Cory McKane 0:38
Hi, I'm Cory McKane, CEO of we strive the number one platform for personal trainers, gym owners and coaches to both manage and scale their business. I'm your host for why we strive where every Tuesday I sit down with some of the most incredible tech founders investors and creatives to find out how when, where and why they strive. Be sure you tune in every single Tuesday. And check us out at why we strive.com For more info. Now let's get to this week's episode everyone's gonna go
I don't even think I think I said I would think I was saying Roger roger, but I never said that to my I just stopped saying it halfway through it. I was like, what is it? This is like a reflex just Yeah, it was I was like Roger, is Star Wars. Yeah, that's right. That's right, Roger. Sweet Episode Five. Welcome, guys. I have my co hosts it's our first time doing a guest host is what's up
Drew Bellcock 1:40
guys. You may remember me from episode one the best episode?
Unknown Speaker 1:43
Yeah, this will be second
Cory McKane 1:44
this will be this will be this will be a good one. So Drew is the CEO of pipe dream episode one, check it out. And we got episode five here though. We got Rhys spelled ri Z S E. So don't forget that. Do you want to introduce yourselves? Oh, yeah, no, great. No,
Colby Harvey 2:01
thanks for thanks for having us here. It's actually a really cool opportunity to be able to not only work with one of my friends that I've met, been over here for the past two years in Austin, but to really build something that's actually really, really cool. So I'll give a little background on myself. So for anyone that knows or even honestly cares. My background, I actually graduated from Arizona State and no, I didn't party as hard as you think. Almost there. But I'll say not that. It's great. Oh, it's great. So I'm like I were just sort of computer science for about two and a half years. So I got to count three and realize, Wow, I just don't like this. Ultimately, you know, like saying aviation because I'm passionate about the industry. So
Cory McKane 2:42
study what sorry, studying aviation, obviously a nation. I was like, I don't know what that means. So it was a language. pilot's license.
Colby Harvey 2:50
I actually did. I did. Yeah. So we could have done this in an airplane. Yeah, I mean, we cut up but like, I would have to stick the mic in my mouth and be like, how are you guys? Certain know. But it also might ultimately end up sitting in aviation. And then I kind of took a look at the industry and really, like created the company. And I'll get into that a little bit. But like my background formula is like I've been really kind of like a big tech guy. I've held several positions in several Fortune 500 companies. I mean, some from like Charles Schwab Olia to Google, which is like, I really ended my career. So you think I did anything, let things things more technically there at Google, but ultimately ended up becoming more of like a project manager for like, when I was three or four team. So that's what helped me really become a better hopefully, like, better leader or at least better at giving direction. And I don't know, you can ask Jack, because he'll know he'll tell you. Yeah, I'd
Jack Medellin 3:45
say you're pretty good leader. Yeah, you got some good stuff going on, on Jack Mateen. Doing operations stuff arise before that was at Lockheed Martin for about five or six years on the F 35. Program. And then prior to that, you teach computer science
Cory McKane 3:59
is your official role operations stuff? What do you guys do you guys have the role as
Drew Bellcock 4:03
I don't know, what is it now? Let's see, oh, we're CEO and chairman of the board. Whoa. And President of
Unknown Speaker 4:16
the Board That's right. If you want to take it honestly,
Cory McKane 4:18
we need voting rights. Right?
Drew Bellcock 4:19
That's that's, that's on record. I'm just gonna strike
Cory McKane 4:23
the defending team wants to have voting rights, we want shares. We walk
Colby Harvey 4:29
funny. I really brought jack on to really kind of support the engineering efforts in the team as a typical project manager but like he showed so much more and use cables so much more, that only the only thing for me that made sense was to give him a position in the company where he can I honestly felt that he fit in I think there was someone as in my in my C suite executive executive role. So
Jack Medellin 4:52
yeah, I really appreciate it. I mean, it's a super interesting business model. Like I didn't know anything about drones coming in and I've just learned a bunch from from Colby and Braden Madonna there's just limitless stuff going on. It's great
Colby Harvey 5:03
thing about drones?
Cory McKane 5:05
Well, I think we've done a good connection. Like even when I was speaking with pipe dream Episode One, they were discussing how our candidate was mentioning how it's cool that each of the executives have some sort of background in robotics. And so similar situation, it's like he's running Office, but he has his computer science degree. So it's not like a computer engineering. He's not sitting there like, Okay, what do you mean by that, like, he can actually communicate with the team, which puts him in a good position to be an office guy,
Jack Medellin 5:30
which is, I mean, that's kind of what I did at Lockheed, I was talking to the engineers and then talking to the, to the back office visit people saying, you know, we got to build this, because we need to be here in three years, putting this money down, you know, so we can get a read along.
Cory McKane 5:41
Very cool. And we're gonna, I'm gonna do one question, I want to know what the company actually does and what you guys got started for. And then we're gonna break out the tequila. So there we go. So if I have you, of course, answer the question. So actually, can you answer the question? And then you tell me how it got started. Jagger was rise do
Jack Medellin 5:59
so rise builds autonomous drone platforms for data capturing to inspect aircraft are really extensible to any large infrastructure, and it's tough to get to. And then there's, there's an API on the back end that takes those images and does some, some analysis to tell you where the damage is at what type of damage it is, how big it is all that stuff.
Cory McKane 6:19
Very cool. And then what is the background on rise? Like, how'd you guys get started? Why did you get started? And all that?
Colby Harvey 6:25
Yeah, good question. So how we got rise hot and how you like start rise was, is kind of came from a little bit of a passion project from myself, right? So like, I was, um, I have a huge passion for the aviation industry, right? So I went to go to the Air Force Academy, there's this whole thing, I'm not gonna go into that story. Now. This is
Cory McKane 6:44
a little, you're the third person I know. That's what did the Air Force Academy there was a whole thing.
Colby Harvey 6:49
Like to get into their crazy, but so I mean, I came up with the concept of it because I ultimately, I wanted to figure out a way that I can work with the aviation industry without necessarily working for the aviation industry, right? How can we make an impact on something that was so like, kind of near and dear to my heart? I've worked in it right. So I got the opportunity. Once I suspended my my degree field to study, Aviation Management pilot track thing else, that's what I got to work in. It's an odd preference right now. It's called the MRO. So it actually stands for maintenance period overall. So those are where every aircraft goes, basically like your, your repair shops for airplanes. Good to know. I got to work at one in Arizona. So that's where I would school. And I really got to take a really deep look at like, a fundamental issue that I was kind of like toying around with like, Is this really a problem? Is it not a problem? And why isn't this been solved? So from there, I got to talk to a lot of people like qualified ANPS those are airframe powerplant mechanics and understand like, hey, what do you guys do want to database and when you like clocking in versus when you clock out? What are you doing? And I got a really good understanding that got to see this clearing and bright red problem. I mean, at a first level, it's just like these inspections are extremely inefficient, like they're slow they're dangerous like you're literally connected the ceiling of the hangers and a boom live and they won't tell you this the industry and I'll tell you this, can you hear from me? But they want the amount of times that operators or technicians run like scissor lifts and boom, listen to the size of aircraft and damage them all the time is frequent.
Cory McKane 8:25
We're gonna put a video over what he just said to describe that, not for me, obviously, I'm very familiar with scissor lifts. That say that right. Okay, cool, guys. I thought I just forgot what you said. I just made up a word, but that's what you said. Okay, cool. Sounds like a like a core exercise. But okay, got it. Okay, so we'll put a video up. We'll put it we'll put a video to describe it. It's that people
Colby Harvey 8:51
are saying, Yeah, it's cool. I don't know if you can find a video with no hidden aircraft.
Drew Bellcock 8:56
Oh, there's a lot of perfect anyway. Perfect ammunition. Well, you know that
Colby Harvey 9:01
but, um, but yeah, ultimately, I really got to like, take a look and ask these questions. And I'm like, Hey, and like, and while I was in university, I got to, like, look and see, you know, what technologies were available? Right. So like, we had a drone program. So like, Okay, if there are technologies that are capable of doing the same inspections, much more accurately, much more consistently than humans, let's be honest. Why don't we use them? And it's such an underserved entrant is such an underserved market, that it only makes sense. There's reason why it's underserved. It's a little like there's regulatory hurdles and major to get through, but now that we've like gone through COVID, and there's a lot of things. There's a huge and even before COVID, there's a huge labor shortage. I mean, I mean, it's substandard this whole 40,000 Open a&p positions right now, and we're losing, I mean, on average, 12,000 qualified and tenured inspectors per year. And that's only been replaced by about 7000 On average,
Cory McKane 9:58
just because like their jobs just like so. have ridiculously hard are what are why are they leaving
Drew Bellcock 10:02
quite a lot of training right to be able to be an a&p mechanic and word inspector.
Colby Harvey 10:07
It does. But also Mike, these people age, you know, like they were in during the, you know, I mean during the war, but Right, that's when you get like a lot of your pilots and stuff. So a lot of these people are aging out. And as my dad would say, but like, once people in our generation realize that you can make a lot more money in the.com Boom, like doing building an app or doing something else. It's not a sexy industry. So I'm trying to find a way this is going to be corny, but to make it more sexy.
Cory McKane 10:38
For sure I can drink sexy dude, it's cool, man. So can you it's basically like your drones are a better version of making sure that a airplane is ready to operate and fly again, essentially, or am I totally wrong on that?
Colby Harvey 10:51
We want to make sure that plane gets from maintenance hangar to sky as soon as possible. Gotcha.
Cory McKane 10:54
Okay, gotcha. Are you is it? Is it more accurate and efficient or one of the two or what would you describe it us
Jack Medellin 11:01
both? For sure, like aI cameras gonna have a better visual than the human eye and plus, like a drone can fly up whereas a person has to, you know, be able to move on a jump on a lift and write it down. But then Tomalin stuff.
Cory McKane 11:13
Gotcha. Okay, gotcha. Yeah.
Drew Bellcock 11:15
That's cool. I was wondering why is your company spelled the way it is? Because I had a hard time like trying. And I know your company and I know you and like,
Unknown Speaker 11:25
I know we're gonna new we're gonna get this question. I'm gonna answer the most predict No, I really don't.
Colby Harvey 11:33
I wish I did. Um, so one of my God, this is gonna suck. What my, the original name for the company was way too on the nose was horrible. I was not as creative as I am so excited. I'm also known as that creative, but like it was originally for the company and god I can't believe I'm saying this publicly. It was called maintenance automation lab. Take it all in
Jack Medellin 11:57
to your own company that I've been around for decades.
Cory McKane 12:00
I'm gonna fall asleep. I'm not laughing
Colby Harvey 12:03
That's what I want.
As long as it's safe in a plane. Sexy.
Unknown Speaker 12:08
No, no, no. Rise.
Cory McKane 12:11
No rise is a good name.
Colby Harvey 12:14
I mean, it's a great weight and so great name, but there's like, there's no way that you can trademark this name in any way because it's used literally everywhere. So gotcha. I didn't come up with the company name. So when I took my time when I was living in San Francisco, I had my roommate who's now when my were my my senior engineers mazing DevOps engineer level give him a shout out who was named so you can look them up but his the worst way to say this, his gamertag
was Rhys spelled the way that it is now. Yeah, it's fun. Me, I didn't know this either. You're learning information.
