Robin Cowie | Skillmaker.AI

Robin Cowie | Skillmaker.AI

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Amplified CEO with VC and serial entrepreneur, Richard Stroupe with today's guest, Robin Cowie, founder and CEO of Skill maker.ai, an AI-powered, extended reality platform, revolutionizing workforce training. He's also a seasoned producer and director whose work includes time at Electronic Arts and the groundbreaking horror film, the Blair Witch Project.

Good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much for coming. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's, it's a gorgeous drive over here. It's so beautiful. A beautiful day here in Wilmington. Yes, sir. And I know we've exchanged multiple emails and phone calls, but this is the first time we've actually got to see each other in person.

Yes. So I'm extremely excited not only just to talk to you about Skillmaker, but to actually have you here on this podcast. So I'm, I'm, I'm really excited. Well, I, I thank you for having the [00:01:00] podcast. Your, your previous guest and I actually had, uh, dinner last night, Scott. Yeah, yeah, Scott. , And we were talking about it and, and, uh, I know it's a little bit early days, but, but such an important podcast.

I'm really glad you're doing this. I think it's really got a lot of value. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. So you and Scott are neighbors? Yeah. Yeah. We just, we live and we have no idea. We actually met at Venture Connect. , In Raleigh Durham. And we were talking and then we basically were like, oh, you're the here, you're here.

I'm like, wait a second. You're my neighbor. And, and then the next day we were at the Tiki Bar, so like, like up the street from us, so Right. That's where we had dinner again last night, was back at the Tiki bar. So, well, it's, it's incredible to have two such outstanding people move to this area for different reasons, but then to find out that you live right next to each other, or very close.

Yeah, that's, yeah, it's very interesting there. There's, um, you know, look, the Triangle has been an incredible place for quite a while. Mm-hmm. Um, Wilmington is a very [00:02:00] exciting place to be. I just think it's, it, you know, it's young. You're at the beach. I like business at the beach, it's wonderful. Mm-hmm. But there's incredible talent here.

You know, a lot of people retire here. Mm-hmm. and so a lot of people have like, deep roots here. but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a really interesting place, especially of course with my film interests. Wilmington's been a film hub for a long time, right? There's incredible production talent here.

Mm-hmm. So that's exciting for me. But really one of the main reasons my wife and I, I mean, after the beach, 'cause both of us love, you know, love living on the beach, um, was the triangle and the talent that is here and in the periphery of, of the triangle. It's a very, very cool place. The other choice was Santa Cruz mm-hmm.

And the Silicon Valley and kind of that, that area. and I, I always think that, uh. You know, you, you skate towards where the puck is [00:03:00] going. Mm-hmm. And I, and I feel like, uh, there's a lot of really interesting things going here in the triangle where it's like Silicon Valley has got its own thing, you know?

Right. Which is great too. But yeah. We love it here. So what was one of the main reasons you moved to Wilmington? Was it just the, the ambiance of the lifestyle or? Well, we were, we were living in London. Mm-hmm. Um, when Covid hit, I was doing really interesting, cool things in London.

Mm-hmm. But it was based on physical experiences mm-hmm. That wasn't gonna work very well in London, uh, in anywhere. Um, and so my dad had a big challenge going on with the, the thing that he was doing, which we'll probably get to later. Mm-hmm. And so I said to dad that I would come and help him. To do what he wanted me to do, but we were gonna look for a house.

Mm-hmm. So we drove for 14 months, Airbnb had a deal where if you stayed in an Airbnb for more than a month mm-hmm. They'd give you like five, $600 [00:04:00] off of the house. Okay. And nobody was traveling. So I was like, well, if nobody's traveling now, that's the time to travel. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. We traveled all over the United States looking for where we wanted to live.

And went to just so many incredible places. Mm-hmm. Um, but it finally kind of came down to the fact that, you know, either Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz, like just a little north of, of that area is, was very interesting. Mm-hmm. Um, or here, and it, it got us everything we wanted. We wanted the beach, we wanted lots of water.

We wanted, you know, a young community mm-hmm. That was kind of growing. And then we needed to have the technical, you know, resources and, and so it all fit here. Mm-hmm. Um, plus we've got a lot of family up and down the east coast, but yeah, no, it was a well-researched 14 month exploration to get here. Uh, and we're so thrilled with our choice and we've been here three years now, so.

Okay. That's fantastic. Yeah. [00:05:00] Now you grew up in South Africa? Yes. Um, my, tell me about that journey. Yeah. My, my, my dad was, uh, an industrial psychologist. Mm-hmm. Um, he went to Rhodes University and he actually started working in gold mines in South Africa. Mm-hmm. And Johannesburg. And the problem was that, um, people in the mines, the, the people, the miners Were, they couldn't read, uh, they couldn't write, they couldn't speak English. And yet they were being given explosives and dangerous equipment, and they were literally measuring the effectiveness of the training by the mortality rate. I mean, it was insane. And my dad. Uh, in the sixties picked up a film camera And started trying to step into the shoes of the people who were, uh, being the minors. And show from their point of view, um, what to do. And then he was able to dub that [00:06:00] in multiple different languages, no text, so, so nobody would have to read anything. And this whole idea of point of view learning, um, then inspired what came later for me, um, which was, you know, essentially the, the Blair Witch Project.

That whole experiential ex, you know, point of view. But also, um, I was cheap labor, so I was in the bag changing film and I was, you know, fixing the cameras and hauling gear for him. So I fell in love with film cameras when I was 14. Mm-hmm. Um, I grew up near the beach in a place called Durban. Um, my dad was always at.

Techno files. So, you know, I had the very first computers. I had a a, a Commodore 64, and I started programming in basic A Right. I remember that. You know, you know, went on to like, you know, all kinds of programming languages. I was obsessed, uh, with, with programming. And also there was just film gear, video [00:07:00] gear throughout the house.

So it was constantly making things. Um, and I went to, you know, dead Poet Society. Have you ever seen that, that movie? Mm-hmm. Well, Robin Williams. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I went to that school, like okay. It was, oh, that's a beautiful, it was, I mean, not exactly that school, but it, I went to an all boy. Yeah. All boys private school, kinda religious based and very, like, if you were at that school, you were either gonna be a lawyer.

Mm-hmm. Uh, a, a, uh, doctor or a politician. Right. Like that was it. Yeah. But they had computer science classes. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I loved that. And I, and my, my dad literally came from the vaudeville and theater. Mm-hmm. So like theater and film and that like, was just in our blood. Okay. And that, that's how I grew up.

