Ever wonder how a tech visionary turns innovative ideas into practical tools used by the military? Join us on this exciting episode of Midwest Momentum as we sit down with Eric Wagner, a key figure in the Midwest Ohio tech community. Eric shares his journey from the early days of computer science to today when he is helping to create an ecosystem for AI startups in Hilliard, Ohio, called Hilliard City Lab. This episode contains valuable insights about seizing opportunities and taking decisive action.
Eric shares about the birth of the Center for Design Manufacturing Excellence (CDME) at Ohio State, co-founded by Eric and his partner, John Baer. The CDME became a hub for bringing brilliant minds together to work on commercialization and applied engineering. Hear how this venture paved the way for Converge Technologies, an engineering design and development firm, and Converge Ventures, a startup incubator. Despite facing venture capital funding challenges, Eric and John’s persistence and adaptability fueled their success, providing a supportive ecosystem for nurturing startups until they are ready for investment.
Finally, we plunge into the future of AI and its transformative impact across various sectors. Eric elaborates on his current work with UbiHere, focusing on geospatial analytics and environmental tracking and how these innovations revolutionize industries from fast food safety to employee performance. Additionally, get a sneak peek into his involvement with Lighthouse, an aerospace management company for drones and air taxis, and the obstacles faced in Ohio's drone delivery logistics. Entrepreneurs and small businesses looking for collaboration opportunities will also find valuable information on connecting through Hilliard City Lab. This is an episode brimming with inspiration, practical advice, and forward thinking.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time to hustle America, Roll up our sleeves and
make dreams happen.
Midwest Momentum brings youstories of CEOs, startups,
product development and foundersdoing whatever it takes to make
their big idea happen.
Midwest Momentum is supportedby Big Kitty Labs and produced
by GNR Media.
(00:20):
Here's Midwest Momentum hostsDan Rockwell and Michelle
Gatchel.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey everybody, thanks again for watching and
listening to Midwest Momentum.
I'm here with a great friend ofmine in Columbus Ohio.
He is a legend in the techspace here in the Midwest Ohio
tech community, my good friendEric Wagner in the house.
Eric, my man, how you doing?
Eric?
Let's talk a little bit about.
I want a quick origin story andthen I want you to race up to
(00:55):
the point where you meet me.
So start with how you start andthen where did you meet me?
And then we'll pick up fromthere.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I was born, I went to college, I joined a research
institution, I joined anotherstartup, and then my life wasn't
fulfilled until I met DanRockwell at the tech
commercialization office at theOhio State University, where I
shared an office immediatelynext to him.
So Dan and I were essentiallyroommates for what?
Two or three years.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, we were two, three years there at
commercialization at Ohio State.
I liked it because when youcame in you were like pretty
serious about you know, forthose that are listening that
don't know whatcommercialization is, every
university gets a lot ofgovernment dollars, right.
We all hear about thegovernment dollars that come
into a university to do what?
To do innovation, right, tochange science and research and
(01:42):
things, and that takes a wholegroup of really crazy people.
It needs the people thatactually work on the thing, but
then it needs the people thatthink about how it goes to
market and, more so, how itreally can get to market.
And that, I feel like, is oneof your specialties, eric, is
that.
You know, when I met you, youwere really on the hustle, like
(02:04):
you arrived and like, all right,what do we got?
What we selling, what's thedeal, what you know?
And it was like it was for me,it was like a moment where we
like walked up to the back ofthe semi and opened it up and
there's a bunch of what?
what do you got?
You got tvs.
All right, I can move those,you know, and it's in.
That's actually part of that.
Culture is to understand what'sthere and then assess it.
(02:24):
What's your background in that?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I mean it's funny, you always joke about that.
You know I'm going to sell you.
So you used CPUs out of theback of a truck but the defense
contractor I joined out of outof so I was in Ohio State
computer, computer science,computer engineering.
I went to Southwest Researchwhich is kind of like a Battelle
except for defense and thenjoined a DOD tech startup
(02:50):
company called DNS Consultants,but it was out of New Jersey and
it was right outside the cityand it had that feel of
something just fell off the backof the truck and we're going to
sell it to you.
So, it's funny you always alludeto that.
However, the general mentalityfor us at that company was we
are going to do fundamentalresearch, so with universities,
with federal labs, but we'regoing to be the application end
of it, right.
So we're going to take the goodideas, turn them into something
(03:12):
, and then field systems for thewarfighters primarily the Army
at that time, but some for theNavy and the Air Force as well.
We built everything from bigfull motion simulators,
helicopter simulators thattrains pilots, to free space
optical systems that they use tocommunicate overseas, to SATCOM
systems, and so really justtaking good ideas, good
innovation, and turning theminto fitable, you know, value
(03:34):
added solutions.
And when I left that company, Itook an exit.
We, we, we had a liquidityevent.
I came back to Ohio or I wasliving in Ohio and spent most of
my time road and overseas,settled down back in Ohio and
looked for what was next.
And for me, I always wanted myown startup.
So I was a very, very smallowner of that company, enough to
(03:55):
give me a little bit ofbankroll to get started when I
left.
But still not the man right,and you always want to be the
man.
I always joke around with myson.
He always says what's it taketo be the man?
I always tell him well, just bethe man, right.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Do the thing.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
If you say you're going to do the thing, do the
thing and that applies genderneutrally across the ecosystem
right, you want to do it, do it.
Stop saying you're going to doit and do it.
And so I was looking for whereI could in quote, quote, do it,
do a startup, and for me it waseither the alma mater at Ohio
State, in the TCO office, or Rev1.
(04:28):
At the time it was TechColumbus, and so I knocked on
both of the doors.
Tech Columbus actually wasgoing to give me entry, but I
really wanted to be at the TCOand I was told no four times.
So four times I tried to joinOhio State's commercialization
office and four times I was toldno.
Uh, and then brian and ray cameon board.
I, I know, you remember them.
Uh, ray atalano was a a in andaround dod community for quite
(04:50):
some time and he's like we needthis guy and so so I don't care
what you say, he's joining us.
And so I joined, kind of underunder, under ray's wing, as it
were.
Uh, the tco office, which wasprimarily all really good people
, but but phs, patent attorneysand then Dan Rockwell.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I always did feel that, you know, I loved it when
you got there because it was,and I never I don't mean that in
a derogatory way on my track.
I mean, that's like to me,that's like honesty, that's like
that's like.
Is that's the people that Ikind of want to protect me?
You know, the people that arewise, right, the wise guys, the
(05:29):
ones that understand things andand can work the deals and
really work the math and stuff,because, honestly, I didn't know
any of that.
So, like tco was like a shortcourse for me to see everything
that would occur, um and ondeals, and at the same time, I
was just wildly passionate aboutevery day learning like 16
different contexts.
It was just, it was wild.
(05:50):
And yet you still meet in theafternoon and talk about the
money that you didn't have.
You're talking about theresources, which you would not
have any.
Now that's not to say, well,I'll see, it doesn't have
resources.
They've changed a lot and theyhave a lot of stuff now.
They have a Techstars program,they have the Boost program.
There was a lot.
The time that I met Eric wasjust a time where they were
(06:14):
trying to reboot that effort.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I will say that what they have now is the result of
people like Cheryl Turnbull andAaron Bender and you and myself
and the whole crew down there,who really kind of changed the
attitude and mentality aroundthings.
