What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast coming to you here today with another king on the stage, but this king Chaz a guest of his own. Mister Tom Stevens on the King stage, my brother, how we do it? Things are well. Thank you so much, Chaz. Thank you for having us. You know, you say us, for those that maybe aren't sitting here watching the video, she just introduced herself. It sounds like, but who do we have with us in addition to you? Well, this is Jenny.
Jenny is a fully interactive robotic emotional support animal, and she'll be the first to be both an FDA medical device and a remote safety and health monitoring platform. So lots of lots of things to unpack there, but, basically, she's a dog for people who can't have dogs. Yeah. This is incredible just for the listener's sake. You and I have been chatting for the last little bit here before we hit the record button, and she could hear me at the beginning.
And then we moved your audio to where you she couldn't hear me any longer, and she was looking at the screen. Like, where did he go? And it was just one of the funniest slash weirdest things that I've experienced today. Is that this robot dog wondered where I went, which is really, really cool. And look. She's doing it right now. Just looking at him like, wait. What is that? You know? Where are they? Exactly. Well, like you said, Tom, we have a ton to unpack here.
You are obviously a brilliant mind living somewhere in the future. And you've brought the future back to us. And so we gotta dive into this. Before we dive into the mechanics, literally, the mechanics of Jenny and how you do this, but Let's talk about you for a second. Why do you do this? Why why are you moved every single day to not necessarily just do this business, but to impact people's health? Like, what what's inside for you? Thank you for asking.
So my background Chaz I've been in the high-tech industry for 35 years. Lied to Talbot cofounders and I built a prior startup into 1 of the world's largest litigation automation companies Well, we were successfully acquired in 2011, which gave me the freedom to think about other things.
Unfortunately, that same year, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia, and that begins a series of very difficult choices that I had to make on, for her, had to move in a caregiver, had to take away her car keys, but by far the worst of those decisions was the day I recognized that she could no longer safely care for her dog.
I successfully rehold the dog with good family friends My mother was devastated, and and quite frankly, I went from being the golden boy to, to being the villain in her life. Every day was Where's my dog? Why can't I have my dog? When am I getting my dog back? I looked around for substitutes for live animal companions. But she hated everything that I brought home.
And so just through an effort to salvage my relationship with my mother, I started looking around I I I began a a a a multiyear research and education journey. That culminated in a master's degree from Stanford University.
And along the way, I learned that my mom's story is shared by tens of 1,000,000 of other seniors around the world with dementia and about a billion people in total that suffer from some serious mental or physical health adversity, which makes it impossible for them to safely or practically care for a live animal. And so we launched Tom Budd to serve these people. Yeah. That's incredible. I wanna dig into you a little bit in that.
We'll dig into the story of you serving your mom, really, but all these other millions of people. But Most people would have come across this scenario and said, you know what, mom? I'm sorry. This is the this is the situation now. You can't have your dog, and this is why. And And maybe they would have gone online and tried to find some other options, but there were none. And then they just, you know, they just deal with circumstances and they go on.
But what you said was that that turned into a multiple year research project and a master's degree, then eventually turning into product research and development unto launching a company, that's not normal. Why why did that turn into that for you? What what's different about you? Well, one of the so one of the things that's not discussed very much, publicly is how serious mental health adversities affect the family members around the person with with that mental health adversity.
Dementia Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia. It is progressive in nature, which means it starts in a very mild state might it's called myocognitive impairment. Yeah. And that's addresses over time. And if you're If you are unfamiliar with that, as I was, these changes kinda sneak up on you. Mommy's just mom struggling. Oh, she made a weird decision, or she's getting a little forgetful, and then, oh, she's not paying her bills. Her car has more damage on it than the last time.
So the these things kinda sneak up on you. So from a family member, my perspective, and, and that which has been shared with me by by countless family members that I've spoken to since is there is a there's a desire to, 1st of all, understand what's happening with the loved one. But also a desire to do something. And there's tremendous guilt associated with becoming the parent of your parent. And most people, myself included a fortunate to have parents that had successful lives.
They lived independently. They took care of themselves. And so we as children could live very selfishly just kind of focusing on ourselves, and then Chaz our parents's parents' issues mounted when we became more and more involved their care, we have to make very tough decisions for them and what makes us feel badly. So most people are actually really interested in figuring these things out. But are either not equipped with a solution. Don't have the time to work on it.
Don't have the financial freedom to do it. And so, you know, are just basically left to do with what they can. Yeah. I I think that well, first off, you're right. I mean, you know that based on research. I know that from personal experience and just a couple of family members of my own, but I think most people listening can go, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay. So I hear that answer, and that's great. And I love that. That's perfect.
