087: Ultra Violet: Conor McGinn & Akara

0:10 Hey there, this is Pete. Townsend familial Ventures and welcome to money. Never sleeps podcast. Looks inside the head of entrepreneurs in a what makes them do, what they do. This episode of money. Never sleeps is kindly sponsored by Ireland's fintech and financial services recruitment specialist. Top-tier recruitment. If you are calling me to help attracting retaining great talent for fintech or financial services company. This, highly advisable that you build a relationship of the team and Top tier recruitment. You can find them at top-tier Recruitment.com and tell him we sent you this week. We talk to Connor mcginn from a Carro Robotics. And Ireland, based startup building robots, that care given the direction that this podcast is gone in the past two years from its fintech roots to a few tech-driven, human interest stories, then an exploratory dive into crypto blockchain and Venture Capital.

0:53 It's really looking forward to learning more about Connor and the acara team given that this is different. Connor really got me. Thinking on this one, especially with the cars sense of purpose and making an impact, deep expertise in robotics and artificial intelligence combined with first-hand experience with the problems or solving, which is so important when you are building a start-up. But let's not give too much away in the intro and just jump right in with Connor mcginn and this week's episode of money, never sleeps. Here we go again. Again, welcome to money, never sleeps. Recording today from the home studio. And we're on with Connor, mcginn, co-founder and CEO at acara, Robotics and Ireland, based tech company developing technology that empowers people in the healthcare industry.

1:41 A car is a spin-out company from Trinity College. Dublin, Builds on over a decade of pioneering scientific research in robotics and an artificial intelligence. This research goes all the way back to 2010. When Connor was young PhD student. And then, after that, and assistant professor Trinity from 2014 onwards after years and years. Thousand Years, researching, designing, building, researching designing, building. Let's fast-forward to today, where a car is social robot designed to help keep seniors, socially connected, whose name is Stevie recently made the cover of Time Magazine with a headline, the robot that could change the senior care industry. So with that, Crescendo welcome to the show. Connor. Thanks piece. Great. Awesome to have you on. So we're introduced by Eamonn carry from techstars by way of is sharing deal flow newsletter.

2:28 The embedded Links at Connect his newsletter readers to the power of the bridge app for intros courtesy of Connor Murphy & Co also part of the techstars family. So shout out to Amon and Connor and former guest and friend of the show. Martin cast from Barclays, who's always encouraging the Irish startup ecosystem to stay close to techstars. Anyway, enough about text yards is our first chat with robotics company founder and 80 plus episodes of money. Never sleeps Connor. So, honored to have you here and great. Great to learn more about what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah, plan. Thanks for the interest. It's awesome. Cool. So, why don't we just start out with your backstory? How you got to this point and what you're up to right now? Yeah.

3:12 Yeah. Sure. Well, I guess I've always been interested in robotics. We very early age, but I never like most people who are interested robotics think that they're gonna have a career in us, but I guess as an undergrad I kind of saw the potential. It was interesting because as undergraduate engineering students are usually exposed to you know on day one. You're not just special. Those into one area, you can be an exposure to everything. And I remember, just kind of, I guess having an epiphany of seeing the mechanical system sitting next to you know, computer science kind of computer vision, AI system. And just thought, well, I feel we can actually build these machines to do things. This normally people are required to do and it just seemed to me that there had to be a lot of applications where it made sense to do that. And it seemed that we re just have to start something. So that was kind of where robotics became real for me and then I guess over.

4:00 I'm I started to do more and more research in this area. I did a PhD in this area. My interest was always on the applications of the technology first. And then from that I kind of found interesting technical problems to work on and I guess, you know, we're at the point now where I feel like enough research has been done to get this out there into the real world and suppose that's what's motivated, the formation of the car. Gotcha. Gotcha, make sense. I saw kind of looking back at your background as well on LinkedIn. You are a mechanic internet, John buggy garage and Ansley Motors in Thousand. Eight 2006. Was that like a young Anakin Skywalker fixing podracers before, moving on to more complex problems. My only interest primarily as an imaginary was in cars as you can imagine them.

4:42 I felt that like, I would have loved to work and for me to warn or, you know, any working for some of the big kind of sport car makers. I thought like, you know, when we kill to work at Aston Martin, but you know, I suppose, as I became and, you know, deeper entrenched in engineering. I saw that the job opportunities in those spaces. It didn't seem that. Exciting. It seemed like all of the really, you know, groundbreaking still had been done previously at the time. I was a student, it was all this kind of, you know, hydrogen hybrids type stuff going on. That I wasn't really that interested in. And I just felt that like, you know, that kind of technical leap what happened. And so I kind of opened my eyes and looked a little bit more into inside of that space at that point. And we'll certainly, you know, from from the age of probably 16 till 21 and I spent Summers working as a mechanic because I felt and, you know, it would be good skill to have and will be really helpful. If I sit We design a car, it'd be good to know how they're designed to begin with.

