July 5, 2024 • 16 mins
In this episode, we talk to Renan Devillieres about his work with OSS Ventures and their investment in the logistics and operations sector. We discuss the critical need for innovation in this space, the role of AI, robotics, and new materials, and the potential for massive economic impact. Renan shares his insights on how technology can transform industries and solve global challenges like climate change and supply chain disruptions.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Tectastic, where we navigate theintersection of technology and business,
uncovering innovations that redefine our world.
Ronan Duvalier.
Welcome to It's Fantastic.
This is so lovely to have you here.
Thank you for me.
So you were in a space that I have a lot ofpassion around, and anybody who's followed me
(00:22):
recently knows that I care a lot about thelogistics and operation inside the house.
Which is often not the sexy part of technology.
There's a critical need.
It's really important.
It's how the world works.
But it's not the flashy whiz bang stuff that weall get here.
And you run OSS Ventures, which seems to beinvested in that space.
Tell me more about that.
(00:43):
Tell me why you chose that space.
So there are 2 big answers.
The first 1 is just my personal story.
I worked for 10 as an operation.
I was a factory director, supply chaindirector, and then I created a tech startup and
was lucky enough to to make some money in theexit of that company.
And so I just used my money to put back inoperations.
So that's the historical way of looking at it.
(01:05):
The second way, which is way more interestingfor me, is operation is 25% of the world GDP.
Roughly, it's 0.7% of this Tiffany.
So there's that in the almost gap.
And the world is needing badly innovation inthat space.
Innovation in atoms was not fast enoughcompared to innovation bits And, there is
(01:25):
incredible progress to be made there.
And what I often say is, if you really want tosolve climate change, and the tensions in
America and Europe over wages and cheap Chinesestuff and everything, we have to put technology
in operations.
And the way we are going to do it.
And I dream of a world where robots are goingto do a lot of the physical things, and we are
(01:48):
going to innovate in the physical world, andwe're going to change the world this way.
So it's critical for me to put tech in there.
It's funny because my company does a lot stuffaround tech debt.
And the vast majority of tech debt, when Ithink of it, I'll use my wife as an example.
She has alphabet supervisor named a lot ofadvanced certifications, all that kind of fun
(02:09):
stuff, and heavily in the operation space.
And what does she get asked to do generallyspeaking when she brought into a company?
It's not those things she has, you know, thosedegrees for her.
It's usually to manage broken technology.
Yeah.
Of course.
Because at her level, it's a lot aboutreporting.
That's where I think a lot under investment hasbeen a huge gap.
(02:29):
We rely on both systems to give us good dataabout how we're doing.
They're not telling us the reality on theground so often because of the gaps in the
technology itself and how fundamentally flawthey are.
And you mentioned global warming and a lot ofthe the risks that are coming with, you know,
advancement of technology in general, there'srisks that come with it.
And the place that we've least solved are theplaces where the most people work, where the
(02:53):
most of the jobs actually sit.
40% are full jobs.
Yeah.
And that's where I personally started leaningin about 10 years ago because I, like many
technologists, was so enamored with the flashy,with the the stuff that was right in front of
But as you move your way deeper into theoperations of any business, you'd find more and
more opportunities.
(03:13):
And I think I know why, lack of willingness toinvest there
The relative contrast, it's let's let me takesome examples.
Biggest companies in the world.
Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, arguably 3 outof those 4 companies our operations company and
their Edge supply chain.
(03:35):
So if you invest right into those functions,the payout is massive.
What is problematic is that the average line ofcode in operations is 24 years old, so they can
get a drink.
And when you have something that works, it'sclassic Innovator's dilemma.
You don't really invest that much becauseyou're not seeing the next frontier of what a
(03:59):
significant investments in technology in thatpart of your business could drive.
And so, that's, for example, what happened toautomakers.
It showed brutal the amount of softwareinnovation for the last 20 years in cars is 0.
And then Tesla comes, and then the amount ofinnovation in software and cars gets to a lot.