Now we're gonna move that to the side, and it's just you, me, and a bunch of entrepreneurs because at the boil of it, yeah, you were you were being like all the other people you just described and you wanna take action and help your family member because you're right. But you, what's in you that made it that turned it into this thing because that's the entrepreneurial piece.
That's like the guy listening right now who just started his own you know, HVAC company or the the gal that just started a hair salon or whatever the scenario is that they're listening, and they're like, he's like me, What was it they that took you to the brink of not just doing something for their family member, but doing something for all of the other people so they could do something for their family member?
Well, I think I I'm sure with all of the interviews you've done over the years, Shows, you've heard, a lot of commonality in in this answer, but I think there's always something emotional or usually something emotional that serves as a catalyst. For taking for for taking the first step down this journey. My mother was a special education teacher. She had multiple masters degrees, kind of person do anything for anybody.
Also, the kind of person that would not hesitate to ask anybody to do anything for her. Head of the world that I grew up with. It I I'd I'd look back on it and realize how strange Chaz that was, but also wonderful. And it Yeah. Fruitflower really gave me a desire to serve. Now my career up to that point, in high-tech was almost exclusively financially motivated, you know, saving money on lawyers bills, in effect.
And Wolfe it was intellectually, challenging, stimulating, interesting, devoid of any kind of passion from home. And so this this emotional event is wanting to save my relationship. Salvos my relationship with my mother really formed that catalyst, but I'm also a business person. And I recognize for being highly unsuccessful in working with my mother Chaz there was a gap in the marketplace. And so I started wondering Why? Why is there a gap in the marketplace?
You know, what's really what's really going on here that's preventing technology Chaz took home to the market? And and is today a day or in the last few years the time where technology is really ready to come on to the market. And there's a reason why there are 0 realistic robotic animals, is technically very, very challenging to do Yeah. And prior to a decade ago would have been impossible.
Yeah. But the big changes, particularly in smartphones, in sensors in the maker space with 3 printing, there become a wealth of technologies, sometimes very small scale, very simple, but make make r and d in this space really, practical without spending 100 of $1,000,000. Yeah. The the the underneath to that, I'm curious here what your thoughts on that is that there's nothing that's ever been created or uncreated.
From from an angle of, like, just we have all, like, everything inside of Jenny right now has always been here. It's just a matter of other people, like you're saying, that put together the technology in a in a cell phone or in a print a 3 d printer that then you were able to combine some of those things to then make a another new discovery for lack of better terms.
And and I think that the encouragement or the encouragement or the courage for the listener right now is what whatever they need in order to be successful is here. They just have to find it. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. I think that's a fantastic point. So I've I've often said that I don't believe in technical revolution.
I believe in technical or technology evolution Chaz your example of smartphone and cellular communications, the internet, all of these things which, you know, smartphones tough screens. All of these things that we take for granted today and didn't have if you're if you're a little bit older, didn't have really in our lives. Just sort of appeared magically, suddenly and magically. But if you dig into them, they really didn't.
Cellular technology Chaz been around, you know, for all Really long time, really, really decades, before they initially emerged in a commercial sense. And the same thing with with smartphones portable portable electronic devices, things like that. So so if there's the fundamentals exist, maybe they need to evolve further, before they're practical, maybe there needs to be more maybe the the technology hasn't reached critical merits before it's really practical.
Yeah. To do things because, at some point in time or some level, there's a finite amount of capital that can be employed in bringing a new product to market. Obviously, hardware products are much more challenging, and capital intensive. It's helpful products. Right. And more difficult to raise capital than for Apple's products, but there's a finite amount. You have to say, okay. If I can't get this to market, x amount of dollars.
It's just not gonna happen, and you have to be able to forecast that. If it needs 2 x or 3 x, it's not timely. Right? They they the world has to evolve further until Chaz capital that needs to be deployed successfully bring a first of its 9th product to market. This is a really deep well, especially knowing just the the advances that you've made personally, and we're gonna get to Jenny here in a second, but technology, but then even before that, it was industry. Right?
And so how do you know as an inventor or an innovator kinda depending upon what bucket we're really putting you in. We what we just said was that you're an innovator.
It's like I'm taking all these pieces, and I'm putting them together into a brand new thing, which kinda makes you an innovator, but I think back to Henry Ford, and I'm like, well, he just he didn't calculate two and three times, and then and then, oh, well, the 8 cylinder doesn't doesn't work anymore, it's no. I will have the 8 cylinders. So where's the line for you as an innovator inventor where it's like, okay. There's a projection But, like, this thing is coming to market.
It just may not be in my lifetime. Who knows? Right? So great question. I'm gonna give you a little bit of a a roundabout answer to this. It cuts for me. This is this is hugely important. And and, you know, innovation, once again, it has some usually has some sort of emotional, catalyst. Not always, but usually does. Henry Ford Hayden horses. So there there's an there's a little factoid in for your audience to look up. He hated horses.
