Building the Eyes, Ears and Brains of Autonomous Robots

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I'm Jake Aaron Villarreal, born and raised in Silicon Valley and here to take you behind the scenes to share what it's like to be a startup founder. The journey they're on, problems they face, and the products they build in an effort to transform industries. I'm excited to have with us today Bradley Dillon, CEO of Luxonis. Bradley, welcome to the show.

Bradley Dillon: Thanks, Jake. Happy to be here.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: A little bit more about Bradley. He not only leads the company today, and he's been there since 2022, prior to joining, he worked three years at Amazon and also nine years at a safety equipment manufacturer. Before we jump in here, Bradley, where are, where are you calling in from today?

Bradley Dillon: I'm calling in from Laguna Beach.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, that's a town that we're both in today, and a place that you're the first founder/CEO that we've talked to that's actually from the same town. So, excited to uh to have you on and join us and, and tell, tell your story. Before we do that, you know, just a little background of us. We're a recruitment company that helps grow startups. And you know, I just want to share a story of a problem we're seeing in the market today. There is hundreds and hundreds of AI startups launching, making it more challenging than ever to hire. And the challenge is when you go out and try and hire in the market, you might not have the network. And if you use a third-party recruiter, they don't always get your story right. And when they don't understand your story, your company, the culture you're building, the roles you're looking to fill, and they go to market, unfortunately, they send candidates that are just not a fit. It's a waste of their time, but more importantly, it's a waste of your time.

So, we launched Match Relevant to help solve that problem. And we do it in three steps. The first step is we use AI to capture your whole story from the founder's journey to the problem you're solving and why it matters. So when we go out and talk to that perfect candidate that could be a fit for you, we make sure it's worth their time, certainly worth yours. The second thing we do is we understand not just the role that you need to fill, but your culture. So the attitude of the people that you bring on and the mindset are right. And when that gets corrected perfectly, they're not just a short-term, but a long-term fit. But the part that we're most excited about is we built a team to help you assess and increase the probabilities that you're getting the technical hires right. And how we did it is we built a team of CTOs that have built some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies. They've had their own VC backed startups, some with exits. And they can either collaborate with you in the technical interviewing process, they can run it for you, or they could just be a sounding board to make sure what you're seeing they're seeing. If you want to learn more about how we do it, you can find us at matchrelevant.com and click to talk to a hiring guide to see how we do it.

Okay, now let's get into the story. So Bradley, talk a little bit about your background. You've worked at some big companies. You've worked uh... now you're running a startup. How did you get into technology and kind of what's your DNA? Are you an entrepreneurial type person? Did you have lemonade stands? Did you have a newspaper route? Walk us through your origin story.

Bradley Dillon: Yeah, of course. So, as a, as a young kid, I really enjoyed math. And I think I always knew from a young age that I wanted to, you know, study engineering and be able to have an opportunity to work on uh, you know, technical pro-, uh technical products and technical problems. And growing up, I was, uh, I had this fierce drive for financial independence as a young kid. Uh so when I was, you know, eight years old, I was trying to make money mowing neighbors' lawns. When I was 10, I became a soccer ref and I would, I would referee games on the weekends. Um, and then by the time I was 14, I got kind of my first uh full-time job. I worked at a golf course all through uh high school. And so for some reason I always just had this desire to make my own money. And uh it was, it was informative kind of, kind of working as a, as a kid you know, throughout uh, you know, middle school and high school. Uh really enjoyed being able to do that.

And then when I went to university, I ended up studying mechanical engineering and I ended up being really attracted by robotics. So this is about uh 20 years ago. And I took a number of robotics classes where we did autonomous competitions. Uh, so my first one was a robotics class where the robots played capture the flag against each other. Then we did another one where they played uh dodgeball. And this was so much fun and the idea that you could do this autonomously was completely mind-blowing. I mean this was before Waymo and autonomous cars and all that.

