The promise of autonomous vehicles and machinery has been on the minds of industries, consumers and science fiction writers for many years. While advancements in AI, Robotics, Edge Computing and 5G Connectivity have gotten us closer to that vision, we are still quite far from computers solely running the show. The brain’s ability to compute and react to real-life situations is still a critical component to most operations, and companies such as Phantom Auto are working hard to combine these two forces - the advancements in machine learning and the power of human decision making, opening entire sectors of the labor force previously unseen.
In this episode of The Restless Ones, I had the pleasure of sitting with the founding partners of Phantom Auto, Elliot Katz and Shai Magzimof who are actively merging the world’s needs for autonomous machine operation and dynamic employment opportunities. With skilled labor as a key problem for their clients, Phantom specializes in creating remote controlled solutions for everything from forklifts, to factory and warehouse vehicles and more, all made possible through connecting the power of technology and human intelligence. Their work is also bridging the worker divide, allowing blue collar workers to enjoy the benefits of remote work that their counterparts enjoy, avoiding the hazardous and other physical challenges typically associated with their work.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Technology d couples Labor from location. We remove the geographic
restriction to hiring, because with remotely operated forklifts you can
have someone doing that exact same work in the exact
same warehouse but be sitting thousands of miles away. So
(00:24):
our customers are using our remote operation platform to connect
people all around the country who want need to work
with the hundreds of thousands of essential jobs that must
be filled to keep our supply chain intact. Welcome to
(00:44):
the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. As you may know,
I've spent the last fifteen years covering technology and learning
how it works, demystifying everything from massive parallel processing to
advanced robotics and everything in between. Yet it's the conversations
with some of the most forward thinking leaders, those at
(01:05):
the intersection of technology and business, that fascinate me the most.
Elliott cats and shy Magsimov are working at Phantom auto
on some really tricky challenges related to autonomous vehicles. Phantom
Auto's mission is to provide solutions that address gaps in
autonomous vehicle capabilities, and one way you can look at
(01:27):
that is how machines are very good at dealing with
a limited number of variables, but as you add more
and more variables and you make a system increasingly dynamic,
machines can struggle to keep up. Situations that a human
could handle by drawing on similar experiences or using free
(01:47):
association or trial and error are beyond machine capabilities, at
least for now anyway. And when it comes to driving
a vehicle, dynamic situations are the norm. Under controlled can
editions and autonomous system can excel, but the world is
rarely organized into such standard scenarios, and that's one area
(02:08):
where Phantom auto can help. The company creates solutions in
which a human operator can control a vehicle, such as
a forklift in a warehouse from a remote location in
real time. Using a combination of cameras, sensors, actuators and
wireless connectivity, the operator can control the vehicle as if
they were sitting in the driver's seat. I was beyond
(02:31):
excited to talk about that technology, but first I wanted
to learn more about Elliott cats, whose vision is all
about leveraging tech to make a difference in the world,
and shy Maximov, who builds solutions that make those ideas possible.
I am so excited today to have this conversation. We're
(02:52):
going to be talking about a lot of things that
I find absolutely fascinating and I want to welcome both
shy and Elliott to the restless ones. Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Ji. Thank you, thanks for having us so. First, Elliott,
I was wondering if you could start us off by
telling me a bit about how you first got interested
(03:13):
in technology. Yeah, absolutely so. I grew up in Silicon Valley,
really before it was silicon valley, but I kind of
came of edge during the first dot com boom. So
I saw from a relatively young age how quickly and
broadly technology can be adopted by society, and that's when
(03:36):
I really got interested, and and not so much in
technology for technology's sake, but really technology that could help
make broad, sweeping positive societal change. So I'm mainly attracted
to technology that I believe can create material net positive change,
(03:58):
enhancing people's safe the or their health or just the
general quality of their day to day lives. Yes, and
that DOT COM boom, that's also a time of learning,
lots of lessons. You know what is working in that
realm of technology that can make positive change in the
world versus technology that, without the proper planning, can end
(04:21):
up falling apart. Shy, I'm also curious about you. When
did you first start getting interested in tech? Yeah, I
got a slightly different story than Eliot I. I grew
up in Jerusalem, in Israel, so pretty far away from
Silicon Valley. I remember when I was six seven years old,
I used to wake up at night and see my
dad playing video games. So my dad was a video
game addict. So I saw that growing up and I
(04:42):
got into computers, playing within real time multiplayer on the computer,
connecting land and and things like that. So that's how
I got, you know, my my initial passion to computers.
I started to learn about networking communication and had a
deep passion for wireless connectivity and built on communications. Later
on I got to white combinator and went to Silicon
(05:03):
Valley for the first time. I barely spoke the language
at the time and that came in and presented the company.
We were doing at the time, some e commerce social
website that turned into a search engine that later got
acquired by Apple. So it was an interesting journey there.
But I would say, you know, for me, technology is always,
you know, something that is fascinating just seeing it and
what it could change in this world. What the things
(05:24):
that you can create and build makes you so excited
to do something that really matters. Shall you touched on
something I definitely wanted to ask you about, because having
someone who is a serial founder of companies is really
exciting for me. What is it that motivates you when
you're founding these companies? Is it just that you you
have a spark of an idea and you have to
see it to fruition? For me, it's a deep passion
(05:46):
for technology. You know, I was inspired by the Steve
Jobs and the Mark Zuckerberg of the world when I was,
you know, a teenager already, and you know then there's
solving big problems, changing the world as the results and
doing something that matters and leading teams building something that
can really, technologically speaking, make a leap in in our
day to day and how we used to do stuff.
Just a be passion for technology. Elliott, we're going to
(06:09):
be talking about things that have kind of a then
diagram overlap of autonomous vehicles. Did you become interested in
autonomous vehicles, partly because this is a technology that is
poised to have a tremendous positive impact if we get
the technology right. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, as
I said before, I'm attracted to technology that I believe
(06:32):
can create material net positive change. And when it comes
to our current status quo with passenger vehicles, for example,
more than one point three million people die from traffic
accidents every year worldwide and, to put that into a
pretty sobering perspective, that death toll is equivalent to nearly
(06:58):
eight fully loaded, seven forty seven airplanes crashing every single
day in a given year in killing everyone on board.
So you know, if that amount of planes fell out
of the sky for even a week, we would likely
shut down aviation as we know it. But for whatever
reason we've kind of just accepted the fact that a
(07:19):
certain amount of people are going to die each year
driving on our roads. And I really am a true
believer that autonomous vehicles can and eventually will change that.