Right, ohio State does havemassive resources.
They have a huge endowment,they have, you know, active
investors, a huge alumni networkthat was never kind of brought
to bear on anything other thangiving right.
(06:39):
And when you start turning itagainst commercialization, good
things start happening.
And you know we're still notthere, but but it certainly it's
.
It's much better than it was.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, that's what I felt like.
I feel like you know, we bothhad a great.
I mean, it was like it's behindenemy lines.
It's not easy.
It's not an easy thing, but thecool thing was is that, uh, I'm
I felt like when I left there Ikept doing commercialization.
You know, I kept.
Well, a lot of the things youlearn in commercialization you
kind of take out and this is nottalk about that, but that was a
(07:08):
part of your life.
And now what have you donesince you've been working?
Last thing I heard you've beenworking on drones.
You've been working on a lot ofreally cool.
I know you can't talk aboutthem in terms of government
contracts, cause I know bigkitty is, is is sort of, and
again, I can't talk about thateither, but I just know that
(07:29):
there's people I know and lovein town who are doing really
cool work for veterans and doingreally cool work for that.
I'm excited about that piecebecause I see the drone activity
, I see the flying cars, I seeall the innovation, I see the
Intel plant, I see the epicenterexpanding and Columbus, and
really the Midwest, is a hugepart of that.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
You know, dan, I think that when I left the TCO I
did that little student CDMEand that's you know because of
my current partner, john Baer.
He had come in previously whenyou and I were at the TCO and
asked to do a number of startups.
He's an alumni electronicsdesign development manufacturing
guy who built his own company,took a public, took a private,
(08:11):
was retired but was helping outwith the business plan
competitions and thecommercialization efforts as a
volunteer right, was the dean'sexternal advisory chair for a
college of engineering andreally just wanted to help
commercialization too.
And you see, all these peoplewho want to help, but it's
always in this fragmented,siloed, individual kind of way
that was never kind of pouredinto the cohesive ecosystem,
right, I think that's at the TCOwhat we try to do more than
(08:33):
almost anything else was pullthose passionate people together
and actually have them moveforward in some common direction
.
And I got suckered into joiningJohn and creating a center over
on Kinnear called the Centerfor Design Manufacturing
Excellence, which I know you'reaware of, but had wrote out my
non-compete.
So I was coming to Ohio State towrite out a non-compete for my
other company, which apparentlyBiden says now is illegal.
(08:56):
So I would have been lucky backthen to not have to do this,
but I wouldn't have met you.
Wouldn't have met you.
But I was writing out anon-compete.
I wanted to learn how to dostartups in Ohio.
I came to TCO I was gettingreally close to the end of my
non-compete.
I was going to go do a startup.
My partner, john Baer, who wasnot my partner at the time, was
doing startups at Ohio State.
You and I both helped them getup that includes Nikola Labs and
(09:19):
Care Batteries, which CareBatteries fell fast, like you're
supposed to.
Nikola Labs is still ongoingand a growing concern with Will
Zell and those guys.
Good results, bad results thatwere done the right way, Fell
fast, fell honestly.
If you way you know, fell fast,fell, fell, fell honestly.
(09:40):
If you make it more than threeyears, you're a successful
entrepreneur, whether yourcompany ever succeeds or not.
Right, if you can collect thepaycheck that sustains you for
three years, plus owning yourown company, you have.
You have succeeded.
Congratulations.
Plus owning your own company,you have succeeded.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Congratulations, are you?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
aware, is the question At the end of the day,
if you don't go home and cry ina pillow every single night, you
have succeeded.
And so John had convinced methat I had been preaching and
you had been preaching that, hey, listen, if we bring all these
resources together into a commonenvironment and we row in the
same direction and we row at thesame speed when we're going to
go somewhere, right, and and sowe, you know, he said hey, the
(10:20):
Dean told me to build thisoutward facing center center for
design manufacturing excellence.
Myself, john Nate Ames, glennDane and a couple other folks
founded it I on a model that youhad student resources that you
could get applied engineeringvery cost effectively and give
them student experientiallearning.
You could bring technologiesout of the university and mature
them to the point where they'reready and you can bring
industry and entrepreneurs in todo all that commercialization
(10:41):
around that right, um,relatively large success that
the center is still growingevery single year.
From what I understand, I'vebeen down there in a while.
I, but john made me join thatbecause he said you can't
practice what you preach and ifand if you're going to be the
man, be the man.
And you've been talking aboutpulling all these things
together in a common ecosystemand making sure that this model
works Right, and now you have todo it.
(11:01):
So I joined them.
We built that for two and ahalf years and then we finally
just said, hey, listen, themodel we know works.
It's going to be a uphill slog,but we're going to go do it and
going to go do it.
And so five years ago maybe six, almost six now geez, we
started Converge Technologies,acquired a building over in
Hilliard off 270.
It was one of the old Ray Hallbuildings it's 621 Lyman Drive,
(11:23):
if anybody wants to ever comevisit and created a two-person
company in a 27,000 square footinnovation center.
And so you know, if you want totalk about taking leaps of
faith, you know there it isright.
I subsequently grew Converge tobe an engineering design
development services-basedcompany and then we were going
(11:44):
to do a startup incubator andthe startup incubator was going
to be called Converge Ventures.
You know, aligned very wellwith the namesake, but fell into
the trap that so many folksfell into with VCs that, hey,
big promises, big commitments,big demonstrated commitments.
You know they had docked upthis whole, this whole thing,
only to have the entire billiondollar fund not make it at the
(12:07):
end Right.
So the fund never launched andafter two and a half years of
heartbreak and bootstrapping ourbusiness and partner businesses
, we finally just say listen,we're not taking VC, we're
bootstrapping from here on outuntil they're Series A ready, or
at least pre-seed like reallywell-defined pre-seed ready,
before we take any investment atall.
So launch the incubator on ourown, have a number of companies
(12:31):
kind of resident under the roof.
We're expanding that operationand that's kind of where we're
at.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I mean.
Well, first of all, there's alot there.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
You and I have ADHD, dan, in the worst kind of way.
We have what we have ADHDreally badly, that's true.
Listen, if you just focused onthis, it might be really
successful.
Yeah, but what about this?
Speaker 4 (12:52):
What about this?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You know it might be really successful, yeah, but
what about this, what about this?
It's not a disorder, though,quite frankly, it's the fact
that you go that fast and youcan.
You have that gift.
Same thing with John Bear.
One thing I've always reallyenjoyed about John in a lot of
ways is he added up the patternsreally quick at OSU.
In a lot of ways, it's kind ofadded up the patterns really
(13:16):
quick at OSU.
In a lot of ways, we have toengineer the bulls in our own
china shop.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Roger that Make sure they knock down the right
shelves.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, and not only that, but make sure that our own
personnel knows what to do inthe bulls china shop and
everything else.
So it's important to do in thebull's-eye of China and
everything else.
It's important to do that.
I really respect John for that,because he had the Parallel
Company he did that.
I don't know if it was Parallel, I forget the name of the
company he did that it's prettycool.
Then he came in and then thecenter of design, Chris Sess,
(13:50):
where Camp went, and of courseCamp went in his direction.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Listen, and the ecosystem hasn't changed.
