00:00
You're like the whole milk version of an Elon Musk. You know what I mean? You're the Midwest version of the of an Elon Musk, but what the hell did you know about
00:07
building a fucking airplane. You know what I mean? What did you did you know anything about that? No. I did not. I
00:16
I knew I knew nothing. It's just like I really wanted to do it.
00:27
Alright, everyone. We have, a really interesting guest. His name is Brett Adcock. I've talked about him on pod a bunch of times. But let me explain why this guy's interesting. So he started a
00:38
recruiting website that he sold for a hundred million dollars, which in most everyone's case, that's a a massive home run. You're you're incredibly successful of of of which he is, but then he parlayed that and invested pretty much one hundred percent of his money into another company called Archer,
00:54
which basically makes, like, unmanned helicopters.
00:57
And then that took went public at, like, a one point five billion dollar valuation.
01:02
And he started another company called Figure, which is making humanoids. They're basically robots that can work warehouses and do human labor.
01:10
The reason I wanted Brett to come on
01:12
is because I just wanted to think and learn about how someone
01:16
who's so unique how they think and how they make decisions.
01:19
And so Brett's really subtle. He's a he's a low key guy. He he's not crazy high energy.
01:25
He's not one of these guys who we have on who is a a a personality where they have a big personality on on YouTube or Twitter or anything like that. He's subtle, man. The guy's humble, and he's quiet. And I find that to be incredibly fascinating. My opinion,
01:39
in ten years,
01:40
Brett is gonna be in the running of however we think of, like, these, like, Howard Hughes, Elon Musk types of crazy folks who build these amazing, world changing things. Brett gonna be that. I mean, he's already up there, but I think he's gonna be like that. And no one knows who he is now or at least, compared to some of those other folks. So what I want you to do is listen to this episode, particularly, like, the last fifteen minutes when we talk about his latest company.
02:03
It's really fascinating. And I want you to tweet at me, my handle's the Sam Parr, p a r r, so the, the word the, and then Sam, and then Parr, tweet at me and let me know what you think about this guy. And what makes people like him special? Because I'm really fascinating with these types of personalities, and I'm fascinating with how people can learn so much information so quickly. It's just really fascinating to me. So let me know. Give it a listen. His name's Brett Adcock, Let's start the show. Alright. Dude, let's just get right into it. The reason you're interesting to me is because you're incredibly successful. I imagine you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars
02:39
but you
02:41
you go all in on stuff. So you told me with this new company figure
02:46
you financed it for the first year and you put up most all of your money and do it. I was like, I was like, what what what's your asset allocation for your personal portfolio? And you're like, well, I own archer stock, which I took public, I own a house, and then I put
03:01
some huge amount of money, which if you want, you could say, into the my company figure, and I'm going all in on them. And I and I just go hard. I go all in. Is that right? Yeah.
03:11
This has really been out of necessity.
03:14
My career,
03:16
when I started Bettery,
03:17
I couldn't get anybody to invest in the
03:20
business. For the first, like, almost, like, three years. So I basically put all my savings into the company, took no salary for three or four years. How much savings did you have year twenty five? I think I had, like, close to two hundred thousand dollars I put into the business.
03:35
And then, you know, didn't take any salary for three years. I meant, like,
03:40
had to pay for my own health care, food, rent. I was living in Manhattan. It was really expensive.
03:45
In twenty fifteen, things got so bad that
03:48
I had to borrow,
03:50
I think it was fifty thousand dollars to pay for rent.
03:53
And survive.
03:56
I had, like, credit card debt. I was, yeah, I was probably in the red, like, negative a hundred thousand dollars.
04:01
Prior to
04:03
the the acquisition of Vettery. Well, what did Vettery exit for?
04:07
A hundred and ten million. So that was a that was a windfall. Right? Yeah. That was great. I raised, like, a little over ten million dollars over, like, seven years.
04:16
So I had a large, you know, percentage ownership of the company. So, but, yeah, overnight success from going from,
04:23
you know, seven years of agony
04:26
and debt
04:27
to, like, having capital for the first time in a significant way. And then did did you I don't know if you're telling me these stories, like, when you're if you're goofing around or not, but you're you said that you put most all of your money into archer. Right?
04:41
Yeah.
04:43
When I so I started Archer in twenty
04:46
eighteen, so I called arch aviation, and,
04:49
we build,
04:51
electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. So these are basically aircraft,
04:55
somewhat similar to a helicopter, but they're purely electric And their their the goal is to use the aircraft to move people around cities. So
05:02
the traffic's just like such a terrible phenomenon.
05:05
Nobody's really worked on traffic for a hundred years. So we're we're basically out there. I was out there trying to solve the traffic problem and kinda help help the sustainability
05:13
The pitch coming out of Vettery was just it it was bad. Like, it was,
05:18
hey. We we need,
05:20
basically, probably about a billion dollars maybe more to get to market or we or we don't make it. We're designing this new type of
05:28
transportation system in the air. So instead of driving to the airport, you would fly. And it needs to be fully electric that nobody in history had had ever certified an electric
05:37
aircraft before.
05:39
And I was coming off a software
05:41
you know, ten years, fifteen years in software.
05:45
So that that pitch did not really resonate too well in twenty eighteen.
05:49
You're like, we made a joke in the last pod where I'm like, if you drink a glass of milk with dinner, you're my type of guy.
05:57
Like, people were making fun of me from being from Midwest. You're like you're like the whole milk version of an Elon Musk. You know what I mean? You're the Midwest version of the of an Elon Musk. But what the hell did you know about?
