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From Almost Quitting to $74M Raised: Gather AI’s Sankalp Arora · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:01
  This is 10 p.m. at night in the parking lot,
• 0:04
  I'm on the verge of tears and I call one of my board members saying,
• 0:07
  this is not really working out.
• 0:09
  what I've learned is no matter how big the org gets,
• 0:12
  a leader needs to have the ability to go all the way down.
• 0:15
  So if a problem arises, then you can really get your hands dirty and solve it.
• 0:25
  All right, Dave Gulas back here at Shop Talk and I'm with Sankalp Arora,
• 0:29
  who is the founder and CEO of Gather AI.
• 0:32
  Hey Sankalp. Yeah,
• 0:33
  Hey Dave, thank you for having me.
• 0:34
  thank you so much for being here.
• 0:36
  so Sankalp, tell us what is Gather AI?
• 0:38
  Gather AI digitizes
• 0:40
  workflows in warehouses and inventory movement so that warehouse operators
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  can make decisions on how to run their warehouses better on live,
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  real-time digital twins. By having drones flying around and taking inventory
• 0:52
  and cameras on forklifts actively tracking what each forklift is moving
• 0:55
  and what it is carrying. And then for each thing that we move or we track,
• 0:59
  we collect about 15 data points.
• 1:02
  to understand what is the state of that thing and provide insights into
• 1:06
  how to run your warehouse better.
• 1:08
  Okay. And the company as it stands right now is eight years old,
• 1:11
  is that right? That's good. Okay.
• 1:12
  And you were telling me off camera that this is your first job.
• 1:16
  The only job you've ever had is the founder and CEO of this company here.
• 1:20
  That's right
• 1:20
  you did some very exciting stuff with robotics in university and then
• 1:24
  you got right out of school and started this company.
• 1:26
  Tell us about that journey and why you started Gather AI.
• 1:29
  So for me, so just Gather AI where the name comes from is gathering data using AI.
• 1:34
  There was this core thesis that if we can digitize physical operations,
• 1:38
  we can run them better. So what we are doing is digitizing physical operations using
• 1:42
  off the shelf hardware that you can buy out of Best Buy essentially.
• 1:45
  How it started during my PhD, I got to work on the world's first fully autonomous
• 1:50
  helicopter.
• 1:51
  One of the demonstrations that we did was in Quantico,
• 1:53
  where the helicopter's coming into land.
• 1:55
  It avoids a bunch of trees, avoids a bunch of hay bales.
• 1:58
  Lands itself, where it had built a beautiful map of the environment
• 2:02
  it had flown through. And it stayed with me how effective of
• 2:05
  a data gathering machine it was.
• 2:07
  So I dedicated my PhD on making robots curious.
• 2:10
  They were curious about what...
• 2:11
  Department of Defense or DARPA cared about and now they are curious about boxes
• 2:15
  and barcodes in warehouses.
• 2:17
  Okay, interesting. So in this university project you got to work with
• 2:20
  the Defense Department, a fully autonomous helicopter,
• 2:23
  and that gave you the inspiration in terms of the all the data points
• 2:26
  it could gather when it made the landing And then you translated that over
• 2:30
  to the logistics arena and said,
• 2:31
  wow, this would be great for the private sector and and putting
• 2:35
  it into warehouses and other types of logistics environments.
• 2:38
  That's right. Okay. All right.
• 2:40
  So what was the process like taking that idea and that vision and turning
• 2:43
  it into a tangible business?
• 2:45
  Joyous and painful at the same time.
• 2:48
  Ha ha ha.
• 2:50
  For us, since our backgrounds in supply chain only started eight years
• 2:54
  ago when we founded the company,
• 2:56
  we had the hammer of technology and we were looking for the right nail.
• 2:59
  So before we spun the company out,
• 3:02
  We did about 175 customer discovery interviews to understand where
• 3:06
  is the most pressing pain point in the enterprise world and physical spaces.
• 3:10
  And with e-commerce accelerating,
• 3:12
  this I'm talking about 2018, 2019,
• 3:14
  it really became apparent that supply chain needs a transformation
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  and supply chain visibility needs a transformation.
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  And we have an unfair technology advantage to provide that.
• 3:24
  So that's where we started.
• 3:26
  We started with about $2.5 million of funding and now thus far we've raised
• 3:30
  $74 million. It took us three years to make the technology go because what
• 3:35
  we were doing was the world's first.