Dan, I'm doing shit with Campnow too, and Lee Mosbacher, so
we'll touch on that here in asecond.
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
So I love that it kind of keeps going and
everything and converging.
I love what you're doing withthat, Because that's taking the
leap of faith and doing theincubator, knowing that it's
going to be filled.
Right, you had to build churchknowing full well there was
people there at some point andwe're going to share those.
But when we talk about AI andthis is something that Michelle
and I talk a lot about we haveanother podcast where we talk
(14:22):
about it too.
What's your feelings on AI andhow it's coming in?
You're in the AdvancedManufacturing Center.
You got IC3D right next to you.
There you guys are doing somereally cool stuff.
Do you feel like the DARPA, thesci-fi of our dreams and our
movies, is on.
Is it right at our front dooror what?
(14:42):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (14:44):
You know, dan, I have been a big vocal person on the
fact that AI for years now, andyou've known this is going to
disrupt the entire ecosystem,right, not just manufacturing,
not just tech.
It's going to disrupt the humanpopulation, right, and when you
look at it, the two possibleoutcomes are utopian and
(15:07):
dystopian.
Right, utopian is, you know,dan can now go play the ukulele
because he has time to play theukulele, because we have much,
much, much higher, higher levelsof efficiency and productivity.
Right, the dystopian iseverybody's on the job, and you
know you're not seeing that yetbecause the economies are
growing relatively well.
Democratization of it, if youwant to call it, of this
(15:35):
software that enables you torapidly harness the knowledge
and resources of the world intoan application.
It's profound, right, it'sgoing to be a profound shift,
and I think what we've seen sofar is some of the things that
we have been contemplating forthe last couple of years.
And so you know Yubi here.
You know Dr Alper Yilmaz, andhe's the founder of you be here
and a computer vision specialist, and so he's he's one of the
(15:56):
kind of front runners of AI.
I'm lucky enough now to be theCEO of his company, so Alper and
I work quite a bit together,thank you.
We have focused from the verybeginning, on the fact that YOLO
and these large models aregoing to do all of the things
right, but they're not going todo the specific things that add
value for very specificcustomers, and so we built a
(16:23):
platform which allows you to dovery efficient customization of
computer vision and businessintelligence and any type of
intelligence generation usingcomputer vision in a very
targeted, very directed manner,right.
And so we have pilots, like yousaid, with the Army, we have
some with the Air Force, but wealso have some with the city of
Hilliard, we have some with someretail manufacturers, we have
some with direct consumercompanies, and all of these use
a common set of AI tools right,on a common platform.
(16:44):
What you're seeing for, likethe LLMs and other stuff, though
, dan, is ridiculous.
You know, I have a friend whoworks in the energy sector and
said that energy is going toquadruple in the next decade
strictly because of AI, right,because of the data centers
associated with AI.
Now, what will the increases inproductivity be?
What will the outcomes be?
I don't know, but it's going tobe profound, right?
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
It's simply a it's.
It's the elephant in the roomand I'm glad you brought to the
forefront first, because it'salways it's kind of like when do
you bring it up?
When you bring the job, youbring it up at the beginning of
the conversation and bring it atthe end because it's going to
be part of the narrative.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
And I think it has to be right.
I mean, you know, you, you, you, you, you humans are inherently
emotional.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Emotional, yeah, and I.
I see that too.
I know when I um.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
I listen, I, I, I, I agree, I agree.
And if you're not continuallyexpanding and innovating and
growing, and and again, uh at atat, at its core, at its core.
I hate to always joke aroundwith this, but but, but
financial institutions areconstruct right.
Money is a construct and, at theend of the day, as long as we
(17:59):
keep expanding that construct ina positive manner, to do
whatever to get on Mars, to,like you said, starfleet right,
or to become a better, morerounded society that takes care
of their people, I don't carewhat it is, but as long as we're
moving in a positive direction.
The financial mechanisms aroundthat are constructs, right it's.
It's the human, the humanevolution into the next thing.
It's is really kind of me.
The big thing and I joke aroundmy son, who somehow ended up
(18:22):
being in like a documentary filmand international affairs when,
when his mother wanted him tobe medical and I wanted to be an
engineer, and he's he's overhere doing his own thing, that
that he better get on boardbecause, at the end of the day,
I appreciate intellectualproperty and I appreciate
creativity of humans andwhatever.
But if other people have accessto those tools, they're going
to use them right, and so youeither need to learn the tools
(18:42):
that are available to you andutilize them to the fullest
potential, or you're going toget pushed by the wayside.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, the construct is a really great word to use,
because you know money is aconstruct, even the business is
a construct.
But you are not a construct,your wife's not a construct.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I always talk on.
He jokes around about thesnowflake generation.
Right Now I walk the road.
I'm again not to get intopolitics, but I'm kind of a
centrist Democrat Right, and soyou know we're part of that
little snowflake culture orwhatever and he jokes around.
He's like I'm not a snowflake,I'm not like the snowflakes.
Buddy.
There's 8.2 billion snowflakesin the world.
Everybody's unique.
(19:22):
Everybody's a snowflake.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Well, everybody wants to get along and try to get out
of the building alive.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Listen, I just want to make sure that we don't melt
before the next ice age, right?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
No, totally.
I mean, that's the thing it's.
And it's not just that too,it's just that you're wildly
passionate about the science man.
I mean, I tell friends like soyou know, folks will ask me why
don't you do what you do, Is it?
You know it's?
(19:54):
It's like I'm bragging right.
Maybe someday, maybe someday,maybe no, it's it's.
It's, you're right, it isdefinitely um, but it's more
about being at the intersection.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
You were there even the money, dan, even the money I
, I preach and I I live.
You know, and, and my son willtell you this, it's, it's a tool
, it's a you know, it's a toolto do things.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Really, it's part of that construct.
That's awesome.
Yeah, all right, we're wrappingup here a little bit.
What can you give us on?
Wait, before I jump to that UB.
Here is that entrepreneur inresidence.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
So UB here was one of our startups that we looked at
when we came out of Ohio Stateto do as part of this startup
fund that we're going to do inthis incubator.
Alper had started it with Rev1and the folks on Airway and
Embry and those guys it kind ofstagnated a little bit.
John and I, when we wereleaving, were asked to come and
(20:41):
look at it.
We spent about six monthslooking at the tags and the
computer vision pieces of UBhere, found that there probably
was market there.
We just had to push it into themarket, adapt it for those
specific markets.
We took equity for sweat forover the first two years and
then I put about I don't knowprobably seven or $8 million of
federal funding behind you behere so far to develop the
(21:01):
solutions that now we areactually launching commercial
pilots for both tags and and thecomputer vision this summer,
dan.
So I'll make sure you get thefirst.
I'll make sure you get thefirst implementations of them
and first maintenance of themand away you go.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh, michelle's got a fewquestions, she's joined in now I
will.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I will say real quick for entrepreneurs, michelle,
before you jump in there um, oneof the things that we did do uh
is one of the things that yourold bkel partner, uh, too, sure
is helping with too is wepartnered with the city of uh
hilliard to start what they callwell, well, they have CityLab.
They started CityLab, which wasa we're going to help small
businesses and entrepreneursfigure out how to do businesses
with municipalities, right, kindof like the AFWERX programs for
(21:39):
the Air Force, and then askedus to be the tech innovation
partner for CityLab.