It's going to take a lot of time and a
lot of hard work, obviously, to make that change, but
(07:39):
I think that, you know, given that factual backdrop, our
current status quo, it's a very worthwhile pursuit. And Elliott,
you've tapped into something that I think really helps define
restless ones, this idea of just because things are this
way now doesn't mean that's how they have to be
and that, through the application of technology, we can and
(08:00):
envision and make that change. So Elliott, the Society of
automotive engineers a while back define levels of autonomy from
zero to five. Zero being there are no real driver
assist features to speak of in the vehicle. Five being
the vehicle does everything and there's no need for human
oversight at all. When I talk to people I say
(08:22):
we're probably to maybe on the cusp of three, but
as that being too cynical, too pessimistic. Listen, we definitely
have level two vehicles out on the road today and
that's that's basically advanced driver assistance right. An easy example
is Tesla auto pilot. But when we're talking about, you know,
(08:42):
what I would call truly autonomous vehicles, we do have
an extremely small volume of level four vehicles that exists today.
A level four meaning the vehicles are truly autonomous. You
can be sitting in the back seat of the car
with no one sitting in the passenger seat or up
(09:03):
front at all, but you can only do so in
certain very specific operational design domains, which means the vehicles
can only travel at certain times a day in very
limited weather conditions and in very limited geographic areas. So
to expand to more vehicles operating in larger geographic areas,
(09:27):
in in areas where there may be rain or even
snow that is going to be very, very difficult. And
the issue is just how hard this problem is to solve,
because if you think about it, if every day today,
when you drive to work, you have to make an
unprotected left hand turn, you know that you, the driver
(09:49):
in the car, are very, very likely going to successfully
make that unprotected left turn a hundred percent of the time.
And for an autonomous vehicle it has to be the
same right and if an autonomous vehicle makes that turn
successfully nine times in a row but crashes on the
thousandth attempt, that's arguably the worst automotive grade product in history.
(10:15):
So it's an extremely high safety bar that the autonomous
vehicle players need to hit and again, it's going to
take a very long time to get there, but I
do believe that it's a very worthwhile pursuit. Yeah, shy,
can you talk a little bit about the guiding principle
early on with Phantom motto. Yeah, it comes from my
(10:35):
experience with wireless connectivity and Communication. You know, as we're
talking right now, we can be in different places at
the different times and still hear each other, see each
other and help each other. Right. And when it comes
to the future of technologies, when you look at the
four g even and then five g and sixty in
the future we're going to have more and more wireless
connectivity and infrastructure and also technologies that would allow us
(10:58):
to almost be in a different place in real time.
You're not actually going to be there physically, but you
will be able to help out. And we're looking at AI.
You know, I remember when it started Phantom, before I
came up with the idea, I started working on autonomous
system and I built my first AI application. And getting
a data set online gets you of accuracy, and then
(11:21):
everything else is getting more and more difficult as you
continue to develop your software and machine learning and practice
more data. But it doesn't just get more difficult linear,
it gets more exponential as you go towards the top.
Once you're a ninet, you need trillions of data sets.
So when we're looking at the technologies they're there. The
problem is they can't cover the entire all the use cases,
(11:41):
all the edge cases. And then I thought what if,
with low latency communication, somebody can help out? It doesn't
mean that they can jump in in the middle of driving,
but if the vehicle recognized it as a problem and
then it can slow down and stop in place, wait
until someone remotely connects to it to figure out whether
they need to to the sideway of the world or
(12:02):
continue to do something around an object that is an
obstacle that's in front of it. Broad construction areas, right,
whether conditions. So that's when I thought, you know what
if we have that human capability? So I started working
on an engine for a video communication and data that
allows you basically to see what's going on from the
sensors like human, not like a machine. Right then be
(12:22):
able to send commands back to the vehicle, assist the
vehicle or remotely driving in certain cases that are very limited,
at the speed, limited the constraints, and that basically resulted
in the idea of a human in the loop. Right.
So think about someone that can be sitting far away
from where the vehicle is and getting a request. Hey
know there's a vehicle in trouble here, can you help out?
(12:42):
They assess the situation and, depends on the conditions, they
can help out in different paths. Right some would be
a bit more involved than others. That was the general idea.
But more than that, something that we keep forgetting is
computers have been out there now for forty or fifty
years and there's still not perfect. There's no single computer
syst them that you can say hey, no, that can
never fail. It's a hundred percent secure from anything in
(13:05):
any bugs, any edge cases, and I think that combination
of machines and human at the same time is the strongest.
If we can work together to accomplish autonomy, it's going
to be much better and it's not this kind of
a vivid idea of like a rosy picture of people
and computers. I think we practice it every day when
we're working on our computers and we see that there's
certain things that we still gotta do, and I believe
(13:27):
it that and I think that's not going to change.
I think that's going to be the next couple of
decades to come. We're still going to need to have
human in the loop in every computer system, especially mission
critical systems that we all depended on and we need
that for our psychology and we need that to make
them work and we need that to really deploy autonomous
vehicles at scale. That's it must have. Yeah, you've touched
on so much that I love to talk about on
(13:48):
this show, like I love the idea of Ai being
more about augmented intelligence, where the AI and the humans
are working together so that the AI is an a
willing people to do their jobs better than they could before,
as opposed to the AI has stepped in and humans
have become unnecessary. I find it phenomenal that the convergence
(14:10):
and technologies have enabled this approach, largely in the sense
of of that low latency, because that was, I think,
a huge hurdle for us to overcome, and we're entering
into a world where we're getting that same sort of
low latency, high throughput capability, but now we're not constrained
by tethers, which obviously, in the in the case of
(14:32):
being able to potentially control a car remotely, is absolutely critical. Right.
You can't have any latency there. When you're talking about
moving a vehicle that has some form of cargo in it,
whether it's people or products or whatever, and there are
other vehicles on that road as well. There are real
time events that are happening, so you have to be
able to see and react in that real time as
(14:54):
if you were physically behind the wheel of the car.
I'm very curious about what your approach was to ensure
that low latency, to enable this technology. Right. So we
can talk about the approach of specifically how we solve
for low latency and communication, but before we get there,
I think just taking a look at the history, right.
(15:15):
So we started a couple of decades ago. I think
even when I was a child, like ten years ago,
video communication like the one we're having now, you know,
that didn't exist at the time, and let alone like
twenty years ago, when it was only just giant phones,
when I don't even have to make a phone call
and you barely can hear the other person, you know.
So you can see that there's progress and evolution around
communication that is definitely trending in the right direction to
(15:37):
enable things like that. If you read online about five
g low latency capabilities and and in the future of
things like six G, everything points that we're working on
getting low latency communication. So first of all places or
areas where it may not be the case yet, it
will happen eventually and we're a big believer in that.
So that's number one. Number two is the design of
(15:57):
the vehicle. We believe that the vehicle safety sensor system
must be intact in order for a remote operator to
get in. So meaning if the safety system is disabled
or not working or as a problem that dissevered with
the vehicle, the human operator will not intervene with the vehicle.
They can guide, they can give some information, some logs
and pointing a direction to the vehicle, but they can't
(16:18):
really drive it. They can only drive it when the
safety system is working, and the safety system is the
baseline protection of the vehicle. That's how we should think
about it, almost like a guardian. Think about like a
circle around the vehicle, like your Aida System Today, and
the idea is that the remote operator can communicate with
that system and say, Hey, you know, you're now detecting
an object, but listen, if you reduce that distance from
(16:41):
an object but another a couple of inches backwards, closer
to the vehicle, then you will be allowed to proceed. Right.
