Reinventing the Freight System | Meet the Drapers S9: Draper University

Took trial and error. It took a lot of pain to get to where we are now.

Very challenging, but this is possible.

I always say to myself, would I like to work for that person?

I've been always taking risk, creating my own path.

Million dollar would help us especially in the R&D side because right now we are in the scaling mode. So this means a lot.

Deliver our first 100 robots to our early customers. Get feedback and iterate more, launch our next version.

Allow us to augment our staff with some specialists. We're finally now realizing that this isn't something we can build by ourselves. We need to start adding to our staff. We would accelerate a lot of the pilots that we have in our pipeline in regards to workforce development as well as deploying out to different sites and look to align with communities that need the most help.

A million dollars would take us a long way.

I'm very excited to show just a small snippet of the amazing founders that go through our program. We have Andy Tang, my partner at Draper Associates, but he is also chairman emeritus of Draper University. And dad, this is Bill Draper. He was one of the pioneers of venture capital. So dad, anything you're going to be looking for in the entrepreneurs?

Energy. And I always say to myself, would I like to work for that person? That is a big clue. I am just happy to be here and see this wonderful crowd. Silicon Valley, we're right in the center of it. Really should be very thankful that we have so many wonderful entrepreneurs around us. I'm happy to be here and let's hope I'm here next year.

Hi, I'm Sum. I'm co-founder and CEO at Sephores and we're building private chef for everyone. Deep down, I wanted to solve this problem of cooking because food is fundamental to human existence. As a student, you don't have time, we don't have money. I was struggling with that, eating unhealthy. I wanted to automate some of that. Growing up, I built these robots and instruments fixing things and I realized I like hands-on. I went through my undergrad and masters. I realized, okay, yeah, robotics seems hard. A lot of problems that would keep me awake at night. A lot of my friends chose computer science because that was a certain path where if you followed these certain steps, you would get to these companies, but mechanical engineering, yeah, I was the only one choosing that. Nowadays we think a robot is a fancy humanoid type thing but those could be just microwave type tool that talk with you that help you cook, be more creative, do 90% of your work. We've been able to cook good food with our robot like delicious freshly cooked food. But the surprising reaction was from the personal connection that robot expressed when people talk with the robot and also get to experience the amazing food that has been really interesting. So I've been always taking risk creating my own path. I've learned a lot, failed a lot, but I think yeah, my younger self, he wouldn't be surprised. We have a restaurant back home, so yeah, I'm kind of spoiled and used to eating good food. I think the best encouragement was from my dad. Go do it. You might fail, but it's worth trying and you'll learn a lot.

We're in San Mateo, California in front of our Draper University building. It's a nice weather today. A lot of good restaurants are nearby. So, I loved just walking anytime and getting any cuisine you want, any food you want. And also, since I'm working on cooking robot, it was good to explore what are the options and opportunities around Draper University. Bringing like all these passionate and ambitious entrepreneurs from around the world to the same building and letting them connect with each other, work together. Yeah, it was fun staying here. When you are in the environment with all the founders, super ambitious people, you also encourage yourself to push more and help others.

Being the first one, I think it's sometimes like much more exciting because like everyone is full energy and they are excited to listen to you. As an entrepreneur, you got to be ready for anything. And I was ready.

I'm Sum, co-founder and CEO of Sephores. We're building robot chef to accelerate physical intelligence. 77% of Americans say they are too tired to cook after work. And time is the main issue here. They end up spending over $35 on Uber Eats and Door Dash only to get cold burger and soggy fries. Let's be honest, it's not healthy either. In this age of AI and robotics, we have a robot chef that does everything from meal planning, ordering groceries to completely cooking your dinner. We already have a robot chef that has cooked more than 10 recipes and more than 85 people have tried and loved the food. We're scrappy, but we move fast. In 3 months, we built our version two, and we're moving faster. And as you can see, we've cooked chicken curry, fried rice, a penne pasta, and burger and many more. And we have documented our journey on social medias too.

So a robot, it can communicate with you and plan a recipe in natural language. And then our target price is $1,500. We want to bring a complete solution so that everyone can have a personal chef in their house.

So yeah. We have hardware $1,500 you get it and then premium model. So like you can operate the robot for free and everything. And then there is like premium grocery delivery and we partner with these meal kit companies like HelloFresh or Whole Foods and they can deliver you groceries and then you can monetize the recipe.

We haven't really sold anything of course it's a new hardware company R&D. So my job was to convince him that we're moving fast and we're making progress. We have done 10 demos, live demos and then we have like 50% waitlist just with this robot.

