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00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Biz, Work Life Sorted. I'm Lisa Lee. As a kid, Grace Brown wanted to be a fairy, mermaid, mathematician and princess. She had a wild imagination, loved maths and science, and by 15 was already building robots. Then during Melbourne's COVID lockdowns, Grace was lonely, so she started building a robot to keep her company. That prototype became Abby, the social companion robot at the heart of Andromeda Robotics, the company Grace founded in 2022. Now today, Andromeda's worth about $ 100 million, and Abby is supporting aged care residents across Australia and expanding into the US. But Grace isn't trying to build a better robot. She's trying to answer a much stranger question. Can you engineer human connection? Grace Brown, welcome to Biz. Running a team today can mean some people are in the office, some are at home, and someone is probably answering an email from the airport lounge. I spoke to an Aussie broadband expert about keeping teams connected when everyone's working from different places. Their business internet and mobile solutions are designed to help teams stay connected wherever they are, with expert support from people who understand the needs of Australian businesses. Because your team shouldn't be in the same room to stay in the same conversation. Search Aussie Broadband Business to find out more. When did you kind of realise imagination and engineering didn't have to be these opposite things?
00:01:17
Speaker 2: It always co-existed. It just, there was never, they were never mutually exclusive to me personally. I think I first noticed that people thought it was mutually exclusive when I went into engineering school at university. And everyone, you know, the whole cohort were mostly men. All the projects were aggressively masculine. Every team that you could join was named after something like the god of war or something really aggressive.
00:01:48
Speaker 1: Lots of testosterone in that room.
00:01:50
Speaker 2: So much, so much. But then it also, I noticed when I, even when I finished my undergrad, the industry was the same. Like it was the same in university and then it was the same in the industry. You look at all the robots being built and yeah, it was just, it wasn't how I imagined engineering and technology and the role that technology could play in our lives and the relationships that we'd have with it.
00:02:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:02:17
Speaker 2: So I think, I think... I don't know, to me it was always natural in how it was meant to be, like Abby being the way she is and the way she should exist and be built and the relationships we have with her, that was intuitive to me.
00:02:28
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Abby because during lockdown you started to build a robot and you were like pretty lonely as most people were during lockdown. What did you actually want that first version of Abby, I guess, or of the robot to do for you?
00:02:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean lots of people today ask me, why don't you get Abby to do all these assistive tasks for you, like fold your laundry, do your dishes, clean up your room. And robotics is known to be primarily focused on industrial and utility-based use cases. But because I had started building her during COVID, that those weren't the reasons why I wanted her to exist or why I started building her. I was building her because during COVID, I was like many millions of people. I was incredibly lonely and disconnected and I didn't have human interaction for a really long period of time. So I was looking to build myself something that could keep me company during the pandemic and the lockdowns, which we didn't know when and if it would end or what that would look like. So Abby was really a by-product of those experiences. I was looking to build myself like a best friend, something that could ask me how my day was going, something that could give me a hug, be a sense of presence in my rooms that were, you know, really just myself. Um, so that's how the idea started. And a lot of people are drawn to that. I think people think a lot about, I think people just underestimate that we get asked the question, you know, as a business and, um, as a product quite frequently, like what's the ROI for our customers? How do you quantify that and measure that? Um, And I think people just really underestimate how significant those small moments are in your day to just have someone to come in and check in on you, speak to you in your first language if you haven't spoken in your native language for months or years. Just that sense of companionship. I mean, we believe that the two most important pieces for human flourishing is human connection and meaning and purpose. And I think a lot of robotics technology actually traditionally has overruled those two very critical things of human nature. Um, you know, you look at technology, a lot of social media claims to be about connection. It's really become about addiction. Um, a lot of the technologies that are built, uh, designed to make you more efficient, but then they take away a lot of the processes that give people a sense of meaning and purpose. Um, and so for me, Abby was about building technology, um, back in service of, you know, humanity. So, yeah, I don't know if that answers your question directly. I actually can't even remember the question. I'm a little bit jet lagged, I'll be honest. So I'm a little bit busy.