(04:19):
And separating would that never happen if therehadn't been a new player in the field.
And so my personal take on it is that it's anecosystem and we need descriptors to pave the
way and do things differently and investmassively to show the way and then incumbents
have to care to catch up, and so they startinvesting.
(04:42):
And so I'm an optimist And so I think thatthere will be massive investment and
opportunities in that part of the economy inthe next 5 to 10 years.
The last thing that happens is that the Chineseare outspending us in every CapEx category that
you can think of.
But Biden came and said, okay, guys.
(05:03):
We are going big.
And now we have chips coming back to the US.
We have, computers, making, coming back to theUS, and we have a 100% tax on electric vehicles
coming from China, which really help.
So it came down to me to that exact point aboutthe investment levels.
And the sunk cost fallacy that's oftenassociated with technology.
(05:25):
There's very real reasons to not worry aboutbeing pushed hard by a creditor and startup
because the amount of capital they have toexpend to catch up when it comes to something
in logistics, like, I don't know, oceanshipping.
Yeah.
Every 1 of those ships is a $100, 000, 000 plusFistag plus the port build outs and everything
else to disrupt a space like that, we requiresmassive investment.
(05:48):
Yes.
Right?
And you're gonna see that coming from a longway out because as soon as they start asking
for money, you're gonna know about So a lot ofthese spaces have had no reason to really
change.
I kicked on that particular industry partiallybecause I was And I saw it firsthand the only
innovations that have ever happened in the 31000 year history of ocean shipping or more,
(06:08):
probably, like, 12, 000 year history of oceanshipping.
Are no longer relying on mother nature to moveour ships.
Right?
We invented steam engine.
Yeah.
And the introduction of the container in the 19fifties.
Yeah.
That's it.
And we're at a point now, though, where ifyou're not digital, full end to end visibility
at least, you can't optimize, you can'tpredict, you can't do a lot of the things that
(06:30):
are necessary for just baseline today.
Yeah.
And so everybody that works with those partiesworks around them.
They get data from other paths, you know, theycome up with other ways of doing it, which is
terrible because it's a very big portion ofglobal trade.
Happens that 1 industry.
Yep.
So it's ones like that that I look at and go, Ihave theory on how we disrupt the space like
(06:51):
that, but I don't really know how we go afterthat.
It's hard.
Whereas there's other places, the going aroundit pieces, where it's very clear how we do
that.
And technology is such a big enablement.
And when most people think technology.
They're really thinking about the computer andautomation that comes along with it.
But there's a lot of other technologies outthere that have a potential to disrupt this
(07:12):
space.
And I'm curious what you think some of those,like, most exciting ones are right now.
So the first is AI.
Clearly, and above all other categories, thereis a case where AI is bigger than the internet
in terms of impact on global trades.
And we really think that.
Yeah.
And the way we talk about it at OS adventure isvery simple.
(07:34):
Cloud and the internet gave us the way to reachanyone and any business owners.
And AI gives you how to replay people who don'tactually do things.
So AI.
Yeah.
It it it's exactly right.
But it's also 1 of those moments where it'slike, I think that the future of AI for a
(07:57):
period of time is largely a side by side,enabling of the people to do a much better job
to be much more productive.
But there is a point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There is a point.
You know, it's exactly like the when there is atakeover from an company to another.
First, they say, we are going to work togetherand 3 years later, there's only 1 company
(08:18):
standing.
So, well, so AI robotics is a very bigcategory.
And we think that robotics is going from awhole base to learning.
There's that incredibly interesting companycalled Figures that is doing a human with
general purpose robot.
They just stroke deal with BMV, and the goal isto automate 50% of the factory without coding.
(08:42):
Wow.
So self learning robots, we think that this isgoing to happen for sure.
Yeah.
The third is new materials and new pro newprocesses.
New materials and new processes are enabling usto do things that we could not do before.
I have 2 stats that I love.
