Always Ageless w Valerie v June 30 2025 Guest Tom Stevens

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome back to Always Ageless, where we believe that life
is full of possibilities at any age. It's full of
purpose and new adventures. And today's guests is someone truly special.
And actually, today we get two guests. Tom Stevens is
the founder and CEO of Tom Bought, the company behind Jenny,

(00:41):
the world's most advanced robotic puppy designed just for older adults.
Although I think I want one to well, I am older.
So this story began with Tom's family. He's going to
tell us that story. And like many of us, Tom
wanted to bring comfort and companionship to his loved ones,
but what he created was so much much more. With

(01:01):
a background in tech leadership and a heart full of love,
he built a robotic dog that's helping thousands of families
bring joy, calm, and connection to their aging loved ones.
And yes, he's even partnered with Jim Henson's Creature Shop
to make sure that Jenny feels, moves and responds like

(01:22):
a real puppy. And for those of you who can
see this today or watch the video after, you're going
to be amazed. So, whether you're a caregiver, a family member,
or you're just curious about how tech can serve humanity.
This conversation will move you. When I first heard about
Tom and I saw Jenny, I knew I had to
have him on our show, Always Ageless and bring him

(01:43):
to all of you, our viewers and our listeners. So
let's welcome Tom Stevens to Always Ageless. Tom.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Welcome, Hi, Valarie. Thank you so much for having us.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
You are so welcome. So tell us your story. I
think began with your family, maybe your mother again, So
tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yes, I'd be happy to so. My background, as you mentioned,
I've been in high tech my entire career. My two
tombaught co founders and I built a prior startup into
one of the world's largest litigation automation companies, and we
were successfully acquired in twenty eleven, which gave me the
freedom to think about other things. Unfortunately, that same year,

(02:24):
my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia and I had
to make a lot of really difficult decisions on her behalf.
By far, the worst was realizing she could no longer
safely care for her two year old golden doodle puppy,
which was a full standard dog with all kinds of
energy that was knocking her down, and all kinds of

(02:46):
other difficult situations. While I successfully found a new home
for her dog, my mom was furious with me every
day was where's my dog? Why can't I have my dog?
When am I getting my dog back? Really, just out
of motivation to salvage my relationship with her, I started

(03:07):
looking around for substitutes for live animal companions. She didn't
like anything that I brought home, and I realized there
was a very large gap in the market. That launched
me on what became a multi year research and education journey,
culminating in a master's degree from Stanford University. And along
the way, I learned my mom's story is shared by

(03:28):
over three hundred million seniors with dementia or pre dementia
mile cognitive impairment, and about half the planet, about one
billion of the two billion households, do not keep a
live animal as a pet for reasons including health adversity, cost,
burden of care, and living restrictions. And so we launched

(03:50):
tombought to be in service to those people.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
That is an amazing story, and I know we're going
to hear more as we go along. So did you
start your education at Stanford in your college years or
did you go back to Stanford.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
I went back to school. So one of the privileges
of being acquired is I didn't have to go back
to work immediately. Turns out retirement didn't suit me. I
learned I don't want to play golf every day. And
while while I was working with my mother in the
early days of her diagnosis, I wasn't thinking about launching

(04:29):
a company, but she was so upset, and I started
talking to people and realized that, Wow, this problem might
be solvable with technology, and technology is rapidly evolving to
make something like a robotic animal possible. And so the
further I got into this, the more interested I became,

(04:49):
and I said, well, I need to go back to school.
I can't come from litigation, automation and general technology to robotics.
So I'm going to go back and study of bit more.
And so I ended up getting my master's degree.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
And did you go to Stanford and pallo Altawer, did you?

Speaker 2 (05:08):
I did? The program I was in. It was a
full time on campus program, so moved up there. For
it was a one year compressed program, so twelve decade
of month program for a master's and loved it. It
was well, I should say, loved the people, loved all
the activities we were doing. It was the most miserable

(05:32):
year of my life in terms of the intensity of
the of the academics. You can tell from the gray hair,
I'm not I'm not the youngest person on campus, although
interestingly I wasn't the oldest in my program.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Right, and there were there are other older people.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, so I did a master's program in the graduate
school business and the program, but I did. You had
to have a certain number of years of senior leadership experience,
and so everybody was a bit older, although I was
on the older end. But we had we had a

(06:09):
professor in the medical school there who was taking a
sabbatical to pursue this degree. We had a gentleman at
the time was the dean of the medical school Texas,
a and m radical to do the program, and many
other people who were near my age, which at the
time was my mid fifties, who once again, we're looking