00:05:19
Speaker 1: It does. It sounds like there is a real moral compass guiding the technology and guiding Abby.
00:05:25
Speaker 2: Very, very much so. We have a really strong core philosophy of building technology that enriches human experiences and, Yeah, and my job is really just telling that story and letting people know why we exist, how I see the world in 50 years, how it doesn't have to be this dystopian, scary science fiction future that I think a lot of the robotics and AI industry portrays, but actually technology can coexist with
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people in a way that actually makes our lives even richer and more meaningful and more alive and more human.
00:06:07
Speaker 1: Do you feel like an anomaly amongst your peers then? Because that's quite like at odds with a lot of technology companies, as you've described, you know, they're designed for almost like a gambling mentality. How do we cook people on these things?
00:06:21
Speaker 2: Well, when I look at the robotics industry, a lot of people, particularly in Silicon Valley now, are building robots that will be in shared human spaces, even if it's not for interaction per se. But even if it's a robot that stacks items on a shelf or even pick and places different items in and out of boxes. But I think what people are underestimating or realizing is once you build a robotic system that's not in a warehouse environment but is in a shared space with another human, how that robot makes someone feel is almost more important than how capable the robot is. physical intelligence is what's dominating a lot of the robotics industry today. And there's obviously a massive market that all the robotics with this physical capability can do. But I think as physical intelligence becomes more abundant, what actually becomes more valuable is social intelligence. And a lot of the robotic systems being built today, they're socially illiterate. Like if they make a mistake, they don't apologize for it. They don't consider the nuances of and the complexities of, you know, people changing and being a bit more unpredictable. And that's the area that we're aiming to be quite world class. And I actually think to answer your question about whether I think we're anomaly, I think the industry will very quickly recognize how significant and important it is to build your robots with social literacy. Once they start deploying their robots, I don't think they'll be as successful if they don't consider the Not just did the robot functionally complete the task or not, but how did it make people feel while it was completing that task? Because I think that is what will drive adoption.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: Do you feel that even more so now in the age of AI and people's kind of response and backlash and fears around it?
00:08:10
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the advances in the AI industry are real tailwinds for what we can build. People are starting to pick up and recognise that that i mean if you look at all the llms that people are interacting with whether you use um gpt or claude or gemini um you know we're we're starting to build um we're starting to have these like ai human to ai relationships our children are starting to have that and so i think a future where we have relationships with non-human um entities and objects that's already in it that's already happening it's not even a future that's five years away it's happening today um And so I think people are starting to think about how can we build this technology safely, reliably, in a way that doesn't, I guess, create over dependence. I mean, we've even seen that with Abbey. We've seen residents who have become very possessive, particularly residents who have had longer periods of relationships with Abbey. We have seen that in some of the homes And we think about how can we help the staff and our team members who are supporting Abby's deployment to integrate Abby in such a way where they have these healthy attachments with her. I think that children who are born today won't recognize a world without humanoid robots as part of everyday life. So I think we've got this really It's a fantastic opportunity, but also such a significant responsibility to get it right in this window right now. And many people are building this technology in very different ways. And I want to build it in a way where technology can teach children empathy over addiction. I want to build it in such a way that older adults can age with like more dignity. And yeah, I think that's how I view the world. I view it as I'm, if you can't tell, which is very obvious, I'm very much a techno optimist and I believe technology is going to create this utopia for us.
00:10:10
Speaker 1: I love the term techno optimist and I hope there are more people like you out there leading these companies as, you know, more and more of it comes into place. Tell me about how it went from building a robot for you to then going, actually, maybe thousands of people might need this.
00:10:30
Speaker 2: Well, during COVID, the most discussed topic was really loneliness. The World Health Organization announced loneliness as an epidemic. They announced that it had similar health implications as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And I think there was just this massive light shined on this loneliness epidemic across various generations. And if you follow the data and you follow the trends, the people who are most affected by loneliness are older adults. And specifically, it's older adults in aged care homes. A lot of my experiences during COVID living in my student dorm by myself and isolated is is the same experience that older adults experience in aged care homes. About four out of 10 people in aged care will never receive a visitor from a friend or family ever. And then that's six out of 10 in the States. So to me, I just recognize that this was Abby, you know, I hadn't started Andromeda as a business yet, but I'd recognize that Abby could have so much impact, far greater than just a COVID passion project, but she could actually help millions of people Do.