It was me being lazy because like we were going through our financing, and I was like, Okay, I can't use an a maintenance automation anymore, because it's a horrible name. And I'm like, Okay, this exists in the wheelhouse that I want it to be in. It's just not the most like SEO friendly. But you know, at the time, I'm like, You know what, screw it. Let's go for it. Did it haven't changed it now we have so much IP and everything else in my branding around it that I'm just like, changing this is going to be a nightmare.
Cory McKane 13:25
Well, thankfully, you have a company that SEO doesn't really matter. Like you could have no website and you could still do what you're doing. So like just like, I my old company was perfect. It was spelled p e r f ICT like it was fit, capitalize. And it was like in the Android store. You would type it in and it would autocorrect to perfect and then we just would disappear. And you'd have to say Did you mean you have to click Did you mean and then it would pop up? So like that kind of shit is so irritating, but you guys don't really have to deal with I mean, of course, I can't find it as easily but like, you know, I'm not you know your client. So we'll link it here for you. Nice. Let's like Twitter isn't
Jack Medellin 14:01
a word. You know? If you're good enough, and you're doing well enough in industry, you'll find it.
Cory McKane 14:06
But I will argue Twitter's also not a misspelt aspect. That's that's the that's argument I'd be I'd be like, Well, yeah, Google did it. And then I as I thought it over the years, I was like, there's not a word called Google. So it's like you're you don't have to like worry about the misspelling. So. Yeah, anyways,
Unknown Speaker 14:26
I feel less thrown on the bus now.
Cory McKane 14:27
Thank you. Good. It's a good gamertag story. So who are the coach? Are you the owner, the sole co founder? Do you have other co founders or?
Colby Harvey 14:34
So I'm actually no. So I technically have two other co founders. So I to preface this, like when I I founded the company in the original work and everything else. And I found my co founders later, and I realized their passion and what they're building. It's because they're engineers. So like, they love tackling hard problems. Yeah, and whoa, for me to give them an extremely hard problem. Yeah, later But with that being said, I found with a company and how I actually found my co founders, one of them I was, you know, his name's Don, like, I was an electrical, like circuits class with him. Great guy super amazing look eats, if he could like, like eat an actual physical drone he would but sounds horrible. So if I'm in class, and then you know, my, my co founder, Braden, who's, I mean, like, he's like, really like the brains of the technical operation, right? Like, I'm like I was talking with a certain point. Now I'm going at it. So I'm here. But he really built up like the navigational stack and everything like the autonomous navigational stack. So I I actually put in at Arizona State like we have, you have capsuled programs in order to graduate way and I was I was a part of the school like the City School of Engineering for about like, for two and a half years. So I made relations and connections with professors. So I actually ended up creating, like making a proposal when it came to the company. And I gave it to the classes to see if I get students. I didn't happen to be one of the people that chose his team chose the project. And he was the only one that was extremely communicative, communicative with me, excuse me. And was working on the project. And actually, it seemed like he would come down to I'd make him drive like an hour, an hour and a half down at like Marina Arizona, in the middle of nowhere to go like scan planes and like certain really kind of doing things. So like at that point, I asked him like, Hey, do you want to be my co founder?
Cory McKane 16:24
When you first start? Are you manually scanning planes with like, some Star Wars escalator? Or like you? Are you holding it? Like you're doing a drone? Or like, what are you doing? Like step one, because you don't have the drone? Yet at that point, right? Or do you have the drone? No, we didn't have the journal. So what do you mean by scanning? Um, I mean, it was really just kind of collecting data, right, like scanning with your eyes, then is that where you're
Colby Harvey 16:45
really looking? And like taking pictures and like trying to like figure out okay, how the hell are we gonna actually do this? Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. And that was the hardest part. Because I'm like, we're working with multimillion dollar aircraft. I mean, like getting somebody says, what, like, 130 100 $40 million? Yeah. Easily. So like, I'm like, Who the hell's gonna give me access to like these aircraft? Yeah, exactly. And then that's when I found my mentors. I kind of know that, like, my father actually recognized him as my father, who believed in me believe in the company says, like, hey, like, I give you free rein, like, I can go there. Everyone knows me and just let it just don't hit the play. And I'm just, you got him three times. It was really an eye or anything else.
Drew Bellcock 17:23
Have you ever had a plane? No. Let's go.
Unknown Speaker 17:27
Haven't seen it happen before me? No, no, no, Jeff, Jack's claiming
Cory McKane 17:31
just with the drone. What do you mean by that question, just like, yeah,
Drew Bellcock 17:34
like, like, the whole point of using the drones to scan is like it's allegedly safer. And like, then running into them with the scissor lift, like we were talking about
Cory McKane 17:41
earlier. Gotcha. I feel like a drone wouldn't really hurt a plane. I mean, it could be
Jack Medellin 17:44
Well, I mean, those prompts been pretty fast. They probably cut through, but, you know, it's got it's got distance sensing, and it knows where it's at. So it's not gonna hit in
Cory McKane 17:52
the denominator.
Drew Bellcock 17:53
So I had a question like, You guys mentioned that you leveraging AI for your scanning technologies? And like the analysis of your data? Do you think that your product is going to be a full replacement for human operators? Or is it going to be collaborative?
Colby Harvey 18:11
Well, I'll tell you how I pitch it. It's a good way. So the answer to that is no. The The reason why I gave you this statistic in the very early part of this, the age of this podcast is because it's a it's a really strong and valid statistic on the industry. This system is not poised to replace technicians. Trust me, we have that we've spoken to a multitude of different unions, who were afraid of this. And then we told them like, Hey, this is to make your job safer and much more efficient. Right? There's, there are not enough technicians that are replacing the ones that are going out of the door. And we also they take a lot of knowledge with our systems, psycho tideline is meant to augment human potential.
Drew Bellcock 18:57
So you see it as like, collaborative, that
Jack Medellin 19:00
collaborative. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I mean, human cells to repair the damage out there are out there finding it, you know, telling you where it's at taking care of the boring stuff, so they can go focus on the fun things, okay, I'm gonna go replace this part on the actual, or I'm gonna break this panel off. And, you know, dig into the wires, as opposed to having to take, you know, a couple of days to go to walk along the way. And, Mark, our intent is
Colby Harvey 19:21
serious when he says a couple of days, like, I mean, it literally takes a team of like four people depend on the size of aircraft, LinkedIn, 20, and 200 hours to inspect one of these aircraft, especially when we did measurements. It's a long time.
Drew Bellcock 19:32
And you mentioned you were at Lockheed prior to this, right. So I imagine you have to do a lot of inspections for your manufacturing aircraft to not just when they're in service, right?
Jack Medellin 19:42
Yeah, there are all sorts of cameras and fit checks that go through on the production line. It's a little bit more stable than environment because you've got Standard Work Instructions, you've got parks that are coming at a certain you know, fit. I mean, there are a couple of times where something gets dropped, but then you just grab another one and put it on there. But then after you roll the plane off Production Line, you'd have checkoff flights you've got 30 ish hours worth of test flights making sure the wings flap that the cockpit opens all that stuff. And so they're you know, you're you're potentially getting damaged during that too as somebody drops a wrench or you know a bird happens so it's it's it's full on from manufacturing to all the way until you retire that plane
Cory McKane 20:18
I feel like birds happen should have been you guys that would have been a great slogan
Jack Medellin 20:29
they had a thing called called the burger, they would do put frozen chicken soup bird Gary at the at the cockpit to make sure that it would work. Nice. And the legend was that somebody left one of the chickens in there overnight and came back the next day and you smelled like something and
Cory McKane 20:40
you're gonna make a joke like it was it came back to life or something
very cool. So you mentioned earlier that like, when you came out, like when you first had this idea, you were like, Alright, here we go. Like that's pretty much like you had the idea and you're still working on it. So like, that's the target market change at all like that you were like, you're still working with the same thing that you wanted to when you first start because like all of us that have companies, we're always like, this is what we're going to do. And then we're like, oh, like maybe that's not a good idea, actually. Are you still just like this is the idea. And then you're still doing the same concept? Same target market everything.
Colby Harvey 21:18
Yeah, actually. So Mike, has it has a market change? Absolutely. They actually want to adopt it now. I mean, first of all, the idea like it was it's a great idea to automate this, like this really archaic, like, solution. You know, I mean, I mean process for the industry. But yeah, you know, it wasn't really until like it was we were getting traction prior COVID. But like after COVID happened, it really like changed how the industry is like how I'm gonna guess anything about the aviation industry, the airlines, but they have razor thin margins, all the way down to the maintenance side. So anything that can they can do to alleviate the I mean, the the pain of potentially losing our lien or the losses of revenue, because of we had to take another day to inspect this aircraft to get this part and like they want to take it. So they're doing everything in their power now, to really do like drive down those costs. And that means the adoption of a lot more automated, like automated technologies and digital taskforce solutions and things like that. So
Cory McKane 22:22
I have two questions for that first one is similar by last one. So are you targeting Like, who do you even target? And are you like reaching out to Southwest? Are you reaching out to like, some sort of governing body that commands all of like, the US, like airlines kind of thing? Are you going after the military or private airlines? Like what are you we're all like, what are you going after?
Colby Harvey 22:42
I mean, I think the easiest way to say it was like, oh, kind of all of the above, and that governing bodies like the FAA, but like they're
Drew Bellcock 22:48
interesting, and there's not a business,
Colby Harvey 22:51
ya know, so like, who like who we really target, you know, our target customer base are any airlines or maintenance providers, or like manage routers or like their grid means providers for airlines with tight cooperation. So like your Americans, your delta, like delta TechOps your southwest tech ops and that also at the same time, they also outsource a lot of those things as your heico There's your SD engineerings there's your a RS world
Cory McKane 23:16
Gotcha. So when you first when you first get your first product out there though, are you like calling southwest or like where do you start like like a small airline like like a local one? Like how do you like cuz you can't just like hey, I've drones like, called southwest up to like, here trust me, like, you know what I mean?
Drew Bellcock 23:30
Like, do you have customers? Yeah, we do. Yeah, who's your first customer
Colby Harvey 23:34
our first customer was actually the customer that allowed us to do our development on their facilities the sanitation services they're out in marina in Tucson and now opening like another location in Mexico very cool. Also like a defense contractor reminder if you've ever heard them as well and then we have a customer agreement I don't know if I can say it like literally publicly but it's one of the top tier airline as well. Nice I tell you to cut it
and then also one of the largest air third party aircraft repair station in North America is very
Cory McKane 24:10
cool. And then one more thing before we take the killer because I wanted to cheers and I was like fuck, we should have to kill it since I would like when there are random crashes that like unfortunately happened like overseas and stuff like that like or do you believe that if your drone had been the thing that scan that plane that it wouldn't have crashed? Not to like a guarantee but like Do you think there's like like a much better chance that it wouldn't have
Jack Medellin 24:35
potentially I mean the 737 maximum was because the gas
Drew Bellcock 24:41
broke off right and poor training and not
Jack Medellin 24:45
whenever you have potential design flaws like that it's tough but if it's anything with the defect from Miss Miss basic maintenance, yeah, we can help there.
Cory McKane 24:54
Make me feel better about flying because every time I fly, I get more scared.
Colby Harvey 24:59
For airplane means we make sure that you don't have duct tape on airplane.
Cory McKane 25:02
Why don't mean you guys ended up I mean, just in general just general flying, like give me something to be like this doesn't ever happen. I'll be like, okay, cool.
