Rob Sladen, Co-Founder & CEO, Zulu Pods

Rob Sladen, Co-Founder & CEO, Zulu Pods

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Iard Media Presents CEOs you should Know.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Welcome to CEOs you should Know. Rob Slayton is the
CEO and founder of Zulu Pods in Aerospace and defense
startup company.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Welcome Rob, thank you for having us.

Speaker 4 (00:14):
Mike, we are excited to be here.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
And you've definitely got a you've got a voice for this,
We've got a voice for radio podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well thanks, as they say I have a face for radio, thankfully,
I have a voice for radio two.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
That's good.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
So Rob tell us what Zulu Pods are.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, we are a fluid conveyance company or a fluid
delivery system company. We focus on subsystem and components as
we deliver products, particularly focus on the DoD for things
like jet engines, things like transmissions, things that the DoD
can use for fleet readiness and sustain it the company.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
I guess I'll just kind of get into maybe ale
bit of.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
The founding story and the problem that we solved with
the first beachev product to give a better visual know
what is what do you do at Zoobu Pods. We
started the company where we recognized that there was an
opportunity to deliver I'm just going to say, simpler, more
efficient oil systems for gas turbine engines that powered things
like brones and missiles. We had this realization or opportunity

(01:18):
that started in the summer of twenty twenty, and there
are little jet engines that could fit that you and
I could hold in our hands actually, that are maybe
three feet in length and twelve to eighteen inches in
general diameter, so really little ones.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
So things.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Think about the things that you fly and you see
those little jet engines, think of if you shot it
with a shrink gun and it shrunk down. There are
really little ones that power things like thrones and missiles,
and those sometimes have a traditional oil system, like think
of the oil system you had in your car, tanks, pumps, tubes,
a circulating oil system. And we recognized my wife, my wife,

(01:57):
and myself and mainly my wife, she's a brilliant aerospace engineer.
We recognized that there was an opportunity to say, hey,
what if we took that system that consisted of all
these disparate parts. We got rid of a lot of parts,
and we could take all those disparate parts and we
can shrink them down all into one part. And we
could take the idea of a tank and a pump

(02:19):
and put that all into one. We called it the
type pod for the jet engine, where we put just
the perfect amount of oil into this pod that would
provide this little jet engine the necessary amount of oil
for a thirty minute, a forty five minute, or a
one hour mission. So we take the functions of a

(02:39):
normal oil system, a circulating oil system, one that has
many parts, to shrink it down into one part. And
this all works because these little gas turbine engines that
powered things like zones and missiles have a one way ticket,
so they only have to travel for like thirty minutes
or forty five minutes or an hour, and so you
don't need all.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
The traditional parts.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
You don't need an oil tank, for example, because you
never have to refill the oil tank. It just turns
into a heap of scrap. And so our beachhead product
that we call the zpod is a oil system for
little jet engines that power things like thrones and missiles.
We call it the typod for the jet engine, and
that since then we've developed other products, but I'll pause

(03:20):
there in terms of just the I'll call it the
beachhead product.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
That is awesome. And you know when I hear stories
like this, it amazes me, you know, and it's like,
how did you ever think of that? But both you
and your wife have mechanical and aerospace experience. Now, are
there implications beyond aerospace and defense for this product?

Speaker 3 (03:42):
I would say that in general, the general tech stack
of what we're doing, the answer is yes. So when
we take a step back and we look at what
we think about that Beachhead product, and we think about
how we got there as a team, what we're really
doing is saying, how do I make the best technology

(04:02):
for a given let's just call it mission. How do
I make the best technology that gives the end user
the optimal product when it comes to weight and cost
and efficiencies and all that. And so this idea of
taking a few parts and putting them into one part
certainly has applications outside of just little gas turbine engines.

(04:25):
For example, the Army really likes our product when it
comes to solving this problem around loss of lubrication or
loss of oil, and so loss of oil in the
sky happens for helicopters more than one would think. And
you can imagine that if you lose your oil system
in the sky, it's a big problem. It's not like

(04:45):
you know, having a problem with your car where you
just pull over to the side of the road, right,
you can't just pull over in the sky and be
safe with respect to the asset and more importantly, the
crew that's on board. And so the Army likes this
kind because we can take the functions of a traditional
oil system and we can put that into a rather

(05:07):
small footprint, and we can package a rather small amount
of oil, and that small footprint is very appetizing or
appealing in the aerospace because weight is so important when
it comes to things in the sky. And so the Army,
for example, sees what we're doing and they like the
thinking to help with solving a problem around loss of lubrication.