(06:33):
to take the next big leap in their career and
let's go to an extraordinary academic opportunity there at Stanford.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Definitely, definitely well that's great. So with over thirty years,
you had over thirty years in your high level c roles, right, yes,
And then what key lessons from that did you carry
over into your healthcare robotics startup.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Oh gosh, well, I'll tell you about two. There acquire
a lot of wisdom from doing things badly over the years.
So there's many many things that I've learned.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
You learned from them, right, But yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
When you when you when you're when you're smart enough
to learn from them, they they they're helpful. I I
And that's not always the case, unfortunately. But there are
two major things that I learned, uh uh that really
were super informal. Super formal. One was about just how
to manage a business, uh, running a business, and that
is organizational culture. Really understanding employees, investors, board members, and

(07:39):
what needs they have beyond financial compensation and so structuring
a culture which supports and rewards people in non financial ways, uh,
super important and I'm happy to delve into that. Really
one of the biggest assets of our previous company, where
my partners who are senior to me, really instituted the

(07:59):
organizational culture, and I really became a tremendous fan and
supporter and owner of that culture over the years. The
other is product innovation and new product development. One of
the things that I learned from once again doing things
not well is you never want to be a solution

(08:24):
looking for a problem. You want to be really focused
on the problem and then try to determine what the
solutions are. Is you have to be an expert on
the problem. And this was the primary reason I went
back to Stanford. I developed lots of software and services
other technology, I'd never developed a solution for a healthcare adversity.

(08:49):
So our product is actually designed to treat the behavioral
and psychological symptoms of dementia and reduce the need for
certain medications, including psychotropics. And so what I went back
to school to do, and once again carry over from
my previous career, was how to become expert in this problem.

(09:10):
How to become expert in my mother's problem, so that
when I produced a solution, I would understand have the
ability to collect and process data to know that I
was actually solving the problem. And there are two key metrics.
Of all the metrics that you use to develop and

(09:34):
evolve a product, the two most important in my opinion
are one called product market fit, and the product market fit,
by simple definition, is solving a customer problem in a
way that they love and so love for us means
literally love the product and then they so I had

(09:54):
to fall in love with this, had to create something
that they would fall in love with. And then the
second metric is minimum viable product. Minimum viable product means
the least technologically advanced product in our application, least technologically advanced,
least featured product that achieves product market fit. And the

(10:16):
way to get there, the way to find that, because
we could build one hundred thousand dollars robotic dog that
everybody would love and nobody would buy, is to define
product market fit and then begin product development with an
inferior product and then iterate on that until you actually

(10:36):
achieve product market fit. And as you mentioned, our work
with Jim Henson's Creature Shop was absolutely critical. We knew
early on that our prototypes had to be high fidelity,
meaning they had to look great in order to get
the kind of data that we needed from the over

(10:57):
seven hundred seniors with dementia with whom we study, and
without that partnership, we never would have been able to
determine what product market fit was and that we had
a version that actually achieved product market fit.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
When you first started this, how did you what was
your vision? Was your vision to go as far as
you are.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
No, it really wasn't. In fact, I tried to remain
as agnostic about what the solution might be, so I
took my mom's dog away, So robotic dog was always
rattling around in the back of my head. But that
wasn't really our mission. Our mission was to develop a
better emotional attachment object. We are very fortunate that we

(11:41):
are standing on the shoulders of over two hundred peer
reviewed studies going back as many as forty years that
looked at the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia and
how to treat them, how to manage them. Research shows
that where a senior with dementia can form a robust

(12:03):
emotional attachment to an object traditionally that's been a human,
baby doll, or a stuffed animal, that senior gets a
great deal of relief from the behavioral psychological symptoms, which
include loneliness, anxiety, depression, delirium in my mother's case, hallucinations,
and violent anger, and where they form that emotional attachment.

(12:25):
It also reduces their need for certain medications, including psychotropic
medications and opioids. The problem, however, is almost all seniors
are like my mother, and they don't care for human
baby dolls or stuffed animals. Research on robotic animals show
they significantly outperform those traditional objects and have the added

(12:47):
benefit of reducing pain and the need for pain medications.
The problem there, however, is existing technologies and it's still
true today, are either simple children's toys which are originally
created for children, which after the novelty effect wears off,
most people lose interest in them, or on the other

(13:09):
end of the spectrum, are prohibitively expensive robots. This whole
space was invented in the early two thousands by a
Japanese research institute. They created a robotic seal by name
Aparo Pro. It's a good robot, but it costs over
six thousand dollars. Most senior care facilities can't afford one,

(13:31):
let alone individuals like my mother who need one for
themselves or to form that emotional bond, and so we
didn't set out to develop a robotic dog. We set
out to develop a better emotional attachment object. One that
consistently stimulates emotional attachment over time, but it also be
priced at a level that many people could afford it

(13:54):
even before we get healthcare insurance reimbursements in place. Studied
with over seven hundred seniors with dementia, three formal rounds
and a bunch of anecdotal rounds developed five generations of
high fidelity prototypes. This one's modeled after generation five, and

