got it to work, it's been pretty well
- 2:53Speaker 1: received in the whole global civilian, military community. Civilians, a
- 2:58Speaker 1: little different story because civilians don't like to spend money
- 3:01Speaker 1: on safety. because they don't think it's going to happen
- 3:04Speaker 1: to them. But the military has to, because they've got
- 3:07Speaker 1: to be safe.
- 3:08Speaker 2: You definitely can see the value here. But can you
- 3:11Speaker 2: take us back, because you had this idea many years ago,
- 3:15Speaker 2: but how did you come up with it, and why
- 3:17Speaker 2: did you come up with it? Was there a reason
- 3:18Speaker 2: that it cost us?
- 3:20Speaker 1: I was flying to the outer islands. I just got
- 3:23Speaker 1: to Hawaii to work on my PhD, working on volcanoes,
- 3:25Speaker 1: and a fellow grad student had a pilot's license. He said,
- 3:28Speaker 1: do you want to fly to Kauai? I go, sure.
- 3:31Speaker 1: So he rented a plane. I don't know if you've
- 3:33Speaker 1: ever been in a rented plane, but it doesn't sound
- 3:36Speaker 1: good because it's not really, you know, it's a rental.
- 3:40Speaker 1: So it's kind of missing a little. I'm like looking
- 3:42Speaker 1: down at the ocean. It's just blue everywhere. I'm like, geez,
- 3:47Speaker 1: if we crash, I could probably swim to shore. But
- 3:51Speaker 1: my wife and his girlfriend and him, they're all going
- 3:54Speaker 1: to drown. It's like it really bothered me. I like
- 3:56Speaker 1: they only have smoke flare dive. But that's going to
- 4:00Speaker 1: go away. And again, once you've been up high, next
- 4:03Speaker 1: time you take a plane ride, look out the window
- 4:06Speaker 1: and look at the ground or the water. And it's massive.
- 4:09Speaker 1: There's no way you can see a person's head in
- 4:11Speaker 1: the water or on land. So that was the impetus
- 4:16Speaker 1: to try the idea. And then a few weeks later,
- 4:18Speaker 1: I flew to Miami where I'd grown up. And Christo,
- 4:21Speaker 1: the artist, had wrapped these islands in Biscayne Bay in
- 4:24Speaker 1: pink plastic. And when we banked a turn to land
- 4:28Speaker 1: at Miami International, I saw that pink plastic from the air.
- 4:32Speaker 1: I'm like, that's it. I just need a piece of plastic.
- 4:35Speaker 1: Then it took me years to figure out how to
- 4:38Speaker 1: incorporate the struts to make that long orange plastic tail
- 4:42Speaker 1: not curl up. So it's been a very, very long process.
- 4:46Speaker 1: And that's still, that's my overall strategy in life is
- 4:49Speaker 1: to play the long game. You know, instead of trying
- 4:52Speaker 1: to rush things take your time and do it right.
- 4:56Speaker 1: And ideally don't have the pressure to make money from it.
- 4:59Speaker 1: That's the, you know, don't quit your day job. So
- 5:02Speaker 1: you can quit your day job. So I just kept
- 5:05Speaker 1: chipping away. And then I, you know, again, it's an
- 5:08Speaker 1: uphill battle introducing a new technology. So I, my brother
- 5:12Speaker 1: who was in advertising goes, you know, you should work
- 5:15Speaker 1: the media that, you know, they're sitting on their butt
- 5:17Speaker 1: wondering what to write about. So I got a lot.
- 5:21Speaker 1: I did these at night. I would do, In the
- 5:23Speaker 1: olden days, a fax machine, which your listeners probably don't
- 5:26Speaker 1: even know what it is, but even worse so, the
- 5:30Speaker 1: landline phone call at 11.01 at night was cheaper than
- 5:34Speaker 1: the whole, you know, after 11. So at 11.01, I
- 5:38Speaker 1: would just keep sending the same one-page press release on
- 5:42Speaker 1: my fax all over the world, trying to get some
- 5:45Speaker 1: media play. Actually, the Miami Herald wrote about it first.
- 5:49Speaker 1: And then I would take that article and send that out.