So coming out with the mass produced vehicle was really driven by his fear and hatred of horses. Oh. Lots of lots of problems with horses back of the day on safety and and and pollution and things like that. So so that that served as his catalyst, and he just was extremely gifted and figuring out how to solve problems.
But so so picking up on that last point, We I did not, and my team did not say, hey, wouldn't it be cool to come out with a robotic dog and then figure out how many people would like it. Rather, we became experts in Alzheimer's dementia. Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. And this is we're fortunate once again, evolution as opposed to revolution. Over a 150 peer reviewed studies down before we took our first step in the product that showed the benefits of emotional attachment objects.
Seniors with dementia suffer from something called behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. These include loneliness, depression, anxiety, In my mother's case, hallucinations, and violent anger. The peer reviewed studies show that where a senior can form a little bus emotional attachment to an object. Traditionally, that was a human baby doll or a stuffed animal.
That senior gets a great deal of relief from the behavioral and psychological symptoms and a corresponding reduction in eating from certain medications including psychotropic. Problem is my mom hated stuffed animals and and human baby dollies. And so she wanted a dog. She and most other seniors were kind of left out of a cold from getting those benefits.
Research on robotic animals showed the significant re outperform the traditional objects and have the added benefit of reducing pain and the need for pain medications. But the problem there is existing technologies are either simple, children's mechanical toys that have been rebranded through seniors, or are prohibitively expensive robots. This whole industry was actually invented, by a research institute in Japan, It came out with a robotic seal called Parro.
Parro's been featured on Master of Non and a number of other, television features. They invented this space, but they weren't a real business. They were a research institute. The product costs over $6000 Wolfe, most senior care facilities can't afford to let alone individuals in the in one for themselves in order for them that emotional attachment. And I was not about to bias $1000 robot on the chance that my mom hated it as much as she did, everything else that I brought home.
So all of this was done before before we started the business and before I graduated from Stanford. But armed with this information, It really gave me, clues on on how to approach it. 1st of all, studying the problem, becoming an expert in the problem, So you know not just intuitively, but can know empirically that you're actually solving the problem. No company should exist. No business should exist. Chaz isn't solving a real problem, you know, solving a real problem.
So you have to have a real problem to begin with. Solving a real problem, and that problem has to be a hair on fire problem. It needs to be something that if it isn't solved today, people will suffer. People may die. Yeah. That's obviously kinda dramatic when you think of B2B Chaz software or fintech software, but they have to have a very serious problem that isn't solved, plaintiff suffered greatly. Otherwise, people aren't motivated to spend money to solve Chaz. Right.
So becoming an expert in Alzheimer's dimension, really was critical so that so that we could understand it. Yeah. First of all, what the problems are and whether or not you were solving them and what we realized The gap actually was was a gap in emotional attachment objects. So the very first thing that we did This set up customer studies. We studied with over 700 seniors with dementia and trying to understand what they would want in a an emotional attachment object.
And and of the many things we learn, the 3 primary hypotheses that we confirm are seniors with dementia, prefer things that move over things that don't move. So help explain why stuffed animals and human baby dolls were not attractive, to most seniors. Secondly, they prefer objects in which they're familiar. So dogs and cats over wild animals or or ticious creatures. So we knew that that we had to stay home with with what people knew. And then thirdly, the more realistic, the better.
Realism in terms of appearance, realism and texture, and most importantly, realism in behaviors. And we reached out to Hollywood and teamed up with Jim Henson's creature shop. The people behind muffins and Sesame Street to do all of our artistic design. And with their help, we're building what we believe to be in the world's most realistic robotic animals scientifically designed to stimulate emotional attachment.
And then once in place, we become an ideal and unique platform on a trisa platform for monitoring vaccine for for safety and health. And I realize I've got a little bit off on my picture, but just to get back to the question, minimum viable product. Right. Yeah. If you don't if you're not an expert in your problem, you don't know, first of all, if you have product market share, meaning that solving the problem and and wave the customer loves. And for us, the bar is literally loved.
People have to fall in love with the product in order to get that emotional attachment. Yeah. And then secondly, the minimum viable product, we could come out with a much more expensive product. We could be in the cost range par in the robotic seal, right, but people won't buy it. Right? Because a less a less a technologically advanced product or is a less expensive fraud, even if it is technically more sophisticated, we'll meet the needs, of those people.
And so Starting with the problems, understanding the problem, knowing how to solve the problem, and then solving it in the least technologically most cost effective manner possible. And this is really what wasn't possible to a decade ago, but 4 widespread advent of smartphones and small sensors, inexpensive sensors, I mean, touch sensors that are essentially free today.