06:07
I mean, software is easy in a sense. Like, you know, like, it's just code. Right? Like, no one's gonna die. If you if you screw it up, or in most cases, no one's gonna die. And if I talk to a guy who's doing, like, computer engineering or computer science, I'm like, what the hell do you know about building a fucking airplane. You know what I mean? What did you did you know anything about that? No. I did not. I
06:32
I knew I knew nothing. It's just like I really wanted to do it. That doesn't make sense to me.
06:37
Yeah. But what do you do? That doesn't make sense to me. Like, if I wanted to go learn about how an airplane is built, I guess I would like for a or a unmanned drone. I don't know what you wanna call it. I would go. I guess I would first of all, you have to have a high IQ to begin with, which I don't. But I would like what I what would I do? I guess I would call people who know what they're talking about and ask them what books do you read? And then I would go and read the books and take lessons, and maybe I would go to, like, a call a few college courses. I don't I like, it this just seems like an impossible thing to learn, and you learned it in how many years. So yeah. So here's what I did. I,
07:11
one is I spent a tremendous amount of time after Vettery, figuring out what I wanted to work on next, I kinda fell into the recruiting marketplace space with Vettery,
07:19
and, I really wanted to be very thoughtful,
07:22
about what I wanted to work on. So I basically spend a a large amount of time figuring out, okay, what is the right opportunity I wanna spend my time on and and it was archer? It was very clear to me I I wanted to do the archer evasion and build it. The first thing I did is I basically built a spreadsheet and I called everybody in the I could I could think of in the world. So I think I made,
07:40
I think that spreadsheet is about three hundred people I I connected with. Whether they're at NASA or professors
07:46
or working in industry at rotorcraft or airplanes or turbofan development, what whatever it would look like. And I just immersed myself, and I wanted to know every
07:55
technical book that was on on the market, I wanted to understand how to build electric aircraft, like, what are the components and what are what are the physics governed by in the space?
08:03
And, I probably spent almost six months in a room just making phone calls, like cold calling everybody in the world. What's that call look like? Hey,
08:11
mister Conway. My name's Brett. Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk to me about helicopters?
08:17
It's it's crazy, man. Like, people people will pick up the phone for you. Like, it's just, like, you you just gotta pick up the phone and call, and people will talk to you. People wanna people wanna help. What was the most,
08:28
like breathtaking call you had or meaningful call you had? I did a I did a meeting. So I I I in in addition to calling everybody in the world,
08:38
the the parallel track was I was going back to school, so I went back and, like, learned how to do, like, mechanical and aerospace engineering.
08:46
And, you know, leading up to that, I went to an event in twenty eighteen. I think it was twenty eighteen. It's, like, early twenty eighteen at this point. It was at this Hyatt, like, like, basically Hyatt Hotel in Atlanta, was hosting this, like, electric,
09:00
aircraft design course. There's a lot of aerodynamics folks and, folks in the industry that really wanted to understand the physics around electric aircraft.
09:08
I went down there, and I basically sat for two days,
09:13
being lectured on how to build an aircraft, electric aircraft from scratch, how to think about the propulsion,
09:19
aerodynamics,
09:21
batteries,
09:22
and,
09:23
it was it was just, like, all my heroes today in electric aviation,
09:26
And one of the guys there was in his PhD at the University of Florida and said,
09:31
I got me too. I'm doing my PhD electric aviation, and I wanna build a EV Tall aircraft. And I go to the University of Florida, and I said, wow, I went to I went to undergrad University of Florida as well. He's like, you need to come by ASAP and see our lab. We're trying to build electric aircraft and, you know, smaller scale,
09:47
and we we could help you.
09:49
So
09:50
I did this course. I got on a plane. I went down to Gainesville,
09:54
And I met the the head of the group there,
09:57
and,
09:58
he's basically the the head of all mechanical and aerospace engineering university he had this, like, basically twelve person lab building things like Hobby grade, like electric aircraft drones.
10:08
And I I just said, I wanna take this lab over, and I wanna just build
10:12
electric aircraft.
10:14
And, this lab happened to be off of Archer Road. So I called the Business Archer
10:18
Aviation.
10:19
What percentage of the veterinary windfall did you put into this education pour po portion as well as art starting archer? Oh, like, all of it. Yeah. All of it. But what does that actually mean? Like, how are you living?
10:32
Well, I was living off the cash. So I I had just from from Vettery, just, like, pay my bills. I took no salary at Archer for
10:40
two years. I don't know. Something like that. Like, this is a zero.
10:45
Like, cover insurance type thing.
10:47
And,
10:49
you know, I made, like, I went from, like, having nothing to, like, having tens of millions of dollars after tax. So it was, you know, it was it was a lot of money. I just didn't need I didn't need almost any of it. So I wanted to work on
11:02
this new new thing, and no nobody would like I couldn't even get meetings.
11:07
At one at one point, a guy introduced, like, the guy that runs like General Catalyst Joel.
11:12
And,
11:14
he called my pitch disrespectful.
11:16
What did he say? He was, like, it was, like, mid it was, like, right when COVID hit, and
11:21
I got a big introduction from him, from, like, one of my investors, Mark Laurie introduced me to Joel. He's like, this is the best guy got you gotta talk to him, and I got on the call with Joel, and he's just like, I gotta stop you right here, man.
11:33
This is the most disrespectful pitch I've ever seen. We have people dying because of COVID. Like, the hospitals are filled up, and you're asking me for money.
11:42
Like, for, like, for this, like, flying car idea? Like, what are you talking about? This is not possible. Like, why would you be doing this?
11:50
And I said, like, I'm running out of money,
11:53
personally. Like, I need somebody to fund this. So we're all like, nope. I know p I know COVID's bad, but the business is gonna die. And this is what you do. You fund companies. Like, this is why I'm calling you. Like, this is,
12:05
and yeah, I would say probably gonna stay the worst phone call I've ever taken.