5:32 Absolutely. Absolutely. You did a short stint at Nasa to, didn't you? Yeah, so it was an interesting opportunity because what happened was that? I am going to start working on robotics was very little being offered here, even in universities myself and actually David McKee, own, who's a Kearney Professor new CD. He was a PhD student at the time and we set up a kind of a robotics Society. I suppose here in Dublin, we'd meet in the science, category every week and, you know, the goal was to try and no develop. About such as a hobbyist, I suppose and complete them in international competitions. I wouldn't say we were very good, but, you know, the fact that we were kind of proactive in doing this, and we probably have a lot of passion. And when the folks at Nasa, were looking for recruits for their, their good robotics program, they wanted to have some people from outside of America. And, you know, they didn't just want to find the smartest college kids.

6:21 They wanted to find people who are, you know, dynamic and actually getting stuff done and somehow they managed to come across us and I got an invitation to spend a summer working on. A project there which was an interesting experience to say the least. I bet, I bet. Yeah. My sister and I've said this on the show before my sister's a rocket scientist or aeronautical engineer. She is stayed in education for her career to really spread the word and spread the wealth that way in terms of her experience and knowledge and everything. She's built up over the years. She did a little bit of a stint with Jeff Bezos his rocket company. Yeah, you know, little bit of an overlap there tiny bit and only by association. I have no rocket science ability in my head. What? However, but at least cool to make that connection, so tell us about a Cara.

7:04 I had to look at. I know that acara is Irish for friend, right? My kids. My kids are in Wales school and we talked about this with Ash Quinn, a couple weeks ago. And they, I know very little and that was even something new for me to learn when I had a look at that today. Yes. Okay. Kyra is the name of the company. Interestingly enough. The only thing that I guess our founding team really ever disagree on his name. Ames, so we can be building very technical things that a lot of you think that there would be kind of intellectual discussions about what the what part were using or what algorithm were using. But in fact, usually, it's the name that causes the most when the conflict. So after about 20 names over the course of two to three years, our founding team eventually settled on the car and it's belt AKA or a. So we could have overcome some of the, I guess fanatical challenges that might come with an Irish, a fully Irish name, but nonetheless, we wanted to I guess, corporate a name that I sounded good meant something and I guess reflected the values that we have as a company.

8:06 And you know, what, we try to do is develop technology that enables people beginning with people in the healthcare industry and south of Cairo kind of fit that mold quite well. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. I like it. What were some of the others that didn't work before? This Juno was the last one? Jocasta stuff that you do piece was an interesting one because like we did look at like, you know, Greek and Roman gods because you know robotics often kind of conscious those images and then I suppose We felt that we just couldn't be that arrogant and we moved away. I can't remember there was probably probably five or six that were there were closed containers. Judah was definitely second with Cara and then before that, I can remember was probably 18 months ago at this point. I was just change equally. We have, there's as much, you know, in fighting between what the logo might look like as well.

8:49 So we had ones of have a kind of an avocado. He ones that were robots. There was a Hebrew and back and forth. So the kind of two rings that we go, we have at the moment and which I guess our little bit assembly. Like of Audi. The look like half of mod symbol. Yeah, they're things as well. The came to through a lot of trial and error. Okay. Okay. I got you. I got you at school and tell me about Stevie who is Stevie Stevie is the Celsius. This robot does, I think most of my career has led to up until this point when I say, so she Cicero. But what I mean is that it's a robot that looks quite human. Like it's going to face its size. As it may be to be four and a half feet tall and the way you interact with his true natural interaction, the same way you interact with with Each other.

9:30 Like a lot of people who in the building robots, they kind of start with the problem and say, okay. Well, what explicitly does this robot need to be able to do? And whether that's, you know, picking something up off the ground or getting something from a different room. That's that's where the design is centered around. We sort of taken the opposite approach and saying that, you know, in order for this robot to be used and not to be not for people to put off, we need to be able to interact with it seamlessly and to do that. We need to not have to adapt. Our check our Behavior too much and doing so requires you to actually designer and social requirements. So, Stevie is a robot that does that Very much designed to be a kind of a general purpose, robot and not regarding what we've hoped to stop by the by centering, you know around the intellectual property around the interaction. We can always layer functionality on top of that.

10:11 I'm going to see the what we did was we focus on retirement communities as a user base and there's a huge supply shortage of workers in that space. And we felt that a robot like Stevie could be really helpful in enabling staff to be more with less. And we spent a period of between two and three years, developing this robots TV, and and then not just Playing but also embedding it inside retirement real retirement, community. So, we've tested at this point quite extensively in the US and also in Europe, mostly in the UK, but someone are and as well. Okay, is there just one Stevie or there are multiple Stevie's that are making the rounds right now. So this is actually to Stevie's. So, the first one we built we built in 2017 and and that was very much a proof-of-concept. Like, you know, when you were small team with the small budget we had and you tell people we're going to be able to, you know, one of the most advanced robots out there. You're going to have people.