Yes, we made it super interactive. Let's say all the robot robots out there, you follow certain instructions and you put in ingredients and then if you mess it up, it's going to mess up the recipe. But for us, we have three cameras and AI speaking with you. If you put in wrong ingredients, it's going to say, 'Hey, you put in like random stuff here. Let's do it this way.' Okay. So, it's more interactive and it's going to fix. So, that's our advantage. And also, we built this robot and we've cooked 10 recipes in just 6 months. We can do much more.

It was amazing. We're going to eat some of the leftovers. After that, just hang out with friends for tonight. Yeah.

Being from Pakistan, like curries and all of these things, they require like continuous attention. So, you have to be at the stove for like a long period of time. So, if somebody else is managing that and getting smarter about it over a period of time, I think that's a really good opportunity. I still think like it's not market tested. So, we'll really have to see how that part of it goes.

I was thinking about this rule that I made up. It's what I called the 1310. If I see one sort of weird company, I would say that's interesting. Is it just one sort of weird idea? If I see three of them, it's thought maybe there's a movement. And if I see 10, I know it's probably overinvested. I'm trying to figure out if this idea is sort of three or 10. I slightly worry it's getting becoming closer to the 10, so the competitive landscape may be a little bit crowded.

Hi, I'm Kevin Moa. I'm the founder and CEO of Glide. We're on a mission to make road and rail more accessible to all. I started age of 17 right out of high school. 911 happened. So I ended up joining the army at the age of 17 full-time active duty. During that time I did two tours in Iraq, one Afghanistan. But when I was in Iraq I did rail head operations. So that's when we moved our tanks and our Bradleys from road to rail. And that's when I first saw that it sucked. And then the San Diego fires happened. And I went down to San Diego to be a part-time volunteer firefighter. The folks down there was like, 'If you love firefighting, you should join the Air Force National Guard. They fight fires all the time.' And ended up falling in love with it. Did it for almost 13 years. Everywhere I did logistics. That was always the common thread across my entire career to move people and things from place to place and I just kept following that trail. Growing up, you know, my parents work really hard all the time to provide for us. And they no job was beneath them either. They would do any and everything in order to put food on the table. The second one is I was raised around creatives. You know, I'm an artist. I'm a dancer and a musician. And, you know, when I go into these different jobs, I see a level of creativity, a level of complexity that needs to be made pretty in such a way. Either aesthetically or the way it's form, fit or function. So we always saw as a challenge. I discovered that if I want my mission to stay the same, I have to be in the driver's seat. I have to operate at a place of risk and being uncomfortable. But it took a lot to get there. You know, it took trial and error. It took a lot of pain to get to where we are now. I think folks see all the successes. But a lot of folks that have done this knows that it doesn't come without a lot of heartache and pain on the way there. And my family's been with me through all that. So, I think the word that I can share is they're proud now of where we are. And it's a dream fulfilled, but not a mission fulfilled yet.

We are in San Mateo. Yeah, I appreciate train stations because it is a point of embarkation just like a shipping container. People. We are containers that move from place to place and the place that we converge on is a train station.

I love the Bay Area because it's a melting pot of everybody. You have folks from every single country around the world converging at one place in order to make something of themselves in life. And to share with other folks in many different ways and avenues from food to music to commerce. There's many places like it, but no place like it all at the same time.

I pitch quite a bit, but every single time I'm nervous. I think it helps me to center. But then whenever I start, I feels like I'm at home. And then just seeing the reactions just gives you even more motivation and more confirmation that you're supposed to be there.

I'm Kevin Moa, founder and CEO of Glide. A little bit about my background. I grew up in a marginalized community that lived adjacent to ports and rails, you know, similar to 30 million Americans or 200 million people around the world. And I've done transportation for the military. I'm retired military, active duty army, came in California, fought fires in California as well.

So, I talked about the invisible problem like you know folks that are impacted by our transportation infrastructure but the visible problem is that have you ever driven down the freeway behind a semi-truck and looked over at the rail and said why aren't these guys over there? Well, the only reason why that is because there's multiple pieces of equipment that are needed to move goods from road to rail. Multiple pieces of equipment, multiple processes and a lot of people and it's very very capital intensive. What we've done at Glide is we streamlined the process down to one. So, one vehicle, one move, one piece of equipment. And we can move goods from road to rail within 15 minutes to a day. So, we're going to show you our technology here. So, we are the world's first autonomous road-to-rail solution, patented road-to-rail solution. So, we can get underneath any road-based trailer, any rail-based cart with little to no modification. So, we're essentially industry agnostic, commercial side as well as the defense side. Oil, gas, trash, containers, whatever moves on road or rail, we can move today. Utilizing our patented technology.