Drew Bellcock 25:08
hasn't brought down a plane. So if you're shaking you're safer than driving a car,
Unknown Speaker 25:13
right? It is. Yeah, it's ticket by the by the numbers.
Cory McKane 25:16
I went on a date with this girl a few years ago that was a pilot and she told me this really helped me she goes, turbulence is kind of like when you're driving over bumps when you're driving, and I was like, I feel so much fucking better. Oh, my God, so many flights, and I'm just like, Dude, you're doing and I was like, I hate it so much. So that also helps me. I'm gonna remember that sentence just as the first
Colby Harvey 25:36
show. It's a killer of bourbon. Did you know good.
Cory McKane 25:40
Turbulence was never Okay, awesome. That's a good note to end on. I feel way better. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. We hit pause. Alright, so tequila 512 is an Austin owned and operated tequila company. distilled into lisco. It's made from 100% Blue agave, and real volcanic spring water, crisp and clean with just a hint of sweetness. It's the perfect anytime tequila. Whether you've been coding all day and need to unwind, or your VC group is throwing a party. You can always count on tequila 512 to bring you incredible tequila at an incredible price. You can find the BLANCO reposado or an EO at your local retailer.
Colby Harvey 26:20
He's by the way because it no he's Mexican.
Jack Medellin 26:22
I'm gonna Latina dude.
Cory McKane 26:23
I can I can say on Yahoo if you want me to.
Jack Medellin 26:26
Japanese your Japanese one quarter. Really? My mom's gonna tell you
Cory McKane 26:30
Oh, we didn't do that again. I didn't even after I choose
Drew Bellcock 26:36
right this time.
Jack Medellin 26:38
Read Pozzato Repko Saddam rather there was a
Cory McKane 26:42
respire Saddam, that's embarrassing. I stopped being why there's misspelling the word.
Unknown Speaker 26:49
Just a white thing. It's something I just can't read.
Cory McKane 26:52
It's part of me being winded. Yes, yeah. All right. This podcast is sponsored by tequila. 512 a local tequila here and ATX Okay, Austin. Cheers to me. Cheers to you. Cheers to tequila 512. Salute. Especially stuff, man. What's your man? What
Drew Bellcock 27:17
was that cocktail?
Cory McKane 27:19
That cocktail was two ounces of reposado. Two ounces of Topo Chico two ounces of grape juice 1/4 ounce of lemon or lime juice Excuse me. And then a little to he and rim that is the we strive 512 cocktail. Love
Colby Harvey 27:37
it. But whatever it is, I know mostly well night
Jack Medellin 27:39
healthy, refreshing. I mean, what more do you want? Do grapefruit
Cory McKane 27:42
grapefruit juice? All day all day. If you saw them on talk to me like 20 minutes to squeeze the grape. Please plan that out. But here we are. So we're back here to the gym earlier. I did actually do arms today. So that's actually might be why I put an extra I was like I put an extra shot in mind. But I was like that was just trade from the shot model. So you know, we're just trying to make me feel fat. I got you. It's working. Well, you were the tightest shirt I've ever seen.
Unknown Speaker 28:06
So it's gonna show off
Cory McKane 28:10
like it's like the drone made that shirt just so it fit you perfectly
Colby Harvey 28:13
3d printed. model that up last Chico to me
Cory McKane 28:17
nice like the halo show. Yeah. Great show. amazing show. We're actually sponsored by the halo show. Thank you Amazon. response by Amazon to Yeah, there we go. Yeah, I'm gonna move this one out of my face
Colby Harvey 28:28
as permanent plus, okay.
Cory McKane 28:30
Oh, you're right. Dang it. So that's embarrassing.
Jack Medellin 28:33
That whole scene? Sorry. Let me just say
Cory McKane 28:36
I apologize guys. i We're back at it. So one thing I wanted to ask is, how is the drone community? Is it similar to like web three? Like it's really tightly knit? You know everybody in it? Or is it like, you're kind of just all doing your own thing?
Colby Harvey 28:51
That's actually a really good question. Like, one web three in its own right is like is it's a whole Bernie Bros club. Boys Club. It's like, I got me I didn't really seem that much. I live in San Francisco.
Jack Medellin 29:03
So it's drowns out to be to be honest.
Cory McKane 29:08
Well, you're, this is more of a bro and this that's more of like, there's just guys like, okay.
Unknown Speaker 29:16
It's not quite as tight. Yeah. So like,
Colby Harvey 29:18
do we know everyone's like, I think like after COVID happened, or during COVID, like the community that we once had that was being built like, it started like, I mean, just like everybody, like, you know, I just saw like, I just recently watched this. I'm the CEO. He's the CEO of a rapid robotics meeting guy reached out to him he's like, he's raising money on robotics might not be drones, but like, trust me you try raising money for like a robotics company is not the easiest thing to do in the world. Yes, me. And I reached out to him, they reached out but I'm like, it's it's not like there's a ton of them around, you know, so like the ones that I do see, I tried to make sure that I'm like, we have a relationship at least so we like smart drone.
Cory McKane 29:57
And that's true. You can just like I'm sorry that It's true. Also, you can just be like, I'm a web three company overnight, like whereas drone, you're kinda like, you're you have to, like, fucking make a drone company, like your
Colby Harvey 30:09
company, all my money on fire, like.
Cory McKane 30:14
Unfortunately, I do have a lot of friends of the web three community, so I might delete that. But I also might not because I also agree. It's true.
Colby Harvey 30:22
I mean, I've had people trying to give me I was like, I looked, I went to consensus, and I was like, okay, yeah,
Cory McKane 30:26
I got the consensus. Yeah, it's
Drew Bellcock 30:28
good to drink again to stop the conversation. That's right. So what is it like innovation in the drone community or in like, some of the technologies or the subsystems going into it that you guys are really excited about? Like, what's something that's cutting edge that most people don't know about yet?
Colby Harvey 30:45
I said, Well, I'm excited about but
Jack Medellin 30:46
you go ahead, you seem ready. Okay.
Colby Harvey 30:50
I'm always ready. That's the point with this year. I think one of the coolest things about our technology is like, the way that we navigate, we're not just using like optical sensors like Scotty or some like that we're doing something that actually gives us very precise measurements. And then me. And trust me, it's a lot harder to do like you guys have seen self driving cars, right? Like they have a spinning like letters that are going all the time. So we use a similar system, we were the first drone company to actually implement that system to do this type of work. So we don't just navigate in two dimensional space, we navigate in three dimensional space, which is interesting and been infinitely more difficult.
Drew Bellcock 31:24
When what sense? Are you using it for that? Is it LIDAR? No, that's cool. Yeah, it's see it might like multiple arrays, or how are you getting the vertical component.
Jack Medellin 31:33
So the LiDAR, it's, it's a bunch of plates, and you get, you get an angle up and an angle down. So you've got 92 recovered. And then from there, you kind of target where you're at, you have another vertical Lidar and gives you some altitude or some barometer. You merge all those sensors together and figure out where you are in the
Cory McKane 31:48
space. So for like the non cronies, I'm just going to ask it. So like you're saying before, used to go like this, and this and this, and now can dislike, what do you guys know? So like, most All right, you're right. Okay.
Colby Harvey 32:02
That would be that nice, though it's not right. For you, I'm just getting a Go ahead. Know, what I was referencing was like we're using like self driving cars only operated two dimensional. Eventually, you see way Mo, you see whatever, you know, Uber had before, somebody from my apartment that was interesting.
Unknown Speaker 32:21
This podcast not sponsored.
Colby Harvey 32:24
I'm the worst you can do. Have you do any of these ever again. But what essentially like they're only operating into the forward, backward, left and right. That's it. For our system, which really excited about it. And it's cool is like we're using that same technology, but we introduced a new XE. And that is something that is unique, really difficult to do.
Drew Bellcock 32:43
It's good. Did you guys have to write a lot of like software behind that is all of it. That's amazing. Are you going to sell that to other other companies or like other drug companies? Or is that the secret sauce that makes rise?
Jack Medellin 32:54
We may license it out? I mean, anything's on the table. Right now. That's, that's the core operating system of the hardware itself. But as it gets better and packaged, I mean, if we can jumpstart the community to make sure that drones are more accepted. That's that's definitely the table.
Colby Harvey 33:07
Well, we we also we did build the drones ourselves. Again, it wasn't by choice by kind of, you know, we could have bought something off the shelf like we would have, but like, for what we needed and us for our customers wanted there. They, we got to make it and so we built this system. So it's actually I wish I had one of the drones here so
Cory McKane 33:22
I can show you guys but I have a little oddball put a little video over it.
Colby Harvey 33:29
But no, what's really cool about it is like we know that we build something that like integrated all the technologies and software because we're tougher integrators was really hard to do. But we did it with style, like we had, we want to design for the red dot award for product design. That's a big deal. Yeah. And the if award
Cory McKane 33:45
early this year. That's awesome. Very cool. Really quick, Drew, you got to talk closer to my fear. You're not only talking at them, but you're like this fucking faraway,
Jack Medellin 33:56
little skinny mics that you see
Cory McKane 33:57
people bring his fingers.
Drew Bellcock 34:00
I don't want to be so close to them cutting you out.
Cory McKane 34:01
I know you're about to win your talk, though. Just like your first year, when you talk really quick, and then like, yeah, so you get cool. So back to it. What we're just talking about? Okay, so what that's for, like, I don't know how to ask if that's for, like, literal, like aesthetics, like physical design, right? Or is it? I mean, it's just physical design at that point. Gotcha.
Jack Medellin 34:26
Yeah, I mean, it looks, it looks nice. And we're also at the bleeding edge of using LIDAR in, you know, drones that fly like, like, we are finding questions from our like, the LIDAR sensors generating and sending it back to the manufacturer and saying, Hey, what is this they go? We're not sure we'll get back to you on that. Like we're pushing the limits of what's going on.
Cory McKane 34:43
Very cool. And
Drew Bellcock 34:45
is your flight plan fully autonomous or like how much of human operations has to happen to make your system more question?
Jack Medellin 34:52
So the goal eventually is that a person doesn't have to be a part of it. So you can have a drone either like sitting on the runway, push a button, you know, hood opens and it goes out and why's that's great? Now it's, the operator will take it out, set it down next to the plane, you know, tell it how far away it is put in a data point of you know, this is a 737, or this is a, you know, a 350, or whatever it is. And then it takes off five years waypoint and starts navigating around,
Cory McKane 35:14
is it is it scanning the plane is taking a video or does it literally know what a part is. And if that part is broken, like or
Jack Medellin 35:21
so it takes the cameras doing snapshots, it does about a dozen images a second together and looks like a low frame rate video. Okay, but I mean, you're looking at 2000 photos per per inspection. And then we've got some algorithms on the back end that kind of pull that out to just the core four or 500 that somebody would want to look at. And then from there, you know, the damage protection that says these are the ones with damages the ones without the type of damage? I think it is, here's the size, and this is the part of the plane that we took that photo at Gotcha.
Drew Bellcock 35:47
Are you guys looking at just the flat images? Are you doing like photogrammetry and tomography? No.
Jack Medellin 35:56
But I know that I've heard Greg talk about it a bunch.
Drew Bellcock 36:00
All right, let's see, oh, I learned a
Colby Harvey 36:02
couple things, you know, I listened
to to absolutely not.
