[00:00:00] Then I think often times founders jump into developing or creating something and not really
[00:00:06] realizing that there's a lot of really solid know-how that can help accelerate your business,
[00:00:13] your ideation, your development.
[00:00:16] Welcome to episode 6 just past the official halfway mark of season 3 of the Innovation
[00:00:21] Day Podcast.
[00:00:22] I'm your host Neil Fallon.
[00:00:25] We often have people reach out wanting to be on the podcast.
[00:00:28] Sometimes it's to promote a book, sometimes it's to talk about their business and honestly
[00:00:33] a lot of the time it just isn't a fit.
[00:00:36] But when Ali's team reached out it was a different story.
[00:00:39] Auto is a pretty amazing product and Ali is clearly a passionate and insightful founder.
[00:00:43] I'm really excited for you to listen to Ali's story so I'm going to wrap up this intro
[00:00:48] and start the episode.
[00:00:52] I think I said to you on our first call when I contemplated all of the industries that
[00:00:58] might be right for disruption, lawn care was not necessarily at the top of my list.
[00:01:04] So describe auto in a little bit more detail and maybe let's start with the genesis for
[00:01:10] you of where did this idea come from and what was the spark that said okay I think there's
[00:01:15] an opportunity.
[00:01:16] I think a lot of people don't think about lawn care about yard care as an area that's
[00:01:21] ripe for disruption.
[00:01:24] And I didn't think so initially.
[00:01:26] I mean the core reason the genesis for auto grew out of my own issues with the yard care.
[00:01:32] So before starting auto, I was traveling a lot spending a ton of time in between Germany
[00:01:37] and Japan.
[00:01:38] And didn't really have a lot of know how when it comes to caring for a yard and around
[00:01:43] that same time, I bought a house just a little bit outside of Toronto and I met the same
[00:01:48] challenges that most homeowners face when it comes to yard care.
[00:01:53] Everything between figuring out what you have to do to irrigate what solutions you have
[00:01:59] to apply having to go out there and do that on a consistent basis.
[00:02:04] So that was an all around sort of issue that I came across for my own problem.
[00:02:08] And the more and more I dug into it, the more I realized that customers are often choosing
[00:02:13] between spending a lot of money or spending a lot of time caring for this small piece
[00:02:18] of yard that's outside their home.
[00:02:21] And when it comes to irrigation, they're either spending a lot of money putting in expensive
[00:02:25] and ground sprinkler systems or spending a lot of time moving sprinklers around.
[00:02:29] And similarly when it comes to the solution applications, there's a very, very steep learning
[00:02:33] curve here.
[00:02:34] So oftentimes people will outsource that and that's a great cost.
[00:02:39] Or they'll try to take it on themselves and have to go through that very steep learning
[00:02:42] curve, spend the time near.
[00:02:44] But then also have to find a time to go out there consistently and apply these solutions.
[00:02:48] So as I was approaching this problem first, it was myself.
[00:02:53] Then as I started talking to neighbors, you know, discovered that in fact, this is not
[00:02:57] just an issue with myself and the home and what I was struggling with that it was much
[00:03:02] broader than that and sort of expanded from near, you know, from our neighborhood in
[00:03:07] Toronto and then sort of cross the US and across Canada.
[00:03:11] And one thing that kind of ran true across that essentially entire continent is what has
[00:03:18] been happening since the 70s, essentially is homes have gotten larger and lots of gotten
[00:03:24] smaller.
[00:03:25] So now you end up with, you know, small to medium size greenery around the house with
[00:03:30] very few options on how to care for them.
[00:03:33] So this is where auto comes in super simple to install a device about the size of a shoe
[00:03:38] box.
[00:03:39] All it needs is a hose and a Wi-Fi connection and it shoots out a single stream of water
[00:03:43] that goes about 35 feet and rotates 360 degrees.
[00:03:48] And from the auto app, you can select all sorts of different zones so you can have a point
[00:03:54] if you have trees or planters or you can create a polygon and auto will go in there and
[00:03:59] essentially print the water.
[00:04:01] And on top of all of that, we have a lineup of people, planet pet safe solutions so things
[00:04:07] like fertilizer and mosquito and tick repellent that you can scan with the QR code and load
[00:04:11] those solutions in.
[00:04:13] And that's another layer of convenience that our customers love.
[00:04:17] I have to say as much as I said, I didn't think lawn care was right for disruption.
[00:04:21] I went to the website and it was immediately clear this solves a whole bunch of problems.
