The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:55:56 · Grace Brown
[00:55:56] S1: Yes. That's actually... So I can't remember who, but someone once told me that my greatest strength is acquiring mentors. And it's never something I actually went out and tried to figure out how to do. It was more... If I had a problem, I would want... I I would wanna collaborate on solving the problem with the person who I think is best to solve that problem. And so I was always really good at finding the people who had the right experience to solve whichever challenge it was that I was experiencing at the time. And, actually, like, with Abi, before it even started as a business, I'd reached out. I was like, who are the best people in robotics? Well, there are fantastic robotics engineers at Amazon. So I found a pathway into connecting with the robotics team at Amazon when we were... When I was still just a student. And I pitched them the idea of building Abi. I was like, wanna build this humanoid robot. Here's what I wanted to do. Here's all the different reasons why I wanna create her, and I don't really know how to exactly. Here are the parts that I'm thinking, and what are your thoughts? And, actually, a lot of the feedback from the robotics team was that I was very junior. Like, I was, I don't know, like, second, third year, and they advised me to build a different kind of robot. Like, one that was a lot more simple, wheel based, and had a lot less functionality and was just very different to what I imagined for Abi. And told them, no. Don't wanna build that robot. I wanna build this kind of robot. So could you help me build this kind of robot? And they're... I didn't realize it at the time, but they were really thinking that it was beyond me as a project, and I didn't sense that. They were very polite, I guess, in their feedback to me. But then two years later, some of those robotics engineers came to me and they were like, I'm so glad you didn't take my advice because you've built Abi faster than I could have imagined you could have ever learned to build her, and this is incredible. And, you know, some of them we've actually hired.
00:57:39 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[00:57:39] S0: So good. So good. And it goes back to what you said earlier, which I completely agree with is, I firmly believe to be a founder, you have to be delusional to some extent, where if you knew all the downsides, you wouldn't do it. Right? It's the same in my own business. If I knew all the risks and the pain that I've had to suffer, I wouldn't do it. It's easier to be in a job and get a fixed salary and have annual leave and have the weekends off, right? So I think that delusion, and I think the self belief, I think that's the other thing here is self belief because there's this term that I think a lot about as revisionist history, where when someone's successful, everyone says, Oh, we knew that person was gonna be successful. But if you met that person along the way, they would have been like, I don't think Vidit or Grace have it in them. I don't think this is gonna work out. When it does, everyone's like, Oh, I knew they were gonna be successful. And I always go like, That is so interesting about human nature, we all do it. That [00:58:34] S1: is fascinating. It is... Yeah. It is fascinating. It's just like startups, people say great and successful startups don't always look like great bets in the early days because if they did, like, they just don't. If you even look at Uber, Uber was the first thing you're taught as a child, don't get in the car with strangers. And then Uber comes around, and that's exactly what you're doing. So...
00:58:34 · Grace Brown, Vidit Agarwal
[00:58:34] S1: is fascinating. It is... Yeah. It is fascinating. It's just like startups, people say great and successful startups don't always look like great bets in the early days because if they did, like, they just don't. If you even look at Uber, Uber was the first thing you're taught as a child, don't get in the car with strangers. And then Uber comes around, and that's exactly what you're doing. So... [00:58:53] S0: Totally. Well, look at even open AI and Anthropic. Just recently, there's been news about Anthropic s one. Right? Most VCs didn't believe in it. Most VCs missed the first early rounds, then they came in later on when there was credibility, and that might be the biggest IPO in human history. Right? So a company like that didn't get believed for years.
00:58:53 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[00:58:53] S0: Totally. Well, look at even open AI and Anthropic. Just recently, there's been news about Anthropic s one. Right? Most VCs didn't believe in it. Most VCs missed the first early rounds, then they came in later on when there was credibility, and that might be the biggest IPO in human history. Right? So a company like that didn't get believed for years. [00:59:13] S1: Yeah. No. Walt Disney has... I I can't remember the exact quote, but he has this quote where it's something to the effect of somewhere, something incredible is just waiting to be discovered. It already exists, and it's just waiting to be discovered by the rest of the world. And I'm like, I just love that so much because I'm like, that's how I... I know in Australia that more groups know about us, but in San Francisco, at least in this point in time, I feel like we're just on the precipice about... Of being discovered here and by the ecosystem and people here. So... Yeah. And by the world. So, yeah, I really believe... I know I'm digressing now, but I really believe the world needs to know Abi. She needs to be a complete sensation in this world because she's one of the few robots that's really built in a way that... Where technology is actually coming back in service of humanity. And there's just not many... Not just robots, but there's not much technology or platforms or businesses that are really being built in that way. So I digress.
01:00:10 · Vidit Agarwal
[01:00:10] S0: Totally. And then you don't digress. Totally totally... And I think also just the the gender side. Right? It'd be great to see a female founder killing it in that space. Right? I think that's something a lot of people talk about is there's a lot of male energy in that space. I think you're coming that path as well. I want to come to the fundraise aspect, then we can move to Rapidify Sprint to finish up. The fundraising one is so interesting, because you've had so many, so many changes over time, right? And I think things now seem to be on the right path. And I believe there's further announcements around the corner in good ways. Maybe again, to connect it to The US side, I like to think and other people think that really opened up the possibilities is you moving to San Francisco, raising from Forerunner, getting that capital, but also getting that support. Do you agree with that view?
01:01:03 · Grace Brown
[01:01:03] S1: I agree. I agree from, yes, from a utility perspective and capital and resource perspective, it has unlocked a lot. But similar to the Vogue competition, the biggest unlock for me was less the resources that it came with and more the people. And not the people as in their network, but the people and how they shape my worldview and my belief in what I'm doing. And we mentioned this before we have the call, but, like, Yuri, who led our round, she's one of the first individuals who I had met who, from a... From just very few conversations, understood how grand and significant our vision is. I think I get caught... I get... Particularly in the early days of Andromeda, I caught in debates and conversations at a much lower altitude than really what Andromeda is. On the surface, you know, people understandably assume we're this robot for aged care and, you know, what... They think about the term of aged care. They think about this application, this vertical. By the way, I think this market in itself is gonna be massive, like, just on its own. But then if you really get to the core of, like I said, why are we building this company? Why are we creating Abi? You see it across, like, Gen Alpha, Gen z. People want technology that doesn't come with all the distraction and the noise. Some people are so anti tech now that they actually wanna remove the technology entirely from their lives because it's distracting. It's taking away from the humanness. Whereas Abi from day one has been created as not technology that comes with all the other crap, but something that can actually be more whimsical, a bit more joyful, and create that utopia that, you know, technology was always there for. It can really go two ways. Right? Everyone's so scared of this dystopian science fiction future where robots are gonna have this revolution and dehumanize us all because science fiction is what shared that with us. But it doesn't have to be that way. And I think to the point before, a lot of the players in this space are feeding into this stereotype. And Abi and a lot of our motivations has been an attempt at showing people, you know, a different future for what technology could be and the role that it plays in our lives. And that is... That might sound a little bit nebulous to some people, but that has been the driver from us from day one, like creating an Abi to...