(14:15):
of the many things that we learned, the most important
were around realism. Realism first of all on objects of
which they're already familiar, so puppies and kittens as opposed
to wild animals or fictitious creatures like humanoids. And then
realistic in terms of in terms of appearance, in terms

(14:38):
of texture, and most importantly in terms of behaviors. And
with the help of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, we were
able to get there and define what all of those
features and functionality needed to be.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Look at that, and Dave, do you so when you started
in your first prototype, was it at all? Would you
have been happy with that at all? And your curiosity
just kept you growing or it was just let's just
start with this, something very very basic and.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Well so the bringing a product to market. A product
like this, a physical product like this, is about prototyping
in the fastest, least expensive way that you can. If
we didn't care what the product look like, this would
have been a much simpler endeavor. Yeah, sure, of course,

(15:33):
a bunch of things you tape them together and you say, hey,
do you like this? But we realized early on in
our as we were preparing for these studies that seniors
with dementia couldn't give reliable information for avoid we couldn't
ask them for their opinion. Of course, we end up
reaching out to the academic world and teamed up with

(15:55):
researchers from Georgia Tech and the University of Illinois. These
are lead research institutes for human robotic interaction with seniors,
and they helped us develop a coding methodology for our
studies that did not rely on verbal information. Rather, it
relied on observed behaviors. So did they look at it,

(16:17):
did they touch it, did they smile, did they talk
to it? Did they talk to somebody else about it?
A whole series of measurements that we made and that
allowed us to very confidantly determine whether they would prefer
one product or the other. And so our studies were

(16:37):
built around ab testing. So do you like A or
you like B? Do you like cochi? You like pepsi?
And through these iterations we were able to say do
you like this or you like this? And what our
goal was to get to a point where they were indifference.
In other words, they don't care between A and B.
So we know what we're done. Well, it took us
a long way to get there and to answer and succinctly.

(17:01):
The first versions were very limited. Uh you know, I
would have been happy if the data said this was
what they wanted. But the data didn't. It was not
very attractive at all. And we said, okay, scratching our heads, Okay,
what what do we make of the data? Where where
are the shortcomings? And then let's make a plan for
the next generation of prototypes.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Sure, so where did you get your your seven hundred people?
Where did you get your your core group?

Speaker 2 (17:28):
So it turns out that beginning with dementia as a
as A as our first product to market was a
lucky choice. We didn't we didn't. I didn't plan for that.
I just I just wanted to solve my mom's problem.
So I was sort of focused on that, but it
was a lucky choice because unlike other populations that have

(17:52):
serious mental health adversities, so UH children with level two,
level three autism, developmental intellectual disabilities, adolescents with severe anxiety depressions,
suicide risk, substance use disorder, adults with PTSD bipolar schizophrenia.

(18:14):
Unlike these other populations, seniors with dementia congregate. They congregate
at senior care facilities such as senior daycare or assisted
living or memory care. And when I reached out to
people that my mom knew, senior care professionals that my
mom knew, they said, we would love to study this,

(18:37):
and so we focused all of our research. We're Valeri
and I are both here in southern California, but we
did all of our research in Ventura County and Santa
Barbara County. First of all, because we were in stealth
mode and so we wanted to kind of stay off
off the art, but also because Ventura County and Santa

(18:58):
Barbara Counties are highly reped presentative of UH socioeconomic diversity,
so wide range of of of income levels, wide range
of of of education levels, wide range, wide range of
racial makeup. We have very substantial immigrant population, uh in

(19:21):
large part kind of the agricultural markers county. So we
were able to pull in a lot of different kinds
of people, uh, different walks of.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Life and also different than ethnicities right precisely.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
So even within a racial makeup, we get a lot
of a lot of racial part of the ethnic disparity.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
UH.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
And and languages. For example, a lot of we work,
we do not speak English as a first language. Many
of them struggle with English in general, and so how
does language influence our ability to to to be in
service to them? And so it would It was because
and once again this was just luck. Because we started

(20:04):
with dementia, we were able to pull very large numbers
fairly effortlessly. What was actually a bigger challenge was to
make sure that we were getting a big enough a
diverse enough sample. Because I could go to a skilled
nursing facility and get one hundred long term residents, and
so I didn't want to have three or four or

(20:27):
five of those. I wanted to get a few of
those and then go to other places to make sure
that we were getting people who could afford to private pay,
assisted living or memory care. People that you needed medicare
mediciate to pay for that people who were living at
home and cared for by an unpaid family member. Eighty

