Change management and bringing frontline workers along on the journey and giving them a why it's more important than the technology itself.

What have you found to be the most effective way to incorporating robotics into their workday?

It starts with that base foundational layer of wow.

Who knows what's going to be possible for robotics in 18 months.

David Penn, CEO and CFO over at BrainCorp, the company behind the world's largest fleet of autonomous mobile robots.

How in the world did you get into leading a robo focused company?

I found myself in this role with RU taking the choice that had a steeper learning curve.

You raise it one penny at a time, my friend.

I did not show up one day and someone wrote me $190 million check.

No one wants to hear that.

Exactly right.

What's one of the most unexpected places that you've seen a robot be successful?

We have a robot operating at NASA.

What's it doing?

If you can disclose that?

Well.

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Let's get started.

Here's Ben.

Hey there everybody.

Welcome back to Lead the team.

So what happens when one leader unleashes the power of 40,000 autonomous robots across the globe?

Well, today you're going to find out.

Meet David Penn, CEO and CFO over at BrainCorp, the company behind the world's largest fleet of autonomous mobile robots.

With over $190 million raised in 250 billion square feet of commercial space cleaned and scanned by their brain OS powered machines, he has helped transform both the retail and logistics industries through AI and automation.

From leading a dramatic shift from hardware to SaaS to forging game changing partnerships with giants, you know, like Walmart and Sam's Club.

His story is one that every innovator needs to hear.

David, welcome to lead the team, sir.

Thank you very much for having me.

Ben.

Been Looking forward to this and really seeing the technology that you all have been forging and how you're integrating it into these huge industries and transforming things is really inspiring.

So let's start this out with when's the moment you steered your team or company in a completely different direction and what was that like for you as a leader?

That's a great question, Ben.

And I'll start by giving a little bit of background.

This is my first time as a CEO, so I'm learning alongside my team.

And I took over as CEO from our founder, Dr.

Eugene Zakiewicz.

So it's really been an honor for me to move from the founder led era of Braincorp to the professional management led era of Braincorp.

And so for me, a transformational change occurred when I took over as CEO.

And the first thing I did really was to take a close look at our employee engagement survey, which is a survey that we send out to all of our employees annually and they tell us how they feel things are going in the company, with the culture, et cetera.

And something that I noticed was that there was an opportunity for me to help lead the team toward more collaboration, toward more communication, really in two different directions.

One, from the executive team to the employees, and in the opposite direction from the employees back up to the executive team.

The employee engagement survey showed that there was a big opportunity to improve in communication and collaboration across the company.

And so I took on the task of creating a planning process.

And you know, for me it's, it's always a little bit nerve wracking to create bureaucracy, to create process in a company.

You know, the first few years of my career were spent in large corporations, but the last 12 or so years of my career have been in startups.

And there's a certain correct allergy toward process, but you need a little bit of process in order to move fast.

And so I implemented a quarterly planning process that we've been running for the last three years here at Braincorp.

And it's really an opportunity for the executive team to share with all of the employees at Braincorp what are our goals for the next quarter and for the next year on a rolling basis and for the rank and file employees to take requests from the executive team a sense of the direction that we want ahead and use those requests to build up from the ground up plans that they're going to execute over the next quarter to achieve those goals and those requests.

And so I'm really proud of this bidirectional planning process that we've put forth in the company where really it's an opportunity for everyone to participate in the direction of the company going forward.

It's an opportunity, of course, for the executive team to set the direction for the company, but for the employees of the company really to fill in the details and to really drive their own destiny when it comes to how we execute our plans over the course of the next quarter.

And what's been the result of coming in and adding that layer of planning and framework over an organization that's kind of built to, I guess, to stay on the cutting edge, so to speak.

It's like if it seems like too much structure could hinder the flexibility and the nimbleness, but you need it to grow at the same time.

What's been the result that you've seen?

Yeah, I think the result has been very, very positive from a culture perspective.

So, and this is something, as I mentioned, we measure every year with an engagement survey for our employees.

So, you know, make sure and really keeping close track of how people are feeling about that communication, again, in both directions.