12:09
So I sold my company
12:11
three years ago, and I had the same thing where I, like, I didn't I was I was just barely getting by and then overnight things changed. And I was like, I'm gonna spend six or twelve months just like seeking planning. I'm gonna figure out what because I don't I don't know if you took time off, but I took, like, three months of, like, kinda normal
12:29
twenty or forty hour work weeks and low stress. And I was like, alright. Cool. That's what I needed. I I felt recharged.
12:36
I need to get back to it. Except when I went back to it, I was like,
12:41
have you ever heard of Eiki guy? It's like this, like, free it's like this Japanese, like,
12:45
concept where there's, like, four rings that overlap. And one of the rings is, like, what does the world wanna pay for? The other ring is What does the world want? The other one is what do I enjoy doing? And then what am I great at? And, like, ideally, you find something right in the middle because if you find something, that you're great at, that you have skills at, but the world doesn't wanna pay for. That's just like an expensive hobby. If you find something the world wants and they're willing to pay for and you're good at, but you hate it, that's just like a crappy job. So, like, you wanna find something right in the middle. So I was like, what am I skilled at? And, basically,
13:19
I I thought of it, like,
13:22
I'm just gonna
13:23
use my skills and what do I enjoy, and I'm just gonna try and do something slightly better. And I think that's a pretty rational way to go about doing things. Like, most people are, they're like, I don't wanna do too hard, too outside of my realm,
13:37
What interests me about you is, like, you're kind of an alien. Like, you, like, really, like, alright, this software thing, this battery thing, it worked. I don't know if it worked as good or as as you wanted it to or not. I don't know the full story, but you just, like, took a total one eighty and you're, like, screw
13:52
the fifteen years of internet experience that I'm doing, I'm going to do aviation
13:57
hardware. I'm gonna do
13:59
a totally different thing.
14:02
What do you think is is unique about you that makes it so you don't actually want to, like, go the easy route because I know at Vettery, I think you, like, built Did you build, like, the email marketing software? Like, that's pretty, like
14:14
that's a very narrow niche, and you did something not even within it. Within that niche, not even related to it, and you took the totally different route. What do you think is inside of you that makes you do that? Because I find that fascinating. I think at the end of the day, I just wanna
14:28
wanna wake up, like, a amazing future.
14:31
That's exciting and inspiring. Are you motivated by money?
14:35
Not really. No.
14:36
I think if I
14:38
wanted to make a lot of money, I'm probably in the wrong field.
14:43
You know, I think, like, the there's, like, a risk reward balance in startups. Like, I think if if it was just about money, I think I'd be basically probably back in software still.
14:52
I think going and doing these projects I'm working on now are just probably the probably the surest path to losing everything.
14:59
When you're starting to figure,
15:02
like, you know, you read about Elon Musk, and he's like, well, I put everything in. He's like, I was sleeping on couches. And it's like, well, the couch was, like, sir, Adrianne. You know, it was, like, his couch, which probably isn't like a normal couch. You know, it's probably the couch in the living room of the guest house, and you just don't wanna go and use the king sized bed. But, like, when you're starting figure,
15:22
are you ever worried about running out of money and losing everything that you've earned?
15:27
I basically almost went,
15:30
personally bankrupt last year, a figure. What what yeah. Tell me
15:35
that. Yeah. So when I left Archer,
15:37
I had basically,
15:39
you know, all my asset, all my money tied up into Archer. Like, just had, like And you you you can't sell that as an officer. Right? Yeah. So, like, insider Yeah. We were, like, you know, I I I made it pretty,
15:50
clear when I started the business and even when I went public that, like,
15:54
me, as the, like, I as a founder and CEO, I'm not I'm not selling stock. We're pre revenue,
16:00
I I told the board this. I told all of our investors this. I even put a million dollars in the in the stack,
16:06
pipe, as we went public at ten bucks.
16:08
And so,
16:09
personally, I was like, I'll put another million dollars in here at three million dollar evaluation. Just show you guys.
16:14
That's all I got. And,
16:17
And when I I left Archer
16:20
in April of twenty twenty two, I had twelve month stock lock
16:24
up this is public. Like, there's an SCC document for this.
16:28
And so I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't sell
16:31
a majority of all my stock was fully locked up until April of this year.
16:36
So I
16:37
had some percentage I could sell over
16:40
over some time series. I could sell a certain amount of stock, limited by certain volumes of the market cap. That there there wasn't just that much volumes a year ago. So I was selling some stock to fund figure.
16:50
And the stock went from, like, I left, the stock was at five or six bucks. It wouldn't take a dollar eighty,
16:56
end of last year, earlier this year. And
16:59
I I was just like, I don't know if I can get to I don't know if I can get to twelve month mark, which was, twelve month mark was April of twenty twenty three. That's, like, April
17:09
you know, April eighteenth twenty twenty three promised land. Like, I could sell an unlimited stock. No volume restriction,
17:16
all stock lock up, which which I'm, you know, I I have a bunch of stocks though here. I'm not selling right now. But, like,
17:22
but that was the point where I needed to get to. And
17:26
I thought, you know, I was underwriting seeing that stocks at three, four, five, six, seven dollars. Like, no problem. I'll I'll be able to get there. And we were building a team. Team's not, like, was that, you know, forty or something like that. We're building we're spending like millions of hard work. Figured with that forty. Yeah. We were, like, we were within six months. We were at a seven figure a month bird.
17:46
I figure.
17:47
And I was just, like, it was, like, sell stock, transfer to bank account,
17:52
transfer it into the company pay pay payroll.
17:55
It was like, how fast can we get that done?