Cory McKane 36:09
This is like what it means like running an app company. I'm like, I know what flutter is. And I'm like, I can talk about flutter really quick.
Colby Harvey 36:17
too. Anyway, so like photogrammetry like to answer your question on like, I don't so photogrammetry is literally what it sounds like. It's like the measurement in within photos. So like we're doing like digital image stitching onto like a 2d image stitching into a 3d model representation. So that's how we use photogrammetry so you can we can do like the length and width of a damage until we get to the depth so yeah, there's a lot of photogrammetry techniques on what's going on lighting angles,
Cory McKane 36:40
is that just photography combined with geometry is exactly
Unknown Speaker 36:43
exactly now that you know
Cory McKane 36:46
more than you ever smarter and God looks at the sizing we bring it all down. Maybe people are rewatching like that's such a good point. I was thinking that he said it you know I'm saying very cool. Good question. That's why I brought drew
Drew Bellcock 37:01
grounding us in the course guys, of
Cory McKane 37:03
course, from v1 to now what are the main differences and I don't mean to be wondering like what you sketched up like the first product that you physically built, and then like maybe even shipped out to like your first aviation client difference between that versus like the current product you have right now.
Colby Harvey 37:18
So let's think about this way anytime you start like a company that has robotics and I know you could probably as you know to do hardware like you understand this and like it's it's hard hardware oh my god love it so much fun. I'm just takes longer. It takes longer it takes more to develop like a usable product. Yeah, exactly. And money hitting like various investors that love you. But it takes me like 35 years to actually come up with a product that's usable for market switching when you're doing something brand new. It takes time so when we first came up with the very original version of dragonfly we so the I named the Dragonfly is still very interesting. It's like Dragon with like a Gu a Mr. geoana.
Cory McKane 37:57
Of course. Of course. Not as DNS. Yeah, it was like dragons flying
Drew Bellcock 38:07
dragon rising. Dragon rise.
Colby Harvey 38:10
I'm nauseous anyway.
Cory McKane 38:15
Birds happen should still be there. T shirt. No, I literally we were at we were at unbar. Let's see. Oh, and this guy had a shirt. That was a pigeon. It just said pigeons aren't real. And that was the shirt. I fucking it's my favorite shirt.
Jack Medellin 38:29
My sister today sent me a link for this website. That is birds are real.com
Cory McKane 38:33
There's a hole to move it. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 38:35
birds work for the bourgeoisie. Take him down. Yeah,
Colby Harvey 38:41
I'm really gonna give me a meme right now.
Okay, anyway, going back to the question. We're gonna circle back to that. I know circle back to the point when it came to like our drone. So we so it'd be V one, two, b two. We want to do that. Like the very first one we've made. We've got our first set of funny and I'm like I call it like arts. We call it mantis. It was fucking ugly. It's a cool name, though. No, it was a cool name. fucking ugly. Like it was literally like a sandwich board of like all the internals and two carbon fiber like picking things loves a quadcopter that like barely functioned as a drone. Yeah, gonna sell people on this. But but it did, because people saw like they saw the potential of where the machine where it's going. So we took not the design cues, but we took like the technology that we built into this. And I took it and like, I think I'm a Product founder. At the end of the day like product design things. I'm like, I like things aesthetically. And I was like we need to make sure that this thing is palatable for the industry like not just palpable but like I want people to like the thing is like I've loved this as it's amazing. Like and I want I want to use this to engage with this every day. Yeah. And so we took that and I worked for the firm out in like San Jose that actually really love and we created what is now dragonfly. And it is this artistic mosaic of amazingness. That is not only beautiful, I know. But it's not. Yeah, it's not only beautiful, but I'm like, it's intentional. Yeah, like, high visibility, you can see, you know what's going on. And it's easily Nice. Yeah, I think there's
Jack Medellin 40:22
a way up on that. On that also is whenever we've taken it out to testing out to, you know, actual airplane making shops, the guys, the liberal workers never really comes out and just says, Hey, that was awesome. You know? Yeah, whenever that's whenever that you guys are doing that. I want to be the first one in line. I think the big part of that is the design of it looks like not I mean, drums definitely cool for them to see and work with. But yeah, hey, this actually looks cool. I can take a photo of it. And so to
Drew Bellcock 40:45
me the other day, like that's kind of the this Elon effect, like he made rockets sexy. Nobody had thought about rockets is an interesting thing. And it's so hard, it takes so much money and so much time to develop. But he made it interesting, and he made it look good. And he made it like understandable to regular people.
Jack Medellin 41:02
And also with the electric cars like, Tesla, they looked like golf cars. Fast,
Cory McKane 41:07
they're fun. What I like, what I like about you, what you said is two things. The first thing was that, like, when you're first getting started, you didn't take the time to make it look sexy, because like, That's a fucking waste. Because like, anything you do, it's like, it's like, wireframing with an app, it's like anything that you make, is gonna have to be deleted anyways, at some point, or like, moved or whatever. So it's like, Why would you waste your fucking time making it look pretty when it's gonna get deleted anyways. And then the second thing is, like I, the more I get into the tech world, I just like, cleanliness, and just smoothness and just like, just, like, just glossiness. And it's like, you don't like yes, of course, you can easily, easily, easily easily push a gross looking drone that works out to the government, and they'll fucking buy it if it works. Like, unfortunately, that's how most of our competition runs their companies, like accounting firms after gone after government fucking agency will hire and purchase the shittiest ugliest things. And so the fact that like, you took the time to like, they're like, Nah, don't give a fuck, we're gonna make it look really, really fucking good to is awesome. But then like you mentioned, it gives you a leg up too, because then every person that sees it talks about it wants to see it and wants to have it as part of their company too. So I think that has so many benefits to just like, making it look like really attractive. So
Drew Bellcock 42:21
yeah, you know, on that note, do you guys have anyone in this space is doing like similar application of drones? So you guys are doing you have competitors? And yeah, and what makes you better? Oh,
Colby Harvey 42:31
god. Yeah, tends to QUESTION Yeah, we do. So there's, what's great about our company is that we're the only company in the United States, the largest
Cory McKane 42:41
market, I have a company here actually
doing we're doing we also have a company
Colby Harvey 42:53
no, we're the only US based like, like company worked in this space. So like, the largest market, like we can work with the US military without any issues because like we're founded and we're based here, what our competitors.
Cory McKane 43:03
What was it? What do you call this? Have a name like your specific space
Jack Medellin 43:06
drone inspection? Well, I guess drone drone aircraft inspection.
Colby Harvey 43:11
So like, in this case, and like how Boeing says, because of the conversations we've had with Boeing is like the remote inspection systems,
Drew Bellcock 43:18
specifically for aviation, right, specifically aviation, because there's other because there's other inspection companies if you like, refineries or infrastructure, or construction,
Cory McKane 43:27
are we naming the space right now? What are we calling it? Whatever,
Jack Medellin 43:31
remote inspection
Colby Harvey 43:34
I mean, like again, I'm not gonna come up with anything sexy. I
Drew Bellcock 43:36
came with raw rise inspection.
Cory McKane 43:40
Remote aviation inspection, right.
Jack Medellin 43:43
Oh, right. Re inspection zsC
Colby Harvey 43:51
it's so funny cuz I was like, dig this like, like this guy like in San Francisco and like he's director of marketing and like people keep mispronouncing like Ryan they say Brizzy whatever. Like people to think about this anyway, he's just like, like, he looks at me just like change the Z to like read. So people when they see it, and
Drew Bellcock 44:11
they read Bri, Bri
Cory McKane 44:14
but you didn't do that daughter said what you're saying that for? Its
Unknown Speaker 44:21
supply chain issue we're working on? No idea. We
Unknown Speaker 44:24
were gonna ask him that question.
Cory McKane 44:26
Wait until our Series A to get new shirts.
Colby Harvey 44:32
Hopefully, coming soon.
Cory McKane 44:33
I'm just doing your show while you're talking. I'm like, again, I thought I was gonna say,
Colby Harvey 44:43
to answer your question. We're not the only people this space like we have. There's like two other competitors there. They said Netherlands they're based in France. They're working in this space as well. One of the things that that I like is that when you have a very like kind of like a The Blue Ocean market, right? There's not a lot of people in this space. But you do have a handful. You don't want to be the first ones. Yeah. Because then they go because that's a lot of marketing a lot of gear that you have to do where it's like we have to be chewy, like resilience coupled with how we spend our capital. Yeah, a lot of that stuff goes engineering because what we build is like funneling the brand new. Like it doesn't it didn't exist. Well,
Cory McKane 45:24
you guys are doing the same shit. Yeah, definitely. Like there's no pipe dream. There's no prize like guys are literally it's like the same conversation. But yeah, David mark is way better than your you have a cleaner for their products really clean? Actually. You can see it.
Drew Bellcock 45:40
Yeah, we put it on new grounds. It's very, very simple.
Cory McKane 45:44
The robot is very segmented, they have like, the livestream has like unnecessarily Sexy Commercials. And you're like, okay, like, unnecessary.
Drew Bellcock 45:56
One of our engineers is super good at renders, and every grin, like will do actual, actually product shoots, and they look so good that people think it's a render and they think it's not real. Like that happens. Well, that's
Jack Medellin 46:08
a good problem to have,
Unknown Speaker 46:09
I guess. So but then we have to convince people like, No, this actually is real. Have somebody like standing in the photo room? Can we have one of those?
Colby Harvey 46:17
For sure. We're gonna have conversations about this as the marketing angles, what we really need to work on that's our biggest thing. It's my big focus is connections.
Cory McKane 46:26
We why we strive. This is why we strive This is why we strive This is why every podcast I've done pipe dream has gotten a sick fucking intro. So like we're gonna keep this we're in the pipe dream headquarters, by the way, so we're gonna keep pumping it up. Question was sponsored by
Drew Bellcock 46:40
Jack Stone, you say provide his input on like, why you better than your competitors? Oh, yeah.
Jack Medellin 46:45
So I mean, the US May is the is a clear designation, we can we can go after the US military and any of the MRO shops that do commercial and military, there's a little little symbiosis there. We're also at the bleeding edge of LIDAR. There's not really, you know, a lot of good LIDAR uses out there. And especially the our competitors are a lot of camera based navigation. They have a leg up on regulation, some point some parts because of working outside of the FAA, but yeah, I mean, other than the techies, the people, I think, are super smart.