Right.

Does the executive team know what's really happening on the ground?

Do the employees feel like they understand the direction of the company from the executive team?

Right.

So looking at that data over time and making sure that more and more employees agree with those statements is really critical for my leadership.

So that's on the culture side.

And then of course on the exec, on the execution side, which is even more critical.

You know, it's really about ensuring that we're able to stay nimble.

To your point, you know, you don't want to calcify with process.

And so having this quarterly planning that takes place on a rolling quarterly basis really allows us to find that right balance between being intentional, you know, having a good plan, but also being nimble and being able to change with the market.

AI and robotics is changing all the time.

And we have to make sure that our plans reflect the latest technology advancements, the latest customer demands, and ensure that we're helping our customers stay on the cutting edge with all this new technology.

Yeah, I can imagine a lot of organizations, they go through, like their annual planning, like, hey, these are your goals for the whole year.

And then, you know, when December rolls around, we're going to measure you based on those goals that we set back in January.

And for an industry like yours, that probably does not make any sense because in a year, a year, everything's changed.

Well, thinking about your industry and the listeners are probably thinking, how in the world did you get into leading a robot Focused company.

Because were you like this kid reading sci fi books, you know, and you're like, oh yeah, I think this robot thing has some potential.

Or like most of us, it's like, hey, this, this was, this did not exist before.

And how'd you come to where you are today?

Yeah, well, it's a great question.

And yeah, as you point out, you know, when I, when I was a kid growing up in the 80s, you know, robots were very much science fiction.

And I've stayed with kind of leading edge technology since then, you know, as I mentioned, starting on the tech side, but I ended up going back to school and getting an mba and so I stayed in the telecom industry, but much more focused on the merchant acquisition side of the house and, you know, how businesses buy other businesses and sell businesses.

And so it's been, it's been a journey sort of from, you know, a technology practitioner to a business person.

And then it's been a journey from the telecommunications industry into robotics, which for me it's the through line.

And the theme is really all about staying on that cutting edge of technology.

Wow.

It's, it's changed so much from when you started, I mean, to what's possible today.

What are, I'm just trying to imagine what are some of the ways or the traits or the skills that have helped you stay at the vanguard of technology through all these changes to where you can step into a place where there's like, there's probably, I know there's a vision for your company.

You know, there's obviously a vision for, for Brain Core, but you know, so many things are changing so quickly.

For example, you know, chat GPT, not to date this episode, but is what, like 18 months old or so?

And now it's just become ubiquitous in the world.

And in another 18 months, who knows what's going to happen next?

And so, thinking about Brain Corp, how are you staying at the top of your game as a leader and casting a vision for a world that we don't really know how it's going to exist.

And thus you're trying to kind of bring it back around to the robotics industry.

Who knows what's going to be possible for robotics in 18 months?

So how are you thinking about this?

Yeah, it's a challenge, so I'll start with that, Ben.

But you know, for me, one of the foundational traits is about staying curious.

And it's something that I embraced.

It's something that we embrace here as part of our culture at Braincorp.

And that means asking questions.

It means acknowledging that you don't have all the answers.

You know, it's a, it's a thirst for knowledge, it's a curiosity to understand.

To your point, like, what is going to happen next?

Seeking out different people's opinions.

It's really important not to calcify into thinking of yourself as an expert.

You know, even though we've got 40,000 robots deployed to your point, technology is changing so fast all around us, both inside our company and outside of our company.

And so we cannot treat ourselves as experts.

Right.

Like that is death knell, I would say, for a technology company and for an executive or an employee of a technology company, is to consider yourself an expert because it closes you off to new ideas and new ways of doing things.

And so it's something that I've really embraced throughout my career and is just that mantra of maintaining that curiosity, asking people, you know, their opinions, getting opinions from, from far and wide, you know, inside the industry and adjacent industries, you know, looking for analogies in industries that maybe aren't the same as ours but have similar characteristics.

That's something I think that has really served me to, as best as I can, stay on top of the latest technology because as you say, it's changing daily.

