Interviewee
Michael Davis, Head of Engineering at Handwrytten, the company allowing you to scale your handwritten outreach, through robotics. The patented Handwrytten robot is capable of autonomously writing nearly 500 notes a day.
Transcript
Michael Davis: My name's Michael Davis. I am Head of Engineering here at Handwrytten. I've been with the company for four or five years now and yeah, I started here in November of 2018 where there was just, I wanna say there was like 10 or 12 employees here. So we've since grown and we're, I think we're officially considered mid-size now. We have 50 employees on hand. And yeah, my job is basically to make sure that we continue building these robots so that we can mass produce these personalized, handwritten notes so that our clients can send them out. So we utilize a lot of different technologies here to make sure that that can happen. Including building our robots in house, using like, I've got a whole fleet of 3D printers and a laser cutter in here to make sure that we can do everything.
We develop everything in house. We're able to custom tailor stuff to our clients to make sure that everybody's happy if you wanna use a certain color ink, if you want a certain type of paper, anything like that. And we control everything start to finish. So we produce the cards, we write the notes, we qa all of the stuff to make sure that everybody's getting quality notes sent in the mail and then we stamp 'em and drop 'em in a real mailbox just like you or I would at home.
Elisa Muñoz: Wow, impressive. Do you know how this idea started?
Michael Davis: So my boss David, the CEO of the company, started this company about eight years ago after leaving, after selling his last company. And his last company was, it was something similar but it was, it was like automated text messaging. So like they would send companies up to send messages out, text messages out to clients. And he felt that that was just, it was a great idea, but it was very impersonal. Like, you know, none of us check our junk folder anymore in email. So it's starting to get to that point in text messages right down the door. Like you can block text messages as spam on my iPhone type deal.
So he wanted to find something that was a lot more personal. Yeah. Had that fine touch. So he had the idea of doing handwritten notes as a service. So it's easy for you and I to just text up a message on her phone really quickly and send it out. So we could do the same thing where I can like type up a message, but then it actually gets translated into something that like I can send my grandma and she's gonna think that like, and I did take the time and effort to like put in the thought into the message, but it just, it has that next level detail. So David started this company about eight years ago with that intention in mind just to help people connect in a personal way. And eight years later we're sending out like almost 2 million notes this past year.
Elisa Muñoz: Now that you are mentioning David, who is the CEO, I actually saw an interview from ABC and I noticed that the holiday season gets super busy for you guys. So I mean how do you handle the part of being the Head of engineering there?
Michael Davis Yeah, December is fun. December is fun. That is probably the best way to put it. I definitely segment my year up. So I've been in this role for a little, I wanna say a year and three months that I've been head of engineering. So I've gone through at least one full cycle of being in charge, but I've been here many years before that. So definitely Q1 and two is a lot like product development, trying to make our robots right faster, trying to make them look even more realistic. Trying to just improve processes here. Q3 is where we start to be like, Hey, like winter is coming kind of deal. Hmm. We need to prepare for that. So how do we make sure that we're stocked up and are all the machines working as effectively and everything's online running properly and whatnot. So that come the end of October, beginning of November, like we'll go from doing like 50,000 notes a week to, I think we've peaked at like a hundred thousand notes a week. So, we'll, we'll double just in like November, December. So I'm preparing all of the months before so that I can stop what I'm doing come November, December and just focus on how do we get all the robots writing 20, 25 hours a day if I could kind of deal. So, wow. That's how we do it.
When we first started building this machine, I think most stuff came from McMaster. And so we're slowly trying to figure out, cost wise, what's the most effective way to do it.
Elisa Muñoz: What would you say it's the biggest technical challenge that you have managed to solve?
Michael Davis: A few of 'em, depending on what point of view you wanna look at improving our, one of them is improving how fast we can build robots, right? Because the more robots that I have on the floor right now, I have 180 robots in house and we've recently started leasing our machines to select vendors. So we've got about, I think there's 18 out in the wild out in the world, all across the United States. And we've got a few going to like Australia and some other countries, which is really neat. But to improve how fast and effectively we can build the robots, that was like my big project when I stepped up as head of engineering.
My degree is in electrical engineering. So I wanted to move from, we used to have like this box that was just wires. Like I would cut and strip and cramp every single wire inside of a box. It'd be an eight hour process for one machine. So we moved from that to our own circuit board that's able to like, I can just send that, have it populated, send it or have it sent in and like it's ready to go. So cutting those build times effective use of our 3D printers is a big one. And I, I don't know if that's something that if you use 3D printers in industry, I think it's a normal thing. But when I came into this job I didn't really think about how to maximize use, right? Like 3D printers are great all but they take time. It's not like a mill like a C N C where it's like, you know, in half an hour you'll have this whole part. This is like how some of my parts take days, so how do I use it? I've got 11 printers over there, how do I use that and maximize their time schedule to make sure that they are producing enough parts for me to build enough machines to keep up with demand. So that's more of like, you know, figure out the production schedule and the non-technical engineering things. On top of that, I've got a team of five people here, including myself.
Elisa Muñoz: We normally tend to speak with different CEOs, founders or Head of engineering in the industry and some of them are involved in the procurement process of the company. So how close are you to this?
Michael Davis: Yeah, so I am for the, for the machines, I'm definitely, I'm in charge of all of the, yeah, all of the procurement for the machine. If we build it like it's going to, like I have to take into account all of that budget stuff. And also just making sure, just general like office upkeep, things like that.