So that that's a huge idea. Now it's all within
predefined area of operation. So again we have a guardian
for the vehicle, and this is one of the reasons
why we are not working with forklifts in warehouses, where
you don't have that same problem like auton was vehicles,
(17:02):
where their safety systems are just not not there yet.
You know, they're overly conservative. You can't really adjust them
because there's too much risk on the table. And we're
looking at the forklift in the warehouse. The speed is
much lower, so you're allowed to work together with the
safety system to achieve the task, which is to drive
to somewhere, pick up a palette, places on the racks
or load the truck and so on. Some places really
(17:23):
have a bad network right as five g continues to
roll out in different places all around the country. We
have a niche today that we're very successful at and
we're proud that we're making impact in the labor and
logistics where the market really needs Phantom today, and that's
in closed environment. Right. So in the closed environment, when
you have a warehouse or the yard operation areas where
(17:45):
you can actually install better network conditions, you know if
you have an issue with the networking, you know, you
map the network, you see that there's not enough bandwidth
for upload or download and and basically your request to
get a better network conditions in this specific area. And
there we go. So that's the infrastructure side. Now the
text site. We have the ability to bond multiple networks.
You can think of it as it can be a
couple of networks together. Each packet of our software is
(18:09):
being sent to the best network available, right. So you
have basically packets routing and each package that its own criticality. Right.
So if you have a data channel versus a video
channel and the data is to break system, so you
have to have that over all the channels, to have
multiple redundancy layers where you know something that is less important. Right.
So we have some prioritization and bonding systems that would
build some deep technology and I P that. You know,
(18:31):
we spent a lot of time with money working on
the first couple of years of the company. That same
technology works for cars, for trucks, for forklifts, for you know,
delivery robots, and we believe again, as the future and
infrastructure continuous to evolve, that's going to apply there as well.
And I definitely want to talk more about the forklifts
in particular. Can you talk a bit about some of
(18:52):
the challenges that this remote operation helps solve? I know
that like labor shortage being a huge one, obviously. So,
first of all, we are squarely in the logistics sector.
Our hottest application right now is remotely operated forklifts. We
also do work with yard trucks and distribution center yards and,
(19:13):
first and last, mild delivery with robots. But when you're
talking about the logistics space, you hit the nail on
the head right. There's been a labor shortage in the
sector for decades. That's become much more acute in the
past couple of years, in which many believe, for a
myriad of factors, is our new status quo. And our
(19:35):
customers have traditionally had to hire, for example, forklift operators
that are in commuting distance of their facilities. But our
Technology d couples Labor from location right we remove the
geographic restriction to hiring because with remotely operated forklifts you
(19:57):
can have someone doing that exact same work in the
exact same warehouse but be sitting, you know, up to
thousands of miles away. So instead of having to hire
people only within commuting distance of the facility. We're turning
that Labor pool into literally anyone located pretty much anywhere.
(20:19):
So our customers are using our remote operation platform to
connect people all around the country who want need to
work right especially coming out of the pandemic, with the
hundreds of thousands of essential jobs that must be filled
to keep our supply chain intact. Labor is the key
(20:43):
top line problem right now for our customer base. Yeah,
I didn't have a deep appreciation for how delicate the
supply chain was until the pandemic and we saw the
disruption of the supply chain acted out on a global scale,
affecting every industry, particular lead computer and Electronics Industries, as
the semiconductor shortage exacerbated that problem, and I realized that
(21:08):
you could think of the supply chain operating almost like
an electric utility and that it's frequently operating near Max
capacity and that anything that would push it beyond that.
Suddenly you realize how delicate the system was and when
you pair that also with this growing trend of a
desire to work remotely, which is happening both in white
(21:31):
color and blue color jobs, you realize that this is
also a solution for that as well, where it enables
people to have that kind of life where they are
able to work remotely. If covid taught us anything, it's that,
you know, remote work is probably here to stay. Right
the face of work, I believe, has changed forever, but
(21:52):
times like Covid have taught us that there are times
when remote work isn't just a nice to have, it
is a half to have. And what we're doing is
we're providing warehouse workers that same privilege to work remotely. Right,
I think that we have an ability to positively impact
(22:14):
the lives of, you know, the backbone of our supply chain,
these warehouse workers, while at the same time providing a
technology to their employers that is solving one of their
major challenges, which is not only finding labor but retaining
that Labor right, because a lot of times working in
(22:36):
a warehouse is really hard work in a pretty tough environment,
and their safety issues. To write. One in ten forklifts
are involved in a in an accident each year which
can cause, you know, serious injury, sometimes even death, unfortunately.
So if you can remove those operators out of that
potentially hazardous and definitely uncomfortable environment in put them into
(23:01):
an office environment where they're sitting with other colleagues and
they're doing the exact same job, but you know, it's
seventy degrees and they can have a cup of coffee
while doing that. We strongly believe that that is going
to be preferred by both sides, meaning the employers, the
companies and also their workforce. Conventional Thinking says you have
(23:25):
to pay more to get more. I want the world,
but t mobile for business uses unconventional thinking to deliver
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(23:46):
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T MOBILE DOT COM. Moving on to dad, because that
has become the currency of the modern world. How does
data gathering and analysis play a part in your strategy?
(24:09):
This is a great question. I think we're only scratching
the surface when it comes to the data in general
in this world and we're looking at specifically what Phantom
is doing, and you know autnoms vehicles collect data today
with drivers that are sitting as safety drivers in the vehicle, right,
and you have to practice and drive with people in
order to collect data, to teach the machine how to
(24:30):
drive without people. Are Approaches saying, you know, if you
can get to commerce and really operate in the way
that creates value, true value, not just a safety drivers
sitting there without any value for for people or consumer
or logistics, you know in our case, and then collect
that same data while the vehicles being operated remotely and
contributing value to the warehouse or to the road. It's
(24:53):
such an amazing model. You're basically getting paid two collect
data on the system and you can practice with this data.
But even more than that, what's interesting is you can
use models in the cloud that read that data and
respond back with what they would do during this time
of operation. Let's say a model that needs to compute
(25:16):
the best path for the vehicle, and you can also
magic with what actually happened with the remote operator guidance
for the vehicles. They'll say if it's in the forklift
in the warehouse, right. So you basically have this kind
of training. said that, not only is being collecting the data,
but can also train in the back end and compare
the results of the bottom line. So it's such a
great way to get into the market. I think of
(25:37):
it like an entry point that is very business effective.
I mean there are many ways to collect data. The
problem is they're not really effective when it comes to
cost right you just have to spend a lot that
you have safety drivers and vehicles driving around for no value. That,
I would say. Again, we're the early phases there of
that technology. I think in the future we're going to
see more. There's a lot of discussions about edge technology.