And I ended up uh after university, I ended up going into manufacturing where I looked- worked for a long time. And our products weren't, weren't overly technical, but I remember it was about 10 years ago, uh 2014 in Taiwan, we were visiting one of our suppliers. And I was blown away by seeing automation and robotics in the workplace for the first time. So they had a completely autonomous warehouse. So, I was used to a warehouse where a worker had to go get inventory for them. They had a computer screen, they tapped in the goods that they wanted, and a big robotic system went and fetched it and brought it right to them. And I was completely blown away by that.

And, and then on their manufacturing line, the supplier, they put in a computer vision system that I had never seen before. So, they were manufacturing these kind of snap hooks, you can think of them kind of like rock climbing gear. And they had a problem where they weren't being assembled properly. They would have a, a rivet that wasn't actually machined properly. And so they put like a camera in the sky, and the camera would check each of the snap hooks. And if one of them wasn't working, then a robotic arm would knock it out of the way and then they put it back into the production line. So that really got me, you know, excited about what the possibilities were for robotics and automation. Uh and then, you know, fast forward to 2022, was very fortunate to be able to join Luxonis that's uh specifically tackling that problem.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You spent a little time at Amazon. Uh big company. We all use Amazon. What was your role at Amazon?

Bradley Dillon: Yeah. So I had a few different roles there. I started kind of on business development and ended up doing product management. And so the product management was around their uh B2B e-commerce, and I ended up focusing on pricing. So how it works at Amazon when you have you know, hundreds of thousands of co-workers, you end up focusing on something very specific. Uh so is, is you know, pricing product management. And I really enjoyed my time in Amazon. Um it's an incredible company. It has individuals there that are very brilliant, very driven, is very customer obsessed culture. And it's uh, it's pretty exciting to have all of those technical resources. So when you came up with an idea and you got to test it at that kind of scale, uh it was, it was definitely really remarkable to be a part of. So I enjoyed my time there.

My main kind of purpose for wanting to be at Amazon was to have more of a technology education. So it was my first time getting experience in you know, developing software products. And you know, the parts of Amazon being a huge company, uh that part I never really got too good at navigating. It's uh you know culturally it can be, it can be tricky there for sure. But you know, I, I was very heads down kind of focused on trying to improve the products that I was managing. So it was a lot of fun. I, I, I would do it again for sure.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. What's one of the big lessons you learned that you've taken with you from Amazon that's helping you today in your startup?

Bradley Dillon: Well, so I think yeah, I think there's a few things for sure. I think one is that Amazon tries to have small teams that tackle big problems. And so they kind of have this uh colloquially known term as like a "two-pizza team." And when the teams get bigger than that, you have kind of difficulty of really uh making the type of quick progress that you want. Uh so that's one thing for sure. And then what I already mentioned, their customer obsession was really truly remarkable. So it's always around when you're making decisions across the, an organization, whether it's you know sales and marketing or operations, engineering, and technology, that the first question you're asking is, "How does this improve the customer experience? How does this create value for the customer?"

And that was something that in my career I hadn't actually really seen built into the DNA. You would maybe sometimes have decisions that be made because, "Oh, they make something easier for us internally or they make this stakeholder happy." And to instead throw that all out and just say the North Star is, is, is the actual customer that you're serving, I think that's been really beneficial and something to carry on at Luxonis, uh, for sure.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well, that's, that's amazing. I, I love people that have gone to big companies and they can take that knowledge and really utilize that when they're building a startup or part of a startup. Because it's, big companies have proven methodologies and some of those are little nuggets that you're not going to learn unless you work internally for one of those organizations. So really cool to hear that. You know, when we look in the market we always look for products or services that are solving a real problem that is not a "want to have" but a "need to have." Talk a little bit about the problem that Luxonis is solving today.