(20:47):
three percent of seniors with dementia in the United States
live at home and cared for by an unpaid family member.
So we wanted it was actually a bigger challenge to
make sure that our sample really was representative enough and
not just you know, convenient for us in doing these studies.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yes, I would ask, I mean you also could find
that though in Orange County or in La County.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Precisely, we just wanted to do. We've done studies in
La County and Orange County subsequent to these. It's actually
so thirty two percent of seniors in the United States
live in one of four states in descending.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
What's the percentage, thirty two.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Percent, So in descending order, California, Texas, Florida, and New York.
And so we were another lucky thing that we were
here in California. But if we had been in Texas, Florida,
and New York, we would have had just as easy
a time of producing these studies.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Interesting, at what point did you decide to engage Jim
Henson's creatureshop.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
The very beginning. So one of the one of the
wonderful things from a business standpoint about my mother's journey
with Alzheimer's dementia is I had to live in test case.
I had somebody right there who had no problem giving
me her opinions about anything. Wonderful person. I hope we

(22:21):
get a chance to talk about her a little bit
because absolute but I had a test case. I had
not only I could observe what she was going through firsthand,
but I could also my own experience as being a
caregiver for her and all of the challenges associated with

(22:43):
that which are not to be understated. I got a
lot of firsthand information from that. And what I realized
that right away is that something that was toy like
in appearance was not going to work. Our first round,
our first round of customer studies, we're looking at existing

(23:05):
products that had a variety of different forms. And our
first hypothesis that we tested because I really wanted to
understand why human baby dolls and stuffed animals were not succeeding.
The first hypothesis was seniors with dementia would strongly prefer
objects that move over objects that do not move, and

(23:28):
so I got some very high quality Alzheimer's approved stuffed animals,
human baby dolls, as well as some simple mechanical toys
and tested them. And whereas we could detect preference with
the senior with dementia, literally one hundred percent preferred the
objects that moved over the objects that didn't move. But

(23:51):
what we and these were off the shelf products. These
were not products that we produced. They just wanted to
get a foundation of data going. But we would hear
things like, oh, I think my granddaughter might enjoy this,
or maybe my great grandson would like playing with this,
and we realized that, you know, my mother never walked

(24:12):
down the toy aisle at Target shopping for herself. Seniors
don't try toys. So people think of seniors with dementia's
is really being completely incapable of doing anything, and it's
certainly not the case. It's really only the very latest
stages of dementia where somebody is so profoundly impacted by

(24:33):
the disease, early where dementia is still mild, still able
to successfully live, maybe not independently anymore, but still live.
And so the information that we got at those early
stages was fairly fairly useful, and so we knew that
we knew that toy like appearance wasn't going to succeed.

(24:55):
I said, okay, we need help. Living here in Los
Angeles and being a Hollywood the son of a Hollywood
executive executive, my dad was in a senior position at
Universal Studios, I have just immediately thought, well, special effects,

(25:16):
we should reach out to.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
The absolutely, yeah, I can see where that Yeah, of
course you would think that.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Sure, And we reached out to quite a few, and
we were just lucky that Jim Henson wanted to work
with us. There's a video on our website that's a
behind the scenes video was shot at the Jim Henson
Creature Shop. Their two leads, their creative director and their
animatonic supervisor, were both in late stage dementia. Their fathers

(25:46):
were both in late stage dementia, and so they personally
identified with our mission immediately and said, we want to
work on this. Please let us work.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
On this would oh my gosh. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
So what they were able to do for us was
create these prototypes of different appearance, different shapes, different sizes,
different features, and progress those through the various rounds of
studies until we actually got to this point.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
And of course it's not unlikely that someone there could
be connected with dementia somehow, because there's so many people
who have dementia of some sort, right, not all Alzheimer's,
but of course that you might find someone who was
connected with it and could relate to your project.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
The prevalent, as you say, the prevalence is extraordinary. It's
thought that people of people eighty five and older, fifty
percent have Alzheimer's. Doesn't mean they haven't progressed to have
progressed to dementia necessarily, but they have Alzheimer's, so they
have greater than age related cognitive decline. And the number
one risk factor for Alzheimer's is age. And so if

(26:53):
we live long enough, the likelihood is that we're going
to have some kind of neurological disease that and pairs
our ability to think. And so the prevalence as we
live longer is our general health supports greater and greater longevity.
We're going to run into other limitations, and Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,

(27:15):
Louis bodies are our limitations on our ability to healthfuly
age in any circumstances.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
And for those of you who are unable to see
us right now. But when you do watch the video,
Jenny's now taking a nap. She's bored with this conversation.
Well or else, Either that or she's so comfortable with
the conversation she just wants it.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
I am sure that our engineers have programmed Jenny to
fall asleep as soon as I start talking.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Oh you think so. Well. That was one of my
questions is so, what significant technical challenge did you have
in creating Jenny. Was there anything like her movement of
her neck or her ears.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Or Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna for those of you watching,
I'm gonna power her off for a moment and so
I can show off some of her movement capabilities. Okay,
so we knew at the end of our customer studies,
we knew that realism was going to be important, and
we knew how to get the robot to move realistically.

