00:00:55 · Adrian Weckler
[00:00:55] S2: Hello. You're welcome to Can It Scale, a new podcast where we talk to interesting people in start ups and scale ups. Today's guest is pretty well known, not just in the startup and tech world, but considerably beyond that. Bobby Healy started or helped to create several companies and has made lots of money, but he's most familiar now as the CEO of Manna, the drone delivery and technology company that has raised over a $100,000,000, has completed over 400,000 flights across multiple countries, and is now scaling up in The US. You're listening to or watching Can It Scale? With me, Weckler, sponsored by Electric Ireland. Looking for ways to reduce your business energy costs? Electric Ireland can help make solar work for your business with tailored solutions, expert guidance, and support from assessment through to installation. Visit electricireland.ie/business for more. Bobby, we're gonna talk about drones and scaling in Ireland and America. There's one thing that not everybody knows that you claim the title of having cocreated two of the worst computer games in history. That is a fact. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Running Man. Now we actually have some footage here of Moonwalker. Super. Can ask you? Yes. Can I ask you to explain to me what is going on here?
00:02:15 · Bobby Healy, Adrian Weckler
[00:02:15] S1: Two frames, so one and a half frames it's called. So the top half of the body is stagnant while the legs move, so this half you're animating two different things at once to save memory. The engineering marvel that you're witnessing here wasn't the most playable thing, like it's a piece of shit as a game, like probably the worst game that was ever created, but technically superb. Like, I'm very proud of it. Well, look... Everyone should buy that game. [00:02:43] S2: Congratulations, and we might leave the names of those games in in the show notes. So, Bobby, you grew up in an entrepreneurial household, six kids, your mom ran a clothes shop, your dad was a traveling salesman, also played for a drum, Condra, played against the fellow Real Madrid [00:02:59] S1: Yeah. [00:02:59] S2: In what was that era's version of the Champions League. Did that atmosphere affect you growing up?
00:03:06 · Bobby Healy
[00:03:06] S1: So dad was a role model for sure. We were so proud of him, particularly with the football. He was someone that didn't care about business or money or anything. He just loved, you know, his friends, golf, us. He was a great role model from a personal human values point of view for us. And we were like, I remember when I was asked in school, everyone asked, What's parents do? Back then it was, What's father do? Because your mother didn't do anything. And I was so proud to say he's a footballer, you know, because that was unusual. And we didn't talk about the rag trade, that it was really, you know, running a van around Donegal, selling Shite you know, small shops, mom and pops, and it wasn't a good business, he barely kept the family afloat, so he wasn't a businessman at any stretch of the imagination. And he was obsessed with football, and he was my football manager as a schoolboy for over a decade. So he was dedicated to kids, fostering the sport, all that stuff, and it was great. My mother did nothing in VerdiCamas, raised six children, you know, till she was in her late 40s, and then started up this shop in Tallaght, and actually in the market, in the Star Market. If anyone from Tallaght old enough, they'll remember the Star Market there. My mother was there with boxes on a stall selling socks and jocks to everyone in Tallaght for a number of years, and turns out my mother is a very astute businesswoman, shrewd as hell, worked hard, and actually, you know, eclipsed my dad's salary, you know, pretty quickly and funded all of our education. Well, I didn't get much of an education, but funded the family. And so, I definitely learned my business. I wouldn't call myself a businessman at all, but...
00:04:53 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:04:53] S2: You've done all right? [00:04:54] S1: Well, my lust for chasing things and going for it and working hard and all that stuff I got from her, you know, and I got my self belief from her, for sure. My dad didn't want me to get into computers at all. He did not understand why I was up in my room with my Spectrum coding. He's like, What on earth are you doing? So, it was my mother, this is a well told story, but my mother bought me my first Spectrum, and that's what really... I could already program before I even had a computer, I was that obsessed with it. Was writing the code down on paper and running it as if I was the CPU, debugging it, like that's but me and many other nerds like me at the time. So, my mother, invert a comma, was divisionary. She was the one that saw, you know, this, you know, not technology, but that he loves this and it's his passion and support. And so, a 100% we're all products of our parents. [00:05:47] S2: After school, went to Kevin Street, think, and then you dropped out [00:05:49] S1: For five minutes. [00:05:50] S2: Yeah. Pretty soon to join a video game company, Emerald Software, which is the company that made those IP titles with Running Man and Michael Jackson. And eventually though, you... And I'm skipping through a bit here because you've done an awful lot in your life, so forgive this summary and correct me if I'm wrong, but you veered toward travel tech. Yeah. A few years after that, you founded a company called Eland.
00:05:50 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:05:50] S2: Yeah. Pretty soon to join a video game company, Emerald Software, which is the company that made those IP titles with Running Man and Michael Jackson. And eventually though, you... And I'm skipping through a bit here because you've done an awful lot in your life, so forgive this summary and correct me if I'm wrong, but you veered toward travel tech. Yeah. A few years after that, you founded a company called Eland. [00:06:14] S1: VTI, actually, which it's a bit complicated, but the company was VTI, which was in Mexico City, and that was a particular product, and it was great, forwardwind, a good travel tech product. And then Eland was really another company that I created another product because we couldn't it was very difficult to VTI were perceived as a certain thing by airlines and by travel agencies. And if we tried to build a new product, which was a different airline product, middleware, more targeted airlines, and tried to put that under VTI would have clouded the strategy and the product and the brand. So we just created a whole different company. [00:06:51] S2: Was this in Mexico? [00:06:53] S1: Yeah. And Chicago. [00:06:56] S2: Were you being held up at the time? [00:06:58] S1: Yeah. Multiple times. We had 11 people working in Mexico. Every one of us held up at gunpoint multiple times. For what? For money, like people just robbing us, you know, white boys in Mexico, you know, we we stood out like, it was all a bunch of Irish guys writing code and going out, you know, and drinking and going to restaurants and stuff. We were sitting ducks.
00:06:58 · Bobby Healy, Adrian Weckler
[00:06:58] S1: Yeah. Multiple times. We had 11 people working in Mexico. Every one of us held up at gunpoint multiple times. For what? For money, like people just robbing us, you know, white boys in Mexico, you know, we we stood out like, it was all a bunch of Irish guys writing code and going out, you know, and drinking and going to restaurants and stuff. We were sitting ducks. [00:07:18] S2: Did you have much to give them?