So was your school in South Africa or is it United States? In, in South Africa. Okay. Yep. In, uh, yeah, we're like third generation Scottish heritage. Okay. Um, my, my mother's side of the family was British. Mm-hmm. [00:08:00] Like literally was, uh, my, my grandfather was in, uh, he, he ran a frigate in World War ii, so like, um, and then Scottish Heritage.

But we were sent there because the, and when the British and the Scots were fighting mm-hmm. They would grab the Scots, send them down to South Africa. You could go to prison or you go to South Africa to fight the, um, the, the Boers, which were the Afrikaans. Right. Mm-hmm. And that's how my family came, was to literally fight in South Africa many, many years ago.

Wow. And South Africa is a very interesting, beautiful. Amazing place. Mm-hmm. But a very difficult time to grow up. I grew up in the middle of apartheid. Mm-hmm. Um, similar to Elon Musk in that I got into, you know, gaming very early. Right. Got into technology very early. Um, but it was a very hostile environment.

Mm-hmm. Um, there was a lot of, you grew up very quickly. Right. Um, I had friends killed in [00:09:00] bomb blasts. I had, you know, if you were against apartheid, it was, it was a tough place. Very tough place. So yeah, we could spend the whole podcast just talking about that. Yeah. I had an interesting, um, conversation.

This German entrepreneur who connected with me on LinkedIn, um, this space related company. Yeah. We got to talking and then he flew into Washington via California. I took him out to dinner and we talked two hours about World War II and the whole German point of view. And it was, it's very interesting.

Yeah. No, it, I mean, it is that. You know, south Africa's a gigantic, I mean, Africa is a gigantic continent. The mineral wealth, you know, south Africa's about the size of Texas. Mm-hmm. But the mineral wealth and the natural resources there are incredible. Right. Yeah. And then I think there's 12 official languages.

Right. So, I mean, it's the cradle of civilization, right? Right. The oldest fossil record comes from Africa, from South Africa. How often do you travel back there? Do you still have family? Yeah. You know, [00:10:00] my grandmother, speaking of entrepreneurship, my grandmother. Uh, started her last business when she was 90 years old.

Wow. Delivering food Yeah. To elderly people. And I would be like, grandma who's older than you, like, like who are you delivering food to? Yeah. Um, but uh, she passed when she was like 97, I think. Mm-hmm. And we would, you know, 'cause we'd take the kids back and we'd, you know, go see a bunch of the family. But unfortunately, with all the craziness, uh, our family dispersed mm-hmm.

All over the world, um, I, I have, I'm next year, like, kind of as a, a milestone next summer. Uh, I'm gonna take a bunch of people from the island. You're welcome to come. Okay, great. Uh, we're gonna rent a bus mm-hmm. And do like a three week safari. Wow. Um, because I've done that before. Yeah. For other friends.

Yeah. And it, you know. I grew up in the bush, like the [00:11:00] bush was just part of my fabric. Mm-hmm. And, uh, until you actually go into the wild and you smell it and you see it and you hear those sounds and you see those incredible animals and creatures and like, immerse yourself in it. Mm-hmm. Um, I can't, I can't even begin to describe how amazing it is.

Right. It's, it's really a magical place. Right. Yeah. South Africa's definitely my bucket list. Let's go hiking Kilimanjaro next, next summer. Let's do it. Alright, you're on. Good. So you transitioned into UCF. How did, how did that happen? Oh my gosh. Yeah. So, so my dad, uh, you know, my dad that, that, starting with the gold mines, right?

He ended up, um, doing a lot of work for Ford Motor Companies. Speaking of the Germans, he did a lot of work for Mercedes-Benz. Mm-hmm. Um, we traveled like extensively. Mm-hmm. All throughout Africa, all throughout Europe. Um, but my dad always loved America. Just that was the goal. Mm-hmm. And he [00:12:00] started working with IBM and their AS 400 systems.

And so we got to immigrate to Atlanta, uh, when I was 15. Mm-hmm. Um, but I had done several trips to the US before then, and actually, um, early entrepreneurship stuff was Dad would bring stuff back so he would, there was a whole, there was a whole thing that I had him doing. I was like, all right, dad, I want you to re take an audio cassette, record the radio.

Mm. And then I would double all the audio cassettes and I'd sell the audio cassettes just of American radio to all my friends in South Africa. Wow. And then I would, uh, take, uh, there was these jelly bangles that would glow in the dark. Mm-hmm. You could only get 'em in the, in the United States. So I'd have 'em buy a whole bunch of those and then resell 'em to all my friends in South Africa.

So, uh, I just, just, it's what you did. You know, you were, you were Amazon before Amazon? Well, yeah, just, just entrepreneurship was in his blood, was in my blood. Like, it was just constantly doing stuff like [00:13:00] that. Right. Um, but then 15 moved to Atlanta. Um, I knew by then that I wanted to be a filmmaker and we, we, I, there was a phenomenal, um, high school based Wal Walton High School in Marietta, Georgia was exceptional.

Mrs. Brown to this day, Diana Brown, she had this thing called, um. The Walton, uh, advanced le uh, learning program. Mm-hmm. But really it was a video club. Mm. And we started making films like right at the bat because I was, you know, I had been doing stuff for a long time. I ended up making a film that was a, uh, drunk driving video.

So, um, it was basically made by all these kids under 18. Mm-hmm. And it was the story about a kid who goes with his girlfriend, gets completely hammered and then kills her in the accident. And we took the car that we had done and we put it in the front of the school. That was all smashed up. Right. [00:14:00] Well, it, it ended up becoming part of the health program.

Everybody in Georgia had to watch that film. Right. And I was like, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm onto something, you know? So that ended up, um. Uh, you know, getting into all these film, uh, film schools and stuff. But my, but I was, I was ahead and my parents would not allow me to go to LA or New York. And then I found this film program, it was pretty funny.

I, I was either gonna go to Chicago mm-hmm. And it was incredibly freezing cold. Or that same day that I checked, well, right in that thing I went to Orlando and. The, the professor had left a note on the desk for my interview. Mm-hmm. And he said, um, we're filming today, come down to Universal Studios. So I go down to Universal Studios.

Oh, wow. Yeah. And there's all the film crew and everything like that. I walk in and they're like, I'm here. I'm here to see Mike Sullivan. He says, okay. Um, your wardrobe's in the back. [00:15:00] I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, oh, well we're short, uh, of women, we're shooting this film about Elvis and we don't have enough women, so you're gonna put on a wig and a dress and you're gonna be an adoring Elvis fan.

And I was like, what? So I go the back, I get dressed up like a girl. The guy next to me is like the super goth film guy and mm-hmm. And he looked so uncomfortable in a dress later on I got to make films with this kid. Um, but that was, that was my introduction film. They had all of this gear. Disney had, uh, uh, donated, uh, equipment Universal, it opens studios.