Well, when you say that, it reminds me of what I learned from Steve Jobs's autobiography with Sir Walter Isaacson, where he was talking about learning about calligraphy back in, back in his college days and how that informed, like Helvetica font and a lot of the fonts that they ended up integrating to the Apple operating system.

But he's pulling from all these different, different, different areas.

Not to put too much pressure on you to be the Steve Jobs of robotics, but could you walk us through like an example of one of these other industries that that's been helpful for you to learn from and how it's been helpful to you, because I'm thinking that other leaders listening could probably take a page out of that in term because it's so easy to get tunnel vision on your industry, what you're doing with in that.

And it's so easy to get tunnel vision just reading the Wall Street Journal and like, hey, that's going to be my main news source.

And what are some ways, or maybe when's the time that you're able to pull from a different industry and it helped you innovate.

That's a great question, Ben.

And you know, for us, I mean, a big part of what we do in our company, right, is we're bridging the gap between you mentioned ChatGPT.

Right.

So those large language models, that generative AI industry as well as the retail industry.

Right.

And so we have to take lessons from both of those industries and apply it to our industry in robotics.

Right.

And so for me, it's been a really fun educational journey for me to learn all the intricacies of retail.

You know, my first job in high school was actually a checker at a Tom Thumb in Dallas, Texas.

But I didn't understand the intricacies of the retail industry kind of working in the front lines there.

And you know, now that I've been at BrainCorp for almost eight years, working alongside companies like Walmart and Sam's that you mentioned in the intro, really understanding as best as I can, and I'm no expert in retail either, but just understanding the depth of the complexity of that industry and gaining an appreciation for how something which to you and me as consumers, it seems very simple.

Right.

There's a can of beans on the shelf and I pick it up and I check out how hard can it be and you realize, no, it's really hard to make sure that that right can is at the right spot at the right time, at the right price.

There's just so much complexity that goes into that.

And so learning to appreciate that, learning to see the problem statements that exist in that industry and then seeing all the advancements that's happening with Gen AI, with large language models, et cetera, and putting those two together to figure out how Braincorp can take all of those problem statements and all of those advancements and then you know, our capabilities when it comes to autonomous mobile robots and bringing it all together.

That's the fun part of the job here at Braincorp.

And I think it's what gets all of us out of bed in the morning and like super excited to, to tackle those problems.

Yeah, I was watching a video about you and it was about your company and the impact in Sam's Club.

And I learned a lot about that listening to one of the sans Sam's Club executive talking about the impact of out of stocks.

And it sounds like you guys have really solved that problem for them in a lot of ways with the machine learning with robotics and then being in your and sort of paint a picture for listeners.

When you watch the video, you see this robot coming down the aisles and it's got all these really high level cameras detecting out of stocks, how much is left and reporting that real time.

So when someone shows up to buy it that item, it's going to be There.

What is the, what does the future look like from this?

Are you actually going to be stocking the shelves with robots in these big Walmarts and Sam's Club type facilities or.

Yeah, I think, you know, to your point on that video, I mean, I think the, the key ingredient there, right.

Is that we're unburdening store employees from doing the really tedious task that used to be manual of going up and down the aisles and looking to make sure that the right product was in the right spot, checking on what were the out of stocks, checking price labels.

Right.

These are tasks that humans don't enjoy and aren't particularly good at.

And robots are incredibly good at it.

And I don't know if they enjoy it or not.

That's a topic for another conversation, but.

You should ask them.

Absolutely.

And so, you know, your point really, at the end of the day, it's about unburdening the store associates from the tedious so that they're empowered to provide the customer service that really differentiates a brick and mortar retail experience from an E commerce retail experience.

So that's really a big part of our mission.

And to your point, you know, where this is going is, you know, today we detect issues on the shelves that need to be corrected and in the future the robot itself will correct those issues.

Right.

So to your point, rather than, you know, today we can point out an out of stock, tomorrow we can address the out of stock and actually restock that item on the shelf.

