Josh Figuered: Thanks for having me, excited to be here.
Basically, my history has been largely in space in robotics, as well as that of my co-founders. So all of us met several years kind of in our past lives at NASA Johnson space center and the robotics lab down there. And essentially, you know, we did a variety of stuff, you know, humanoid robots, the Hickey color system. So like a lot of the robots you see, when you go to the NASA website that are big and gold can range anywhere from Ruben, not the MRV or chariot vehicle, which was basically a concept developed for the next generation of man Rover systems.
So that was something that was actually what I worked on at the very beginning of my career at NASA was doing the drivetrain system for that Rover spent many years kind of following that project, doing tests out in the desert, you know, kind of getting, you know, learning, learning, everything we could about it on earth, you know, to, to kind of get to the moon essentially. And then did, yeah, like a number of other humanoid robots. Like the Valkyrie project was really cool. That was something, it was one of the DARPA grand challenges that actually me and all my co-founders that's kind of like, that was the project that brought us all together was doing Valkyrie, which was just an amazing challenge, you know, like in robotics it was, you know, anything that's a DARPA challenge is obviously about as hard as it gets.
And, you know, it was a year's time frame to try and put this robot together to compete and, you know, everything had to be wireless. And that was at that stage, bipedal motion for humanoid robots was also a very, very challenging thing, you know? So that was an exciting project, working on a number of other vehicles there that were, you know, in the common thread with most of the vehicles that were found at NASA, they had these very unique drivetrain systems. We would refer to it as crab drive. So, you know how, like you see a crab on the beach and it can kind of go back and forth and, you know, consider circles.
So all of the wheels essentially could rotate either 180 or 360 degrees, which gave you the ability to. You know, you could go in a direction and the vehicle could rotate around in circles. So you could do just really, really cool stuff. And also most of our vehicles we developed there also had an active suspension system, which allowed the, you know, the rovers to adapt to different drain features. They could actually lift the legs up, you know, to climb up on a big rock, you know, and kind of equalize that traction. So it was just a really exciting part of my career. That was, you know, I got, I did several internships. They were kind of out of school.
And then I moved on to do underwater robots. So I spent a couple years at a company. It was originally Houston, Houston mechatronics. It's not Nauticus robotics and working on a large variety, you know, just kind of a sub robot. You know, we were trying to take what we knew at NASA and bring it to the underwater world, which is similar to space in a lot of ways. There's just enormous challenges. It's amazing how much of the ocean we haven't explored yet, what little we know about it. And largely that's based on the kind of technology we have available, you know, so I spent some years there as the director of mechanical engineering working on a lot of really exciting projects there. And then, you know, decided to move home back to Bloomington, Indiana left Houston.
And I've been here since 2020. And, you know, it was one of those kind of interesting turns in my career where it was like, I just wanted to move home, kind of be closer to family. And, you know, didn't really know what I was going to be doing. And when I moved back here, I ended up just talking to some friends quickly, got kind of a gig, building a drone for a really cool local company called Taryn robotics. That's working on some unique construction stuff on with kind of the approach of using drones to do construction and that sort of snowballed into, you know, this was a COVID thing. And you know, my friends from NASA reached out to me and said, Hey, we're thinking about getting together, doing some, you know, more side work, you know, would you be interested? And at the time I was just like, well, like, yeah, you know, I need another job, you know, so that really just snowballed quickly and turned into what is today now, no VM, which we started just over a year ago, our first birthday was July 16 and it's just been a wild adventure.
We've kind of used those skills that we kind of cultivated at NASA as roboticists really just, you know, like we were looking at industry and there's so many applications, you know, for robotics and what robotics is at its core is, you know, it's, it's not just a humanoid robot. Like people look at the movies and, you know, it's, if it's walking around and talking, that's kind of the classic mindset for what robotics is. And really it's when you look at those technologies, what a robot is, you know, it's, it's electronics, it's tying a bunch of sensors together, you know, there's, there's machine learning applications and kind of intelligence that you derive from the sensors there's parts that are, you know, moving, which are, you know, controlled by electronics and software. And that's, that's like the core of what robots are. So you look around and you're like, well, what does that? And it's, it's almost everything today. You know, electric cars are kind of, you know, essentially robots at this point with all the sensors, they have the via luck electromechanical systems built in a lot of modern industry, you know, and, and, and that effort to be greener, you know, is, is moving towards electrification, which is a lot of what robotics is.
So essentially we kind of founded our company on the premise of helping people in all these different industries, you know, using our skills and kind of the lens that we view the world as roboticists. And, you know, just to like solving very challenging problems, you know, it's like, we've, we've collectively almost never done one of the same thing twice. People usually come to us with, ah, I've got this hard problem, you know, we ha it hasn't really been done. You know, what do you even think? And often it's, you know, the responses, but we'd never done that, but, you know, let's just, let's break it down and start and see how, how we'd go about doing that. That's kind of been our mindset, you know, our entire careers is to take on new challenges, break them down to first order fundamental principles, and then just kind of use our skills to develop that. And, you know, like now it's really cool with all our customers that we work with, you know, kind of just bringing them new and innovative things, tying a lot of skill sets together that, you know, a lot of companies might not have in house.
"Especially with founders, it's just very easy to overwork yourself to the point of being ineffective and not being able to make good decisions. So I think my biggest piece of advice is, work hard, but work smarter instead of harder, that’s it."
Elisa Muñoz: Wow. I think it's really interesting. What has been the biggest challenge when it comes to founding a new company and customers?
Josh Figuered: I would say everything, you know, it's just, it's one of those things where I think, yeah, like we've been through a first year. I think we'd been, you know, very, you know, part of it is just lucky, you know, like ironically, you know, founding the company during COVID a large part of how we operate is we have engineers working remotely and that wouldn't have really been possible, you know, in many ways without COVID, you know, like, because we are designing hardware, we're delivering hardware to our customers that requires us to be very hands-on and, you know, like playing with physical systems.
