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Dusty Robotics CEO Tessa Lau on Reinventing Construction Through Automation · Automated with Brian Heater

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Back then it was all paper checks and mail, right?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so every month you have to write a check to the utility company, you have to write a check for rent, right?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, write a check for your credit cards.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the way you pay your bills.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I hate this.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's build a robot that can write and mail checks, right?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: And in hindsight, that would be stupid.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: That would never have been the right solution.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: And what we've seen is the right solution is bill pay.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: And now I could pay bills with a click of a mouse, or you can even set it up automatically, right?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's all automated now.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need a robot to do it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: But if you had thought about automating that task back then in the day, you would have come out with a solution that didn't actually innovate and solve the underlying problem, which is getting money from one place to another.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, happy early Thanksgiving to our viewers in the US, and a uh belated happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian friends.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Second of all, it is my pleasure to introduce this conversation with Dusty Robux founder and CEO, Tessa Lau.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Tessa is someone I've spoken with, slash, interviewed, a number of times over the years.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the great things about doing a show like Automated is it affords you a kind of depth of conversation that you don't really get when you're just moderating a panel or working on a funding story.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Over the next 50 or so minutes, we will dive into her journey and how she kind of backs her way into a construction job by becoming a robotics engineer.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for watching.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Please like and subscribe.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And don't forget to subscribe to the automated newsletter.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you and I have obviously spoken uh several times over the years, but I was going back and re-watching some interviews that you did.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you said something along the lines of, I never thought I'd start a company.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I hear a lot of people say that.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say it always surprises me because starting a company isn't something like you fall backwards into, or is it?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was for me.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of fell into uh into this role like I'd never planned for it.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: I thought I was going to be at IBM for pretty much my entire career.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you know, life has a way of taking you in different directions.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so when I got into robotics, I kind of landed in startups because that's where the work was being done.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Followed Steve Cousins from IBM to Willow Garage and then from Willow to Savioak.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: And after five years at Savvy Oak, when it was clear to me that the product market fit wasn't there, I just thought, you know, I could do this better.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen Steve do this.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: I've watched what he's done as CEO.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: I can do that.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so I decided to take the risk and do it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: But it was never part of my roadmap, never something I thought I would do.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting because I think like you you technically are a co-founder of Savvy Oak as well, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you don't you don't really frame it that way, it sounds like Savioque was Steve's company.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I was there from the start, you know, helping build all of the systems.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: But he really took on the business side and all of those decisions.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: It was really his baby.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've got this like mythical idea of Willow Garage in my head now because it just seems like one of those things where um, you know, there's this famous thing they used to say about the uh the first Velvet Underground album that not a lot of people bought it, but everybody who bought it started a band.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like everybody at Willow Garage went off to found a robotics company.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: So true.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: It is, it is so true.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's because um that's really the way you can get have you can have impact with robotics.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what we discovered at Willow is that there's all this technology out there, there's there's tools, there's infrastructure that you can build on.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the only real way to actually bring that to market is by starting a company.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so I don't think it's that surprising that a lot of us who came through that Willow ecosystem actually ended up starting our own companies.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: I get the impression that Willow Garage may be part of its downfall is that it couldn't quite figure out whether or not it wanted to be a commercial company.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a fair is that a fair assessment?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Willow was always a research lab.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think that was its mission and mandate, and that's what it was.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: It was a really good research lab.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: There were so many innovations that came out of that, so much foundational research into how to build robots.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's what it should be celebrated for.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So at that at that time, um leaving the company, I'm guessing, you know, in order to continue in robotics, it probably made the most sense to start a new company because there weren't certainly there weren't the number of opportunities that there are now.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, now there's like a Cambrian explosion of robotics companies and a lot of funding going into it.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: Back then, um, there really weren't that many opportunities.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: And there weren't even that many uh industrial research labs that were funding research into robotics.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you really wanted to make a go at it in robotics, uh you kind of had to start your own company.