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0:14 energytechnexascom. All right. Welcome back to the show. I'm excited to have today, Brighton Press-Lika. He's the founder and CEO of FluxWorks, a motion solutions company. I first met Brighton

0:25 when he was at coming out of AM, right? Way back in the day It's like a

0:31 long time ago, it seems, but you've made a lot of progress. So I'm glad to have you here. Tell us a little bit about what FluxWorks does. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, FluxWorks, as you

0:40 said, is a motion solutions company. We started with a core technology of magnetic gearboxes. Think of mechanical gear, but instead of having teeth that are interlocking, we just use magnets. So

0:52 that was our first core technology We've built a top that to not just offer that technology, implement that technology and emotion solutions for our customers. So when you think motion solution,

1:02 think, oh, I wish I had something that could move left and right for me. And so we provide that solution, that motor and the gear and the sensor and the control that all goes into that for our

1:13 customers. Cool. So what kind of things do you use this kind of gear in? Yeah, so it was first invented for a really niche space problem. It was for an application for a future NASA mission where

1:27 they had a robotic actuator that needed to pick up samples, basically. It was invented for that need because it's really cold on the moon. It's really dusty on the moon. Radiation is super harsh.

1:39 And so previous gearboxes that were on lunar robotic applications were only rated to run for about 24 hours, over they completely destroyed themselves, like the former Apollo Landers. And so we

1:52 developed this for that application there But what were some fundamental things that got NASA excited? extreme temperature, extreme reliability, a high degree of precision and control. Well,

2:05 there's a handful of other commercial customers that are interested in those same benefits, right? So we brought down the cost on the technology and now like robotics, automation, advanced

2:14 manufacturing are some of the key areas where we're starting to get traction. Think like food and bed manufacturing or like semiconductor manufacturing. Yeah, so talk to us a little bit about I

2:26 guess what drives wear and tear in an actuator system.

2:30 Do we call it actuators just 'cause it's a bunch of like that's what the NASA people wanna call it or is it like are we talking about a motor and a rack and pinion or something. That's a really good

2:40 question just to get everyone leveled one on one 'cause it's so funny people call them different things. Is it a servo? Is it an actuator? And really those terms mean something barely different but

2:49 for the purposes of our conversation, yeah, when we talk about an actuator, we're talking about something that has electrical in mechanical out, right? You're trying to accomplish something Okay,

3:00 so just motion. It's exactly an actuation is about. Yeah, actuation, exactly. You're trying to send a command and you want something to actually happen.

3:09 And so that's what we were talking about when we talk about an actuator. And we usually use that term instead of saying a motor, 'cause sometimes when people hear motor, people think a big

3:19 multi-megawatt oil and gas, maybe, you know, compressor, gas turbine, you know, those things use motors and generators too And so actuators usually, we say that term to help people think

3:30 smaller, because we usually make stuff that's closer to like two inches, you know, four inches. One of the newest ones we're making is like the size of like a Dewalt hand drill. Okay. Like

3:39 that's like the size of kind of the motion solutions that we're developing. And so, yeah, what causes wear and tear? You know, you've got a gearbox in your car, right? And you've got to put oil

3:48 in it and you've got to change that oil, right? Why do you have to change that oil? Yeah, you should change your oil, right? It's like, why does the oil get dark over time? Well, there's a

3:57 couple things, right? Even a sealed system is never really sealed. It's always getting dust in it, you know, there's wearings here. But then also the literal gear teeth as they grind against

4:06 each other, even though they're lubricated, will actually destroy themselves slowly over time. So there's a little bit of metal shavings that build up in like the lubrication. So the gears are

4:15 wearing themselves, the lubrication is wearing itself. So over time you have to change up the lubrication So that's just like maintenance wear and tear. But then also there's like failure

4:23 conditions. Like if you were to, you know, drive it really hard, you could break a tooth, you could strip the tooth, et cetera. So it's usually the friction contact and ours is contactless,

4:34 right? It's just magnets. Yeah. Are there like, I guess I'm trying to visualize this. So like there are,

4:41 they're no longer interlocking teeth, but you're really just like, you can interlocking. It's gonna be pretending to be smart here. Interlocking magnetic fields. Oh, that was perfect, that was

4:49 it, yeah, exactly. I would say that, yeah, so if you wanna imagine it, a lot of times I like to kind of compare it to Russian nested dolls, if you've ever seen those, you know what I'm talking

4:59 about? Where you have the little one, and then there's the bigger one. So really what it is is it's multiple concentric bodies is the way ours work. And so there's a circle with little magnet

5:10 pieces on it, and then there's another circle with little magnet pieces on it. And they just rotate inside of each other And the way that we get it to be a gear is we play tricks on the magnets. So

5:21 normally a North wants to connect to a North, a South wants to connect to a South. So if you try and do this, it would just be a coupling, right? Be one to one, they would both spin at the same

5:30 speed. But we play tricks and that's our technology is, hey, what if we could make them think that there's something else? Like, what if we made it look like there was a different number of pull

5:39 pairs either by putting steel in between the different magnets and kind of playing with the magnetism. And that's the way that we achieve kind of the gearing effect. But if you look at it, you cut

5:50 it open, you just look at magnets, air magnets, and they're just concentric. First thought I was going was, oh, it's like a planetary gearbox. But then as you described it, I was like, no,

5:59 this is nothing like a planetary gear system. And that's the magic, I guess, it's the technology that, and tells how you developed, invented, were part of inventing, like, what's the history

6:09 of it? Yeah, I mean, did you, when you were a young boy, is that was your dream? You're just planning to

6:15 work on these magnetic gears Definitely, I definitely, at a young age, loved electricity, and I didn't know much about magnetism, they just didn't have as much opportunity in school, but I

6:23 remember my sister, when she moved into college, my sister's nine years older, she moved in, and we were, she was fun. We used to, like, dumpster dive together. Did y'all already do that,

6:33 till I get furniture? And so, like, that doesn't move people in, you know? I had friends in college who do that. Yeah, exactly, so I don't know. We thought it was kind of a bonnet. So, this

