The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
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...
00:36:09 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[00:36:09] S0: Yeah. That that is so interesting. I would have thought you would have told him that, but it's interesting that he told you that. So Yeah. [00:36:15] S1: Yeah. No. He... He's... Yeah. He says that he... Well, and I agree. I think he is one of my first true believers. Yeah. [00:36:24] S0: And then when... Was there a moment where you realized, okay. This can actually work. This could be a company and you can dedicate your... The next stage of your life to it?
00:36:24 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[00:36:24] S0: And then when... Was there a moment where you realized, okay. This can actually work. This could be a company and you can dedicate your... The next stage of your life to it? [00:36:35] S1: I think there are various moments that had that impression on me. But I think the most significant, at least, yeah, more more recently than at the very start of Andromeda, was when customers were really drawn to Abi and seeing residents and the relationships that they build with Abi very early on. The very first prototype of Abi was a very bare definition of a humanoid robot, like, very bare. Even that version of Abi brought in so much customer love, like, so so much. Like, I can't even explain how how quickly people would just look at Abi and just by the consistency of her showing up and me bringing her into the homes every day and residents expecting her to be there and having stories ready to share with her. And it was just... Yeah. I think that was really eye opening for me because... And I... Even to this day, I say it to everyone. I'm like, this is the worst Abi is ever gonna be. Because that was what I thought then. I was like, Abi is hardly, like, even one to 2% of what I imagined for her, but people will already have that love for her. Like, even I found that surprising. And so to me, yeah, I think the early customer love for her was the first time I was like, this is going to be a fairly, like, really significant business. So...
00:36:35 · Grace Brown, Vidit Agarwal
[00:36:35] S1: I think there are various moments that had that impression on me. But I think the most significant, at least, yeah, more more recently than at the very start of Andromeda, was when customers were really drawn to Abi and seeing residents and the relationships that they build with Abi very early on. The very first prototype of Abi was a very bare definition of a humanoid robot, like, very bare. Even that version of Abi brought in so much customer love, like, so so much. Like, I can't even explain how how quickly people would just look at Abi and just by the consistency of her showing up and me bringing her into the homes every day and residents expecting her to be there and having stories ready to share with her. And it was just... Yeah. I think that was really eye opening for me because... And I... Even to this day, I say it to everyone. I'm like, this is the worst Abi is ever gonna be. Because that was what I thought then. I was like, Abi is hardly, like, even one to 2% of what I imagined for her, but people will already have that love for her. Like, even I found that surprising. And so to me, yeah, I think the early customer love for her was the first time I was like, this is going to be a fairly, like, really significant business. So... [00:37:56] S0: Good. Because I believe aged care is your focus, or at least at the moment it is, and maybe over time it expands. Was that always where you started? Was that always the wedge?
00:38:06 · Grace Brown
[00:38:06] S1: Aged care came up because over COVID, as you would know and many people would know, loneliness was one of the most discussed topics. Like, everyone was talking about the loneliness epidemic. The World Health Organization announced that it had similar health implications of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And so it was a topic that was just so widely discussed amongst... Globally. And when you follow the data, the people who are most affected by loneliness are older adults, and specifically older adults in aged care homes. And because Abi was built as, you know, a solution to help address loneliness for myself during COVID, I thought if she could if she could help me during COVID and keep me company, you know, imagine the impact that she could have for tens of millions of people around the world who experience, you know, the disconnection and isolation that I felt in COVID, but every single day. And so that's how the market... That's kind of how the the steps that led towards going into aged care. And I'd just... I'd gone to a few local aged care communities with Abi and just started talking to the staff and the residents. And exactly like I said before, just the early attachment to the industry really... You know, just having this appeal for Abi made me realize that this could be a really significant business in this market. And the other reason is, like, people aren't really building solutions for this space. You know, it's really unfortunate. It's not seen as a very sexy industry, and so people just aren't really thinking... Even people... I feel like the older adults are one of the most overlooked and forgotten generations. We're all gonna age, and we're all gonna get to that stage of life. And at that stage of life, you do need more support, unfortunately. And... Yeah. And like I said, no one's really building solutions for them, and so I noticed it was an industry that was desperately looking for a new model of care because more and more people are getting older and over the age of 65 every single day. And so it made sense to me that it was a market that even if it wasn't Abi, like, I'd be looking at building something else in this space because it's an industry that's perfect for new innovation with very little competition. Yeah.