[00:04:26] I fell in the category of the person who spent a lot of time moving my sprinkler around.
[00:04:33] There's a notion of having a product that can like you say kind of print the water on
[00:04:39] the lawn.
[00:04:40] That to me is a really huge win and innovation right there.
[00:04:45] But I think the other component that you mentioned really quickly are all of these solutions
[00:04:50] so that auto feels almost like a system, this combination of a bunch of different lawn solutions
[00:04:57] and the product itself.
[00:04:59] There's a technology component because there's over the air updates in an app et cetera,
[00:05:03] et cetera.
[00:05:04] It almost sounds like you had to kind of start up two or three different companies.
[00:05:08] There's a hardware piece, there's a software piece, there's actual solutions.
[00:05:12] Talk about that experience of how all of those pieces started to fall into place and maybe
[00:05:18] where did you start to feel out of your comfort zone?
[00:05:21] It's a fantastic question.
[00:05:24] The solutions, that came first before even the irrigation piece and to your point, the
[00:05:29] device is not trivial.
[00:05:31] I mean there's a hardware component, there are solutions, there's an app quite a bit of
[00:05:37] complexity when it comes to the intelligence and the watering algorithm but we didn't
[00:05:41] set out to develop all of those things.
[00:05:43] I mean we set out to solve this customer problem.
[00:05:47] And essentially what auto was, the original vision for auto was a ground skipper.
[00:05:51] So if you think about affluent people they have a ground skipper, auto essentially democratizes
[00:05:56] that for everyone else and enables folks to have access to someone that can irrigate
[00:06:01] and know when to put these different types of solutions down.
[00:06:04] But the real genesis for the concept came, I mean I was having all of these issues with
[00:06:09] the yard but one large issue I was having was wasps believe it or not in the neighborhood
[00:06:14] and it was across the whole neighborhood so there's very much you can do when it comes
[00:06:18] to your particular small space to try to push them away.
[00:06:22] So I did some searching online and I had the two kids at the time they were very young,
[00:06:28] they'd roll around in the grass and all of that.
[00:06:30] I didn't want to use anything harmful or synthetic.
[00:06:33] So I did some searching online and discovered that a mixture of some botanical oils, cloves,
[00:06:39] lemon, those types of scents could push away these types of pests.
[00:06:44] That's particularly wasps.
[00:06:45] So I tried that, I boiled a few of these things, made a small little concoction and sprayed
[00:06:50] it around and it worked wonderfully but the issue was and we discovered this pretty quickly
[00:06:56] is that it dissipates, it breaks down quite quickly so it only works maybe a few days up to
[00:07:02] a week.
[00:07:03] And this is where we kind of started digging in a bit more and discovered that there was
[00:07:08] a whole slew of natural solutions that have been developed, that people have used but
[00:07:14] they're coming up against sort of an issue when it comes to scale because they require frequent
[00:07:19] application and with rising fuel costs, with labor shortages, your standard lawn care companies
[00:07:25] aren't able to keep up with that.
[00:07:26] So you need some form of automation and this was one of the original concepts or sort
[00:07:32] of light bulb moments that started auto that if we were able to inject these natural solutions
[00:07:37] in small frequent amounts, we're able to do pretty incredible things.
[00:07:41] When it comes to pest control, we can start leveraging botanical oils and those types
[00:07:46] of lower risk types of solutions when it comes to fertilizing, we can start integrating
[00:07:52] things like bacteria and different microbes in our solutions and then feeding those to
[00:07:57] the lawn in small amounts and that brings the soil fertility up and essentially reduces
[00:08:02] the reliance on needing to top it up or the synthetics.
[00:08:07] So when we went to work on our first prototype, it was an injection system for in-ground sprinkler
[00:08:14] systems, put that sort of first prototype together and rolled it out about 10 homes in
[00:08:20] the neighborhood and the solution side of it ended up working wonderfully.
[00:08:25] So we proved out the concept of what we're able to do by injecting these solutions in small
[00:08:31] and frequent amounts but something we discovered quite quickly was how difficult it was to put
[00:08:36] in these in-ground sprinkler systems.
[00:08:38] So everything from the trenching and in practice how difficult that is with all the sort of trash
[00:08:45] that's left in the ground after construction most times you have lines and different things
[00:08:50] you need to watch out for, you need to call ahead.
[00:08:53] But on top of that, you have issues with or difficulties in configuring the different
[00:08:58] types of zones because once the zones are set up within the in-ground sprinkler system,
[00:09:02] the ability to add more and adjust them is much more difficult.