17:58
And it was like a full system of, like, trying to get the,
18:02
like, not hitting the limits every day on stock selling.
18:05
Getting the cash into the bank account and putting money in the figure.
18:09
And,
18:10
and I wasn't, you know, this was, like, there was a recession
18:14
we were in, the banks were going bankrupt.
18:16
It wasn't like it was a pretty market for series a or capital raising. It was the worst market since we've been in since the financial crisis,
18:24
from a from a fundraising perspective,
18:26
I had a stock like a stocks going down, like, seventy five percent.
18:30
And I was just, like, I'm running out of cash.
18:34
So I'm in my say, I'm in my Hampton group,
18:37
And I'm like, everybody's like, what's your, you know, most most important thing you're doing right now? It's, you know, talk about. I'm like, I'm running out of money. I'm like, might not make it. What did they say? What was their feedback?
18:48
I I think they were I I thought they I think they thought it was a maniac. I think everyone thinks you're a maniac. Mean, like, I've talked to a lot of people who know you. That's what fascinates me about you. But what fascinates me about you is that your hand you handle stress differently.
19:02
Like, I I've toured your factory and you were, like, smiling and, like, jumping around. Like, you, like, it seemed like you're, like,
19:09
jolly almost. I don't know. You're showing me the shit I remember going to your factory or your office, and
19:16
you were like, check this out. We got the knee working. And, like, you see, like, a knee or ankle. I don't know what it was. Like, you see some something of the robot in your and there was, like, eighteen or ten people just sitting around, and it felt like hanging out with, like, buddies in a garage, like, just watching you guys finally figure out how to work, like, a remote control car or something like ridiculous.
19:36
And it seemed exciting though. Like, I remember being there, and I meant, like, I have to be part of this. And it was exciting,
19:43
but I didn't I I know that you go all in on things. I didn't realize how close you were to running out of money. Like, I don't understand how you deal with that. Like, what's your wife saying when you're, like, hey, we might file for bankruptcy
19:54
personally in the next couple months. Yeah. I think it's even worse. Like, we had a I had a second mortgage on my house
20:00
to go through it.
20:01
No way. What did she say? Yeah. So I also in the category of, like, you know, people thinking about my maniac. My my my wife just she's been with me fifteen
20:10
years now
20:12
through all of this. Like, we lived in, you know, thousand dollar a month apartment in New York. We had a downsize too to get through the battery stuff.
20:21
To, you know, to to now Archer and figure.
20:24
She's great. Like, she's she's a warrior. She, like, believes me and she
20:29
has total faith in what we're doing. And
20:32
I don't take these things lightly. Like, I really these are, like, planned exercises
20:36
I I need to go through.
20:38
And have been been through many near death experiences. I mean, art Archer, like,
20:44
like, what I went through a figure was probably, like, a tip of the iceberg
20:48
to what I went through at Archer last, like, like, five years. Like, Archer was just,
20:53
you know,
20:53
going public was just, like, a recipe to get sued.
20:57
And we were going public to us the spec process. We,
21:00
you know, as soon as we priced the spec deal, the market turned on specs, it was it was just a roller coaster.
21:06
So,
21:07
yeah, I just I've been through many exercises like this before, and I think I can weather them pretty well now.
21:12
I don't know anything about, like, business finances. I remember when we started our company, I didn't know the difference between cash flow and revenue, which was like a pretty big deal. You need to know that. I didn't know what that was until, like,
21:23
three years into the company. And I was like, I thought cash flow and revenue were the same thing. I don't understand how to read a balance sheet. I don't know how to do any of that. So I'm I'm
21:31
taking classes right now to, like, figure that out, and I was googling stuff.
21:36
And I found this website. It's called
21:39
street of walls
21:41
dot com.
21:42
So I went to Street of Walls, and there's these amazing articles where you click start training, and there's, like, it looks like a book. So if you're on your computer, go to streetofwalls.com. So there's, like, introduction. There's, like, what does an investment bank do? There's, like, how do you do a discounted cash flow analysis. There's all this stuff, and I scroll to the bottom,
21:59
and I always click the about page,
22:02
and there's a link that says follow this site and author on Twitter,
22:06
and I clicked the Twitter,
22:08
and it was you. You wrote you made this website, and I was
22:13
like, texting this is pretty funny. I was texting you ahead of time. I go, hey, I know you took a company public. I don't know anything about finances. How did you learn how to do it? And you're like, oh, I actually taught myself how to do it. And then I did most of the preparation work for the IPO. And I was like, that's amazing. And you didn't even tell me you had this site where it was like a whole site of your learning and education.
22:33
What was this site? What is streetofwalls.com? Yeah. So I so when I when I went to college,
22:40
I I enrolled in, like, industrial and system engineering of finance. This is, like, you know, not something I also talk about a lot, but, like, I basically did a few years in finance after school before, like, doing the startup life. Why don't you talk about that? Was that embarrassing? It just doesn't
22:54
the pitch doesn't isn't great. Like, I think, like, people just don't like hearing about finance folks, and I also didn't really enjoy it. Like, I think,
23:03
you know, I look at those years of saying, man, I wish I was, like, spending more time doing technology development.
23:09
And I was
23:11
working full time at building startups and stuff on the side.
23:14
And,
23:16
I just look at that saying, like, I think it was helpful in some ways, but, like, probably net-net, like, would have been more important just for me to dive in and start building businesses full time.
23:27
So
23:28
I was at, you know, in school. Somebody gave me this book. Is called, like, the fast track to, like, investment banking, management consulting, and trading.
23:36
And I read it, and it was like, you know, people are going to finance, like, drive ferraris. They just, like, do so well.