And so we see an opportunity to continue to migrate the technology toward solving more and more of these really kind of detail oriented, unpleasant jobs in the store to unburden the store employees.

And really for us, at the end of the day, it's about increasing the end customer, the consumer experience for that brick and mortar shopping experience.

Right.

When I show up to the store, I would love it for the store associates to be able to give me personalized attention, give me a recommendation, hey, I'm trying to make this recipe, you know, I, you know, what, you know, what do you recommend?

All these things can be unlocked and really differentiate the store experience.

If we're able to, you know, through our roadmap, over time automate more and more of those mundane tasks in the store.

Yeah, it's such an important thing for people to be thinking about and leaders and their teams because people might hear robots and think, well, they're just, they just want robot so they can reduce their workforce and do it more cheaply.

But to your point, and I think if people really think about this logically.

Retail, in retail world, customer service is the differentiator.

It is, it is the associates that are working in the stores, talking to people, helping them find, helping them find what they need, you know, interacting.

And any technology that's going to help them do that more effectively is like, that's the human ad.

And people see it in the hotel business.

They see it a lot of these industries.

It's the people interaction.

And so when you, when you go into companies and you talk to them, do most leaders get that, that that's what this is really about?

Or are they, is it sometimes hard to bridge that gap from, hey, it's cost cutting mode, you know, how, how are you navigating that conversation right now?

I would say the majority of forward thinking customers of Braincorp think about it in the way that I am describing, which is it's an opportunity to reallocate from undifferentiated labor to differentiated labor.

Right.

If I can move, you know, labor hours from something that's mundane to something that really grows my brand, they're going to back up the truck and do that all day long.

Right.

And so that's a huge part of the roi.

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That's been leads.com apply thinking about your background now, I was going through LinkedIn and I see your CEO and CFO and you have a background in finance, engineering and all of your leadership.

It seems like there are a lot of disciplines that you're pulling from as you lead this organization.

Is there a specific challenge or a time when it was really helpful to have that background?

Because I'm thinking about leaders today in preparing for the challenges tomorrow and having this broad back, having a broad similar background could be helpful to them as a leader?

Yeah, it's a great question and obviously I can only speak for myself for my own personal style of leadership, which is pretty data driven.

I think a lot of my leadership style is influenced by the fact that way back when I had a very deep understanding of how semiconductor transceivers worked and it's completely irrelevant today.

But you know, when we're exploring a new area, when I'm asking questions from the engineering team.

Just knowing how much I don't know because I know how deep their understanding goes, I think really helps to inform my decision making, my understanding of their role.

And so I do encourage, you know, because I get this quote, we have interns every summer.

I think they're just starting now.

It's something that, I mean, I love intern season here at Braincorp.

And I always get that question right, like, what's, what's your advice?

You know, kind of the same question that you asked me, Ben around like, you know, how does your background inform your role today?

It's something that I share with them all the time, which is, look, you're probably studying something and engaged in something right now that 20 years from now you're not going to be involved in.

And just remember how deep you went to really understand that subject and apply that when you're learning something else and just realize the depth of your own ignorance.

Right?

I think it's extremely powerful.

Realize the depth of your own ignorance.

This is something that I think every CEO and every leader should recognize and to realize, too, that when you're learning things in school or you're learning things, and I mean, it's.

These are all little platforms that are going to help you become a better leader down the road.

But.

But it's not the.

And I love your idea, you know, your focus on maintaining curiosity and also saying that, hey, we're not going to just be the experts.

It's not like you are experts in certain fields, but we're not going to go about our work like that, or else you will lose your curiosity.

So keeping your focus on that sounds like it's a real great way to sort of fortify and create this cool learning culture and learning organization that you guys at BrainCorp have.

One of the things that came up to me, for me, a question here.

Could you share with us a big moment in rolling out robots across six continents?

I believe you guys are on six continents.

Is that.

Am I?

I mean, that.

That's robots across six continents.

Five or six.

Five or six.

Okay, like, what happened?

Because I'm thinking about technology at scale and it's.