[00:09:06] And further to that, there's all of these secondary and third area tertiary issues when
[00:09:10] it comes to in-ground for example, winterizing.
[00:09:14] So it's something that very few people think about but you know it's an additional $2,300
[00:09:19] a season that in-ground sprinkler folks who have in-ground sprinkler systems have to pay
[00:09:23] to get those systems blown out so they don't expand and burst during the winter months.
[00:09:28] So putting all of that together sort of the insight that we're able to inject these natural
[00:09:32] solutions get really fantastic efficacy, how difficult it was to install the in-ground
[00:09:38] sprinkler system together with sort of where the market was trending.
[00:09:42] So larger homes, smaller lots and the fuel and labor shortage just sort of come together
[00:09:48] and essentially highlight a need for a product like this.
[00:09:53] And at what point I'm quite as fascinating because you start with a WASP problem and
[00:10:01] you end up however many years later, you get thousands of these devices.
[00:10:06] You guys have had unbelievable accolades, one amazing awards.
[00:10:09] The awards are things like the best invention of 2022 according to Time Magazine.
[00:10:17] This isn't, the accolades are not sort of local region of commerce really likes you
[00:10:21] guys.
[00:10:22] Where between the I have a WASP problem and today did you go oh this is going to be a business
[00:10:28] that I start.
[00:10:29] And then when did it sort of pivot to be the business that it is?
[00:10:33] There's a couple of different moments all the way from you can start by looking at it
[00:10:38] from my perspective and saying okay well I had the problem and therefore there would
[00:10:43] be more folks that have that but that necessarily wasn't the validation.
[00:10:47] I think after we discovered that we needed to integrate the irrigation component on it,
[00:10:53] we worked pretty quickly to get at least a prototype and then something that we really
[00:10:58] believe in or believe then, you know we'll leave them when we were developing it.
[00:11:02] We believe in it now and it's working with the customers really, really closely getting
[00:11:06] up a deep, deep understanding of the problem and in practice what that means today is
[00:11:12] that we've developed a ton of backend tools for us to be able to interrogate sort of
[00:11:18] what the zones are, how the device is being used, what the different distances are, how
[00:11:22] much sun it's getting and continue to ratchet and improve the product from there.
[00:11:28] But in the very, very early days you didn't have customers to do that with and one thing
[00:11:34] we didn't want to do is we did not want to focus on one particular region and say solve
[00:11:38] the problem for Northern Toronto but then you know not have any sort of traction or success
[00:11:45] across the larger market.
[00:11:46] And this is why when we developed our first prototype and sort of you know thought
[00:11:52] we would show this to friends and family.
[00:11:54] The goal there was to get that piece of feedback to say okay are we on the right track
[00:12:01] and we did that and we launched the prototype on March 12, 2020 so the Friday right before
[00:12:09] the whole world went on lockdown because of COVID.
[00:12:13] And you know that was obviously was very, very difficult but we have quite a tenacious
[00:12:18] team and we kind of kept going.
[00:12:21] And pretty soon after we started running some sort of ads, you know just Instagram meta
[00:12:27] ads to try to obtain or try to gather some emails that we would eventually use to maybe
[00:12:34] target for a Kickstarter campaign you know later in the year.
[00:12:39] And that I think when we started running those was the first instance of you know very
[00:12:45] strong external validation.
[00:12:47] There are a fact that you know about two weeks after I put that up someone called me and
[00:12:51] at the time auto was was colored white.
[00:12:54] And this gentleman ended up being one of our first ten customers but he called me and
[00:13:00] he was complaining about the color of the device.
[00:13:02] So he was saying why would you choose the device to be white at the time the device was white
[00:13:08] this would get dirty it will blend into the rest of my surroundings.
[00:13:13] But he mentioned nothing or had absolutely no complaints about the core value proposition.
[00:13:18] So after you dig into it, it turns out that this gentleman and tens of thousands others
[00:13:24] were essentially sold in that we just needed to tweak the value proposition a little bit
[00:13:31] more the design a little bit more and then release it.
[00:13:34] And that's what we've been doing I mean we've been in business for about five years.
[00:13:38] We've continued to ratchet the design from that first hundred units that we shipped
[00:13:42] the first year to now tens and tens of thousands of units we ship every season.
[00:13:48] And it's been essentially the same thing worked very closely with these customers have
[00:13:51] a very deep understanding of the need and continue to evolve the product and meet that
[00:13:56] need.
[00:13:57] Let's go back a little bit I have to imagine that pre auto you weren't an accounting.