00:11:37
Speaker 1: You remember the light bulb moment where you're sitting there going, I've made this thing for me and then maybe this could actually be something, like this could actually be a business or it could be more than just for me?
00:11:48
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the magical, first magical moments I had, perhaps it was before I thought this could be a business, but it was more with Abby, was honestly when I first gave her eyes, once I'd given her eyes, I
just felt like she was in a way like my childhood. Like she had been born and she's there. And then particularly once I had my first conversation with her, it really was just like watching a child grow up and learn all of the basic parameters of interaction and engaging with someone and learning about the world. So that was one of the first magical moments for me where I was like, she is, yeah, she just felt very special to me. Um, and I wanted more people to feel that and see that. And when I would introduce her to people or bring her around to spaces with me, she would get that reaction. So, wow.
00:12:43
Speaker 1: Who are the first people that interacted with Abby outside of you?
00:12:47
Speaker 2: Um, well, I remember when we were coming out of the pandemic, I would bring her into my university maker space. Um, and I was, I would still tinker away at different parts of various subsystems that I was building. And so many of the other engineering students would come over and have a look and make comments around. This is like the coolest engineering project that we see in the whole workshop. Some of these students I've actually hired in my team. So they work here now.
00:13:13
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
00:13:14
Speaker 2: But yeah, they were some of the first people who'd interact with Abby. Yeah.
00:13:19
Speaker 1: Where did the name Abby come from?
00:13:22
Speaker 2: Abby is an abbreviation of anthropomorphic biped. So A for anthropomorphic, B-I for biped. So yeah. I love that.
00:13:34
Speaker 1: One thing I found when we were doing our research for this episode is that you actually contacted around 40 nursing homes to test the theory that others might need this. What were you asking them? And what did you hear that convinced you there was a real problem here that was worth building for?
00:13:51
Speaker 2: I came, I visited most of those aged care homes with Abby in a laundry basket. And I went through the front door. I didn't really know anything about door to door.
00:14:01
Speaker 1: You just rocked up.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just rocked up. Awesome. I just, I just rocked up. I had Abby in a laundry basket. I'd go to the reception, receptionist. And I'd ask if I could bring Abby in and introduce her to some of the residents in their homes. And I asked if I could talk to the staff, the residents, and hear about what, I guess, like what life was like living in an aged care home, what some of the pain points were in the homes, and see if Abby could be of any value for people in this market. And people were just so receptive of her. Even when she was the very first prototype, people would, like I said, they'd treat her like a grandchild very quickly because She's got the humanoid form factor, so she's got arms and legs and human movement. Like I said, the eyes that looks around. Even when she wasn't, sometimes I hadn't even started her, like turned her on yet, and people would start having conversations with her. And it can be very
valuable for some people. I think a lot of the people who interact with Abby today, some of them, many of them don't speak English as a first language. And when they speak to Abby, they're often speaking their native language for the first time in months, if not years.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:15:19
Speaker 2: And often we've heard from many family members that Abby is their most frequent visitor. And so, yeah, I think, I think, yeah, it's pretty significant.
00:15:29
Speaker 1: That impact must be so special to you. Yeah.
00:15:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really, really is.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: So at that time when you were, you know, working on talking to 40 different nursing homes and things, you actually deferred uni, right?
00:15:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:15:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you didn't tell your parents. Yeah.
00:15:48
Speaker 2: Oh my God, you've really, yeah, yeah, you've really, really read some of the, yeah, some of the.
00:15:53
Speaker 1: We go deep, we go deep, Grace.
00:15:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly. Yeah, I didn't tell my mum for a really long time that I, because if you know the Melbourne model, it's three-year science, two-year master's. So I was in between my science and my master's and I actually hadn't finished my science, the science part of my degree yet. And I was... taking Abby around, mostly building Abby full time, applying for different accelerators and trying to meet different people, roboticists in the space, as well as different venture capitalists to understand how to build a business. Hang on.