The first 1 is that there are more scientistsalive right now than the total tiers of who
(09:04):
died ever since Jesus Christ.
So it means that the pace of innovation inmaterial science is exponential.
And with AI, we discovered in the last 20 yearsmore materials than in the last 200 years.
I did not know that.
That's amazing.
So that there's another 1 that I think is veryinteresting in this space that I I actually
don't hear many people talk about anymore,though it was hot about 10 years ago.
(09:27):
Which is advanced manufacturing, 3 d printing,CNC machining, all the things that are related.
Because for me, you know, I'm gonna say theexact opposite 1 I just said before, like, I
actually think that's the way that we start todisrupt the global shipping industry and
logistics as it is because my premise is this,marching forward, there's been this ever
expanding, like, desire from consumers for 2things.
(09:51):
I want the product now and we're getting closerand closer to that.
And the other is I want a custom.
And those are in direct conflict with eachother if you don't have something like advanced
manufacturing.
So you're thinking of the syntitizer from StarTrek.
And yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
There is 1 thing though for the Sentitizer fromStar Trek.
Which is 1 of the most counterintuitive truthsthat we hold at OSS Venture.
(10:14):
The bottleneck to the scintatizer or star trekis not the process.
It's the material.
Meaning that you don't need 3 d printing and amill and some smoldering and blah blah blah.
You don't need, like, those 14 differentprocesses in a box.
If you have the right material that needs onlyto process to do a variety of things.
(10:36):
And then sending the instructions on how totransform matter is very easy.
Like, we have 1 company in Europe.
They operate factories where there is 0 people,and they can remote, create any number of 200 k
SKU just by pressing a button, and people candeliver it.
What's the name of that company I need toconnect in the Wayfair?
(11:00):
It's it's a it's a Cognex and I will send it,to you.
But what is very interesting is that those 200K SKU, the constraint is not the information
sending the constraint is not the processes andblah blah blah.
The constraint is having the right materials toexpand the type of SKUs that they can do.
Yeah.
(11:20):
Absolutely.
So I was at Nike.
I was their head of innovation for quite awhile.
And 1 of the things that we were trying tobuild was Nike Iggy, the custom shoe that you
can design.
Yeah.
The hard part of that was never letting peopledesign whatever they want and being able to,
like, do all the models and all the cutpatterns and all for it.
It was how do we get purple, green, gold, blah,blah, all the different materials to each
(11:42):
factory that might make that So we actuallystarted down an interesting process, though.
We rethought how a shoe was built entirely.
And that led to 3 major innovations, theflyknit upper, which is a mid upper 1 piece
instead of being, like, 20, the, I think theycall it lunar on later or lunar soul, but
instead of being air soles, it was the lunarsoles because I 1 thing.
(12:04):
And then it was the it was like sonic weldingfor the different parts together instead of
stitching.
And was all so we could do it faster.
And it pushed a lot of, or sorry, we could getit closer to customer errors.
We could do more things.
And I do think reef thinking the productsthemselves along those lines creates its own
set of innovations, which is very positive.
But you're absolutely right.
If you can't get the base materials to thatplace where the thing's gonna be manufactured,
(12:28):
you're no better off.
And our supply chains are still built for rawmaterials to go 1 way.
It Exactly.
And so 1 of the biggest innovations of Tesla isthat they reduced the raw material variety
needed for the car.
And they verticalized a lot of the supplychain.
And so that's how they got through the COVIDsupply chain descriptions and blah blah blah
(12:50):
blah.
And so they They thought the product with moreconstraint on the raw material at start.
And we think that in the next 10 to 20 years,innovation materials you need to be so huge
that it unlocks the rest because the bottleneckstops.
I hear you.
That's a very good point I did not realize thatthat many innovations have already been made in
(13:12):
that space because it what's interesting aboutthat is it gets buried in everything you buy.
You don't even know what's happened Yeah.
But you have more comfortable shoes.