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that that combined with the fact that there was so much cool tech that was developed at Willow that could actually make an impact on the world.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: So that kind of led to that explosion of startups.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: During your time at Willow, were the wheels in motion as far as like what are some actual useful real world applications I could do with this technology?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've always been impact driven.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like my goal is to change the world.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I one of the reasons I left uh academia was because when you're in academia, you're mostly writing papers and you're hoping that people read them and actually put them into practice.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: But when you're in the real world actually building stuff for people, that's how you have that impact.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so I've always wanted to find ways to have that impact.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so even at Willow, I was looking for like how can we make this relevant to people and how can we solve problems that that matter to people?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing you said that jumped out at me is that, you know, at least early on, and you can tell me if this has changed that you did not like public speaking, that you, you know, consider yourself, I'm the same.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: I consider myself to be an introverted person, and people are surprised given what I do for a living.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, certainly in order to be to found a company, but also to be the CEO of a company, like there's a lot of new skill sets that you need to learn.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've definitely grown a lot in my journey.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, getting uh, you know, stepping into this role as CEO of a robotics company, um, especially one like that's that's like second generation from Willow, um, puts me a lot in the spotlight, uh, especially now at Dusty, because we are so successful.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, a lot of people look to me to say, like, hey, you figured it out, you know, and so you should be on stage.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, I actually just got off stage at ICRA, one of the main robotics conferences.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: 7,000 people, plenary speech, right?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: That was the biggest audience I've ever spoken to.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And um, it's I'm embracing it now as an opportunity to get the word out and uh starting to enjoy it.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was literally like just watching that speech before um this conversation.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's online now.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: You seem very comfortable.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like you didn't seem nervous at all.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the little known fact is that I actually took a public speaking class in high school.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: I like doing it because it's a way to be the thought leader in the space.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's trade secrets.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's, you know, there's certain things that you don't want to to release.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there are reasons why companies do build things in in stealth.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have to place certain aspects close to the best, I'm imagining.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: For a long time, and actually now, we never let people video or photograph the insides of our robots.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's our secret sauce.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you think about all the complexity that goes into doing what we're doing, uh, we made some really smart choices in terms of the components that we're selecting, our architecture.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want people copying that, you know, if I can help it, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, take lots of videos of the robot, but you can't take videos of inside.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, like, you know, people have copied it or have tried to copy it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's that that's kind of the ultimate sign of success, right?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: When an HP comes out with their own version of your product.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's a lot of flattery, right?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: It means we're on the right track.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: It validates our market.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the fact that they didn't do it as well as we did is, you know, it's a sign that uh we've figured things out that aren't so easy for other people to figure out.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that you again talk, I maybe people should go back and watch the ICRA uh uh presentation, because you know, you do touch on a lot of these interesting things in there.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: But you you mentioned, you don't I don't think you actually call them out by name, but you mentioned a large corporation that was working on effectively what turned into the dusty robot, but wasn't able to crack the code.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, insofar as you're able to talk about this without cracking the robot open and taking pictures, like what did you figure out that they hadn't?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that corporation is DPR.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, we're very open about our relationship with them.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um we've cover I've covered that in other venues.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: And uh DPR actually invested several million dollars and several years in trying to develop a layout robot.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: They hired a robotics company, like one of the best, and uh they gave them the specifications, and then they uh they weren't able to produce something that had the quality that our system does.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, part of it was the technology that they chose.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think just was not the uh we know in hindsight that that was not the best set of uh components to choose.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and also part of it is looking at the problem with a little bit of an outsider's eyes.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: When you're coming in to construction and you're not a construction person, uh, we actually boiled the problem down to first principles and said, what are the fundamental problems that we have to solve here?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: And what are the technologies that we need in order to solve those problems?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how we ended up with the solution that's just way better than any of the competition.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: You said the technologies in hindsight.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the hindsight of having seen them launch this thing and it not work out, or is that really trial and error on your part?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so here's where um having been at several robotics companies actually really helps.