(05:28):
And we're working with the Army and companies like Boeing,
Sikorski and Bell on integrating this type of a product
into future vertical lift applications or modernization activities that are
going on within the Army. So there's applications there. And
then our third i'll say product or our third application

(05:50):
for this technology stack revolves around fighting corrosion and helping
with fuel cell preservation in stored assets, and so you
can imagine that in the DoD there are a lot
of assets that we have as a country that are
not in use. Very different than like commercial travel, where
commercial airlines are always flying right, they don't really ever

(06:11):
want to sit because if they're sitting, companies like Delta
United are losing money. And so again the same idea
of taking a simple sort of sort of a simple
concept of combining functions of reservoirs and tanks and pumps
into one unit as applications where the DoD can use
it when they look at fighting corrosion and preserving assets

(06:33):
in general in stores. So imagine something comes into like
a depot or a hangar or an overhaul.

Speaker 4 (06:38):
It's going to sit for a little bit.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Corrosion happens in gearboxes with certain gear steals or bearings,
and so that's really bad. They have to do manual
practices today to help to preserve those assets. And so
we take that manual effort out of the way. We
have to set it and forget it. Technology that has
AI inspiration can learn its environment and can preserve assets.
Oil bomb things think of like flea bombing your house,

(07:02):
and it creates this constant coding on applications or services
that would normally rost, taking the manual effort or labor
out of the loop, and so we're seeing use cases
in sustainment as well within the DoD. So we generally
think that the core idea around the beachhead product has

(07:22):
many applications both in the defense and the commercial world,
and we think we're just getting started with where else
we think we can take some of these general products
and concepts.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, I had mentioned where it amazes me where I'm like,
how do people think of these things? But you have
a long, robust career and background in mechanical systems engineering,
don't you.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
I did spend a significant time at Pratt and Whitney
designing or being a part of the teams that design
jet engines and bringing new products to the market with
a focus on mechanical systems and oil systems. So that
definitely gave all to speak for myself, the confidence that
we could do this and the confidence of being able
to bring new products to the market with many unknowns

(08:02):
ahead of us or ahead of you. But the reason
why we're so successful is because we have a really
talented team, and that talented team has a lot of
engineering experience and you know, business development experience and legal
experience and financial experience and everything you need to build something,
and so all together, we just have an extremely talented
team that has lots of this type of you know

(08:24):
experience that you're talking about. So many of the engineers
come from places like Brad Whinney or Lockeedmore and el
Threie Harris Collins Aerospace, and that gives us the ability
to you know, think like we're thinking, and to challenge
the norms and to ask those questions of like, well,
why is it.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
Done like this?

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Maybe it shouldn't be done like this, Maybe it should
be done this way, and bring those solutions to customers
and not be afraid to be in front of those
customers and not be afraid to take on the challenges
and solve these types of problems that are just are
fun to go after, but also to probably daunting if
you don't have that background. So thankfully we have a

(09:04):
super talented team and that's why, you know, kind of
to your you know, thinking of how can we do this?
That's that's how we're able to do the exciting things
that we're doing thus far.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Yeah, Rob, you know, we call it CEOs you should
know and your product is fascinating. But we also like
to delve into the personal side of the CEOs because
you know, part of the process of coming up with
that and you know, putting this team together and being
a part of the team and innovation and entrepreneurship. It's
interesting to find out what drives people and get and

(09:37):
to get to know them on a on a personal level.
So tell us what your background is. Where did you
grow up.

Speaker 4 (09:42):
So?