6:39 one time, we were dumpster diving together by sister, and I was in eighth grade, and someone was throwing out, like, big surround sound system and it was really nice. It had this big, nice new

6:48 Sony console and apparently it didn't work. I was asking them why they were throwing it out. So I picked it up and I just learned to like solder on my own and I was like, I'm gonna try and make

6:55 this console and this surround sound work. You can't really do that as much anymore. Like all these modern systems are so digital. You can't really put things together like that anymore. But it

7:04 was an analog system and so I was like, okay, let me play with this and see if it works. And so I fixed it. I built my own surround sound system at home for free. And then I started accidentally

7:12 learning about electricity I started to say, what if I added more speakers? What if I get like 15 speakers with like five subwoofers? You know, this is like an eighth grade boy just like, yeah,

7:22 I don't get louder. And I was so confused why when I added speakers, was it getting quieter? All the speakers were playing quieter and I didn't realize I was putting stuff in parallel, right? So

7:32 each system was getting less current and therefore making less noise. So by eighth grade, I knew I was interested in, you know, electrical engineering. And so that's what I ended up studying at

7:41 Texas AM. went to Texas AM, studied electrical engineering undergraduate. I didn't think I would get a PhD. I thought I would go and work, but my senior year, I took a class that I thought was

7:50 really cool. It was actually in robotics. You really programmed a motor and a drive down to the bits and the bytes. You knew what everyone in zero was doing and why that caused the motor to turn in

8:03 a certain way. And I thought that was really cool. So I talked to the professor and I said, how do I do this for a job? And he said, oh, no one will ever hire you to do this if you don't have a

8:11 PhD And I was like, I do not want a PhD.

8:15 He said, I'll pay for it. And I said, I'll think about it. And so I thought about it. And I was like, OK, so I did it. So I got my PhD at Texas AM. They were already working on magnetic years.

8:24 Magnetic years are not a new idea. There's patents that go back over 120 years to people first thinking, what if we just used magnets instead of teeth? And at that time, the magnet technology

8:35 wasn't good. And also, the topology wasn't good. If you just took teeth and then you made the magnets, you didn't really get the same oomph. of it. And so, so Tech Satan was already working on

8:44 this technology. And the one that PluxWorks is now commercializing was developed by me while during my PhD program. So, so I thought of a new way to do it. And we patented that and we built it for

8:58 that NASA project. And that's where the core technology came from. And I didn't even think I would start a company at that time. It was actually just after that project, someone, one of our

9:06 industry sponsors, saw what we had built, and he called me and said, Do you do consulting? And I said, I do now. And it was technically the moment that FlexBricks formed was for that very first

9:16 customer call. Yeah. So what enables the technology now is that we understand, like, the physics better, or was there a new material, or was the modeling achievable? That's it. It's the

9:28 materials and then our ability to model better. Like, computers have gotten better. AIML has gotten better. You're doing this in MATLAB. Or like, oh, it's the - We do Matlab and we use ANSIS.

9:40 They're so expensive. ANSIS is so expensive to say. Yeah, exactly. So magnets have gotten better. Like a magnet this big compared to a magnet 100 years ago, the amount of that we get. And

9:50 that's also what allowed electric vehicles to take off. Like magnets about 30 years ago got to where they are today. And that's what enabled all these electric vehicles companies to start making

10:02 permanent magnet motors and really be super high performance And so that was part of it. And then the other part of it was, yeah, solving magnetic equations is really hard. So you always have to

10:13 use these computer solvers that solve these super nonlinear equations. It's like really high power simulations at a Texas AM. We just used to burn all the RAM of the Texas AM super computer. And

10:24 they actually sent us once a letter asking us to stop hogging so much of the bandwidth so that other people could use the computer And so it was, it just took a lot of modeling to like optimize the

10:36 the topology and the size of the magnets. And so because computers have gotten so much better, we were able to invent new ways of doing it altogether, not just making minor adjustments on how big

10:46 the magnets should be, things like that. But think crazy and altogether, what if it spun a completely different way and then run those simulations? Is anyone else doing this? Has anyone else

10:57 figured it out? Is there any other product that's in the market that's using magnets in the same way? Yeah, there's a company in the UK, Magnematics, and there's a company in Germany called

11:06 Georgie Cobold that sell magnetic gear products. They do the magnetic gear in the way that Texas AM was first working on it when I joined the lab. That one is a lot similar to a planetary gear.

11:19 Actually, if you, they even kind of pitch it that way. A lot of times they say, It's just like your planetary, right? But the challenge is if you try and just take a solution that was optimized

11:30 for a mechanical system and say, What if we just use magnets instead? it's not gonna be as good, right? This was designed and optimized to be mechanical. So our technology instead has this,

11:40 actually this eccentric motion with it. And it's not really analogous to any particular mechanical gear. And that's part of the, you know, heart of the core IP, but at the same time, that's also

11:51 like, I feel like it intrinsically makes sense. It's like instead of taking something that was good for mechanical and just trying to make it magnetic, it's like, well, let's start from the

11:59 ground up. It's just like rethinking an EV It's like, why is there a center console in the middle of your car? Well, that's 'cause the transmission you used to be. What if you don't have a

12:08 transmission anymore? Do you need that? Anyway, right? You just rethink the vehicle, right? Yeah, you gotta redesign it. Yeah. So one of the things I was curious about is,

12:19 I think in some ways my concern with a magnetic gear system would be what happens with slippage, right? Well, this is like the classic, like why I don't like driving an automatic car is like the

12:29 slushbox feel when the attraction system was converter never like locks in, right? Is that a challenge or how do you manage that with this? Yeah, there's applications where hands down the slippage

12:42 behavior of the magnetic gear makes it not appropriate anymore, right? So there's, so it certainly points us in a set of markets where, well, who is interested in that behavior, right? Oh, who

12:52 are the customers who want like the low torque, I guess? Yeah, exactly, right? There's customer niches that, like for example, robots that work near humans, collaborative robots, right? Is a

13:05 big topic these days, and humanoids too. Huge topic these days, and we have some piloters in both COBOTS and in humanoids, right? In these applications, that was what specifically got them

13:15 excited. They said, Holy cow, your gear has an intrinsicclutching property. Oh, 'cause they use belts now, 'cause the belts slip. That's right, that's right, yeah. And so we have a more

13:25 controlled slip behavior that we can know exactly when it's gonna do it

13:31 and we can see that this behavior is taking place, right? So that's where us as a company, part of our journey, 'cause we were formed in 2021, and why right now are we doing our first seed round

13:41 and really taking in venture capital? It's because we finally found our niche, right? We found the advanced manufacturing and robotics application, 'cause when you met me three years ago, that's

13:51 not what I said. It was drones. It was drones, right? It was for propulsion. And it was just, you know, is the, you know, number one, engineering 101, right? Talk to your customers, right?