10:59 Actual some skepticism. And so the first TV was was, you know, and we built it with 5,000 Euros budget or something like that. We build it three months. And that was really just to provide confidence that we can actually get this done. The next one. Then took us quite a bit longer to build it substantially more updated version has far greater interaction capability, but also artificial intelligence capability and that took us probably 14 to 16 months to make and then we probably spent as much time now testing in the field. So, we generally learn so much between iterations of robots that it doesn't make sense for us to build more than one. Yeah, it would only make sense to spend more than one if we were to like ship them out somewhere and then leave them out there. And but the problem with doing that is just that you don't learn from how it goes in the environments. If it's just sitting there, it's one else is looking at it. I got it.

11:47 I got to that make sense. What do you think? I mean, in terms of, you know, five, six, seven, eight years, really, of deep deep deep on the educational side and research side in terms of Robotics. And then what was that real crossover? Point to the, why of the first deployment really of Stevie or of your robotics skill set and your team's approach right to go to have this entry point into the senior care industry, right? What was that robotics, but into the senior care industry point for you, I would say it was the, the point happened long before I became an academic, I suppose when I was not even before I was a PhD student. I, you know, I would have loved to, when I graduated go into a robotics company, would they just didn't exist?

12:29 And so I kind of saw that vision of like, you know, these robots code and eventually will be deployed in these ways and but they're not being employed like this now. So like I was going to force into PhD in a way and I felt that you know by getting that knowledge we could. I could I could reduce that kind of gap between the scientific lab side of things and also the real world. So I felt that like really me doing a PhD in me becoming an academic was always leading towards this point and I felt that like, the traditional model and universities is often, you know. Got scientists doing the research and then the license it perhaps to a company that will deploy it. And but I felt that like the it was this was an example of somewhere. Maybe that didn't make as much sense.

13:10 Maybe it makes sense for the person who invented it, actually, the person who deploys it and you have to take it that extra bit further. And look, I think time will tell, if that's the right approach to take, but that's always been doing. I've seen it, it's that it starts the approve, the concept out in the University. That's where that's what scientific grants are for. And, you know, if we want to prove this that scientific validity is something, we write papers. That's, that's always been the way it works. But like, what's the next step? The Next Step shouldn't automatically be to hand things over and I feel. Now we've done a lot of that work. And we importantly, you've gained a lot of experience of how to implement a robot in a nursing home, or in a hospital or whatever might be. And really the next step is now, I think to figure out how do we do that at scale. And look, there's lots of very interesting, scientific things that we will, and will scientific research questions that will address and doing so. But you know, equally that's a commercial Pursuit, you know, the University's remits not to build 100. Robots, and so we feel like the next step, you know, very organically is to set up a company that's to, you know, be able to get funding to manage some of the operational elements that are the go-to company that, you know, are kind of unique to us startups require and, you know, differ from what University Research Grant looks like, importantly, I guess for me is impact that we found in industry and retirement community space and the allocate space. That's just crying out for Innovation. Like, you know, there's more people working in direct healthcare workers and the reason retail And, you know, there's just a massive, massive demand for these jobs and that with covid, we've seen the importance of these roles, but we undervalue them, the job prospects, or promotional prospects, pay is pretty terrible. And, you know, and if we can

14:41 develop technology that can enable people in these jobs to up, skill to be able to get new opportunities, to be able to do more with less and we think we can improve conditions in that industry and you think that's worth while. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. Would you know, when I first looked at what you guys were doing Connor? My mother-in-law is in a nursing home in Dublin. And, you know, I've been out there and it's a nice place, but you can totally tell that it's engagement. That's just so important and that engagement can come from, you know, any which way. And I've seen on your website. The, you know, the face of Stevie, right that shifts from the eyes in the smiling robotic face to actually being a FaceTime or a video chat face, right? With our love.

15:29 One's. Was there. A moment for you? Where it was like, okay, be on the commercial side of seeing. What is the biggest Gap out there in the market for something like Stevie to, was there a personal moment of hey, the the senior care industry is where it's going to make sense. For me personally, as well as commercially. Definitely. I can't leave. Things started long before we decided to build robots like for, you know, eldercare, the motivation for me to get into that industry was was In high school and like I had a grandmother that passed away in a nursing home. And she was a very independent woman open to open till quite late in her life. And I remember when she was made to live in a nursing home, like feeling a little bit let down because technology could do so much. But this woman who, you know, she was perfectly Compass mantis.

16:18 Well as much as you'd expect for a woman in her eighties and but yeah, it'll she had some Mobility problems. So she was doing by yourself and think she she might fall twice a year and the family just thought that was too big of a risk, too. Let her to continue living by herself. So she gave up a lot of Independence to move into a nursing home, where she shared a room with a woman with dementia. And I just felt that the we should be doing more to to enable these people to get older with dignity. And even though, like, the, the people, there, the staff that are there Grace like, you know, you rarely hear negative stories about nursing home staff at they normally fantastic, but it's just, you know, there's a limit to what people can do, unless there's technology that enables and and sports them and there just wasn't in that area. And I actually spent a couple of months working in a nursing home in high school just as a way to kind of sport community. And like I just felt that this was an area where I could work. Well, with the people I felt that, you know, we know from demographics that you know, the number of people who are going to be above the working age and 15 to 20 years is going to be unmanageable.