- 5:51Speaker 1: It was like a fishing mission and you keep putting
- 5:53Speaker 1: a hundred lines in the water. And then I got
- 5:55Speaker 1: it on outside magazines, CNN, sailing magazine, diving, flying, everything.
- 6:04Speaker 1: I even got it in Playboy. I mean, I've gotten,
- 6:06Speaker 1: I used to take my little binder to meetings to
- 6:09Speaker 1: show the media I got. And now it's like this thick,
- 6:12Speaker 1: it's too thick, which was really cool. So now it's
- 6:16Speaker 1: morphed into, Social media is another way to get it out.
- 6:20Speaker 1: So I've kind of pivoted a little. And one of
- 6:25Speaker 1: the things I enjoy about meeting people online, on podcasts
- 6:30Speaker 1: or wherever, is that it's a third-party assessment of the technology.
- 6:36Speaker 1: I don't know you. You don't know me. I didn't
- 6:38Speaker 1: pay you to say the streamer is a great thing.
- 6:41Speaker 1: So I think that has a lot more value. And
- 6:45Speaker 1: it just gives you better credibility. And then ultimately the
- 6:50Speaker 1: home run of PR was Shark Tank. So, and that was,
- 6:53Speaker 1: you know, 30 years after I had already been working
- 6:56Speaker 1: on it. So, you know, it was already a mature product,
- 7:00Speaker 1: but the idea of Shark Tank was to try to
- 7:02Speaker 1: get it on the civilian people's shopping list, which is
- 7:07Speaker 1: still a heavy lift. So that was quite an experience.
- 7:10Speaker 1: And Even that, you never know what media is going
- 7:14Speaker 1: to happen, what's going to happen to it. Like even this,
- 7:17Speaker 1: I don't know who's going to watch this interview, but
- 7:19Speaker 1: it might be some admiral that sees this and makes
- 7:24Speaker 1: a big move. Same thing with Shark Tank. Shark Tank
- 7:28Speaker 1: got picked up by someone on TikTok, and it got
- 7:30Speaker 1: 16 million hits, my pitch. And then just last year,
- 7:34Speaker 1: someone picked it up on YouTube. It got 58 million hits.
- 7:38Speaker 1: So these things have a life of their own. You know,
- 7:40Speaker 1: you just got to put it out there and hope
- 7:43Speaker 1: for the best.
- 7:44Speaker 2: You got to put those lines out there because you
- 7:46Speaker 2: never know what you're going to get.
- 7:47Speaker 1: Right, right. It's just like fishing. If you have no
- 7:50Speaker 1: lines in the water, you're not going to catch anything.
- 7:53Speaker 1: That's the only guarantee.
- 7:54Speaker 2: Just like the streamer, just the simplicity of it.
- 7:57Speaker 1: As well, right? Exactly. I mean, my whole thing is
- 8:00Speaker 1: simple and that's my whole MO because I like to
- 8:03Speaker 1: try to solve problems with the least amount of material,
- 8:06Speaker 1: least amount of technology. And, you know, technology is a
- 8:09Speaker 1: weird word, but it's still technology. And to me, and
- 8:13Speaker 1: the patent office reflects this, the broadest patents are the
- 8:17Speaker 1: simplest ones because you can't design around like the streamer.
- 8:23Speaker 1: It's hard to build it and have struts in it
- 8:26Speaker 1: without infringing on my patent. It's really hard to make
- 8:30Speaker 1: it stay stretched out and not curl up and twist up.
- 8:35Speaker 1: So it's ironic, but you think high-tech like an iPhone
- 8:38Speaker 1: or something. It's so easy to design around certain components
- 8:43Speaker 1: in it, but if the broadest claim is something very simple,
- 8:48Speaker 1: it's very hard for piraters to steal it.
- 8:51Speaker 2: You also managed to sell to the military in SpaceX.
- 8:56Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
- 8:57Speaker 1: In parallel to the media, I learned about trade shows.
- 9:00Speaker 1: And I love and hate trade shows. They're a hassle,
- 9:04Speaker 1: but they put you shoulder to shoulder with the powers
- 9:09Speaker 1: of any industry. So early on, I would go to
- 9:13Speaker 1: trade shows and walk the floor. I didn't have the
- 9:15Speaker 1: money for a booth. but I'd have a streamer in
- 9:18Speaker 1: my pocket. So, and I practiced my elevator pitch. I
- 9:22Speaker 1: got 30 seconds to impress someone. So, and I try
- 9:25Speaker 1: to poach him from other booths or, you know, famous stories.