14:01 Really understand exactly what they want out of it and understand, you know, the pros and the cons. And it took us a little bit to find that. And we, so we've really, you know, found that niche

14:10 of people that are excited about that slip behavior as well as some of the other properties of the gear, yeah. I think that's a really good point. 'Cause it's like, there's a moment that you go

14:17 from like as a PhD student where you're like this technology nerd really diving into the technical details to actually wearing the CEO hat and being an entrepreneur and understanding, I'm not

14:29 building just a new invention. I'm actually innovating. I'm changing something that's going to bring value to society. So talk to us about how you discovered that, that need, that niche, and

14:41 what did you actually learn? Yeah, yeah, thanks. And it's certainly been hard because I started as a PhD, and definitely we had traction because we were getting calls, but it was hard for me to

14:54 hone that in and understand exactly. And so yeah, I've had a lot of great mentors and advisors helping me on that, but it was in particular last summer, summer of 2024.

15:05 Gosh, how was I even in this room? But I was in a room with a handful of roboticists, and they were, one of them actually read one of my papers, which weirded me out. Like, you know, normally

15:14 nobody ever actually reads my academic papers at all, right? So my PhD advisor, baby, you know? And this guy that read my paper, he asked a question about the stiffness of the gear. And he said,

15:26 is it springy?

15:28 fortunately, and he goes, That's amazing. I was like, What? Because a lot of times people, the people's instinct is to compare it to a mechanical gear. Or I want it to look and think like a

15:42 mechanical gear. That's how people have thought for all of existence, right? Gear is as old as the Babylonians, right? It's a pretty mature technology that people understand. So people always

15:50 wanna compare it to what they know. And so I always say, Oh yeah, it's less stiffthan a mechanical gear. And so yeah, he goes, That's amazing It's like, Why? And he goes, I mean, in robotics

15:59 right now, everybody's been trying to add springs and clutches in series. It's this huge topic, this whole field called series elastic actuation, where people try and take a motor, put a

16:10 mechanical gear, and then put a spring on the end of it. The reason you do that is that the most accurate way to be able to model torque, right? It's high school physics. If you know the spring

16:19 constant, and you know the displacement, you know the force. So if you have a spring and you know the displacement torporially, then you know the torque, right?

16:28 And right now they use like a3, 000 spring

16:32 and a6, 000 strain gauge that's really temperature sensitive in order to get that. And I was like, oh, well, yeah, my gear is springy. And it's so springy that we can just use this50 encoder to

16:43 get the position information and we can calculate torque for you. And we can dump your9, 000 spring and load cell problem. I feel like the answer is my solution is7, 000 or save it 20. Yeah,

16:55 exactly, exactly, right And so it was one of those moments where, just talking to your question where I was like, wait, there's a market that wants, what I thought was one of the worst qualities

17:04 of the gear, was that it was - Well, you thought it was the weakness, yeah. Exactly, and so it's really, and that's part of the reason we've stopped actually marketing ourselves as a gear

17:12 company. It's because people - Does it mean they need the alarm? No, think motion exclusion, exactly, right. What's your motion solution? I want motion that has good position commands and good

17:22 force torque feedback. Okay, we've got that for you. Right, don't worry about whether it's magnetic or mechanical gear, that doesn't even matter to you, right? What we care about is do I have

17:31 precision? Do I have controllability? Do I have availability,

17:35 right? Those are the value propositions, right? Compared to just focusing so much on the gear. So it's part of the reason why we've with this round really focused on providing the full solution,

17:45 yeah. I'm trying to remember if it was your pitch or another pitch that I watched, I think it was a linear actuator company and they had a technology that we're trying to get into backhose, I think,

17:55 and they had an issue where their system went back-drive. Like it wasn't freeze in place. So it's just funny how, anyways, it's totally a tangent. Yeah, but like different actuation technologies

18:05 do have these other principles where, yeah, you think it's a weakness, but sometimes people spend so much time trying to get around the strengths of other technologies, so that's very interesting.

18:17 And I guess how did you know, like you told us of how you actually started FlexWorks to collect a consulting check. How did you take that? from saying, I'm gonna be a consultant to, oh wait,

18:28 there's a product here, or we should start a solutions company that is more than consulting. Yeah, I realized after my first job consulting, I thought about what the future looked like, and I saw

18:42 this linear chart of, if I wanna grow my consulting business, I just need to work more hours. Yep. And I was like, that seems dumb Yeah, it's unfortunate, yeah. And then, right now, I'm

18:58 pretty on top of things. I'm a 28 year old guy, I'm learning quick, I don't have kids yet. But the reality is, is I think someone younger and smarter is gonna pass me up at some point, right?