Speaker 3 (09:42):
I actually grew up outside about an hour outside of Boston,
in a small town called Seaton, Massachusetts, and it's it's
right on the Providence right next to Providence, so right
on the mass right island border. I have a I
have a sister. I have My mom and dad were
really hard workers, just super amazing parents and just you know,

(10:04):
did everything for their kids, and so I grew up
in a you know, just an awesome household I was.
I was fortunate to go to college at Yukon and
so I spent four years in stores. We won a
national championship when I was there basketball, so that was
pretty fun. I was always pretty athletic growing up, played

(10:26):
a lot of sports and stuff and did pretty well
in school, went to college, went and got an engineering degree.
My dad was a was an engineer, and he always said,
you know, go to college and try to you know,
go get it. Go get an engineering degree. Even if
you don't know what you want to do, you'll be
able to use it no matter what you want to do.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
In life, and so great advice.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Lived in Connecticut for a while, went to went and
worked at Pratt and Winnie coming out of college. So
spent like fourteen years there. And I actually met my
wife there, Danielle. So we met at work, sort of
work together for as much as I've known her, which
kind of cool story in itself. People are always like,
how do you work with your wife? And I'm like, well,

(11:07):
I guess I don't really know anything else because that's
where I met her. So I have a couple of
little kids and noa panelbe you know what gets me
out of bed? What do I get excited about? You know,
providing for them and you know, building something in national
security gets me excited. I think a lot about, you know,
the world I want my kids to live in and

(11:28):
grow up in, and I care quite a bit about
preserving Western values, care quite a bit about democracy, and
not taking those types of things or not taking what
we have in the United.

Speaker 4 (11:40):
States for granted.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
I think it's we live in the best country in
the world, and so there's obviously always things that can
be improved, but we live in a great place, and
I care quite a bit about building something that just
you know, continues to preserve those I care about leaving,
you know, building something and that helps my kids and

(12:02):
helps them to, uh, you know, continue to live in
that type of of a world. And so that actually
gets me pretty excited, gets me, keeps me motivated. I
never really maybe cared about that stuff in my career
at Pratt and Whitney, But as I got older in
my career there and I continue to work more and
more with the Air Force, I think it just for
whatever reason, I started to care more about it. And so,

(12:25):
you know, building a startup is hard. There's tons of unknowns.
Every single day, you're getting different types of news that
you've got to react to, and so you definitely need
a why. And so my you know, a big part
of my wife revolves around my kids, and and so
that gets me, yeah, us me.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Motivated, your family and your country, and so you want
to make a difference, you know, to your to your
country and also leave a legacy for your for your kids.
And where do you get your entrepreneur spirit from? Is
that something from you? You mentioned that your dad, so
I can see the mechanical side of it. You know
your dad being an engineer, but was he also an

(13:02):
entrepreneur or was this something that just bubbled up and
signed you or do you have a somebody that influenced
you towards entrepreneurship.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
I don't. My dad was actually my dad helped to
start Zubabad and he was a big part of how
we even got this off the off the ground with
some early prototype testing that allowed us to raise our
first chunk of money. But he himself wasn't an entrepreneur.
He hard worker, a brilliant, brilliant guy. And I think
I when I had gone and when got my MBA

(13:35):
at night, and thankfully Pratt and Whitney paid for that,
and they had a great employee education program. And I
think just in general, when I would be sitting in
these classes at night, I would always just be, I guess,
challenging myself to not just work at Bratton Whitney forever.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a great

(13:57):
place to work. It's an amazing place to work, actually,
But I always just said to myself, hey, I what
like what else could I do? How big could I think?
And I guess I would just challenge myself to say, like,
let's let's let's use all this experience to go build something,
do something on your own. So I always just had
a desire to, I guess, start something, and I was

(14:19):
always thinking about different concepts or ideas. When we my
wife and I lived in Connecticut, we had a two
family house, for example, and so I would rent out
one floor to offset mortgage costs, and so that you know,
that was let's call that business number one right where
it was a small business in the sense of bringing
in some type of residual income outside of a normal career.

(14:41):
And it's a time where I thought, oh, I'll just build,
you know, buy lots of two families or three families,
or and build a real estate empire. That didn't exactly
pan out. I still love real estate from an investment standpoint,
and but I think I just always had a desire
to do something different, to do something that was new
or novel, hasn't been done, and I think I always

(15:02):
liked the challenge though, the idea of people being like,
well that's hard, or I don't know how you're going
to do that, or you know, it's kind of that
hold my beer attitude, and I've always just had that attitude.
And fortunately we found something with Zobu pods where it's
stuck and people actually care about it in the market,
and so I guess the rest is history to some degree.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Now, was there a special moment or event that sparked
the idea for Zulu pods or were you looking for
an opportunity and found your path that way?