17:23 And it's already on management will more than one or two people in hospital beds before coronavirus, we're pensioners and So we have a challenge to be able to improve efficiency in healthcare. So thus we're able to cope with the demand that an aging population, brings and Robotics is an obvious area. You don't need to be an economist to point to the fact that this will eventually make commercial sense. But, you know, as an engineer who wants to develop technology that delivers positive impact, it seemed to me a no-brainer. Absolutely. Absolutely. It totally see that. And it's great to hear that kind of personal experience has made its way into your Envisioning ambition, with all this because it's so important to have that to really keep driving you forward, right? Yeah.

18:05 Absolutely. It has to unlike, you know, because I couldn't wait. I know this is a risky Pursuit and I know that you know, it's difficult to do a start-up at the best of times and picking something that's is I guess as out there as robotics Hardware's is, as hard as they say like, you know, with the situation where when it's all said and done, we fail. Like if I look back and say it, well, at least we tried to do something worthwhile. I don't think I'll have regrets and what they - sacrifices and come, you know, the minister. Devices and things you give up. And in order to put this, you know, where it needs to be to be successful are high as you know, and if you don't see value Beyond, you know, making money, then it won't be doing this for and exactly. Certainly most at myself. Like, you know, I've got classmates that people, I grew up with who, you know, have are making very comfortable living at the moment, you know, working 9 to 5 jobs, like this is way more than just, you know, about a commercial success for me.

18:57 This is about doing something worthwhile. My life and selling the company that hopefully, you know, can make a positive impact in the world. That's awesome. I love that. Tell me you talked a minute ago about funding and getting this funded at this stage. How is that going for you? It's going. Well, I guess like any startup. It's always challenging when you're raising around because I guess, you know, your, it's hardly less vulnerable stage. You're at because you haven't done anything yet. And even though we've come from a university that has, you know, we managed to show that we're capable of building. Technology. And you know, we have a team that's been together for quite a while, you know, we're pitching to a different different audience, I guess as myself as a someone whose background has been mostly academic come to this point. I probably have a point to prove commercially and obviously, speaking to VCS and investors like the way you pitch to them as is going on quite nuanced.

19:50 I'm not as I'm learning. So I think, you know, people have generally been impressed by what we're doing. And since covid has happened. We've kind of reprioritized. A lot of We're doing so that's involved. Making significant changes to our deck and a business plan, which I think is, you know, be able to show that were adopting that market is we see it as a big opportunity to start developing em robots in response to covid as well as the CD platform, which we can talk about it later if you like, but it's been interesting and I think that there has been a lot of engagements. It's one of these things that just takes time and we've only seriously started trying to raise the round in January and then with covid and everything else, you know, realistically, it'll probably be another couple of months. Months before we do it, but certainly all of the signs are pointing to the fact that it will get there. Yeah, absolutely.

20:34 And I did see Violet on your website as well fighting fighting covid-19 right with lightning, you know, like I don't even want to get into that. If I sit that Donald Trump gave the world but you know, there was a bit of a difference between opening up somebody's body and Shining ultraviolet light on the inside to kill coronavirus, which is just ridiculous to even think that someone would mention That versus actually okay. We have a lighting system here that has been demonstrated scientifically to to kill germs in physical environments rather than biological environments, right? So that must have come about pretty quickly or here at that been in the works prior to the world catching fire in the last few months. Yeah, you know, it was honest and in the works. So, like one of the things that we've been doing, and I think, I think we operate quite differently from a lot of Robotics startups.

21:28 And then like the menu. Time we spend in the field and with users is probably more than worse. People might expect. So, like, over the last kind of 18 months or so. I just spent a number of months and, you know, not just testing it in nursing homes or Atomic means, but actually living there and staying there. So, I'm pretty first. I think I'm a pretty first an understanding of what the places are like and what the challenges are. And this part of that process like wouldn't be one of the many kind of challenges. We could have pointed out was infection control, you know, you probably hear of drug resistant to a germ. Amorous a seed, if these things cause chaos. And hospitals, hospital-acquired infections are hugely problematic, because you might have someone with an open wound who gets an infection and all of a sudden, you know, your antibiotics. Don't, don't do anything to fix it. And this is a huge problem with older people. And we saw this being a massive issue in retirement communities because it's impossible to implement the same kind of infection control programs.

22:23 You can't, you know and disinfect a room that's full of fabrics, carpets, curtains and things. And and so we started looking at alternative methods of disinfection that potentially, we could have put on the CV robot as an add-on. That was kind of where the idea began. And like again, it's TV is being a vehicle to be a potentially be able to do a lot of things. And that was, that was something that we could put into the product, the the technical roadmap. We spent about a year working on, try to understand the germicidal effectiveness of UV lighting, and when I say germicidal, Effectiveness swimming is, if you have one of these lights turned on and you know, how close is a need to be to the For germs are on in order to kill them. How long does it need to be turned on? What are the specifications of the lice are important?