And once we have been able to rapidly prototype because of three pristine and all of the supporting technologies around prototyping just it would have taken tens if not 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars to get to where we'll get to for less than $10. Yeah. I love I love the explanation there. It wasn't too much at all. I think that anybody who's interested in really winning in business has to understand this. And so the the the market fit is like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna build a deck for somebody.
They they need a deck. I build decks. But it's like, no. Wait. Wait. There's so much more that can make that deck a larger purchase or a better purchase or you know, the whole the whole thing is just really cruxed on knowing who you're serving and what the problem is. And so I appreciate that that deep understanding. What do you think from a, like, okay, research innovation, and you did a ton of work, but then it was, like, launch.
And so tell us a little bit about that and maybe if there was a good decision that you made in the launch because I think a lot of people are like, okay. I got my avatar. I know what the problem is. You just did a great job of that. Then what? How did you sell the thing? Well, so, yeah, we got lucky. The output of our customer studies Could have been a set of plastic keys for someone to fidget with. It could have been, a quilted blanket.
It could have been, you know, something really elaborate, like a a multi tens of 1000 of dollar robot, but we got really lucky Chaz it was the output of the data actually led us to Puppies, and we could build these puppies, I think, design and build these pup, puppies with a relatively modest amount of capital, infusion and then offer them for a price Chaz most people for even without insurance reimbursement.
So we got lucky I'm a data person, always looking to to get data to confirm or reject hypotheses. One of my favorite quotes is from the, former CEO of of Netscape. His name just slipped out of my head. But he said If we have data, we'll go with data. If we have opinions, we'll go with mine. And in my company, no one wants to trust my opinion. So so really, worked very, very hard to get data to either confirm or reject our hypothesis.
The the first the next hypothesis up once we had this as a as a high fidelity prototype, see, anybody would buy it, you know, do people I it how hard will it be to sell? So we did a Kickstarter campaign. He ran it for a very short period of time out of finite number of units that we have made available And did virtually no marketing to give out figures for hung up at Chaz Kickstarter, campaign with a few dollars spent on Facebook ads.
We sold out of our first of our least expensive units in the first seven hours of the campaign. And so we realized then that it wasn't gonna take a deep scientific or technical explanation to sell product that that people intuitively understand it's a dog. It's a puppy, and my mom can't have a puppy. And so, therefore, this is a puppy for my mom who can't have a So there was very, very fortunate.
The other the other fortuitous side of this is because it is a social impact play is really dealing with health and well-being, which is one of the social impact, charters, the media loves it, the media loves the story, and of course, They love the back story, but, of course, they also like puppies. And so the the media has robustly covered us. We've been we've uncovered over four hundred times. By TV online print publications, not just here in the US, but Right. Around the world.
So we got lucky Was that by design, do you think, or was that just, happenstance because of the emotional connection to it? No. I so first of all, A lot of things encouraged us to continue. You know, this is Sure. The entrepreneurial step, basically developing a piece of hardware is really, really, really hard. Why keep going? Even if the data is looking favorable, why keep going? It's it's I still gotta get a job to get a good paycheck and then let somebody else bear the risk.
Why keep going with this? The senior, the professional senior charity community is a wonderful body of people. Nobody in this space is doing it for the money. They're doing it because they care about senior health senior well-being. Through a system, a lot of money there that brought a lot of people make in money taking care of seniors. 83% of of seniors with dementia live at home, and are chaired for by an unpaid family member. Why is this family member doing this?
Because they love their parent. They love this spouse. They love them sibling or their answer uncle. Right. And so they do that. We, through my mother, And then once we got into this community through through some fairly viral withdrawals, we were able to connect with 1000, 1000 of senior professional, care providers who not only gave us a lot of input technically, what the product needed to do gave us access to our users and patients to participate with our studies.
We're just incredibly warm and nurturing and and caring and encouraging to our journey. You know, just the thought of disappointing though. Yeah. But failing failing to come out with a product and and disappointing them was more than enough to keep the fire burning them and and won't get it all the way to Yeah. There's a principle there. For you, it was your it was teasing the client, but the client was was, in essence, your mom.
It was the people, you know, that you look at in in the senior community, and and how could you now how would how would you wanna disappoint them? But the same principle, just for the listener's sake, exists, whether you have, someone in business that you're collaborating with and you throw out a target and say, hey. Hold me accountable to this.
Whether it's your spouse, Whether it's other business owners that, you're trying to do collaborations with or or strategic partnerships, like, there's always ways to be able to Not want to disappoint AKA. Move the needle. Don't quit. There's people counting on you. But if you're alone, talk about the isolation factor, For you, it's the senior who's alone and you're solving that problem. Well, this podcast and gathering the Kings as a mastermind group solves isolation for entrepreneurs.