19:09 Someone that's gonna work harder and more hours. And so I was like, this is not what I think I wanna do. So pretty much after that first job, I started thinking, how do I turn this into a

19:20 products company, such that we've established ourselves? And, you know, I didn't have any. mentors to look up to like my family or anything like that. But I was at Texas AM where there was, of

19:29 course, tons of people that want to pour into young Aggies and mentor them. And so that's where I started going out to those competitions and trying to raise cash to start to build up the company

19:37 and met a lot of mentors along the way. And we've just been kind of coached on that the whole time. And now we've got also a great team. Everybody on our team comes from industry. It's not anybody

19:49 that I knew from an academic background It's all people that worked in various industries and manufacturing. And so now we approach it from that direction. And so that was our one and only

19:60 consulting gig. Yeah. Yeah. But it seems like you had maybe not entrepreneurial mind who thought about the business, right? Like how do you actually scale this? How do you scale consulting

20:08 versus fight a product? How do I scale that? Because in PhD, I imagine, you weren't taught so much about fundraising or the economics or the finance And so these coaches and the mentors that come

20:21 along the way, they play a big role in helping - you become an entrepreneur now from being like a product developer. That's right, yeah. And if you talk to my wife, she says, I'm always

20:31 optimizing. And so it's definitely there's, I think there's certainly a quality within myself that it's like, you know, there's this self-driven, I look at the chart and I'm like, I don't wanna

20:42 work like this, right? Like that's somewhat within me, but then I don't know necessarily how to go out and scale a company. 'Cause I'm a 28-year-old guy. I've never done it before, right? And

20:50 so then it's like, okay, well, at least I

20:53 know what my gaps are. It's like, I know what I want. I want to become this manufacturing company. That's fully within me. And then, okay, but I know that I don't know how to do sales and

21:02 marketing. I know that I don't know how to build a manufacturing operations. And I don't know how to write a go-to-market strategy. Let me go find people that do, and then, and then you all know

21:12 how it is, right? When you're, in a way, as you go out and start fundraising, it's like this self-improving process where you pitch to investors and you start to figure out what's not making

21:21 sense. because you're getting constant feedback, right? And you're kind of taking from that. And so it's then this kind of positive feedback loop, yeah. Unless sometimes you get bad advice,

21:30 right? And so you got to also sift through that, yeah. Have you noticed if there's a different way that you have to pitch to like customers versus like pitch to investors? Yes. It sounds like we

21:42 want to leave it there. Yeah. Yeah, and even buy customer segment. Yeah. Because we do some government work and we do some commercial work I mean, those are

21:53 something higher than 100 different. Like two, the government cares about the technology, right? Whereas the commercial customer cares about the value, right? It's like, the government customer

22:07 cares about just completing the mission, according to SPAC and the commercial customer cares about, well, how is this benefiting? How am I making more money from this? What is this creating for

22:16 me? And so it's completely different. And then there's this third one over here, the investor, right? It's like all different, certainly. But having been in like the aerospace side of things,

22:25 I think that there's still a need for value in kind of government stuff. It's just, they're integrating in an entire system, so they get to look at systemic benefit. Yeah, yeah, I 100 agree.

22:37 And that's 100 times more than whatever the cost you are. Where I'm coming from is more so, I'm usually not the one

22:44 at the top of the value there. Like usually some mission has been created because someone already recognized the value and doing XYZ in low earth orbit or something. Yeah, and that's a billion

22:54 dollar program. That's a billion dollar program and that's the value that Lockheed Martin is gonna do. And

23:00 then Lockheed Martin now needs vendors to supply the equipment for that. And Lockheed Martin has a spec, right? It's like, we're gonna hit that spec. Kind of funny you said back drivability. One

23:10 of the key reasons Lockheed Martin is excited about us is because we are back drivable. Okay. Yeah, it comes up all the time, right? They're like, Holy cow, there's a back drivable gear for

23:17 space So yeah, yeah, interesting. Oh yeah, 'cause they use worm gears and stuff for the other stuff, interesting. Okay. Yeah. Now, I mean, back to the story. We had Colin who's the CEO of

23:28 Collide talk about how story, telling the story is so important, right? Like getting really good at telling the story. Absolutely, yeah. But then I think there's the art of like what you said,

23:37 really good founders are also then able to figure out how to tweak the story based on who you're talking to, right? 'Cause it's not the same story. And like what you said, as you're talking to

23:47 customer, you realize, oh, this is actually what they really want And what I thought was a big weakness is actually something that I need to be selling to them. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I

23:55 guess. Do you ever feel like you're talking to a customer sometimes and then you're hearing from the mid-pitching, you're

24:02 like, I need to turn around. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. All the time, even like sometimes certain key words to people, right? We were talking about actuator

24:11 earlier. If a customer starts saying servo a whole bunch, let's just call it a servo. Yeah. It's like, let's just not call it words Yeah. servo, you know, it's a motor plus gear that's

24:23 controlled, you know, it's like, we're, we're just going to call it what you call it. You know, like, so one of the things, like, I'm going to be snobby founder for a minute. Like one of the

24:30 things that I think is, um, I don't know, it's like a unique founder trait is like that ability to like block and tackle mid mid conversation, mid mid, you know, quarter. Um, I find sometimes

24:41 when you, um, kind of work with employees, maybe aren't as passionate or maybe aren't as flexible. They really want to get locked into like one way of doing things. And, and I don't know what it

24:52 takes to open people up to like kind of being more flexible. I don't know. I don't know if you run into that challenge. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I certainly, that's one of the reasons I love being

25:03 around other like founders and I love what y'all are doing with like, um, the, the energy tech technics is like, it's like, it's so good to be around other founders and, and learn these skills

25:13 from each other. And then we do all have these like intrinsic qualities. Like You're right. There's certain qualities that are, you know, founder and then yeah, like with team members you know,

25:20 it depends on the, it depends on the person. I feel like, you know, sometimes, like a sales and marketing person, I feel like it's also pretty good at, you know, chameleoning, you know, into

25:28 a room or something like that. But yeah, certainly, sometimes the engineering team, you know, like - We're gonna call it an actuator. Yeah, and it's like, that's just like what it is, right?

