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I was even watching something recently with Walt Disney, the early days of the animatronics there, and stuff like that... And it's just some really cool stuff they've done, way back when they first invented theme parks... And specifically Disney theme parks. Characters that moved, and seemed real, and so much cool stuf... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah. And their teams are amazing in imagineering. The robotics that they do there is pretty incredible now. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What's interesting though is -- I guess to bring it back to Misty... As I can see it, it's an interesting thing to try to empower developers with a real robot, to make it compartmentible, to make it componentable, to give it access to APIs and access to all these different things... And to have this... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** 2017 was the founding of Misty robotics...? |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah, although we just started shipping in September of 2019. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. Because you had a Kickstarter, or something like that. Didn't you have a Kickstarter? |
**Ian Bernstein:** We did our own crowdfund, but yeah -- we did a crowdfunding in the middle of 2018. So it took a little bit to get the robot out the door as far as manufacturing... But I would say that our ten-year plan that we wrote about a few years ago -- I don't know, I'd say we're still... I would say really shi... |
You know, some things going to be potential real applications, but more on the experimentation side, and what we were finding is almost immediately we were starting to get contacted by real companies - big companies, small companies, entrepreneurs wanting to really dive in and create a meaningful solution immediately. ... |
\[56:10\] I didn't think that would happen for maybe at least like a year, or something... More experimentation period, versus diving right into a real solution, which is -- you know, on our side, we had envisioned Misty as being this sort of experimentation/development platform where when you're experimenting, some of... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Good enough. |
**Ian Bernstein:** If somebody is already building a solution that's deploying out to kids with autism, or elderly people, it has to work... And even though our direct customer is the developer, their customers are a real consumer, and especially groups that might be even more challenging, and the technology needs to w... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. It just makes me think how difficult it must be to have this mindset of iteration, with that kind of long-term vision, and let's say to some degree accurate hypotheses today, that tomorrow may be somewhat accurate, and need to iterate. I don't know how you iterate -- I mean, I know how you ite... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah. It is super-challenging. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** How do you focus your time? How do you focus understanding what is important today? I ask that generally, but then seriously, how do you do that? What do you listen to? What are the metrics, what are the indicators to say "This is what's important." Especially considering Coronavirus and the slowdow... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah, that was a crazy curveball to -- it was already challenging trying to figure that out, and then Coronavirus came along... You know, I would say we're still trying to figure it out. We have a very finite team, and finite resources, so we literally put our energy where -- we're trying to focus on... |
So the two we're looking at again - and a lot of this is coming from our customers - is that children's therapy space and elder care. But even those are pretty broad... Like "Well, what in elder care?" Is it the companion robot that just has a lot of personality and it's there, and can help with loneliness, and connect... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:00:06.02\] Yeah. |
**Ian Bernstein:** And all those different use cases - there's some overlap in the technology, but there's also a lot of different technologies that we would need for each one of those different use cases, so where do we focus our energy? And yeah, we're still trying to figure that out, especially now. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You know, hearing that though makes me think if I were in your position -- I try to generally empathize, because I'm similar to you; I'm not quite as dangerous, but I do have a lot of facets... And I think the one area where I would explore, or at least consider, is becoming my own customer. |
So while you are a platform, you're also very future-focused. Why not spin off another company that's focused on one of these larger verticals and specialize, as well as be the platform? So where it's not Misty Robotics being a customer directly, maybe it's a separate company, but the idea is if there's an area where y... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yup. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** If you can become understanding of a vertical that makes a lot of sense, and can become that best customer, well then you're your own champion and you can use yourself as an example to other customers (would-be customers) to use your platform. That's just an idea I would consider. |