And so for the listener right now who's isolated in business, they can't have this impact that you just said. You just said I had people counting on me. And pulling me forward. Right? It's it's I had kind of a lone ranger personality earlier in my career. We all do. Yeah. I I'm I'm good enough to figure this out on my own, you know, and and I don't need your help and, blah blah blah. That just turns out to be. Immaturity. My first real, deal exposure to this was dealing with my mom.
I thought I was alone in the world. I thought I had a unique problem set with my mother, like, crazy Nancy, who's the name of Nancy. Crazy Nancy's Chaz Nancy's off the hook finally. You know, she's gone from being, you know, eccentric to completely crazy and male this burdens on me. And and I don't understand any of us, and I'm really frustrated. She's really frustrated and but it turns out that She is not unique.
She Wolfe I mean, everyone's unique in the own, specific ways, but in general, she wasn't at all. And and my first real exposure to this was getting pulled into Alzheimer support groups. These are people that have been dealing with the same issues I've been dealing with. For years, and I can say, oh, is this happening? Yes. Is that happening? Yes. So is this happening? Oh, not no. Well Wolfe, it's going to, and here's what you need to do. Arrived about it.
And so the mow the emotional support from from this peer group was turned out to be invaluable. And it it it made me sort of step out of this robles me, you know, dynamic I was taking on, which is still a much more clinically, much more practically, a bit less honest with all the challenges that my mother was throwing out. And it's true for business as well. I mean, really, this is gonna be for entrepreneurs who haven't started journey of aspiring entrepreneurs.
This will likely be the most difficult thing you ever take on professionally in your in your career, maybe in your whole life. Because there are a lot of people that don't wanna support you. There are a bunch of people do, but they're potentially that a lot of people don't. And so you've gotta find the way to connect to Both of yours.
Yeah. Through organizations such as gathering the kings through other types of founder groups through your founding partners, through strategic relationships, through supply chain, or customer relationships, and hold on to those because those will be the rock you're anchor during the really tough times. I'm fortunate that I was with my founding partners for a very long time 30 years 25 years, my 2 partners. And so we know each other. We know each other's warts.
We know how to resolve disputes, but it's still probably not enough. You gotta you gotta smooth out for people that are going through exactly what you're going through in your particular silo responsibility as a CEO as chief product officer Chaz, right, CTO as the COO or what have you. Yep, and and and try to for community get the the understanding that you can only get through experience, but also the emotions. Yeah. That's huge. I appreciate that. Let's let's transition here.
You've talked a lot about some of the things that worked for the building of Jenny. Give us a scenario where You did wanna quit. It was a scenario where maybe you made a bad choice. Things were stacked up against you. Maybe someone who who was believing in you, Chains. They turn their back on you. Give us the dirty. Well, I'll I'll tell you the the absolute worst, most difficult, most discouraging part of being an entrepreneur is, funding the business.
I was fortunate that I had some funds so I could get the is moving Chaz I didn't have the financial resources to fund the company all the way to 1st box ship accounts. Schedule, it'll be close to $10,000,000 I didn't have as anywhere near those financial, capabilities. So we Chaz to go out and make believers out of investors. Well, 1st of all, 90 plus percent of of institutional investors will not invest in hardware under any circumstances.
So for those of you that are considering a hardware journey, yeah, you know, I think twice about Chaz, because it you're you're really shrinking the universe of, investors potentially support your business. If you're a software AI generative AI kind of company, pretty easy to raise money today comparatively. Just like it has been for Chaz, fintech SAS Companies in in the past and so forth.
You know, If you if you have the idea to give an XR and D or Uber to side of marketplace, you're gonna be able to raise money. But as a hardware product, it's gonna be much much harder. And so secondly, it's a shrinking universe. Then when you you look at the reason why people are reluctant to invest in hardware, It's really about risk failure early on in the business.
For any hardware product and, you know, you know, more truth for a for a robot, is if you're gonna come up with an idea that has market viability, it has to be something that's highly differentiated gonna be a big idea more than likely. It's gonna be something that's actually really difficult to execute. Does the founding team have the ability to execute on that idea. That's a huge risk.
There are a lot of robots that have them worked on Over the years that never made it to market because the the founders either couldn't overcome that risk, the those challenges to bring it to market, or they could all they could all become some of them, and they brought it to market. It just wasn't it didn't need to call us. And then the second the second risk is say you overcome all of those, technical hurdles. Will anybody buy it once you bring it to market?
So Your question is, what didn't go well? Raising my brutally hard, even even sort of growing up, through Stanford and living in the the Bay Area for a period of time being there right at the heart of, the priests of Sandhill Road Chaz they're referred to, you know, it's kind of VC Central in Palo Alto. We failed. I failed, and we ran out of money twice. And, you know, rule number 1 for every CEO don't run out of cash. Random like that.
