00:46:19 · Adam Bry
[00:46:19] S1: Yeah. Mean, I to some extent, you just do it. I think in order to do anything as a company, as a CEO of company, you've got to convince other people it's a good idea. And I find it much easier to convince other people for good... It's a good idea if I actually believe it's a good idea. And so, if- Crazy. Yeah, and so, well, it sounds simple, it's true. So, you know, if I find myself in a position where I'm trying to, like, explain to an investor or a potential employee, you know, why we're doing a particular thing. And, you know, I find that I don't have the, like, conviction that, like, I, you know, I believe it to my bones. That's a clue that, like, we need to do something different. And so with the doc example, like, I just couldn't... I couldn't explain to anybody why we wouldn't be massively investing in it. Like, you know, I couldn't explain why, like, couldn't simultaneously explain to somebody why Skydio is gonna be a super valuable company and we're not investing in Doc. Like, to me those two things just did not fit together logically. So, the only path forward is like, we're gonna do the thing, and I think when you have that, you're not gonna be able to convince everybody, when you have that level of conviction, it makes it easier to convince other people and get them on board, or at least get them curious enough to like come along for the journey and see what happens.
00:47:42 · Ty Morse, Adam Bry
[00:47:42] S0: Over the course of the last thirteen years, has there ever been a moment where it felt like everything was failing and employees or morale or whatever was just out the window and you had to pull it back from the brink? [00:47:53] S1: Yeah, there's certainly been a lot of hairy moments. I think, I think when we launched R1, our first product, and we didn't sell very many of them, that was like, that was a painful kind of moment for the company. And on that one, think we basically got through it conviction in the overall technology direction that we were heading. [00:48:16] S0: You ever have a mutiny? [00:48:21] S1: Well, one of the great features of capitalism as we practice it here is people just can vote with their feet, right? Which I actually think is great. It's like if people don't believe in what you're doing, they can go and find something that they do believe in, which is just kind of healthy all around. So, because of that, you know, the mutinies are expressed in like, in people leaving or or joining. You know, probably, like, most recently, the the most challenging moments have been, like, before we launched Dock for X10, before it was really scaling, where, you know, the if you just look at the company on the financials, it's very uncompelling. And so, you know, that makes it difficult to raise money, and, you know, ultimately, we probably had to roll a few hard sixes to get through that and get to the other side.
00:48:21 · Adam Bry, Ty Morse
[00:48:21] S1: Well, one of the great features of capitalism as we practice it here is people just can vote with their feet, right? Which I actually think is great. It's like if people don't believe in what you're doing, they can go and find something that they do believe in, which is just kind of healthy all around. So, because of that, you know, the mutinies are expressed in like, in people leaving or or joining. You know, probably, like, most recently, the the most challenging moments have been, like, before we launched Dock for X10, before it was really scaling, where, you know, the if you just look at the company on the financials, it's very uncompelling. And so, you know, that makes it difficult to raise money, and, you know, ultimately, we probably had to roll a few hard sixes to get through that and get to the other side. [00:49:10] S0: You know, you get axed from China a couple years ago, and you have to bring a lot in house, and then you have to decide, like, which things are we gonna vertically integrate versus which things are we just gonna partner with suppliers on? How'd you kind of make the trade off on, you know, we might not make the camera or the battery, but we're gonna make these other things.
00:49:28 · Adam Bry
[00:49:28] S1: So, think that this is a... This idea of, like, vertical integration, I think is a little bit misunderstood. Like, vertical integration is all relative, and, you know, nobody's running their own mind, like, the companies that are like considered very vertically integrated, Maybe Tesla. Yeah, I mean, in a few instances, but they're not doing it for everything, right? Like Tesla is considered highly vertically integrated, Tesla works with a ton of great suppliers, and if you, you know, they have a supply chain team and, and if you like, dive into that, like a lot of what goes into a car and a lot of Tesla's success can be attributed to having a great supply chain. The thing that I think is universally true is, if you wanna be building, like, world leading hardware capability reliably at scale, you need to have a lot of control over everything that's going into your product. And you can either do that by doing it yourself and having it be done inside your company, or you can do it by forging deeper and deeper relationships and partnerships with companies that are building key components. And every company that's successful at scale with hardware building great products does some mix of those two things, and we're no different. If you look at it through that lens, it's really a question of like, where is there, where are there gaps in what we want to exist that are stopping us from being able to build the best products that we think should exist? And, and if nobody, if no other company is building that thing, then we're going to go after it ourselves. And, you know, we're in an unfortunate position where, like, you know, we are extremely demanding when it comes to cameras and we've gotten more vertically integrated with cameras over time. We have a world class camera team in hardware and software and supply chain, but we're not grinding glass ourselves to make lenses, right? Because there's companies that are world class that wake up every day thinking about how to better grind glass, we're just like partnering with them. We're not making our own silicon yet because the things that we want out of our compute are extremely well aligned with the chips that go into like other kinds of robots, AR devices, VR, and so on.
00:51:29 · Adam Bry, Ty Morse
I think a lot of the mechanical stuff, there's like, there's more nuance there where we've had to go deeper and do more things ourselves, but we're still in a position where we can benefit enormously from tens of billions of dollars that are being spent in supply ecosystems that are much broader than just drones. [00:51:46] S0: When you think about your just general most enjoyment in life, like you said that you're a very competitive person, is your favorite time kind of wartime mode when there's actually a competitor that is trying to kill you?
00:52:00 · Adam Bry
[00:52:00] S1: Yeah, for sure my happy place is when there's something really challenge, existentially challenging to solve. I mean, like the mode of like operating with our back against the wall, either like we're gonna run out of money or we're facing a key threat or we're deployed with a customer and things aren't working as well as they need to and we just need to like, to get in there and figure out a way to solve it. I mean, I've probably just been doing it for too long, like that's, I'm just used to that, I love that, that's like the normal way of operating, And it's not everything all the time. I mean, it's different parts of the business are in different states of challenge at any moment in time. I love the... Actually, I didn't really discover this aspect of it until we started working with enterprise and government customers. Like, you're selling to consumers, there's not the same kind of competitive element to it because you don't, you don't see your, you know, you're not like looking into the eyes of your competitors. Like, when you're selling to an enterprise organization that's gonna go one way or the other, like, you're... It's like a... It's a cage match or something, and... But I, you know, I love that element of it. Like, I love, you know, I know what our competitors are, you know, are trying to do, and and, you know, I love thinking about like, what do we need to do to win by being better partners and and providing more value to our customers.