It had the unfortunate name of like Hollywood East. But I was like, this is fantastic. Right. Right. They're just making stuff. Mm-hmm. And then I went on to make 15 films while I was at UCF. Wow. So it was just access to gear and Right. Doing, if, if you take one thing away from my interview, I've always just like making stuff.

Mm-hmm. I'm make stuff. Right. And I was like, okay, nobody's heard of UCF. But [00:16:00] one day they will hear of UCF and it was that access to equipment that just got me super excited. Wow. So yeah, my film career started in a dress. That's funny. Not ashamed to say it. Right, right. So Blair Witch. Yes, sir. Okay. So what was the creative spark behind well, Blair Witch and your involvement?

Yeah, so, so like I said, um, we had the most, there was 20 of us in the first film school at UCF. Mm-hmm. I was one of the first 20. And, um, we just we're helping each other out all the time and recruiting, there was kind of a two different groups. One group wanted to make Hollywood movies. Mm-hmm. And I was in that group.

And so everything that I made was big and complicated. And, you know, I raised, uh. Just over $600,000 in donations to make a film called It's [00:17:00] Relative, where I met my wife. Mm. And, uh, so many of my friends. Um, it was a very well produced movie. I. But, uh, I realized like, wait a second. Like, I'm not a writer, because the whole goal was to make a Student Academy award film.

Mm-hmm. And so I wanted to, because nobody would won a Student Academy award movie outside of Los Angeles. Mm-hmm. The other group were like super artsy, making these like, you know, indie films that were like really grainy and gritty. And there's this guy named Ed Sanchez, who's a super tall six seven, I think, or six six Cuban guy mm-hmm.

Who had big mutton chops. And, you know, he, he was, uh, he was just a character and him and I could not be more opposite. Right. But because of the environment, we started working on these things together and I started realizing, oh, wait a second. This guy, he's got a lot of the things I don't have. Mm-hmm. And I have a lot of the things he doesn't have.

And so we started, like, over the years [00:18:00] of film school, we started being like, oh, we should really do stuff together. Uh, and then this other guy named Greg, who was actually in the military, he, he had done, uh, he was, he had come out of his military service. He had been part of military intelligence. So like he knew everything about tech.

He was a tech technology and also logistics and all that kind of stuff. And there was this other guy named Mike Mano, who was more on Ed's side, super into independent film, like, uh, worked in a movie theater. Mm-hmm. Really understood. Like the, the, that whole thing. So the, the, the, those guys. And then there was this other guy named Dan, Dan Myrick.

So it was us five. We, we all worked. On stuff together. Talked about film all the time, and, uh, ed and Dan started talking about this idea called the Woods Movie. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and, and we'd talk about it and they'd tell a story and the whole thing. Originally we were gonna film on 16 millimeter and we were gonna do the whole thing, but it was, it was, it was [00:19:00] impossible to do.

Mm-hmm. Like, it just wouldn't, it was too big, too big of an idea. Mm-hmm. And then we all graduated, we went different ways. And, um, my, I got my girlfriend pregnant, um, so I had to, we're still married after many, many years, so I think we're about to celebrate, uh, May 28th, we'll celebrate 32 years. But we all went in different directions and came back.

Uh, I went to Nickelodeon. I launched, I launched Nickelodeon studios, I launched the golf channel. I was involved with the Golf channel. Mm-hmm. Um, and a few years afterwards. Basically we got back together. Greg, uh, had been trying to raise money to do the film with, with Ed, and they hadn't succeeded. Um, and basically we all came together and said, okay, if we don't make this, we'll never make it.

Mm-hmm. And, um, at the time, I'd had some really good success. Mm-hmm. And I said, look, I'm gonna [00:20:00] write the check, the first check mm-hmm. To do this. And my wife, um, we basically had a choice. We were gonna buy a house or put money into the movie. Mm-hmm. And she, said I think we should put money into the movie.

Mm-hmm. And so that was the first check that that went into Blair Witch was, was that. And then I started raising money for the movie and I quit. I, I had, at that point, I had my first business. And we, um, we started working on Blair. It took us two years from that point mm-hmm.

Before we sold the movie at Sundance. Okay. Um, so it was really like the total journey of Blair was really, you know, from that time in film school to the time that we sold it, it was probably about four years mm-hmm. Of like various different versions of it. Mm-hmm. Obviously for me, that point of view, uh, experience that I had, you know, had with my dad mm-hmm.

Was a very important part for me. Mm-hmm. Um, but then, you know, Greg added, I. Hey, we'll do this real time, eight [00:21:00] days. GPS give the actors GPS, they won't know, you know, we'll put 'em in film school, we'll do it really real. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, ed was just an incredible editor and, and Dan was a really strong editor and Mike had all these things.

So it was really the alchemy of the five of us. Right. That slowly over those four years, various different versions, you know, came kind of bubbled up. Mm-hmm. And then the biggest single moment for the Blair Witch Project was that we originally had this idea of the experiment and what we did in eight days, but we were unsure of that decision.

And so we made a documentary that the original scope was a documentary within a documentary. Mm-hmm. So this eight day experiment and then all this other stuff. Mm-hmm. We basically came to this point where we're like all this other stuff. Takes away from the immersive point of view. Mm-hmm. And if we lock people into this first person, um, uh, point of view mm-hmm.

It's gonna [00:22:00] be more compelling. Right. But we'd spent most of our money on all this other stuff. Mm-hmm. So we didn't know what to do with it. So. We kind of had this thing where we said, you know what, if we, like, there's this thing called the internet. Like what if we start like slowly leaking this stuff out on the internet and we start, you know, marketing it on the internet.

I mean, we didn't even call it marketing. We just wanted to get all our other stuff out. Right. And it was that decision that A, made the film much better. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, it was very compelling, 87 minutes short. Mm-hmm. B it gave all of these other hooks, right. For people to go in. So we, all of a sudden, all these other websites started, you know, uh, fan websites started coming.

This is before Google, right? Right. Google didn't exist. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So you had, um, all of these sites that got built, but we were, we were one of the fir, I think we were the first independent movie. To use content to bring people into that [00:23:00] experience. Mm-hmm. Um, and when we sold a movie at Sundance, we had, you know, lines around the block.

We had all of these fans, mainly because they'd come to our website and participated in our website before they'd ever seen the movie. Mm-hmm. And we had done a lot of things that we never said it was real, but we never said it wasn't real. And we gave them a lot of very, very authentic things so that a huge percentage of the people who went into seeing the movie mm-hmm.