If it's the autonomy is going to sit in the
(25:59):
vehicle or some of it is going to be in
the cloud, it's probably going to be a combination of
the two. It's just like our Syria on our phone.
And again that back to the communication infrastructure and connectivity.
Nothing can be deployed without connectivity and build time communication.
So it's a backward necessity for the vehicle to begin with.
So why not use it to gather board data and move,
you know, create value at the meantime? Elliott, you mentioned earlier,
(26:22):
right at the top of the show, that you were
really interested in technologies and solutions that can have real
material change, positive change, in the world, and I'm curious
is there any sort of specific challenge, like maybe even
a global challenge, that you would really like to approach
an attempt to solve, either through Phantom auto or through
some other venture down the line? Yeah, absolutely. When you
(26:46):
talk about operating a forklift right, this is a dangerous job.
Want in ten operators get into an accident each year,
severe injuries, even death, and so if you can move
those people out of harm's way, out of that potentially
dangerous environment and into an office environment, that is a
(27:08):
huge win. In addition to expanding the Labor Pool for
our customers, we're also diversifying that Labor Pool. So we have,
you know, people working for us today that are able
to remotely operate forklifts. One is a wheelchair user. He
(27:30):
was injured during his service in the military, so you
know he he would not be able to operate a
forklift in the way that one you know drives a
forklift in a warehouse today, but he can remotely operate.
We also have neurodiverse individuals, operators that have autism, and
(27:52):
we are quite literally bringing jobs into their homes where
they're fantastic remote operate leaders. They can do this from
their homes, they can operate vehicles across the country, and
so there's real impact here. Obviously we have primary goals.
The first goal is to kind of change the face
(28:15):
of work and hopefully build a game changing business around
doing that. But the second goal, which is equally as important,
is that aspect of positive societal impact. If we can
really make positive change for different individuals along the way
and open up new avenues for people to do work
(28:37):
where they formerly could not operate machinery of this nature,
that's the real win win for us. Yeah, that's phenomenal, Elliott.
I mean this idea of the technology not just enabling
business solutions but also addressing things like accessibility and providing
an outlet for employment for people who are completely capable
(28:58):
of doing the job. It's inspirational because we're looking even
beyond the critical role that this plays for business operations
to remain intact. Before I could let my guests go,
I needed to ask Elliott cats shy maximum one more thing.
(29:20):
We call the show the restless ones and I have
my own definition of what a restless one is when
it comes to things like leadership and in technology. But, shy,
I will start with you. I'm curious when you hear
that term the restless ones, what comes to your mind? Wow,
that's a that's an important question. First, it's really about working,
(29:42):
not just for the sake of making money, but really
having ambission, having an ambition and inspiration, something to work
for that is beyond what's out there. We just talked
about this wheelchair and artistic people that work at Phantom.
I would work day, night and weekends if needed to
make sure that those people get jobs, because the is
something that can make a change that is positive in
(30:03):
the world. So restless for me it's making sure that
your mission and in the vision, you're doing everything you
can to achieve it. Thank you. Shy Elliott, same question.
What does being a restless one mean to you? Yeah,
it's a very interesting question in the way I would
interpret it personally. To kind of tie together all the
(30:25):
threads here, I consider myself a big thinker and I'd
like to think that the things that I put my
mind to and really put my time and effort into,
I want them to have real purpose. And Shy and
I are co founders of Phantom, but we have very
different skill sets right, as I mentioned before, he's been
(30:48):
an engineer basically since his bar Mitzvah. I had a
certain vision, I had a certain idea, a way that
I saw the world away that I could make impact,
and I happened to be lucky enough to meet someone
who not only shared the same vision but, from a
technical perspective, could put that vision into motion. So I
(31:14):
was restless in the sense that, hey, this is something
that just makes sense to me, and I think Shay
was restless in the sense that, you know, not only
is this something that makes sense, it's something that's technically feasible,
it's technically possible, and so when you get two people
like that with a similar vision in the room, we're
(31:36):
gonna be just restless enough to make it happen, because
for us, we can't sit here and think about what
if we have to create our own offense. We have
to make that reality happen and it's what we think
about all day, every day. Yeah, I just go back
to that thought of just because things have been done
(31:59):
this way doesn't mean that's the only way they can
be done, and that when you adopt that as your
philosophy and you realize that this is an opportunity to
experiment and to attempt new things and to innovate. The
results end up being phenomenal. Even in the failures, you
learn right like even then. You you learn things like, well,
(32:21):
now I know to go a different way, but if
you've never if you just accept how things are done,
then there's no growth, there's no learning and there's no change.
I couldn't agree more and I think that phantom motto
in most ways is no different than any other startup.
And the way I I typically think about it is
at a big company you can hit singles all day,
(32:43):
but if you want to take a really big swing
in the bat, if you want to attempt to hit
a grand slam and really change the status quo, like
if we succeed in the way that we want to succeed,
we will change the face of work. Mean people that
formerly had to go into warehouses and distribution centers every
(33:05):
day and work in these environments and work in these
conditions will have a better quality of life. And we
believe that because, also for our customers, the business case
pencils so beautifully that this can really create rapid change
and we just can't take those swings of a bat.
(33:26):
When you're in a large system, you have to have
this startup environment where it's encouraged to not only think
differently but act on that. Thank you. And so we've
done it thus far for almost five years, and we
really hope to continue to do it for many more
years and remain restless and thus create that change. Gosh,
(33:48):
I can't think of a better way to conclude this episode.
Elliott shy, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
Thank you for this conversation. It was even more or
inspirational and invigorating than I had anticipated, and I have
to tell you my expectations were set pretty darn high. Well,
(34:08):
thank you, Jonathan. We really appreciate you having us on.
It's always a pleasure to speak with leaders in tech
who have incredible drive, no pun intended, and it was
obvious to me that shy and Elliott have that drive.
Their collaboration is inspiring. Identifying a real world challenge and
(34:32):
then building a solution to meet it, and to know
they were working on these technologies before the issues with
supply chain stability had become undeniable shows how forward thinking
they are. It's also incredible to think that wireless connectivity
has reached a level in which someone can operate a
vehicle in real time from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
(34:53):
I would refer to this use case as a reason
why low latency connectivity is transformative. It opens up possibilities
that would have been science fiction a decade ago, and
that's before you even touch on what options open up
when you have access not just to low latency but
high throughput. I really do believe we are on the
cusp of an era of unprecedented innovation. Making use of
(35:18):
five g technology and beyond will usher in a world
in which data analysis, automation and remote Operation Change Everything.
These are the elements that are necessary in a world
where working from home becomes the new norm, and we'll
discover that through careful use of these technologies, we can
actually improve operations, make our work more efficient and cut
(35:40):
costs and ease pain points along the way. Thanks again
to Elliott cats and shy Maximov for joining the restless ones,
and be sure to join us on future episodes. We're
I'll talk with more leaders in the tech industry. I'll
see you then, m t mobile, for business knows, companies
(36:04):
want more than a one size fits all approach to support.