You have shirts with less seams and, all kindsof it's, there was a commercial when I was a
kid, but that was, like, we don't make theproducts you buy.
We make the products you buy better.
And it reminds me of that because that was amaterial sciences company.
Right?
(13:33):
Yeah.
Exactly.
And it's so interesting because a lot of thisis driven by AI.
I think 2024 is on track to be the 1st yearwhere more new materials are discovered by
robots than by humans.
So it's starting.
For drugs, it was true in 23.
It's already true for drugs.
(13:53):
Now it will be true for materials.
And so it's it's a good space to be in becausewhen that fundamental innovation happens at
such a deep level, it changed the world'ssupply chain.
Absolutely.
I I wanna keep this conversation going forhours and hours, but but I can because we are
running out of time rapidly, and I wanna giveyou a couple suggest to say some last words to
(14:16):
the audience?
Oh, sure.
So, at West Adventure, we launch and buildsoftware and hardware companies for the
operational world.
We invested in 20 companies.
They are live in 2200 industrial sites.
We are 25, 000, 000 ARR.
And we are looking only for 3 things, which isincredible founders wanting to partner with us
(14:40):
and change the world of operations.
2 are industrials.
We work closely with industrials.
We go to their factories.
I have a 20 people team We went to 860factories in the last 4 years, basically, all
over the world, and so we get all the time fromthe ground up.
So if an industrial is listening to this andsaying this is sounds interesting, you can
(15:01):
contact us.
And the third is, we are closing investmentfund.
It will be announced next week.
So I think it would be a it will be already allnews when the podcast goes live, but, it's 1 of
the biggest fans in France.
So we are very proud of
We're not that, fantastic having you on.
I will have you on again if you're interested.
I'd love to go deeper into any 1 of thecompanies you're invested in, the topics you
(15:23):
wanna go into, love having you on.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you.
And that's a wrap for this episode of wannathank you personally for joining us, and we'll
see you next time.
Until then, keep exploring, and stay curious.
Thank you for listening.
(15:44):
If you are new here and enjoyed the content,please subscribe.
It really helps us out.
And if you are a regular listener, thanks somuch for your continued support.
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Welcome to Tectastic, where we navigate theintersection of technology and business,
uncovering innovations that redefine our world.
Ronan Duvalier.
Welcome to It's Fantastic.
This is so lovely to have you here.
Thank you for me.
So you were in a space that I have a lot ofpassion around, and anybody who's followed me
(00:22):
recently knows that I care a lot about thelogistics and operation inside the house.
Which is often not the sexy part of technology.
There's a critical need.
It's really important.
It's how the world works.
But it's not the flashy whiz bang stuff that weall get here.
And you run OSS Ventures, which seems to beinvested in that space.
Tell me more about that.
(00:43):
Tell me why you chose that space.
So there are 2 big answers.
The first 1 is just my personal story.
I worked for 10 as an operation.
I was a factory director, supply chaindirector, and then I created a tech startup and
was lucky enough to to make some money in theexit of that company.
And so I just used my money to put back inoperations.
So that's the historical way of looking at it.
(01:05):
The second way, which is way more interestingfor me, is operation is 25% of the world GDP.
Roughly, it's 0.7% of this Tiffany.
So there's that in the almost gap.
And the world is needing badly innovation inthat space.
Innovation in atoms was not fast enoughcompared to innovation bits And, there is
(01:25):
incredible progress to be made there.
And what I often say is, if you really want tosolve climate change, and the tensions in
America and Europe over wages and cheap Chinesestuff and everything, we have to put technology
in operations.
And the way we are going to do it.
And I dream of a world where robots are goingto do a lot of the physical things, and we are
(01:48):
going to innovate in the physical world, andwe're going to change the world this way.
So it's critical for me to put tech in there.
It's funny because my company does a lot stuffaround tech debt.
And the vast majority of tech debt, when Ithink of it, I'll use my wife as an example.