Thought it was real. Right. Did you ever think that the movie would have such a major impact? At the time, because we're talking like late nineties, right. So the, the first investor that I managed to talk into giving money was one of our neighbors. His name was Richard Ungaro. He was an executive at Blockbuster Video.

And, uh, he wrote one of the first checks to, to go into the movie. And we had a screening, an early screening of the movie for my, my dad's friends. Mm-hmm. [00:24:00] One of which was Richard Ungaro. And my dad was horrified. Like, he watched the movie and he was like, oh my God, this is so bad. And like, he was so embarrassed about it.

And like, he literally got up and made an apology to all of his friends. Oh my gosh. And Richard got up and he said, what are you talking about? Yeah. He said, this is, this is incredible. Mm-hmm. It's, I've never seen anything like it. Mm-hmm. And it's scary, you know? Uh, and it's powerful. So, no, you don't ever, you don't ever think that.

I mean, the movie made almost $500 million worldwide. Mm-hmm. It was the most, you know, profitable. We were in the Guinness Book of Records know until we got taken out by My Big Fat Creek wedding. So, um, but, but, but we were, yeah. It, it, no, we never imagined the success, but we did know right. From early on, I mean, right from the, that decision, I mean, right.

From the very early, it was the best [00:25:00] idea that I had seen for an indie movie. Because it took everything and this, this kind of has followed through a lot of things that I've done since. Mm-hmm. It took. All the shortcomings mm-hmm. Of indie movies and turned them into assets. Right. You know, the fact that it was grainy, the fact that it was shaky, the fact that it seemed real, like taking all of those weaknesses and actually turning them into strengths.

That's a very good way. Um, as a creative entrepreneur, it's like constraints are actually a blessing. Mm-hmm. And, um, and I'm, I don't think a lot of people think that way. Mm-hmm. You know, they're like, ah, I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time, I don't have to have enough resources, whatever.

Yeah. It's hard. But use those constraints to help build what you're gonna build. You actually find that in the raw materials of what you've got. Right. Um, and that was a huge lesson from Blair because in a sense it was like a startup. You had a, like a low limited budget. [00:26:00] We had no budget, but, well, yeah.

So was it, was it 60,000 total or? Well, no. So at the, at the end of the day, uh, we, so at the time, so I, the first check was $30,000. That was the, instead of buying a house, you know, we put that in there. Um, but then, uh, and that got us the experiment Right. Filming in the woods. Mm-hmm. But at that time, if you were going to Sundance, which we did, right, you had to deliver a film print and an optical soundtrack and a blah, blah blah.

So at the end of the day, that's expensive. Yeah. It was about 180,000 bucks. Yeah. So, and then in total, you know, I can't say the exact number, but many million, many, many, millions were returning to the investors. So it was, it was very good for the investors, right? It was very good for them and, and good for us.

I mean, I can tell you all kinds of crazy, we'll be here forever if I tell you all the crazy Hollywood stories that that catapulted us into. I mean, we literally, we got together, put our money together and bought groceries. We got a house and [00:27:00] collectively went a house. The, the. Like two days before we went to Sundance, a couple of the guys had their power turned off.

I had a baby. Wow. Like at that time. And when we went to Sundance, we were broke. Broke filmmakers. Mm-hmm. I'll tell you one quick story. The, the, they, they said to us, uh, they're like, we love the movie. I mean, it was a bidding war. It's a whole thing. Um, we love the movie, but we just, we're just not sure about the end.

And we knew the end was. Really, but we were so broke, right? And we, we were getting all this, they were like, well, we'll pay you money to reshoot the ending. And we were like, like, how much will you pay us? Right? They said, oh, you know, I think it was something like $90,000. We couldn't believe $90,000. We're like, what?

Yeah. And we're like, okay. So then we were like, we just went and paid all our bills off, paid everything off, went back to the same place, and we shot these horrible endings, like really terrible endings. And then we came back and they're like, [00:28:00] well, we think the original ending is, is the right one. We're like, yeah.

You know, you're absolutely right. Yeah. But that was how he survived. Yeah. Um, you just, you just, Blair was one thing after another of, of, um, collectives, thinking, working, the five of us were constantly solving problems together. Mm-hmm. Um, and then also, um, just. N not taking no, and not just having a, you know, being stuck on what we wanted to do.

Mm-hmm. Um, there's, there's so many things that I could tell you out of that film that have Yeah. Informed everything else. Those are great lessons learned from that experience. Yeah. That you can apply to entrepreneurship and general startups really ca the, the, uh, the last thing I'll say about Blair maybe, 'cause I know we've got so much to talk about.

Um, we were always imagining the best case scenario mm-hmm. And being prepared for that. Right. [00:29:00] So when we sold a movie, um, we went to New York. To meet. So originally, uh, artisan, the distributor was actually a, a video library. Mm-hmm. So we knew they had all of these videos. So we wrote like 32 ideas on how we would market the film.

Mm-hmm. And we went to New York and we met with the marketing department. Um, and we went through our list. Mm-hmm. And of the 32 ideas, they ended up doing like 28 or 29 of them. Mm-hmm. And to their credit, they really had us involved in it. Mm-hmm. But we had the material, like we walked into there not being like, Hey, you know, it's great you bought us, or maybe what are you gonna do with it?

Instead, we were proactively saying, this is how we would want distribute the film. Right. And, you know, so we had the missing flyer for example, that was, so the, we put up missing posters all across the United States, and then we had a thing you could tear off the number and call and we had a live line. So, you know, so we did that.

You know, [00:30:00] we, we did a, a a a special on the sci-fi channel that again took a bunch of the material that we'd shot and told this like crazy story. It was the highest rated special that they had on the sci-fi channel. Right. So, like, we were always, I. Proactively ahead of everybody else, right. Thinking about our perfect way to go.

Mm-hmm. Um, and I think that was, you know, one of the reasons why Blair, and then fortunately we got in a place where they listened to us and we, we genuinely later. It wasn't that way. Right. It got a lot. Well, it worked because I can remember like it was yesterday, a lot of people at the time actually thought it was real.

Yeah. And no, it's fake. It's a movie. No, it's real man. You know, so you would have these, these intense debates. Yeah. And 'cause we nobody really knew for sure. You know? So. Good job. Well, I tell you, I, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And there's, there's, there was so much nuance and detail that went into mm-hmm.

You know, that tapestry. [00:31:00] Right. And then later we got hired to do that for, I mean, we got, James Cameron hired us to brainstorm on a TV series that he was doing, you know, so like, we actually started doing a lot of consulting and work once the movie had hit right. On how to do, you know, this, this kind of multi, in fact, Mike Mano has built a career out of that.