- 9:29Speaker 1: I chased the guy into the urinal to get his attention,
- 9:32Speaker 1: which sounds worse than it is, but whatever, whatever elevator
- 9:36Speaker 1: scenario you can get, that's where you go. And, That
- 9:40Speaker 1: ultimately has led to so many great things because, again,
- 9:44Speaker 1: last 10 or so years, I had a licensee for
- 9:46Speaker 1: 15 years and we had a booth. And then when
- 9:49Speaker 1: I took over the license, I took over the booth.
- 9:52Speaker 1: And from then on, I do trade shows where I
- 9:55Speaker 1: have a booth. So that's better because people come by
- 9:59Speaker 1: my booth. So I'm not poaching them from someone else's booth.
- 10:02Speaker 1: People try to poach them from me now. But anyway,
- 10:05Speaker 1: you meet people. You just keep networking. And the thing
- 10:11Speaker 1: about SpaceX is I'm part of the SAFE Association. It's
- 10:15Speaker 1: an International Military Survival group from all over the world
- 10:19Speaker 1: these guys come every year to the u.s and they
- 10:23Speaker 1: come around all you know and the streamers on british
- 10:26Speaker 1: british air force canadian air force singapore sweden belgium it's
- 10:33Speaker 1: all over the world it's really cool so these guys
- 10:35Speaker 1: come by and in those in addition to military there's
- 10:39Speaker 1: groups like noah nasa and spacex a couple young young
- 10:43Speaker 1: kid i call them kids like 30 year old engineers
- 10:46Speaker 1: come by and this looks good so i get you
- 10:49Speaker 1: know i see their their their badge says spacex oh
- 10:52Speaker 1: that's cool talk it up i didn't think much of
- 10:55Speaker 1: it then a couple years ago two weeks before the
- 10:58Speaker 1: first mad launch they said you got a material data
- 11:02Speaker 1: sheet on this and i go why they go well
- 11:04Speaker 1: it's going up we've included it in the aircraft and
- 11:08Speaker 1: spacecraft and we want to make sure it's not going
- 11:10Speaker 1: to make the spaceship blow up. So I go, it's
- 11:13Speaker 1: only plastic. So I sent them and now it's under
- 11:16Speaker 1: the seat of the astronauts, which is really cool. So
- 11:20Speaker 1: my DNA goes to space, even though I didn't get
- 11:23Speaker 1: to go.
- 11:24Speaker 2: That's really cool. Now, what would you say is your
- 11:27Speaker 2: biggest challenge of growing your business?
- 11:31Speaker 1: The military is a weird animal for being in business.
- 11:34Speaker 1: It takes years to get national stock numbers, get approval,
- 11:38Speaker 1: get people to buy it. So it's a very cyclical.
- 11:41Speaker 1: And then you might get a nice order, but then
- 11:44Speaker 1: it's quiet for a long time. So that's the number
- 11:47Speaker 1: one challenge is trying to perpetuate a company throughout quiet periods.
- 11:53Speaker 1: And my licensee had this problem because it would go
- 11:56Speaker 1: up and down, get a big order, then it was
- 11:59Speaker 1: crickets for a while. And all the time, for 40 years,
- 12:03Speaker 1: I've been trying to sell this to the civilians. And
- 12:05Speaker 1: I do, but it's a tough sell. So it's still,
- 12:09Speaker 1: to this day, very hard to sell safety gear to people,
- 12:14Speaker 1: to consumers that don't need to have it. It's not
- 12:18Speaker 1: a required product. So Joe Boater would rather buy a
- 12:22Speaker 1: six-pack of beer. And Joanne Hiker, you know, they don't care.