23:41
And make a hundred and fifty thousand after school. And I was, like, I was dead broke in college, like, taking out loans that pay for school. And I was, like, man, I'm gonna go this is how I'm gonna, you know, make some money,
23:52
start my career.
23:53
And I I went into, like, an interview with Goldman Sachs, and I just I just whiffed. Like, they asked me, like,
24:00
some accretion dilution, you know, like M&A modeling and LBO questions or leveraged buyout questions, and I just I didn't know anything.
24:07
And they're like, you know, I think the the guy was nice. She was like, listen, you just you have to have a certain, like, bar of understanding of financial finances.
24:15
He's like, this is such a disrespectful interview. Yeah. This is the second time you've been you're disrespecting people constantly. Yeah. Exactly.
24:22
And, just like, you're, you're, like, wasting my time. And I was, like, man, like,
24:26
I'm not really learning how to do this stuff in college. So I'm just gonna have to go learn it. And,
24:32
you know, I was learning now. I just started, like, writing notes and writing about it. And,
24:38
when my brother actually went to finance. My brother works at a private equity company now. I was like, I'm just gonna repackage all these notes. I'm gonna put them online
24:47
and also give him my brother. And, like, like, when I'm where am I gonna use him again? And that was the genesis for a Street of Walls. We've I think I've gotten, like, thirty million views,
24:58
of that site for the last, like, you know, fifteen years, which has been
25:02
which has been great. Like, a lot of folks have been like this has been my primary
25:06
reason I've gotten a job.
25:08
And,
25:09
but, you know, as you can see, I've I've haven't spent a nickel on it in over a decade.
25:14
Do you how do they get traffic? I mean, according to similar web, it's still getting a hundred thousand or so people a month coming to it. It's all organic SEO. That's insane. I mean, it that's kind of a lot. Right? I mean, for supply,
25:27
for an this would be an expensive term to rank for. Yeah. These are, like, you know, there's thousands of pages of content there with good original content.
25:36
And it's, you know, it's just ranking high on Google. You wrote all these? I wrote all those articles. Yeah. Were you gonna turn this into a business?
25:42
Yeah. I saw I at one point, I was making, like, five thousand dollars a month selling those interview guides,
25:48
like, like,
25:49
like, one year out of college.
25:51
It was great. I mean, it was like a ninety eight percent margin business. Alright. Well, when you're in that position, what's stopping you from going full time on that? Because if I'm broke and I'm twenty four and I'm making five grand a month, I'm like, this is the thing.
26:02
Yeah. I I didn't I I strongly believe,
26:06
like, I I I strongly believe I need to touch, like, the the mass market
26:11
And,
26:12
to have, like, significant impact in technology, you need to have, like,
26:17
a either a lot of people using your product or very few that use it I really like it a lot. And I just felt like the products, services I was
26:25
starting were just,
26:28
not important enough.
26:31
For my time. So in the pod, we on this pod, we talk a lot about, like, ideas and, like, different opportunities,
26:37
in terms of Vettery, what opportunities did you see that you guys weren't able to pounce on that still exists?
26:43
One of the things we did is,
26:45
you know, so what what so I started the delivery at the NYU incubator,
26:50
and,
26:52
what what what are the guys there
26:54
handing me a book one day and it's like, it was it was the book it was the predictable revenue book, which is basically like an outbound lead generation marketing playbook.
27:02
He said, hey, you need to read this. It would it'd probably be pretty helpful for Vettery.
27:07
And, those guys are it was actually Tap commerce. Those guys sold for, like, over a hundred million to Twitter. So it was Brian, the founder there.
27:14
And, I I ended up reading the book because, like, this is great. We need to, like, replicate this system fully end to end.
27:20
So I started, like, working online,
27:23
writing this, outbound lead generation process
27:27
And we ultimately gave it to,
27:29
basically a person that's here with me today. So Lee Randasio gave it to her and said, hey, can you, you go go figure out how to build this. So we she bought on an engineer, and we basically built this outbound lead generation software system that basically ended up powering all a battery.
27:43
So that was basically, like, how do we put
27:46
contact information of people and basically do this cadence of emails
27:51
out to folks to do, like, basically drum up leads. You can do this for both, like, customers. Where did you get the emails? We had an we built an offshore team of, like, three hundred people in the Philippines,
28:00
and we did all by scratch. What what does that mean going to LinkedIn or something and just building the list? You can,
28:06
basically finding the right people based on job titles And then there's a process where you can use the find emails pretty well. Like, there's, you know,
28:14
there's a lot on GitHub. There's a lot you can get to emails through Facebook pretty easily. There's basically a process where you can basically back into somebody's personal email address. There's also, like, databases.
28:23
You can use a lot of folks use. So We would get emails, plug them into this machine and go,
28:29
and we basically built this, like, huge engine that would power, like, millions of emails we were doing per month.
28:34
And then, I think it was, like, an early twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. There was, like, this startup emerging,
28:40
which is outreach.
28:42
And we demoed it. We're like, this is the same exact thing we just built.
28:46
Internally,
28:47
you know, Outreach now is like a four or five billion dollar company.
28:51
And we're, like, watching Outreach scale up. We have a product that is literally built internally ourselves that we're just using ourselves. At the time, we thought it was a little bit better, so we didn't use Outreach. Was more customized for what we're doing, everything else. But,
29:03
it it was really funny to see us, you know, me go out and build, like, a hundred million dollar company when, internally, we had billion dollar company sitting internally.
29:11
So there was there was a few of those that happened through the life of Better that were it was just interesting to see, and
29:18
I think that goes back to my same theme, which is, like, be very thoughtful. Like, so so my my time now is haunted by
29:26
Am I working on the right things? Do you think that was the wrong thing? I I think, bettery was the right thing for me at the right time, but it was definitely not the right thing to do it was definitely the right call to get into archer next in the figure.