Mm-hmm. He's, I'm still, we're all still very close. You know, that's also another testimony to, to everybody is still married. Mm-hmm. To either the girlfriends that they were with or to, to, to the same partners. Um, everybody didn't, you know, lose their mind. Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah. It's a good bunch of people and right place, right idea, right time.

Mm-hmm. Lots of, lots of, out of, outside of the five people I just talked about, a lot of incredible, our, our attorney, Stuart Rosenthal was amazing. Mm-hmm. The agency, Endeavor, which ultimately became William Morris Endeavor mm-hmm. Was this young, aggressive agency. They were incredible. Mm-hmm. You know, the dis [00:32:00] you know, the distribution, the, they were young and, and had full of ideas and they've gone on to do in various different ways, incredible things.

Mm-hmm. So it was just, it, it was, it was the right idea, right place, but also we were very fortunate to meet incredible people. Mm-hmm. Um, and then able to act on those relationships. Right. And that's another thing. That I think goes to entrepreneurship is mm-hmm. Recognizing, recognizing what you're good at, recognizing what you're not good at mm-hmm.

Is equally valuable. Oh, yeah. And then surrounding yourself, you know, the, the cliche is surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Mm-hmm. Um, but it's so true. Like that alchemy of people and, and, and the quality of the people around you making those choices, those are really hard choices to make.

Mm-hmm. We would agonize on, okay, who's gonna be our PR guy, you know? Mm-hmm. And that choice really mattered. 'cause the guy that we got still to this day is a very good [00:33:00] friend. And the PR on Blair was off the chain, you know? Right. But there were 400 choices that we could have made that would've been the wrong choice.

Right. So the fact that we made the right choice with Jeremy Walker mm-hmm. Like, you know, and that, that flows through to every business. Right? Yeah. So taking the success in the film industry that you had, you pivoted into gaming. Yeah. Right. Tell me about that. So, yeah, we made, we made nine, uh, nine movies and two TV series over the 15 years that followed.

Mm-hmm. Um, but pretty early on, we, we ended up working with. This group out of Texas called The Gathering of Developers. God, nothing. No, nothing Meek about that name. Right. Um, but they were incredibly talented guys out of Austin, Texas, um, making PC games, and they were really into Blair, but they were also really into kind of the techniques that we had [00:34:00] used in the filmmaking side.

And so we made these PC games. Mm-hmm. Um, and they were very dark. And like, one of the things was you had a flashlight that you could turn on, and only wherever you, you know, put the beam of the flashlight would you see things. And they were terrifying. Mm-hmm. Um, and I just fell in love with making video games just really, really awesome.

Mm-hmm. And my, my years later, my sister. Um, had twins and she was walking the twins on this path. And this la this, this lady fell in love with the twins and they would walk together and she'd take care of the kids and you know, that whatever, they became friends and they would talk back and forth. And one day she said to my, my sister, Hey, like, didn't, wasn't your brother involved in like Blair Witch and movies?

And, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She said, well, my husband is looking for like a cinematic producer that might have a game background. Do, do [00:35:00] you like? And you said, well actually, you know, he is really into games, a blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm. Long story short, I, I go and meet her husband and he was the general manager of EA Sports and they were looking, you know, the Madden franchise.

Every year has to like outgun itself. Right. Um, it's an incredibly, I mean I think they're at 35 years now or something like that. Mm-hmm. It's an incredible franchise. It was such a rich, rich, rich history. But every year you've gotta do something different. Mm-hmm. And his name's Roy Harvey. Roy definitely had this vision for doing something, uh, unexpected.

And at the time, the first Last of Us game had come on, you may not know this game, but now it's the tv. Oh, it's very popular. Yeah. And it's now a TV series. So the first narrative game last of us was so innovative in that. You played it, but it was deeply rich narrative. Right. So [00:36:00] Roy's vision, um, and then the, the director that I worked with, Mike Young, their vision was to completely turn Madden on its head because everybody was talking about being on the sticks.

Mm-hmm. And, and, and that's great, you know, rich gameplay. But you know, football has such a legacy, such a deep narrative behind it. So we came up with this idea, Mike came up with it, and then I helped him write the script. Um, for a guy who, uh, was serving his, his dad was his high school coach, um, his dad, they kind of went, won the high school championship.

His dad was killed in a car accident. Hmm. And then he basically escaped to the military and went to Iraq. And now he comes back and this is the beginning of the story mm-hmm. Where you, him and his best friend who's a wide receiver are long shots. So it was called Madden Long shot, and you then had to play from a complete outsider long [00:37:00] shot mm-hmm.

And get yourself to the Super Bowl. Wow. And the big thing that we did that was very different was you could lose. Mm-hmm. There were so many failure states, like the best way was you and your best friend make it to the Super Bowl and amazing. Right? Mm-hmm. But you could lose so many different ways along the, it was basically kind of like, choose your own adventure.

Mm-hmm. And, um, the game guys basically hated it. Like the, the, and I mean the game team internally. Mm-hmm. They hated the idea. They just couldn't wrap their head around this narrative vision that Roy and Mike had. Mm-hmm. And so we, it internally was really, really difficult and, but we just. We were determined to do it, and I didn't know any better.

I was just like so focused on getting this story out. Ultimately, we made about six hours of content that you could play in a one and a half hour sitting. Mm-hmm. And we won Sports Game of the year. Wow. It was the most profitable Madden that had come out to that time. Yeah. Um, but [00:38:00] again, it was this, you know, if we'd pitch Blair Witch to somebody, to a studio, there was no way it was ever gonna get made.

And if it wasn't for Roy and his, like, I mean, he played defensive end for, I mean, he was just blocking for us all the time. Right. Yeah. And, and uh, and, and then Mike Mike's vision of doing it and then, yeah. Yeah. So we, we ended up making three versions of those games. Each one became more and more profitable.

Mm-hmm. It was a big, like, reinvigoration of the franchise. And, uh, so much fun. Actually, some of our team went on to work on Last of Us 2. Wow. Which is. Really, really cool. Yeah. Um, again, like, just kind of going against the odds, just trying to do something different. Skate, skate to where the puck is going right.

Is like a big thing in my life. It's like you can, you can see kind of where it's going. Mm-hmm. But that area is a gray area. Mm-hmm. That's where I love to play. Right. That's the best thing for [00:39:00] entrepreneurs to play. It's like, how can I both creatively and then like logistically, practically get there.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and Madden was that for me and, uh, ultimately. I started work, Roy went on to run a division called the Search for Exceptional Experiences Division. Mm-hmm. Which the D kind of got, you know, put in there, but it was basically R and D for EA Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so I started working a lot with the seed guys going, okay, how can we, you know, basically bring the narrative things so like in Fifa, like, how can you know the story modes?