• 3:36
  But after that, we have consistently doubled or tripled every year.
• 3:40
  Okay. Wow. So I think every entrepreneur can relate to that description
• 3:44
  of it being joyous and painful at the same time,
• 3:46
  right? I mean that's quite ambitious and quite confident for someone fresh
• 3:50
  out of university to be building the world's first,
• 3:53
  you raise money right away, and then now you said you're going through this journey
• 3:56
  and it took you three years to even get the product to work.
• 3:59
  what's the mental conversation during those first three years?
• 4:02
  You know, you raise money, you're on the hook,
• 4:03
  it's not working out. I mean, did you ever think about giving up?
• 4:07
  multiple
• 4:07
  times, just being honest. I think one incident stays with me where I
• 4:12
  was three years in, I'm in a parking lot of our first major customer.
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  the tech is not behaving it should and we are just five,
• 4:19
  seven people at this point, right,
• 4:21
  focused on tech. This is 10 p.m.
• 4:23
  at night in the parking lot, I'm on the verge of tears and I call one
• 4:26
  of my board members saying, this is not really working out.
• 4:30
  I don't know what to do anymore.
• 4:32
  And he just said, know, sure, just give it your best shot and then let's connect
• 4:36
  every week on how you think things are going.
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  And somehow it did work out and that has happened multiple times over multiple
• 4:43
  periods in the company.
• 4:44
  Wow, so okay, so you're like at a breaking point,
• 4:47
  right? And you're calling a board member and someone that's you know,
• 4:51
  has a financial interest in the company,
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  you're saying, I this isn't working,
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  I don't know what to do and he basically tells you just figure it out.
• 4:57
  Right. Right. You're you're the founder.
• 5:00
  But with support. He said, figure it out.
• 5:02
  Call me on a weekly basis, and I'll just hear you out,
• 5:05
  and we'll work through this.
• 5:07
  Yeah, and I mean, how how important do you think that was,
• 5:09
  like that vote of confidence basically from a board member given that you're
• 5:13
  on the verge of breaking, it's not working out.
• 5:15
  how much did that help you?
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  If on that call he would have said,
• 5:18
  yeah, I understand, just give us our money back.
• 5:22
  That's what I would have done.
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  And Gather AI wouldn't be what it is today.
• 5:47
  Okay. All right. And so from that standpoint,
• 5:49
  like you said, you you got the support,
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  you kept doing the weekly meetings,
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  eventually you figured it out,
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  and then you've reached the point,
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  you've raised a bunch more money,
• 5:57
  seventy four million in total.
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  In these last three years you've been doubling your revenue year over year,
• 6:01
  is that right?
• 6:02
  doubling to tripling depending on the.
• 6:04
  Okay. So what was the inflection point and how'd you get from it not working
• 6:08
  a few years back to really this drastic upswing?
• 6:12
  Having
• 6:12
  a bunch of customers that trust us now.
• 6:15
  So whenever they deploy a new facility or move to a new facility,
• 6:18
  they take us with them. And that has really the inflection point for the company.
• 6:23
  Both in terms of expanding with the current customer base,
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  because we always start with a couple of warehouses and then we go network wide.
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  And second is now they are referenceable,
• 6:31
  so there is more trust in the market on what we do.
• 6:34
  Okay. And what's the employee count
• 6:36
  currently?
• 6:36
  We are 120 people.
• 6:38
  One twenty. Okay. And so in the early days like you mentioned you had a team
• 6:41
  of five to seven, very small team.
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  What's been the transition like to managing,
• 6:46
  almost twenty times as many people?
• 6:48
  I've never thought it's actually 20 times as many people,
• 6:50
  yeah. I think there was a lot that I was doing with my own hands
• 6:56
  in early days across the domain.
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  Sales, marketing, coding, autonomy,
• 7:01
  AI part of it. And now a lot of it,
• 7:03
  the team just takes over and my responsibility switches to setting the right.
• 7:09
  framework and vision for the company to deliver on its goals.
• 7:12
  Instead of trying to solve every problem that comes over,
• 7:15
  because now we have support to solve that problem the org.
• 7:18
  The second thing is, what I've learned is no matter how big the org gets,
• 7:23
  a leader needs to have the ability to go all the way down.
• 7:26
  So if a problem arises, then you can really get your hands dirty and solve it.