And it was cool starting in, in COVID because we, we, you know, everybody was learning to do that. It was like, how do we have a hardware company and maybe leverage remote work or hybrid work. And so, you know, a lot of companies had to adapt their systems to it. And we built our system, you know, with that intention, like discovering the ways that we could do that. And so kind of largely how we function is, you know, one thing that's incredible, like where you ask how many people were up to, I think we just passed 20 people yesterday, which I, which I think has been really incredible and kind of the first year, you know, just getting on your feet and getting going, and, you know, everybody we've hired is just like, like absolutely amazing, you know, like having been at NASA and, you know, having been at, you know, like not a cuss, like I I've worked with just these incredible engineers that are just like, you know, it's, it's been places where they've been assembled to solve these extremely hard problems. And, you know, it's like, so my career I've been fortunate to work with the best and starting a new company, you know, not having a name like NASA, you know, not having a lot of money behind us when we started, you know, that was one of the big challenges we faced was like, how are we going to get the best people?
And it was something that our customers often ask, you know, initially was, well, we hired you guys because of you guys, you know, you like, we know where you come from, we know what you're capable of as the founders.
Elisa Muñoz: Which one is the field of robotics that you guys are working with the most or the one that you enjoy the most?
Josh Figuered: You know, it's just like, it's almost hard to say because, you know, with our company, we were very intentional and that we didn't want to commit to a certain industry. Like we, we really wanted, I know a lot of companies will say like, we're going to be a space company, you know? And so everything's in space and, you know, for us, it was, we came from the space industry. So a large part of our business currently is in space. You know, we're doing some space station where we're working with NASA, we're working with a satellite manufacturer, you know, it's like, we've, we're doing a lot of stuff in the space field, you know, where we came from and leveraging some of the, you know, unique skills we have and understanding like, how do you put something in space? You know, there's a process and not a lot of people understand that.
So that was an obvious industry. But, you know, I think there's, you know, in the kind of traditional, like very pure robotics, there's just, there's so many things going on. Like, we've seen the construction field the past year we've been in this, you know, a lot of people are leveraging robots for construction and trying to see, you know, what parts of the process, you know, we can make more efficient with robots. You know, we can make it more cost-effective because obviously housing is getting very expensive. And if there's ways that we can, you know, reduce the cost, that's a, that's a huge win for everybody, you know, like who has trouble affording a house, which I think in this day and age is, is almost everybody, you know, it's just, it's kind of crazy.
So construction's been a big one, you know, warehouse robotics has really been blowing up. That's another one we've kind of been involved in the farming industry. It is really fascinating. One that's, one where we're getting more involved in. And I mean, there's, there's huge, you know, there's a huge range of applications and that like most people think of farms is outside. There's a lot of indoor farming operations now that are, you know, vertical farms. And they're really tremendous from the standpoint of like from an ecological standpoint, like they can control, you know, the amount of water that's going into growing these crops, like much better.
Elisa Muñoz: And I wanted to ask you, I mean, since you started kind of like, okay, maybe not in the middle of the pandemic, but a little bit afterwards, have you found any critical challenges when it comes to the procurement process?
Josh Figuered: Yeah. That's another, that's another D all of the above kind of thing. Absolutely. I mean, that is, and that has been another thing that, you know, we try and be really scrappy for our, all of our clients of, you know, often something that we, we normally use that we're comfortable with. You know, we're just like we might get to this. Like we had one client last year, actually, where we had designed say around a, I think, a specific motor and we got, you know, did the design and we were going to purchase it. And like, literally three days before we were purchasing it, like we checked at the beginning of the week and they were like, yeah, we got 5,000 in stock. You know, we were like, great, that's awesome.
And then we go to make the order. And they're like, yeah, it's like a 24 week lead time. And we were like, wait, what? You know, like you, you had these in stock. And they were like, yes, somebody came in and bought all 5,000 yesterday, you know, cause like they just can't get 'em and they were just like, let's buy them all. You know? And so it's been a, it's been a very Rocky process of we've found just we're constantly scraping around for alternatives and, you know, we try and be really flexible and, you know, I think, I think adversity always can build strength, you know? So at first it was annoying, you know, obviously and frustrating, but we've really looked at it just as like another opportunity, which I think you have to look at these things as is like, now we know of all these like new vendors we can use, you know, we know of new manufacturers, like, and it makes us a lot more agile and like also just be able to provide, you know, more solutions to our clients and provide more work around.
And I kind of see that as some recurring value. Now, when people come to us with an idea, or maybe it's something very specific and it's like, God, just like, I, I think I want to build it and I need to use this, but it's like, it says, it's going to be 12 weeks. And it's like, well, okay, we've got this option and this option and let's go explore those together. And often they're like, oh, I've never heard of any, you know, like, this is great. Like, you know, so yeah, like, like any other industry we've been very strongly faced with that, but we've just been rolling with the punches and, you know, trying to make the best of it and hopefully, you know, things, things get easier.
So now that we can kind of make it up in the end. Yeah. Those are the things we're always, always kind of looking for.
Elisa Muñoz: Last but not least. Do you have any advice for future entrepreneurs future years starting on this path?
Josh Figuered: I think that's the biggest thing, because especially with founders, it's just very easy to overwork yourself to the point of being ineffective and not being able to make good decisions. And you know, that often people learn it the hard way they get, they get sick, you know, from doing it. And so I think that's my, my biggest piece of advice is, you know, work hard, but work smarter instead of harder, you know, that's, that's at the end of it.
Elisa Muñoz: That's great! Thank you so much Josh for joining us.
Josh Figuered: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