How can we do that? And how can we share art assets? And logistically how can we do this? 'cause the engine that that EA had wasn't built for narrative. Right. And so we had to write a lot of original technology to, to basically force the narrative tools, technical tools mm-hmm. That we needed in there. So, um, yeah, it [00:40:00] was, it was fascinating.

And, uh, one last thing that I'll say about, uh, film versus, uh, gaming. Um, so many of the people on a film set are. Artists and emotional people and mm-hmm. And about half of a game team, maybe a third, are the same kind of people. These are, they wear their lives on their sleeves. They make, they make beautiful pictures.

They're, they've got emotional iq. Right, right. They're, they're really emotive. So you typically do like a rah rah thing. Right. Engineers not so much. Right. In fact, software engineers and engineers in general, they're very practical, very detailed. And, you know, so in the beginning of Madden, I got in, I did my normal like rah rah film thing, and the, the, the chief, the lead technical guy, uh, still Matt, Matt, uh, he came to me, he goes, what is that?

Mm-hmm. I'm like, that's, you know, it's a rah rah. Just, you know, get the team all that. He's like, dude, you [00:41:00] just, you just made all the engineers furious. You just pissed them off. I'm like. Why you're like, that's not what they wanted to hear. Right. They wanted to hear, you know, like, okay, this is the burn down rate and here's the technical design approach, and they, they want to hear all of this stuff.

Yeah. And I was like, I realized, okay, wait, I'm not speaking. I, these are different humans, right? Yeah. They think differently. And I had to change everything. So I just said to him, Hey, look, I apologize. Teach me, you know? Mm-hmm. And I had to learn how to talk to engineers mm-hmm. And how to think like an engineer and, and, and get into all of that type of stuff.

Right. It was very, very, very different. Um, and then ultimately, last story, the best thing that I ever did while I was at ea. When you get into this thing called alpha, which is really like all of the, you know, all of the engineering's been done, you've done a vertical slice, you've done [00:42:00] all the, you know, you've set up all the technical things, you've captured all of the material that are gonna go into the game, into the narrative.

But now, like it's all gotta be locked down And sewn together. And it is crunch time Alpha in game game world is, you know, legendarily long, long hours, sometimes six, seven days a week. So I noticed that a lot of people were, were working on Saturdays. And so I came up with this idea. I got a.

I got a cart, and at the end of the Saturday I loaded it with like drinks and beers and Yay. Had all of these floors. And I would just walk the floors being like, Hey man, you want a beer? And like, give 'em a beer. And then so what are you doing? Tell me what your problems are. And you know, tell there's 120 people on our team.

Right. And that way, in a very social way, I could learn like what their problems were, what their pain was. And if that would be my line, I'd be like, Hey, I'm here to find out what your pain is. So you tell me your [00:43:00] pain, enjoy the beer, tell me your pain. And then I could take that and then, oh, go over here.

And it's like, oh, wait a second. I got this guy over here who could solve that problem. Because the biggest problem with game development is somebody does something that's very, very specific. And we called it throwing it over the cubicle. Like, all right, I'm done with my piece, whoop. You know, throw it over the edge of the cubicle.

Right, right. And the next guy had to catch it. But if you weren't thinking about the person who comes after you. Like things would break, right? So beer cart, best advice I can give you for game development, right? Yeah. That silo mentality kills. Kills. Yeah, does kills. And especially when you've got specialists, right?

Mm-hmm. The more specialized you become, and devs are amazing, amazing people, but because a lot of times. What they're doing is just so technically mm-hmm. Difficult and detailed, that they, they do become siloed and, and, and, uh, locked away from the, the other humans. Mm-hmm. Right, right. Yeah. Well, I can tell you just real quick [00:44:00] on the video games.

It's, it's exciting that you worked in Madden. Uh, I'm a big fan. I played cool. Madden, yeah. For many, many years. That's so awesome. Um, but to see the future of gaming Yeah. Evolve into what you see today with Call of Duty and Oh, red Dead Redemption and Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, Red Dead, man like that game.

It's just to talk about open world. I mean, I just love, love, love that game. Yeah. No, and look, I, you know, we do a lot of work with Unreal Engine, which of course is right up the road, Raleigh Durham. Yeah. And, uh, it, I highly recommend, uh, Lex Friedman has a podcast, and Tim Sweeney just did just over four hours.

Mm-hmm. So Tim Sweeney's the head of Unreal, right? Yeah. And, uh, he talks a lot. If, if you only listen to one podcast on gaming, it would be, that one just came out, I think last week. Yeah, I'll check that out. It's very, very good. But yeah, the future of gaming is phenomenal and very, very interesting. And, um, I.

Talk about, you know, the [00:45:00] AI playing such an important role in it. Mm-hmm. I mean, in the early days that I was involved in, in ea we were talking about what AI could do. Um, and then just now, like the tool set in computer graphics alone mm-hmm. Have gone through this unbelievable evolution over the last two years.

Right. Um, but yeah, gaming, gaming is, is, uh, is very interesting to, to where it's, it's going. Mm-hmm. And that Tim, Tim Sweeney podcast is a good one. Absolutely. Yep. So. A very interesting and exciting background. Yeah. Which kind of culminated into this idea for Skillmaker. So I'd love to hear the story of how you, yeah.

What was the idea behind Skillmaker? Well, so I, I owe my father a lot. So my dad's had 50 years in learning and development and, you know, father's Sons, like I always loved my dad, we're always close, but I was on my own thing. I was doing entertainment, movies, games. If you told me that I'd end up like [00:46:00] working with my dad at all, I would've said, no way, just not gonna happen.

Right? Mm-hmm. I mean, I love my dad, but no, um, I. CID and then Dad was kind of in trouble a little bit. Um, he, uh, and this other gentleman had started a company called Promising People. Mm-hmm. And the idea was, it was part of my, my dad's very religious, very, um, so part of his ministry was helping people who were in prison.

Mm-hmm. And so, recidivism in this country is insane. A number of people who go back to prison is just astronomical. So their idea was, you know, what, if we could use virtual reality to actually train people while they're in prison, um, and then they won't go back to prison. Mm-hmm. And promising people still exists.

It's, you know, the, it's, it's a, it's good company and. The, they chose electricians, um, as the first job to train for, and the downside is they're not very technical people. [00:47:00] Mm-hmm. So Dad called me during covid and was like, I'm in trouble. I've, you know, it's like we can't solve how to do this and, you know, could you get involved in, uh, in helping us actually rebuild the technology.