Bradley Dillon: Yeah, absolutely. So what our technology enables is uh competing with humans. So we enable robots and automation systems to have human-level perception. And they, what they can do is they can uh do a task that maybe a human previously would have done. And so the problem that we're solving is being able to make it so that the uh these robots can, they can see. So they can see and navigate the world around them, navigate safely. And you know, being able to do the tasks that they're, they're after. Uh make it so that they can hear, and make it, make it so that they can think. So we, we really view ourselves as being like the eyes, the ears and the brains uh behind these systems. And what you, you can kind of think of it is, is we're, we're trying to enable uh artificial general intelligence for the physical world, to make it so that these systems can be better than humans at every task or project that they're doing. That requires, you know, uh human-level perception, visual perception.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I like how you say that about the physical world, because as humans, we're in the physical world, not just always online and digital. So when we hear AI, we think co-pilots or things that can help us do our job better or maybe automate a process. But you're talking about a physical robot moving maybe items or doing things. Give us a use case of where your product is utilized today.

Bradley Dillon: Yeah, you're exactly right on it being for the physical world. And you know, I think it's something like 75% of the labor around the world is in the physical world. We're, we're the rare folks of the, the knowledge workers that we can kind of tap tap on a keyboard. A good example of a use case that we're in that you can help kind of understand it is uh big industrial equipment. So we work with uh customers that uh you know, you can kind of think of like the Caterpillar, John Deere of the world where they have uh this industrial equipment that's doing things you know, mining, agriculture. And these machines, unfortunately, they, they kill and, and injure millions of workers per year. It's, it's really uh unfortunate.

And so what we're doing with those clients is step one, we're making it so that the machine stops hurting the human. And we, we want to make sure that that doesn't happen. And then step two is to make it so that the machine can be operated uh remotely. And so this is where you can imagine you have a, a machine, a car, a robot, and somebody that pre- maybe previously was working in a call center, they can now basically have like a video game controller and they can operate that, that robot remotely. And then step three, the holy grail that we're working on with these companies is to make it so that their equipment can operate completely autonomously. So this is a, the system's already enabled so that it's not hurting the humans anymore and it's made so that you don't need to have that, that remote video game worker working on it. It can, it can navigate and do what it needs to do completely autonomously. So those are kind of the three steps that we're working with those clients, and it's, it's a lot of fun doing it.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's really exciting. There's a lot of industries out there that are trying to figure out how to take advantage of AI and systems and robotics. You know, you talk with an Elon Musk and he's talking about humanoids and, you know, hiring, you know, millions of, of robots that are doing work. I think of a physical person that looks like a robot, but robotics is really, you know, machines within a warehouse that can do a job or maybe it's even autonomous mobiles or vehicles that you're talking about. Talk a little bit about the company. How long have you guys been around, the funding? If you can share revenue, maybe you can, maybe you can't. Kind of I'll leave it up to you, but just how big of a company are you today?

Bradley Dillon: So, we were founded back in 2019 and we've been shipping hardware of our AI cameras for a little more than four years. Uh, I can share with you that we've shipped more than 150,000 devices. Um, so we scaled up uh quite a bit from when we first started shipping hardware. And then as a, as a company, our team's grown quite a bit, too. So we currently have about a 100 staff uh located around the world. And we're very engineering heavy. So about 80 of those 100 staff are, are engineers because we do self-perform everything on the technology side of things. So yeah, we're five and a half years deep into the journey and we're fortunate to have made as much progress as we have had so far.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's really cool. Why is this space important to you?

Bradley Dillon: So you know, I view it in two ways. The first is something I already touched on which is safety. I think it's pretty funny when folks talk about being worried about uh like AI that's come out recently and they're worried about, you know, like one of these movies that you'd see in Hollywood where the robots, you know, take over and, and start to hurt all the humans. But we're, we're in a world today where we've gotten really complacent. We've accepted that machines are uh you know uh killing, injuring, permanently disabling tens, hundreds of millions of workers per year. And to me, it's completely unacceptable. We have an opportunity to reduce that to zero or approaching zero. And you know, I think within the next decade our type of technology can reduce that number by about 90%, um if you look at the, the kind of the physical world uh injuries out there. And no worker should have to go to work and uh know that there's a risk of that happen to them every day. And so we're really excited to be able to help eliminate that.