We agreed to it and, as afunction of that, we found a
number of we'll call thempublic-private partnership
opportunities to advancetechnology for entrepreneurs.
One of the big ones is a BKL UBhere and CityLab opportunity
(22:01):
that they call the AI Sandbox.
And the AI Sandbox came aboutthen because, as you know,
amazon Web Services and Azureand OpenAI and whatever they're
these huge monoliths, right, andat the end of the day,
especially the AWS guys theycharge you a lot, these huge
monoliths, right, and at the endof the day, especially the AWS
guys they charge you a lot ofmoney for computational power,
right, and when you'redeveloping a new model, a new
agent, a new agent's form, orwhatever it might be around.
(22:23):
Ai testing the value add to aparticular customer application
while not incurring hundreds andhundreds of thousands of
dollars of compute costs fromAmazon Web Services is a big
deal for entrepreneurs, right?
And so we created a replicantcluster that's going online here
at the end of May that givesentrepreneurs the ability to
schedule time on big GPUs withbig net storage that run
(22:47):
localized models that aretrained, you know, by the big
guys, but being held locally,right, to ensure what the
compute cost would be when youmigrate to the cloud.
And if, at the end of the day,you only produce seven cents
worth of value, but it costs you25, you probably shouldn't do
it, right, yeah yeah, oh, that'sgood.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You know, I was telling Shashar I think hardware
concepts are really right now.
Hardware concepts are very cool, especially in again you'd be
here, especially in again you'dbe here because you're going to
get to analog AI hardware.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Listen, the small guys are pushed out too right.
I mean, at the end of the day,the big guys will always go for
the biggest, most stablecontracts.
The small guys will always getpushed to the bottom.
If you're not doing bare metalapplications or scalable
applications of hardware, you'redoing a disservice to the
entrepreneurs and that's whatwe're trying to do too.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You're not Taking a lot of federal dollars are
probably on the table.
Looking for aspects of that,I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
The nice thing is the federal dollars are available
for helping build those systemsout to support entrepreneurs.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
So we pursue that too .
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, michelle jumped in.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Hey, hey, hey, hey, Michelle, hey, aaron, I was
going to ask you specificallyabout the Hillier Lab and what
kind of young entrepreneursyou're seeing come through there
.
Right, now?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
That's a great question.
The first ones that we'reseeing come through there right
now are some of the ones thathave been referred by folks,
like Align AI.
Right so, they have largelanguage models that are going
to create agents that make yourinbox more efficiently
maintained.
Right so, virtual assistants,if you want to call them that.
(24:13):
Right, we've seen ones wherethey're doing agent swarms that
are doing optimization ofprocess because they have very
keen insight and intelligencearound the physics, the math,
the whatever for certain partsof process, but can't figure out
how to create new complexprocess chains that are either
better, more efficient orwhatever.
(24:34):
And that's the case forcompanies like Voxel, and Voxel
does new designs of additivemanufacturing, medical devices
and other things.
So very complex geometry, verycomplex parts.
But if they can model thatbefore they actually do it, they
can determine if there's valuethere versus traditional
manufacturing methodologies.
And that plays into what IC3Dand some of those guys are doing
(24:54):
as well.
So really, the sandbox is openfor whatever It'll be.
It'll house, you know, kind ofall the large known LLMs, some
of the computer vision systems,the open CV systems, but hold
those all resident so that we'renot eating up compute costs and
dollars on the cloud for theseentrepreneurs.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
And so what's next for you?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
So I've had to I've had to, sadly, start focusing a
little bit.
You'll be here is getting tothe point where that eats up a
fair amount of my time.
I'm still helping with, likeDan said, we have a company
called Lighthouse which isaerospace management for drones
and air taxis.
I still do a little bit ofconsulting for the Air Force and
some of the people who do workwith the Air Force on the side,
but it's really kind of boilingdown to UB here.
(25:41):
We had a nonprofit studentexperiential learning program
that we brought an executive inresidence in to lead it, dave
Nestick, if you know him, dan.
So Dave came in to run the OMIC.
We're looking for a CEO forLighthouse.
We're raising capital forLighthouse right now and so
we're starting to not divest butchange leadership in some of
(26:02):
these things that we startedbuilding.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
That's really cool.
Can you give us just a snapshotview of like you'd be here
again?
I think it was yeah listen.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
so Alper Yolmez, Public concept.
So give be here again, I think.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah listen.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
So so for you, ole Miss, public concept.
So give me.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
I'm going to boil it down to a sentence for you.
They do geospatial analytics.
And geospatial analytics meanshow do people, objects, things
move, or detected or trackedmove and interact in three
dimensional space?
Right, you know, even you and I, if we're in the same room and
my body language is doing thisand this and this, and you know,
(26:37):
maybe Eric's briefing Dan on anew thing, right, but how those
things are moving.
So Ubi here has these scalablewe'll call them Lego blocks of
tracking tags.
They're environmental sensingtags, they're movement tags,
they're GPS tags, which allowyou to have environmental
awareness and tracking inthree-dimensional space.
But we also have computervision systems which allow you
(27:03):
to do things like eventdetection, event tracking,
process management, but do it ina we call it storyboarding, do
it in a storyboarded manner,that's storyboarded specifically
for customer applications.
And so, for example, if youthink in fast food, maybe safety
is an issue, so make sure thatonly people who can use the
fryer are certified to use thefryer, or actually touching the
fryer, maybe also timeliness ofpreparing the things are
important for employeeevaluation.
So you watch an employee howfast they make this or that or
(27:25):
the other thing, and so we cancreate these custom analytic
generation tools for customersthat, from what we found, a fair
amount of value, um, and thendo that for a low cost.
It would have been theequivalent of a manager sitting
there watching his team for thewhole day and doing an
evaluation, right, yeah?
Speaker 4 (27:41):
that is awesome yeah, it's really cool and like I
said I'll make sure dan you getfirst copies of this and then
with the lighthouse, the dronedelivery logistics is amazing to
me.
I know was it Kroger down southhas been trying.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Kroger did it.
Yep, absolutely, kroger did it.
We had a couple other folks.
We have the corridor.
Ohio doesn't do nearly as muchas everybody else does, though,
and we've been trying to push onthat.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Why is that?
Is it we don't have theairspace?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I think it's more that there is a there's a lack
of coordinated communicationbetween the FAA and the state of
Ohio to determine what we'reallowed to do and what we're not
allowed to do, where some ofthe other states are a little
bit more proactive about hey,this is what we're going to do.
Faa, you have to work with usto figure out how to do it.
And you see like South Carolinais flying first responder
(28:32):
activities and you see likeSouth Carolina is flying first
responder activities, texasoutside Dallas, are actually
flying package delivery with,with, with Walmart.
So Walmart has outside Dallas,has 25 square miles that they do
package delivery on.
And so Ohio we got oh yeah, wedid a test flight or we did this
, but we're not actuallyactively operating autonomous
systems.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And we have any final questions.
Michelle, I think we're over.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
I have a million questions.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
I'm happy to come back or send somebody else back
for another show.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, good, good, good.
So how can people get a hold ofyou if they want to connect
about any of those jobs youmentioned?