Cory McKane 47:18
So why why me two things one, every time you guys talk, I'm like, you will want I'm glad that you're here with pipe dream, but also, like, I interviewed Ritwik on Friday, and he's literally like, doing camera sensors for like, for the government. Infrastructure. Same thing. roads and sidewalks. Yeah. So like, literally, you guys should just talk. Second thing is, so you're saying like, you know, competition, obviously, blah, blah, blah. But like, there are other drone companies, why can't they do what you're doing? Is the what is the main question? I think I'll take that one. Because I'm Colby,
Colby Harvey 47:47
cos. Hi. Nice to meet you. Yeah, we're not saying that. They can't do what we're doing. But the thing is, to get to where we are is,
Drew Bellcock 47:58
I mean, they're not doing
Colby Harvey 48:01
and like they're not doing it. Because, you know, either they're large, and there's this, there's literally quite a handful of drone manufacturers that are known. You can get Scott, do you got DJI and you have these? But like they're not doing it? Because for us, I'm like, I don't know, I woke up on life on hardmode. If I want to be honest, Detroit, I'm gonna go into my full background. But like, it's hard. It's really, really hard, especially when you have a product that doesn't need to be in that specific space. Why would you change your market analysis? Why would you change your product in order to fit a need that that's not going to like that for you got to drive like the the the profits like, image industry is flush with cash. Like I think American has like a $2 billion treasure. They have a lot of money. I don't know whether or not so much money for flights, but whatever, they keep it. But it's it's not impossible. And it's not impossible to create it with the level of development that it takes to get to where we are. We're a small startup, you guys understand this? Yeah, we're scrappy. We're gonna do whatever we can in order to get there. We're gonna do it at the cheapest and best way possible. For sure. Large industries, large companies like like Boeing, like like it, like, I've tried these, but like when you're specific winner that large, the, the, the ratio or the percentage of time that you're gonna actually fail trying to, like bring one of these memories high? Because you know, the same, you're not hungry. Like you have plenty. I don't we don't deliver on this and like, I'm not eating. I mean, I'll find out a way I don't know, but like, you know,
Drew Bellcock 49:30
like ticking the 512
Colby Harvey 49:32
I love to drink my calories next.
Cory McKane 49:34
Move it out of the way so you can't see to the gun.
Colby Harvey 49:39
Yeah, but it's like it's, it's totally possible like but so it's like we're trying to like not only building something that's cool, but we try to like, like shine a light on like this. Plus, also the sensors of the sensor is very expensive. Yeah, I'll be honest, like, like, if we want to get like an OS one liner, we use ours or partner. It's like $12,000
Jack Medellin 49:56
try to just try to put 3000 liners into a small little package Earth Are you
Cory McKane 50:02
also a shock
Unknown Speaker 50:02
absorber? Yeah,
Cory McKane 50:04
my mom told me that every day when I went to school, she was like, try if I can, you can't do it, you can't do it. I'll tell you
Drew Bellcock 50:11
why. Because you're underselling it to like, there's not a lot of drone manufacturers period. And I don't think there's very many outside of like the like defense primes that are building for a specific application. They're definitely not the inspection industry,
Jack Medellin 50:27
like DJI and scatti are consumer grade, right? So so you're gonna get smaller, cheaper components, and probably not as built to last, or you're gonna get all
Drew Bellcock 50:35
the perks and they're only like visual cameras, like visual visual light spectrum cameras, and that's it.
Jack Medellin 50:41
Whereas recently, you know, laser pointer tells you absolutely, yeah, crash away, but
Drew Bellcock 50:46
what was that? Was that part of the decision to like, manufacture your own product? Or did you just kind of like, start doing that and realize all the benefits afterwards?
Cory McKane 50:58
So
Colby Harvey 50:59
again, so the reason why we like manufacture our own product is because there's nothing on the market today that we can you can't use the Jags are Chinese and we work with the DOD. So like, that's a huge No, no, it's a big fight. Like struggle was not in existence when we started it. So there wasn't even an option. Yeah, we mostly did it out of necessity. Trust me, like if we could like switch when it comes to the venture capital raising if we can, like not be in the draw manufacturing business. Trust me, that's alright. If I can just buy these things and then just develop software. I would. Yeah,
Cory McKane 51:27
but at the same time, though, like you were saying earlier, I had the same kind of question. I was like, I think if you had just bought them at some point, you'd be like, fuck, we have to do this ourselves anyways, like you would have, you would have hit that. Well. You hit that at some point? Yeah. And it probably would have gotten worse and
Colby Harvey 51:42
worse and worse. Like, it would have cost us money to sort of do because at the time
Cory McKane 51:47
exactly. Yeah. So time is
Jack Medellin 51:49
arguably as important as money even if you're just startup money isn't gonna last so long so you got to efficient with your time. Exactly. And
Colby Harvey 51:56
really wonder like your money's gonna last very long. Not really. To make the money
Unknown Speaker 52:05
we're working on a book garage. Okay, we work out of
Drew Bellcock 52:09
a garage for a year and a half.
Jack Medellin 52:10
Yeah, I mean, whatever you gotta get to.
Drew Bellcock 52:11
Yeah, yeah. Totally been there. Has the like chip shortage and like the raw materials like shortage across the globe affected you guys?
Jack Medellin 52:22
I would say yeah, definitely. So the long lead part for us at this time are the CPUs that companion computers that are on there, we're running Nvidia
Drew Bellcock 52:30
products on Indiana's R TX twos
Jack Medellin 52:34
excuse right now
Drew Bellcock 52:35
freaking kidding me we're running TX two zero the reason wow
Unknown Speaker 52:43
thanks for one today oh my Really 400 On Amazon I bought them all you guys are so annoying. I'm gonna have to put
Jack Medellin 52:52
were downstairs
Cory McKane 52:55
I think we're done I'm gonna have to put so many fucking definitions on the screen ever like 20
Jack Medellin 53:06
So the TX two is the NVIDIA chip that controls the drum platforms.
Cory McKane 53:14
For small robot it's the M It's the m one of the drone community. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 53:17
it's the Intel said yes. You said yeah, that's like the mid grade Intel thought was right. Yeah.
Cory McKane 53:27
I from zero knowledge that was a fucking that was pretty close to it
Unknown Speaker 53:33
was pretty interesting. You're gonna be able to
Drew Bellcock 53:35
do we're seeing the hardest component to get as the TX two is? Yeah. Because we need them and you're taking them from us. Other than that, that's correct. Well, so how are you building your supply chain and like local manufacturing? Because I'm assuming you're doing a little manufacturing? Yeah. Are you building that to be robust in the future? Yeah. So
Jack Medellin 53:51
our manufacturer right now because we're at a low rate production is just is here in Austin. He's a big drone enthusiast, you know, does runs of 1000 drones at a time for mostly for cinematography? So he's helping us with he does you know from micro to, you know, a football
Cory McKane 54:08
what is that a time you like if you do it in 1000 At a time like what's the what's the like the time range on that? And I know it's hard to answer for him.
Jack Medellin 54:14
Aren't it's his it's his business like he he makes drones on his own and we're using him to manufacture ours. Gotcha. 1000 drones probably a month for him Gotcha. We don't use like a CNC press like all that stuff. Like at his shop just over there at the at the end of Mopac. If you take 45 West for a little bit o que es el cual standard. They address phenomenal super super smart guys
Unknown Speaker 54:39
in this Detroit like hey, I want an intro
Unknown Speaker 54:43
Yeah, we don't want to think it's like we don't want to we don't want to do the manufacturing ourselves.
Jack Medellin 54:46
Although I will say he did buy 150 Jetson TX two's recently so he might he might be positive definitely want to introduce you. Because I really
Cory McKane 54:57
want to come say hello. So peace of mind. Okay, go ahead and look
Jack Medellin 55:01
for him. Like if we have all the parts he says you can build one in about three days are the the jet, the NVIDIA chips being? I don't know if you can find them online and whatever it whatever the shipping time is. But for the Xavier, if you go to that you're looking at like 30 weeks to get one of those beds. Yeah, I mean, they're orders of magnitude stronger and processing power. So for us, that's a that's a big deal, because we can start to load on a lot more of the, you know, algorithms and control onto the onto the platform. Good. Because partially it is it is a offline mode cable, right, you can just set up a little local network and fly around. But currently, the processing has to be done either in the cloud or on the server.
Drew Bellcock 55:37
Okay, so you guys are doing your, like, navigation processing on the server? Are you doing it all?
Jack Medellin 55:42
No, no. So the drone flies by itself and captures all the data and stores it on onboard. But you have to pull the images off and then run those through the where the damage is what types of data processing
Drew Bellcock 55:53
is done in the cloud? That's
Cory McKane 55:54
probably I totally forgot. Yeah, we do edge computing. Xavier do tell them what you have your degree and we didn't forget mentioned this.
Drew Bellcock 56:03
In drones. That degree.
Unknown Speaker 56:09
Oh my god. He's asking alternate
Drew Bellcock 56:10
intro for drew a master's degree in aerospace specifically for drones and autonomy.
Cory McKane 56:17
I totally forgot that. Well, whenever you're like, I know. I have to figure it out. Because I was sitting here as I know, drone. And I know Drew knows a lot of stuff about this. But I'm like, he knows a lot. And I was like, oh, fuck, he has his master's and
Drew Bellcock 56:35
six years of my life. It's like
Jack Medellin 56:37
Cory gorgeous out he goes.
Cory McKane 56:41
I forgot we discussed this. He's like, why my master of like, what's new? Here? Yeah, no, literally, literally, I forgot to mention it.
Drew Bellcock 56:50
About me, it's about them. Jack was finishing his explanation of how they're making, how they're making their supply chain robust. And then like current market? Because that's a big thing for our companies. Like it doesn't affect software. But yeah.
Jack Medellin 57:03
I mean, the majority of components are off the shelf, either wiring or a few computers on board, the majority of the cost comes from the Lidar and the raw material, the structure of it, but the structure is Oh, in the camera. So so different cameras cost different amounts. But I mean, the structure as far as a 3d print in a carbon fiber, it's not. It's not taking damage is not like this, that's not a critical piece of
Cory McKane 57:29
paper, it's happened.
Jack Medellin 57:32
The carbon is from, you know, Japan or something like that. They're more about where's it? What is the data going through? Can we can we ensure that that is not going to be compromising to the system itself?
Drew Bellcock 57:42
Yeah, that makes sense. And is there any strategy to being here in Austin? Because like that, that's part of the podcast is like, this is about Austin startups. Right?
Colby Harvey 57:50
I can answer this question. Yeah. She
Jack Medellin 57:51
wants to know, you go ahead. Okay. Cool.
Colby Harvey 57:53
Well, so the strategy behind moving Austin and why move the company is a couple of reasons. First reason, like I used to live in San Francisco to just because I love San Francisco, probably at some point waiting to move back there.
Cory McKane 58:07
You visit, they're still tired all the time all the time.
Colby Harvey 58:11
Never gets a long time. ago, like sales was pretty much like I, you know, when we first started, like, firstly, I was sort of funding, like, okay, I can be in San Francisco. Again, I love it. But I'm like, I looked at my runway, and we either go from here, or we can like stay in San Francisco and go to here. So we ultimately, like I didn't know where we're gonna go. Founders. It's like, hey, why don't we look at Austin, Texas, like, I mean, I'll take a look at Sure. Whatever. And everyone thinks for a little bit. I'm like, okay, the startup community and seen is growing substantially here like, substantially and I'm like, you know, that kind of makes a lot of sense. Versus plus you're like, you have you have southwest you have American you have locking you have Boeing, you have to say SpaceX, you all
Cory McKane 58:51
got virgin now baby, Virgin,
Colby Harvey 58:54
one flight, but yeah, we've got a I'm trying to give Richard Branson Richard Branson.
Cory McKane 58:58
I have, I actually have a connect. I'm interviewing the connection. And next month, I have like
Colby Harvey 59:02
two of them, so just gotta get to my friend. Like, what?
Cory McKane 59:09
He might have 17 Like, okay, I'm not sure
Unknown Speaker 59:14
you're having dinner.
Cory McKane 59:16
I mean, I'm trying. He's like, Fuck you Korean surprise guests. No, like,
Colby Harvey 59:24
further just want to like what are the island is just like, oh, what's his name? Nick.