So so Yes. If you don't mind, Tom, tell us about the the one of those moments or maybe both, but Like, the sticky of you fur first off admitting that you ran out of money is is incredible value for the listener because looking at where you are today, you just don't know that type of thing unless you just say it. So thank you for that. Tell us about that moment where you're like, the o snap moment, you know, Well, you you you question your own judgment a lot.
Your family depends upon you financially questions your judgment a lot. Your partners question your ability a lot because they've done their job. You haven't done yours. And so there's a lot of there's a lot of sort of introspective self analysis, self criticism that comes along with that. And you say, okay. Why am I doing this? Why should we continue?
What's the future look like for Tom butt specifically, and this is not Every analysis would kinda should be uniquely done and have a its own unique outcome. Customers love us. So we we the the the we had materially derisked the business from a sales standpoint. Thanks to the media We we have the the gift of the media loving to cover us loving to cover us. So we get we get new orders 7 days a week, 24 you know, 30 days every month. Without fail, passively.
You just by having a website that's up We got orders. So I knew that there was a business here. I knew that there's simply a gap in from where we are to getting to where we could achieve a milestone where we start capturing, capturing that revenue and delivering product customers. So So I had that. I had the love from the senior care community and and others too. We, once again, a unique situation that we find ourselves in.
About half of our pre orders and wait list customers are for their other use indications, including children with autism, adolescents was severe, anxiety, depression, suicide risk, adults with bipolar schizophrenia PTSD, seniors who are cognitively healthy, but live alone and suffer from severe loneliness write to us every day. I mean, literally every day, Yeah. Leading to get super powerful. Pleeding to get a robot so that we knew that they're a customer. We have the customer traction.
We knew that bears demand beyond that traction. So that from a business fundamentals standpoint, really helped. And then I looked at ways in which we could bring in money. Raising money from customers. We ended up doing regulation crowd funding campaigns which provided us with some bridge cash until we could get larger chunks from the additional investors. And so monetizing your customers, not just the product sales, but through through their belief in turning their their belief, turn it.
Even if they're only, you know, putting in a couple $100, you get a thousand of them, that's that's real money. Yeah. And then, and then lastly, We had a couple institutional investors who really believed in this, really got caught up in this and didn't want to see it failed. I didn't wanna take additional risk. They put all kinds of conditions on on their money coming in. But if those conditions were met, they're willing to put in real cat or mouth pan.
So we were able to to recapitalize the Diesel space upon that. But there was a lot of there was a lot of yeah. There was a lot of doubt that we were gonna get across that, sad Chaz, that cash chasm, and and we're just fortunate, particularly in today's economic climate, We were fortunate they were able to do that. Yeah. I heard a couple things here.
I wanted to kinda break them down for the listener, but number 1, that doubt piece that you just circle back up with is when things aren't going Wolfe, it's almost especially as high achievers, I feel like it's just so easy to throw up the hands and be like, oh, I should have never started anyway. You've been, like, fighting off all of the the negative thoughts. You've been fighting off the family members or the people that said you're crazy. You're fighting off self doubt all this time.
And then that that that moment that just tears you down, you're just really easy to succumb to all those things that you've been fighting off. And in those moments, what I heard you say that you did is that you leaned into the people that said that you were doing Wolfe, that you were changing their life, that Things were really moving in the right direction. And so you had to kinda, like, reach into the cookie jar as David Goggins says and, like, remind yourself of why you're doing this thing.
Why you're why you are who you are and why you're doing this thing. And so beyond Chaz, though, I heard you say, obviously, funding is the practical problem But you pressed into maybe non traditional areas, you just, like, looked at, who loves us, who has an emotional connection to what we're doing, and how do we get what we need from them? We're obviously giving to them what they need. How do we make this thing even more mutually benefiting?
And for your case, you needed funding, but it that could be that principle could be applied to to anything. As a founder, you might need different parts of the business. You might need to hire, a COO. You might need to you might build a team. There's just so many other needs, and you would just look to the area of people that are your cheerleaders. Would you agree with us? Oh, 100 100%. So, you know, one of the other things too, it sort of comes with the territory of being a lone ranger.
And once again, I I credit Chaz to immaturity. This need to create an image of of, you know, in being impervious when we're successful. Chaz that's Chaz that turned out not to be a good a good tactic. Being transparent. Yeah. Being honest, being being vulnerable, telling our investors telling our customers that we need you to save the business, not just invest. This is not we're not saying, hey. This is We're promising all you these rate returns. Give us a dollar. We'll turn it into a 1,000,000.
Yeah. It's, yeah, it's it's this business should exist. You know this business should exist because there are a lot of people that we can help, but we won't be able to if you do not save this business in. And so Being very clear, being very transparent, being very vulnerable, motivated people to step up and and probably do more than they were comfortable doing. Quite frankly, and and a lot of notes from customers apologizing that they couldn't do more. I mean, Talk about gratitude.