She has alphabet supervisor named a lot ofadvanced certifications, all that kind of fun
(02:09):
stuff, and heavily in the operation space.
And what does she get asked to do generallyspeaking when she brought into a company?
It's not those things she has, you know, thosedegrees for her.
It's usually to manage broken technology.
Yeah.
Of course.
Because at her level, it's a lot aboutreporting.
That's where I think a lot under investment hasbeen a huge gap.
(02:29):
We rely on both systems to give us good dataabout how we're doing.
They're not telling us the reality on theground so often because of the gaps in the
technology itself and how fundamentally flawthey are.
And you mentioned global warming and a lot ofthe the risks that are coming with, you know,
advancement of technology in general, there'srisks that come with it.
And the place that we've least solved are theplaces where the most people work, where the
(02:53):
most of the jobs actually sit.
40% are full jobs.
Yeah.
And that's where I personally started leaningin about 10 years ago because I, like many
technologists, was so enamored with the flashy,with the the stuff that was right in front of
But as you move your way deeper into theoperations of any business, you'd find more and
more opportunities.
(03:13):
And I think I know why, lack of willingness toinvest there
The relative contrast, it's let's let me takesome examples.
Biggest companies in the world.
Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, arguably 3 outof those 4 companies our operations company and
their Edge supply chain.
(03:35):
So if you invest right into those functions,the payout is massive.
What is problematic is that the average line ofcode in operations is 24 years old, so they can
get a drink.
And when you have something that works, it'sclassic Innovator's dilemma.
You don't really invest that much becauseyou're not seeing the next frontier of what a
(03:59):
significant investments in technology in thatpart of your business could drive.
And so, that's, for example, what happened toautomakers.
It showed brutal the amount of softwareinnovation for the last 20 years in cars is 0.
And then Tesla comes, and then the amount ofinnovation in software and cars gets to a lot.
(04:19):
And separating would that never happen if therehadn't been a new player in the field.
And so my personal take on it is that it's anecosystem and we need descriptors to pave the
way and do things differently and investmassively to show the way and then incumbents
have to care to catch up, and so they startinvesting.
(04:42):
And so I'm an optimist And so I think thatthere will be massive investment and
opportunities in that part of the economy inthe next 5 to 10 years.
The last thing that happens is that the Chineseare outspending us in every CapEx category that
you can think of.
But Biden came and said, okay, guys.
(05:03):
We are going big.
And now we have chips coming back to the US.
We have, computers, making, coming back to theUS, and we have a 100% tax on electric vehicles
coming from China, which really help.
So it came down to me to that exact point aboutthe investment levels.
And the sunk cost fallacy that's oftenassociated with technology.
(05:25):
There's very real reasons to not worry aboutbeing pushed hard by a creditor and startup
because the amount of capital they have toexpend to catch up when it comes to something
in logistics, like, I don't know, oceanshipping.
Yeah.
Every 1 of those ships is a $100, 000, 000 plusFistag plus the port build outs and everything
else to disrupt a space like that, we requiresmassive investment.
(05:48):
Yes.
Right?
And you're gonna see that coming from a longway out because as soon as they start asking
for money, you're gonna know about So a lot ofthese spaces have had no reason to really
change.
I kicked on that particular industry partiallybecause I was And I saw it firsthand the only
innovations that have ever happened in the 31000 year history of ocean shipping or more,
(06:08):
probably, like, 12, 000 year history of oceanshipping.
Are no longer relying on mother nature to moveour ships.
Right?
We invented steam engine.
Yeah.
And the introduction of the container in the 19fifties.
Yeah.
That's it.
And we're at a point now, though, where ifyou're not digital, full end to end visibility
at least, you can't optimize, you can'tpredict, you can't do a lot of the things that
(06:30):
are necessary for just baseline today.
Yeah.
And so everybody that works with those partiesworks around them.
They get data from other paths, you know, theycome up with other ways of doing it, which is
terrible because it's a very big portion ofglobal trade.