- 12:26Speaker 1: They don't think about safety. The women, ironically, think more
- 12:30Speaker 1: about safety. So they're more likely to buy it, which
- 12:32Speaker 1: is kind of weird. So that's been the challenge. And fortunately,
- 12:37Speaker 1: I took a dual track approach, which is keep the
- 12:41Speaker 1: military business going. and try the civilian but don't put
- 12:46Speaker 1: too much pressure on the civilian market to succeed and
- 12:50Speaker 1: even on shark tank all five sharks loved it thought
- 12:53Speaker 1: it was going to save lives but they thought it's
- 12:56Speaker 1: a hard sell to civilians i convinced them of that
- 12:58Speaker 1: which is i kind of dug my own grave on
- 13:00Speaker 1: that but i want to be totally honest with those
- 13:03Speaker 1: guys and it's just hard and if you look into
- 13:05Speaker 1: our country and and automobiles, for instance, we wouldn't have
- 13:10Speaker 1: airbags and seatbelts if it was America's decision. Those things
- 13:15Speaker 1: came from Europe, you know, and they saved so many lives.
- 13:19Speaker 1: But you know why they saved so many lives? Because
- 13:21Speaker 1: they're required. You can't build a car without an airbag
- 13:25Speaker 1: or a seatbelt now. So someday, probably when I'm long gone,
- 13:30Speaker 1: streamers will be required on life rafts, flight jackets, life jackets,
- 13:35Speaker 1: as they should be. I mean, it's really ridiculous because
- 13:38Speaker 1: they have a certain level of flotation required for a
- 13:41Speaker 1: life jacket or a life raft. They should have a
- 13:44Speaker 1: certain level of visibility required, right? So I don't get
- 13:49Speaker 1: as frustrated as I used to when I was younger
- 13:51Speaker 1: and I, So now I just kind of, hey, if
- 13:54Speaker 1: you don't want it, that's fine. Even sharks, when the
- 13:56Speaker 1: sharks said they didn't want it, I'm not going to
- 13:58Speaker 1: get mad at them. That's just their call.
- 14:01Speaker 2: After all these years, have you had any interesting stories
- 14:05Speaker 2: of anyone who's contacted you and said, I used it
- 14:08Speaker 2: and this is what it did for me? Can you
- 14:09Speaker 2: share one of those with us?
- 14:11Speaker 1: Absolutely. Well, I was at a military trade show and
- 14:14Speaker 1: a couple of guys walked by and You know, they're
- 14:17Speaker 1: kind of gruffy looking. Some of the special forces guys,
- 14:20Speaker 1: you can't really tell. They never wear their badge. They
- 14:23Speaker 1: wear it upside down. You don't even know who they are.
- 14:26Speaker 1: So I knew they were military. And they said, hey, man,
- 14:29Speaker 1: that thing's great. We use it. It works great. It
- 14:32Speaker 1: saved my ass. So I think they were in Afghanistan
- 14:35Speaker 1: and they needed to get extracted. The other use for
- 14:38Speaker 1: the streamer, not only lost at sea signaling, but extraction signaling.
- 14:44Speaker 1: So in the Vietnam days, they were taught to light
- 14:47Speaker 1: a purple smoke to signal the helicopter. But the Viet
- 14:51Speaker 1: Cong figured out that a purple smoke would get the helicopter.
- 14:54Speaker 1: So they just stole it from dead bodies and lit
- 14:58Speaker 1: a purple smoke and the helicopter would come in and
- 15:01Speaker 1: they'd shoot it up. So the ability to go to
- 15:03Speaker 1: a clearing, unfurl a streamer, be spotted, pull it back
- 15:08Speaker 1: in and then get extracted is very valuable. So that's
- 15:13Speaker 1: one set of stories. And the other is a local
- 15:15Speaker 1: diver I said, hey, man, this worked. It saved my life.
- 15:18Speaker 1: I was on a freediving expedition, and he came up.
- 15:21Speaker 1: The real risk, a big risk is boaters, divers. You
- 15:25Speaker 1: go down, especially scuba, you don't know where you are.
- 15:28Speaker 1: You come up, the boat's a mile away. So this
- 15:31Speaker 1: guy came up, and the boat was so far away,
- 15:34Speaker 1: they were looking for him. And he got creative. He
- 15:37Speaker 1: put the streamer on his spear and held it up higher.