In the darkest of days, realizing that you have a lot of people that really care about you, care about the business, care about the vision, and are willing to take a risk personally in order to help support it. And so it was those kinds of things change you. They can't help but change you. The bad times change you, but also being saved Chaz you. There's there's pretty much no lengths we won't go now to, you know, to fulfill our customer's expectations. Yeah. Yeah. It's real courage.
It's we talked about this before with the record button that that's my main objective here with these shows is to transfer courage. And it's like, if I got a dosage of courage, every hour on the hour, maybe every 10 minutes, just hook me up straight to the IV of courage. I don't think I could get enough. And and so I appreciate you sharing that how you were able to get courage because even in sharing that story, it tells us that it's possible to to go through it.
You even gave some really clear practicals on on where you got it from, so I appreciate that. I wanna I wanna ask you about family. This whole thing has been about, you know, your mom and and that piece of your family, but you've been building a business outside of your family. And so I I wanna talk about balance. I think the the word is erroneous, and I don't think it exists. Okay. So let me just set the stage. Okay? I think what exists is exactly what you just said about your team.
We were talking about Henry Ford, and you said, look, our team didn't say, So let's come up with a puppy idea and just see how many people like it. No. It was this is the research. This is what we're gonna make. This is what we're gonna do. It's it was resolute. It was obsession. My thought process on life is that that's what also equates success in my family, in my health, in my lifestyle in my faith, like all of those other areas.
How for you, Tom, are you obsessing in those areas at the same time as Jenny? So I don't believe that high achieving people live balanced lives. I don't believe I don't believe that you can get to that kind of achievement without being imbalanced or where that's your top priority. But you can't go so far as your family members pay the price for that. And so there there has to be ongoing conversation with the family members. You have to figure out what's important to them.
So it's a a process guide, data guide. So what is What is important to my five year old son? What is important to my 2 adult children from a previous marriage? What is important to my wife? What's important to my ex Wolfe? And, you know, close friends and, and extended family, and making sure that I do those things for them, make sure I structure my life in such a way that that's there. For example, I coach my son's, soccer team. He tells everybody that his dad coaches his soccer team.
The impact that you can make on somebody, even with small allocations of time, If it's in the right areas, Chaz really pay dividends. And and so don't be afraid of those conversations. In fact, don't have them just once have them on an ongoing basis, and and you will fail. For 100% for sure, you will fail. But you won't necessarily tell all the time.
And and and you do what you can, you know, to to achieve the success to work without sacrificing the things outside the business that matter to you and that it are the people that care about. Wow. That was a really succinct answer. It's like I had asked you ahead of In all seriousness, though, it's super good. I hope that the listener paid attention to that because what I heard was sit down. See the other humans in your life.
Just like you paid attention in your business to what who was connected to you emotionally, you've done that outside of the business. You sat down Who are the relationships? Who are the humans that I need to pay attention to that need either more time or more intention in the attention that I give to them. Right? That's the soccer team. That's probably only a couple hours a week, but huge dividends, like you said, for your son. I just got back from a trip.
We actually just did a a in person event for a gathering of kings. And when I got home late last night, it was about 1 o'clock in the morning, and I snuck down to my almost five year old son's room. And we'll came up a little bit, and he just, like, latched on like a monkey. You know? And he didn't even remember it this morning. But I know in the moment, it was like, I I know it's what he wanted me to do. It was waking him up in the middle of the night when I got home.
And so I think the intentionality of how you funded the business, but then I saw the same intentionality in your personal life. So you wanna add anything there before before you move on from that? No. But I will tell you, I'll give you a little bit of insight. What you did for your son and what your son did for you, changed your mural chemistry. It Chaz a positive impact on your chemistry. Your son may not remember it, but you gave him a, a nice little neurochemical cocktail.
Chaz made him comfortable and reduces fear and reduces anxiety. That's really what we're about. We Chaz human beings are hardwired. To form these emotional attachments where we can give them, whether it's to a child or a spouse or a friend, it's him, family, or or workmates. Yeah. It will make a difference for Dante physical, a measurable difference for them, even though it may be an insignificant act, like, simply going in and giving your son a hug and a kiss in the middle. Right?
Yeah. I I wanna I'm not quite done with the interview. I want I got one more for you, but I wanna cap off what you just said with this is exactly what Jenny is. Right? It just rather than the intentionality of human to human, It's, it's a substitute, but, man, a darn good one. And and what you have are raving fans. By the thousands and pot and a 100 of 1000 or 1,000,000 at this point of going, there's a there's a real need. And so I just I just wanted to a chance here to play.