[00:14:04] What did you do before this that set you up to launch this business?
[00:14:08] Yeah, so no offense sorry no offense to account no offense to accountants.
[00:14:13] Everyone needs a good account.
[00:14:15] Absolutely.
[00:14:16] I'm an engineer my background is in engineering my education is in engineering but the curiosity
[00:14:23] started way before that so I mean I was born quite curious I was the kid that would take
[00:14:28] the you know take toys apart to figure out how they work and I enjoyed that more than
[00:14:32] and essentially playing with the toy itself.
[00:14:36] And that led me pretty early on into coding.
[00:14:39] So I learned to code in grade school I coded our elementary's first ever website in the
[00:14:45] late 90s and then from near really fell in love with being able to create you know different
[00:14:50] software products different different items and throughout high school I continued with
[00:14:55] that actually turned it into a small business and started saving money which later put
[00:15:00] me through university.
[00:15:01] I also had a recording studio so record music for high school bands and then try to market
[00:15:07] their their CDs.
[00:15:08] Obviously as you can imagine high school bands aren't that good so that business didn't
[00:15:13] fly but I just fell in love with the ability to conceptualize something or work alongside
[00:15:19] some passionate folks and then get it out to the world and then sort of receive that feedback
[00:15:24] and then work on the next version of it.
[00:15:26] And it's true to music as it is to writing as it is the product development but I always
[00:15:31] had that love for physical products and you know throughout all of high school I was
[00:15:36] really really fascinated by the automotive industry and I think a little bit unconventional
[00:15:42] if you think about you know every teenager they're really in love with the with the
[00:15:46] Ferraris and the and the goodies and what have you.
[00:15:49] The really expensive and fancy super cars but all throughout high school even today I've
[00:15:54] always thought that one of the best cars ever made was the Honda Civic and to me I was
[00:15:59] always found fascinating how this 13,000 at the time vehicle can go for two 300,000 miles
[00:16:06] virtually no maintenance to me that was an engineering marvel not a $2 million supercar.
[00:16:12] So I went into mechanical engineering focused on automotive you know what did my bachelor's
[00:16:19] there from there went worked for a few years then got into a project developing a lesion
[00:16:25] detection device for Mount Sinai hospital and the University of Toronto.
[00:16:30] And that was the first time I you know took the software knowledge took the hardware knowledge
[00:16:34] that I'd learned and the electronics and sort of put that together with some complex algorithms
[00:16:40] and sort of if you think about it it was the first ever electro mechanical device that
[00:16:44] I put intelligence in and sort of saw the magic as to what you're able to do in this particular
[00:16:48] device essentially quantifies palpation and palpation is sort of what doctors do to feel
[00:16:56] around for tissue for hard tissue to find that lesions or cancer areas.
[00:17:02] And this device essentially quantifies the stiffness and the damping of tissue and
[00:17:09] then that could be correlated to different sort of issues and different tissue harnesses.
[00:17:15] From there I was poached and spent about 10 years working in the automotive industry,
[00:17:22] working through testing, working through engineering and eventually working my way to leading
[00:17:27] this global team where we designed and developed a product that's now on one out of every
[00:17:32] three vehicles in the world.
[00:17:34] It's a device that goes on internal combustion engines and improves efficiency by about
[00:17:39] two percent and that taught me a ton about how to build for scale, how to handle the supply
[00:17:45] chain, the logistics, how to go through design for manufacturer ability and takes a lot
[00:17:51] to take something from zero to 35 million units a year and that experience was really
[00:17:57] the experience I was looking for to really dive in and understand all along why I'd
[00:18:02] fallen in love with sort of the Honda Civics and the Toyota Camrys of being sort of engineering
[00:18:08] marvels when it comes to value.
[00:18:10] And we brought a lot of those processes, I brought a lot of these processes, a lot of
[00:18:14] these methods into what we do at Auto today.
[00:18:16] So Auto is driven in terms of development in terms of reliability, supply chain, how
[00:18:22] we look at things quite a bit from the automotive industry and sort of the rigor and the value
[00:18:27] that's delivered there.
[00:18:29] You mentioned those kind of first 100 units maybe the colors changed.
[00:18:33] How are those first 100 units holding up?
[00:18:35] Are they the Honda Civics of lawn care or have you realized that there were maybe some
[00:18:40] fundamental design changes that needed to be made?
[00:18:43] How's the first batch doing?
[00:18:44] Yeah, I think we've learned a lot and some of the things that we learned are we're changed
[00:18:51] through software.