Speaker 3 (29:09):
We are, like I said, a partner of Hilliard City Lab
and that's probably the easiestway to come through.
So if any of your viewers orlisteners want to find us
through Hilliard City Lab, it'sprobably the easiest way.
If they're an entrepreneur, ifthey're a small business, if
they want to do work with someof the things we're doing,
coming through the city ofHilliard is probably the easiest
way.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Okay, all right.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Awesome, Eric.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Thanks and big shout out to Huard Michelle Crandall,
dwayne Powell and David Meadowsfor CityLab.
I've got to throw them in nowthat we're talking about sending
people to them.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Absolutely To Sharan, the gang over at Big Kitty, for
helping you.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
To Sharan, the gang over at Big Kitty, including the
Big Kitty himself, excellent,excellent.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Eric.
Time to hustle America, Roll up our sleeves and
make dreams happen.
Midwest Momentum brings youstories of CEOs, startups,
product development and foundersdoing whatever it takes to make
their big idea happen.
Midwest Momentum is supportedby Big Kitty Labs and produced
by GNR Media.
(00:20):
Here's Midwest Momentum hostsDan Rockwell and Michelle
Gatchel.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey everybody, thanks again for watching and
listening to Midwest Momentum.
I'm here with a great friend ofmine in Columbus Ohio.
He is a legend in the techspace here in the Midwest Ohio
tech community, my good friendEric Wagner in the house.
Eric, my man, how you doing?
Eric?
Let's talk a little bit about.
I want a quick origin story andthen I want you to race up to
(00:55):
the point where you meet me.
So start with how you start andthen where did you meet me?
And then we'll pick up fromthere.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I was born, I went to college, I joined a research
institution, I joined anotherstartup, and then my life wasn't
fulfilled until I met DanRockwell at the tech
commercialization office at theOhio State University, where I
shared an office immediatelynext to him.
So Dan and I were essentiallyroommates for what?
Two or three years.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, we were two, three years there at
commercialization at Ohio State.
I liked it because when youcame in you were like pretty
serious about you know, forthose that are listening that
don't know whatcommercialization is, every
university gets a lot ofgovernment dollars, right.
We all hear about thegovernment dollars that come
into a university to do what?
To do innovation, right, tochange science and research and
(01:42):
things, and that takes a wholegroup of really crazy people.
It needs the people thatactually work on the thing, but
then it needs the people thatthink about how it goes to
market and, more so, how itreally can get to market.
And that, I feel like, is oneof your specialties, eric, is
that.
You know, when I met you, youwere really on the hustle, like
(02:04):
you arrived and like, all right,what do we got?
What we selling, what's thedeal, what you know?
And it was like it was for me,it was like a moment where we
like walked up to the back ofthe semi and opened it up and
there's a bunch of what?
what do you got?
You got tvs.
All right, I can move those,you know, and it's in.
That's actually part of that.
Culture is to understand what'sthere and then assess it.
(02:24):
What's your background in that?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I mean it's funny, you always joke about that.
You know I'm going to sell you.
So you used CPUs out of theback of a truck but the defense
contractor I joined out of outof so I was in Ohio State
computer, computer science,computer engineering.
I went to Southwest Researchwhich is kind of like a Battelle
except for defense and thenjoined a DOD tech startup
(02:50):
company called DNS Consultants,but it was out of New Jersey and
it was right outside the cityand it had that feel of
something just fell off the backof the truck and we're going to
sell it to you.
So, it's funny you always alludeto that.
However, the general mentalityfor us at that company was we
are going to do fundamentalresearch, so with universities,
with federal labs, but we'regoing to be the application end
of it, right.
So we're going to take the goodideas, turn them into something
(03:12):
, and then field systems for thewarfighters primarily the Army
at that time, but some for theNavy and the Air Force as well.
We built everything from bigfull motion simulators,
helicopter simulators thattrains pilots, to free space
optical systems that they use tocommunicate overseas, to SATCOM
systems, and so really justtaking good ideas, good
innovation, and turning theminto fitable, you know, value
(03:34):
added solutions.
And when I left that company, Itook an exit.
We, we, we had a liquidityevent.
I came back to Ohio or I wasliving in Ohio and spent most of
my time road and overseas,settled down back in Ohio and
looked for what was next.
And for me, I always wanted myown startup.
So I was a very, very smallowner of that company, enough to
(03:55):
give me a little bit ofbankroll to get started when I
left.
But still not the man right,and you always want to be the
man.
I always joke around with myson.
He always says what's it taketo be the man?
I always tell him well, just bethe man, right.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Do the thing.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
If you say you're going to do the thing, do the
thing and that applies genderneutrally across the ecosystem
right, you want to do it, do it.
Stop saying you're going to doit and do it.
And so I was looking for whereI could in quote, quote, do it,
do a startup, and for me it waseither the alma mater at Ohio
State, in the TCO office, or Rev1.
(04:28):
At the time it was TechColumbus, and so I knocked on
both of the doors.
Tech Columbus actually wasgoing to give me entry, but I
really wanted to be at the TCOand I was told no four times.
So four times I tried to joinOhio State's commercialization
office and four times I was toldno.
Uh, and then brian and ray cameon board.
I, I know, you remember them.
Uh, ray atalano was a a in andaround dod community for quite
(04:50):
some time and he's like we needthis guy and so so I don't care
what you say, he's joining us.
And so I joined, kind of underunder, under ray's wing, as it
were.
Uh, the tco office, which wasprimarily all really good people
, but but phs, patent attorneysand then Dan Rockwell.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I always did feel that, you know, I loved it when
you got there because it was,and I never I don't mean that in
a derogatory way on my track.
I mean, that's like to me,that's like honesty, that's like
that's like.
Is that's the people that Ikind of want to protect me?
You know, the people that arewise, right, the wise guys, the
(05:29):
ones that understand things andand can work the deals and
really work the math and stuff,because, honestly, I didn't know
any of that.
So, like tco was like a shortcourse for me to see everything
that would occur, um and ondeals, and at the same time, I
was just wildly passionate aboutevery day learning like 16
different contexts.
It was just, it was wild.
(05:50):
And yet you still meet in theafternoon and talk about the
money that you didn't have.
You're talking about theresources, which you would not
have any.
Now that's not to say, well,I'll see, it doesn't have
resources.
They've changed a lot and theyhave a lot of stuff now.
They have a Techstars program,they have the Boost program.
There was a lot.
The time that I met Eric wasjust a time where they were
(06:14):
trying to reboot that effort.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I will say that what they have now is the result of
people like Cheryl Turnbull andAaron Bender and you and myself
and the whole crew down there,who really kind of changed the
attitude and mentality aroundthings.
Right, ohio State does havemassive resources.
They have a huge endowment,they have, you know, active
investors, a huge alumni networkthat was never kind of brought
to bear on anything other thangiving right.
(06:39):
And when you start turning itagainst commercialization, good
things start happening.
And you know we're still notthere, but but it certainly it's
.
It's much better than it was.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, that's what I felt like.
I feel like you know, we bothhad a great.
I mean, it was like it's behindenemy lines.
It's not easy.
It's not an easy thing, but thecool thing was is that, uh, I'm
I felt like when I left there Ikept doing commercialization.
You know, I kept.
Well, a lot of the things youlearn in commercialization you
kind of take out and this is nottalk about that, but that was a
(07:08):
part of your life.