Cory McKane 59:32
Black dude, right? Yeah, and yeah, I was supposed to be I supposed to meet with him there when when virgin was here. We couldn't do it. And then I see on Instagram a week later. He's fucking with Richard Branson on the island. And I'm like, what? Like,
Colby Harvey 59:45
oh my god, we want to get since we're doing some traveling together. I'm not gonna get on this podcast, but
Cory McKane 59:49
we'll talk about it later. Yeah. Yeah, so
Colby Harvey 59:53
like, yeah, it doesn't matter. The point is, there's a lot of like opportunity in terms of like The like the business just like the location is here, right? It's
Drew Bellcock 1:00:03
like you were just saying like Richard Branson was in town, talking to people and doing stuff and you know, other influential people are here in town right?
Cory McKane 1:00:12
The pipe dream is here. And that's disk drive. I
Drew Bellcock 1:00:14
know we moved here to be a part of out. Here we made I think you shared in this first episode, right like the spreadsheet we made of where it moved five
Cory McKane 1:00:23
tree and put it up again. This is me the third time in five episodes.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:27
Every episode is sponsored by Excel.
Drew Bellcock 1:00:31
I was about to give a shout out to Cory actually. We made the spreadsheet and then if you know, Austin was not at the top and then we went to Korea's first beer pong tournament for tech and loved Austin.
Cory McKane 1:00:44
Oh, you played the to the first one yeah, he was they got they got pretty far too. Until he was really we did not we Oh. They brought that they brought it was double elimination. They brought three teams. They went they won one game. They went one and five. With three teams. Amazing, amazing style training my boys. Yeah, right. The rice team would pretty far. You know, it's hilarious. I have so many friends in tech that are like, like series A and B or whatever. And they're like, they met at one of my stupid beer pong tournaments.
Drew Bellcock 1:01:19
I mean, so many people that I'm friends with now, your first beer pong.
Cory McKane 1:01:23
It's insane. It's literally insane.
Drew Bellcock 1:01:26
I can't believe there's only one more left.
Cory McKane 1:01:29
I'm sure. Next year, I don't want to be still hosting beer pong tournaments. When I'm like 30 years old. Keep going. I want to I want to keep going to them. But yeah, well, Beer Pong is turned 30 and April. Well, you look amazing. So thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Colby Harvey 1:01:43
Like I said like, yes. The blood of my enemies. Yeah, that's right. Okay,
Cory McKane 1:01:48
so how much have you guys raised so far? And I'm gonna ask you specifically, because earlier you mentioned boyfriend, so obviously, like, I was gonna ask you about how is it raising as a black founder and also LGBTQ community as well? Because I got to ask him Yeah, it's
Colby Harvey 1:02:03
fair enough. Yeah, one most people like when you ever meet me like you never know. It's not like I'm hiding anything but you just really so
Cory McKane 1:02:11
that you're black or
Unknown Speaker 1:02:17
it's totally that don't let this exterior
Jack Medellin 1:02:22
you know, it's like Kobe.
Drew Bellcock 1:02:28
My, my CTO,
Jakob says, he's like, this is Kobe. And I was like, Yeah, you're not you're not cool. But you didn't say confidently? You're like, again, you don't see that? A quarter iron? How am I supposed to answer that? How am I supposed to answer but you were saying as I
Colby Harvey 1:02:51
was saying, it's from the fundraiser so so date, like we're actually currently closing like a fundraiser right now. Like, at least, like a part of it, I'm probably gonna raise a million but it's like just your seed. Like, come like a seed to really think about,
Cory McKane 1:03:04
we never want to say series, a
Unknown Speaker 1:03:06
three, or 14. Seed breed
Colby Harvey 1:03:12
a lot of metrics so that I would I actually don't even tell people like the round that we're raising. I'm raising, like I'm saying, like, we're raising like, we're raising a round. Yeah. Because like, I don't need to put a label on it.
Cory McKane 1:03:22
No, I like that. Yeah. Every fucking region of the country is like, oh, in San Francisco. This is what it seems to be in Austin. That's right. That fucking down. That's a good fucking. That's good. I
Colby Harvey 1:03:36
gotta give props to go to you. You love her. You see her in the next episode?
Cory McKane 1:03:38
I'm gonna read her Monday. Thank you.
Drew Bellcock 1:03:40
What are you doing with what you're raising right now?
Colby Harvey 1:03:42
So I'll ask the first question. Yeah. Yeah, so So yeah, so the first question. To date, we have raised in our club currently closing another like another like it's a part of coils around. So but 6.2 million. Very cool. It's cool.
Cory McKane 1:04:02
I'm gonna put a tiny bit a lot more.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:06
Like how I eat this,
Colby Harvey 1:04:07
because I'm telling you like, this has been a, this has been a journey for us. Like it's not been a very easy, it's not been easy to do. Yeah. And I've like, I'm a first time founder. So I've so I've made my mistakes. Like, don't let anyone tell you that you're not gonna be unmade. A lot of mistakes along the way. But it's how you come to like, you think about you structure yourself so you can get out of those mistakes and just build what you want to build. Exactly. So in terms of what it's like building this company. I mean, it's a very male centric dominated it's six point. Sorry. 6.2 7.2.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:48
Cheers for another million volunteers.
Colby Harvey 1:04:50
There's another million Yeah. So I'm like, I'm like after this whole thing. Of like pride fun tomorrow. Like if you guys want to throw up a couple of bacteria. I'm doing the last one.
Cory McKane 1:04:59
are you pitching you Like millions of dollars because remember hardware is hard. Just kidding. I'll be there tomorrow
Unknown Speaker 1:05:16
Mr jazzy Latino in the room like this just
Cory McKane 1:05:22
because earlier you said you were Latino. You said you were Latino off camera. Please explain that really quick as everyone's watching. Like,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:28
he's super fucked me up and he's like, wait.
Jack Medellin 1:05:31
Yeah, so I am Latino. Jack Mateen. Me te l i in. My dad was born in Mexico City. My mom was born in Tokyo, Japan. I was born in Texas. She's, but she was born. Okay. There's no way I was thrilled because the Mexicans are like, okay, then the Tokyo they go. Okay. No. My mom was born in Okinawa. So yeah. Yeah,
Colby Harvey 1:05:54
so awesome. Yeah. Well, Japanese moms.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:56
Yeah, great grandmother, but very
Jack Medellin 1:05:59
close in name only. But yeah, so my dad, born in Mexico City, then moved to Acapulco, like seven then back to Mexico City yet. 12. Okay. And then both my parents went to school in San Antonio at St. Mary's. Okay, that's it, and then, you know, moving to Dallas.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:16
So have him and then later after lucky
Cory McKane 1:06:19
night, where
Jack Medellin 1:06:20
I was working for Locky to get my security clearance. And I did do the interview the lady she
Cory McKane 1:06:24
was a unicorn. You really put the lid on it.
Jack Medellin 1:06:29
And she goes, Wait, so you were you were born in America? Yes. So you're an American? Yes. And then you became Mexican Consulate and she goes first? Did they give you a security grades? Yeah, it took a little bit longer. But then like
Cory McKane 1:06:51
he became a Mexican. Excellent. I went up to
Jack Medellin 1:06:53
Maryland to to work also and also had to have a clearance be up there. And I said it was a dual citizen they go, huh. But we didn't know that. So until you can prove it. You have to leave. I was like you're mad that I might I might not Mexican.
Drew Bellcock 1:07:09
Like he's definitely American. Here's
Unknown Speaker 1:07:10
a total different is that the same here for us?
Colby Harvey 1:07:17
Yeah, he's got an interesting story. And like I love it every single year. He's just like, it's
Cory McKane 1:07:21
the shock value. Um, have you skewed it? Because you're like, a
Unknown Speaker 1:07:25
week? My voice is like I was saying, it's very easy fun.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:30
Anywho. How to fundraising. Like, Yeah,
Colby Harvey 1:07:33
how's it fundraising? It's, it's, as you know, it's hard. It's not easy at all. Because the thing is, when it comes to something like, like, when you're dealing with like, raising capital for hardware companies, I mean, like, again, we're a software company at our core, and we just have a hardware component in business. And when it comes to raising capital for that, it is it's difficult because I have to explain, again, like I multiple times, I've gone through fundraising like okay, we want to see these metrics. When you see these metrics. I'm like, and I go when I get these, I get LOI. Some big name companies. These will be like, Okay, well, we want to see you actually deploy it like the move the goalposts. Yeah. Right, which is really frustrating. And especially when you're just like, I have something that this industry wants, I just need to capital to get there. Yeah. So when it comes to I mean, as far as I know, like when it comes to doing fundraising, because again, like you've no one ever knows, like, I'm like, I'm very proud of who I am. Yeah, we'll always be proud of who we are to. Yeah, we're
Jack Medellin 1:08:29
proud of you. Awesome. Yeah, fuck you call me
Colby Harvey 1:08:36
like, Don't you like you? Probably. Don't you ever curse on me ever again.
Cory McKane 1:08:39
Anyway, that rule applies to you to Kobe.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:46
I guess it's just done right. Yeah.
Colby Harvey 1:08:49
Like I'm like, I'm always I'm really proud of who I am and what I've accomplished. I believe in the people that they I mean, the amazing people that I've been able to attract into follow me about this fucking crazy business, right like the Latino
Cory McKane 1:08:59
community of course. Yeah.
Colby Harvey 1:09:01
Latino, the whatever anyway.
Love it, but it's I've never once felt like because of like, racially sexual exception I'm gonna get I don't like it's it's also not like pronounced but like, if you ever asked me,
Cory McKane 1:09:17
it's not in your deck. I'm gonna lie. Yeah,
Colby Harvey 1:09:19
I'm never gonna lie to you and say, Yeah, I'm Yeah, I'm just like, I'm never gonna like never gonna lie to you and share and say you want Yeah, but like, I think for me, it made it has shaped me to be a much more Rovell well rounded person and how to interact in a way that might be like a little bit unnatural. But it's, it's taught me how to become successful in a field. That's general not because I'm not there's so many like in being a man. I'm like a minority meaning being a black person. I mean, a black male being a gay male and like, it's, I've had to learn I've already like I've already grown up with adversity. I'm trying to think he's like, so I'm like when I have someone that whenever VC tells me like, we're not going to miss you for this reason, like, I was like, it doesn't bother me anymore. Like, I mean, it didn't with the beginning, but I'm like, I'm like, I have faced much harder things in my life than you telling me no. And no matter at the end of the day, no matter what I do, I am going to be successful because of the effort and the energy that I put into my business on a day to day basis. Period.
Cory McKane 1:10:24
Love that. Do me a particular on the podcast, it's
Jack Medellin 1:10:28
ingredients in crazy effort to I can I can tell you he's, I'll get an email at 930 at night saying hey, here's this document you want to review.
Colby Harvey 1:10:36
You want to snooze right now? Right? Indirect leadership like I don't I try not to do most like hey, so when you get a chance, just gonna like I'm just gonna slay this Crusher desperate.
Jack Medellin 1:10:49
I'm one of the focuses on my phone as for sleep, and I had to let slack through my jacket just in case you don't know what's gonna go on? Don't know what's going to come through.