25:36 And it's like this balance, it's this, it's this artful tango of like, you know, this is a big challenge for us as a company. I'll give you an example, like, like us as a company, we wanna

25:45 make standard frame sizes. We wanna make like five products and that's it Take it or leave it, right? But so many companies want something that's just right for their system, you know. And so

25:55 it's this like artful tango of like listening to them and taking their feedback and then being like, what if you just use something a little bit bigger than what you needed, you know? It's like you

26:03 kinda have to guide them in that, you know? And sometimes it's just that artful tango where like, like maybe a team member isn't, you know, as good at that art and that's something that like is,

26:15 is uniquely founder skilled. I don't, I don't know how to do it. if you know how to instill that in 100 of our team. Like I would love that. Yeah. Love that knowledge, yeah. Are you ready to

26:27 lead the decarbonization charge? Energy Technexes is your platform for growth, offering unique resources and expertise for energy in carbon tech founders. Join us at energytechnexescom and

26:39 start building your Thunderlisset. One of the things that you used to believe when I was a lot younger is that you could like invest the time to manage or teach everyone on your team to like develop

26:49 these skills. And the older I get, I'm just like, man, this is why like hiring is so important to just find the right person who already kind of meets the things you need. It's 'cause you're just

26:58 running so much. You don't have time to - Yeah, talk to us about that. You're only 28, we're a lot older. So, you know - I'm just kidding, okay. No, I was like 10 years old now. Yeah, so

27:11 like how do you, you know, and there's so many things in terms of leadership and managing people and like getting people to motivate in building a team around you. And, you know, many people that

27:20 I'm sure you're working with your advisors, your mentors are older than you, more experienced than you. So how do you manage that? One of the artists on the team, yeah. Yeah, do you have a

27:27 coach? Like how do you deal with all of that? Yeah, yeah, so a few things. One, I do have like an advisory board like that I hand selected and it's changed over time. Like people that I brought

27:40 on based on like the needs of the company this time. So right now I have like this monthly rhythm, 'cause right now I'm the sole board of the company. Once we close this seat around, I will have a

27:48 board, but I'm really excited about. But I do have this advisory board, and we have this monthly rhythm, where I send out emails of what's going on, and then I meet with all them one-on-one at

27:56 some point, and then we do these quarterly all-group meetings. And so I have all these touch points where they can really like deeply understand the company and where we're at and provide advice.

28:06 So that's been amazing. And some of the best things that I feel like we've done is we spent a lot of time thinking about our mission, vision, and core values.

28:19 And we went through this whole exercise in this day-long thing where we really made sure that they're actual tools for decision-making. And that's really all we interview based on is like whether or

28:31 not they like deeply align with these mission vision core values. And so I'll give you an example about how our core values play out. So we have ranked core values and we only have three and it's

28:41 take work seriously, not yourself It's quantify decisions and measure impact and it's ask questions to facilitate mission. Those are our three ranked core values. And the reason they're ranked is

28:53 because you, you have to go through them in order. So if something comes up and someone's not maybe like, I don't know, you're kind of like frazzled by the way. Someone's doing something you have

29:02 to like kind of ask yourself right now. I'm I taking work seriously, not myself, you know, and then if you feel like they're not kind of asking that, right? You'd be like, Hey, man, you know,

29:11 coral, you one check, right? You know, seriously, we've done that in meetings live, we have to start a memory meeting, right? Yeah. And then it's like, OK, if that's true, OK, then like

29:18 what's going on? Okay, quantified decisions measure impact. Like, what do we need to do? Is this, you know, path A, path B, one of them's expensive, the other one's expensive, you know what

29:26 I'm saying? We have to quantify, okay, why we're doing this and write this down, right? You know what I'm saying? You go through these things. And I learned all this from this particular

29:33 example from Disney Parks and Resorts actually. Disney Parks and Resorts had ranked core values too. And, you know, what an amazingly well run, like business that all 50, 000 employees like act

29:43 in the same way. And their ranked core values were safety, inclusion, efficiency, and show. And so there's like a really famous example where for the haunted house ride, there was a mobility

29:54 impaired guest that wasn't able to get on the ride. This was, you know, some 15 years ago. And so they had to ask themselves, would it be safe to stop the ride to allow this guest to get onto it?

30:02 Yes, it would be safe. The engineers checked it. It was okay. Would it be inclusive to let this person get on the ride? Yes, you absolutely have to do it. It would be non-inclusive to not let

30:11 this person get on the ride. Okay, is it efficient to stop the ride and let this person get on? No, it is not efficient. right? So you're actually violating the third core value at that point.

30:20 However, they're ranked. So it doesn't matter. Inclusion was more important than efficiency. And so you can't prioritize efficiency over inclusion. So they have to stop the ride to let this

30:31 person to get on. So it provides this like useful tool for like making like decisions that it's also like a clear hiring and firing point. It's like if someone gets fired, it's because you didn't

30:40 do the core values in the proper ranges. I love this. And that's setting the culture. Yeah, exactly. That's the culture, right? Number one is take work. Seriously, not yourself. And that

30:48 means there's so much meaning behind that we poured over that, right? Like it's like it sets our fun positive culture. But at the same time, it's saying, Hey, leave the ego at the door, right?

30:58 We're just doing a design review. And I'm not attacking you. When I'm saying, why did you do this in that that way? We're just talking about the work. You know what I'm saying? We're not talking

31:05 about ourselves here. And so, yeah, it's like, it's a very engineering, like engineer focus, like, I totally get where you're coming from, where you have to have that hard discussion of like

31:14 Steve Jobs said, you I'm not it's not about

31:23 me being right, it's about getting it right. That's exactly right. It's not my conversation on Monday. I know we did. We're talking about taxonomies. Yeah, we were, yeah, we were. So I was

31:25 like, we had, he wanted to do it one way. I wanted to do it some very different, but we kept on talking about it, right? 'Cause it wasn't about ego or who's right or who's wrong, but it's like,

31:33 let's just get it right. I think I literally had to say it's not because I just, it's not just because Jason wants it. It's because we gotta get it right. So anyways, it's exactly it. It's

31:43 hardcore value number one, right? Yeah, but how did you go through that process of like, did you sit down with your team? Did you go on a meditation? You alone be like, oh, these are gonna be

31:52 my core values. Like, how did you decide that? Yeah, there was a lot of feedback that went into that as well. And what was recommended is, yeah, you get the full team together and you really go

32:02 through these exercises. We do one through one that was awesome called Is Does Feels where it's like, what is FlexWorks? And everybody writes on the board for like a long time. Like set aside a

32:10 whole half a day for this. And then what does FlexWorks do for people? Not like, so gears.

32:17 What are we really doing for people? Like, we are giving them new capabilities. We are giving them peace of mind. We are giving them, you know, it's like, and then how do we want people to feel

32:28 with our product and with us? You know, and so then you get people excited, you get people buying, and it really starts to set everything up. And then this is for my mentor feedback and myself.