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one of the lessons that I took from Savioque to Dusty is um selecting those components that go into the robot.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we don't have to do trial and error as much.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, for example, we've tried at Savioque, we tried all of the different uh LTE modems out there.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: We knew which ones worked and which ones didn't.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: We knew how to configure them.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that didn't have to be something that we learned on the go at Dusty.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was something that we brought with us.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, still there are gonna be those, those, those times, especially early on, especially again, you know, you're testing this robot in San Francisco and everybody's got a Wi-Fi signal and all of a sudden it goes haywire.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's kind of inevitable to a certain degree, right?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why you got to build in public.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's why you have to like test it on real world conditions um and find partners that are willing to uh work with you to gain that experience.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: I love that story in particular because like you it sounds like you may have like semi-permanently burned a bridge there.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, that company eventually came back.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: They have a robot now and they're really happy with it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: So um uh things come back around eventually.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm I'm always curious why um like I I understand why companies are uh like to be early adopters and like to be, you know, the first to uh uh take on a new technology, but it's always it's always surprising to me that like that uh companies are willing to really test things out in the field.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: If we have any construction companies listening to this, uh the advice that I would give them is um so we we learned a lot as we were going through our initial pilot phases, and and our customers learned a lot too, um, as they were going through that.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the biggest uh thing that I want them to know is that what you see in year one is not what you're gonna see in year three or year five.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Technology moves much faster than the pace of typical construction innovation does.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um and if you look at like the Ryzen AI right now, right, that kind of wasn't even registering with us last year, and now all of a sudden it's everywhere and everyone's using it and investing in it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have to start being comfortable with that rate of change.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then the second thing I would tell uh construction companies, if you're listening to this, is that don't think of those pilots as testing the final product.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, think of them as uh if this works, then you're gonna have to figure out how do you embed this in your workflow.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: And by being an early pilot partner with some of these customers, you get early access to thinking through what is this gonna mean for your workflow.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Seven years ago, when we just started this company, we weren't sure if automated layout was gonna work or not.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: We thought it would, but we weren't entirely sure.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: We hadn't built it yet.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so the companies that we were talking to back then, uh DPR is a really good example of that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: They had, because they partnered with us early on, they've had years of experience more than their competitors in figuring out how are we gonna transform our company to make use of this new technology?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: What is that gonna mean for us?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, how are we gonna do business when there is this technology that's available to us?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: And because of that advantage, they're much farther along than others.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how to think about piloting.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think this surprised you as it as it did with me, um, that that at least like historically, that construction has been slow to adopt new technologies or at least slow to adopt robotics.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um what what's your sense of what of the hesitancy there?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Risk is the biggest driver in construction.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone's trying to avoid risk.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And when your average profit margin is 3%, you can't afford to take a lot of risks.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I think construction is so hidebound.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's a unwillingness to do it any differently because if you do it differently and you wipe out your company's profit margin for the year, you're gonna get fired, right?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: So no one wants to stick their neck out and and and do that.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what Dusty has done to combat that, and the reason we've actually been able to uh grow as fast as we have, is because our solution is 10 times better.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that was our philosophy going in.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like we had to create something that was 10 times better than the way people are doing it today.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and if you think about it, having someone on their hands and knees using measuring tape and string to mark out the floor, that's horrible.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: But it's how it's always been done by showing the industry that we can do it so much better, that it shouldn't be a guy on his hands and knees.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: It should be a robot.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that robot is much more accurate and much faster than those people.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: That is what's driving the growth and the adoption that we're seeing.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like simple advice, like just be really good at your job and have a really good product.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: But it's not it's not so simple, right?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because it requires looking at the world in a different way.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I think coming to construction as an outsider has actually helped us think about the world in a different way.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like, for example, when we were thinking about what to build, we thought, should we build a robot that snaps chalk lines?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do we need two robots, one holding each end of the line, and then they like drive apart and stretch it thin and have a third robot that like comes in and snaps it, right?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: That is kind of the if if you're um if you're trying to replicate the way things are done today, you're gonna end up with the wrong solution.