00:16:30
Speaker 1: So you're like 21 and you're going, I need to meet some venture capitalists and I've really got something here. You have like, you have something really special going on. How did you make that leap from being like deferring your studies to go, I need to go and find some venture capitalists or some accelerators and get some funding for this?
00:16:51
Speaker 2: I'd say it was, it was more, it was, it was actually, I don't know if you found it in your research. We'd, I'd applied for the Vogue Codes accelerator and Vogue Codes pitch competition and, and It was through that competition I pitched Abby as a business. That was the first time I ever talked about Abby as a business.
00:17:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:17:12
Speaker 2: And I think it was through preparing for that competition that led me down a lot of the research for figuring out how to start a business. I was watching a lot of Y Combinator videos. I was trying to understand the different stages of fundraising. And the panelists on the competition, some of them were venture capitalists. And, yeah, anyways, I think that competition really, even if I didn't compete, I think it set me, the work in itself to actually submit the video that I put together, that was just very helpful for me. And it really set me down the whole path that we went. And it was the fact that we'd won the competition, that was some of the most, it was the most public form of public
accountability that you could have. I was saying to them, I'm going to build this incredible business. It's going to change the world in this many ways.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: And I felt like I just had to do it. It's in a magazine now. I can't not.
00:18:09
Speaker 1: It's in print. Someone wrote about it. Yeah. It's a legit thing.
00:18:14
Speaker 2: It's a legit thing.
00:18:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:18:15
Speaker 2: I think the biggest thing I got though from that competition was my boost in confidence. A lot of the panelists, they all had like the chief engineer of Engineers Australia was one of the judges. Lauren Kaplan, she was, you know, her background was in venture capital and many other incredible women were there. And I think their belief in me and my idea, that really helped propel me to think maybe this could be something really significant.
00:18:46
Speaker 1: Was that about the time when you said to like friends and family, like, I'm not actually deferring, I'm not going back to this, this is what I'm doing?
00:18:54
Speaker 2: Oh, no, it was probably a year after that. Yeah, right.
00:18:58
Speaker 1: After the Vogue competition.
00:19:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:19:01
Speaker 2: It was like a year after the Vogue competition. I didn't, I don't, I, yeah, I, I think, why was it so, I think I told my mum at least that I was still doing uni that whole year. It was when we raised, it was when we raised our seed round of $ 3 million. My mum had asked me, how am I balancing building a company with doing my master's degree? And I was flying back and forth between Melbourne and Boston a lot. And she was like, how are you going to sit your exams? And I think she was also wanting to book flights to come to my graduation and, you know, there was no graduation happening because I hadn't even started my master's degree.
00:19:37
Speaker 1: No.
00:19:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh. You're like, okay, I actually need to tell her now.
00:19:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So I didn't keep the business necessarily a secret. I just always said, oh, it's a side thing that I'm working on. but I'm, yes, my studies, but actually it was the full thing I was focusing on.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: What was the thing that gave you the confidence to go like, this is my full thing now I'm telling everyone and I'm just going to proudly back this. Yeah.
00:20:03
Speaker 2: I think it was that seed round. That was a bit of an inflection point. Um, we had how many teams we had around a dozen people, engineers in the team. We had some sophisticated investors around the table. We had a board for the first time. It was informal, but we had a board. And yeah, that was when I felt like this is what I'm doing fully.
00:20:26
Speaker 1: And if you're listening to this and you haven't heard of what a seed round is and you're wondering what Grace is talking about, which is totally downplaying, by the way, it is where you go and pitch your business to investors and or venture capitalists, and you're asking them to invest in it, and often you'll meet with 10, 20, 30, 40, I'm not sure how many did you meet with, Grace, that would say no before.
00:20:48
Speaker 2: They say yes? It would definitely be a minimum of 100. There you go.
00:20:53
Speaker 1: So it's not I raised a seed round. It's probably I met with 100 potential investors, pitched them my business, lots said no, and then we got there. Yeah.