Um, so we did, we went in there, built a team. Um, and that was when I was driving around the country. Um, I would, you know, basically everybody was remote, we could do it. So ultimately we were able to take the training just using virtual reality mm-hmm. For an electrician from eight months down to 15 days.

Mm-hmm. Um, and that was. Really cool. Mm-hmm. And I finally read my dad's books and my dad had written like four books and I was like, Pop's, like there's, there's some really good stuff in here. Um, I think we are doing the wrong thing at promising people. Not that I. Not that the mission of the company is good or everything like that.

Mm-hmm. But I think there's a lot of work here that [00:48:00] really needs to happen. Not, I mean, yes, virtual reality, but it, there's a lot of other technology that we can use mm-hmm. Especially AI that could, on the technical side, solved the problem. Mm-hmm. But I also think that, um, you know, it's really difficult to, to run a business in the justice involved system.

Mm-hmm. I was convinced that that enterprise is where we needed to be. Um, and also we needed to be, we needed to find this like dream client who had a very big technical problem that needed to be solved at scale. Mm-hmm. And then we could solve that as kind of a master story. And, and ultimately, um, a, a friend of mine, um, knew the head of marketing for.

Genuine Parts Corporation, G-P-C-G-P-C owns Napa mm-hmm. Order parts. Mm-hmm. Um, and so my friend introduced me to, [00:49:00] uh, the marketing person who was running it and, and she said, oh, you've gotta meet John Ellsworth. So John Ellsworth at the time was the head of training. Mm-hmm. And very, very fortunately for us, John ended up getting promoted to the GPC level reporting directly to the Chief Information Officer.

Mm-hmm. And all of a sudden we had this client that had this gigantic problem that needed to be solved. And it was mapping so much into my vision of like where we needed to go. Mm-hmm. Um, and so I really started Skillmaker to do, you know, the previous thing was really my dad's vision. My dad's kind of retired now.

Mm-hmm. Um. And so it was me learning from him, but then taking my 30 years of content development and applying that right to actually making this better. Mm-hmm. So, and I, I can go [00:50:00] into the problem, solution, all that if you want, but mm-hmm. That was the origin of Skillmaker. Right. How do you measure success?

Yeah. So the, so the problem is by, by 2030 we're gonna be short, 85 million skilled workers. Mm-hmm. Um, people use their hands, they use their body, use their brain. So trades, so problems. Trade, yeah. Yes. Trades. But the, the thing, 

Robin: the problem from NAPA is their skilled technicians, very specifically. So when we first started working with napa, they were asking about technology and vr, and I said, no, like, don't worry about the technology.

Let me understand what your problem is first, let's really dive into that. And so we went to shops, we went to auto repair shops, and we talked to them and turned out that entry level technicians, what they call a c-tech. They do your brake jobs and your, you know, wheel alignment [00:51:00] and, you know, all, all of that kind of work.

It actually accounts for about 80% of the revenue of a, of a shop, of a, a repair shop. But they can't find them 'cause they're normally young people. Um, the, the wor the trade, the workers are aging out. Um, and it takes, it takes two years to train a c-tech. So if we could reduce the amount of time that it takes to train a c-tech from two years down to what we ultimately did 25 days You could ramp up younger people and also use all of this technology that they would be really excited about. Mm-hmm. Um, and get 'em to work faster. Um, and so this process of reducing training time from two years to 25 days mm-hmm. That speed up, uh, was really kind of one of the tent poles mm-hmm. Of what we were gonna do.

Um. And then the other thing was, it was so funny when we [00:52:00] were at Napa now, which is like 14,000 people where we launched the, now what it's, it's called the Napa Accelerator in, in Vegas a couple weeks ago in Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Mm-hmm. Um, this lady, she's, she like, stands up with a question. She says, all right, I get all this thing about speed and I agree I need to get a car into a bay up on her lift down.

But let me tell you if that car, that, that, that vehicle comes back to my shop, I'm losing money big time. So you better not be compromising on quality. And she's absolutely right. Virtual reality can show people what they need to know, and we can test people inside the headset. We use mixed reality where, um, which, which is great.

We use vr, but. Mixed reality allows you to use real tools. Because in a technician's world, it's often just like the angle of the, you [00:53:00] know, of the instrument or, or the, it's the full spatialized context of what you're doing. It's the, it's the feeling or the sound. Like when something clicks or the Even the viscosity of an oil or, or what, you know, whatever, it's so much more embodied. So if you're just playing a video game Or if you're just in the digital realm, that's not enough. But with mixed reality, you can actually look through the device And you can use your real hands and real tools in a real situation.

Mm-hmm. And it was that combination of VR and MR that really made a big difference, but that still was not enough. Mm-hmm. Um, we've reduced the amount of time, but. As a technician, you're gonna have a million questions, and if you're creating a whole bunch of questions to bug your b-techs and your a-techs and your shop owners mm-hmm.

You just created a problem. Mm-hmm. So for that, we started using smart glasses and we basically [00:54:00] took this knowledge around the job. Mm-hmm. Like what's the rich knowledge that you need to do that job? Mm-hmm. And then think of it as like ChatGPT for technicians. Mm-hmm. We've now enabled technicians wearing regular glasses, which by the way, they've gotta wear when they're working on a vehicle.

Mm-hmm. You can ask it a question. Say I'm standing in front of an F-150, it's a 2020 model. I'm working on the engine block. Tell me what the torque specs are for these bolts. Mm-hmm. And instantly you can get the answer to that question in your glasses. Mm-hmm. So we got ahead of the curve again, based on everything that I said we anticipated.

That problem. Mm-hmm. And we've answered it with the smart classes. And those smart classes, when you start to get into that, um, are the measurement that you're talking about. Mm-hmm. Because we test people in the VR setting. We test them, we call it teach five, test five. Mm-hmm. Um, we, we test them that, but you get incredible data points from this technology.

You [00:55:00] know, those glasses are timestamped. Mm-hmm. You know, what they looked at, what questions they a looked at. So as a shop owner, all of a sudden you have very, very rich data, not only of like individual results mm-hmm. But very, very rich data that allows you to go, oh wait, like, this guy's good at that.

And this guy's good at that. And maybe I should train him up a little bit here and I should apply this over here. So you, you, you visualize, it's almost like you're able to. Talk to the shop. Right. Right. You are able to see this. It's, it's, yes, it's data capture, but it's also really intelligent data, data, uh, uh, on a very specific problem.

Right. And, and I think this is the future that we're heading into now with artificial intelligence. Mm-hmm. Natural language processing allows you to have a conversation with data that you were never able to have before. Right, right. And even put on. Humanistic qualities to that [00:56:00] data mm-hmm. That allows people to, you know, it's this, what you're seeing with programming languages, like programming languages, the new programming language is English.