[00:18:52] Some of them we had to make some hardware changes and ratchet and evolve the product over
[00:18:57] the years but those first units, funny enough, you talked about learning from a customer.
[00:19:02] So we had the hypothesis that customers essentially didn't want to or didn't care to pick the
[00:19:08] amount of water that they wanted to put on a particular zone.
[00:19:12] And as long as we knew what the vegetation was and the soil type and where the location
[00:19:17] is so we can infer temperature and amount of sun, that we could make that decision on
[00:19:21] behalf of the customers and customers absolutely hated that in the first version.
[00:19:27] They wanted control.
[00:19:28] They needed a schedule.
[00:19:30] They needed to be able to deal with things like the droughts and to be able to set a
[00:19:35] custom schedule based on what the municipality is dictating in terms of when they can water
[00:19:40] and they can't.
[00:19:41] And that's when we've changed it.
[00:19:43] Same thing with charging.
[00:19:44] You know, the device is able to charge through a solar panel that's right at the top.
[00:19:50] The majority of our customers use the solar panel only but also pretty early on.
[00:19:56] We had folks that were trying to use the device indoors.
[00:20:00] They had some grow operations or folks that that were trying to use it under some areas
[00:20:04] with heavy shade and this is where we incorporated an external flux.
[00:20:08] And now you can power it more than one way, but essentially the product stayed very much
[00:20:14] the same.
[00:20:16] And it's because we didn't really build or ship those first hundred units till we
[00:20:20] really understood the problems.
[00:20:22] I'd say we got it about 90% of the way there in that first iteration and a lot of what
[00:20:27] we've been improving on over the last three years has been software and software support.
[00:20:32] You mentioned engineering, hardware, you've got curiosity.
[00:20:36] It sounds like right in your DNA.
[00:20:38] Is this your first business?
[00:20:41] It's the first business of this scale.
[00:20:42] Yeah.
[00:20:43] Talk to me about that going from maybe a team leader or part of a large team that's building
[00:20:48] something within an organization.
[00:20:50] It's a very different thing when you're out on your own and you don't necessarily have
[00:20:54] the scaffolding and you got a million different things to be thinking about.
[00:20:58] What was the transition like to being, I'm sure you're not fully on your own, but being
[00:21:03] an entrepreneur?
[00:21:04] Yeah.
[00:21:05] I think before I just dive into the answer, there is something and I think this is a piece
[00:21:09] of advice I give to a lot of founders, a lot of aspiring founders that ask me and it's
[00:21:14] essentially around working for or particularly selecting a good boss that can teach you.
[00:21:21] In an industry that would add value to your business and I think oftentimes founders
[00:21:26] jump into developing or creating something and not really realizing that there's a lot
[00:21:32] of really solid know-how that can help accelerate your business, your ideation, your development.
[00:21:40] It can reduce your failure rate and improve your chances of success.
[00:21:44] So I think one thing I noticed when I was working in Big Code, let's say are some of
[00:21:49] the processes in some of the rigor that would benefit startups, particularly when you're
[00:21:55] talking about hardware business.
[00:21:57] So in hardware businesses, one of your big risks is around the development of the device.
[00:22:02] It's very, very costly so you have to use the right tools to sort of arrive at an answer
[00:22:06] there quickly and also everything that comes with tooling and transportation is a great
[00:22:13] cost.
[00:22:14] So mistakes could be avoided with some of these processes that you would learn from some
[00:22:19] for kind of big costs.
[00:22:20] So that was the easy part, sort of bringing what works, what I've learned works, you know,
[00:22:26] sort of bringing the 35 million units a year to life, you know, what are some of the
[00:22:31] lessons that we can bring over to auto.
[00:22:34] And another part, you know, kind of a larger the company gets the more bureaucracy there
[00:22:39] is and that's true for several reasons.
[00:22:42] So I also, as I kind of moved over to auto, I was able to kind of build an organization
[00:22:50] and a culture that is more conducive to this type of thinking, to this creation, to thinking
[00:22:56] outside the box.
[00:22:59] And that comes a lot with obviously trusting the team, picking the right team members.
[00:23:03] But I think it's been an absolutely wonderful experience.
[00:23:06] I'm really glad sort of with the progression of being entrepreneurial, having all of these
[00:23:12] different ideas and concepts and doing those on the side while really focusing and growing
[00:23:17] a major part of my knowledge and career and how you design, how you develop, how you
[00:23:22] put into the market a hardware product and then moving over.