23:05 But these are the kind of critical. What the science is very clear. It works. These are the critical questions that need to be answered. If you want to put it on a robot. And so when covid with a covert outbreak, kind of re started to become clear that this was here to stay, we've been, we don't over a year of work in this area. So good timing, I guess as a team. Yeah. Well, I would say nothing is good, but it's fortuitous in a way. So we kind of felt, you know that there was a potential here, too. I wouldn't say pivot the company cuz I don't feel that we are pivoting and instead we just kind of I guess reprioritize things. We just said, you know this tv robot can wait for now and I think the demand and the short term is going to be four things that can help with, you know, reducing the transmission of covid. You know, let's see if we can put together a robot that we could deploy quickly.

23:49 And let's leverage our know-how as well as our knowledge in UV lighting. Let's try to do something quickly and that led to a prototype that we since tested now, if you are Littles, and we've worked with the microbiology lab and Trinity that have been fantastic and they've really been able to, they don't have a horse in the game here. So they've been able to tell us what works and what hasn't and you know, very, you know in an independent way and we've been able to show that this thing is fact, even I guess going forward, a big part of what are our product is going to be in the future. It's going to be disinfectant. Disinfectant at these technology. Yeah, that's really interesting. And, you know, we talked about on this show, the importance of a Founder, having first-hand experience with the problems or solving. You said a few minutes ago that you actually lived inside a nursing home for a little while to figure some of this stuff out.

24:39 Is that right? Yeah. Well, it kind of happened, you know, quite unintentionally, but since then it's almost become a practice within our group is that this is sort of how we how we how we do things. So I called him only when we built the robot, I guess the partners we were looking. Or were end users and we know from the literature that will to really it's really difficult to deploy a robot and get it accepted over time. Typically. What happens is that when you bring a robot into an environment, especially social and you see a lot of interest early on and what's called a novelty effect. It's a little bit like, you know, when the kid is interested in their toys at Christmas but like four days later they forgotten about them. Yeah, and you know, is there's not value there to keep people using it over time. And then you, you know, you haven't got anything. And that's been a problem for a long time in robotics. And what we've been trying to do, I guess, is we want to make sure that we're able to stay involved without you. No problem as long as possible.

25:31 Because if and when people stop using it, we want to know why? And that was our motivation initially, and what's happened. Is that by staying that clued in, and we're able to react. So soon, as we start to see people not use the technology or we fight. We know, if you get to know people, personally, they'll tell you very honestly, why they don't like something we can make that change quickly and that stops the drop-off. That's so that keeps them engaged. And the fact that the robot is adapting to, their needs of their requirements is a key piece, and it's not a scalable. It's not a scalable way to do things. But at the very early stages, if you're the first people to bring a machine into this industry and we think it makes sense to spend a lot of time doing this up until the point where you solve most of the problems.

26:15 And from that point onward, you can probably do it remotely, but certainly in the short term you need to be there. So we've been able to get a lot of fundamental insights from, from doing it. We've been able to get Lot of insight into error tolerance, like, you know, had how much error can people, tolerate, like what happens? If somebody at the robot calls Somebody by the wrong name, like these are the kind of in places intangibles that think a lot of people don't. You don't really know unless you see us. We spent a lot of time. No seeing and we were pretty good idea. And what happens is that it's and it's not just me that spends time there the whole team. Do it screens that are software Engineers when we're writing the code. We're testing the code like in Our Minds Eye were able to kind of go back to those times and say well if the robot was deployed And it did what I've Just Seen. Would that be okay, you know, if you're just so you know PhD student or postdoc or you know, you know, fresh higher, like you just don't have that experience. You don't have that insight.

27:03 And, you know, your opinion is going to be in most cases. I'd say wrong. People will be very surprised with what works. What doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. It was that was that a natural kind of step for you or did someone say, Hey listen, you really got to get out there and live it. Like I would say it's a combination like we The things that we've been doing in the university for as long as we've set the group is we're not just innovating in the area of Robotics. Like, you know, we're working on, you know, an interdisciplinary Global Innovation project that requires lots of different people with lots of different skill sets. So a lot of what we've been doing over the years has been trying to find ways and systems for us to collaborate work well together and with not just as a team, but also like weed seed, our users has been in somewhat of an extension of our team.

27:50 And so we've been very lucky to have collaborations. With your like to Stanford. And we work with number of different, not only universities across the world. Would also big companies, the likes of Panasonic sap and, you know, some big companies in Germany and we've managed to, I guess find within ourselves, the way to operate that I think keeps us very, very clued into customers. If we're going to fail, we want to fail fast and that's been very much the kind of the philosophy that we have, and I think that's very much the culture within the team. And so I guess when we work on these kind of projects We make a lot of progress in the early stages. It's all centered around learning from mistakes. We try and prototype things. And I think that's where we have a lot of experience doing and that's what we've been doing invited. That's how we've gotten something from, you know, an idea to testing in a week.