My department's also in charge of making sure all of the computers run in the office and things like that. So when new hires come in we get them all set up, order them, computers, things like that. The whole networking system is all done in-house. Like that's another part of my job there. So, but yeah, when it comes to the procurement, normally we just have like for my machines and whatnot, we've got a standard order of parts that we order and we just kind of try to keep up on stock there. I like to try to keep everything to the same couple of vendors. When we first started building this machine, I think most stuff came from McMaster. And so we're slowly trying to figure out, cost wise, what's the most effective way to do it. I don't know if that necessarily answered your question, but.
Elisa Muñoz: Yeah, it does. It does. I mean I just think that it's really interesting to see how every hardware company organizes and especially after the pandemic, right? With all the supply chain issues and challenges and how you guys managed to solve them.
Michael Davis: That was a big, like this pandemic has not been fun. So especially I stepped into this role like I said, almost a year and a half ago, right? So in the middle of the pandemic, so we have, we had a lot of stuff that we had to pivot from, including like, well we were working on a new design for a riding arm and getting with new partners and like having to work with them. They're based out of China. So like having to get that stuff over here, I had a lot of hurdles to get through. So, you know, that was backlogged for many months. Raspberry pies are the biggest deal for me. I don't know if you've seen any news on that, but all of our machines run, run Lennox with our proprietary software inside of it.
But it's running on a raspberry pie inside. So like over the last month I haven't been able to find any until like super recently. And the ones that I could find are marked up two, three, 400%. Like, so, you know, it's been skimming by and defining what our goals are for the quarter and making sure like, okay we, we've got some safety stock, right? In case something happens, somebody trips and breaks apart or somebody rubs their feet on the ground, the rock that goes the wrong way shocks the machine and kills the raspberry pie or something like that. But I also don't wanna spend, you know, $4,000 on 10 raspberry pies that should cost $35 a piece. So that has been a lot of tiptoeing, a lot of, when you see a good deal, keep just enough in stock to make sure of it. But I think from what I'm seeing, I think we're starting to come out of that stuff cause I'm actually able to get stuff now and I'm not having to stress about that so much. But that has been a pain for the last year or so.
Elisa Muñoz: Thank you for sharing. Do you have any plans on expanding anytime soon or any news that you can share with us?
Michael Davis: Yeah, we actually, you know, we're, we're planning on being the best for a very long time.
So, you know, we're, our goal, our main focus is going to be making sure that all of the cards coming out here look great, look authentic, but hopefully by caring about that stuff, the stuff that brings our customers in and what they like about us and what makes us stand out, we can expand, like I said, we did 2 million orders last year. Hopefully we can expand that to, in, you know, 5, 6, 7, 10 years at some point we're 10, 15 million orders. So we're looking at, as we start leasing around the country, we're looking at expanding that idea. We're also looking at opening up a second location here in the next couple of years. Right now we're based out of Tempe, Arizona, and so all the cards come out here. If you order from New York, it's gonna take, you know, three, four days to get there, whereas if you order to Tucson, it's gonna be there the next day. So if we can open up another, another office in, I dunno, Ohio, Chicago, somewhere in the middle of the country to kind of alleviate that and just give us more opportunity, more flexibility, things like that, I believe that that's, you know, hopefully three, four years down the road and will give me even more, even more to do. Cuz now I get to fly around and make sure that multiple offices are performing at peak efficiency.
Elisa Muñoz: That would be great. From your perspective, I would like to hear where you think the future of the robotics industry is going?
Michael Davis: I like, I'm hoping by the time I retire that I'm just like a robot. Like that, that's kind of my deal. I think things are moving up, you know, I've got my, like, the biggest impact that I think I have robotics wise is we got my wife at Tesla last year and like, the fact that that car can drive itself around is amazing. So just like seeing the kinds of things that, you know, computer vision and this machine learning stuff can do. I see, I see upfront, you know, like we have a lot of, there's a lot of job openings in America, right? So hopefully we're able to start filling those so that you and I can just work on the big picture stuff and the stuff that's not remedial and then by the time, you know, hopefully 30, 40 years down the road, there's just a lot of relaxing I think. So I think we get to the point in time where humanity just kind of chills out and yeah.
Elisa Muñoz: Do you have any advice for our future entrepreneurs or engineers or engineers starting on this path?
Michael Davis: You know, this might sound, I don't wanna use the word cliche, but it might sound something like that. I love my job. Like I, I feel very put in the right place. Like I think that I am, Michael Davis was meant for head of engineering at handwritten. So, and it makes me, it makes it easy to come to work. Like I drive here, I hang out, I get to do stuff like this, and I get to help make a good product and, you know, go home and live my life outside of there. So I definitely think that if anybody who's watching this and looking for something like, you know, I don't know what to do next. If you can think about what you like and what you wouldn't mind doing for 40 hours a week, 40 plus hours a week, start down that. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Like that's the rest of life. You can figure it out. But at the point where you know what, you know, you're like, oh this is, I like this, this doesn't cause me stress. That's my biggest thing is I don't wanna be stressed in life. So I'll do whatever I can to mitigate it. So I love my job and my job brings me happiness and not stress. There are stressful days but then we get past them and you know, net I'm happy that we went through them. So yeah, just find the thing that you like and go for it and if you don't find it the first time, try again. Like.
Elisa Muñoz: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. It was a pleasure to have you on the podcast today Michael.
Michael Davis: Thank you!