And it's interesting for people to think about because Brain Corp, you guys have the operating system across this, but you're also working with organizations to provide the physical robots that have to do the work.

So could you share a challenge that you guys have faced in that and how you overcame that?

I'm happy to, Ben.

So you can imagine, you know, Brain Corp was founded about 16 years ago, it's a group of neuroscience PhDs thinking about biomimicry.

Right.

How can we take what we understand about the biological brain, put that into technology?

And that led us to autonomous mobile robots and everything that you've described very expertly in your intro.

And so you can imagine, like, our heritage is the technology, right.

So in our own mind at the beginning, it was all about, hey, we're going to make an amazing robot.

To your point, we're going to partner with the best people in the industry and we're going to just create this amazing machine.

We're going to go lob it at customers on five continents and they're just going to like, you know, turn it on and hit the button and, you know, do the automation.

That's, that's what we had in our minds.

Yeah.

It turns out that change management in some ways is even more important than all the technology that I just talked about.

Right.

And that was something that we had to learn along the way.

Right, because.

And I spoke a little bit about store associates, but at the end of the day, right, it's where the rubber hits the road with this technology.

It's in a grocery store, it's in a warehouse, it's in a hotel or a hospital.

It's frontline workers that are interacting with the technology.

And it's really important to give them a why, to give them training, to give them motivation, to help them through the change management of how their job is going to evolve with the robot.

And so for me, that was something that we kind of had to learn on the job.

We didn't know that that was going to be such a big part of the solution.

And to your point, it's something that you really only learn when you get to scale because, you know, when you're deploying 100 robots or 1,000 robots, you know, there's a certain amount of personal touch that you can provide when you're up to tens of thousands and when you're up to multiple continents, you've got to make sure that you've got systems in place that really help in a, in a programmatic way, those individual facilities and those individual frontline workers to really embrace and adopt the technology for their own sake.

And so that's something that we've learned a lot along.

Along the way.

We've invested a ton of resources into, you know, the user experience, the user interface, the training materials, you know, gamifying the solution so that people feel like, you know, they're, you know, there's some excitement around using robotics and automation.

And so it really is tapping into, you know, people's motivation, people's hopes and dreams, people's desires around their own job and how our technology can help elevate them.

That's been a huge part of our success.

So you have an example of a, of a gamification that you've been able to employ, that that's helped adoption.

Would love to.

Yeah.

So just as an example, right.

If you.

And I don't want to name names of individual customers because they're kind of sensitive to their internal operations, but just picture a large national grocer.

And as you can imagine, you know, these large organizations, they're broken down into regions and then further broken down into districts.

And so you can run little contests, for example, within the district district of like a dozen stores.

And, you know, the contest is, you know, who's going to run their robot for the most hours in the week.

Then you can have a little leaderboard that shows up on the robot and everyone gets really excited about embracing the technology.

And so it's giving people that kind of recognition for going on that change journey with us.

Because, you know, part of human nature is, of course, to resist change.

If they've been, for example, cleaning their floors manually for the last X amount of time, and now you're introducing a change to that that can be, you know, psychologically disruptive for them.

And so giving them a contest and of course, backing that up with training materials so that they know how to win the contest can be very, very powerful as a motivator in getting people on board with the change that's needed in order for that corporation to recognize the ROI and all of the improvements that they're hoping to achieve with a robotics program.

What.

And maybe it's gamification, but.

But what has been or what have you found to be the most effective way to get people to buy in to incorporating robotics into their workday?

You know, it's carrots and sticks, to be honest with you.

Right.

So look, let me start with this, right, Because I kind of skipped ahead to like the motivational layer.

You've got to start with a training layer, right?

So you got to make sure that people understand what is the robot, what is its capabilities?

How is it different than a manually driven machine?

How do I teach the robot to do something different if I want to control some specific behavior?

And so it starts with training.

I mentioned about the user experience, the user interface.

We make it as simple as possible for a frontline worker to teach the robot.

We call it learning by demonstration, where you basically just show the robot what you want it to do, and then it can repeat what you should.

And so that's a.