And now what have you donesince you've been working?
Last thing I heard you've beenworking on drones.
You've been working on a lot ofreally cool.
I know you can't talk aboutthem in terms of government
contracts, cause I know bigkitty is, is is sort of, and
again, I can't talk about thateither, but I just know that
(07:29):
there's people I know and lovein town who are doing really
cool work for veterans and doingreally cool work for that.
I'm excited about that piecebecause I see the drone activity
, I see the flying cars, I seeall the innovation, I see the
Intel plant, I see the epicenterexpanding and Columbus, and
really the Midwest, is a hugepart of that.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
You know, dan, I think that when I left the TCO I
did that little student CDMEand that's you know because of
my current partner, john Baer.
He had come in previously whenyou and I were at the TCO and
asked to do a number of startups.
He's an alumni electronicsdesign development manufacturing
guy who built his own company,took a public, took a private,
(08:11):
was retired but was helping outwith the business plan
competitions and thecommercialization efforts as a
volunteer right, was the dean'sexternal advisory chair for a
college of engineering andreally just wanted to help
commercialization too.
And you see, all these peoplewho want to help, but it's
always in this fragmented,siloed, individual kind of way
that was never kind of pouredinto the cohesive ecosystem,
right, I think that's at the TCOwhat we try to do more than
(08:33):
almost anything else was pullthose passionate people together
and actually have them moveforward in some common direction
.
And I got suckered into joiningJohn and creating a center over
on Kinnear called the Centerfor Design Manufacturing
Excellence, which I know you'reaware of, but had wrote out my
non-compete.
So I was coming to Ohio State towrite out a non-compete for my
other company, which apparentlyBiden says now is illegal.
(08:56):
So I would have been lucky backthen to not have to do this,
but I wouldn't have met you.
Wouldn't have met you.
But I was writing out anon-compete.
I wanted to learn how to dostartups in Ohio.
I came to TCO I was gettingreally close to the end of my
non-compete.
I was going to go do a startup.
My partner, john Baer, who wasnot my partner at the time, was
doing startups at Ohio State.
You and I both helped them getup that includes Nikola Labs and
(09:19):
Care Batteries, which CareBatteries fell fast, like you're
supposed to.
Nikola Labs is still ongoingand a growing concern with Will
Zell and those guys.
Good results, bad results thatwere done the right way, Fell
fast, fell honestly.
If you way you know, fell fast,fell, fell, fell honestly.
(09:40):
If you make it more than threeyears, you're a successful
entrepreneur, whether yourcompany ever succeeds or not.
Right, if you can collect thepaycheck that sustains you for
three years, plus owning yourown company, you have.
You have succeeded.
Congratulations.
Plus owning your own company,you have succeeded.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Congratulations, are you?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
aware, is the question At the end of the day,
if you don't go home and cry ina pillow every single night, you
have succeeded.
And so John had convinced methat I had been preaching and
you had been preaching that, hey, listen, if we bring all these
resources together into a commonenvironment and we row in the
same direction and we row at thesame speed when we're going to
go somewhere, right, and and sowe, you know, he said hey, the
(10:20):
Dean told me to build thisoutward facing center center for
design manufacturing excellence.
Myself, john Nate Ames, glennDane and a couple other folks
founded it I on a model that youhad student resources that you
could get applied engineeringvery cost effectively and give
them student experientiallearning.
You could bring technologiesout of the university and mature
them to the point where they'reready and you can bring
industry and entrepreneurs in todo all that commercialization
(10:41):
around that right, um,relatively large success that
the center is still growingevery single year.
From what I understand, I'vebeen down there in a while.
I, but john made me join thatbecause he said you can't
practice what you preach and ifand if you're going to be the
man, be the man.
And you've been talking aboutpulling all these things
together in a common ecosystemand making sure that this model
works Right, and now you have todo it.
(11:01):
So I joined them.
We built that for two and ahalf years and then we finally
just said, hey, listen, themodel we know works.
It's going to be a uphill slog,but we're going to go do it and
going to go do it.
And so five years ago maybe six, almost six now geez, we
started Converge Technologies,acquired a building over in
Hilliard off 270.
It was one of the old Ray Hallbuildings it's 621 Lyman Drive,
(11:23):
if anybody wants to ever comevisit and created a two-person
company in a 27,000 square footinnovation center.
And so you know, if you want totalk about taking leaps of
faith, you know there it isright.
I subsequently grew Converge tobe an engineering design
development services-basedcompany and then we were going
(11:44):
to do a startup incubator andthe startup incubator was going
to be called Converge Ventures.
You know, aligned very wellwith the namesake, but fell into
the trap that so many folksfell into with VCs that, hey,
big promises, big commitments,big demonstrated commitments.
You know they had docked upthis whole, this whole thing,
only to have the entire billiondollar fund not make it at the
(12:07):
end Right.
So the fund never launched andafter two and a half years of
heartbreak and bootstrapping ourbusiness and partner businesses
, we finally just say listen,we're not taking VC, we're
bootstrapping from here on outuntil they're Series A ready, or
at least pre-seed like reallywell-defined pre-seed ready,
before we take any investment atall.
So launch the incubator on ourown, have a number of companies
(12:31):
kind of resident under the roof.
We're expanding that operationand that's kind of where we're
at.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I mean.
Well, first of all, there's alot there.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
You and I have ADHD, dan, in the worst kind of way.
We have what we have ADHDreally badly, that's true.
Listen, if you just focused onthis, it might be really
successful.
Yeah, but what about this?
Speaker 4 (12:52):
What about this?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You know it might be really successful, yeah, but
what about this, what about this?
It's not a disorder, though,quite frankly, it's the fact
that you go that fast and youcan.
You have that gift.
Same thing with John Bear.
One thing I've always reallyenjoyed about John in a lot of
ways is he added up the patternsreally quick at OSU.
In a lot of ways, it's kind ofadded up the patterns really
(13:16):
quick at OSU.
In a lot of ways, we have toengineer the bulls in our own
china shop.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Roger that Make sure they knock down the right
shelves.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, and not only that, but make sure that our own
personnel knows what to do inthe bulls china shop and
everything else.
So it's important to do in thebull's-eye of China and
everything else.
It's important to do that.
I really respect John for that,because he had the Parallel
Company he did that.
I don't know if it was Parallel, I forget the name of the
company he did that it's prettycool.
Then he came in and then thecenter of design, Chris Sess,
(13:50):
where Camp went, and of courseCamp went in his direction.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Listen, and the ecosystem hasn't changed.
Dan, I'm doing shit with Campnow too, and Lee Mosbacher, so
we'll touch on that here in asecond.
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
So I love that it kind of keeps going and
everything and converging.
I love what you're doing withthat, Because that's taking the
leap of faith and doing theincubator, knowing that it's
going to be filled.
Right, you had to build churchknowing full well there was
people there at some point andwe're going to share those.
But when we talk about AI andthis is something that Michelle
and I talk a lot about we haveanother podcast where we talk
(14:22):
about it too.
What's your feelings on AI andhow it's coming in?
You're in the AdvancedManufacturing Center.
You got IC3D right next to you.
There you guys are doing somereally cool stuff.
Do you feel like the DARPA, thesci-fi of our dreams and our
movies, is on.