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, totally, Like I would say, always looking, but there
is definitely the former here. My wife, Daniella or brilliant
aerospace engineer. She went to UCF for aerospace engineering undergrad
I thinks she graduated like a four point zero GPA
something pretty close.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
So that's just unreal. And so we were actually on
a car ride to Orlando.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
We had moved from Connecticut in September of twenty nineteen,
and I had I was getting more familiarized with little
gas turban engine and Daniella had worked on oil systems
and lubrication systems and external jet engine components, and she
just she kind of had this thought bubble like, well,
what if, like the oil systems didn't have to look

(16:18):
so complicated, Why do they have to be so complicated
if something going on to travel for thirty minutes or
forty five minutes, And we challenged the norm. What if
we let the things inside run a little hotter because
they don't we don't care about durability or longevity. And
that car ride on the way to Orlando with my
two kids sleeping in the back, they were quiet, pretty abnormal,

(16:40):
you know, thing going on within the Slaton household with
two little ones being quiet, you know, a bunch of
nerds talking about you know, physics in.

Speaker 4 (16:50):
The front seat.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
And that was the moment where like the light bulb
went off where the tiepod for the jet engine was born.
So that's that was the sort of this concept of
the idea that was in like the summer of twenty twenty,
and you could imagine that was before unfortunately things were
happening in like Ukraine and Russia. That was before the
world was seeing what a knew what the new battlefield

(17:14):
would look like, right, lots of AI inspired products, unmanned
applications drones and so even at that time though, it
was like, yeah, this is definitely the future. This is
what the future is going to look like. And general
experience being in the DODO working with the Air Force,
not that anybody would foresee the or see a war coming,
but the mechanics of what that would look like we're

(17:35):
starting to become more and more apparent. So that was
the moment where it was like, hey, let's go pursue this.
And then the story goes that Joe Cunningham, another co founder,
close friend from Yukon that I went to college with
that I stayed close with ever since then. I've known
him now for like twenty two years, was just randomly
being like, hey, you know, there's this idea of this concept.

(17:57):
I think, you know, it has some legs. Danielle has
a really good idea, and we would always we always
share like stories back and forth or what.

Speaker 4 (18:05):
If we did this, or what about this and.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
So, but this one seemed to stick, not just like
the ones where it was like, yeah, it's kind of cool,
but nobody then does anything about it. So he called
his cousin, who's an attorney, because the next one of
the next logical steps was to think about patenting the
idea or is something like this patentable? You know you
need IP protections typically in hard tech stuff like this.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
And so sure he calls his.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Cousin and this is during Now at this point, it's
kind of during the COVID era and everybody is to
some degree their lives are a little different. There's a
lot of work from home. In this case, Troy an attorney,
not in court anymore for a period of time, more
time on his hands. So the four of us got
on a call. We kind of kind of pitched the
general idea of the general vision I think it was

(18:51):
called like rocket pods or something like that then and
Troy was super interested, very much as an entrepreneurial spirit,
you know, lawyer by background, but that was just an
excuse until he found something that got him excited to
go start a company. And so he started the company
literally like two days later. He formed the Sea Corp.

(19:12):
Created all the documents, we figured out all the things
we needed to figure out from a co founder standpoint,
and the.

Speaker 4 (19:18):
Rest is history.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
So that's how the that's the true the first day
origin story all around a car ride with a bunch
of sleepy kids in the backseat.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
That's just awesome. I mean, you never know where the
next great idea is going to be, how it's going
to develop, in where it's going to come from, and
it could be as simple as you know, driving down
the street with kids sleeping in the back and talking
about things. So that's awesome. So you sound very driven.
What's the philosophy that drives you each day?

Speaker 4 (19:45):
You know? I like to solve.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
I like, in general, solving problems like and that probably
is a big part of you know, by education and
career just being you know, being motivated around being solution oriented.
I always liked did pretty well, like in school all
the time. I always liked math stuff. I always liked
I wanted to kind of always, i don't know, be

(20:09):
the best student in a class. And I think that
has always just created this drive to bring solutions to
the table. And so every day we're just so we're
you know, there's just problems to be solved all the time.
And I actually think, I actually, you know, I guess,
you know, well, some problems aren't really always maybe the
best as they're presented. I stay motivated around this idea

(20:32):
of solving problems, and I think as as the more
I think now there's also this transformation around. I also
really care about creating an environment. You know, I talked
about this idea of a drive around or the importance
around Western values and national security and that that plays
a part in this. But like one thing I see