- 15:41Speaker 1: You can hold it up higher to see it from
- 15:44Speaker 1: the horizontal. It's mainly designed for aerial searches when you're
- 15:48Speaker 1: really lost, but you can see it from a boat
- 15:50Speaker 1: because the waves take it up to the waves. You
- 15:54Speaker 1: can see it going up and down. So I, those
- 15:57Speaker 1: are only a few stories. The other thing is the military,
- 15:59Speaker 1: they don't really share stories of stuff like that. So
- 16:03Speaker 1: I know they've used it a lot more than so.
- 16:06Speaker 1: And that was the irony of shark tank is I
- 16:09Speaker 1: tried to convey to the sharks that how good it
- 16:13Speaker 1: made me feel to have these guys thank me for
- 16:16Speaker 1: saving their lives. And I said to the Sharks, don't
- 16:18Speaker 1: you want to have that feeling? You know, we can
- 16:21Speaker 1: save thousands of lives. And they just didn't care. They
- 16:24Speaker 1: cared only about money, which was shocking and disappointing.
- 16:28Speaker 2: Could be challenging sometimes. Now, based on your company's status today,
- 16:36Speaker 2: who are you looking forward to working with?
- 16:39Speaker 1: I'm looking for military groups all over the world. And ironically,
- 16:43Speaker 1: the group I'm looking most forward to working with more
- 16:48Speaker 1: is our military. It's funny, but the foreign militaries have
- 16:52Speaker 1: adopted it as much as our military. Our military has
- 16:56Speaker 1: approved it as an optional item and we sell it.
- 16:59Speaker 1: But it really should be on all life rafts. It
- 17:02Speaker 1: really should be on all flight jackets. It really should
- 17:05Speaker 1: be on all life rafts. So I'm hoping... To one
- 17:08Speaker 1: day crack that nut and have some admiral or general say,
- 17:12Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. Of course, this should be a standard
- 17:15Speaker 1: piece of equipment. So that's who I'm trying to get
- 17:18Speaker 1: to ultimately.
- 17:19Speaker 2: Where can people find out more about the streamer and
- 17:23Speaker 2: connect with you and continue this conversation?
- 17:25Speaker 1: Well, Sea Rescue Streamer online or I have an Amazon
- 17:29Speaker 1: store on Sea Rescue. That's where we sell the civilian stuff.
- 17:32Speaker 1: It's Amazon. And then also on Amazon, if you just
- 17:35Speaker 1: Google my name, Rob Yonover, for Amazon or social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube,
- 17:42Speaker 1: my name's pretty unique. So you can see all my
- 17:44Speaker 1: stuff and contact me there. I'm not the greatest social
- 17:47Speaker 1: media guy. I kind of got chided for it over
- 17:50Speaker 1: the years. But I put out a lot of new content.
- 17:52Speaker 1: So I do interviews and podcasts. So there's a lot
- 17:56Speaker 1: of stuff up there. And That's the best way is
- 18:00Speaker 1: just go through social media or the site. I do
- 18:04Speaker 1: a lot of outreach to kids and entrepreneurs. I've written
- 18:08Speaker 1: a bunch of books, Hardcore Inventing, Caregiver Survival Guide. My
- 18:13Speaker 1: wife got MS and became paralyzed in the middle of this.
- 18:18Speaker 1: For 19 years, she was in a wheelchair. I had
- 18:20Speaker 1: to build this company and raise little kids all at
- 18:23Speaker 1: the same time. So that story as an inventor, scientist, male,
- 18:28Speaker 1: being a caregiver is pretty valuable. People really like that book.
- 18:32Speaker 1: And I did a children's book, Brainstorm Islands. And it's
- 18:36Speaker 1: been a lot of fun. I really enjoy the outreach.
- 18:39Speaker 1: I think I'm a frustrated professor that never, so I'm
- 18:43Speaker 1: a virtual professor.
- 18:45Speaker 2: Rob, thank you so much for joining us today. And
- 18:48Speaker 2: we really appreciate your time and everything you shared today.
- 18:51Speaker 1: Thank you. That was great. I appreciate that.
- 18:54Speaker 2: Thanks, everyone, for listening. If this episode inspired you, make
- 18:57Speaker 2: sure you share it with someone. And don't forget to
- 18:59Speaker 2: follow the Globalizer podcast for more conversations that make an impact.
- 19:03Speaker 2: Till the next time.