Is it right at our front dooror what?
(14:42):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (14:44):
You know, dan, I have been a big vocal person on the
fact that AI for years now, andyou've known this is going to
disrupt the entire ecosystem,right, not just manufacturing,
not just tech.
It's going to disrupt the humanpopulation, right, and when you
look at it, the two possibleoutcomes are utopian and
(15:07):
dystopian.
Right, utopian is, you know,dan can now go play the ukulele
because he has time to play theukulele, because we have much,
much, much higher, higher levelsof efficiency and productivity.
Right, the dystopian iseverybody's on the job, and you
know you're not seeing that yetbecause the economies are
growing relatively well.
Democratization of it, if youwant to call it, of this
(15:35):
software that enables you torapidly harness the knowledge
and resources of the world intoan application.
It's profound, right, it'sgoing to be a profound shift,
and I think what we've seen sofar is some of the things that
we have been contemplating forthe last couple of years.
And so you know Yubi here.
You know Dr Alper Yilmaz, andhe's the founder of you be here
and a computer vision specialist, and so he's he's one of the
(15:56):
kind of front runners of AI.
I'm lucky enough now to be theCEO of his company, so Alper and
I work quite a bit together,thank you.
We have focused from the verybeginning, on the fact that YOLO
and these large models aregoing to do all of the things
right, but they're not going todo the specific things that add
value for very specificcustomers, and so we built a
(16:23):
platform which allows you to dovery efficient customization of
computer vision and businessintelligence and any type of
intelligence generation usingcomputer vision in a very
targeted, very directed manner,right.
And so we have pilots, like yousaid, with the Army, we have
some with the Air Force, but wealso have some with the city of
Hilliard, we have some with someretail manufacturers, we have
some with direct consumercompanies, and all of these use
a common set of AI tools right,on a common platform.
(16:44):
What you're seeing for, likethe LLMs and other stuff, though
, dan, is ridiculous.
You know, I have a friend whoworks in the energy sector and
said that energy is going toquadruple in the next decade
strictly because of AI, right,because of the data centers
associated with AI.
Now, what will the increases inproductivity be?
What will the outcomes be?
I don't know, but it's going tobe profound, right?
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
It's simply a it's.
It's the elephant in the roomand I'm glad you brought to the
forefront first, because it'salways it's kind of like when do
you bring it up?
When you bring the job, youbring it up at the beginning of
the conversation and bring it atthe end because it's going to
be part of the narrative.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
And I think it has to be right.
I mean, you know, you, you, you, you, you humans are inherently
emotional.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Emotional, yeah, and I.
I see that too.
I know when I um.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
I listen, I, I, I, I agree, I agree.
And if you're not continuallyexpanding and innovating and
growing, and and again, uh at atat, at its core, at its core.
I hate to always joke aroundwith this, but but, but
financial institutions areconstruct right.
Money is a construct and, at theend of the day, as long as we
(17:59):
keep expanding that construct ina positive manner, to do
whatever to get on Mars, to,like you said, starfleet right,
or to become a better, morerounded society that takes care
of their people, I don't carewhat it is, but as long as we're
moving in a positive direction.
The financial mechanisms aroundthat are constructs, right it's.
It's the human, the humanevolution into the next thing.
It's is really kind of me.
The big thing and I joke aroundmy son, who somehow ended up
(18:22):
being in like a documentary filmand international affairs when,
when his mother wanted him tobe medical and I wanted to be an
engineer, and he's he's overhere doing his own thing, that
that he better get on boardbecause, at the end of the day,
I appreciate intellectualproperty and I appreciate
creativity of humans andwhatever.
But if other people have accessto those tools, they're going
to use them right, and so youeither need to learn the tools
(18:42):
that are available to you andutilize them to the fullest
potential, or you're going toget pushed by the wayside.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, the construct is a really great word to use,
because you know money is aconstruct, even the business is
a construct.
But you are not a construct,your wife's not a construct.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I always talk on.
He jokes around about thesnowflake generation.
Right Now I walk the road.
I'm again not to get intopolitics, but I'm kind of a
centrist Democrat Right, and soyou know we're part of that
little snowflake culture orwhatever and he jokes around.
He's like I'm not a snowflake,I'm not like the snowflakes.
Buddy.
There's 8.2 billion snowflakesin the world.
Everybody's unique.
(19:22):
Everybody's a snowflake.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Well, everybody wants to get along and try to get out
of the building alive.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Listen, I just want to make sure that we don't melt
before the next ice age, right?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
No, totally.
I mean, that's the thing it's.
And it's not just that too,it's just that you're wildly
passionate about the science man.
I mean, I tell friends like soyou know, folks will ask me why
don't you do what you do, Is it?
You know it's?
(19:54):
It's like I'm bragging right.
Maybe someday, maybe someday,maybe no, it's it's.
It's, you're right, it isdefinitely um, but it's more
about being at the intersection.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
You were there even the money, dan, even the money I
, I preach and I I live.
You know, and, and my son willtell you this, it's, it's a tool
, it's a you know, it's a toolto do things.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Really, it's part of that construct.
That's awesome.
Yeah, all right, we're wrappingup here a little bit.
What can you give us on?
Wait, before I jump to that UB.
Here is that entrepreneur inresidence.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
So UB here was one of our startups that we looked at
when we came out of Ohio Stateto do as part of this startup
fund that we're going to do inthis incubator.
Alper had started it with Rev1and the folks on Airway and
Embry and those guys it kind ofstagnated a little bit.
John and I, when we wereleaving, were asked to come and
(20:41):
look at it.
We spent about six monthslooking at the tags and the
computer vision pieces of UBhere, found that there probably
was market there.
We just had to push it into themarket, adapt it for those
specific markets.
We took equity for sweat forover the first two years and
then I put about I don't knowprobably seven or $8 million of
federal funding behind you behere so far to develop the
(21:01):
solutions that now we areactually launching commercial
pilots for both tags and and thecomputer vision this summer,
dan.
So I'll make sure you get thefirst.
I'll make sure you get thefirst implementations of them
and first maintenance of themand away you go.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh, michelle's got a fewquestions, she's joined in now I
will.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I will say real quick for entrepreneurs, michelle,
before you jump in there um, oneof the things that we did do uh
is one of the things that yourold bkel partner, uh, too, sure
is helping with too is wepartnered with the city of uh
hilliard to start what they callwell, well, they have CityLab.
They started CityLab, which wasa we're going to help small
businesses and entrepreneursfigure out how to do businesses
with municipalities, right, kindof like the AFWERX programs for
(21:39):
the Air Force, and then askedus to be the tech innovation
partner for CityLab.
We agreed to it and, as afunction of that, we found a
number of we'll call thempublic-private partnership
opportunities to advancetechnology for entrepreneurs.
One of the big ones is a BKL UBhere and CityLab opportunity
(22:01):
that they call the AI Sandbox.
And the AI Sandbox came aboutthen because, as you know,
amazon Web Services and Azureand OpenAI and whatever they're
these huge monoliths, right, andat the end of the day,
especially the AWS guys theycharge you a lot, these huge
monoliths, right, and at the endof the day, especially the AWS
guys they charge you a lot ofmoney for computational power,
right, and when you'redeveloping a new model, a new
agent, a new agent's form, orwhatever it might be around.