29:39
And,
29:41
I use it as a learning lesson to say What happened with batteries, I I fell into it. I fell into it from Street of walls. I fell into it because I built up this huge database.
29:50
Of traffic from, like, from from content, and then I use that to help build and boost drop the marketplace with Vettery.
29:57
It it wasn't as if I, like, I was in college when I kinda stuff started and said,
30:02
I wanna go do recruiting. This is where I'm gonna spend the rest of my life in. It just I just fell into it. And,
30:09
happened to work out really well, and I think I wouldn't have been able to start archer if it wasn't for the battery acquisition.
30:16
So, you know, I think
30:18
think looking back, it was something I would have done again, but I used that less I used that as a lesson to say,
30:23
I do have a choice I want to spend my time on, and everybody does.
30:27
And it's the most press it asset you have because we don't have that much time left.
30:31
Alright. I gotta tell you about one thing that's one of the great joys of my life. And I'm not a car's guy, and I'm not watch guy, but there's one thing that gives me a lot of joy, and that is having a virtual assistant.
30:41
You know, here's the scenario. I'm running my companies. And even though I'm supposed to be this, CEO, We all know. I spend twenty, thirty percent of my time just doing random bullshit
30:50
stuff that is not high value, but it's just tedious. The stuff that has to get done, But it's not creativity. It doesn't require me. It doesn't add a bunch of value to the business. It's just stuff. Just stuff that has to get done. And so that stuff is what a virtual assistant does. Like, just this week alone, I lose my wallet. So she goes to the DMV website, fills out a bunch of forms, gets me a new license, or, you know, every morning. People have their morning coffee, I have my morning metrics, and my morning metrics are basically all the business metrics that I care about compiled. She goes, she finds it for all the different sources, puts it in Excel sheet, takes a screen text it to me so that when I wake up in the morning, I don't go on Twitter or check my email. I'm looking at where what are the metrics at and what do I need to do? I'm just focused on the right things. So having a virtual assistant is a no brainer, whether it's travel booking, email inbox, or just knocking stuff off your personal to do list that would have just lingered there forever,
31:40
I think it's a no brainer. If you're a business owner, you should definitely do it. I I think one of the best ways to find a assistant is shepherd. So go to support shepherd dot com you know, I pay my assistant, I think, eight dollars an hour, something like that. That's double what she was making in a previous job, so it's a win for her. And for me, it's super affordable. It's something that, you know, you don't need to have biggest business ever be the biggest big shot in order to afford it. So it's amazing. I now do this for my COO and my CMO too. Like, I just give them assistance without them even asking because know it makes them more productive. That's it does that for me. So of course, it's gonna do that for them too. So go to support shepherd dot com, check them out,
32:14
get an assistant, and tell them I sent you. They'll take good care if you could do that. So support shaver dot com. Check it out.
32:20
I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot?
32:24
HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned, no out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot
32:33
grow better.
32:36
What was the math that you saw or like the graph or whatever?
32:41
That made you wanna start figure? Like, what was was there a signal where you're like,
32:46
oh, man, this can be the biggest company in the world? Cause I think you sold that to me. You go We're we we'll either gonna screw up and go bankrupt or we'll have a very small exit, or it it's gonna be a hundred billion dollar company. Or you said something like like, this is either gonna be the biggest thing ever or total failure. But what did you see that gave you the idea that this could be the biggest thing?
33:06
So so what what what we're doing to hear figure is we're building humanoid robots. These are robots. When we see humanoid, I mean, it just it looks like the human form. So it has
33:15
legs, arms, hands. We're not trying to look like a human, but we're trying to do everything a human can do. And when you look at the world today, if you, like, go out in the world and look at everything you're doing, it requires a human interface in the physical world.
33:28
So the equivalent to, I I always make an analogy is when you use the internet using a keyboard and mouse, and you can interact with all the internet. You can use a keyboard to your little your fingers are like your little little keyboard device.
33:40
You can basically interact with all the digital world. The physical world blast several hundred years, we built to interact with the human body. So we have, like, door handles, we have tools, we have stairs,
33:50
everything around us was built for human interface.
33:53
And so
33:54
when you look at what we're doing here, is we're trying to
33:58
build an automation solution to do physical labor. How do we get into the world and do human like tasks?
34:04
And when you look at the market for human,
34:08
human like tasks, it's half from GDP.
34:11
So, like, you know,
34:13
GDP is roughly seventy eighty trillion. Half of that is goes to human labor to pay wages every single year in the world. And it's roughly half or so for, you know, for if you go to any company, any country in the world is roughly half of GDP.
34:27
And what we've seen now is we've seen this, like, we we've seen, like, these emergent properties happen in in the kind of the space we operate here that are allowing us to build and do this this decade.
34:38
We have hardware
34:40
from, like, that that is that is capable of being built to do human like tasks.
34:46
And and then from a software perspective,
34:48
Separately, we have software today, and we have AI systems today that could basically understand,
34:54
like, semantically what's going on in the world and do human like applications from a software perspective.
35:00
So here at figure, what's so so at a at a high level,
35:05
The biggest company the next ten, fifteen years in the world will be human like, AI powered humanoids. That, like, that's, for sure, gonna happen.
35:14
The question is, like, what groups are gonna do that? Well, I think Elon Musk let me find this quote. I have this quote here. I think he said,
35:22
Tesla has a robot. I think it's called Optimists.
35:24
So Elon says it'll probably cost less than twenty thousand dollars to build, and it will be a bigger business than cars.