Drew Bellcock 1:10:58
Yeah, what is your work life balance, like, because it's it's bad at startups, but it's particularly bad at hardware startups that are early stage. It's a so not that I would know, all that I can. So So first back to back to Coronavirus, interviewing with him.
Jack Medellin 1:11:13
didn't really think anything of it. And then all of a sudden, like the second year, he dropped his boyfriend was like, okay, cool. Let's keep going. Like, like very, very reasonable guy, a great person to be around. I don't care about the sexuality don't
Cory McKane 1:11:26
care about it. Like,
Colby Harvey 1:11:28
I literally do that on purpose.
Cory McKane 1:11:30
You should you don't be like four months in like, by the way is my boyfriend. They're like,
Colby Harvey 1:11:34
again, I'm not putting like, literally nothing on blast. And I also like, I'm not going to hire people that are not there that are accepting that are accepting like, like, somebody's not like, again, if you're telling the person that's great, but I'm like if you're a cultural poison.
Jack Medellin 1:11:46
Yeah. Especially if a start up. I mean, you're so small. Are you bad hires gonna
Drew Bellcock 1:11:51
be so sensitive to this early on to
Jack Medellin 1:11:53
Yeah. But she was what was what was the last question they had work life balance,
Drew Bellcock 1:11:58
oh, culture in general. So we'll be as
Jack Medellin 1:12:02
I can really do is to compare it to my time at Lockheed. So five or six years there, it's a very stable, stagnant set of stress, right, it's not gonna be too high, too low. It's just always like a bare level of stress. Versus here. It's, it's it's peaks and valleys. Right. So there are times where you're just going balls to the wall for three, four or five weeks. And then there's some little periods where it's like a, it's a bit of a time to let off the gas. We're waiting on some contracts come through or some developments come through or some some meetings, and then you're going back to it. So it's high stress and low stress, which is good. I kind of up and down. Sorry. I was like, how do you deal with this with me, I'm like, I see for myself and I go through it. I'm like, I'm like I've already given well, and you're so communicative. With everything that I can, I can see it come in like I'm like, Okay, this this is coming down, the pipe is coming down the pipe. Next week is gonna be a bear. You know, we'll be there from eight to eight, you know, every day and then check, check email before
Drew Bellcock 1:12:56
we don't feel bad about taking like the Friday off beforehand, knowing that week is coming. I always
Colby Harvey 1:13:00
make sure that he's like, when he ever say something like, I like I will catch up with it. Like, I'm like, I did operations. I did everything. Like I'm like, listen, Jack, I'm like, even if it means for me, like it's gonna be more stress for me. And you sort of like what I care about was like, I care for my people. And I care about them living a good life. So it was like, you're just like, I gotta go what my friends is like pitching this game. I'm like, yeah,
Jack Medellin 1:13:19
go do it. Yeah, fun, like, so last week, one of my friends she ordered fanatics, which bought tops, the training our company, but obviously they make Oh, nice sports gear. But they get a certain amount of first pitches because of their connection to like MLB so she was going in throwing the first pitch at the Astros game was so cool and cool was like, hey, you know, this is coming through and I was like, Well, my friend is is pitching at at the Astros game on Tuesday. He goes okay, yeah, do that, you know, but on Wednesday, we got an investor to talk to
Cory McKane 1:13:48
Yeah, that's what I love about startups is like, like, and I was telling someone the other day is like, I was interviewing the founder of stocks, and they were so he was talking about like, how they just took a different path to fundraising. And I was like, I I agree with that. Like, I hate how like typical companies, it's just 9595 9595 it's like, you can get done with your shit. You can go to your Astros game and then you can work more than next day like just fucking do it. Like it's just like what like just like, like startups should be like very stressful Of course they should be so we can have big upside but like they should be fun and you should be able to do what you want and then like work a shit ton basically it's a good it's a good like work life balance that we need to have
Drew Bellcock 1:14:30
any working in town you should be inspired to like you enjoy your time. You're You're enjoying being at work and you also enjoy being not feeling guilty.
Jack Medellin 1:14:42
I worked my butt off and then when I go off and you know, watch her watch the new Westworld on Netflix for four. Oh,
Cory McKane 1:14:52
I like two seasons behind so good. There's too many good shows Westworld is top Of course,
Jack Medellin 1:15:02
they're kind of going crazy with this new one, but it's gotten cinematography is amazing.
Drew Bellcock 1:15:07
I love the HBO Max, we appreciate it. Please. We started finish we can't afford it.
Cory McKane 1:15:14
HBO minimum, I love the
Drew Bellcock 1:15:15
call back to season one. And honestly, that's kind of irrelevant.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:20
Anyway, because, ya know, we'll talk about this
Cory McKane 1:15:25
later. Are you hearing any story because I'm watching I'm like, What is this gonna happen? And it ruins the show for me.
Jack Medellin 1:15:31
So, in this sense, I don't want to spoil it for you. But
Colby Harvey 1:15:34
going back to like the entire question, like when it comes to the company culture, like I've like, I've never had anyone like, you know, obviously, there's been many, like, if I've ever had to have people leave, it's like, okay, can be your like your sponsorship or like, this reason, but I've never had any was like I hated working here. Yeah, I'm like, I tried to establish a culture where like, I try to be as competitive as possible. It's as a found it's hard sometimes. Because you're like, I don't know exactly what I should and shouldn't shares I want if I can scare people. Yeah. Yeah. You don't wanna lie to them? Either? I don't know. I don't know. I think so. I'm just like, it's, it's this, I try to sell this culture where it's like, it's, we all trust one another. And we can have an open communication, like, I'm on board. And I'm like, what? So one of my investors is this, you have the largest private jet maintenance companies in the world. mazing man, that's cool. Send me a private jet is great,
Unknown Speaker 1:16:21
great guy, we're gonna do my private jets. By
Colby Harvey 1:16:25
the name, I'm gonna be able to appreciate Gulfstream
challenging, but it was it was cool. But
I try to make sure that we have a culture and he can talk to this more that like it's not oppressive, right? Like, don't get me wrong, like, I want things and I want things out. But like, but I made sure that I'm like, it's in a like, we have a business. At the end of the day, we have a business run. Yeah. But at the end of the day, like I trust my team enough. And they are capable of performing. Like,
Jack Medellin 1:16:56
well, and I think you've done a very good job of hiring motivated individuals at this time, which is what you you. I mean, that's the lifeblood of a startup, right? Because you cannot have started out by hitting the thing. You can't, you don't have time to be watching everybody, you know, day to day. So you've got to have the ability to trust to have everybody work on what they want to do. And then from the top, obviously, you said, here's what we're trying to hit. In two weeks. We're gonna do this in two months. We got to do that. And then by the end of the year, we need
Cory McKane 1:17:22
to do this. Also, I told him not to bang on the table. He did. And then he grabbed his I was like, Well, if that
Jack Medellin 1:17:27
were to close, I
Cory McKane 1:17:30
was like, I love that one.
Colby Harvey 1:17:33
My birthday this weekend. I'm just gonna
Cory McKane 1:17:37
start the weekend. Alright, so
Jack Medellin 1:17:38
are you turning 30? Is that right? 27? One is
Cory McKane 1:17:41
okay. All right, the old 273 being
Drew Bellcock 1:17:44
33 years.
Colby Harvey 1:17:46
Cocoa butter and shea butter if you want to know. There you go. That's why we don't crack
Cory McKane 1:17:50
anyway. If you sold the company today, what would you do? And what would you sell it for?
Colby Harvey 1:17:58
If I sold the company? You know what, you know, in the very beginning, I actually thought about this question. And I never knew how to answer one beginning you always tell. Like right now, that's a really great question. If I were to sell this company. Hi, I'll be honest, I mean, going through what I've gone through the past couple of months, and he just got a little like influence on apps. Like I don't know if I was starting a company again. But I said, Oh, hell no. Yeah, do it again. But only give it a year.
Cory McKane 1:18:27
Forget it. Forget it. Yeah.
Colby Harvey 1:18:31
I forgot for a year. But like, if I were to sell it now, like, I wanted to take this IPO. I'm like if someone gave I think my minimum number. minimum number of sub companies 800 million, a million near unicorn status 850 right here for a little bit less than that.
Cory McKane 1:18:54
Well, because I've interviewed people were like, I wouldn't sell for less than 10 billion. I'm like, Yeah, you fucking would. It was John John Stone, as I call them. I was like, you would do it for 8 billion. He goes, nope. And he's like, Well, what his logic was 10 He's like, he actually had a good stat. He goes, in 2018 alone, like years ago, there was 125. Unicorns in 2018. So now there's probably like 1000. So he's like, I want to be a DECA corn. That's what he worded it as 10 billion
Jack Medellin 1:19:25
so it's a different market back four years ago.
Cory McKane 1:19:29
I get that but most like you would say, yes, a billion dollars.
Colby Harvey 1:19:33
That's much less than, like my lowest and this is me being very conservative as a million knows the markets
Cory McKane 1:19:40
$8,000,000,000.07 or 50 million. You're saying no.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:45
You gotta you gotta remember 100 million dollars
Colby Harvey 1:19:50
that's what I'm saying. Like your grandchildren have to work. Like in us real estate investors have to pay out first. I'm like, Yeah,
Cory McKane 1:19:58
I'm like a last What's your
Jack Medellin 1:20:00
what's your what's your lottery, like, whatever the number is, you get like 30% of that.
Drew Bellcock 1:20:04
And they're inventing an industry, you got to remember that like, like, if they're if they're that level of successful, they're probably going to be able to scale it, you know, a little bit farther
Cory McKane 1:20:12
remote inspection aviation industry. They are, it's an all right.
Colby Harvey 1:20:16
Like, I can give you a few more like who made it really, it's an eight by 29, as it's expected, be like an $8 billion
Drew Bellcock 1:20:22
interesting industry,
Cory McKane 1:20:23
just you guys.
Colby Harvey 1:20:26
I don't expect to like take the entire market, right? Like, I don't we can.
Cory McKane 1:20:33
Yeah, but I'm
Colby Harvey 1:20:37
like, What is like, what, what am I doing here? Wanting to airlines that are going to use, like, our government will take most of it. So I'll take point like 8 billion. Fair enough. But at the end of the day, like Yeah, so realistically, if I'm gonna be very realistic, like, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do that personally, especially over the last year that I've had, I'm going to fuck off for a year. And I'm going to focus on my mental health, my mike my family, things that I love and figure out what I want to ultimately want to do. And what I'm willing to do is everything I've gone through, I want to help other companies, startups, if that be the adventure routers, being an advisor or mentors, is really don't make these two groups these things because I did it already. Like I want to help in that in that format. And I'm doing it now. Like I love helping inventory and companies just like if you've ever taken money on a convertible note, I was slapped the doctor, you know, so we're not doing that your
Jack Medellin 1:21:27
ex companies hardware ventures just strictly investing in hardware, making it easy for that path. I mean,
Drew Bellcock 1:21:32
obviously that's a good idea. There's not a lot of hardware dedicated
Colby Harvey 1:21:35
just harbor come up with like, it's
Jack Medellin 1:21:38
been being friendly to them and help them go along. You can get cornered the
Drew Bellcock 1:21:43
market there and understanding the need to like follow on to
Colby Harvey 1:21:46
Oh, yeah, exactly. And like I would water it's Eric Rosen provide mentorship and then if Moses doing well, I guess the number of venture capital route, right, like my like, that's what that's ultimately at the end of the day, what I would want to do, because, like, again, right now, you know, again, my lowest would be the angel millions. Like if Boeing came in tomorrow and said, We're gonna pay you this much algorithm, everything else want to have you like the CEO for a little bit and then transition. I'm like, okay, that's fine. Again, I'm gonna fuck off to Mykonos for a couple of weeks. That's my goal. But like, it's Yeah, that's a question.