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have to go back to first principles and figure out what is the problem that they're actually trying to solve and what technology actually helps them solve that.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'll I'll give you another example uh from from my past.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this was back when I was in grad school and I was thinking about like, what am I gonna do with my life?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I the task I hated at that time was uh I'll I'll date myself here.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um back then it was all paper checks and mail, right?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so every month you have to write a check to the utility company, you have to write a check for rent, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, write a check for your credit cards, and that was the way you pay your bills.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I hate this.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Let's build a robot that can write and mail checks, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: And in hindsight, that would be stupid.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, maybe I can use a humanoid now, but you know, no one that would never have been the right solution.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: And and what we've seen is the right solution is bill pay.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: And now I could, you know, you can pay bills with a click of a mouse, or you can even set it up automatically, right?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's all automated now.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need a robot to do it.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: But if you had thought about automating that task back then in the day, you would have come out with a solution that didn't actually um innovate and solve the underlying problem, which is getting money from one place to another.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So but but but your sense of why you didn't have that perspective there is because the like the the other the other technology, the other technology infrastructure just didn't exist to support that idea.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh no, I'm saying um roboticists tend to hold a hammer.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: And when you hold a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so roboticists tend to solve problems by using robots, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm saying that there is going there are the equivalent of those check writing robots out there right now.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they're not writing checks, but maybe they're solving problems in the same ways that that check writing robot would have solved.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that is not always the best solution to the problem.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Through the years, you knew that you wanted to solve a problem that could be solved with a robot.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Is that fair to say?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: That is fair to say, right?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that means that you have to choose your problems carefully.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, when my co-founder Phil and I were looking into this space and trying to figure out what are we going to build in construction, um, there were many, many things that we many problems that we looked at.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And in some cases, the answer to that problem was not necessarily a robot, which meant that, yeah, you know, there is a company to be built to to solve that problem, but it's not the company that we want to build.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's not where we're going to focus.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it it sounds like at least for for you, for you and and he, that Savioque was kind of a lesson in um maybe working at things from the wrong direction, maybe working at things with a hammer in your hand.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: When we started Savvy Oak, the thing that we, the idea that we started with is that at Willow, we were doing a lot of work on uh mobility, like navigation, autonomous navigation.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: We thought that that was a solved problem in the research lab, at least.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so we started Savvy Oak with the question: what can we do with autonomous navigation?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like what kind of product can we build that's an autonomous navigation robot?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how we landed on relay, that's how we landed on hotel delivery as the use case, because we asked the question, what can we do with this technology that can move robots from one place to another?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so the thought process was, well, if I can move around, then I could maybe I can move things around.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: And where do I need to move things around?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: I need to move things around in hotels.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so that's how we ended up with that use case.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that hammer um that we were holding that made everything look like a nail.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure like one of many reasons why so many robotic SERPs fail is because um like absolutely that's true, but also to like to a certain extent, the technology also has to be there in order for you to be like enabled, like at least the foundation has to be there for you to build that technology on top of.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the timing, you gotta get the timing like just perfect.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: There's skill and luck.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: I I I won't say it's all skill, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: You have to time the market.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and it's not just that the technology has to be ready, it's that the market has to be ready.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they have to be open to uh receiving this new innovation and technology that you're bringing to them.
• 19:41
  unknown: Aaron Powell Yeah.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, hospitality is an interesting one because like uh to a certain extent, I mean, I even to this day, I go to hotels and I'll see like a robot at the front desk.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I obviously novelty is a piece of it, but it seems like hotels were and continue to be excited to have robots around in some capacity.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think there are still some relay robots out there.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: So it it's not um it's not a bad idea.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell We're kind of getting back to the beginning here, but so this is when this is basically the point when you realize, oh, maybe maybe this is a time to start a company.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like the things and you still you still didn't necessarily know what problems you needed to solve, you but you knew that you wanted to go out on your own, and you knew that you wouldn't be able to do effectively what you wanted to do in the context of Savvy Oak?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: So when we were starting Dusty, uh Phil and I spent a lot of time on construction sites.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: We were basically living on construction sites.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: And there was this one site in in uh Palo Alto on Stanford campus where the project exec was just like, yeah, come buy anytime you want.