I want the world. So we provide three sixty support
customized to your business. From discovery through post deployment. You'll
get a dedicated account team and expertise from solutions engineers
and industry advisors already, right now. I want it now.
(36:25):
Three sixty support that's customized for your success. That's unconventional
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Technology d couples Labor from location. We remove the geographic
restriction to hiring, because with remotely operated forklifts you can
have someone doing that exact same work in the exact
same warehouse but be sitting thousands of miles away. So
(00:24):
our customers are using our remote operation platform to connect
people all around the country who want need to work
with the hundreds of thousands of essential jobs that must
be filled to keep our supply chain intact. Welcome to
(00:44):
the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. As you may know,
I've spent the last fifteen years covering technology and learning
how it works, demystifying everything from massive parallel processing to
advanced robotics and everything in between. Yet it's the conversations
with some of the most forward thinking leaders, those at
(01:05):
the intersection of technology and business, that fascinate me the most.
Elliott cats and shy Magsimov are working at Phantom auto
on some really tricky challenges related to autonomous vehicles. Phantom
Auto's mission is to provide solutions that address gaps in
autonomous vehicle capabilities, and one way you can look at
(01:27):
that is how machines are very good at dealing with
a limited number of variables, but as you add more
and more variables and you make a system increasingly dynamic,
machines can struggle to keep up. Situations that a human
could handle by drawing on similar experiences or using free
(01:47):
association or trial and error are beyond machine capabilities, at
least for now anyway. And when it comes to driving
a vehicle, dynamic situations are the norm. Under controlled can
editions and autonomous system can excel, but the world is
rarely organized into such standard scenarios, and that's one area
(02:08):
where Phantom auto can help. The company creates solutions in
which a human operator can control a vehicle, such as
a forklift in a warehouse from a remote location in
real time. Using a combination of cameras, sensors, actuators and
wireless connectivity, the operator can control the vehicle as if
they were sitting in the driver's seat. I was beyond
(02:31):
excited to talk about that technology, but first I wanted
to learn more about Elliott cats, whose vision is all
about leveraging tech to make a difference in the world,
and shy Maximov, who builds solutions that make those ideas possible.
I am so excited today to have this conversation. We're
(02:52):
going to be talking about a lot of things that
I find absolutely fascinating and I want to welcome both
shy and Elliott to the restless ones. Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Ji. Thank you, thanks for having us so. First, Elliott,
I was wondering if you could start us off by
telling me a bit about how you first got interested
(03:13):
in technology. Yeah, absolutely so. I grew up in Silicon Valley,
really before it was silicon valley, but I kind of
came of edge during the first dot com boom. So
I saw from a relatively young age how quickly and
broadly technology can be adopted by society, and that's when
(03:36):
I really got interested, and and not so much in
technology for technology's sake, but really technology that could help
make broad, sweeping positive societal change. So I'm mainly attracted
to technology that I believe can create material net positive change,
(03:58):
enhancing people's safe the or their health or just the
general quality of their day to day lives. Yes, and
that DOT COM boom, that's also a time of learning,
lots of lessons. You know what is working in that
realm of technology that can make positive change in the
world versus technology that, without the proper planning, can end
(04:21):
up falling apart. Shy, I'm also curious about you. When
did you first start getting interested in tech? Yeah, I
got a slightly different story than Eliot I. I grew
up in Jerusalem, in Israel, so pretty far away from
Silicon Valley. I remember when I was six seven years old,
I used to wake up at night and see my
dad playing video games. So my dad was a video
game addict. So I saw that growing up and I
(04:42):
got into computers, playing within real time multiplayer on the computer,
connecting land and and things like that. So that's how
I got, you know, my my initial passion to computers.
I started to learn about networking communication and had a
deep passion for wireless connectivity and built on communications. Later
on I got to white combinator and went to Silicon
(05:03):
Valley for the first time. I barely spoke the language
at the time and that came in and presented the company.
We were doing at the time, some e commerce social
website that turned into a search engine that later got
acquired by Apple. So it was an interesting journey there.
But I would say, you know, for me, technology is always,
you know, something that is fascinating just seeing it and
what it could change in this world. What the things
(05:24):
that you can create and build makes you so excited
to do something that really matters. Shall you touched on
something I definitely wanted to ask you about, because having
someone who is a serial founder of companies is really
exciting for me. What is it that motivates you when
you're founding these companies? Is it just that you you
have a spark of an idea and you have to
see it to fruition? For me, it's a deep passion
(05:46):
for technology. You know, I was inspired by the Steve
Jobs and the Mark Zuckerberg of the world when I was,
you know, a teenager already, and you know then there's
solving big problems, changing the world as the results and
doing something that matters and leading teams building something that
can really, technologically speaking, make a leap in in our
day to day and how we used to do stuff.
Just a be passion for technology. Elliott, we're going to
(06:09):
be talking about things that have kind of a then
diagram overlap of autonomous vehicles. Did you become interested in
autonomous vehicles, partly because this is a technology that is
poised to have a tremendous positive impact if we get
the technology right. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, as
I said before, I'm attracted to technology that I believe
(06:32):
can create material net positive change. And when it comes
to our current status quo with passenger vehicles, for example,
more than one point three million people die from traffic
accidents every year worldwide and, to put that into a
pretty sobering perspective, that death toll is equivalent to nearly
(06:58):
eight fully loaded, seven forty seven airplanes crashing every single
day in a given year in killing everyone on board.
So you know, if that amount of planes fell out
of the sky for even a week, we would likely
shut down aviation as we know it. But for whatever
reason we've kind of just accepted the fact that a
(07:19):
certain amount of people are going to die each year
driving on our roads. And I really am a true
believer that autonomous vehicles can and eventually will change that.
It's going to take a lot of time and a
lot of hard work, obviously, to make that change, but
(07:39):
I think that, you know, given that factual backdrop, our
current status quo, it's a very worthwhile pursuit. And Elliott,
you've tapped into something that I think really helps define
restless ones, this idea of just because things are this
way now doesn't mean that's how they have to be
and that, through the application of technology, we can and
(08:00):
envision and make that change. So Elliott, the Society of
automotive engineers a while back define levels of autonomy from
zero to five. Zero being there are no real driver
assist features to speak of in the vehicle. Five being
the vehicle does everything and there's no need for human
oversight at all. When I talk to people I say
(08:22):
we're probably to maybe on the cusp of three, but
as that being too cynical, too pessimistic. Listen, we definitely
have level two vehicles out on the road today and
that's that's basically advanced driver assistance right. An easy example
is Tesla auto pilot. But when we're talking about, you know,
(08:42):
what I would call truly autonomous vehicles, we do have
an extremely small volume of level four vehicles that exists today.