Cory McKane 1:22:20
There you go. No more questions. I have one more to say I will take less than that.
Jack Medellin 1:22:25
But what I'm going to do that I'm watching your Rogen, Austin, and just let that money print. There you go. That's no upkeep, you just take a power washer there every six months. And it just mean at $22 every 30 minutes, you're making money. He's
Colby Harvey 1:22:39
also like, I'm gonna give him like a good chunk of money so you can look manager.
Drew Bellcock 1:22:45
For sure. You can use your drones to inspect your planes to you at that point.
Cory McKane 1:22:53
The drones can also inspect the parking garage if it's dirty or not. I was gonna watch
Jack Medellin 1:22:59
guys we're getting somebody don't give away their secrets putting the homeless in Austin to work and just say walk the garage. For every second trash that you bring back. Here's a certain chunk of money to go ahead. That's
Cory McKane 1:23:12
actually a really, really good
Unknown Speaker 1:23:14
you should do that.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:19
Like if you leave
Cory McKane 1:23:21
it's called a division of the company. It's called parking garage
Drew Bellcock 1:23:26
buys care so yeah, no well we do that we do side projects
Cory McKane 1:23:29
we rise we rise
Jack Medellin 1:23:31
we rise why we rise while I'm here for the
Colby Harvey 1:23:37
you know, we're gonna talk about this offline anyway.
Cory McKane 1:23:41
We have we have birds happen and we rise like guys what what am I here for?
Jack Medellin 1:23:48
To get a product and then we're
Drew Bellcock 1:23:49
on the off chance you guys have not exited five years from now what is your company look like?
Colby Harvey 1:23:54
working space? Space asset resilience. So one of the biggest things for me, but my biggest goal and like I'm a big I'm a Trekkie. I mean starting It's my biggest thing I grew up with that.
Drew Bellcock 1:24:06
Are you kidding me? I love Stargate.
Cory McKane 1:24:08
We're not Whoa, crazy. No one saw that coming.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:12
Camera ever. Atlantis, a universe? A universe of shit. But like how dare you?
Unknown Speaker 1:24:19
It was not as good as we're gonna talk about this Atlanta was the best. Yes, absolutely. It was so good. We can talk about this later, say five years from now I watched like Star Trek Discovery
Colby Harvey 1:24:33
and like the new ones like Picard like Picard. Amazing. Do you think I
Unknown Speaker 1:24:36
haven't watched this? I know you.
Drew Bellcock 1:24:38
Oh my gosh. Anyway, so
Unknown Speaker 1:24:41
this was really Ansel is a big thing. It's gonna especially space so that's what I'm saying. Yeah, sorry.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:48
rolling out a friend.
Colby Harvey 1:24:50
To him not upset about it. But like this face. So resiliency is so important. Like one of my investors and advisors. He's like he was a executive at a company Gotcha. canopy is a big defense company. He can do great in one of the spheres many when he says when he says I can make someone disappear I believe him. Former Navy SEAL known former Marine Marine,
Jack Medellin 1:25:12
he was we were talking to him they they made movies based on the company that he worked for.
Drew Bellcock 1:25:19
A very cool Can you scaler? Say any those names or? I don't remember so. Because you raised your memory? No. Muscles a man maybe? I don't know. I'm just getting
Jack Medellin 1:25:29
with the clearance. There were certain things that I that I couldn't tell. But my friends would always try to like baby into like, so. You won't get to this country? No, not really. Because you can't you don't want to get I don't want a yin yang. Are you ex military?
Unknown Speaker 1:25:43
Or? No? No, he's not
Jack Medellin 1:25:46
working for Locky claims.
Cory McKane 1:25:50
The whole time he kidnapped you been talking about you talk about your like ex like 40 years Marines. It was well, I was
Jack Medellin 1:25:58
six years and I spent a bunch of time at the base like so I spent seven months in Maryland up closing out the development contract for the F 35. Super cool to see but it's it's all
Drew Bellcock 1:26:08
you know enough that you wouldn't go to certain countries because you'd be getting x right.
Jack Medellin 1:26:12
I mean, maybe I don't know. But there's certain countries that are definitely not friendly, that there's a public list of countries that from from a scale of one to five and green to red and whether or not you should go there threat level. Okay.
Colby Harvey 1:26:27
Yeah. So, I mean, like, from my perspective, like, again, like I was worked at Amazon, so they flew me out over this whole thing. I didn't accept the job, but it was like I was like going to work in gov cloud. So they started like, you have to get your your secret clearance and they like in the interview process. They make you start the process because it takes
Jack Medellin 1:26:44
so long, so it's a long document to the SF 86 I think mine was like 110 pages cheese.
Drew Bellcock 1:26:52
I got interviewed for one of my friends that got in TSS CI that's what it was a weirdest thing that the agent that was doing background checks flew out to where I was living at the time, and she met me at a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts yum.
Jack Medellin 1:27:11
To do an interview to do the
Drew Bellcock 1:27:12
like TSS CI interview on my friend and she
Cory McKane 1:27:15
flew up her referral interview what is it tssi was
Unknown Speaker 1:27:22
really secure we are watching Disney Channel
Colby Harvey 1:27:30
we all know this core is like
Jack Medellin 1:27:34
a skiff. Have you heard that term? It's like a room that is for a specific type of information be shared, let's assume let's
Unknown Speaker 1:27:39
assume he's now Yeah, I've
Cory McKane 1:27:41
heard that word one time
Jack Medellin 1:27:43
is the SEI and Skiff it's
Cory McKane 1:27:45
what I need another
Jack Medellin 1:27:48
compartmentalized Information Facility gotcha Sei and TSS CI is the same as the gotcha. Cool.
Drew Bellcock 1:27:56
Basically, they're all working on the same thing but they only know like part of the thing.
Jack Medellin 1:28:00
Gotcha is in Palmdale. That Skunk Works it's been it's been some time out there too. They have the like, like a badge that has a bunch of letters and numbers and colors on it. And in the hallways like everybody is super quiet contact doesn't talk to each other because there's like dozens of classified programs they don't know what you know, because it you know, it's hard to see from a distance but once you get behind closed doors, every single party and throw shooting Nerf guns at each other. Yeah, nice. But it's nobody's very friendly. And always
Cory McKane 1:28:23
nice.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:24
Sorry, go again. Yeah, sorry.
Drew Bellcock 1:28:27
She was saying you had to start that process.
Colby Harvey 1:28:29
We're gonna wrap all this up into what we want to do what I want to do future Yeah, so in the future, how I see the company going like I want to ultimate like working space. I don't want to go to space because Screw that. I'm like, I've watched a live. I mean, what does it whatever I've watched like space and that space, that'd be like, I'm not trying to get I'm not trying to get like Alien nuke. I'm not going to do that. But I want my drones to do I want our drones excuse me to do inspections of the ISS. So our astronauts or people do not have to go into space to do these were like very menial, menial tasks or
Jack Medellin 1:29:07
a base on Mars. Right? You can you can send it out. Yeah, absolutely.
Colby Harvey 1:29:11
I bet you're gonna do systems parting with the companies, those type of things that really excite me where I want to do I don't even do things my focus on fundraising, which is fucking think it's sexy, it's not sexy. It's not at all. Mostly feeling like crying. But, but that's what I want us to do at the end of the day. And ultimately, I'm like, I don't know if I want to do that. And to rise, we want to do something else and like, but like at the end of the day. There are so many applications for technology. Yeah. And for what we're building, and I have the passion and I have the team that I believe is able to execute on that. Boom, it's so important.
Cory McKane 1:29:48
We rise. We rise we rise.
Drew Bellcock 1:29:52
Why we rise?
Cory McKane 1:29:53
Well, my rise. Well, we've been talking for almost two fucking hours. So I'm going to conclude this conversation game So, I'm sorry, I told my girlfriend to be there for three minutes ago, and I have I need to do a lot of shit after this. Hi, Jared. So, where can we find out more information? Where can we reach you at? Do you want us to reach you? If not, we can just cut this part out. Like if you were to reach us
Colby Harvey 1:30:17
by all means, social media and anyway rise ri Z Zed se if you want me to phonetically like Romeo in the Zulu Sierra eco different ethnic.in Yellow IO, but you can you can meet us there on our website. You can see us on like Twitter like I again, I'm getting better on our social media game. I'm going to talk to this one about this and have them talk so I want to do I don't know why.
Jack Medellin 1:30:43
I don't think it's gonna be a fruitful
Cory McKane 1:30:47
worse person.
Colby Harvey 1:30:49
But the word Yeah, you know, something that you guys can always use here. Like you'd have any questions like I'm happy and I'd love to talk to anybody that's that wants to talk because it's it's cool stuff.
Cory McKane 1:30:58
It was very cool stuff. We'll put the links up there. We'll put the links in the podcast description. Any last notes? Like and Subscribe. There you go. He has he always want to say that. It's his first podcast. I love mark. Let's go. Alright, guys. We have anything left. Let's do one more.
Colby Harvey 1:31:20
I already pushed her off dinner. My friend was putting up drinks and she's like, Oh, it's 930. Sorry.
Cory McKane 1:31:25
Yeah.
Drew Bellcock 1:31:26
Hey, we're doing the important stuff.
Cory McKane 1:31:27
I just sleep here to be honest. Like, you can't.
Jack Medellin 1:31:30
You wouldn't be great. I mean, they redid the garage downstairs like I
Cory McKane 1:31:33
did. It's hot as fuck.
Drew Bellcock 1:31:36
Yeah, but backordered but it'll be here soon.
Cory McKane 1:31:40
Great. Austin. I'm gonna be in.
Jack Medellin 1:31:42
Yeah, it was only like one on one today.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:44
I mean, you fine. Yeah, it was
Drew Bellcock 1:31:46
it was it was like 95 inside. I will
Jack Medellin 1:31:49
say going from the 107 we had to feeling like a 95 a couple of days after that. We had the crazy heat pika. It's kind of nice. You know, you guys. Yeah. In Texas. Exactly. Alright, boy.
Cory McKane 1:32:00
I got one final cheers. It's gonna be a little combination. So when we strive cheers we rise we rise
Unknown Speaker 1:32:11
I didn't become a CEO for nothing.
Cory McKane 1:32:16
How did you know I was gonna say that. It was really good.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:19
Fucking great.
Cory McKane 1:32:20
It was great. We strive given we rise. We rise. Like an actual outro though.
Jack Medellin 1:32:27
What's your outro I just me talking. Oh, it's not like a song or anything?
Cory McKane 1:32:32
Well, Garrett, the first episode he goes. That's why we strive. Right? We're like holy, this is
Unknown Speaker 1:32:39
why we write
Cory McKane 1:32:41
Oh, but we strive to. I wanted to thank you for watching this entire episode of why we strive to be sure you had to why we strive.com and subscribe. So every Tuesday you can see incredible interviews with some of the best tech founders, investors and creatives in the industry. Have an amazing day. And don't forget to keep striving
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
