Interviewee
Erik Reynolds is the Founder and Principal Engineer at Reynolds & Moore. With responsibility for strategic vision and team building. He is also a Lecturer in Systems Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, and has served in several technical and senior leadership positions in the aerospace, certification, and utility industries.
Transcript
Erik Reynolds: Reynolds and Moore, we're focused on systems engineering specifically for robotics and specifically for safety systems that apply any kind of automated safety systems. We work in energy storage, robotics, medical systems, but the bulk of our work is in robotic systems.
Right now we're about 20 people, maybe a little bit more. It changes every day. So we have systems engineers, software, engineers, hardware, engineers, technical writers, test oriented folks as well. So the team is growing and we're seeing a really big demand in the marketplace for our services. If you ask a little bit about me, so my background, I I've spent a lot of time in a lot of different industries, but primarily I came up in test and evaluation first, starting off with what was then called drones or unmanned systems in the us air force was a flight test engineer for those in the early two thousands. And if you remember, that was the kind of the wild west of drone days. So it was a really unique and wonderful experience to get to be a part of that.
And then also I started working in systems engineering and regulatory environments. After that I've worked in utility spaces, I've led large organizations within those. And then in 2016, I decided it was time to start the company and, and we launched and we did that and it's been, it's been good so far.
Elisa Muñoz: So you have been like, kind of like all over the place. And I think it's great because you have a lot of experience in the area, but what would you say it was the main trigger in order to be like, okay, “I'm gonna start my own company”?
Erik Reynolds: Well, there's a couple things. I think one would be that I've, it's always been a dream of mine. Okay. To start, I consider myself a creative person. I know that a lot of people don't view engineers as creative people, but I think in a way we're the most creative because indeed we wanna make things out of, you know, our heads and make them real. Right. So that's good. So part of it was just an internal drive in my personality, part of it as well was recognizing a market need in this area. Okay. Just the fact that it's a new and growing area and there's so many people that are in need of it now. So that was part of it. And then also to be completely honest, one of the main triggers for me to really decide to do the company full time, you know, we work in safety and a dear close friend of mine, their daughter was actually killed in an accident. And at that point I had already started the company, but I just decided that I kind of viewed this automated safety as my calling.
And I wanted to dedicate myself to it and to build a company to meet that need. So it's a, it's kind of a sad thing, but it's a very deep, very deep reason why I'm committed to this company.
Elisa Muñoz: Okay. Thank you so much for sharing. I was like looking at the company and looking at the history that your co-founder is actually your wife. How was that experience? Like? I mean, I'm pretty sure this is amazing and pretty hard at the same time.
Erik Reynolds: Oh no, it's easy. She's a wonderful person. So the, so my wife and I actually met in engineering class in Texas. And of course we were on a team together at that point. That's how we got, that's how we met and we have different styles. So as I said, I'm kind of the creative style and she's kind of more of the diligent, you know, studious style. Right. And so we had a little bit of conflict at the beginning on the team, I think, but that's the spice of life is to make it interesting. So we've been married now, of course, for 21 years now.
And we have six children. We also have been foster parents for a long time and adopted parents for a long time. So we're really committed to that just in our personal lives. That's great. But then when we decided to start the company, you know, she has a master's degree in nuclear engineering. And so her emphasis is in radiation safety. And so she's, I would say a better safety engineer than I am, but we decided to combine the two and, and to start the company together. So the more part of Reynolds and Moore is actually her, that's her middle name. And we work together and I think it works well.
Elisa Muñoz: I wanted to ask you, like, how was experience getting your first investors, especially in safety?
Erik Reynolds: So when I started off the company. It was just me. And honestly I was doing it, part-time on the side. And then I started inviting people in to help out people that I knew. And really the recruiting story at the company has been one of me calling my friends that I know have the skills and the temperament and inviting them to see if they're interested in it. And so far it's been really surprising and a little scary to me because I've had several friends quit their jobs and come to work, you know? So that's, that's kind of exciting that they're committed to it, but you feel the responsibility too. So it started off small, just me and a couple other folks helping, and then we've just continued to grow.
And I do want to talk about finding investors. So we've taken a little bit of a different route with that. Okay. In that our growth has been all organic growth and we haven't actually taken on any outside investment at all. We've been working completely out of revenue and continuing to grow. And I think that has been number one or a reflection of the market need of how much need there is in autonomous safety.
And then also our focus on finding the right people who are committed to do the job. And that works with our customers too, because we're focused on what they are interested in and what their needs are rather than just our specific solution. And so that's inspired a lot of trust and confidence with some, we have, some of our clients are fortune 10 companies. So they're really committed when they find the right partners to develop good relationships and move forward with that. So far, we haven't taken on any outside investors.