(22:23):
Ai testing the value add to aparticular customer application
while not incurring hundreds andhundreds of thousands of
dollars of compute costs fromAmazon Web Services is a big
deal for entrepreneurs, right?
And so we created a replicantcluster that's going online here
at the end of May that givesentrepreneurs the ability to
schedule time on big GPUs withbig net storage that run
(22:47):
localized models that aretrained, you know, by the big
guys, but being held locally,right, to ensure what the
compute cost would be when youmigrate to the cloud.
And if, at the end of the day,you only produce seven cents
worth of value, but it costs you25, you probably shouldn't do
it, right, yeah yeah, oh, that'sgood.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You know, I was telling Shashar I think hardware
concepts are really right now.
Hardware concepts are very cool, especially in again you'd be
here, especially in again you'dbe here because you're going to
get to analog AI hardware.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Listen, the small guys are pushed out too right.
I mean, at the end of the day,the big guys will always go for
the biggest, most stablecontracts.
The small guys will always getpushed to the bottom.
If you're not doing bare metalapplications or scalable
applications of hardware, you'redoing a disservice to the
entrepreneurs and that's whatwe're trying to do too.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You're not Taking a lot of federal dollars are
probably on the table.
Looking for aspects of that,I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
The nice thing is the federal dollars are available
for helping build those systemsout to support entrepreneurs.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
So we pursue that too .
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, michelle jumped in.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Hey, hey, hey, hey, Michelle, hey, aaron, I was
going to ask you specificallyabout the Hillier Lab and what
kind of young entrepreneursyou're seeing come through there
.
Right, now?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
That's a great question.
The first ones that we'reseeing come through there right
now are some of the ones thathave been referred by folks,
like Align AI.
Right so, they have largelanguage models that are going
to create agents that make yourinbox more efficiently
maintained.
Right so, virtual assistants,if you want to call them that.
(24:13):
Right, we've seen ones wherethey're doing agent swarms that
are doing optimization ofprocess because they have very
keen insight and intelligencearound the physics, the math,
the whatever for certain partsof process, but can't figure out
how to create new complexprocess chains that are either
better, more efficient orwhatever.
(24:34):
And that's the case forcompanies like Voxel, and Voxel
does new designs of additivemanufacturing, medical devices
and other things.
So very complex geometry, verycomplex parts.
But if they can model thatbefore they actually do it, they
can determine if there's valuethere versus traditional
manufacturing methodologies.
And that plays into what IC3Dand some of those guys are doing
(24:54):
as well.
So really, the sandbox is openfor whatever It'll be.
It'll house, you know, kind ofall the large known LLMs, some
of the computer vision systems,the open CV systems, but hold
those all resident so that we'renot eating up compute costs and
dollars on the cloud for theseentrepreneurs.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
And so what's next for you?
Speaker 3 (25:19):
So I've had to I've had to, sadly, start focusing a
little bit.
You'll be here is getting tothe point where that eats up a
fair amount of my time.
I'm still helping with, likeDan said, we have a company
called Lighthouse which isaerospace management for drones
and air taxis.
I still do a little bit ofconsulting for the Air Force and
some of the people who do workwith the Air Force on the side,
but it's really kind of boilingdown to UB here.
(25:41):
We had a nonprofit studentexperiential learning program
that we brought an executive inresidence in to lead it, dave
Nestick, if you know him, dan.
So Dave came in to run the OMIC.
We're looking for a CEO forLighthouse.
We're raising capital forLighthouse right now and so
we're starting to not divest butchange leadership in some of
(26:02):
these things that we startedbuilding.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
That's really cool.
Can you give us just a snapshotview of like you'd be here
again?
I think it was yeah listen.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
so Alper Yolmez, Public concept.
So give be here again, I think.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah listen.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
So so for you, ole Miss, public concept.
So give me.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
I'm going to boil it down to a sentence for you.
They do geospatial analytics.
And geospatial analytics meanshow do people, objects, things
move, or detected or trackedmove and interact in three
dimensional space?
Right, you know, even you and I, if we're in the same room and
my body language is doing thisand this and this, and you know,
(26:37):
maybe Eric's briefing Dan on anew thing, right, but how those
things are moving.
So Ubi here has these scalablewe'll call them Lego blocks of
tracking tags.
They're environmental sensingtags, they're movement tags,
they're GPS tags, which allowyou to have environmental
awareness and tracking inthree-dimensional space.
But we also have computervision systems which allow you
(27:03):
to do things like eventdetection, event tracking,
process management, but do it ina we call it storyboarding, do
it in a storyboarded manner,that's storyboarded specifically
for customer applications.
And so, for example, if youthink in fast food, maybe safety
is an issue, so make sure thatonly people who can use the
fryer are certified to use thefryer, or actually touching the
fryer, maybe also timeliness ofpreparing the things are
important for employeeevaluation.
So you watch an employee howfast they make this or that or
(27:25):
the other thing, and so we cancreate these custom analytic
generation tools for customersthat, from what we found, a fair
amount of value, um, and thendo that for a low cost.
It would have been theequivalent of a manager sitting
there watching his team for thewhole day and doing an
evaluation, right, yeah?
Speaker 4 (27:41):
that is awesome yeah, it's really cool and like I
said I'll make sure dan you getfirst copies of this and then
with the lighthouse, the dronedelivery logistics is amazing to
me.
I know was it Kroger down southhas been trying.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Kroger did it.
Yep, absolutely, kroger did it.
We had a couple other folks.
We have the corridor.
Ohio doesn't do nearly as muchas everybody else does, though,
and we've been trying to push onthat.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Why is that?
Is it we don't have theairspace?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I think it's more that there is a there's a lack
of coordinated communicationbetween the FAA and the state of
Ohio to determine what we'reallowed to do and what we're not
allowed to do, where some ofthe other states are a little
bit more proactive about hey,this is what we're going to do.
Faa, you have to work with usto figure out how to do it.
And you see like South Carolinais flying first responder
(28:32):
activities and you see likeSouth Carolina is flying first
responder activities, texasoutside Dallas, are actually
flying package delivery with,with, with Walmart.
So Walmart has outside Dallas,has 25 square miles that they do
package delivery on.
And so Ohio we got oh yeah, wedid a test flight or we did this
, but we're not actuallyactively operating autonomous
systems.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And we have any final questions.
Michelle, I think we're over.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
I have a million questions.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
I'm happy to come back or send somebody else back
for another show.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, good, good, good.
So how can people get a hold ofyou if they want to connect
about any of those jobs youmentioned?
Speaker 3 (29:09):
We are, like I said, a partner of Hilliard City Lab
and that's probably the easiestway to come through.
So if any of your viewers orlisteners want to find us
through Hilliard City Lab, it'sprobably the easiest way.
If they're an entrepreneur, ifthey're a small business, if
they want to do work with someof the things we're doing,
coming through the city ofHilliard is probably the easiest
way.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Okay, all right.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Awesome, Eric.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Thanks and big shout out to Huard Michelle Crandall,
dwayne Powell and David Meadowsfor CityLab.
I've got to throw them in nowthat we're talking about sending
people to them.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Absolutely To Sharan, the gang over at Big Kitty, for
helping you.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
To Sharan, the gang over at Big Kitty, including the
Big Kitty himself, excellent,excellent.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Eric.
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