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so we spent lots of time just watching what was going on, talking to everyone who would be willing to talk to us, and just trying to understand this whole construction process.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where we tested a lot of the ideas that we had about where robotics could help.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there were many other advisors that helped us during that time.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, one the one I talked about in my Acre keynote was uh there was a development down in San Diego where I flew down to actually meet with the VP of Operations for a big home builder.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that was where I lot I learned a lot about, you know, here's how residential homes get built.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I should say for context, too, that like just just to kind of I guess paint a picture of where you were at the time, that you weren't sure whether or not you had the budget or wanted to spend the money from a flight from the Bay Area to San Diego.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: I there was there was no company, right?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you were going through a home remodel at the same time.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: I was going to my home remodel.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was, yeah, I I didn't have a job, right?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was living off of savings.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: And did I really want to spend, you know, some money on a flight to actually go visit this stranger in another city to learn something about construction, right?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, but that's what you have to do as a startup founder to um if you believe in your idea, you have to put your money where your mouth is.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: You have to actually do the things that are going to get you conviction of uh of the idea that you're solving and um and who's going to buy it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the only way you're going to get that is by talking to your potential customers.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: What was it though that really made you realize like, oh, I I'm going to go out on this on my own.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go start my own thing.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Savioque kind of demystified startups for me.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, before that I'd been at IBM, I'd been at Willow.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, you hear about startups because you live in Silicon Valley and so everyone, you know, is talking about it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: But I'd never actually worked at one.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: I never lived through one.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so going through that Savvy Oak experience made me realize that, yeah, you know, it's actually not that hard.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: I could do this.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is and it isn't, right?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: It is and it isn't, right?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: But you learn that you can figure it out.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that you just have to start.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that once you start, you gather people around you who can help you.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to do it all yourself.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: For example, getting um getting our first lawyer helped me realize okay, I don't have to figure out how to incorporate a company on my own or you know how to uh how to navigate a fundraise, right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: They they help you with that, um just as an example.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so there are so many other things like that where you get help.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to figure it all out.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to have the initiative and the desire to do it.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Are are you the kind of person, because I I feel like for me in that situation, like certain things would have to be wrestled out of my hands because you know I would feel I like I I I this is something I'm trying to address in myself is is the the sort of the um the drive to to micromanage things.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is it was it at all hard for you to start kind of giving up different pieces of that to delegate?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: I gave up coding when I started when I started uh when we started Dusty um and I hired a team to do that.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: We hired a first couple engineers and I decided I am not going to write any of the code in the robots and that was a huge jump for me because I was so involved in the Savioque robots.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: I knew every single line of code and I architected a lot of it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so walking away from that and saying I'm not going to be technical anymore.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to focus on the business.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to focus on the operations, making sure we have an office, that we're paying our rent, that we're getting snacks, that you know all the things that you have to do that are not engineering, that was my job.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the more important things were like I was going to be the one talking to customers.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: I was going to be the one figuring out what our product needs to be, what do they need it to do by just by learning from the construction industry what's what's necessary for a product like this.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that was that was the biggest jump that I had to make was stepping out of that technical role.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's an extent to which that's scary I would assume because like that's what you went to school for and you had been in that world and you're like I'm going to use this entirely different side of my brain and you know this is like you know doing sales is terrifying for someone who with an engineering background, right?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: Eventually I figured it out.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: I learned how to do it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: But when you're starting out the the the things that you know are the comfortable things.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that I've really enjoyed about this journey at Dusty is that it's forced me to get out of that comfort zone and develop a whole nother skill set that I didn't know I had.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: But in after I've learned like I I really enjoy it.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of technical founders who you know found a company and then within like a couple years they bring somebody on because they they're like they're they're not quite cut, which is fine, you know, like it's not everybody's cut out for everything.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it sounds like you learn that side of things pretty quickly.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: So when we started the company um Phil and I are both technical we both have PhDs and we had pretty candid conversations about what are we each going to do?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: And we just divvyed it up.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: You get the technology, I get the business.