00:08:38 · Bobby Healy, Adrian Weckler
[00:08:38] S1: 22, she is, [00:08:39] S2: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So... And I'm gonna fast forward a little bit here, but you you mentioned Eeland, but... And that was essentially a travel tech company as well, like middleware for airlines, Lufthansa, American Airlines, United, some big clients there, you sold that in 2003. And then the next big one, the one you bought into was the one that probably propelled you into the Major Leagues, CarTrawler, the Turley Brothers. You came on as CTO. That company got very big. I mean, that at its peak was worth hundreds and hundreds of of millions. You were Close [00:09:17] S1: to 1,000,000,000 at one stage. [00:09:18] S2: Yeah. And you were a fair... Fairly major shareholder Yeah. At the time as well. Yeah. I think sold equity a couple of times, but still, I think you were probably the biggest shareholder when that company was sold, the biggest single shareholder. [00:09:31] S1: Yeah. Was thinking private shareholder was, yeah, at the time. And and fun fact, I got wiped out to zero when COVID restructured us, you know, so I think that's a great lesson for everyone. They always take a few quiddits Because [00:09:43] S2: this was a company that was, you know, a car hire, it was all of these functions.
00:09:48 · Bobby Healy
[00:09:48] S1: Yeah. You would you would go to an airline, let's say it was, you know, British Airways or whatever, Virgin Atlantic, you'd booking your flight, and then there'd be suddenly three cars offered in Malaga, know, three car hires, and you'd say purchase, and that would be us. And we would take your £200 for your car hire in July for your holidays, and we would sit on your £200 for six months, and it would be ours. And then you'd rent the car, you'd go get the car, and then we would pay the supplier a month later, two months later, whatever. So we had what's called a negative working capital model where we were taking all the customer cash beautiful model, and like it doesn't work anymore, that model doesn't work anymore, but it all worked great. And we were, you know, over 1,000,000,000 in sales, billion and 0.5 in sales, I think, at the peak, 600 people. But it was like, I always say this, a ham sandwich could have built that business and made it successful. It wasn't a difficult business to build or to grow. And Mike McGurty, who is the CEO, is, you know, proper legend, proper management guy, knows how to grow a team, knows how to foster a culture, knows how to, you know, put discipline, commercial discipline, all that stuff. We were a very good team because I have none of that. And so I was tech strategy product, Mike was the CEO, but the actual business was you could build that tech stack in a couple of hours with AI now. I mean, I could literally point an AI at a car trawler website and tell it how the middleware works and say, give me that. Opus 5.5, you'll have it working industrial scale within the day.
00:11:23 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:11:23] S2: Well, to be fair, that's a twenty year old, tech stack that we're talking about, twenty year old code. [00:11:27] S1: Yeah, correct. Yeah. So I [00:11:29] S2: can see how AI might, do that now. But anyway, so you're wiped out to zero. COVID comes along, the model, the travel gets [00:11:37] S1: All the cancellations came in, so we had to refund everybody. Suddenly, we're refunding six months of working capital, but the bills are still coming in from suppliers. [00:11:45] S2: So you took a major bath on that then? [00:11:46] S1: Yeah. Totally. Got zeroed. [00:11:48] S2: Right. Okay. But you had enough from It
00:11:48 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:11:48] S2: Right. Okay. But you had enough from It [00:11:50] S1: was a fine time. Yeah. COVID was very special for me. But, you know, like, honestly, I won't say I didn't care. You know, was quite philosophical about it. You know, I knew I could build again. Was already building man at that stage anyway, so it was like, you know, I'm motivated by enjoying what I do. And I was bored out of my face for six years in Gardner, I was fifteen years running with Mike, and I was really like, I like to build. I like to start with a principle, with a plan, build a team, build a product, you know, get it flying, in inverted commas. And that's where I'm happy, you know? And that is my life's mission, to continue building companies. It isn't you know, maximize, you know, whatever, the money, any of that stuff. Like, of course, I'm always trying to do that, but what makes me happy is being, you know, running the teams, building the product, and driving that forward. And so, did okay, just to be clear, we did okay out of CarTrawler, everybody did, and it was a great story, and it still is, like it's still there, just got sold to Expedia. Good ending for it, I think it was probably the best ending for it that could have been achieved because it's 20, it's nearly twenty five years old now, it's no longer relevant, it's broker model, all that stuff. [00:13:06] S2: Talk to me about hiring a cherry picker crane for your back garden and everything in McDonald's just to see if the McDonald's bags will survive when they're dropped to the ground because you've been playing with drones.
00:13:06 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:13:06] S2: Talk to me about hiring a cherry picker crane for your back garden and everything in McDonald's just to see if the McDonald's bags will survive when they're dropped to the ground because you've been playing with drones. [00:13:20] S1: Yeah. So that was, I had the idea for drone delivery, then I was thinking, okay, well, what's the You're still on [00:13:26] S2: CarTrawler at this point? [00:13:27] S1: Yeah, was still on the board of CarTrawler. Was, I was the face of CarTrawler. I was the one meeting customers, doing all the public speaking, all that stuff, and I was on the board, but I was just not interested in, like when I was on the board I was on my laptop coding during the board meetings. Manna was obviously different, and at the very start, before I started the company officially and started to say, right, this is what I'm doing, because I'm thinking, right, what am I going to do next? Everything you build is a decade, right? So you're saying, right, what's my next decade? And I was 49, so, like, you know, not a lot of decades left, right? I'm going to pick something, I'm going to research it, I'm going to be sure that it's doable, subject to a bunch of risks. And so I was clear that, you know, drones, the technology was commoditized, like confluence of pricing and ability Well, [00:14:14] S2: remember that era, like DJI drones, was fascinated by them. I started buying them, flying them all over the place, putting drone videos up all over the web. Drones were the the next big thing at that time on everybody's Christmas But no
00:14:14 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:14:14] S2: remember that era, like DJI drones, was fascinated by them. I started buying them, flying them all over the place, putting drone videos up all over the web. Drones were the the next big thing at that time on everybody's Christmas But no [00:14:25] S1: one was making money, though. [00:14:26] S2: I was going to, you know, CES in Las Vegas. Yeah. There were drone cars, and people were talking about cities being rebuilt with drone pads on top. This was a moment for drones. [00:14:37] S1: It was, yeah. [00:14:37] S2: Now you're sitting in your back garden, you're still a chair of car trawler, you're probably messing with the drones, maybe you're hacking them as well. Yeah. And then what, you get this idea that they can start delivering things.