The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
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?
00:34:37 · Grace Brown
[00:34:37] S1: Well, Jan and I were best friends in university and he... Like, we were so... Like, I had so much trust in him and he and I. And I remember when people were telling me, you should just go build a business. And I thought the people who advised me on that, I thought they're ridiculous. I was like, no. I can't build a business. I don't know anything about how this world works. I haven't even got my master's degree. And I talked to Jan about it, and he was like, don't think it's that ridiculous. And I was like, really? Like, you don't think it's ridiculous? You don't... You think I could go off and build a business? He was like, yeah. Why not? And I was like, well, because I don't know anything. He was like, well, what's there to know? You just... Like, he was like... And then he sent me a few y Combinator videos and was like, just watch these videos. And he was like, I... And he told me. He was like, I think you would be an exceptional founder, and you could build a really great business. And because he believed in me, that... And I really trusted him and his judgment. He was a couple years ahead of me in university, so I just... I really trusted his judgment and his worldviews. And that got me also to really reconsider whether I could really go do this. And watching all the y Combinator videos was like... I don't know. It was just so liberating. It was just like... I don't know. You discovered your religion almost, not to make it sound cult y. And... Yeah. And I asked him pretty seriously. I was like, do you think I should build a company, or do you think I should go off and finish my engineering degree? Which I didn't finish my engineering degree. I ended up just finishing off a science degree, enough to get a science degree. And he was like, nah. Fuck the engineering degree and just go build the company. You'll learn so much more. So...