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Was there ever any conversation about it being the other way around?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no I think I think we both recognize that I have a a better affinity for the business side of things.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he's much more of a technologist than I am.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I'll be honest I was always frustrated by technology.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like even though I know how to code or at least I used to know how to code and I'm doing vibe coding now and it's actually really with code.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: I always thought it was too too slow, too frustrating.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: In fact my research area in when I got my PhD was uh using AI to automate repetitive tasks because fundamentally I think computers should be doing the the boring slow stuff.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: And coding I've always been interested in end user programming in in no code, low code before those became terms because I've always thought there's got to be a better way.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm really excited about vibe coding now because that you know it's starting it's starting to become real like we can actually just code by telling the computer what we want it to do.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of the um the ultimate instantiation of what I had originally imagined when I got my PhD.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: I love the outcome of being able to develop your own things, but I never loved the process.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: So so what what drew you to it in the first place?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh the fact that you can build stuff.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know I love building stuff.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: I just don't love the process of building stuff.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's too slow.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell I don't want to say that you missed it but you know it sounds like that there was like a part of your brain that um maybe that it feels nice to go back and scratch every once in a while in a different way.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well the way I think about it now is that I'm still building stuff.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just now building a business not a product.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assembling the team and the people that will do that building for me.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so the problem solving that I'm doing now is not which library do I use or how do I debug this code.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's how do I get the right team in place to actually accomplish these goals.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I I I also just mean from the standpoint of like I you know I think that's probably the reason why like people like Sudoku for example you know people who don't like have math in their job because in a way it makes you better at the other things that you do if you're able to like continue to exercise that part of your brain.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: I do a lot of sewing and baking and knitting like I make a lot of stuff with my own two hands.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's just not robots how long you've been sewing for uh probably um two decades at this point.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Two decades?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and how did you how did you start?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: I bought a used sewing machine off of Craigslist in grad school and I just taught myself uh back then there wasn't YouTube there wasn't all this like content out there where you could learn I just bought a lot of books trial and error made a lot of clothes that didn't fit chucked them in the trash can and started over but I knew I wanted to do it.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was um it was that creative outlet that I'm always looking for.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's very telling to me that you did that in grad school like you did that during a time when I'm sure that you were like incredibly busy and overwhelmed.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's a way to turn off like one of the things that I actually another thing I did in grad school was I um I spun yarn.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you that's a really old tradition that pretty much no one does anymore except these you know few diehard fiber artists and uh that you take a big bag of wool straight from the sheep and you use uh either a drop spindle or a spinning wheel to actually turn that into yarn um and then you can knit it into something into sweaters.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a very meditative thing.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: And what I liked about it, particularly a drop spindle is that um you can do it you don't have to be sitting in front of a machine to do it.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: You can do it while you're out and about uh you can do it while you're just like standing around or walking around.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I liked not being tethered to a computer because that's my day job.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder how much of this um you know this desire to kind of I get I guess in a sense like lower the barrier of entry and and you know and when we talk about like low code and no code to a certain extent we're talking about hopefully like democratizing access to technology it's a big piece of HRI.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that strikes me as something that would be very uh essential to a company that is building robots to put in construction spaces.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: 100% like that philosophy about how do we democratize technology and and make it easier for people to use tech that used to be only in the hand in the domain of like PhD level roboticists that drives Dusty's philosophy today.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm really inspired by the iPhone and what Steve Jobs did at Apple.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to read a manual to learn how to use your iPhone you unbox it and you go.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I want that same ease of use for all of Dusty's products we're not there yet, right?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: But that's where I want us to get to it should be as easy as that to pick up and use a construction robot.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't need to be trained.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't need to like go to a class you should just be able to pick it up and use it.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: When you say all of the products you so like how many products currently are you offering one of the things I've realized recently is that people think of us as a robot company um you know and and your question shows that right it it's in it's in the it's in the name It's in the name yeah I know.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: But but people focus on the robot right the field printer it's got two little eyes and it you know drives around on a job site and they think that that's the main product that is the centerpiece of our solution.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: But the reality is that in order to get this adopted by construction, we've actually had to build out a fairly large product surface that touches many stages, in fact seven different stages of construction.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so we actually have product that touches all of those different stages because as early as when the project is an idea in someone's head and they're choosing which contractors to bring onto it, that's when you actually have to start thinking about automated layout.