Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:04:02 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni, Charlotte Ross
[00:04:02] S0: It is very smart when you know and and recognize exceptional talent. Let's talk a little bit about ACS. What are you guys building in plain English? [00:04:12] S1: Yeah. So we are trying to become the air defense prime. So, like, the one stop shop for all things air defense. So, like, one of our taglines is if it flies, it dies, which we take seriously. Like, if it's in the air, we're shooting it down one way or another. So our flagship product, Bullfrog, is an autonomous... What's called an autonomous weapon station. That's what the military would call it. Basically, it's a robotic gun that can auto target and shoot drones, and and also brown targets as well, which is important for the military's mission set. So that's our first product, but the the vision where we're taking it is all things air defense, targeting the small drones up to the bigger drones. [00:04:50] S0: And then, I was gonna say, going back [00:04:51] S2: to Veeva for a minute, like, you know, obviously, you had a successful exit there. You didn't raise a ton capital efficient business. You got a nice acquisition from DoorDash. Going from restaurant tech to this, walk us through that thought process. [00:05:06] S0: That even seemed like a leap for you.
00:05:06 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:05:06] S0: That even seemed like a leap for you. [00:05:07] S1: Not a leap as an electrical engineer. Like, robotics is the same, you know, regardless of the industry, you know, different use cases, but still the same principles of electrical engineering apply across industry. You know, we started in the military, Luke and I. So we had a good kind of landscape of what products and what are being built for the military. So we kind of entered the market, like, with some history. And we saw an opportunity in... Particularly in weapon stations, which hadn't been upgraded since Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Those Those are the last time those were upgraded. So obviously with the Venture hat on, think opportunity to upgrade that before other companies start doing it is really where we entered the market at. [00:05:48] S0: I want to just quickly step back and really describe the Bullfrog to And keep in mind, I also want to describe, like, how is a war fought these days? And obviously, none of us want war to happen. But if war does happen, you want to protect as many lives as humanly possible. And the bullfrog does that, which I think is a really important part of your mission. But let's just talk a little bit. What is the Bullfrog? And just kind of give everyone a visual.
00:06:16 · Steven Simoni
[00:06:16] S1: Yeah. Starting with the Bullfrog, a couple of questions there. But also, by the way, we're in war right now. It's everywhere, and it's scary. But Bullfrog is a... The core of it is a computer vision tracking software. So it uses modern computer vision techniques as well as original legacy computer vision techniques. So just straight signal processing techniques coupled with modern day neural nets, kind of like a layered computer vision stack to identify and detect, identify, and track targets. So once we have a track of where the target is, imagine a dry... Drone flying in the sky, it's moving laterally or it's moving... Coming at you, like, a constant bearing or something, we detect and and know where that is in three d space. The way we know in three d space where it is is we actually hit it right before we shoot with a laser rangefinder. So we have the distance and position. Wow. And then right then, we... Then Bullfrog will, on on the edge, do a ballistics computation so we know the physics of a bullet, and lead the target in the right amount of lead time based on its speed and fired shot. So it's like, there's basically a lot of math happening all at once on the edge. And this wasn't really possible until, you know, basically, like, NVIDIA Thors came out, like, the the newer NVIDIA cards in 2017, 2018. So, like, you couldn't actually build Bullfrog like this until, you know, about six years ago or seven years ago or so.
00:07:42 · Charlotte Ross, Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:07:42] S2: Like, to kind of maybe go back to your comment on war, obviously it doesn't feel like we're in war. I mean, are and we're where we're on, but doesn't... Say more about what you see out there that maybe we [00:07:56] S0: don't see? [00:07:57] S1: Yeah. Mean, I'm sure it didn't feel like... You know, if you're like a citizen of Rome during the Roman Empire, probably didn't feel like you're in war in Germania. Yeah. But we're in war. You know, the world's at war right now. And wars... We're seeing two very different wars. The Ukraine Russia front of the war has a much different landscape than the Iran war. In the Iran war, what we're learning is kind of how war is changing, especially for, yeah, the American empire, [00:08:25] S0: I [00:08:26] S1: would say, which is that it's all about long range standoff now. You know what standoff is? No. Standoff's like a military term for, like, the distance you wanna engage at. So, like, you can imagine in... I just watched the movie Troy with Brad Pitt. He's hot. They're like fighting sword hand to hand. Yeah. So the standoff's like zero meters. Right. Right. That's who they're fighting. Correct. Yeah. That's not a modern war. No one wants to see the whites of anyone's eyes anymore. Like, you don't wanna actually see the person you're killing. Yeah. So now, especially for The US where we have really no appetite for troop loss at all anymore. Have zero appetite. Wars are now far. [00:09:00] S0: Which is a good thing. Which isn't like a thank god.
00:09:00 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni, Charlotte Ross
[00:09:00] S0: Which is a good thing. Which isn't like a thank god. [00:09:02] S1: Obviously, potentially. Yeah. Potentially good. Mean, we can debate that. That's a that's a deeper topic. But on the surface, good. So you have, like... Basically, you wanna have miles and miles of standoff. Like, we're talking five, six, five. You don't wanna see any... You don't wanna see humans on either side. That's like how The US is fighting more now. So you're in Iran too. So you're seeing, like, Iran has these missile launchers underground. They bring them above ground. They fire off a bunch of missiles at our bases, bring them back underground, and then we respond by firing some missiles back or trying to intercept those missiles. And it's very long range, long standoff battle in the air. And that's kind of modern war. And then the way it works is it's all about what's called escalation dominance. So that means first you do a round of barrages on on each side, and then you go on Twitter, and you're like, okay. Leaders of Iran, if you don't surrender now or make a deal, we're gonna blow up your bridge. And then they respond, like, blow up my bridge, bro. I don't care. And that's kinda... So it's like Twitter Twitter... Like, those heads of state aren't... They're not flying back and forth. They're on Twitter discussing this. And they're using long range arsenal to see who's gonna take a beating harder. And that's kind of like... That's like modern warfare. Same thing. [00:10:22] S2: I hear it is that. [00:10:23] S1: Has a lot of implications, I would say.
00:10:23 · Steven Simoni, Alexa von Tobel
[00:10:23] S1: Has a lot of implications, I would say. [00:10:24] S0: Okay. So like what? [00:10:25] S1: Like Yeah. Same more. A lot of implications for, like, what is getting procured, like what the military procures. So, like, you don't really want to spend a ton of money, and this is where it's kind of... It's more of a hot take. You don't really want to spend a ton of money augmenting soldiers. Like, you know, with like, I don't know, the IVAS program or something, like giving them like heads up displays or new armor packs or use... There's, like, products that you can, like, wear that... It's like a soldier infantry drone detector. So, like, when you're, like, on patrol, you can, like... It'll, like, tell you there's a drone in the area. Oh, interesting. These products don't matter as much because we're not fighting hand to hand combat, you know? Like, it's... That's not that's not modern warfare. And even in Russia and Ukraine, those products matter a little more. But even there, there's... The the front line is a five mile wasteland on each side. And, like, if you go into that... If you're a human that goes into that five mile wasteland, a drone will find you and probably kill you. So, like, you're seeing just the standoff extend very far. And that's that's pretty new. [00:11:27] S0: Can we Just to give people a sense of these budgets, obviously we know The United States spends a ton of money on defense. And my expectation is that those budgets only continue to grow. Give people a sense of what the budgets are coming towards a company like ACS.