(28:16):
That was a lot of work, a lot of challenges.
But the robot, that prototype robot that could move realistically
was fragile. With seniors with dementia, anything on the ground
presents a tripping hazard, and so products in this category
are never to be placed on the ground. They sit

(28:39):
on somebody's lap, or on a table or a chair,
somewhere where they can remain in close proximity close contact
with the robot. But that means the robot's always in
an elevated position and it's going to fall. Our prototypes
couldn't survive falls, so we had to fully re engineer
the product, literally one hundred percent re engineer product to

(29:01):
survive everyday use as all of the many required safety certifications.
Child safety people say, even though this is for dementia,
any product that has fur covering on it plush covering
is attractive to young children, so we have to get
all of the safety certifications for a child's product, even

(29:23):
though this is not intended for young children. This will
be an FDA product, so we have to get all
the FDA certifications. And then lastly, it needs to be
manufacturable in high volumes in order to get the cost
down so economies of scale. We take eighty thousand dollars

(29:45):
to build our last our generation five robot. Nobody wants
a eighty thousand dollars laptog, and so we had to
build in such a way that it could be produced
in much larger numbers, retain all the features, functionality, all
the desire ability of it, but engineer for mass production
and that's a big deal. And we've been at this
quite some time. We'll have raised and deployed over fifteen

(30:09):
million dollars before we ship our first product. The company
was launched in twenty seventeen, so the time that we've
been involved with this is quite quite long, but we're
very close. So we're happy to see the light at
the end of the tunnel and know that lots of
people will be enjoying new puppies there very shortly.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
We know that there are some communities, some assisted living
communities that allow live animals.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
We're big fans of that. So there are two types
of relationships that someone in a senior communic community that
is permissive towards light animals will have. One is that
they can bring their own patent. But what happens in
those circumstances is the pets. First of all, the sad

(30:57):
thing about pets is they don't live that long. So
oftentimes people will build bring in a pet that's aging
and it will pass away while they're there, and do
they really want to replace it with a new pet?
And so that's a challenge. And for people who don't
bring in pets, don't have pets of their own, they
have community pets, and once again we're huge fans of

(31:20):
both scenarios, but the problem with a community pet, specifically
for someone with dementia, is the community pets really watch us.
They're very shrewd to our behavior, and as a person
with dementia ages, their behaviors can become more erratic and

(31:43):
what happens is the community pet becomes wary of those
people and won't interact with them anymore. There was an
interesting study that was done out of Australia that looked
specifically at this question, and they found that people strongly
preferred the robotic animal to the community pet because they

(32:04):
could choose. The residents could choose when and how they
wanted to interact with the with the robot, whereas the
community dog chose when and how it would interact with
the residents. And so, while we're fans and we have
many of our assisted living and memory care operations are
pet friendly and have pets, we are complementary to try

(32:27):
to take those relationships with the companions to another place.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
So for seniors who've never had a pet, who've lost one.
How does Jenny fill that space for them?

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Two important questions there. Peak pet ownership rates are in
our fifties and then decline by about fifty percent per
decade after that to the point where people in the
eighties and nineties very few people have live animals anymore.
And that's by choice. Statistic Yeah and down at the

(33:05):
University of Michigan produced those stats. And so people who
are otherwise healthy and capable, physically capable of owning pets,
choose not to have pets as they age, as they
get beyond our fifties, and so there is a natural
void there that we're looking to fill. Now, there are

(33:28):
many people that, despite the fact they were physically capable,
chose never to have a live animal, or maybe they
had one very early in their life, but didn't choose
to maintain pets as they ate as they you know, thirties, forties, fifties,
even peak patternership rates. There may be reasons why why

(33:48):
for that, but they just didn't care for it wasn't
of interest to them. Maybe it was a lifestyle choice.
But we have a lot of people that are afraid
of dogs specifically, and we've studied with those and what
we found with both people who chose never to have
a pet and people that were afraid of pets and
just couldn't couldn't psychologically be near them, that they're very

(34:12):
attracted to our robot because our robot is essentially maintenance
free other than plugging it in to make sure it
gets charge overnight, and it's programmable in such a way
or configurable in such a way that we can eliminate
those behaviors that cause the fear reaction. In our studies

(34:33):
with with with adults, not seniors, but with adults that
have sinophobia, as that's called, there were two things that
stood out more than any others about why they were
afraid of dogs. One was the barking and just this sound.