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: When you're designing the building in software using Rabbit or AutoCAD, you have to be designing with automated layout in mind.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: When you're coordinating all the trades together, you have to be doing that coordination with automated layout in mind.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've built out product tools that actually help our customers at every one of those different stages most of that preparation happens before a robot even sets foot on your job site.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Are there um I guess are there aspects in the software stack that um are are useful to people even if the robot doesn't necessarily enter the picture for them.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely one of the important phases that happens in construction is is coordination and that's where all the different trades decide uh who gets which space.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine you're building a hospital and you have to cram a bunch of stuff into a small small amount of space how you decide that is a coordination process.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know your HVAC ducts can't be in the same space as your plumbing runs.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: There's only one thing that can be in each place.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so someone has to move and that coordination process happens online.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the tools that we have our portal enables that collaboration to happen easier because all of the trades can come together.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: They can look at everything on the same screen aligned and overlaid on top of each other and they're using that even when there's not a robot running on the site.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell One of the things that's always interesting to me about learning about a new field is how much of it is just when somebody explains it to you, it's completely logical but you just never really thought about that in the first place, right?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because you just hadn't taken the time to you know learn the machinations of something that's definitely true in construction.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like the more we dig into it and the more customers we talk to the more we realize that there's just um so much complexity here.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: And um and my takeaway from all of that is actually that um by providing this method for doing construction in a different way, we're calling it the dusty way.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: When you do construction the dusty way, you're actually adopting these tools that help you preserve quality throughout the construction life cycle.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the reason people come to us.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's not because they want a robot um it's because they are struggling with quality problems.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And at every stage in construction there's quality degradation.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: When you hand off from one person to another anytime you have a manual workflow, it's an opportunity for someone to introduce errors um maybe you named you know something as simple as the wrong file name could trip you up and cause you to build the wrong thing and that's going to have huge impacts downstream.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so by eliminating all the steps that can introduce manual error, you are preserving that quality all the way through.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's why what we build is not just a robot because yeah the robot does one of those stages it automates that that that step of getting a uh printing a file in the field.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: But how do you get that file?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: What happens after the robot leaves all of those steps are things where there's an opportunity for quality degradation to occur.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're eliminating those opportunities and giving you a higher quality output.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Once you're able to convince a work site to digitize and like all of a sudden you're potentially opening the floodgates up to all kinds of different new technologies they can adopt one of the stages of construction that we uh that we impact is installation.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: So think about what happens after our robot leaves.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's when people come in they have building materials in their hands and they're putting it up they're building building the building we've actually created a visual language for standardizing installation.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's the dusty way and every time you set foot on a dusty job site it looks the same.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: We have the same conventions, the same line styles, the same nomenclature and what that creates is that consistency that anyone who sets foot on a dusty job site, they know immediately what to do because it's all laid out right in front of them.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: There's no confusion they don't have to interpret any diagrams or marks they know exactly what to do and that consistency gives you that quality.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: And beyond that another way in which we're we're impacting all the work that gets done on site is we are actually printing QR codes.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: Our customers have started using our system to print QR codes throughout their job site.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: There's one hospital in the Southeast right now that has 500 per floor.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: The reason that's important is because everything on site not just the workers but any robots that they might be deploying on site are going to be using those QR codes to know where they are and what to do.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is how we start standardizing that installation through automated layout.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: In the early days did you find that there maybe was a lot of pushback because I, you know, I I again I don't know a lot about the construction world but it strikes me that probably a lot of it is like unionized, for example.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: So they might be a little hesitant to adopt any sort of new automation.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: In the early days we definitely had challenges with the union um in fact uh the the um you know unions so so the way unions work is that they claim particular scopes of work in some regions where we were operating primarily California which is where we're based the Carpenters Union claimed the layout scope for drywall you know marking down where the walls are supposed to go.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's a union task.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: And the same for sheet metal and electrical and plumbing like all the other unions, they would claim that task of putting the marks down on the ground of what they're going to install.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: Union pushback was actually a forcing function for us to turn over operation of the system sooner than we were anticipating.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: We always knew eventually that we wouldn't be operating it ourselves.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like we are not a service business.