And then from a broader economic perspective, you know, I really do feel like progress equals you know, innovation times intensity of use. And so, you know, we believe that we're creating incredible innovations that make it so that, you know, the world can be a richer, more prosperous place, and really can like uplift the uh the labor that's around the world to be able to, you know, do more, be more productive, and uh, you know, uh, prosper.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well said. You know, there's a lot of competition in racing the market with technologies. It sounds like you've got a really good lead in some capacity with that much volume of product sold. When you're going to market and taking a hardware and a software product and, and selling it, what, what's, what's, who are you selling to when you go to a company? And do you use a direct channel? Do you go through an OEM channel? What's the partner strategy? Do you have any insights there?

Bradley Dillon: Yeah, it's a great question. So we do have uh distributors uh globally around the world. We have more than 20 that offer our product. So we do sell the, the products to them. And then those distributors they're either focused on a specific region or, or a specific industry. And so we enable them to uh you know, grow in that market, you know, participate in trade shows, support their sales team. And then the majority of our revenue, we uh we do have direct to the uh end user. And so we're serving uh robotics companies directly. So we work with thousands of robotics companies, uh humanoids being one of them, but a variety of different like purpose-built robots as well. And then we also do work uh directly with a variety of companies working on the automation use case.

So we're fortunate to have direct relationships with a lot of big customers. 11 of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial we count as customers, and about 40 of the Fortune 500. Um so we, we are able to have direct relationships with all these folks and we work with them directly to you know, sell our hardware um, and then you know, in some cases do customizations with the hardware and software to be able to get them to a solution that they can scale up.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. I like that strategy. When it comes to growing, you know, you have some challenges to get the right product in market. Maybe it's the right people on the team. As a company, what's, what's one of the bigger challenges you're solving today as a company?

Bradley Dillon: The systems that we're enabling, we're trying to compete with humans. And humans are, I think Elon Musk said, they're underrated. You know, they, they're pretty remarkable at the task that we're trying to tackle. And so organizations, they expect the systems to not just be as good as humans, they want them to be a lot better. And getting the technology to mature and work at that level of reliability, I'd say is probably our, our biggest challenge. A good example uh to kind of think through this conceptually is self-driving. So if you look at autonomous uh vehicle companies like Waymo and Tesla, they've demonstrated that they can outperform a human driver by, you know, 5 to 10x in terms of safety. But in a lot of ways, that's not good enough. The idea that like some blackbox AI is still going to cause there to be kind of mistakes and accidents, that's something that we as a society should uh, you know, want to have a higher bar on that.

And then the enterprises that we work with, that's kind of the same challenge, Jake. So, they're wanting to get a system that approaches 100% reliability. And when it comes with artificial intelligence, you know, it's uh it's getting, getting the, getting the technology to be able to iteratively improve. So some of what we help enable is to tackle the ever-changing world. Like, the world's always adapting. New, new stuff's coming up and you have to be able to react to that even if you haven't seen it anywhere before. So that's, that's, I'd say that's probably the, the biggest part is, is getting the technology to mature. Fortunately, it's really iterative. It's iterating and improving very quickly. So, we're getting there very in very short order, but we certainly wish it was happening faster.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I got it. You know, I want to ask your opinion. What, what happens to humans if robots end up replacing them in the labor force?

Bradley Dillon: It's a question that we get a lot, and we use technology history as a guide for us. What we've seen over and over, you know, since the Industrial Revolution, is, is that when new technology comes out, it does cause some short-term displacement, structural displacement of, for uh employment where it requires some retraining of, of workers. But then ultimately it leads to uh the workers that are, that are at these companies to be more productive. And then that, for those productivity gains, mean that new capital is formed. That new capital gets deployed and we find a whole new host of jobs. So I actually think that when you net it all out, that robotics and automation is actually going to be a net job creator rather than, than one that destroys it.