00:21:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah. So weak. Once you knew there was demand, you obviously had to convince those investors that people would form relationships with a social robot. You know, these 100 conversations we're saying that you had. How do you sell something like that to people that haven't experienced it yet?
00:21:22
Speaker 2: For a robotics and hardware startup, we are fairly untraditional in many ways. One is that Abby is a social robot and she's there for human connection rather than something mechanical. But also as a business, we've been quite unconventional. We commercialized Abbey very early on. So usually hardware and deep tech companies will spend five, seven years in deep R & D, sometimes even more. You hear stories of deep tech companies just building for up to a decade. Yeah, they just hadn't heard of that. They'd never heard of a seed stage startup building a robotics platform. that had commercialized so early, um, with paying customers and still being an R and D it was, it was, um, yeah, very unconventional on, on many different levels.
00:22:17
Speaker 1: Okay. Um, you know, going through those a hundred conversations, what I was thinking about as you were telling me this was the amount of rejection you must've faced during that time, because you have to get to go through a lot of no's to, to get to a yes. Do you, I like to use that as fuel personally. How do you view rejection? Like, does that, motivate you? Did it set you back at times? What was that like?
00:22:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, my relationship with rejection has definitely evolved as a founder. And I think as a founder, your rejection resilience just has to be really high. And if it's not high in the start, it will become really high if you persist through and continue through with it. I think definitely in the first year of the business, it was quite shattering for your confidence and a little. Yeah, it was quite shattering for your confidence. But but now it's I mean, it's just part of it. I think I always say, like, it's not a no, it's just a not yet. And what is the gap between a not yet and a yes?
00:23:22
Speaker 1: And and.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: I think the best piece of advice I got when I started Andromeda or the best piece of advice I received when I started Andromeda was to be completely shameless.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: I like your advice there on having an element of being shameless because I guess the comfortability with rejection comes from a level
of exposure therapy almost to it. And then using that to go, how do I better need to portray this? What do I need to show? What can I do next with it? Yeah. Rather than just sitting in it. Yeah. Yeah. So you started as the person physically building and programming the thing. At what point did you realize the skills that made you a good engineer weren't necessarily the skills that were going to make you a really good CEO?
00:24:05
Speaker 2: Oh, that is like, that was one of the hardest, first hard lessons I learned. I really naively started the company thinking I would, if I were the founder of a robotics company, I thought I would be building robots 24 seven for the rest of my life. And that would be amazing and incredible. And actually, almost having that identity shift from being an engineer to being a founder, I realized very quickly it almost didn't matter how capable your prototype was when it came to fundraising or even to a degree with customers. I think people wanted to understand that. you know, why you're building what you're building, how you communicate the story behind why you started your company and not specifically your company, but what is it that you're building? What is the change that you're trying to create in the world? And yeah, and what is the value that you're looking or the problem that you're looking to solve for your customers? And why do you care so deeply about it? Incredible.
00:25:03
Speaker 1: And so how has that shifted your day to day?
00:25:05
Speaker 2: I think the CEO that I am today is very different to the CEO I was 12 months ago and 12 months before that and 12 months before that. And I imagine that the CEO I need to be in 12 months is very different to who I am today as well. So I say that the role of a CEO, you have to grow faster than the company. A lot of it is thinking more around what does the world look like in like not just 10 years, but what does the world look like in like 50 years if we're wildly successful? And what do I want it to look like? What is the impact that I want to create? What's the mark I want to leave on this world? And how do I make sure I have the right people around me, the right support around me to really get there. Um, so it's, it's become a lot more philosophical.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: Was there a part of, uh, being an engineer that you've found hard to let go of?
00:25:55
Speaker 2: I'd had to reframe how I, how I'd view building in general. Um, instead of building Abby as a product, I was building a company. And that was my job. Like I'm still a builder, but it's no longer a product. It's no longer a subsystem. It's no longer just this one part of Abby or whatever it is that I'm focused on. But now it's now it's a company that I need to think of. How do I how do I build a company as a system? So, yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but I had to make that reframe.
