Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:10:30 · Cameron, Daniel First, Alexa von Tobel
[00:10:30] S3: Tell us a bit more about the problem of quality. You know, how big of a problem is this to manufacturers? Why are they so focused on it? [00:10:39] S0: So I think that there's a couple different lenses about why manufacturers are so focused on this today. So number one, you know, you have this very obvious reason, which is that many manufacturers are just getting totally debilitated by things like recalls or warranty costs. A company like Ford might have $5,000,000,000 of warranty costs every year. So I think, you know, that... That's, I think, well recognized. You also have a lot of these booming industries like like data centers where uptime is really critical, and you need uptime from power systems, from HVAC. And when you don't have that, that's obviously a huge problem. I think that there's a a much deeper point though about why, quality matters so much to manufacturing right now, especially in America. A lot of American manufacturing, a lot of leaders of American manufacturers are trying to position themselves against more commodity, markets and commodity manufacturers by positioning their products as high quality. And you can't do that if you don't understand what issues your customers are facing. [00:11:45] S2: Daniel, let's talk a little bit more about recalls. I mean, I think when I first met you and you talked a little bit about just how massive of a problem recalls are for US American manufacturing companies. We'll just start there. Give us a sense of the scale of the problem.
00:11:45 · Alexa von Tobel, Daniel First
[00:11:45] S2: Daniel, let's talk a little bit more about recalls. I mean, I think when I first met you and you talked a little bit about just how massive of a problem recalls are for US American manufacturing companies. We'll just start there. Give us a sense of the scale of the problem. [00:12:02] S0: If manufacturing is 30,000,000,000,000 of revenue every year, quality probably costs anywhere from, you know, 2 to 4,000,000,000,000 depending on on what you count. I think recalls are the most pernicious and most, you know, widely recognized example of a quality issue. But the reality is that when you when you release any product, there's actually usually, you know, hundreds to thousands of, you know, death by a thousand cuts quality issues that customers experience, you know, every time. So I think that that's really what makes this such a big problem is customers' their experience of products is really that they, you know, they buy version five and they have a lot of issues, and then they buy version six and all those same issues are still there. [00:12:43] S2: Are you in a position where, let's say, you have three of the biggest companies on Axion's platform where you find an issue with company one and you can actually now alert and get ahead of an issue with company two and so that there's true network effects? Talk about that.
00:12:43 · Alexa von Tobel, Daniel First, Cameron
[00:12:43] S2: Are you in a position where, let's say, you have three of the biggest companies on Axion's platform where you find an issue with company one and you can actually now alert and get ahead of an issue with company two and so that there's true network effects? Talk about that. [00:13:00] S0: We we never, share private data from one manufacturer to another. Where I think that this can happen is very often a lot of these OEMs, the the the systems aggregators, the manufacturers who assemble all the parts, they might find an issue that gets localized to a supplier, and then that supplier might be supplying that same part to many other manufacturers, or there might be lots of other models that that it's included in. So that can often happen. [00:13:24] S3: So, Daniel, when we first met back in 2022, you had just signed your first contract. And fast forwarding to today, you now serve many of the largest manufacturers in the world. And Alexa and I and our team have had a front row to your growth. But in your words, what has surprised you about the journey so far as you've scaled? What has changed, and what have you learned?
00:13:24 · Cameron, Daniel First
[00:13:24] S3: So, Daniel, when we first met back in 2022, you had just signed your first contract. And fast forwarding to today, you now serve many of the largest manufacturers in the world. And Alexa and I and our team have had a front row to your growth. But in your words, what has surprised you about the journey so far as you've scaled? What has changed, and what have you learned? [00:13:45] S0: I think that one of the the biggest things that's been surprising to us is that when we started off, we thought quality was really for for one department, for the quality department, and that it was really about defense. You know, you release a product, you're suddenly, you know, attacked with all this warranty costs, and you're trying to, like, defend it away. But, you know, at Harley Davidson, for example, within the first couple of months of us working with them, they had 12 different departments on the platform. Everybody from marketing to CX to supply chain to the software engineering team and product strategy. And when when we picked at it, it turned out that people were using quality to learn more about what their customers wanted. And a quality issue is just a a situation where a customer's needs are a mismatch with what your product is. And so they were actually using this to to inform not just the messaging and not just the CX of the existing product, but actually to inform the next generation of products. So I think that was a very big shift that we saw.
00:13:45 · Daniel First, Alexa von Tobel
[00:13:45] S0: I think that one of the the biggest things that's been surprising to us is that when we started off, we thought quality was really for for one department, for the quality department, and that it was really about defense. You know, you release a product, you're suddenly, you know, attacked with all this warranty costs, and you're trying to, like, defend it away. But, you know, at Harley Davidson, for example, within the first couple of months of us working with them, they had 12 different departments on the platform. Everybody from marketing to CX to supply chain to the software engineering team and product strategy. And when when we picked at it, it turned out that people were using quality to learn more about what their customers wanted. And a quality issue is just a a situation where a customer's needs are a mismatch with what your product is. And so they were actually using this to to inform not just the messaging and not just the CX of the existing product, but actually to inform the next generation of products. So I think that was a very big shift that we saw. [00:14:43] S2: What else has surprised you? Just like being a CEO, you know, building this journey, what else has been harder than you expected? And then what's been easier than you expected?
00:14:43 · Alexa von Tobel, Daniel First
[00:14:43] S2: What else has surprised you? Just like being a CEO, you know, building this journey, what else has been harder than you expected? And then what's been easier than you expected? [00:14:54] S0: I think definitely what's been easier than expected is I think that when I started out, everybody said that there's no way that manufacturers would ever buy, you know, software. And I think that actually people are pretty rational and, you know, we're we're in a... We're an exciting time that people are willing to try out technologies. And if they actually work, then then they're pretty happy to scale it. I think that something that I didn't realize would be so difficult is that I think that Axion... We're actually a very different type of company from many other startups, that have been created over the last, you know, over the last twenty years. Axion really is about going from from data to, you know, detecting a signal in the data to trend to insight to root cause, you know, down to action, and how you can do that at scale as as these companies will solve tens of thousands of problems every year on their products. And I think that there actually aren't a lot of companies, that are trying to to drive automation in that that loop. And I think it's required us to build our organization in a very different way, than most organizations are built. [00:15:58] S2: I wanted an example or a story. Can you think of a story that stands out when you saw firsthand just how effective and impactful Axion has been for your customers?