35:31
Like, it's gonna be huge.
35:33
And so you you just looked at that math, and you're like, I have to go all in on this. But what's the business model? Like, you you rent them out to people, or you sell them to people, what do you do? Yeah. You can do either. I mean, this there's a there's definitely,
35:44
like, a similar CapEx model that is very similar to how we, like, buy and buy cars today where you would wanna you know, buy the asset, it would have a certain amount of depreciable life.
35:55
You'd have to, like, pay for servicing to maintenance.
35:57
And then there's another model, which is, like, operating model, which is we're calling, like, robot as a service, which is a leasing model. So you basically be able to put robots into, say, you know,
36:06
warehousing or manufacturing related applications, and you would charge basically a monthly fee for that work. And that would be a co kinda a lower price per year that you would pay but ongoing.
36:18
And, so we, you know, here at Figier, we're we're pushing the robot as a service operating model. We think it's the way to get cost down and make it affordable to the baaS is.
36:27
And
36:28
but some of the initial conversations were happening with clients too is that they're, you know, interested in buying them because they've been buying robots for, you know, a decade.
36:36
So I think we're open to kinda getting out of the world. What,
36:39
we're seeing here is we're seeing the ability to get these robots over time within high enough
36:41
volumes.
36:45
Cheaper than, like, a mid priced car.
36:48
And then if that robot can last
36:50
four or five years before it's fully depreciated,
36:53
the cost should be
36:55
pretty affordable for the even even for the home. We should be able to put robots in the home for, you know, several hundred dollars per
36:59
month
37:03
I was talking to my family members as and they're like, are you talking to him tomorrow? I was like, man, sick guy, Brett? He builds a humanoid. It's like and they're like, what the hell? You know, what the fuck is that? I'm like, well, it's
37:12
I'm like, you know how, like, Amazon workers do this stuff? It's gonna do that. And then, like, inevitably, the answer is, like, Oh, so he's gonna put everyone out of work. Alright. That's cool. What's your rebuttal to that? Like, how do you think about that? Like, you know, you seem very, like, altruistic and you're like, you're like, I wanna save the world. So what are these people? What what are they gonna do? And when are they gonna lose their jobs? So what we're seeing from, like, a labor perspective is that the
37:37
The amount of people in the workforce is starting to shrink. So we have, like, roughly three point three billion humans working in, in the world,
37:44
A big chunk of that is the baby boomers and the retiring out of the market.
37:48
And then from, you know, from the other side, we're basically having roughly a little over one
37:54
child per household at this point, we're we're well under the replacement rate for humans, which needs to be, like, about two point two,
38:00
births per household.
38:02
So we're like, well, we're not putting more into the bottom,
38:05
the top of the funnel. We're not putting any more in, and the bottom funnel we're retiring out. So we're basically shrinking the labor force.
38:11
So when we walk into,
38:14
the the conventional wisdom is what you say. It's like you walk into one of these, like, big, big companies. They're like, worried about you taking our people's jobs, like, how are we gonna message this? Like, what are they gonna do?
38:24
That is complete one eighty from what we see with boots on the ground. If you if you actually do the work, of walking into a company, that's big. And you ask them their number one problem,
38:33
they'll say employee head count in in a in retention.
38:37
So we walk into these warehouses manufacturing, retail, whatever, and we walk in, and they're telling us that
38:45
Fifteen percent of employees don't show up every day at work.
38:48
They're saying they have two to three percent weekly attrition, fifty to a hundred and fifty percent annual
38:53
turnover.
38:55
The working conditions are harsh. It's really hot in the summers. It's cold in the winters.
38:59
You have to walk miles per day. You have to pick, like, a lot of items per hour.
39:04
It's a lot easier to drive an Uber in this condition
39:07
than be in these facilities.
39:09
So when we walk in these clients, they they have a labor crisis going on.
39:14
And they need help ASAP,
39:16
and they can't figure out how to automate these
39:19
more dextrous
39:20
and human like tasks.
39:22
And so,
39:23
you know, our goal is to go in there and do, like, the dirty and hard work that they can't find humans to do today.
39:29
And we think there's just
39:31
prom I I've never seen a business like this where
39:34
we walk in and they're like, we'll buy a million of them if you could do this.
39:38
And so the the the demand is, like, I think it almost unbounded. I don't even know how to
39:43
handicap it. It's If you can build the technology, we need millions. When we were hanging out, I was like, why don't you just do a software company? And you're like, software's harder. And I was like, what? Why? He goes, well, because I had to make people, like, want vettery. Like, I had to convince them that this was a good idea. And then, like, I had infinite options on what to build, and I had to hope that I was building the right thing. And then he said,
40:06
with hardware,
40:07
I can find problems where there's already demand I know if I could if if I'm able to build this, people will want it. And I know that there's a set of laws dictated by physics, of which create the rules And I just have to figure out within that very small set of rules, can I build this? And as of now, you're like, I think I can, but I haven't entirely figured it out. But it's a much simpler puzzle to figure out in order to, like, build this thing. And if I build it, the business is is gonna be the biggest thing ever because I know people want that. And I remember, like, when you said that, it kind it changed my perspective on on a lot of things. Did did I say that right? Yeah. I think that's
40:44
pretty accurate. Like,
40:46
In software, you have a lot of lot of these things that are, like, these emergent properties that happen in, like, say, the marketplace or SAS characteristics that make it really hard to control.
40:54
You have retention, and you have com competitive threats, and you have, like, feature built. There's a lot of things you need to do to kinda keep,
41:01
the wheels in the car and keep it running.