(20:52):
is I see how much people enjoy working at Zulu
pots and when you just oppose that versus people in
careers that, like, you know, work is work and they
don't maybe they don't really don't enjoy going to work.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
I want to.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Continue to create a place and foster a culture where
people do enjoy their job and people do like going
to work, and people do like being a part of
Zoolu pods. And so I maybe there's a bit of
a triangle piece of that of your question, right, So
being getting excited about solving problems, caring about fostering a
place that people want to be at, and then caring

(21:30):
about national security.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, and you know we're just about out of time
time flies. When you're having an interesting conversation, what advice
and forgive the pun there about time flies? Maybe time
could use one of your Zulu pods to lubricate itself.
What advice would you give an aspiring business owner who
has an idea and needs to get it off the ground.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
So I mean the number the most important thing is
to try to find and a team that is motivated
to do it with you. Can you find one other
person that, even if they're just somewhat excited, can you
find another person at a minimum to take the journey
with you? And then I would say just start. Uh

(22:15):
So in the early days, we just started. So we
would just have phone calls twice a meetings twice a week.
I drove a really regimented cadence we had, you know,
we had to meet twice a week. Sometimes it was
once a week, but at a minimum we always had
to meet weekly. And I just drove a very regimented
cadence to keep things moving. Obviously not ever, but as

(22:40):
much as I believed in it, you never know to
some degree, you're a little bit you're you find you know,
a little bit blind, and you're you're there's a lot
of hope. But if you if you just start and
you take it seriously, you just never know then where
things will go. So finding a team and then taking
it serious and so taking it seriously, maybe like a

(23:03):
cadence like I'm talking about, meeting like I'm talking about
and maybe you know you're Some of your early agenda
items may be things like just creating a logo, creating
the name, creating a website, starting to think about raising money,
starting to think about a prototype that you could do
in your garage, to create some visual showing of what

(23:26):
you're doing, whether you're a SaaS company or a hard
tech company, something that.

Speaker 4 (23:31):
You can see or you can hold. You know.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
The two pieces I would just say is just is
finding some like minded folks that want to go discover
the unknown or feel like they're doing the impossible. And
then just starting. And for some folks starting may look
different than other folks, but you know, if you take
it seriously, you never know where things will go.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, and take some kind of action, right, Yeah. I
talk about this all the time. I call it analyzation
paralyzation where you think of it and I'm guilty of
this too, or you think things through over and over
and over again, and you end up putting up all
these roadblocks and you end up overthinking everything and you
don't do anything. So you know, the most important first

(24:10):
step is to.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Take action totally because you can. If you don't, you're
just going to It's so easy to convince yourself why
you shouldn't do it right, because the statistics aren't in
your favor. So the more you think about all the challenges,
you know that ten percent probability of success, while already limited,
probably starts to become like one to two percent in

(24:32):
your head. And you need to have this. You need
to be an optimistic visionary.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
You need to have this.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Level of optimism that or you're the only you're the
only case study in the world that has one hundred
percent chance to do what you're doing when all the
data says you actually live in that world where you
have a ten percent chance of success. And so that's
why I think action in doing is so important because
it will start then now it starts to feel real.

(24:59):
And once it starts to feel real, if you have
the right like minded folks, you say, well we're doing this,
this is this is real, so we can't stop now.

Speaker 4 (25:09):
Title of the thing.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
And so yeah, taking some action is a great, a great,
a great recommendation. If I was if I was given anybody,
anybody advice.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, well that's good. Advice and and sadly we're out
of time, but Rob. Rob Slayton is the CEO and
co founder of Zulu Pods and aerospace and defense startup company. Rob,
it sounds like you have a great product and a
great team put together, and I wish you the best
of luck and we'll have you back on and check
on your progress. But thanks for taking the time to

(25:39):
talk to us today on CEOs you should know.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
Oh, thank you so.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
Much for having us.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
We really appreciate it. Thank you for your time, thank
you for giving up.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Some of your time, and we look forward to the
to the next shot and I look forward to connecting
with you again, keeping in touch with you. So I
hope you have a great rest of your body.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
You too, Rob, You've been listening to iHeart Radio CEOs
you should know, heard every Tuesday and Saturday morning right
here on this iHeartRadio station.