32:40 They said, what then is important is now that you have everyone aligned. In terms of the literal writing of the words, it should still be up to the founders, right? So you bought everyone like 99

32:50 of the way, but then the literal crafting of the words, like it is still the founders as company, right? You're still putting the culture. So the founder, yeah, exactly. It needs to still set

32:57 the culture, right? And so then I took all that feedback and I wrote these three core values then, and then I launched them company-wide after and said, all right, based on our feedback, this is

33:05 our three core values. And people already were like in agreement with them because they're so close to what we had all written together. But maybe it's just, maybe there was like one word, that

33:14 people want to debate about. Yeah, it's important to me and it's like, no, at the end of the day, I am the founder, right? And so I need to set this culture. Yeah.

33:25 When you think about like looking back, what's been the most significant challenge you've faced and how

33:32 did you overcome it? Yeah, I would say like building a team is probably the most challenging, just 'cause you were talking about it too. Like I'm young, like there's a lot that goes into that

33:42 when all my employees are older than me, right? How many do you have? Did you make any like rookie mistakes when you were first building a team? Absolutely. Yeah, what was one of them that

33:50 you're comfortable talking about? Yeah, yeah, I mean, when I first started FlexWorks, I mean, how do I hire people? I don't know anything. And so I hired people that I knew, you know,

34:01 friends from church and, you know, friends from the lab and not a single one of them is with us, like any more, unfortunately. And it's not even like a bash on them or anything like that It's

34:10 more just like, that's all I could do. like get and, you know, you really need to hire exactly people that are aligned with your mission, vision and core values and have the exact talent that you

34:19 need. And, you know, reaching within arms, reaching college station, like a smaller town and just guiding people from my lab and church, like it's a small pool. And so, so, so unfortunately,

34:27 yeah, like building that this first team, it just like didn't work out, like difference of vision, like difference of like work ethic and stuff like that. And so, but what happened was a lot of

34:35 them, you know, new other people in their network that then as we kept growing, we started like hiring them and, and they were much more specialized and a lot of them weren't originally from

34:46 college stations. So a lot of them were commuting to come to work each day and stuff like that. And so then as kind of the original team left, all of those people that were originally in that

34:57 original team's network, right? Yeah. All stayed, you know, because they, they were more aligned with the now much more honed mission, mission core values So now we're kind of on our second

35:08 team in a way. And so, we're by no means. You know, perfect yet, right? We're still learning every day. But this team is just far better. So those were some of my original rookie mistakes,

35:19 certainly made other mistakes about maybe just comp, like the reality is maybe too much equity or too much pay, so like that. And so I'm thankful to have mentors and advisors too that now can help

35:30 speak into that more. So what have you changed in your hiring process from like three years ago to today that helps you hire better people? Because I mean, we're still hiring like based on like an

35:43 hour interview and maybe we have multiple of them. Like, does that really give you a sense of the person? I hate the dialogue. There was a particular, so the book Who? And then a particular

35:54 podcast from Dave Ramsey actually on his interviewing practices. You know, he has nine interviews and the last of his interviews. I'll just let you listen to the podcast 'cause it's so

36:04 controversial. He gets so much like hate on his style of his final interview. that. I'll just let y'all know that. I think it's an awesome idea. But anyway, so we do have quite a lot that goes

36:18 into our interviewing process and the book Who gives really good tips about like, so that way it also like saves your time like what's like the four questions that you can ask on a very first phone

36:27 call that helps you just lit this test. Okay, great. Now that you do that, what's like the next interview that would be like best to do? Okay, let's do like an hour long. Yeah, like who

36:36 interviews what they call it. And in that hour long interview, they really get into the details of like their last job. Like tell me about the team that you came into. Like was the team what you

36:48 wanted or was there qualities that you had to change? Like how was working with leadership? And they're really like getting into nitty gritty stories, not just like, Oh, I grew this program and I,

36:58 you know, increased efficiency by 57, whatever people say on their bullets or their resume. Talk about what you did. We're really getting into the weeds of like, how did you take your

37:06 organization? and maybe you had a non-ideal team and how did you grow them into becoming a better team? And then even with engineers, like how did you work with your manager and really getting into

37:17 the weeds on that? Anyway, so we don't do nine interviews like Dave Ramsey, but right now at FlexWorks, we do four interviews. And I think that it's going okay for us right now. Yeah, we are

37:26 getting ready to hire. So we're actually in the interviewing process right now for a handful of like project engineer type roles. And how many people are in your team today? We got eight full-time

37:35 and then we've got about four contractors. Okay, very good We talked to us about the fundraising journey. Let's get into that, you know, from like when you started, you won some competitions

37:44 along the way. And where are you today? Yeah, so, so when I first started FlexWorks, I knew that I didn't know what exact market we're going into. So I focused first on like non-dilutive stuff,

37:57 cash prizes, you know, grants and stuff like that. And so we won a handful of competitions and that cash was certainly awesome. And I met a lot of mentors and advisors through those. Um, on the

38:09 grant side, you know, we started writing these like a small business innovation research type grants is what they're called. And, and, um, and we were pretty good at writing them. We started

38:18 winning just like direct to phase two grants, like after over and over. We were, we were on our, we just were selected for our fourth phase two. Um, in

38:26 the, in just a little bit ago, I think, yeah, last week was the NASA phase two. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so I mean, each of those are seven digit, right? It's like a lot of non-dilutive funding

38:36 And it really helped it buy us the time to iron out a lot of things, as well as some of them are great, great paths to potential commercialization. So, so that's where we started. And then in

38:46 2023, it was after that conversation about the springiness of the year that I started to realize, oh my gosh, there might be a market, but we didn't quite have enough capital to win some of these

38:54 pilots to start selling to these first customers. So I raised what we called an insider round, like it's the way most people would think of it, I would call it like a friends and family round, but

39:05 I definitely didn't Yeah, it was definitely just like a handful of strategic angels and we raised close to stakeholders. Yeah, exactly. People on my advisory board, right? I don't get advised by

39:15 anybody that isn't invested, right? And there's a minimum buy-in to be able to speak, you know, at that level with me. And so, and so, you know, we raised about 927

39:25 K with that insider round on a safe. And that was your advice. I remember you telling me that I said I'm going to do a convertible note and you said, You're the safe. I was like, Thanks And I was

39:36 off on guard here in Texas at the time. I remember that. Yeah. And that was just your knee jerk reaction. So thank you for that. And then because I love a pre-money safe now, thank you. And so

39:45 that was that. And then we got our first five pilot testing customers out. So customers actually testing it in their products. And they loved it. And some of them are already coming back for more.