And the example that I like to share from uh my travels with customers is I was fortunate enough to go to South Korea last year. And going to South Korea is like watching into the, walking into the future. It's incredible. So there's five times more robots per person in South Korea than anywhere else in the, in the world. And you would think it'd be a country where you're like, "Okay, there's robots everywhere. Like, where, where are the, where are the workers? Is that, you know, the, the, the, has there been high unemployment?" But it's actually the opposite. So South Korea has some of the, the lowest unemployment in the world. And so, for example, when I was there, we went to a restaurant, the food is brought to our table with a robot, the food was taken away from our tables with a robot, the, the dishes were washed in the back with a robot. And so that business that's there, they're, they're saying, "Wow, like I can pay my workers more and I can have them do more high-value activity. Maybe they want to upsell something rather than they have to be in the back, you know, doing dishes." So we do think that that kind of uh what you see in say like South Korea, we do think that'll extend to the rest of the world. And yeah, I think ultimately it'll lead to uh workers making more money and uh and there being more jobs.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's fascinating. I got to go check out South Korea. I've been to a lot of countries. Haven't gotten there yet, but that sounds really, really interesting. What industries do you think will emerge as a result of the technologies that you're building? This is going to be a really fun part.

Bradley Dillon: What we're tackling is stuff that like previously was only in science fiction novels. And so, it's, it's, it's really cool to get to see it actually become a reality. I think what you're going to see over the coming years is similar to what you saw with software in the 21st century where, I, I do think that AI is going to eat pretty much every industry. And organizations that no matter what they're working on, if they're not adopting it and, and becoming you know one of the leaders in their industry, that they're going to fall behind uh because their competitors will adopt it. They'll get more efficient and they'll, and they'll be competed away into oblivion. So, we do think that it's going to permeate all industries and we do think there's like uh there's all kinds of use cases that come up where we're like, "Gosh, I, I never would have even dreamed that this would, this would, this would be something that you'd want to tackle with our technology." And so, that, that's the part that definitely makes the job the most fun. And it'll be really cool to track to see that how that evolves over time, because a lot of the stuff we honestly we can't even imagine it yet. And so, getting to see it come real is going to be really cool.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Let me ask a different question. In what way will the world change the most as a result of your products?

Bradley Dillon: I'll share the example that I think about the most, which is, is for me at my, you know, my house up the road from you in Laguna Beach. And I am personally going to be first in line for a humanoid robot. Uh, so whatever company comes out with them first, you know, whether it's Tesla or, you know, Figure AI or what have you, um, the idea of having a humanoid robot around the house to be able to help with chores, to, to be able to like pick up after your kids, to, to be able to get your dog more water, etc., etc. That is the piece that I am most excited about. And I'll be the one that's like the early adopter that's dealing with some, you know, clunky robot for that. Um, but that's the future. That's the future that, that I, when I think about what the world looks like in 10 years, I think probably when I imagine humanoid robots, that's where it's just, it's just really exciting to think. And I, I do think there's definitely a path where you, I think there's a clear path where what's going to happen is you're going to have, you're going to have a robot with every worker at their workplace and you're going to have a robot with every person in their home uh in the rich world. And I think you're going to see that relatively soon. And it's going to be, it's going to be absolutely uh crazy how much it's going to, going to shift, shift things in society.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, that's wild. Well, how far away do you think you are from having that humanoid in your house?

Bradley Dillon: You know, from what I've, what I've heard from uh you know, some of the, the... we work with a variety of humanoid uh robotics companies. And then from what I've seen in media, you know, the, the current forecast is about three years. And so, you know, maybe we pad it a little bit, say 5 years. Um, but absolutely this decade. If the year is like 2029 and I don't have a humanoid in my, in my house, I'm going to be very disappointed.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's crazy. I didn't think about the nannies being disrupted, but that's crazy. That's a, there's uh, when that happens, I mean, everything's going to be disrupted, but that's, that's, that's great. Well, we're not too far away, so have that humanoid walk down to my house once they're done doing your work.