A level four meaning the vehicles are truly autonomous. You
can be sitting in the back seat of the car
with no one sitting in the passenger seat or up
(09:03):
front at all, but you can only do so in
certain very specific operational design domains, which means the vehicles
can only travel at certain times a day in very
limited weather conditions and in very limited geographic areas. So
to expand to more vehicles operating in larger geographic areas,
(09:27):
in in areas where there may be rain or even
snow that is going to be very, very difficult. And
the issue is just how hard this problem is to solve,
because if you think about it, if every day today,
when you drive to work, you have to make an
unprotected left hand turn, you know that you, the driver
(09:49):
in the car, are very, very likely going to successfully
make that unprotected left turn a hundred percent of the time.
And for an autonomous vehicle it has to be the
same right and if an autonomous vehicle makes that turn
successfully nine times in a row but crashes on the
thousandth attempt, that's arguably the worst automotive grade product in history.
(10:15):
So it's an extremely high safety bar that the autonomous
vehicle players need to hit and again, it's going to
take a very long time to get there, but I
do believe that it's a very worthwhile pursuit. Yeah, shy,
can you talk a little bit about the guiding principle
early on with Phantom motto. Yeah, it comes from my
(10:35):
experience with wireless connectivity and Communication. You know, as we're
talking right now, we can be in different places at
the different times and still hear each other, see each
other and help each other. Right. And when it comes
to the future of technologies, when you look at the
four g even and then five g and sixty in
the future we're going to have more and more wireless
connectivity and infrastructure and also technologies that would allow us
(10:58):
to almost be in a different place in real time.
You're not actually going to be there physically, but you
will be able to help out. And we're looking at AI.
You know, I remember when it started Phantom, before I
came up with the idea, I started working on autonomous
system and I built my first AI application. And getting
a data set online gets you of accuracy, and then
(11:21):
everything else is getting more and more difficult as you
continue to develop your software and machine learning and practice
more data. But it doesn't just get more difficult linear,
it gets more exponential as you go towards the top.
Once you're a ninet, you need trillions of data sets.
So when we're looking at the technologies they're there. The
problem is they can't cover the entire all the use cases,
(11:41):
all the edge cases. And then I thought what if,
with low latency communication, somebody can help out? It doesn't
mean that they can jump in in the middle of driving,
but if the vehicle recognized it as a problem and
then it can slow down and stop in place, wait
until someone remotely connects to it to figure out whether
they need to to the sideway of the world or
(12:02):
continue to do something around an object that is an
obstacle that's in front of it. Broad construction areas, right,
whether conditions. So that's when I thought, you know what
if we have that human capability? So I started working
on an engine for a video communication and data that
allows you basically to see what's going on from the
sensors like human, not like a machine. Right then be
(12:22):
able to send commands back to the vehicle, assist the
vehicle or remotely driving in certain cases that are very limited,
at the speed, limited the constraints, and that basically resulted
in the idea of a human in the loop. Right.
So think about someone that can be sitting far away
from where the vehicle is and getting a request. Hey
know there's a vehicle in trouble here, can you help out?
(12:42):
They assess the situation and, depends on the conditions, they
can help out in different paths. Right some would be
a bit more involved than others. That was the general idea.
But more than that, something that we keep forgetting is
computers have been out there now for forty or fifty
years and there's still not perfect. There's no single computer
syst them that you can say hey, no, that can
never fail. It's a hundred percent secure from anything in
(13:05):
any bugs, any edge cases, and I think that combination
of machines and human at the same time is the strongest.
If we can work together to accomplish autonomy, it's going
to be much better and it's not this kind of
a vivid idea of like a rosy picture of people
and computers. I think we practice it every day when
we're working on our computers and we see that there's
certain things that we still gotta do, and I believe
(13:27):
it that and I think that's not going to change.
I think that's going to be the next couple of
decades to come. We're still going to need to have
human in the loop in every computer system, especially mission
critical systems that we all depended on and we need
that for our psychology and we need that to make
them work and we need that to really deploy autonomous
vehicles at scale. That's it must have. Yeah, you've touched
on so much that I love to talk about on
(13:48):
this show, like I love the idea of Ai being
more about augmented intelligence, where the AI and the humans
are working together so that the AI is an a
willing people to do their jobs better than they could before,
as opposed to the AI has stepped in and humans
have become unnecessary. I find it phenomenal that the convergence
(14:10):
and technologies have enabled this approach, largely in the sense
of of that low latency, because that was, I think,
a huge hurdle for us to overcome, and we're entering
into a world where we're getting that same sort of
low latency, high throughput capability, but now we're not constrained
by tethers, which obviously, in the in the case of
(14:32):
being able to potentially control a car remotely, is absolutely critical. Right.
You can't have any latency there. When you're talking about
moving a vehicle that has some form of cargo in it,
whether it's people or products or whatever, and there are
other vehicles on that road as well. There are real
time events that are happening, so you have to be
able to see and react in that real time as
(14:54):
if you were physically behind the wheel of the car.
I'm very curious about what your approach was to ensure
that low latency, to enable this technology. Right. So we
can talk about the approach of specifically how we solve
for low latency and communication, but before we get there,
I think just taking a look at the history, right.
(15:15):
So we started a couple of decades ago. I think
even when I was a child, like ten years ago,
video communication like the one we're having now, you know,
that didn't exist at the time, and let alone like
twenty years ago, when it was only just giant phones,
when I don't even have to make a phone call
and you barely can hear the other person, you know.
So you can see that there's progress and evolution around
communication that is definitely trending in the right direction to
(15:37):
enable things like that. If you read online about five
g low latency capabilities and and in the future of
things like six G, everything points that we're working on
getting low latency communication. So first of all places or
areas where it may not be the case yet, it
will happen eventually and we're a big believer in that.
So that's number one. Number two is the design of
(15:57):
the vehicle. We believe that the vehicle safety sensor system
must be intact in order for a remote operator to
get in. So meaning if the safety system is disabled
or not working or as a problem that dissevered with
the vehicle, the human operator will not intervene with the vehicle.
They can guide, they can give some information, some logs
and pointing a direction to the vehicle, but they can't
(16:18):
really drive it. They can only drive it when the
safety system is working, and the safety system is the
baseline protection of the vehicle. That's how we should think
about it, almost like a guardian. Think about like a
circle around the vehicle, like your Aida System Today, and
the idea is that the remote operator can communicate with
that system and say, Hey, you know, you're now detecting
an object, but listen, if you reduce that distance from
(16:41):
an object but another a couple of inches backwards, closer
to the vehicle, then you will be allowed to proceed. Right.
So that that's a huge idea. Now it's all within
predefined area of operation. So again we have a guardian
for the vehicle, and this is one of the reasons
why we are not working with forklifts in warehouses, where
you don't have that same problem like auton was vehicles,
(17:02):
where their safety systems are just not not there yet.