"We've been working completely out of revenue and continuing to grow. And I think that has been number one or a reflection of the market need of how much need there is in autonomous safety".
Elisa Muñoz: So you mentioned that you're working currently, especially with robotics, right? Robotics, batteries, medical services, how it has been your experience with each one of them.
Erik Reynolds: Yeah. Well, I think that I'll say what's common about 'em and then what's different. Okay, great. So the common thread for the work we do in medical devices, we've been helping people get FDA approval for medical devices. The work we've done in energy storage, in getting a lot of these new technologies, hydrogen and lithium battery systems out, into actual use on the grid. And then also in robotics as well, is that the thing they have in common is two things. One is they're all, or three things. They're all highly regulated environments. Meaning the government has a lot of restrictions, either national or state or local municipalities have a lot of rules about things.
For instance, the FDA doesn't want to release approval for just any medical device. They have to show that it is reliable and can do what it's doing. Right? Similarly, cities don't wanna bring in a potentially very dangerous lithium ion battery storage system into a central business district until they know that they aren't gonna have an increased risk of fire or something like that because the safety systems are reliable with them. And then similarly on robotics, if you're gonna deploy hundreds of thousands of robots out to interact collaboratively with people, then you wanna make sure that it's working correctly. Right?
So I guess the three things that are one is they're highly regulated, two is they are also areas where there's a lot of innovation happening. And so a lot of the safety approaches and standards lag behind by 10 years, maybe more, and can't accommodate these new ways of doing things, these news technologies. So our firm focuses on helping find these new approaches to addressing those risks and hazards. And, and so that, and the third thing is they're fun. They're all really interesting to work on. And I think that keeps our team excited. So those are the things I would say are in common about them. The things that are different are they use different languages.
Okay. So as I said, we're all, we're a systems engineering firm and that's really the tools that are the same across all of those, but they all call them something different or have a different process for how they work. So for instance, in a medical community, you have a risk management file, whereas in a robotics community, you may have a hazard and risk assessment. And so there are different nuances. It's a bit like English and Spanish or Italian and German, right. They're all conveying the same meaning of trying to, but you use different words and ways of saying things in those contexts.
Elisa Muñoz: Have you found any challenges when it comes to procurement? Whenever the pandemic happened.
Erik Reynolds: During the pandemic? I think, you know, that was a challenging time for everyone, but for us it was, I don't know if I can say this, but for us it was an opportunity because that's right, because all of this sudden everyone became fine with remote work and our company is entirely virtual. We don't have an office where everyone comes to. We work virtually, I think some companies, many companies are that way now, but because of the pandemic, none of our clients had any problem with it at all. They were totally happy with it. It has also given us some great recruiting opportunities and ways to bring on people who were interested in maybe a new way of working or, or a new focus on their work. So one of my side things that I'm also involved in is I'm a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas in their systems engineering department.
Elisa Muñoz: I'm glad that it was an opportunity for you guys. I wanted to ask you one of the last questions. What would you say it has been the biggest technical challenge?
Erik Reynolds: Biggest technical challenges. Well, I think within automated safety, a big technical challenge is how automated systems are working closer and closer with people. You know, it used to be that you had a cage around the robot and it did its robot things inside and people were outside. Well, now everyone is expecting collaborative robots. Even some of the robots that we work with, people actually wear exoskeleton type things, you know? Yeah. So some of it is being able to detect what to predict, what the person is going to do. So the robot needs to be able to do that.
So what you're talking about is image processing from stereo cameras or other types of sensors. You're talking about predictive models for behavior of people within say a hospital or a warehouse or whatever it is, right? So a lot of those technical challenges are very, very difficult to tackle, but those are the most interesting ones too. And then for our firm, once you come up with an innovative design solution, we work with our customers to do that. The other side of it is now, how do we communicate to people, whether it's trustworthy or not. And in that regulated environment, you can't just claim that something is trustworthy. You have to show it.
Elisa Muñoz: Do you have any advice for future entrepreneurs starting on this path?
Erik Reynolds: Yeah. I think my advice is you've gotta find your why, why are you doing what you're doing? Are you doing it just because you wanna start a company? That's great. That's fine. But times are gonna get tough. You're gonna have to make sacrifices. Especially if you form a company with your wife, you're gonna have to work through these issues and you've gotta have something very, very strong why just beyond making money or whatever it is. You have to have a very strong reason to fall back on in those cases.
Elisa Muñoz: Well, that was straight to the point, thank you so much, Eric. And thank you so much for being here and for sharing your experiences and for sharing everything about the company with us.
Erik Reynolds: The pleasure was mine.