28:38 That's how we've gotten. Clear the validation from hospitals in a month. It's that sort of practice. It's practice that we've refined in the University as well as the science. And I think that as we start to scale and it will be possible to, you know, grow as an organization while keeping those those practices on it. As a nation. Yeah, I get that. I get that and it seems like you've got some pretty Natural Instincts there towards doing all this Connor that have been helpful to you and getting the businesses far. What do you think some of those specific personality traits are just to name a few that you think that have been important. I say you probably get a different answer if you ask my team but I suppose they could know the cliched ones would be would be probably things like resilience.

29:19 They don't mean takes games. Like I know, I I've lost count long time ago, the number of people You look to be skeptical and I've pasted what we were going to do. Feel when I started building robots, that one of my kind of litmus test was actually, you know, will people think this is impossible and it's only if they say yes, is it something I'm interested in that similar to a chip on his shoulder. I got yeah because you know people writing me off before I had a chance to do things and I think being take skin that we are, we dealing with failure all the time. And you know, sometimes it's Meredith sometimes, you know, we've made we've made a mistake but as we go on as we get more experience, like less and less failure, As points tools making technical mistakes. It's usually learning things that we can, we can we can build from. So if we do fail, we learn from it, we get stronger because of it. And I think that's, you know, not having that fear, like not having a fear of failure.

30:07 And it's been something that I think is a team, is really galvanized us over the years. And that's something that I think, you know, if we didn't if we were scared that, what we were going to do didn't work and, you know, we probably have a long time ago. I think probably the piece that's differentiated as most though has been empathy. I mean, empathy kind of The users, like I think a lot of Robotics companies and people who work in AI, they get kind of sidetracked by the technology. Like look how cool this is. Look how much of a step change. We can do on the technology front and they might lose sight of, I guess the, you know, the ethical responsibilities. And also the fact that like, you know, you're Building Technology for people to use, this can affect people's lives and meaningful ways, you know, whether that's positive, you know, naming people do more with less or - it, you know, at the end of the day, you know, robots and AI can threaten jobs. Soooo, and you know, these things that potentially could be - like they're in the back of people's heads. We're going to be using the technology. And yeah, like what we've tried to do is put ourselves in their shoes as best as we can, and really involve them in the process.

31:08 So, we work, I think we make a real effort when we're developing technology to work. What users we try to do as little in a vacuum as possible. We try to do as much with the support and engagement of those partners, and I think that like, you know, it's true, those Partnerships that we've been able to make up for the fact that I haven't had that much fun doing and make up for the fact that, you know, we're only, you know, less than 10 people and because ultimately, they could you do the better, you do the better, you can work with others, you know, it's that old cliché that like a, you know, a rising tide lifts All Ships. It's that sort of that sort of approach. And I think we've sort of embraced that kind of collaborative mind to try to find like-minded people and try to find the common ground to work on trying to find the areas where they add value and we add value. And you know, let's be a team on this and he'll these are changes that need to get made if not us who and you know, that's Do our best here.

31:54 And I think that, that sort of, you know, that sort of sense of working together and come up camaraderie. It's been enriching, but it's also been rewarding in terms of outcomes. We managed to do a lot more than I think. We would have otherwise and precisely because, you know, we've treated this as being something that's bigger than us. Yeah. I hear you. I hear it now. It's all really encouraging and, you know, to get commercial again for a second. I mean, I'm thinking about this in the context of, you know, B2B versus b2c versus B to B to C, right. Which is, you know, any time that you're trying to sell a new product and where you need both the person or the business, that's paying the bill, right to buy the product. But also those that you intend to have the end impact on the outcome on to both all enjoy using the product, right? And to want and need that product. Not only do you have to solve the B2B problem, which is the business problem.

32:48 But you need to solve the customer problem with and problem, as well at the same time. That's really Hard to do and never mind bakey it into a robotics business, right? So, you know, kudos to you guys for getting it this far, the really impressive to say, thank you Pete. What do you guys think? You know, what do you think Connor in terms of you? And I spoke offline last week about kind of your network in the community and those that you lean on as a sounding board for advice that that Community is opened up quite a bit for you in the last in the last six months or so. Yeah, we I'm very grateful that we've been lucky to have so many advisers that are, you know, coming with experience and lots of different areas that have been willing to, you know, give their time and wisdom and really, really helpful to helping us. I guess you'll trade the whole process, whether it's commercial or technical or, you know, providing an opportunity for me to kind of soundy check ideas that we have and that's been helpful because make moving quickly, you know, you kind of have to be decisive and it may be difficult when we got 50 different things in front of you and you're trying to figure out like it should I pick this or this and like, One of the big decisions for example, like, you know doing it doesn't make sense here to kind of hit the brakes on Stevie and focus on this new robot and despite the fact that we work overtime magazine for months ago.

34:03 Like these are pretty big decisions that you kind of want to trust in other people's judgments on as well as your own and like someone like David Maloney, for example, who is the one of the founders of Nvidia sand is now, you know what Intel and you know providing support to us through there. There ain't very high incubator. Like, you know, I don't wonderful conversation with him where he basically, you know, made it very clear. That this, you know, covid is is going to be a world changer. And, you know, there's a big opportunity here for robotics. They're already trying to do this in Japan, you know, he has confidence in what we were doing, was better than what was being done over there. And you know, this is something that you know, you can act fast on and you know, he was willing to support us through that and like, you know, that was the starting point.