You know, they're overly conservative. You can't really adjust them
because there's too much risk on the table. And we're
looking at the forklift in the warehouse. The speed is
much lower, so you're allowed to work together with the
safety system to achieve the task, which is to drive
to somewhere, pick up a palette, places on the racks
or load the truck and so on. Some places really
(17:23):
have a bad network right as five g continues to
roll out in different places all around the country. We
have a niche today that we're very successful at and
we're proud that we're making impact in the labor and
logistics where the market really needs Phantom today, and that's
in closed environment. Right. So in the closed environment, when
you have a warehouse or the yard operation areas where
(17:45):
you can actually install better network conditions, you know if
you have an issue with the networking, you know, you
map the network, you see that there's not enough bandwidth
for upload or download and and basically your request to
get a better network conditions in this specific area. And
there we go. So that's the infrastructure side. Now the
text site. We have the ability to bond multiple networks.
You can think of it as it can be a
couple of networks together. Each packet of our software is
(18:09):
being sent to the best network available, right. So you
have basically packets routing and each package that its own criticality. Right.
So if you have a data channel versus a video
channel and the data is to break system, so you
have to have that over all the channels, to have
multiple redundancy layers where you know something that is less important. Right.
So we have some prioritization and bonding systems that would
build some deep technology and I P that. You know,
(18:31):
we spent a lot of time with money working on
the first couple of years of the company. That same
technology works for cars, for trucks, for forklifts, for you know,
delivery robots, and we believe again, as the future and
infrastructure continuous to evolve, that's going to apply there as well.
And I definitely want to talk more about the forklifts
in particular. Can you talk a bit about some of
(18:52):
the challenges that this remote operation helps solve? I know
that like labor shortage being a huge one, obviously. So,
first of all, we are squarely in the logistics sector.
Our hottest application right now is remotely operated forklifts. We
also do work with yard trucks and distribution center yards and,
(19:13):
first and last, mild delivery with robots. But when you're
talking about the logistics space, you hit the nail on
the head right. There's been a labor shortage in the
sector for decades. That's become much more acute in the
past couple of years, in which many believe, for a
myriad of factors, is our new status quo. And our
(19:35):
customers have traditionally had to hire, for example, forklift operators
that are in commuting distance of their facilities. But our
Technology d couples Labor from location right we remove the
geographic restriction to hiring because with remotely operated forklifts you
(19:57):
can have someone doing that exact same work in the
exact same warehouse but be sitting, you know, up to
thousands of miles away. So instead of having to hire
people only within commuting distance of the facility. We're turning
that Labor pool into literally anyone located pretty much anywhere.
(20:19):
So our customers are using our remote operation platform to
connect people all around the country who want need to
work right especially coming out of the pandemic, with the
hundreds of thousands of essential jobs that must be filled
to keep our supply chain intact. Labor is the key
(20:43):
top line problem right now for our customer base. Yeah,
I didn't have a deep appreciation for how delicate the
supply chain was until the pandemic and we saw the
disruption of the supply chain acted out on a global scale,
affecting every industry, particular lead computer and Electronics Industries, as
the semiconductor shortage exacerbated that problem, and I realized that
(21:08):
you could think of the supply chain operating almost like
an electric utility and that it's frequently operating near Max
capacity and that anything that would push it beyond that.
Suddenly you realize how delicate the system was and when
you pair that also with this growing trend of a
desire to work remotely, which is happening both in white
(21:31):
color and blue color jobs, you realize that this is
also a solution for that as well, where it enables
people to have that kind of life where they are
able to work remotely. If covid taught us anything, it's that,
you know, remote work is probably here to stay. Right
the face of work, I believe, has changed forever, but
(21:52):
times like Covid have taught us that there are times
when remote work isn't just a nice to have, it
is a half to have. And what we're doing is
we're providing warehouse workers that same privilege to work remotely. Right,
I think that we have an ability to positively impact
(22:14):
the lives of, you know, the backbone of our supply chain,
these warehouse workers, while at the same time providing a
technology to their employers that is solving one of their
major challenges, which is not only finding labor but retaining
that Labor right, because a lot of times working in
(22:36):
a warehouse is really hard work in a pretty tough environment,
and their safety issues. To write. One in ten forklifts
are involved in a in an accident each year which
can cause, you know, serious injury, sometimes even death, unfortunately.
So if you can remove those operators out of that
potentially hazardous and definitely uncomfortable environment in put them into
(23:01):
an office environment where they're sitting with other colleagues and
they're doing the exact same job, but you know, it's
seventy degrees and they can have a cup of coffee
while doing that. We strongly believe that that is going
to be preferred by both sides, meaning the employers, the
companies and also their workforce. Conventional Thinking says you have
(23:25):
to pay more to get more. I want the world,
but t mobile for business uses unconventional thinking to deliver
premium benefits for better R O I, from customized five
g solutions to three sixty support. We help you reach
your business goals right now. I want it now, innovating
to improve business today and tomorrow. That's unconventional thinking from
(23:46):
t mobile for business. Capable device required covers are available
in some areas. Some US require certain planter features. C
T MOBILE DOT COM. Moving on to dad, because that
has become the currency of the modern world. How does
data gathering and analysis play a part in your strategy?
(24:09):
This is a great question. I think we're only scratching
the surface when it comes to the data in general
in this world and we're looking at specifically what Phantom
is doing, and you know autnoms vehicles collect data today
with drivers that are sitting as safety drivers in the vehicle, right,
and you have to practice and drive with people in
order to collect data, to teach the machine how to
(24:30):
drive without people. Are Approaches saying, you know, if you
can get to commerce and really operate in the way
that creates value, true value, not just a safety drivers
sitting there without any value for for people or consumer
or logistics, you know in our case, and then collect
that same data while the vehicles being operated remotely and
contributing value to the warehouse or to the road. It's
(24:53):
such an amazing model. You're basically getting paid two collect
data on the system and you can practice with this data.
But even more than that, what's interesting is you can
use models in the cloud that read that data and
respond back with what they would do during this time
of operation. Let's say a model that needs to compute
(25:16):
the best path for the vehicle, and you can also
magic with what actually happened with the remote operator guidance
for the vehicles. They'll say if it's in the forklift
in the warehouse, right. So you basically have this kind
of training. said that, not only is being collecting the data,
but can also train in the back end and compare
the results of the bottom line. So it's such a
great way to get into the market. I think of
(25:37):
it like an entry point that is very business effective.
I mean there are many ways to collect data. The
problem is they're not really effective when it comes to
cost right you just have to spend a lot that
you have safety drivers and vehicles driving around for no value. That,
I would say. Again, we're the early phases there of
that technology. I think in the future we're going to
see more. There's a lot of discussions about edge technology.
If it's the autonomy is going to sit in the
(25:59):
vehicle or some of it is going to be in
the cloud, it's probably going to be a combination of
the two. It's just like our Syria on our phone.
And again that back to the communication infrastructure and connectivity.
Nothing can be deployed without connectivity and build time communication.
So it's a backward necessity for the vehicle to begin with.