That's a very powerful tool to enable frontline workers to have control over the robot's behavior in a way where, you know, they don't need to code anything.

They don't even really need to open up a user experience.

It works just like an appliance for them.

So it starts with that base foundational layer of, you know, a simple user experience, simple training, so that they're.

So that they're competent to do the job.

Then you move on to motivation and change management and helping to give them the why for why they should change the way they do their work.

And this is where, you know, the gamification, for example, shows up in order to ensure that people get on board with the program once we've given them all the tools to be successful.

So a carrot would be like a financial incentive, and then a stick version would be, hey, here's the scorecard.

These teams don't seem to be using it right then.

Leaders get upset about that kind of thing because they're spending a lot of money on these things.

So I can see both as being effective.

It's so interesting because leaders are getting, myself included, so excited about the possibility of the technology, and it's easy to get crazy about it.

But then what you're saying is, whoa, whoa, whoa.

There's a human change management side that we've got to remember, and that may control how fast we can go with technology more than the technology advances.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

That's something that we've learned along the way on this journey.

Right.

Is that change management and bringing frontline workers along on the journey and giving them a why and giving them the training they need to be successful, it's more important than the technology itself.

What advice would you give your younger self today?

Or something new that you tell yourself to try?

It's a really good question.

What an introspective question, Ben.

Look, I mean, I will be honest with you and say, I mean, my career really was not a grand master plan.

I found myself in this role, which I adore, through luck, through happenstance, but I think largely through, you know, leaning in on, you know, when there was a career choice, taking the harder choice, taking the more challenging choice, taking the choice that had a steeper learning curve.

And so, look, if I went back to my younger self, I would tell myself to double down on that.

Really Encourage my younger self to lean in on the uncomfortable.

Lean in on the opportunities that feel like they're going to be a real struggle, because I think that's where I had the acceleration in my career.

I.

I listened to one of your prior podcasts, and I think one of your guests said, you know, there's the best fishing is in the choppy waters.

That.

That was Andy Mack from Andy Max from Chicken of the Sea.

So that, you know, so very happy.

Exactly.

Right.

You know, our robots don't go.

Don't go fishing and don't live in the ocean.

But, you know, I.

I really agreed with what.

What Andy said, which is, and it's something I would tell my younger self over and over again, is lean in on the choppy waters, lean in on the challenging opportunities.

You're going to grow the fastest with those challenges.

And this, at least for me, I would attribute that instinct to what led me to where I am today.

Yeah.

So.

Yes.

Well, tell me about that.

So what a huge step up, right?

Okay, CEO, here you are, the rubber or whatever.

The rubber meets the road, or this buck stops here or whatever.

Like, you're the leader.

All this, you know, 40,000 autonomous robots, huge teams around the globe of people.

What's it like?

What's it like stepping into that challenge?

Because I love.

I love hearing like, hey, this is what I would.

This is what I would do.

This is what I would try differently.

Step in more of these big challenges.

And I'm doing it.

And now this is a bit.

A big example.

Yeah, it's a great question.

Yeah.

So for me, obviously, it's not without its challenges.

It's my first time being a CEO, as you mentioned, it's an extremely dynamic industry.

Things are changing daily.

When you open the Wall Street Journal and you see, you know, what are the latest advancements in AI and you know, which companies in robotics are getting funded, et cetera.

And so it's been a tremendous challenge, but a very rewarding challenge for me.

I do feel like I'm on a very steep learning curve, which is, as I mentioned, something that I very much enjoy in my professional career.

And so it's just.

It's been a delight, honestly, Ben, in that regard also for me, you know, having come from the engineering side and then the finance side, you know, I didn't have exposure to a lot of other sides of the business.

Right.

Operations is new to me.

Hr, you know, there's all other elements of the business that I'd never touched before.

And so having an exposure and at least a little taste of the challenges in these other disciplines has been extremely rewarding for me to learn.

And, you know, for me, you know, because we have such a strong curiosity culture in our company, a learning culture in our company, I think that's really helped me as well, because I have a lot of teachers around me that help me learn how to understand these other disciplines.