Bradley Dillon: Yeah. I, I think you know what, one thing that I, I think about is like with uh kids, like you're not going to be able to say you know, "Hey, clean your room," because then the kid will just say like, "Hey robot, clean my room for me." Um so there'll be like a whole new host of you know things like parenting challenges.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow that's a fascinating topic. I can't wait to see that happen and God, we could definitely use one of those not in 10 years or 5 years but like today. So anyway, totally really, really cool technologies you're building. You know, every company that we've talked to goes through shifts and pivots. And sometimes it's the product you're trying to re-engineer. It could be operations. It could be the people. I want to talk on a topic that's, you know, a little bit more human. And it's about co-founders. And it might be the biggest decision you make is finding the group that's going to help build a company. And it might be a co-founder. It might just be a leadership member that's a friend of yours that you're now part of the company. Sometimes in life, people pass away. Talk a little bit about your company and your story and really the original founder of your company who was your college roommate.

Bradley Dillon: Brandon Gillis was my college roommate and when we were undergrads at University of Colorado in Boulder uh we, we took some of the same classes and that's where we, we both got interested in robotics together. And you know Brandon was the, the most uh driven, intelligent person I'd ever met. That was absolutely mind-blowing at 18 years old to meet somebody uh like that that uh you always knew that he was destined to do great things. And after university we stayed in touch over the years, we were always spitballing different startup ideas. And getting to join Luxonis in 2022 um and be able to finally work with him and realize that you know 18-year-old college boy dream, honestly it was the, it was honor of a lifetime. It was just incredibly exciting to be able to do that.

Unfortunately, about six months into uh joining Luxonis, Brandon got sick and he had to go on a leave of absence. And in 2023, uh tragically, he passed away. And you know, Brandon and me are the, we're the same age. You know, we're, we're in our, you know, mid to late 30s. Of the thousand things that I thought to worry about before joining uh Luxonis as a startup, you know, uh him getting sick was, was definitely not one of them. So it was incredibly difficult to navigate and you know now that it's been more, you know, more than a year since he's passed, you know we reflect on it and we think about how we get this, this great opportunity to carry on this legacy and this vision that he had. So we take a lot of pride in the work that we have.

And it was incredibly difficult two years ago as you can imagine to go through a transition to, to lose our, our founder from being in, working in a business. And at the time when Brandon got sick, he was, you know, he was our CEO. He was uh leading all of our sales. He was leading all of our technology. And he was managing like all of our, our admin stuff. And he was, he was probably working more than, you know, 100 hours a week trying to keep all those balls in the air. And so, uh, kind of overnight, we had to figure out how to, to manage all of those. Fortunately, we had a really great team. So we had to empower them to have the freedom and autonomy to, to be able to you know go independently. And that was tough because they were used to having a founder kind of dictate every, every little detail. Uh fortunately we were able to get through that but, navigate things, but it was really, it was really tough.

And you know on top of that we had this whole year where Brandon's health was kind of going up and down. So we had a period where he thought he was better, maybe he come back, and then it would, it have a, have a rough period. So, it's really emotional and difficult sometimes to wake up in the morning and put on a face with customers like everything's okay when you know you're, you're just so sad inside um knowing that you know your, your, your friend Brandon is you know suffering the way that he did. And uh yeah, it's just, it's tough. I miss him all the time and would, would do anything to be able to, to talk to him. And he would be so incredibly excited to get to, to be a part of where we're at today. We're just, like AI is just so exciting. And so it's yeah, it's, it's tough. But we fortunately made it through and we're in a really good place now.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's something that you don't plan for. It's the last thing you think about when you're building a company or partners that are involved and or employees. I mean, you think of a Steve Jobs, you think of, you know, lots of leaders that are leading and, you know, there's a vacuum that gets filled by people on the team and sometimes it changes the company direction and sometimes it makes it better, makes it more scalable. There's also breakthroughs that can happen as a company, but also as people and as a leader, you now being the CEO of the company. Has there been a breakthrough for you that you've evolved to figure out how to maybe lead differently or manage differently or just in a short time have, have had to kind of grow into some pretty big shoes?