So why not use it to gather board data and move,
you know, create value at the meantime? Elliott, you mentioned earlier,
(26:22):
right at the top of the show, that you were
really interested in technologies and solutions that can have real
material change, positive change, in the world, and I'm curious
is there any sort of specific challenge, like maybe even
a global challenge, that you would really like to approach
an attempt to solve, either through Phantom auto or through
some other venture down the line? Yeah, absolutely. When you
(26:46):
talk about operating a forklift right, this is a dangerous job.
Want in ten operators get into an accident each year,
severe injuries, even death, and so if you can move
those people out of harm's way, out of that potentially
dangerous environment and into an office environment, that is a
(27:08):
huge win. In addition to expanding the Labor Pool for
our customers, we're also diversifying that Labor Pool. So we have,
you know, people working for us today that are able
to remotely operate forklifts. One is a wheelchair user. He
(27:30):
was injured during his service in the military, so you
know he he would not be able to operate a
forklift in the way that one you know drives a
forklift in a warehouse today, but he can remotely operate.
We also have neurodiverse individuals, operators that have autism, and
(27:52):
we are quite literally bringing jobs into their homes where
they're fantastic remote operate leaders. They can do this from
their homes, they can operate vehicles across the country, and
so there's real impact here. Obviously we have primary goals.
The first goal is to kind of change the face
(28:15):
of work and hopefully build a game changing business around
doing that. But the second goal, which is equally as important,
is that aspect of positive societal impact. If we can
really make positive change for different individuals along the way
and open up new avenues for people to do work
(28:37):
where they formerly could not operate machinery of this nature,
that's the real win win for us. Yeah, that's phenomenal, Elliott.
I mean this idea of the technology not just enabling
business solutions but also addressing things like accessibility and providing
an outlet for employment for people who are completely capable
(28:58):
of doing the job. It's inspirational because we're looking even
beyond the critical role that this plays for business operations
to remain intact. Before I could let my guests go,
I needed to ask Elliott cats shy maximum one more thing.
(29:20):
We call the show the restless ones and I have
my own definition of what a restless one is when
it comes to things like leadership and in technology. But, shy,
I will start with you. I'm curious when you hear
that term the restless ones, what comes to your mind? Wow,
that's a that's an important question. First, it's really about working,
(29:42):
not just for the sake of making money, but really
having ambission, having an ambition and inspiration, something to work
for that is beyond what's out there. We just talked
about this wheelchair and artistic people that work at Phantom.
I would work day, night and weekends if needed to
make sure that those people get jobs, because the is
something that can make a change that is positive in
(30:03):
the world. So restless for me it's making sure that
your mission and in the vision, you're doing everything you
can to achieve it. Thank you. Shy Elliott, same question.
What does being a restless one mean to you? Yeah,
it's a very interesting question in the way I would
interpret it personally. To kind of tie together all the
(30:25):
threads here, I consider myself a big thinker and I'd
like to think that the things that I put my
mind to and really put my time and effort into,
I want them to have real purpose. And Shy and
I are co founders of Phantom, but we have very
different skill sets right, as I mentioned before, he's been
(30:48):
an engineer basically since his bar Mitzvah. I had a
certain vision, I had a certain idea, a way that
I saw the world away that I could make impact,
and I happened to be lucky enough to meet someone
who not only shared the same vision but, from a
technical perspective, could put that vision into motion. So I
(31:14):
was restless in the sense that, hey, this is something
that just makes sense to me, and I think Shay
was restless in the sense that, you know, not only
is this something that makes sense, it's something that's technically feasible,
it's technically possible, and so when you get two people
like that with a similar vision in the room, we're
(31:36):
gonna be just restless enough to make it happen, because
for us, we can't sit here and think about what
if we have to create our own offense. We have
to make that reality happen and it's what we think
about all day, every day. Yeah, I just go back
to that thought of just because things have been done
(31:59):
this way doesn't mean that's the only way they can
be done, and that when you adopt that as your
philosophy and you realize that this is an opportunity to
experiment and to attempt new things and to innovate. The
results end up being phenomenal. Even in the failures, you
learn right like even then. You you learn things like, well,
(32:21):
now I know to go a different way, but if
you've never if you just accept how things are done,
then there's no growth, there's no learning and there's no change.
I couldn't agree more and I think that phantom motto
in most ways is no different than any other startup.
And the way I I typically think about it is
at a big company you can hit singles all day,
(32:43):
but if you want to take a really big swing
in the bat, if you want to attempt to hit
a grand slam and really change the status quo, like
if we succeed in the way that we want to succeed,
we will change the face of work. Mean people that
formerly had to go into warehouses and distribution centers every
(33:05):
day and work in these environments and work in these
conditions will have a better quality of life. And we
believe that because, also for our customers, the business case
pencils so beautifully that this can really create rapid change
and we just can't take those swings of a bat.
(33:26):
When you're in a large system, you have to have
this startup environment where it's encouraged to not only think
differently but act on that. Thank you. And so we've
done it thus far for almost five years, and we
really hope to continue to do it for many more
years and remain restless and thus create that change. Gosh,
(33:48):
I can't think of a better way to conclude this episode.
Elliott shy, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
Thank you for this conversation. It was even more or
inspirational and invigorating than I had anticipated, and I have
to tell you my expectations were set pretty darn high. Well,
(34:08):
thank you, Jonathan. We really appreciate you having us on.
It's always a pleasure to speak with leaders in tech
who have incredible drive, no pun intended, and it was
obvious to me that shy and Elliott have that drive.
Their collaboration is inspiring. Identifying a real world challenge and
(34:32):
then building a solution to meet it, and to know
they were working on these technologies before the issues with
supply chain stability had become undeniable shows how forward thinking
they are. It's also incredible to think that wireless connectivity
has reached a level in which someone can operate a
vehicle in real time from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
(34:53):
I would refer to this use case as a reason
why low latency connectivity is transformative. It opens up possibilities
that would have been science fiction a decade ago, and
that's before you even touch on what options open up
when you have access not just to low latency but
high throughput. I really do believe we are on the
cusp of an era of unprecedented innovation. Making use of
(35:18):
five g technology and beyond will usher in a world
in which data analysis, automation and remote Operation Change Everything.
These are the elements that are necessary in a world
where working from home becomes the new norm, and we'll
discover that through careful use of these technologies, we can
actually improve operations, make our work more efficient and cut
(35:40):
costs and ease pain points along the way. Thanks again
to Elliott cats and shy Maximov for joining the restless ones,
and be sure to join us on future episodes. We're
I'll talk with more leaders in the tech industry. I'll
see you then, m t mobile, for business knows, companies
(36:04):
want more than a one size fits all approach to support.
I want the world. So we provide three sixty support
customized to your business. From discovery through post deployment. You'll
get a dedicated account team and expertise from solutions engineers
and industry advisors already, right now. I want it now.
(36:25):
Three sixty support that's customized for your success. That's unconventional
thinking from t mobile for business.
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