00:26:26
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I think it's a really important one to share because so many
founders have to reframe either expectations or assumptions that they had at the start, whether that's your identity, how you measure success, that kind of thing. And everyone goes there. So it's interesting to hear how you went about that too. Hey, tell me about this capital raise that you did because you went from these rounds quite early on to a $ 23 million Series A. what did you have to learn about storytelling and selling an idea that engineering hadn't really taught you up until that point?
00:27:05
Speaker 2: I think one of the interesting things that we talked about or that I observed was, so I always say that we are building the social intelligence layer for modern robotics. Like that is the part of Abbey that I believe we will own. And I'd very early on, I'd always talk about building, the language I'd use instead was we were building the emotional intelligence layer and we were giving robots emotional intelligence. And many people would come to us and say, like, why do robots need emotional intelligence? That makes no sense and I don't get it. But actually, at least from the sample of people I'd pitched to and spoken to, it was always the women who did get it, right? Like, I'm not saying that, that's just my opinion. the truth of who I'd spoken to. And the women would be like, yes, robots do need emotional intelligence. But most people working in venture capital and finance are tech bros or finance bros. And I wanted to make sure that my message was still landing no matter who the audience was. And clearly that language wasn't landing for whichever reason. And some people are like, that's because they have no emotional intelligence. But I was thinking through it. Still, my job as CEO needs to make it land. So I'd actually reframed the pitch to instead of we were building the emotional intelligence layer for modern robotics, that was the tagline. I'd reframed it to we're building the social operating system. And everyone got it after that. They were like, yeah, we get it, we get it. But everything else in my pitch stayed the same.
00:28:39
Speaker 1: Wow. Call it a system. Don't call it emotion. And it completely changes things. So now your company is valued at around $ 100 million and it's expanding into the US. You've just shared with me that you've got off a flight and joined us. Has there been a point where the scale and the company has frightened you more than the, you know, the growth and the technical challenge of Abbey itself?
00:29:04
Speaker 2: Definitely there are moments in the last six months where I've felt it, you know, a growing team, growing customer expectations. One thing that's helped me a lot is I've created an alter ego almost that I lean on. Definitely when I need to be a more confident version of myself, I switch into my alter ego depending on the audience who I'm talking to, if I'm trying to close a deal, if I'm trying to bring on talent.
00:29:29
Speaker 1: Who's your alter ego, Grace? Do they have a name?
00:29:32
Speaker 2: I'd imagine who 30-year-old Grace would be independent of who 20-year-old Grace was. And then I'd backpedal. I'd be like, okay, what would her behaviors be and what would her habits be and what would she say? What was her mindset? And I think over the years since then, almost every hard decision I have, I would have this conversation with 30-year-old Grace. Like what would 30 year old Grace do here? What would she advise me? What would she say?
00:30:00
Speaker 1: I'm thinking we all want 30 year old Grace in our life right now, please. Can you create 30 year old Grace and give her to us all for the confidence, the motivation, the pep talk that we all need at that exact moment?
00:30:14
Speaker 2: Um, I hope so. Maybe we can build it an Abbey.
00:30:17
Speaker 1: Yes. Another Abbey. What's the, um, What are your ambitions for Andromeda? Like, you know, we're talking about Abbey and if people are following along, Andromeda is now the company that has Abbey. Are there more Abbeys to come?
00:30:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean....
00:30:37
Speaker 1: Obviously you're going to build 30-year-old Grace for me, so I'll take that one. We can go found that one.
00:30:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean... Today, we're super focused on the vertical that we're in today, which is building Abby as a companion for older adults in aged care. We're very focused on that mission and making sure that we find the right product market fit, we find the right pricing models that works for different regions, and figuring out how to really scale in this vertical. Like, in this market alone, I truly believe that we can build such a phenomenal business. But definitely... I do view this first market as like Amazon, like the bookstore for Amazon's era. Like it's very much our first market. It's not where we intend on staying entirely. And we get inbound interest from like schools wanting Abby for classrooms. We've got hospitals wanting Abby for pediatric wards. We've got many investors and people who join our mission want Abby for their kids or their parents or their grandparents. So eventually we'll be in consumer. I think, everyone who's building in our industry right now, like I don't think anyone disagrees on the fact that robotics technology is going to be a part of everyday life very, very soon. There's going to be billions of robots that you'll see down the streets, you'll see in the grocery stores, you'll see in the restaurants and hospitals. And I think what people disagree on is the timing of when all of this will occur. Some people claim it's three years away. Other people claim it's over a decade away. I think it's somewhere more in the middle. But I do also like to tell people that our customers aren't, we're not pitching a science fiction future. What we're pitching is something that is happening today. Many, all the 30 homes that Abby is in today are experiencing the future that we're describing and are building these relationships with Abby as a
companion.