So it's just been an absolute delight to have this role, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

I learned that you helped unlock $190 million.

Right.

For the organization.

Am I reading that?

What.

What was that like?

Was there one pitch that you made to, like, sealed that opportunity or maybe a couple biggies along the way, or if you could just walk us through like.

Like that moment, and if you got the advice for other leaders that want to do something similar.

Yeah, you know, you raise it one penny at a time, my friend.

Right.

I mean, it's.

No one wants to hear that.

Yeah.

No, I did not show up one day, and someone wrote me $190 million check.

That.

That's not what happened.

And so, you know, I was very fortunate.

When I joined Braincorp, we already had very strong investors in Qualcomm, in the SoftBank Vision Fund.

And so that was a terrific foundation for, you know, me to show up as a finance leader and, you know, help raise subsequent rounds from those insiders as well as from new investors.

And, yeah, it's just a lot of hard work.

Most investors aren't going to like most stories, just as a.

Just as a general matter.

And so you've got to make your pitch dozens and dozens and dozens of times in order to raise that capital.

And, you know, for me, really, it's just all about finding that match.

Right.

It.

In.

In a lot of ways, it's just very similar to dating.

Right.

There's.

It's.

It's.

It's very subjective.

People will reject your story for the exact same reason that someone else will write you a big check for your story.

Right.

And so it's just really important to have stamina, have perseverance, not take things personally and just, you know, be able to tell the story, you know, and the vision the way you see it, not the way someone else tells you that you should see it, and so that authenticity and, you know, in other words, I.

I think for me, it's like, less about changing your pitch to what you think the market might want, and more about intruding your pitch and finding the investors who resonate with that pitch.

For me, that's been the winning strategy.

And yeah, I've just been very fortunate to, you know, have a lot of support from existing investors, a lot of, you know, good success raising money from new investors.

But yeah, if anyone says it's easy, I would love to, I would love to meet the, the CEO or the founder or the CFO who says, oh yeah, raising capital, that's piece of cake.

It's a, it's a slog.

It's a slog for everybody.

Thanks.

Thanks for that reality check.

And you guys have succeeded with that and a huge congrats.

Starting to wind this up.

What's the most, what's one of the most unexpected or most memorable places that you've seen a robot be successful?

That's a very good question.

We do.

So we have a robot operating at NASA and that's pretty cool.

So operating in and among, you know, rocket ships that are, you know, really wherever they're going.

What's it, what's it doing?

If you can disclose that is it.

That'S, that's a floor cleaning robot.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

So it's, it's like patrolling the floors of NASA.

Yeah.

You got to make sure the floors are as I understand.

I'm not, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a rocket scientist yet.

But you know, dust I think is very damaging for rocketry, for satellites and things of that nature.

And so I imagine that it's a very critical job for our robot to make sure that the floors are squeaky clean so that those payloads and those rockets can go up to space without incident and without having to worry about dirt and debris getting in the way of the mission.

Yeah.

So cool.

Great to think about.

David, it has been a fun one today.

Sir.

What's your, what's your parting thought for our listeners even?

They may or may not have robots, but no doubt they're going to be interacting with them in the future in some capacity.

Wow.

The open ended question then maybe just to sum up kind of a theme of this conversation, right.

I mean, it's all about staying curious.

It's all about keeping your mind open to new possibilities, new technologies that keep coming down the pipe.

It's amazing when people first encounter a robot in the public, the kind of reaction that we get, especially from kids, I mean, they just, they lose their minds when they see a robot driving itself, you know, down the aisle, the grocery store.

And so, you know, kids naturally have that curiosity.

Sadly, a lot of grownups just don't.

They're just in their own world, shopping.

They don't even notice it.

And so I just think it's a, it's a call to action for all of us to maintain that curiosity.

You know, next time you're at your local grocery store or in the airport or the library or whatever, look out for brain os robots.

You know, we're, you know, 40,000 is just the beginning for us, and we're super excited for the growth to come.

Thanks for coming on and lead the team.

David.

Thank you for having me.

Ben.

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