[00:23:27] A lot of that knowledge, a lot of that experience came in very, very handy.
[00:23:33] It takes a village.
[00:23:34] Absolutely.
[00:23:35] I know it's not just Ali on his own making this stuff happen.
[00:23:38] What does the business look like and maybe kind of how's that team shifted over time?
[00:23:43] If it has shifted, has there been a, oh man, this was an absolutely critical role in
[00:23:48] the early days.
[00:23:49] But this other role now is really critical because we're at a different scale.
[00:23:53] Like what does the team look like and who's around you?
[00:23:57] I would not have been able to do this alone.
[00:23:59] We have an absolutely incredible team.
[00:24:02] I think the talent in Canada has been one thing to, I think particularly know.
[00:24:09] This is because a lot of auto, if you look at the company as a whole, a lot of the folks
[00:24:13] that we have are engineers and that's because of the deep know how we need for all the
[00:24:18] different type of subsystems.
[00:24:21] Early on, we had mechatronics engineers, development engineers sort of trying to get from zero to
[00:24:28] one and that was a small team, very, very tight and it's very small team early on during
[00:24:34] COVID that we're making a lot of decisions around user experience, product development.
[00:24:40] So they weren't only engineers in the sense of development but they thought outside the
[00:24:45] box, they looked at sort of the business side, they looked at the customer service and
[00:24:49] the product management side.
[00:24:51] And over time, those roles have evolved.
[00:24:54] So one, the amount of work there is in each of these subsystems has grown substantially.
[00:25:00] But because we're now producing tens of thousands of units, there's also rigor and quality
[00:25:05] and testing and whatnot that has been implemented over the past couple of years which would allow
[00:25:10] us to get to this scale.
[00:25:12] But the team still remains predominantly engineers and this is some of it stems from the fact
[00:25:18] that if you solve a major problem and you have good go-to-market strategy and you're able
[00:25:23] to communicate that to the customer, then you need very little marketing.
[00:25:27] And similarly if you have very good marketing, you need much less sales.
[00:25:31] So that's the way of the progression I think about it, that if you could focus on your
[00:25:35] product, be truly differentiated, you can do less in marketing and automatically less
[00:25:40] in terms of sales staff.
[00:25:42] So our makeup is engineers, we do our development in Canada and then we have fantastic folks
[00:25:51] in the US, we have a team in the Philippines that handles some of our support and customer
[00:25:56] service.
[00:25:57] We have sourcing and sort of logistics and supply chain folks in China and we try to
[00:26:02] between those three locations really focus on how we can deliver that best customer experience
[00:26:08] to the end user.
[00:26:10] And are you selling globally now?
[00:26:11] I know the team's obviously all over but are you selling globally?
[00:26:14] Are there markets that you have an eye on?
[00:26:17] You're really excited about what Evan quite broke it into yet.
[00:26:19] What's the landscape look like for you from a market standpoint?
[00:26:22] For North America, our demand still surpasses our supply.
[00:26:26] So we're laser focused still on the US and Canada but we do get a ton of inquiries from folks
[00:26:34] in Europe, in the Middle East and Asia.
[00:26:37] We're also able to see where those units are.
[00:26:40] So kind of what I was looting to earlier on, we look a lot on our fleet metrics, our fleet
[00:26:46] on the analytics and we know where these devices are because of the weather calls.
[00:26:51] And we know that folks are finding so much utility in this device that essentially sending
[00:26:55] it to friends and then they're having it sent to them in Europe.
[00:27:00] And we're working on scaling, we're working on expansion, we'll get to Europe in the next
[00:27:06] and in the near term but focus has been a really important thing for us and it's really
[00:27:11] really helped us grow.
[00:27:13] And I think we ought to be and continue to be focused on the North American market at
[00:27:17] least for the next two years.
[00:27:19] You mentioned weather calls.
[00:27:20] One of the things that device does is actually checks the weather and modifies its functionality
[00:27:28] and performance based on the weather for your specific region, like your house.
[00:27:33] Yeah.
[00:27:34] So auto in general provides up to 50% water savings and there's two reasons for that.
[00:27:39] The first reason is just the accuracy of being able to water only where you need to.
[00:27:46] But the other part is the intelligence as you alluded to and that's where we look at
[00:27:49] the weather, both backwards and forwards and try to infer soil moisture and then based
[00:27:55] on that decide if we should water move that watering forward or delay it and then the
[00:28:01] same thing could be done for wind.