Bradley Dillon: It, it was definitely tough for sure. I mean, I anticipated, you know, working with, working with Brandon for several years. You know, I thought, you know, I thought we would, you know, we were going to be set up to have a really good partnership. I think the part of going through the transition that was most uh just kind of encouraging and heartwarming to see was, is that when you have really talented staff and you give them the resources that they need and the authority uh to be able to, you know, smash through walls themselves. When you have folks that are really driven, it's incredible to see what they can accomplish. And so I think more than ever in my career, the role came, became about like empowering th- those folks and making sure that, you know, they, they, they had everything that they needed to be able to move fast and, and they weren't, you know, they weren't held back. So I think, so I think for me it did cause a bit of a shift for sure.

I think also too, in some ways it uh, there's some ways it hardened me, but in some ways it softened me too. So I think that the, the people side of things, the human side of things, what's going on in your personal life, I probably had more of an approach of just like, "that's your problem. You leave that at home, at work we're just focused on our mission." And of course, that's true. We're a very mission-driven organization. But at the same time, I, I think I became more, more curious and more compassionate about where, where people were at with their whole self. So that was part of the transition as well.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. You know they say that business is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics. So the psychology and the emotion and the communication and the culture and the team is, is really everything. Uh it could be a big advantage if you really are more empathetic and understand where people are at emotionally but also psychologically. So that sounds, that sounds amazing. It sounds like there's been a lot of growth. Uh what are you excited about as you look at 2025? We're not too far away now. What's on the road map that you're uh, you can share?

Bradley Dillon: Yeah, absolutely. So, the biggest uh product priority for us is to, to introduce a new generation of our hardware every two years. And the reason why it's so important is because the pace of innovation for AI hardware is moving very quickly. In electronics, there's this thing called, called like Moore's law which basically you know, how many transistors you could, you can, you can fit on a chip. And you know it had this thing where it was improving 2x every two years for a long time. And the pace of AI hardware innovation is moving far faster than that. So we have this ability to have a 10x improvement [in] our hardware every two years.

And we're, we're just completing that journey right now with our Series 4 of products. So I told you we're five and a half years deep into as this as a company and we're already on our fourth generation of hardware. And the fourth generation of hardware makes our first generation of hardware look like a complete joke. Uh just, just in terms of it's just uh it's so much more capable and it'll unlock all kinds of, all kinds of use cases that we're really excited about. So we're actually uh formally launching that uh, that Series 4 of hardware later this year, actually later in October at uh ROSCon, a trade show that we're doing in Denmark. So we're really excited about that. And then as we get into 2025, it'll be about, you know, scaling up that new generation of hardware. And then we have, we have a lot of really exciting things um on our, our product software suite um where we're enabling customers to you know better manage these devices remotely, um have models that they can um improve over time and adapt. So yeah, the, the, the future is bright for 2025.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I can't wait to see that humanoid walk from your house to my house in the future and really get our house cleaned up here. Uh, if anybody wants to find Luxonic, Luxonis or find you, where do they go?

Bradley Dillon: Uh, yeah, to our website. So, luxonis.com and then you can reach me at my email address, bradley@luxonis.com. And, you know, we're on all the social medias, so you know, Twitter, LinkedIn, we could just look for Luxonis.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. And for the listeners out there, it's L-u-x-o-n-i-s. Go check it out. Great company. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story, and for the listeners for being with us today. It means a lot to me you spent your time with us. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal. I'm the host of the show and can't wait to catch up with you all on the next episode. Until then, take care. If you like what we're doing, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen and follow us on YouTube where we go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to be a startup founder.

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