(34:54):
And the sound obviously is a very sharp soundly angry bark,
but the behavior itself, it was the dog opening its
mouth to bark, and you know, the teeth are very
threatening to someone who's afraid of dog. Maybe they were
bitten at some point in their lives, and just that
to maintain that fear, and so we can disable we

(35:16):
not only mute the bark sound, but we can disable
the bark behavior itself, so the dog will never actually
go through the behavior of barking.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
And then the second is unknown, right, and you don't
know when a dog starts to make that sound or
open its mouth. You don't know it's going to lunch
at you, although they usually don't, but you don't know
what expects.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
It's very unnerving, that's right. So barking could be a
playful sound, or it could be a sound of aggression
or warning. People who are afraid assume the worst that
and it's irrational, right, It's not somebody who's processing that
as someone without a pet fear has. They're saying, Okay,
this is a threat, and whatever it's doing right now,

(35:55):
I interpret it is more threatening than even normal behavior.
And then the second is rapid movement. It's a sudden
move so we can eliminate rapid movements. So part of
our technology is to have the potential for unlimited categories
of behaviors and unlimited behaviors within a given category, and

(36:17):
we categorize, We code those behaviors in a category, and
we can eliminate all categories behaviors that would trigger that
fear reaction. Conversely, some people have a late stage dementia
have difficulties stimulating the robot to get it to react,
and so we can make the robot very proactive, and

(36:38):
when it does react, be very animated. Especially animated, it
can be demanding of attention, and so a lot of
configurability as to what personality the robot will have to
try to get that just right for people, depending regardless
of what relationships they've they've had with pets over the
course of their lives.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
So I see he's going to wake up a little bit.
I'm so glad to see that. Yeah, you all have
to go on the video watch this. It's just amazing.
So a couple of basic questions is the zona assuming
you never Jenny would never be in a situation where
they feel they need to bathe her. Correct.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Correct, So the robot, for safety reasons, can be wetted,
So we actually have to test for water penetration to
make sure that it does nothing bad happens when that happens.
So she's designed to be cleaned and happy to talk
about that. But she can be clean to hospital standards
of disinfection.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
And who does that as a patient? Able to do
that now of course.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
So there are three different use cases from a practical standpoint,
three different use cases. One is at home like my mother.
My mother tried feeding hers chocolate pudding. So we realize
the robot has to be cleanuple and there are specific
ways in which the robot can be clean to remove dirt, debris,
the oils from your hands can build up on the fur,

(38:03):
and restoring the dog to having this nice luster that
you see on screen. But you're not afraid of communication
of disease in that pretty much like your own dog.
You only bathe your dog when the dog is really dirty.
But in a shared living environment like assisted living memory care,
somebody could touch it with some sort of infectious disease,

(38:25):
like a respiratory disease, put their hand on dog, and
then somebody right after them touches it, you know, wipes
their face, and that's a way that disease can be spread.
That's true of our robot, it's true of a live
animal as well. Sure, yeah, we need to so our
robot can be cleaned with antimicrobial treatment. There are pure

(38:47):
reviewed studies out of the United Kingdom that show how
to do that and that it yets to a point
where the pathogens that were included in those studies included
COVID are not detectable after that cleaning, but that's not
good enough for hospitals, and hospitals we have to achieve
something called Spalding low level criteria of disinfection. So that's

(39:10):
safe for people with close skin, anybody who has an
open wound, or of course something that would be inserted
inside the body. Our robot will not be cleanable to
those levels. But for people with close skin in a
hospital environment, the robot can be cleaned with a combination
of the antemicrobial and ultraviolet UV radiation, which kills all

(39:33):
detectable organic substances at that point.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
And she'll always look as good as she does now.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
So a robot is a little bit like a car.
The more you use it, the more likely it's going
to need service, and of course you crash it into something,
it's going to need repair. But she is designed to
be long lasting, be cleanable, and restorable through ordin ordinary

(40:01):
types of maintenance, which we provide instruction on how.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
To do ordinary wear and tear. And that is one
of my questions, So what is your life span?

Speaker 2 (40:09):
So one of the one of the things we heard
early on in our studies is that one of the
reasons why seniors don't have pat say any longer is
they don't want to grieve for the loss of another
family member, and so we wanted to make sure that
the robot lasted long enough that people wouldn't grieve for

(40:31):
the loss of the puppy. Of their puppy. A senior
with dementia, once they're diagnosable with dementia, life expectancy is
about four and a half years. And so like a smartphone,
I mean, if you really are very hard on your smartphone,
it will last that long. But smartphones are typically designed
to last about that long, and our puppy is designed similarly.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
So there are she's and she's FDA proved. Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (40:59):
So FDA registered, So we are if you're an FDA wonk.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
I'm not much of one and certainly not what you are.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
So the FDA considers us what's called a five to
ten K exempt product, meaning we don't have to prove
that it's safe or effective before we can be in
selling it. But if we wish to sell it as
an FDA product, we have to comply with all the
safety certifications as well as all the quality management systems,

(41:30):
and so that's called FDA registration, and so we'll be
an FDA registered product. But being an FDA registered product
means we can't make specific health claims. We can't say
your health will be better if you use a robot.
What we can say is this study over there suggests
and you can make your own draw your own conclusions.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
So when you get to the point where you are now, Tom,
do you go back to those seven hundred people in
Tester or do you go to another group?