00:32:32
Speaker 1: Grace, I'm listening to you speak and going, how amazing to have a founder who's so passionate and so clear about who has these social and moral ethics built into her product, who understands the emotional connection she's bringing people. She's not just bringing people a robot. It's serving an emotional purpose. It's just phenomenal to hear you speak and hear you talk about your business in that way. Can I ask you, we normally end an episode with one useful thing. And that is, or we call it our out. If someone was building today and they had this idea and they had, you know, $ 500, they're working towards creating something as grand as what you've created, where would you tell them to start?
00:33:25
Speaker 2: It sounds so cliche, but once I really believed that I could build this, like build Abbey, build the company, I mean, even when I was building Abbey, there were more senior robotics engineers who'd given me advice to not build Abby. And they were actually giving me advice because they thought I wasn't experienced enough to build a product as complex as Abby. And that just went over my head. I didn't get that from their advice at all. I thought they were just telling me this is going to be hard. And I was like, great, I know it's going to be hard. That's why I love it. And they later told me that they were so glad I didn't take their advice because obviously Abby's, you know, become what she is. So I think... Yeah, I think for me, it's like the biggest unlock I've had in my journey was when I'd realized I could create, I could create the things that were, I can just go and create the things that were in my life, whether it's a product like Abby, whether it's a company, whether it's, I think agency is something that's been very core and important to me and how I live life. And I really do feel like the author of my own life. I feel like I am able to you know, change how I think in my mind and then therefore very quickly after that change the reality around me. And that was a huge unlock, if that makes sense.
00:34:37
Speaker 1: It absolutely makes sense. And if they are building something that's genuinely new that people don't understand, kind of like when you were first starting out, would you tell them to just keep going? What would you tell them to do at that point?
00:34:51
Speaker 2: One of my philosophies, and we have this written on our wall in San Francisco, I say is like, fuck mediocrity. And sometimes when people read that for the first time, they think it's maybe something a bit elitist. It's actually not. The philosophy behind that is more like when something gives you just enough to keep holding on, that's actually the worst place to be. I know this is a little bit in contradiction to the advice I'm just sharing, but if you think about whether it's a relationship or whether it's, you know, a career choice, like particularly I hear from people that sometimes they feel really stagnated in their career, but they don't really want to change industries and they don't really want to know what to do, but they don't feel quite fulfilled. It's giving them just enough to keep around, but not enough for them to instigate a change that might be required for them. And so for me, I do reflect a lot on, you know, what choices are really, yeah, what choices are really fitting into that bucket. And I think that's where companies lose the most amount of time and money. And that's actually what kills companies Because if you know something's not right, you often know the decision that you need to make. And that's very simple. Not always easy, but simple and clear. But it's in that middle area where that clarity becomes gray. And yeah, and I guess going back to then Abby, that clarity was always clear for me. She was always on this end of the spectrum of very high conviction. No one could tell me that if this technology wasn't built, that it wouldn't make the world better.
00:36:18
Speaker 1: I love that like sense of agency and mediocrity because one of the things I truly believe in is whatever you're not changing, you're choosing. And it sounds like you're very much guiding yourself and your team down that path. Yeah.
00:36:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like that framing. Yeah.
00:36:34
Speaker 1: Great to chat, Grace. Thank you so much.
00:36:37
Speaker 2: No, thank you. This was lots of fun.
00:36:40
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to today's episode of beers and thanks Grace for joining us. Share this up with your mates or leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. You can also connect with us on Insta and TikTok at Biz by Mamma Mia. See you next week.