The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:27:25 · Grace Brown, Vidit Agarwal
[00:27:25] S1: Yeah. No. That's entirely true. I was in my student accommodation at the time. I hadn't had any any meaningful social interaction for many months. I'd FaceTimed my friends, called my friends, but the lockdowns are really restrictive. And so... Yeah. And this was when I really loved skateboarding, actually. So I also had lots of tools around me that I'd used to build my electric skateboard, but I'd also hacked around at different projects... Other projects. And... Yeah. And I guess I just... It was after watching just completely consuming all these Disney Pixar movies that I was like, oh, I really wish one of these characters were, like, alive and real and next to me. And that's when I sort of just had the idea to build Abi. She wasn't named Abi at the time, but I just wanted to build myself a robot that could keep me company. [00:28:11] S0: You make it sound so easy, like building things, like particularly physical things. I don't think they're that easy. They're literally nuts and bolts, and, like, we we talk about building software, which is sitting in a bedroom, and now with AI, it's a lot easier. How did you go about building that first iteration, particularly during COVID where most of us couldn't travel very far, And you couldn't access things and you couldn't buy things and order things in the way you can now again? How... Well, tell me about the first iteration of the... I guess, can I call it a robot? Is that the best description?
00:28:41 · Grace Brown
[00:28:41] S1: Yeah. She's a robot. Yeah. Yeah. She was three d printed. Many parts of her today are still three d printed. And I think, like, going back to the projects that I'd worked on in high school, I think I always described that being an engineer is the closest thing to real life magic because you can just go from raw materials and resources to then creating something that you had imagined. That's why it was such a light... Not even a light bulb moment, but just like a really enlightening moment for me to realize, if you can just go down to first principles and think about how can you create the thing that you... What is it that you want and what is required, like the materials and the resources? Anyways, to me, that was that was... So so I guess starting Abi was... It wasn't too... As an engineer, it's... It wasn't too complex of a project at the start. I did say I looked around at the humanoid robotics industry and I was looking for open source projects, And there were very few open source humanoid projects. There were a lot of open source, like, wheeled robot projects, quadrupeds, hexapods, drones, but not many humanoid projects. There was one that I found online called the poppy humanoid, and I went through... I three d printed numerous parts of The Poppy Humanoid and used that as a bit of a base to inspire me in terms of how to build Abi. But because there was so few resources on building a humanoid robot, I also, you know, almost arrogantly assumed, like, I will be that resource. I'll go build this humanoid robot and open source it to the community and let everyone have access to it and build on top of it. But, obviously, we deviated from that course when we started Andromeda. So I don't know if that answers your question. That was very long winded.
00:30:15 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:30:15] S0: It does. And and please stop saying did that answer a question because it does. I think you're doing a great job. So you don't need to... You don't need microwavl. Is... So so a couple of questions there. One is I would love to connect that to the company and how that led to the origins of the company and putting a business around it. But before that, how much did the robot cost? Are we talking this is really expensive to get off the ground, or was it really straightforward to get started?
00:30:40 · Grace Brown
[00:30:40] S1: It was. It... Robotics is not, yeah, is not really an affordable hobby, particularly as an engineering student or any student. So I had to... I think as most engineering students are, you're very scrappy with your first few projects. You reuse hardware and electronic components from other projects to build new ones. And I was looking at different ways to fund Abi. I'd gone around to different university professors and applied for university grants, but we weren't quite... Yeah. We weren't very successful in that. It was very helpful, that whole exercise, though. That helped set me up for Andromeda because you had to learn how to create a story around what you're building and really communicate that and sell that to someone who wasn't doing it themselves. But it was when I came across Vogue, they had a... Some sort of competition for women entrepreneurs. This was also the first domino that started Andromeda. And if you pitched a business idea to a panel of judges, then... And if you won, Vogue would fund $10,000 towards your idea. And I did not think we were gonna have really much of a chance at all. And I also thought it was a little bit airy fairy. What is Vogue doing backing tech? I thought probably definitely a misjudgment there. But we applied for it. We sent in a video, and then we were invited to do a pitch. And off the back of that, we actually won the competition, which was exhilarating for me at the time to have someone really believe in what we were building. And that was also the first amount of money that I... External money that I ever got towards Abi. And, yeah, that that was the first domino that started everything.
00:32:20 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[00:32:20] S0: And did that give you the hope that, okay, you can actually build a business around this? [00:32:26] S1: That got me to really think that it's possible. Yeah. It got me to really start thinking, is this possible? I think it must be. The best thing I got out of that competition wasn't the money or the recognition, but it was the confidence, the self belief that I that I got from speaking to the women who were judging that panel. And they were telling me how much they believed in me, in my idea, and and that I should just go for this. And that was... Yeah. I don't know. It'd be interesting. I'd actually love to interview myself at that point in time to understand what I was thinking or my thought processes were because I do remember that just... I I don't really believe in step changes. I think everything's more gradual, but that one is the... One of the closest moments in my life where it felt like a bit of a step change. [00:33:15] S0: So at that point, you were still at university. Right? Yeah. [00:33:18] S1: I Yeah. Was still at university. We were still in lockdowns. Like it was the tail end of the lockdowns. But yeah, we were still in lockdowns. [00:33:24] S0: And so then you graduated from university. And then because Andromeda has been your that's been your career, right? Post university?
00:33:24 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[00:33:24] S0: And so then you graduated from university. And then because Andromeda has been your that's been your career, right? Post university? [00:33:31] S1: It has been. I did take a few internships before we'd gone into... Before COVID had happened, which was very helpful. I'd worked at a few startups, most... Mostly in the space tech sector. One of them is doing quite well right now, Skycraft, as they do, like, low Earth orbit satellites. And I was one of their mechatronic... First mechatronics engineers just working on some of the control systems for it. And it was a very short internship, but Craig, my supervisor, is... To this day, he is one of the smartest just humans that I know on this planet. And I think, yeah, I think that also helped... That act... That experience helped a lot with Andromeda because I could see how they ran their business and their startup. And and even when I started Andromeda, I was constantly referencing my experiences at Skycraft. I was like, oh, this is how Craig did this, and this is how Craig set these things up, and this is how he set the stations. And... Yeah. So so it was a short internship, but it was quite a lot of fun as well. [00:34:27] S0: And then and then when did Andromeda get formed? Maybe you can also connect this to, like, meeting Jan. Did both of you started from the start or did he come along the journey?