• 7:31
  And I thought that would go away at some point,
• 7:33
  but seems like it never goes away.
• 7:35
  If a problem deep enough arises,
• 7:36
  you just have to dive in and figure out.
• 7:38
  Okay. And it seems like you still have that founder mentality.
• 7:42
  Like in the early days you did everything and you now even though now
• 7:45
  you have a team built out where you have support in all these different areas,
• 7:49
  if a problem arises you kinda have that natural instinct to just you wanna
• 7:52
  fix it because This is your company,
• 7:54
  your reputation, your customers,
• 7:55
  right? And it's gotta get
• 7:56
  done.
• 7:57
  Absolutely,
• 7:58
  thank you.
• 7:58
  Okay. All right. And so you mentioned your role is transformed.
• 8:02
  What's your role like currently day to day now that you've had this growth,
• 8:05
  you have this big team? assuming nothing's broken and you don't have to jump
• 8:08
  in and fix anything, what's your day to day typically like?
• 8:11
  First, I should say something is broken or you're trying to fix every day.
• 8:14
  You know that as you're running a business,
• 8:16
  you're trying to improve something every day.
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  So depending on where we are focused on,
• 8:20
  are we communicating to our customers and potential customers the right ways,
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  are marketing messaging right?
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  Maybe we'll spend a week there and solving that problem.
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  Another week I'm looking at is our sales pipeline moving correctly,
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  are our sellers performing as they are?
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  And the next week would be is our tech strategy right and working with
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  a tech team to figure out how do we accelerate the deliverables that
• 8:42
  we have promised to the customer.
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  So that changes. The one that is continuously constant is through it looking
• 8:48
  out for if the company is still having that day one mentality.
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  and people are still holding on to that culture where they have a lot
• 8:56
  of agency to do what they want to do and are not feeling encumbered
• 9:01
  by bureaucracy that comes with a larger organization.
• 9:04
  Wow, that's such a great point too.
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  it sounds like the culture and that small business feel right is
• 9:09
  so important to you. So how do you keep that as you keep scaling out
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  and you get more and more departments,
• 9:13
  employees, support, et cetera?
• 9:15
  First and foremost is having that talent filter upfront.
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  There are some people that really thrive in this model where they have
• 9:23
  a lot of agency to solve problems.
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  And some people that need a lot of structure.
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  We tend to hire people that thrive in the agency environment rather than
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  the structure environment. And second is continuously re-emphasizing that
• 9:35
  if people see problems,
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  They have all the right and responsibility to solve it.
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  Instead of just raising their hand that this is a problem,
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  can someone else take care of it?
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  instead of giving tasks to people,
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  what we usually do is people own problems in the organization,
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  and it's their responsibility to get to the outcome instead of just fixing a ticket.
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  Love that, love that. Okay. All right.
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  And looking back at the journey too,
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  right? Where you came right out of university,
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  you did some exciting things, you started this company,
• 10:02
  went through those early challenging years,
• 10:05
  you persevered, you didn't give up when you wanted to.
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  You got to this point where the team's much bigger,
• 10:10
  you're experiencing this really impressive growth.
• 10:13
  Looking back at the whole journey up until now,
• 10:15
  what's been the best part of it for you?
• 10:17
  This is very personal. The main reason for me to start the company was
• 10:20
  I wanted my inventions to make a slight positive difference in someone's life.
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  The best part thus far has been when I talk to people who use
• 10:29
  our technology and have something that,
• 10:32
  you know that they're day to day improved.
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  I think there was one warehouse where,
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  an
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  Inventory control manager said that I have a six month old and this is
• 10:41
  for the first time that I have been able to not put in double shifts because
• 10:45
  I get my work done within one single shift and I can go back to my six month old.
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  There was another warehouse manager that said,
• 10:52
  you know in three months you found me about...
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  one to $1.5 million worth of inventory that was lost within my facility.
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  So just things like that where we can make a slight positive difference
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  in someone's life has been the most rewarding.
• 11:33
  Okay. All right. And Sankalp if people want to find out more about Gather
• 11:36
  AI or reach out to you for any reason,
• 11:38
  what's the best way they can find you online?
• 11:40
  The best way to look us up and see us is gather.ai.
• 11:44
  You'll actually see our concepts and product inactions there with customer
• 11:48
  testimonials and you can reach us on the website itself.
• 11:51
  Okay. All right. Sankalp, thanks so much.
• 11:53
  Thank you.