Happens that 1 industry.
Yep.
So it's ones like that that I look at and go, Ihave theory on how we disrupt the space like
(06:51):
that, but I don't really know how we go afterthat.
It's hard.
Whereas there's other places, the going aroundit pieces, where it's very clear how we do
that.
And technology is such a big enablement.
And when most people think technology.
They're really thinking about the computer andautomation that comes along with it.
But there's a lot of other technologies outthere that have a potential to disrupt this
(07:12):
space.
And I'm curious what you think some of those,like, most exciting ones are right now.
So the first is AI.
Clearly, and above all other categories, thereis a case where AI is bigger than the internet
in terms of impact on global trades.
And we really think that.
Yeah.
And the way we talk about it at OS adventure isvery simple.
(07:34):
Cloud and the internet gave us the way to reachanyone and any business owners.
And AI gives you how to replay people who don'tactually do things.
So AI.
Yeah.
It it it's exactly right.
But it's also 1 of those moments where it'slike, I think that the future of AI for a
(07:57):
period of time is largely a side by side,enabling of the people to do a much better job
to be much more productive.
But there is a point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There is a point.
You know, it's exactly like the when there is atakeover from an company to another.
First, they say, we are going to work togetherand 3 years later, there's only 1 company
(08:18):
standing.
So, well, so AI robotics is a very bigcategory.
And we think that robotics is going from awhole base to learning.
There's that incredibly interesting companycalled Figures that is doing a human with
general purpose robot.
They just stroke deal with BMV, and the goal isto automate 50% of the factory without coding.
(08:42):
Wow.
So self learning robots, we think that this isgoing to happen for sure.
Yeah.
The third is new materials and new pro newprocesses.
New materials and new processes are enabling usto do things that we could not do before.
I have 2 stats that I love.
The first 1 is that there are more scientistsalive right now than the total tiers of who
(09:04):
died ever since Jesus Christ.
So it means that the pace of innovation inmaterial science is exponential.
And with AI, we discovered in the last 20 yearsmore materials than in the last 200 years.
I did not know that.
That's amazing.
So that there's another 1 that I think is veryinteresting in this space that I I actually
don't hear many people talk about anymore,though it was hot about 10 years ago.
(09:27):
Which is advanced manufacturing, 3 d printing,CNC machining, all the things that are related.
Because for me, you know, I'm gonna say theexact opposite 1 I just said before, like, I
actually think that's the way that we start todisrupt the global shipping industry and
logistics as it is because my premise is this,marching forward, there's been this ever
expanding, like, desire from consumers for 2things.
(09:51):
I want the product now and we're getting closerand closer to that.
And the other is I want a custom.
And those are in direct conflict with eachother if you don't have something like advanced
manufacturing.
So you're thinking of the syntitizer from StarTrek.
And yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
There is 1 thing though for the Sentitizer fromStar Trek.
Which is 1 of the most counterintuitive truthsthat we hold at OSS Venture.
(10:14):
The bottleneck to the scintatizer or star trekis not the process.
It's the material.
Meaning that you don't need 3 d printing and amill and some smoldering and blah blah blah.
You don't need, like, those 14 differentprocesses in a box.
If you have the right material that needs onlyto process to do a variety of things.
(10:36):
And then sending the instructions on how totransform matter is very easy.
Like, we have 1 company in Europe.
They operate factories where there is 0 people,and they can remote, create any number of 200 k
SKU just by pressing a button, and people candeliver it.
What's the name of that company I need toconnect in the Wayfair?
(11:00):
It's it's a it's a Cognex and I will send it,to you.
But what is very interesting is that those 200K SKU, the constraint is not the information
sending the constraint is not the processes andblah blah blah.
The constraint is having the right materials toexpand the type of SKUs that they can do.
Yeah.
(11:20):
Absolutely.
So I was at Nike.
I was their head of innovation for quite awhile.