[00:28:03] So for example, if the wind is very high and there's a risk of reducing the accuracy
[00:28:09] or watering the sidewalk, then auto will also skip that that watering cycle.
[00:28:13] So the weather calls looks at temperature and humidity and sort of wind speeds and all
[00:28:19] of these different factors and makes a call as to whether it should water or not.
[00:28:24] And that together with the accuracy could provide up to 50% water savings for people that
[00:28:29] are listening who are wrapping their heads around this.
[00:28:31] You know your auto unit can go from targeting the base of a tree to water your tree to then
[00:28:38] going to your planters and then like you said sort of painting your lawn, you know really
[00:28:44] really accurately.
[00:28:45] So it's quite the accuracy is quite astounding but then you marry that with the intelligence
[00:28:51] that sort of situational intelligence about the weather.
[00:28:54] It's a really quite amazing combo.
[00:28:55] So you know we're at an amazing spot now.
[00:28:58] Your demands are stripping supply, a sentence that every entrepreneur wants to be able
[00:29:03] to speak out loud.
[00:29:06] I also get the sense that you're not one to sit still.
[00:29:11] So what's in the pipeline?
[00:29:12] What are you thinking about if I could give you a magic wand, what's the thing that you
[00:29:17] would love to be able to solve right now like where are you on this all?
[00:29:21] I think part of it is there's a grander vision of what we can do and you know that includes
[00:29:27] everything from us looking at helping folks grow vegetables and food in their own backyard
[00:29:33] you know caring for different types of vegetation, integrations into things like smart home cameras
[00:29:41] where you can use auto to humanely push away larger pests like deer and bears or whatever
[00:29:47] it might be.
[00:29:48] But right now in an immediate term there's a need for different types of solutions so that's
[00:29:53] what we have on our direct road map so you know a particular or a special solution for
[00:29:58] plants not only lawns which is what we have now.
[00:30:03] And also looking at sort of the software in the app side I believe we can drive a lot
[00:30:08] of value to our customers by helping them out with different tips as to you know one is
[00:30:13] the end of the season, the last frost one is the first frost what are sort of different
[00:30:18] points throughout the season where they need to do different things in the yard but begin
[00:30:23] to help educate our customers on these different areas of long care because if you think about
[00:30:30] the original promise this is your groundskeeper that's supposed to be handling your irrigation
[00:30:35] it handles your solution application but at the same time is able to provide you with these
[00:30:41] interesting insights which can help you better care for your yard, can help you better anticipate
[00:30:46] different weather patterns or pests that are coming down in your area.
[00:30:50] So that's our area of focus now is really around the app and then the solutions in the immediate
[00:30:55] term but we have quite a grander vision looking at things like food sustainability, smart
[00:31:01] devices in the outside of the home you know auto is uniquely positioned to develop some
[00:31:06] of these devices.
[00:31:07] If you think about smart device companies a lot of them are focused on the inside of the
[00:31:11] home nest and the eco bees and what have you and auto is developed through a lot of this
[00:31:17] reliability and focus on quality and how we develop for an extreme environment our ability
[00:31:22] to essentially have an autonomous system completely outside so everything from how you communicate
[00:31:27] with Wi-Fi are use of the solar power and that solar power optimization can really help
[00:31:34] the strong catalyst for making other smart outdoor devices.
[00:31:38] When you think about it to your point as a autonomous outdoor device that right now serves
[00:31:45] a specific function but when you open the aperture up a little bit you've got Wi-Fi connectivity
[00:31:51] you've got intelligence you've got it on your property there's a whole bunch of concentric
[00:31:56] circles around the core value proposition of water in the lot.
[00:32:00] It's really interesting.
[00:32:01] Absolutely and we always like to think about these ideas we speak to our customers we look
[00:32:07] at road maps and sort of aspirational directions we can go but at the same time as a team
[00:32:12] we're very very focused on delivering an incredible experience for existing customers and
[00:32:19] customers that have this problem.
[00:32:21] So I think we've nailed a fantastic solution for a massive problem and as part of the
[00:32:28] sort of business growth and the business success is going to be continuing to focus on
[00:32:32] that core value proposition so that in the future when we do go to develop a new product
[00:32:38] we're not taking away from the resources or from the focus that got us to that place to
[00:32:44] begin with.
[00:32:45] Well you've seen so many companies do that right where they have an incredibly strong
[00:32:50] value proposition.