Yeah, we have two sets of wheels on it. So, we have a road wheel as well as a rail wheel.

It's all autonomous. It's fully autonomous. And we have human... the rail. Yes. We utilize sensor fusion. So, a combination of LIDAR, radar, sensors. As well as we work with positive traction control and then you know I'm going to before we jump we work in third developing countries.

Market size within the United States 100 billion globally is 20 trillion.

Yes. From road to rail and then all the industries as well. So everything.

100 billion.

We have. We have. We actually unveiled it last week at re-industrialize a new mobility futures to the world. So it was fully functional.

It was. Yeah. Fully functional working.

Exactly. Tim seemed like he bit on it extremely fast. Like he felt exactly what the technology was. He knows the business. He knows technology. He can see innovation. He doesn't have to hit him in his face. He can like smell it. We have $70 million in LOIs currently with railroad operators as well as ports and industrial manufacturers. And then we will start realizing revenue Q3 this year.

We're a bit of both, but yeah, we're not a vehicle we're not an OEM provider that we sell to folks with the exception of the military because the military actually wants to buy. But for everybody else, we are like your Maersk or your JB Hunt of the world.

It was a big buildup moment. Last week we unveiled our prototype. This week I'm on Meet the Drapers. I'm just overwhelmed with so much gratitude for everything that God has given me.

I like him. There are a lot of parts to this. I think the timing is good for the reindustrialization of our country. As we think about re-infrastructure, it utilizes what we currently have that's worked for like centuries and then automates it, makes it cheaper and faster.

And to Azra's point, we already have the railway system, we have the highway, and then how do we then take advantage of AI, autonomous vehicles? It's big. It's swing for the fences.

I'm Ali and I'm the CEO and founder of Pora. So, we are helping the poultry farmers to save the thousands of dollars by using the IoT, big data and artificial intelligence. We're from Punjab in Pakistan. It's a very small town and in our circle there was no any reference or any example that you can do something bigger. There was only the trade that you have to do the job, you have to earn the money and you have to feed your family. That's it. All of a sudden I left my job and I started to work on my ideas. The most of most of the people said he's a crazy guy. I was searching and observing the documentaries of all the big entrepreneurs Alan Ma from China and all the big big names in Silicon Valley. This is a way, there's a way though this is not easy. This is very challenging but this is possible. This is not impossible. I have very few chances just because I cannot do a lot of mistakes just because I'm already with the kids I have the family I have to feed my family and I left my job so pressure from the family pressure from the society was very high. The approach of the founders in the Silicon Valley they are going deeper deeper deeper they don't talk they do work. So I copied them. I worked a lot on the farms. I had a lot of meeting with the poultry farmers. I realized I understand their problems. I tried to figure out how to solve their problems.

Honestly, I was not ready for the pitch just because we got the lead traction and we got the leap revenue. So, we didn't need anything about to go to any investor right here. Draper, especially Draper and Azra can play the role they can connect us to the top level. PA is actually providing the data-driven poultry platform and we are actually defining the poultry biochemical intelligence. So I think problem you all guys can relate very well just because just couple of months before in US the peoples are facing the problem of the egg shortage right in California not only the California but whole in the US and the reason was the disease attack on the poultry farms the US just lost the billions of dollars just in couple of months before so this problem is common not only in the US but around the globe the many countries are facing the same problem they are losing around hundred billion dollars every year so what the PA is doing PA is actually providing the real-time monitoring and the next generation of poultry farming where we are providing the IoT big and artificial intelligence but we are introducing small mini labs which are actually detecting around 23 different blood samples which can provide the real-time detection of the birds what's happening on the farm. We have the massive opportunity of $90 billion just to make the money especially in the disease prevention and the feed optimization and operation efficiencies.

Both. There are 85 different parameters which are showing what the birds are saying actually the disease they have, their thrust, their...

Yeah, of course. Birds can talk. They can show their hunger, their expressions, and their problems.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It sounds like you're using cameras and maybe mic to pick up both audio as well as visual cues of the bird's health.

Yeah. Yep. And then do you put some of the sensor on them and they'll continuous to monitor the... right now we detecting the disease by using the AI cameras right.

You just cameras?

Yeah cameras just cameras so we were using the sensors before but recently we have replaced all the sensors and now just through the cameras we are getting all the data.

How much of that is your IP versus just commercially available because they're doing that with human babies.

Right now in industry there are so many solutions available but the missing piece is the comprehensiveness which gives a larger picture of what's happening on the farm.

There's a commitment of $150 million and they are making the JV right. In the JV they are providing us $25 million just for the license fee.