And 1 of the things that we were trying tobuild was Nike Iggy, the custom shoe that you
can design.
Yeah.
The hard part of that was never letting peopledesign whatever they want and being able to,
like, do all the models and all the cutpatterns and all for it.
It was how do we get purple, green, gold, blah,blah, all the different materials to each
(11:42):
factory that might make that So we actuallystarted down an interesting process, though.
We rethought how a shoe was built entirely.
And that led to 3 major innovations, theflyknit upper, which is a mid upper 1 piece
instead of being, like, 20, the, I think theycall it lunar on later or lunar soul, but
instead of being air soles, it was the lunarsoles because I 1 thing.
(12:04):
And then it was the it was like sonic weldingfor the different parts together instead of
stitching.
And was all so we could do it faster.
And it pushed a lot of, or sorry, we could getit closer to customer errors.
We could do more things.
And I do think reef thinking the productsthemselves along those lines creates its own
set of innovations, which is very positive.
But you're absolutely right.
If you can't get the base materials to thatplace where the thing's gonna be manufactured,
(12:28):
you're no better off.
And our supply chains are still built for rawmaterials to go 1 way.
It Exactly.
And so 1 of the biggest innovations of Tesla isthat they reduced the raw material variety
needed for the car.
And they verticalized a lot of the supplychain.
And so that's how they got through the COVIDsupply chain descriptions and blah blah blah
(12:50):
blah.
And so they They thought the product with moreconstraint on the raw material at start.
And we think that in the next 10 to 20 years,innovation materials you need to be so huge
that it unlocks the rest because the bottleneckstops.
I hear you.
That's a very good point I did not realize thatthat many innovations have already been made in
(13:12):
that space because it what's interesting aboutthat is it gets buried in everything you buy.
You don't even know what's happened Yeah.
But you have more comfortable shoes.
You have shirts with less seams and, all kindsof it's, there was a commercial when I was a
kid, but that was, like, we don't make theproducts you buy.
We make the products you buy better.
And it reminds me of that because that was amaterial sciences company.
Right?
(13:33):
Yeah.
Exactly.
And it's so interesting because a lot of thisis driven by AI.
I think 2024 is on track to be the 1st yearwhere more new materials are discovered by
robots than by humans.
So it's starting.
For drugs, it was true in 23.
It's already true for drugs.
(13:53):
Now it will be true for materials.
And so it's it's a good space to be in becausewhen that fundamental innovation happens at
such a deep level, it changed the world'ssupply chain.
Absolutely.
I I wanna keep this conversation going forhours and hours, but but I can because we are
running out of time rapidly, and I wanna giveyou a couple suggest to say some last words to
(14:16):
the audience?
Oh, sure.
So, at West Adventure, we launch and buildsoftware and hardware companies for the
operational world.
We invested in 20 companies.
They are live in 2200 industrial sites.
We are 25, 000, 000 ARR.
And we are looking only for 3 things, which isincredible founders wanting to partner with us
(14:40):
and change the world of operations.
2 are industrials.
We work closely with industrials.
We go to their factories.
I have a 20 people team We went to 860factories in the last 4 years, basically, all
over the world, and so we get all the time fromthe ground up.
So if an industrial is listening to this andsaying this is sounds interesting, you can
(15:01):
contact us.
And the third is, we are closing investmentfund.
It will be announced next week.
So I think it would be a it will be already allnews when the podcast goes live, but, it's 1 of
the biggest fans in France.
So we are very proud of
We're not that, fantastic having you on.
I will have you on again if you're interested.
I'd love to go deeper into any 1 of thecompanies you're invested in, the topics you
(15:23):
wanna go into, love having you on.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you.
And that's a wrap for this episode of wannathank you personally for joining us, and we'll
see you next time.
Until then, keep exploring, and stay curious.
Thank you for listening.
(15:44):
If you are new here and enjoyed the content,please subscribe.
It really helps us out.
And if you are a regular listener, thanks somuch for your continued support.
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