39:54 And so then beginning in November, when we started getting that customer feedback, this is November, whatever, six months ago, that's when I started going out for our first series seed round. So

40:03 now we're going out for a series seed round.

40:07 It's a5 million round, a group called Scout Ventures is leading it. They're writing two and a half million of it. And then we've got about a million left in the allocation right now today on this

40:16 podcast. And so, yeah, there's a little bit left in the allocation. And so we're still pitching to followers to try and get the rest of the checks in by before the 4th of July. Okay. Well,

40:29 we're happy to pitch it to our investors in our group. Yeah. Cool And

40:36 to anybody that can move fast, because we want to try and get this all in before things drag out into July. Oh, yeah. Because everyone's going to want some break. That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah.

40:45 Yeah. So what was your journey like in terms of like learning all the terms in terms of like, you know, you said you had some conversations with Jason on like safe versus a convertible note and all

40:54 that because it's all like new lingo. It's very new lingo to me. And I learned so much even like mid raising

41:03 I used to think that bigger valuation was better. And then I learned what valuation means for a seed round and what that means you have to do in series A and series B. There's a model, right? And

41:14 I was like, oh, I don't want anything higher than this because when I really genuinely think about what I can achieve as a company, and you've got scenarios and stuff like that, I was just like,

41:27 dude, this is the valuation I want, right? I actually don't want to go higher and some people wanted to go higher and I turned off certain investors that wanted to do 10 million on some bigger

41:39 valuation. I was like, I'll be honest, I don't think I can raise like a 30 million series A two years from now, like I don't think I can do that. And so we're really excited about the valuation

41:51 that we landed on. And then yeah, in terms of like learning all the lingo, certainly my attorneys have been helpful. They're amazing attorneys that hop on the phone with me and just explain stuff

42:00 to me, like in a kind way, like I'm five, like I don't mean they're being demeaning and they talk to me that way. You explain to me what all these words mean. You're like, you've got to just

42:10 play out, right? And what should we be fighting for? And so, and they've been amazing. And then certainly my mentors and advisors have been amazing. A lot of them are founders themselves that

42:19 started their own company, grew it, had venture capital too. And then being around other founders as well has been great to say, oh, whoa, these are some pitfalls and things like that. So it's

42:29 been a learning journey as I've been doing it. And where have you gone to fundraise? Have you mostly kept it within Texas? Have you gone to the coast? Yeah, where are the scout ventures from?

42:38 Scout ventures is in Austin. Okay, good. Yeah, and they're in the dual use world. And I would consider us a dual use hard tech company. Explain to us what that means for those who don't know.

42:47 Yeah, yeah, for those who don't know, yeah, the term dual use typically means it's a, maybe a technology that is useful for both a defense and space application as well as a commercial

43:03 application. Like the core technology could be to both. And so that's exactly true with our technology. Hey, it could be used for this space rotary actuator application, but like a space rotary

43:12 actuator, that's like a six digit, you know, price figure, but the same exact geometry and shape and all that, but just using maybe different materials, much more common materials with plastics

43:22 and steels and things like that, you can make this product in a non like export controlled way that can be sold commercially. And so that's kind of the idea of dual use. It usually has a national

43:32 security connotation So the like canonical example today is probably like a DJI drone is like, it's really just a small version of a bit, you know, the big stuff they're using in Ukraine and Russia

43:41 now. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so that's how people usually use the word dual use and then you know, hard tech, right? We're a hardware company through and through. And so I was asking people

43:52 my network, hey, do you know any dual use kind of hard tech investors? And so since a lot of my network is in Texas, I certainly got a lot of connections in Texas. But we pitched California, we

44:01 pitched East Coast, Boschton. We've pitched a few European venture groups as well. But being national security related, it does limit our scope to like allied nations. So like one venture group

44:15 that we're working with like is a multinational group that has like presence in Korea, in Japan, and the US, and in Europe. And that's still certainly within scope for us 'cause these are all like

44:24 allied nations. Okay, so you said a lot of your network starting off with it in Texas, but where did you get the interest from most? I mean, the Scott Winchers are in Austin. What about the

44:36 other investors? Yeah, the followers, some of them are like national groups, like plug and play wants to follow in this round. You've probably heard of them. And they have this new aerospace and

44:48 defense fund. And so we're excited to have them be a part of it. And we met them, yeah, usually through personal network, actually that one was an introduction from one of our teaming partners,

44:58 Lockheed Martin said, hey, let me introduce you getting ready to partner with Texas AM, I know you're an Aggie, and so, and they used to announce their big plug-and-play house, their big, Texas

45:08 AM partnership. And so a lot of times, yeah, it came from personal network, or our customers, and then actually a lot of the Boston Connects came from that green town relationship, like we used

45:19 to go up to green town for like, or just a Boston for mass challenge and for green town, and so I had a lot of connections through those as well. Good, good, I'm glad you leverage that. That's

45:24 what you gotta do Let's see, and so when you were approaching this, do you feel like there was a lot of misunderstanding of like working around a hard tech company in Texas? Like what would you

45:25 know, okay. Tell us about like, okay, give us the

45:46 most ridiculous - How are you getting all the soft spots? It's like, oh, it's like you've done this before,

45:53 no. Yeah, right? The some people, it was just such a hard no, like, And, um. I mean, I'll tell you a million different thing. I pitched, I think my air table has 118 investor groups that we

46:04 pitched to, right? And some of them were like, why don't you become the full robot?