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: We are a robotics company we're building the tools that our customers use but in the early days that robot that we developed needed a lot of hand holding and it required you know more expertise to run than we wanted.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: But our working with the unions we actually were able to turn it over to them for operation a little bit before we were ready, but it was a it was a good forcing function for us.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember the first job where we did that, our team was actually basically just standing next to the union operator at all times they were on site, you know, teaching them what to do and showing them how to operate it.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: We called that our concierge program the kind of white glove service where we would give you everything you need to run a robot, but you were running the robot.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: We're not doing it for you.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: That bought us time to keep developing and refining the system to the point where we could hand it off to someone and say, here, we're going to train you how to use it and now it's all yours go.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I also just am guessing that you know if I'm the foreman on a job site and you're offering me this new technology that's supposed to make you know my job easier it's it's less of a selling point if it also requires me to have a roboticist there at all times running it.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: What we found is that uh the superintendents who see this, uh they're skeptical at first before they've seen it because they know that how important layout is.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like they've seen so many cases where layout goes wrong and the job goes sideways and it becomes a big mess.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: But as soon as they see the robot in operation, typically what they'll do is take a measuring tape and verify that it's exactly accurate and it always is, then they're sold and it becomes something that they actually want to have on their jobs because they know how important layout is.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: Layout is the linchpin in the entire construction process.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't do layout well then the entire job is not going to go well.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so by having a tool that just does layout well, even though it's just one task out of many, it is probably the most important task in construction to do well.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why robotics is so important for this task.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think maybe uh the key to uh having people like on on the job site you know embrace new technologies is going out of your way specifically to replace that one job that nobody wants to do.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone knows that there's a labor shortage at construction, you know, particularly now and um and but it's always been the case like there have there have been labor shortages in construction for decades.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: And um part of it is because people are going to college and they don't want to go, you know, take a blue collar job on a construction site.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the change that we're seeing now is that we are actually changing the nature of work on construction sites.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we are creating new jobs that are uh that have the title layout technician um that you know robotic layout technician and those jobs never existed before Dusty um and what they're doing is attracting new people into the workforce because now your job is not to sling drywall or hold a hammer your job is to run a robot and how cool is that right you get to be the the most tech forward person on the job site leading the way through your skill set and it's attracting college educated people back to construction, which I think is going to be a real change for how the industry works.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: Once you get that higher caliber people on construction sites and they're driving higher quality that is going to be a an unmatched differentiator for the companies that are adopting that philosophy.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: In the early days when you're going through and trying to really like isolate the problem that you wanted to solve, you you kind of had a checklist of things that you were going through and and all the different reasons why what what they were or weren't the right problem to solve.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously like you're you're not done solving the problem of layout, but now that the company's matured and you've been around for a little while, are you starting to look back into some of those other aspects of construction?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're refining our positioning for what we're doing.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it's actually given me a lot of clarity in in in terms of the kinds of problems that I want us to solve in construction.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I mentioned before we're we're launching this Dusty way which is this trusted method for doing construction and improving construction quality.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the realization is that Dusty touches all of these different phases of construction.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: And every one of those phases there's an opportunity for automation to come in and eliminate the manual work that causes quality degradation.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: It just so happens we started with a robot that eliminates a huge class of quality degradation.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: But there are many, many other manual steps in the entire construction process that cause quality degradation.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the areas that we have our sites on as a as a place to expand is the design process.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: When you're designing a building for for construction there is so much manual work that goes into that it's my my analogy is it's it's kind of like programming before refactoring tools came on board, before vibe coding came on board it's when you had to copy and paste every line of code yourself because you didn't have support for doing it more automated.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's what architecture design is right now.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's an opportunity for us to to uh level up the industry by bringing better tools that enhance precision and quality by eliminating the manual work that happens during that stage.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I would love to build help build better tools for uh designers because I think that's a underserved market um that hasn't really been able to adopt a lot of technology yet.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Would you say that Dusty is ushering in the era of vibe construction?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh I love that.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yes we are absolutely enabling vibe construction well Tessa thank you so much for joining us.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you Brian thanks so much Tessa for taking the time thanks to you the viewer for keeping the show going thanks to Thanksgiving for thankfully giving us the day off tomorrow.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you're enjoying Automated we ask that you give thanks by liking subscribing and spreading the word more info can be found over at automated.com you can also subscribe to the newsletter over there though we are skipping this week due to some holiday whose name escapes me we will see you next week for another episode of Automated