34:43 I was you know, where we could have transitioned from, you know, full-time working on Stevie to all of a sudden working with Intel on this, you know, UV robot and like that. Was an example of Someone Like Jerry Lacy who's also a professor at Trinity has a lot of experience with spinning out. Like he's been someone who's been really helpful in, advising me personally on how to be able to juggle the responsibilities of being a professor and as well, as you know, leading a start-up and had to be able to do both and time management. And again Haley bring things that are kind of currently in the lab how to bring this those to Market in the process of to go with it and he has a wealth of experience in doing that and he also happens to you know, as luck would have us have a lot of It's in the area of of them hygiene control and he knows a lot about the sector. So he's getting good advice.

35:30 I think to be honest, though. The people who live in most on as a selling for our team, like most of the people who are working with us, like we've been together for some cases 56 years and like they're people who have, you know, as much experience as I do in the most part and speak to be brutally honest like they play Devil's Advocate better than anybody else. And when we hear criticism from the outside, that's nothing that we haven't been talking about ourselves like six months or a year ago. And like there's one person on the team particular guy called Michael Coleman and like, worrying and yang. I guess I see the the possibilities of stuff but he kind of puts it in control. He's very much a details person and I think we work really well together because I'll page something that, you know, maybe exciting, whatever else, but I kill same, you a real like, you know, the technology for this Connors three years away. And so, you know, that kind of puts me in when I'm in the ground and means when we're going to raise funding. Yes, like the the vision is clear. I know.

36:23 It's needed, but I can work when we try to match that with the ask and you know, we're doing that by refining, it within the team and like, I'm really lucky that we do have, you know, we've got, you know, other co-founders, someone call a man Burke who I can prototype things like in the sleep with will, you know with no machine? Yeah, and you know using parts we play into dumpsters. Like that's that's the level of talent. We're dealing with, you know, someone like, you know, Ki and Donovan, this guy who started working with when he was 15 and you know, he seems like he's the guy is unbelievable and I What he does and you know, Nev Donnelly, who's one of the, she won the big award for, you know, best day eye for student project, couple of years ago for her master's work in deep learning.

37:04 She comes with a background of of devops as well. So like all of a sudden now and she started kind of Meandering to. So all of a sudden, now, we've got like, our leads. Can you know, AI person who's got a lot of experience with, you know, mechanical engineering that underlies, a robot, just you knows what the Realms of possible and probable as well as understanding the devops pipelines in the web app. So like when we actually They say that there's a, you know, there's a synchrony there and like when you have people like that. Like, you know, we can probably anything technically, probably have the expertise for eighty to ninety percent of it. We don't need to reach out to that many technical experts and where we do. We're lucky to have some, some, some big players and, you know, some real leading figures and Robotics and Ai. And who I probably wouldn't like me to name them in the podcast, but, you know, we're getting help from from people who've been there and dullness and as much as anyone. That's awesome.

37:50 That's awesome. And when we spoke before, as well, Connor you Stood that you felt like a boxer and the best shape of your career, at least, not you yourself, but the company, right? The business, and from your description of the team. It certainly sounds like that. Looking at it from this point forward. Going ahead. How do you envisage scaling the acara business in Ireland rather than the great draw of the United States of America or perhaps elsewhere? Yeah. Yeah. I know. I want that analogy. I guess it was, it was, it was one that I kind of. Scatter. Because I did, I do, I feel I feel like we've been training for this. Like, that's, that's really it. I think that we've all of what we've done up to this point, have kind of been, you know, when you're fighting the journeyman, we've been doing a good job with those. I think now we're ready.

38:36 Like it feels to me that like, we have all of the systems in place with a lot of Partnerships in place, like most of the designers, don't we just need, you know, the opportunity to execute so feel like we're ready to go on this. Like, looking at where other companies have raised for robotics like, you know, the average value - average Raise for could have proceeded in robotics at San Francisco. Is like a, you know, 5 million raised. And, you know, that that that's the kind of money that you're looking out and just it's impossible to get that seed level in Ireland. It just and Europe. We haven't traditionally invested in this. And so we're going to two options. We can either pack up and go to San Francisco and where they have a track record of doing this.

39:16 And I think there's a lot of drawbacks by doing that or instead. We try to, you know, build have a way to either get that kind of money. Ireland, or try and do more with less. I think the latter is probably what we're going to try to do initially. I think, you know, we had something like, you know, two to three million. We'd be able to get a 24-month Runway and move pretty quickly on this, but it's just, it takes time to convince people that we're worth that kind of money and we have to prepare ourselves. So that so our hope is to now is is to try and get something revenue-generating pretty quickly. There's not too many robotics companies that are out of the pre-revenue stage. So I think that'll show people that we're not just you. We're not just a company that does cool stuff in the lab. We're actually company that can build something people want.