46:10 Because that would cost a billion dollars, yeah. Yeah, I was like, yeah, they were like bigger top line value, you'd be the whole robot. I was like, yeah, compete against Aptronic that just

46:16 raised a 350 million series A. Yeah. Sounds like a great idea, you know? I was like, why, you know? But a lot of people want us to kind of fit something. And so that was a part of my journey

46:25 that was like, no, be confident in what we are to some extent, like be willing to pivot if there's this constant blocking signal, right? And so the minor pivot that we made was, hey, stop

46:36 pitching that we're a gear company and start pitching that we're an actuator company. Because all we have to do is buy two more components. Buy it off the shelf motor and off the shelf encoder and

46:44 slap it around our gear. Boom, you move one stage up on the supply chain and it changes our business model just a little bit. Instead of selling to manufacturers, you sell to OEMs, right? Like

46:55 the integrator, yeah, you're closer to the customer, It's something that a customer understands a little bit more, a lot less technical education has to take place. And then also when you sell

47:03 the full motion solution, there's a whole software play for us as well. So you sell the hardware, but then also, hey, are you interested in our advanced controls that can improve your performance

47:13 or like that. You can do monitoring and things like that. It plugs in with whatever controls and monitoring system you're already using. So it expanded this whole software business revenue stream

47:22 for us. And so we said to be confident about what we are. And then yeah, a handful of investors, just the second they heard that we're not a SaaS company, was like, sorry, not interest. And

47:30 it's like, well, that's okay too, right? You do you. And so, you know, we connected best with companies that just understood what we are, which is a hard tech, dual use company. And Scout is

47:41 one of them that just gets it, right? Yeah, that's one of the things, so we're running a program called Lift Off right now, where we kind of train entrepreneurs to raise their first million bucks.

47:49 And I think it's, one of the things you learn like by being in the Crucible fundraising is that you do have to be authentic because the investors have a very clear view of what they're looking for.

48:01 And them telling you to change is just the signal that you're not it, because they're looking for a certain box. And unfortunately, for better or worse, you're the operator. You know what's best

48:10 for your business and the path you have to take. And the investor doesn't have to live with that journey. Yeah, exactly. It's why you got a pitch to 118 people like

48:19 we did in their box, right? So it's okay to say, look, we're not a fit. It's time to go find the right one All right, so that's an important insight that you figured out. Yeah, yeah. And just

48:32 like you said, you know best, but at the same time, there's this like, I don't know this founder thing to like, but what if you change one word? What if you change one thing about what you're

48:43 saying or in our case, instead of selling just the gear, what if we just add one more component to it? And suddenly we do fit this person's, what they're looking for more now, but it also made

48:54 perfect sense for our business like it's literally one more part on the bill of materials. Okay, boom, you know, I like this, right? This is an exciting partnership now that actually they're

49:03 adding value more than just money. Like this makes a lot of sense and they have also a lot of connections that they can connect us to future customers too, right? Yeah, yeah. That are looking for

49:11 that very thing. And so it's like this balance of like knowing what's right, but also listening, right? Listening just a little bit, yeah. It's interesting to be building the whole robot versus

49:20 figuring out what your product is. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly right, yeah. So what's the one thing you want to be, if you could only be remembered for one thing, in building flex work, what

49:31 do you think that would be? Our vision is empowering progress, transforming motion, and we mean a lot by that.

49:53 Like so much by it, not just the literal hardware, empowering future robots and transforming motion, that's just literally what a gear does, it just changes speed in torque. So, there's

49:54 certainly our technology being in systems. It's like commercializing robots. Yeah, there's certainly that aspect of it, but at the same time what we mean by empowering progress is like, we mean

50:04 like our people, that people that worked at FlexWorks like feel like it better their lives. And I feel like it's already better in my lives, like not just how to run a company, but also like how

50:14 to be a better husband and like how to be a better, we call, I go to church in Houston here and we call this certain set of leaders shepherds, like how to be a better shepherd. Like I learned a

50:24 lot about like asking good questions and like how to really understand what people are seeking through this experience. And I hope that like other people at FlexWorks like also just like develop.

50:35 And that's what we mean by like empowering progress. It's like progress also for like the world and for Houston, right? And so being, what do I want to be remembered by? I want to be remembered

50:43 by like when people had an interaction with me with Brighton and or in how to interaction with FlexWorks that was like, wow, that was like a, it was a life-changing experience. Like that was for

50:53 the positive benefit of like my life. what they did and what they said and what they delivered. That was like a positive experience that bettered me. That's what I want to be remembered by. That's

51:03 very powerful. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you want to be, you know, remembered as a good leader, but also having a positive influence when people around you. I just want, I just want people to

51:11 know I'm crumpy. Yeah. It's like really what I want. Like just don't make Jason too crumpy. Yeah, stay away from him at eight in the morning on a Monday. But yeah, no, if people want to get in

51:22 touch with you, how do they get connected, you know, you're closing around. So very timely, you know, people want in last minute, they can still do that. Yeah, you can still connect with me.

51:33 Our website does have a contact us form and that's a shared inbox between me and my leadership team. And so, you know, if you fill out that form, it's infoflexworksco, CO, not C-O-M. But also

51:45 you

51:47 can fill out that form. And then, you know, that's gonna be one of the best ways to get in touch with, in touch with us, 'cause if you. if you text me directly, I have like 40 hundred messages

51:57 in it. You know,

51:59 like from this morning. Yeah, oh my gosh. It's like, okay, yeah. So not interested, yeah. So that's probably one of the best ways to get in touch with us and get in touch with us soon. You

52:07 know, we are, you know, if you're listening and you're in the Houston ecosystem, like we're pitching Houston Angels on June 18th. Okay. So if you're in it, you know, tuning virtually and all

52:17 that. And so lots of other opportunities. And then we're up in Conroe. So if you contact us and you want to come up and visit, just send us a note and just drive up I-45 and you'll come see our

52:27 facility. Nice. We will have to do a field trip at some point. Yes, we will. We'll be awesome, yeah. I have a big Texas flag and a big US. flag in the manufacturing field. That was the only

52:34 thing I really fought for. Everything else was fine. Three-phase power, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The flag makes it good. No, thanks for joining. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I

52:44 had a good time and man, you hit the question.