Speaker 2 (42:02):
The answer is yes. So one of the things that
we wanted to do is test the production cosmetics. And
so sadly we've been working on this so long. Many
of the people of our early testers are no longer
with us, but the same organizations that hosted our studies
are thrilled for us to come back in and say, ah,

(42:23):
we've bought a new one. Can we come back in
and see what people think? You great, because it's kind
of a fun, enriching activity for their residents and participants.
So back out to Venturrey County in Santa Barbara County
to test the production cosmetics and then start delivering them
to the people that have ordered them very soon.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
So I have a question, So does Jenny, have an
Does she react? Can you give her a name and
she'll respond to that? Is she always Jenny? Is she nameless?

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Great questions? So Jenny, we come with a smartphone app
that allows for all the configuration settings that I mentioned,
including renaming the robot. They all come standard as Jenny,
so you don't need to do this. But if you'd
want to rename the robot, you can rename it and
then she'll only respond to that given name. See if
I can get her to pay attention to me, Hey, Jenny,

(43:17):
want to treat Can you hear? Can you hear? Is
that audible?

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (43:27):
It is great? Yeah. So so so you give her
a command and she'll respond to that. But it could
have been Fluffy, Sparky, Daisy, whatever, if someone wants to
name their puppy. We gendered her as a female, not intentionally,
just sort of happened with our work with Jim Henson
Creature Shop. But people don't have to give it a
gender if they don't choose to. But but this is

(43:50):
this is a female for us, and goes with the
with the name Jenny, and do.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
You program her volume?

Speaker 2 (43:59):
That's that's setable. So we set it so with the
safety certifications, we have to set the maximum volume levels,
so if somebody has their ear right up to it,
regardless of how they've changed the volume, it never is
high enough volume to hurt them. But they can reduce
the volume and sort of right size that you know,

(44:22):
at the maximum or any place below, including muting it.
If they don't want to listen to the.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Bark they can mute it.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
The robot can be fully muted and then the barking
behavior will be mute, or they can turn off the
barking behavior too. If they turn off the barking behavior,
the robot still can make sounds while it's doing other things.
Like the robot yawns, it snores, it's sniffs, so it
explores its environment. It coups, will you know, lots of

(44:53):
all the things that you might associate with an eight
to ten week old Labrador Retriever puppy. We actually have
real recordings of eight to ten week old Labrador Retriever puppies.
There are voice actors and those are the ones that
we use in the Puppy ESU.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
This is fascinating. I do encourage all of our listeners and
any of you who haven't viewed it yet. This will
be on our YouTube channel and we will have a
link here as we show this and talk about it later.
I just want to interrupt for a minute. We are
very fortunate and how I first met Tom was that
he's going to be the guest at an age tech

(45:29):
meet up mini conference, so to speak, in San Clementy
on July seventeenth, and it's age Tech LA, but we're
bringing it to Orange County, so we're very exciting excited
that he's going to be one of our guests. When
I saw this is exactly what I've been looking for.
I need him on my show and to preview so
everyone will know what's coming to San Clementy as well

(45:50):
as for your own use. So tell us, let's go
to the business side, and then I want to talk
about age tech a little bit. You've raised a lot
of money and tell us how does that work? And
of course I want to know. I guess I watch
Shark Tank too much. You know, how do I know
if someone's going to reproduce? How are you going to
keep someone from hopping you?

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Great question. So, first of all, fundraising is absolutely the
most difficult part of the job. I am kidding. I
did not have this much gray hair when I started.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
No, your hair isn't that gray on the picture for
the July event, I have to tell you that.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
So it's really very challenging. Ninety plus percent of institutional
investors won't invest in and hardware under any circumstances, and
most of the rest of them that will invest in
something like a robot want to see us shipping the product,
actually delivering it to customers first before they jump in,

(46:50):
which means that if it takes fifteen million dollars to
bring the first robot to market, we got to get
it from other sources. We're very fortunate that we have
a few healthcare venture capital firms that have believed in
us and have helped us along the way, but we
also have money from family offices, for angel offices, angel

(47:14):
and individual angel investors, as well as just regular people.
We've run three regulation crowdfunding campaigns, which meant anybody anywhere
in the world or virtually anywhere in the world, could
for as little as two hundred and fifty dollars own
stock in Tombot, and these people have been hugely helpful

(47:36):
to us, not only because it makes them most likely
high value customers. They're going to get puppies first when
we're shipping.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
We certainly love people who invest in.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Us, yeah, exactly. And then but also these are people
that are going to spread the word for us too.
So we've raised money that way from almost fifteen hundred
individuals and those are going to fifteen hundred emissaries for us,
spreading news from around the world. And we have we
have investors from every continent.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
You have to interrupt to ask if someone's listening and
they want to invest, are you still taking investors?

