00:14:52 · Anika, Maya, Priya
[00:14:52] S2: Yeah. That might be the case. [00:14:54] S0: The whole thing is like like you're either a bit or an atom. And like bits are like the model researchers and then the atoms are like the hardware researchers. That's so nerdy. No. It is so nerdy [00:15:06] S1: because like I tried [00:15:06] S0: to apply to them like six months ago. And then I was like, I can't. I'm like... [00:15:11] S2: I also tried to apply to them. [00:15:12] S0: Where's the other? [00:15:15] S1: You're like, hi. I'm a product engineer. [00:15:18] S0: I can make your website really pretty. But... Yeah. So anyways. But yeah, we should move on. So the... So yeah. We were talking earlier about like other data startups that are going after this. The other thing I wanted to mention was that there is a bit of a Chinese market that's happening right now. Like currently, the Chinese government is building centralized like robotic training centers. They literally have data factories of, like, robots performing tasks, and they're taking all sorts of, like, measurements and video and all that kind of stuff on this. But...
00:15:18 · Maya, Priya, Anika
[00:15:18] S0: I can make your website really pretty. But... Yeah. So anyways. But yeah, we should move on. So the... So yeah. We were talking earlier about like other data startups that are going after this. The other thing I wanted to mention was that there is a bit of a Chinese market that's happening right now. Like currently, the Chinese government is building centralized like robotic training centers. They literally have data factories of, like, robots performing tasks, and they're taking all sorts of, like, measurements and video and all that kind of stuff on this. But... [00:15:47] S1: I do question that approach generally. Because I've heard of people even in The US, like, building factories or whatever it is, warehouses where they simulate home environments and stuff like that. But I feel like homes are the most unstructured place that exists. And so how much can you actually simulate in an an environment versus is it worth it to take... And with this can, like, lead us into our conversation about the different companies, but, like, a shift approach where it's, like, let's just go into thousands of New York City homes and get the data from each of those individual environments because they'll be more randomized, more unique, and give us better data [00:16:19] S2: Yeah. [00:16:20] S1: Than, like, a Chinese factory. Like, I feel like in my head, I'm imagining it as this, like, pristine place, and then they're, like, messing things up to have the robot come and fix it. But I just don't know how realistic that actually is.
00:16:20 · Priya, Maya, Anika
[00:16:20] S1: Than, like, a Chinese factory. Like, I feel like in my head, I'm imagining it as this, like, pristine place, and then they're, like, messing things up to have the robot come and fix it. But I just don't know how realistic that actually is. [00:16:31] S0: Yeah. I actually, like, imagine a world where you can, like, fine tune a specific robotic model for your specific line work. So like for example, like Amazon still has people like packaging boxes. And like Amazon probably has a bunch of cameras on those people and will probably train like humanoid or autonomous like arms to be able to package boxes. Because you can't... Because like previously robotics was just like performing like a specific task really really well over and over and over again. But it had like, it was a rules based task. It's not like a reactive task. And I think that you can actually constrain the problem to, like, only reacting to packages in a box and putting those in a box. And it makes the problem easier. And so, like, if you can build... So I think, like, what... At least what I understand from these Chinese data factories is, like, it's trying to... They're trying to build, like, specific smaller robot models for smaller line work tasks. [00:17:18] S1: Which also makes sense for China. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So... [00:17:22] S2: And I [00:17:22] S0: think that... Yeah. I think that they would be able to like deploy those. Yeah.
00:17:22 · Maya, Anika, Priya
[00:17:22] S0: think that... Yeah. I think that they would be able to like deploy those. Yeah. [00:17:25] S2: I feel like we may get a generalized model or robot before like we go. Like, for example, like LLMs, like, got a generalized version before people started going into the fine tune phase. And so then either, like, they're making the bet that that won't be true in robotics or they're, like, skipping ahead. They're doing two parallel paths. Right? [00:17:44] S0: Yeah. I mean, I feel like there are so many more dimensions in the three d space outside. Like, when you go from like language to literally like moving in a three d space, I think there's like infinitely more factors that you're dealing with. Yeah. For sure. That I could see opposite being true being being, like, fine tuned models will work better and earlier Yeah. Than, like, a general humanoid at your home. [00:18:08] S1: Also, the starting point for both of them are different. Like, the starting point for robotics today is that they are trained on individualized tasks. And we're, like, moving the opposite direction of, like, trying to get more broad. [00:18:19] S2: Yeah. And in terms of the companies in the space, there are a few. One is Pronto. They recovered pretty extensively during their last rage... Race because they're basically a marketplace for, like, cleaning homes and other, like, domestic labor. What, like, else do they do? Do they do stuff besides cleaning homes in India? [00:18:37] S0: I thought they do, like, laundry too. [00:18:38] S1: Yeah. Okay. Like, different maid services.
00:18:38 · Priya, Anika
[00:18:38] S1: Yeah. Okay. Like, different maid services. [00:18:41] S2: Yeah. Like, basically, everyone in India that's middle class or above has a maid. And they were like, okay, let's make like the Uber for maids in India. And so that's what it is. And then they realized they're sitting on a gold mine of possible data where like they can just... Because it's a marketplace, like, can just have the right to like strap cameras onto all of these people. And it's probably like a really low margin business already. And so I think, like, that data... Like, the data collection gives a little bit of a buffer. And I could totally see it being like a more core situation where you start by being about recruiting and then just become a data labeling company. And then there's like pure play data labeling companies like Human Archive is a big y c one. They're also doing a lot of work in developing countries and they're doing multimodal stuff. So like video across like homes, factories, retail. I know we were talking about, like, on one end of it, China is, like, optimizing for this one factory. I think on the other end of it, most of the American startups are actually trying to get as diverse of settings as possible. A lot of these contracts actually explicitly say you can't set us footage from the same place multiple times. Like, this has to change. That has to change. So that makes sense. Like, our friend Mickey recently launched one too called North Star. There's just like a... Like, the long tail end is like really long. [00:19:53] S1: It's really long.
00:19:53 · Priya, Anika, Maya
[00:19:53] S1: It's really long. [00:19:53] S2: Because there's even like non VC backed ones that none of us even know exist that are just like using their... I mean, you really just need connections in the in the developing countries. [00:20:01] S0: Could just [00:20:01] S1: go to a robotics reading circle and then find some connections. Well, I [00:20:05] S0: was gonna say it's really like an execution based game here. For sure. Like, surge for example, and when we were just talking about, like, text labeled data, they were bootstrapped. [00:20:15] S1: Yeah. And the reason people do gig economies and developing economies like India, for example, is because the price arbitrage is just, like, insane. Like, when you look at how much you pay these people in India, it's a dollar per hour maybe in US dollars versus in The United States, it's an average of 30 to $50. If you're in the Bay Area, it's a lot more than that. And so wage arbitrage in this case is a lot of the business model. And I think that was something that was interesting about Shift that I was looking at because they were marketing New York City. And I was like, why would you do the most expensive place in The United States? Yeah. [00:20:47] S2: But I understand that that I saw it was like, pet PPE dropouts. [00:20:51] S1: And I was like, oh, this makes sense. [00:20:54] S2: That's no hate. I went jobs. I went to a worse school, and I had the same major. Disclaimer alert. So... Yeah. What? That's true.