[00:32:51] I think sometimes companies end up shifting and adding features because of competition
[00:32:58] that's on their heels or a bunch of other market factors but there's a point at which
[00:33:03] if you've nailed a solution to a problem and there's a strong product market fit and
[00:33:08] you have what I think is this really interesting component which is the consumable side of
[00:33:13] it and you have a multifaceted business adding nine more features potentially is more
[00:33:21] detrimental than it is beneficial.
[00:33:23] Yeah and you see also a lot of companies do that just maybe because of capital raises
[00:33:29] or because the board is pushing them and I think auto is very fortunate to have really
[00:33:35] good leadership even outside of what I focus on our board and really believes in my vision
[00:33:42] and sort of the direction and I may very traditional when it comes to company growth
[00:33:48] a core value proposition and sort of growing slowly by providing an incredible service
[00:33:54] and we've seen the effect to that now so even when it comes to marketing when it comes
[00:33:59] to growth because we focus so much on delivering an incredible and a magical experience
[00:34:05] and to your point the device is so fun to watch.
[00:34:08] We now have very much of a network effect if you think about lawn care because if you
[00:34:13] think about your neighborhood and you're taking a walk in the neighborhood and you see
[00:34:16] your neighbor one of the first things they'll show you is they'll say hey come over here let
[00:34:20] me show you this cool device that I got so we see a ton of that matter of fact as soon as
[00:34:25] we enter into a particular zip code there's almost like this the loop where it starts to grow
[00:34:30] exponentially in that zip code because people start seeing it.
[00:34:34] I think continuing to focus on that core value delivering an incredible experience
[00:34:40] then growth will come and on that sort of platform on that foundation we can grow the whole brand
[00:34:45] and start looking at other issues to solve for our customers.
[00:34:49] I've been thinking about the business since we first chatted you know there's a core product
[00:34:55] there's a consumables element to it which is I think great from a business standpoint it keeps
[00:35:00] you connected to your customers there's some recurring revenue there is there a subscription
[00:35:04] model what do people have to pay like how does the whole kind of business ecosystem work.
[00:35:09] When we were building the pricing models the business model I really didn't want it to be
[00:35:14] predatory so I mean I really wanted the stickiness of the solution or the reason that customers
[00:35:20] went on and purchased the solutions was because of the utility because they found it to be very
[00:35:25] convenient because it can enable the use of these natural solutions this is why today
[00:35:29] the auto device is completely free to run for users and the solutions are sold on a subscription
[00:35:35] basis so should customers choose to select our fertilizer or pest control even our solution that
[00:35:41] deodorizes and cleans up after dogs those are shipped by monthly so every two months you receive
[00:35:46] one bottle and they're reasonably priced are somewhere around $15 to $20 per month broken down
[00:35:53] and you know by building a business model like that it was really really important to have
[00:35:57] that sort of element because supporting a hardware device is not cheap you know when it comes to
[00:36:03] customer service cost of customer service cost of the cloud costs and even things like warranty
[00:36:09] so the auto device comes with a two-year warranty and having that subscription element of the business
[00:36:15] allows us to deliver quite an incredible value when it comes to the hardware even if someone does
[00:36:20] not subscribe so we have two-year warranty um we're quite generous on the return policies if someone
[00:36:28] does not like it and we have incredible customer support seven days a week to be able to support
[00:36:33] these devices I'll tell you that this podcast host is going to buy an auto for my lawn after meeting
[00:36:39] you and after hearing this episode I'm sure I'm not the only one tell us where listeners can go and
[00:36:44] find the product absolutely so customers can go on Instagram or Facebook at at ahtolarn so that's
[00:36:52] OTO LAWN or www.ahtolarn.com that's otolawn.com I have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversation
[00:37:05] I love your point about you know having the rigor it sounds like you're laser focused on
[00:37:13] keeping the product right keep in the product working well and growing in a way that's sustainable
[00:37:18] and it makes sense I've loved getting to know more about the product and I've loved your story
[00:37:23] I really appreciate being on today fantastic thank you for having me now
[00:37:29] thanks for listening and I hope you enjoyed the episode speaking of episodes you don't want to
[00:37:33] miss our next over the past few years we've typically featured guests whose businesses are a bit
[00:37:38] more established but the next one will feature is brand new so new in fact that we've held the
[00:37:45] episode to coincide with launch make sure you listen on April 23rd and be amongst the first
[00:37:51] people to hear the wild thing skincare story the innovation day podcast is brought to you by Studio
[00:37:58] 245 it's hosted by Neil Follett and produced by me Darryl Ebster with Chess Originals
[00:38:04] if you have any feedback comments or an idea for a guest you can reach us at Neil at innovationday.c