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Not at this time. We close our most recent round
in May, and so well we just missed it, just
miss it. We're paused for now. But you know, as
companies go, we always need more money in the future.
So we'll have information on our website at tombought dot
com t mbot dot com for investors, but likely we'll

(48:32):
be in the latter portion of twenty twenty six before
we're raising our next round of capital.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
It's a long time.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
We raise a lot of money. Once again, we're very
fortunate to get some believers and that's really allowing us
to bring the product the rest of the way to
market and begin research and development. Our next products, So
do tell.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Us how do how do we know? How do we
know that no one will bring on a Jenny?

Speaker 2 (48:57):
So there, So this is really really hard, hard, hard
hard stuff. The reason why it's taken us so long
there's so many never been done before technical challenges in
building a realistic robot that anybody who wants to do

(49:17):
that and compete against us is going to have to
solve all the same problems that we've solved with all
the capital or more that we've deployed, and do it
in such a way that doesn't violate our intellectual property rights.
And so we have IP protection, We have patents on
numerous patents on the product, and are finally more regularly

(49:38):
so it's there's there's a lot of invention here that
we wish to protect. But even if we weren't protecting it,
somebody got our product and said, okay, I'm going to
reverse engineer this thing. It's still really hard. It's hard,
hard stuff. So the first thing is that it's hard
and it's going to be difficult for somebody to come
and enter us. And secondly, we have so many customers

(50:02):
now that people are going to have to build something
better than what we have, which means it's going to
be more time and more capital just to compete against us.
And then lastly, the FDA regulation. That's no joke. Complying
with the FDA work. You know, companies that aren't prepared

(50:23):
to do that are probably not going to be successful.
And so there are a lot of protections from market
share to brand to technical advantages to IP to regulation
that are going to keep us from having an extraordinary
number of competitors anytime soon.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
I could keep you here forever, so we'll just have
to bring you back again. But I do want to
ask you what do you think other than Jenny of course,
which now we're all sold. I definitely wanted Jenny, and
how what do you think are the most exciting things
in age tech that are coming up? Is is Jenny?
Are there other things you see that you're really excited

(51:04):
to watch for think.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Of us as age tech, but also health tech, So
health tech for aging people, products that are designed specifically
for seniors that make their lives easier, they make their
lives healthier. That's really the focus. And the area that
I'm most excited about is monitoring. Historically, the only time

(51:28):
we knew anything about our health is when we went
to go see the doctor, and if we were relatively healthy,
we didn't go to see the doctor very often. Monitoring
and this has come from science fiction to the academic
world and now into the commercial world relatively quickly. Being

(51:49):
able to monitor our own health get information about how
well we're doing at any given time is right around
the corner. And so I'm very excited about health monitoring
and safety mond not just for seniors with dementia, but
for all people of all ages, but particularly as we age.
Eighty percent of people sixty five and over have at

(52:13):
least two chronic illness conditions for which we should be
receiving treatment. Over half of us are out of compliance
with our prescribed care within the first four months, and
so we age, we collect chronic conditions, and so the

(52:34):
monitoring can give us sort of a boost that doctors
have better information and can give us better, more accurate
treatment courses without sort of trial.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
So much trial and error, and maybe we can even
watch for ourselves so we don't hear stories of somebody
that went to the doctor and they were sick and
didn't know it and died three weeks later.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
So that's the tragedies that you hear. The sad thing
is our body starts aging after age twenty six, and
so we are accumulating errors in our body, and those
errors accumulate to diagnosable conditions. As we approach and exceed

(53:14):
our sixties, we need more help and that's really the
biggest area of excitement for me.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Well, that's exciting. It has been delightful having you with us.
I'm sure everyone wants to see Jenny as as much
as I do, so we're going to show her online.
Be sure to watch our YouTube channel and the links
are going to be all on here. And when can
people have their own Jenny?

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Well, so right now people can go to our website
and join our weightlist. We're not nailing down our time
frame exactly yet because we don't want to give people
bad information. But if you join our weightlist, you will
be automatic. There's no obligation. You can cancel at any time,
but if you join our weightlist, you'll start receiving our

(53:58):
regular up dates. We'll then be in line to receive
the puppy and in the order of priority that you
have with your place on the weight list. So we
hope everybody visits our our website and chooses to join
the weight list.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Absolutely and we would love to have you come back,
and I hope I get invited to the launch party.
Thank you Tom so much for being with us today.
Your store, your mission, and Jenny are making such a
powerful impact. So to our listeners and our viewers, we
want you to know that Always Ageless is much more
than a show and we're so excited to bring these
things to you. So until next time, stay curious, stay connected,

(54:35):
always stay ageless, and tend send us your stories when
you have a Jenny. Thank you Tom very much for
being with us.