39:58 And so I think we're gonna do that with the with the covid response robot. We're hopefully going to use some seed money from from angels, as well as grant money to be able to get over the line and do. Our hope is that we can we can we can raise a seed round by the end of the summer. That's, that's not a realistic goal. I had the opportunity. I think for Ireland is a mass of like we were a country that's relatively small and land mass and we have a lot of experts. We've got a lot of big companies that are based. Here, we have a lot of expertise and a. I so like all of the ingredients are there for us to basically, you know, AI is almost. It's like like use our lenders, like, a proof-of-concept site for the technology to be able to like have something where we're developing and deploying and in the geographic region close to us and what we can do.

40:42 Hopefully it's you know, have two Theta, two effects. One is we can create a positive impact here, which is what we've been wanting to do from day one. And especially now in the time of covid. We're a technology is helpful. There. Are we That it's doing something that's good. But equally it's providing confidence to bigger markets, like places like, you know, the US Mainland Europe, you know, Asia are getting interest. Now, from, from Central America, like what we'd like to be able to do is say, okay. Well, here's the template where we got it to work in Ireland and let's replicate that somewhere else. And I think that's that's how you scale. This look if we if we can scale it from day one. If we wanted to like most of our kind of interest at the moment is coming from overseas. Like we're getting a number of emails, each A from from the u.s. In particular, Australia has started to get really interested to like, you know, if we can find the reality is that if we can't find the funding and not to do this in Ireland, we're going to have to go to one of those places and like, it'll be a shame because I just don't think, you know, the long-term viability of this like, the best way to do it is going to be to do it here.

41:42 Like do it on our doorsteps build it scale, it nationally. And then we have, you know, an ideal situation where we can make it work somewhere else. We can take what we've done here. Bring it somewhere else. Else and I think that's the that's the best way to scale the robotics piece and I visited most kind of Robotics ecosystems around the world. So I've been to Japan, been to America been to Europe or the doing stuff. And I've never seen anywhere that has that potential before. I really haven't. And, you know, if we could do it here, I think it'd be pretty special, but it will require, you know, government organizations to be pretty proactive about this and because it's not something we can just will into place. It has to be something that's is driven and Likes of SFI, the lives of the University Systems, the likes of the, the startups likes of Enterprise Ireland.

42:29 They need to get behind this kind of vision and, you know, it seems that the evidence is that they are truck. They're starting to, but the possibilities, I think for this are huge. Yeah, absolutely. And I've seen plenty of other things happen in Ireland. Like this where, because like you said, it's a small country five million people, the demographics are quite interesting and that you've got this concentration of people in the Dublin area, with one kind of style of living, perhaps to, you know, to Is it but then a much different way of life in other parts of the country with all different types of situations and scenarios, right? So you like you said, you got plenty of a material here, right? For lack of a better word to demonstrate that this can be a success. So, you know, yeah, really want to see this happen. Just to kind of wind up.

43:15 Thanks so much for sharing. All this about the business at about what you're up to tell me one thing that people wouldn't expect to know about you. There's probably a lot, but I suppose it's funny, as passionate as I am about this and those people would think that like from an early stage. I was really like as a nerd and school like it was complete opposite. I was I was a jock and school and like I didn't really care too much. Okay, it mats and stuff, but I was like a pretty average like high school student and okay. This was only something that I like sport for me, was my passion growing up. I wanted to be a professor and prep pressure will be player more than anyone else. That that was that was me. My has that would look so I played I played sport a very high level but like, you know, college and Engineering for me was always a fallback for sports for a very long time.

44:02 And it's only been at a later stage, that is like any of this has really gotten gotten real. So I think it's it when I talked to like high school students or when I talk to parents of kids. I quite often. They think that like, you know, what we're doing is unattainable for either themselves or their kids and like in reality like the opposite is completely true. Like if you were to ask someone likes my teachers where they think I'd be Now I think two of them would have said we'd achieved anything that we've done. I'm with you right there man. That's my teachers and what I was 15 or 16 years old, they'd be like Pete who you don't see him around here. Yeah. I know. I know student. What it was is I was I'd say pretty forgettable student foremost. The teachers that I had me.

44:45 Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you and and hopefully, you know, onwards and upwards, right? So awesome. Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate you coming on to the show Connor, keep doing what you're doing. This is going to work. Thanks, baby. That does it for this week folks and thanks to Connor for opening up. His mind. To help us figure out why he does. What he does makes and show notes for this episode or on money, never sleeps that IE. So check us out online. Remember, if you were a colleague need help attract, and retain, great talent for fintech or financial services. Company is highly advisable, but you build a relationship. Even top your recruitment, as they really know their stuff. You can find them at top-tier recruitment.com. Also.

45:28 Thanks to Conan Brophy, from creates on for editing this podcast. As for me. I increase the odds of startup success. Get in touch with the contact page. I know where your Ventures.com, you could check out what Owen Fitzgerald is up to these days on Twitter at 0 and Fitzgerald nine finally till next time. Thanks for listening. See you.