41:03
And in hardware,
41:07
if if there is demand for the product, it's it really puts the focus on the technology development. So at Archer,
41:14
We already know people are driving to the airport. There's, like, in LA, there's sixty million people driving around every day, and six million of them are taking over an hour going, like,
41:22
ten, fifteen miles.
41:24
So, like, you know, you go to, like, passage unit to LAX. If you could fly that in seven minutes, you wanna drive that an hour and a half. Like, what do you wanna do for your time?
41:32
We know if you can fly that in seven minutes, and it's safe, and it's affordable.
41:37
Over time, a good amount of folks would take that service.
41:40
So it really puts the burden on the technology development of, like,
41:44
can you go build something that is safe and
41:47
affordable?
41:48
And, like, you know, and gives good performance, like, in the reliability side. So that was the that's the Archer case. A similar figure. It's the case of, Can you get robots that can actually do useful work?
41:58
And
41:59
this is governed by physics. There are rules. There are equations.
42:03
So, like, there is no, like,
42:06
I don't need to have to go out and invent a new physics equation
42:09
or, like, aerodynamic equation to make that happen. I understand how an airfoil will will behave in a fluid.
42:15
I understand how battery cells discharge. Like, we we understand
42:19
all those rules.
42:21
So it really puts
42:22
the burden on us to,
42:25
like, think about, like, what's really important here and what's really important
42:29
If I had, like, being back the most important thing to myself twenty years ago, I would say, Brett.
42:34
What really matters or what doesn't matter is, like, marketing PR, who you raised capital from, the TechCrunch article, like, none of that is meaningful.
42:43
It'll make you feel good as a founder because it's usually
42:46
extremely shitty for, like, so so many years building companies.
42:50
What really matters is
42:53
the technology development that you make, which means how often you're iterating
42:58
And then you can measure that by how much progress you're making between those iteration cycles.
43:02
That's basically the game that we're playing a figure and we played it archer. It feels like you're like playing with connects or something. You know what I mean? It felt like play when I was at your office. I remember people were chilling. I think I came on a Friday and people were just sitting around
43:14
and I they weren't drinking beer or anything, but it was like that same, like, vibe of, like, we're just sitting around, like, and they, like, giggle when, like, the knee moved. You know what I mean? It felt like your,
43:24
like, it was almost like a glorified Lego set a little bit. It felt pretty exciting.
43:30
Yeah. I think it feels like,
43:32
I would say it probably feels like the most cutting edge r and d lab you could walk into
43:38
with a focus to move fast and ship product.
43:41
How big
43:42
how big is bigger gonna be in ten years?
43:45
I think the space is it's the it's the world's largest hand.
43:50
It's I think it's probably most similar to, like, autonomous vehicles in terms of, like, the technology development, the risk to developing and deploying the
43:58
technology
43:59
But I think it's easier to scale. I don't we don't have the same safety,
44:03
hurdles that a self driving car would have to have to drive safely within on on, you know, on city streets,
44:09
and not harm any not harm anybody at those speeds.
44:12
And so I think it's I think it's bigger than a self driving industry, and I think it's easier to scale it once it's working.
44:19
So I think if we can demonstrate
44:21
our robots
44:22
in commercial opportunities and we're learning, like, we're we're we're we're in
44:26
commercial
44:28
work, doing useful work, and we're, like, training our neural neural nets with real world data
44:32
and and getting better, recursively getting better.
44:35
I happen to think this this business is probably
44:38
valued bigger than Cruise and Waymo, which are like, these are thirty billion dollar free revenue companies.
44:42
And I think we can do this over the next, like, twenty four months. We'll have robots in commercial
44:47
applications with, like, some of the world's biggest brands.
44:51
In five years, you think figures in the
44:54
in the,
44:56
forty, fifty billion dollar
44:58
value range. I just think, like, this is a really big industry, and we're we're we're we're sub five years from deploying robots into commercial opportunities that are making money.
45:08
It'll be in very low volumes, but you'll be able to see the robots doing useful work, and you'll be able to see the robots getting better over time.
45:14
I have to think that'd be a really large market cap. Who knows what it'll what it'll look like?
45:19
I think it'll be significant to where even where we stand now. And then, hopefully, within ten, fifteen, twenty years, we're, like, we're seeing
45:26
we're seeing robots at scale and commercial opportunities really help fill that void with labor force that we talked about earlier. I wish I would have invested more. I think I I invested twenty five thousand dollars. I should have done more. Yeah. It's it's re risky stuff, so I don't Yeah. It'd be, twenty five thousand makes me feel good. I I don't wanna lose too much of your money. So,
45:45
Oh, I wish I would have done more.
45:47
But, dude, I appreciate you doing this. You inspire me. I think,
45:51
I think that, like, I'm
45:53
you and I
45:54
are not the same. And I appreciate that people like you exist in the world. You are
46:00
significantly bolder than I am, but I hope that the takeaway for people listening is, like,
46:07
That shit wears off on you. So, like, whenever I hang out with you, like, I feel
46:11
I feel bad about myself in a really great way. Like, where I'm like, you know, it's like when you hang out with, like, a really fit athlete, you're like, oh, man. I thought I was fit. I'm nothing. I could totally step it up. Like, I can push this thing way harder. I can I can I could go way I could push myself way more than I thought I could? That's how I that's how I feel like when I'm around you. You know, you are
46:30
you're a really special person, and I'm very thankful that I get to, like, hear some of your wisdom. I think that,
46:36
one of the things on this pod and in my life, we try to find people early.
46:40
And I have a feeling that we are very early in your journey and that you're gonna be a very, very big deal, a bigger deal than you already are in the next five or ten years. And I'm very thankful that we're able to, like, you know, we bought your stock early. Yeah. Thanks, Sam. That's the pod. Alright. Now show me the robot.
00:00 47:18