**Ian Bernstein:** That's spot on, for sure. It's something similar to what I do... One of my tools is I'll -- I basically just have to think about something else, like not work. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Mm-hm. Take a shower, go for a run. Well, you live in Boulder; do you mountain-bike? Do you do anything fun outside? Get outside, take a hike. |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah, exactly. I snowboard... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** There you go. |
**Ian Bernstein:** You know, get out and just completely forget that I work at Misty... And blank all that out. I create another persona for myself in my head, and then I do whatever it is, like play with Sphero, interact with Misty, or whatever I'm trying to test... And just sort of really think about how I feel, and ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, especially because you're such a dynamic enabler. What rings true to me as a good sword to have in a repertoire, which is this dangerousness of you. You say "My strength is that I'm dangerous in many things", and I see that as a -- you know, that's a negative word, but it's a very positive eff... |
Resilience is a big thing, especially in this time... Resilience is probably gonna be one of the hidden skillsets of any individual, as well as any company. How do you get through this kind of -- I mean, no one expected this kind of thing... Speaking to Coronavirus, or just the way the world is right now, and the bounc... |
**Ian Bernstein:** \[01:03:57.29\] Yeah. I mean, it's so easy to get wrapped up... And it kind of reminds me of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was going crazy; you'd just check the price of Bitcoin every five minutes... It's kind of like that now. It's hard to not let yourself every five minutes go on and see what the latest predict... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's a trap though too, right? |
**Ian Bernstein:** Oh, yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Because while that may be true, we all still have our responsibility. What you're doing is amazing, and Coronavirus aside, it doesn't change that. |
**Ian Bernstein:** Exactly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It slows it down, is all it does. It may delay certain things, but the usefulness of what you've personally built, and your team and company has built is still just as useful. And what I'm speaking isn't to say you're right or wrong, it's just -- it's this lie we all begin to believe, that just chis... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Right. So it's like, how do we not let whatever things are going on consume us? I'm just trying to focus on our work. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** The next right thing. |
**Ian Bernstein:** How do we build a bunch of cool features for Misty, so that when we come out of this Misty is in a really good spot for developers who wanna come in, or companies that wanna come in? I think that's what we have to do. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Let's maybe key in on that then, because we've got a highly active audience, who primarily -- a large portion are developers; the primary audience for our podcast network at large, our Changelog brand is developers. So if you were speaking to a large set of developers, what would you say to get them... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Well, Misty is a great platform. We've talked about a lot of the capabilities. I'd love for people to start thinking about how robots can be used, both today, and the time's right, literally today... And coming out of Coronavirus, how is the world gonna change? In what ways are they gonna change, and... |
You're probably an expert in something that I'm not. You may know way more about some other use case for Misty that I've never even thought about. So sharing those ideas with us would be super-useful. We have forums; reach out. It's ian \[at\] mistyrobotics.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I think it's super-exciti... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah... That's what I mean. It's still exciting times. This \[unintelligible 01:07:08.00\] doesn't change the excitement that we have in our state of innovation. We're doing some really interesting things as a human race when it comes to our internet... And I believe it's now turned 20 years old, so... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah, I mean, a kid anywhere can start working with a Sphero, or Misty... Start creating a skill and create a solution for a really important problem. There's people right now for personal protective equipment, like using their 3D printers at home to build facemasks... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Crazy. |
**Ian Bernstein:** ...using transparency films... It's pretty cool how people can come together and innovate and share ideas and come up with solutions quickly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:08:05.22\] I'm curious what your stock is on Misty Robots. Do you have a ton that can be deployed? Do you have any interesting programs where you're finding useful ways or interesting ways to economically get them into people's hands, that weren't there before? I say "before" meaning three week... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah... I mean, luckily, we'd built up a stock before Chinese New Year, which then extended into Covid-19... Yeah, so we do have a stock; we have a pool of loaner units we can get out to people, we have different channels to exchange ideas through our forums, we have these Uplinks that we do, like in... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well, I think of it like the fact that if you've got -- I didn't know you had a loaner pool available, or just some sort of creative way to get these into people's hands, maybe without the large-scale investment, or maybe something; "Let me give you my driver's license", whatever it is. Sign-a... |
**Ian Bernstein:** Yeah, definitely people listening - go to our website and check it out. We have a bunch of videos... We can't talk about all the stuff that people are working on, because some of it is -- they're trying to make money off it at some point... But just kind of check out some of the things that people ar... |
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