I'm gonna give you a chance to tell us where to find it and where how to buy and stuff. But for the listener's sake, what we're talking about here, Tom and I, we're talking about the impact of of emotional connection and moving people. That's really what we've just discussed in the last five minutes and how you do that, even scientifically or neurologically, It's exactly what Tom just gave to you.
And so if you have a family member that that can't have a live interaction, that's why Jenny, this robotic puppy exists so why Tom has has done all this work. So, Tom, I got one last question here for you. I wanna wrap up with this. If you had the opportunity, to just roll back the clock. And you got the younger Tom sitting in front of you and you lean over tap on a shoulder and you whisper something in his ear. What do you say?
If I could have started the company again so once again, there are all kinds of challenges that that you take on the company, you know, technical challenges there. Siemens are malleable or or do you have you can't you fail, and you gotta navigate around them. By far, the most important thing for the business was funding it, and I was naive after building a previous business bootstrapping a previous business with my partners.
It I took for granted that a really good idea, what I thought was a really good idea Wolfe attract, being maybe it might be hard, but it wouldn't be impossible. Pretty close to impossible. So what I would have done is I would have pursued more non dilutive funding. So there are Small Business Innovation Research grants, SBIR grants available from the government various both state government and federal, but the ones that we focus on are federal grants.
I would have been early and aggressive after going after those grants to fund the business. And they're pain in the neck. They're hard to get. They can't kill them. And when you get them, you gotta comply with all kinds of things that are over and above just, you know, meeting, you know, your business. Yeah. I'm pretty sure your responsibility to investors. Right. And I I looked at the difficulty there, and I passed all that came out as a stay.
I should have gone away after those SBR grant SBR grants because I could have under the company more efficiently. Early on. Those SBIR grants are signals, to investors. Yeah. Cool. You know, You can get grants. You can get nonnegotiated funding. There are people that believe, the grant making level in your idea Yeah. And wanna see it exist. So that was that was a big mistake. We're going after them now.
But not to fund the 1st innovation in the business to fund the next participate in the funding of the next innovation. From, ah, I I wish I'd done that sooner and, anybody who is is looking at this, you can you can still work a different job and get those SBIR grants or STTR, which is the equivalent if you're in an academic setting, and wanna, you know, take an academic project and turn that into your business. Should have done that. Yeah. That was a big mistake. Yeah. Love the insight there.
Very practical. I wouldn't expect it any other way, given from a data guy. So thank you for that. How can the listener a Find Jenny if they wanna make a purchase for a family member of this incredible robotic puppy, or if they're an entrepreneur and they wanna they wanna connect with you, how can they do either one? So let me give you all of that information. First of all, we are still pre market. We're not we're not shipping our product yet. You can join our wait list at www.TomBot.com.
So my first name bought.com. My my mother named the company. She asked me She couldn't remember what she was having for breakfast in a given day, but she always remembered I was working on robots for her. And one day, she asked me, says, well, what are you gonna name the company? I said, I don't know, mom. What do you think? And she said, well, how about Tom? I go, well, maybe not Tom, exactly.
And and so it's tombot.com, and we have we have social media channels there where you can see lots of videos. You can see other major media interviews. You can see interviews that we do with experts in our space. Chaz talk about, you know, from a practical standpoint, real health issues, they're not just promotional at the tone button. You can reach me probably the easiest way is through LinkedIn You can on our website, you can send you can send emails to the contact. It's hello at thumbot.com.
I look at a 100% of those. We have somebody who monitors those 7 days a week. You can connect with me through LinkedIn and direct message me there as well. And but there if you if you wish to, you can join our wait list or our newsletter. There's no cost at this time for doing either. We are currently working on final alpha. I would hope to be in beta testing just after the 1st year in ramping up production late, next year. Of course, I'm raising more money.
So if any of you here are also investors, I would love to talk to you about our our vision and our our not just for our current product, but our product might find them why from a business model standpoint. This this is a good idea, at least in my opinion. And and what do you have? Anybody has any questions and comments? Just wants, a few minutes of counseling, poor emotional support. I'm happy to talk year.
Yeah. We I couldn't have gotten here without without lots of support from other people, and I'm I'm happy to give support to others. And quite frankly, quite selfishly, I learned in every conversation I ever had. So I'm thrilled to have more conversations because it contributes to my vote. That was great. Spoken like a true king. Tom, appreciate the Nellie time, but the story, the vulnerability, as you said, you're your innovation ingenuity, your mind.
I just appreciate you sharing your mind over this today. Thank you for sharing Jenny. Jenny, I hope that you have a great rest of the day. And if we'll put all the all the information in the show notes for all those contacts for you, Tom, the listeners can connect with you. Blessings to you, your family, the TomBot team. Thank you for being here, brother. Thank you so much, Charles. It's been a pleasure, and thank you again for the privilege.