Mm-hmm. Or, or natural speak. Right. Right. Because all of a sudden you have this layer that is very, very human. Mm-hmm. And I think that is one of the things that I'm the most excited about. I know it's one of the things that Napa and GPC is the most excited about is it's not just training. Mm-hmm. It's optimization of those bays.

Mm-hmm. And that's how you move the needle. So you took, originally Napa was short, 66,000 people. Mm-hmm. We're helping to reduce that, but more than that, the people that they have we're optimizing their productivity so that basically the shops make more money. Mm-hmm. And if the shops make more money, they're buying more parts, they're buying more parts, Napa is succeeding.

Mm-hmm. So it, it all fits together. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think it all comes from. Starting with what's the human [00:57:00] problem? Mm-hmm. And then applying technology to that. Right. So not only you're, you're increasing productivity, uh, with training. Yes. But it sounds like you're also automating a lot of the operations, or at least, so you're, you're improving them, you're, you're taking friction.

Like all entrepreneurship in my opinion, uh, starts with. This pain mm-hmm. And then applying a creative solution to that pain. Mm-hmm. Right. And normally it's not head on. Right? Like normally it's, you know, a lot of times end of the Napa has, I think it's almost like 50 people that they have travel all over the country.

They go to like a Holiday Inn and they'll have a classroom and, you know, as many people as possible will come at night or on the weekends to come, like gather around and do that. That analog approach, as heartfelt as it is. Mm-hmm. As genuine as it is and as talented as all our technicians are, it doesn't scale, it's just not practical to scale it.

Mm-hmm. [00:58:00] So with VR and mr, you can do it anywhere at any time. Um, you can remote into those headsets, you can have those same technicians instead of having to travel can literally remote into that headset. Mm-hmm. And, and give advice. So it was just. Taking a different approach mm-hmm. To it. Mm-hmm. Uh, and, and entrepreneurship is based on.

Truly understanding a problem, getting into the details of it. Mm-hmm. And then coming up with a creative solution. So yeah, we are automating a lot of things. Mm-hmm. Um, a lot of it is integration, you know, a lot of it's existing technology that's already there. Mm-hmm. That we're just basically taking the friction away.

Mm-hmm. So can I get those torque specs another way? Sure. Mm-hmm. I can stop what I'm doing. Go clean my hands. Log onto a terminal. Bring up the account, type in the question. Get the torque specs back and then go back to [00:59:00] what I was doing. Mm-hmm. But if I can put that answer in the glasses in less than four seconds mm-hmm.

I just took a whole bunch of needing, you know, meaningless work. Right. Like, and so you take that idea and you start applying it to everything that goes on. Mm-hmm. I mean, cars are cool now. They really are. They are so interesting. Yeah. Like the kind of, I mean, I just, um, in, I was just in Silicon Valley and I just, um, did the Waymo, uh, experience.

Oh, right. Don't know if you've done that. Google. Yeah, the Google. So I took a Waymo trip. Mm-hmm. And the, I mean, it's basically. The most sophisticated ai, the most sophisticated engineering and computer technology on wheels, right? Mm-hmm. Right? And, and so cars, this is a great time to get involved in, in, in vehicles and, and where they're going.

Mm-hmm. Because it is not like the greasy mechanic [01:00:00] job at all. Like, that is not what we're talking about. Mm-hmm. So, if you're going to try and get tech, you know, if you're gonna get young people excited about cars, you've gotta reach them in a way that they know. And at the end of the day, most, you know, meta spent a lot of money in virtual reality game playing.

Mm-hmm. So a lot of the ways young people know about. VR is through gaming. Mm-hmm. And, and there's a lot of things that make sense in gaming. So like, I call it serious games, right? Mm-hmm. So we're, we're, we're using gameplay in a, in a serious way. Um, and just young people just take to it like, you know, like a duck to water.

'cause they know it, they know the mechanics and they just fly through it and they find it very interesting. Right. So, as you mentioned, the young population has already had experience, especially Gen Z, you know, folks with the video gaming and the technology. They were born, they were born playing games.

They were born more than iPad. How do you, how do you [01:01:00] integrate your technology or sell your technology to industries that may not have that experience or fearful of technology? 'cause I, I've run into several other companies, founders who talk about, Hey, I've got the greatest thing in the world. I can do analytics, I can do data science.

I can give you predictive Yeah. Reporting. Yeah. But if the customer is fearful of the technology and it's not really, I wouldn't call it fearful, it's just I. They're stuck using what they want. Yeah. They're comfortable doing the old fashioned way, and they're just hesitant about adopting anything new. I, I think the last few years have seen some remarkable changes and I think what you're speaking to, why, why do we not have enterprise VR if, if enterprise VR is so incredible?

Mm-hmm. Why are we not saturated everywhere with enterprise vr? Mm-hmm. Um, and I, I do think that the form factor of the glasses and obviously the [01:02:00] success of things like meta's, meta's, ray bands, smart glasses mm-hmm. Which has been an out of the off the charts. Success. Mm-hmm. Um, and it, and then, you know, uh, Android xr, Google, Google has a new platform that they're launching right now called Android xr, which is basically an evolution of the Android platform that runs in all our mobile phones.

Mm-hmm. And their whole thing is, yes, xr, but smart glasses first with Gemini built into those glasses first place, right? Mm-hmm. So it's, it's in partnership with Samsung and everything like that. The huge differentiator, the, the huge difference is that People are used to wearing eyeglasses. Mm-hmm. And it's not, it's not imposing for you to put a set of eyeglasses.

And then the best thing about eyeglasses is you can take 'em off. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. So when you're in a headset, it is very disorienting and because of the fully immersive way [01:03:00] of vr mm-hmm. Um, it takes a little bit to adjust to that. Mm-hmm. And I also think that the, you know, in the beginning, unfortunately, um, there was, you know, people would have nausea or the, like, the difference between the interocular difference and I think there was a lot of things in the beginning part of VR that were very difficult.

Mm-hmm. Now, I think meta and others have done incredible jobs to get that down. Mm-hmm. But I think the reason why people will adopt this now versus not in the past is a smart glasses. Mm-hmm. And b. The power of putting AI in the, and the intelligence that you get from those glasses. Mm-hmm. Know that, that answer my question right now, just in time information.

Mm-hmm. But also help me solve the problem. Like, help me do some diagnostics here. I can take a c-tech and make them operate like a b-tech if I give them just a little bit of domain specific knowledge. Right. With an [01:04:00] ai, right? Mm-hmm. So, um, so, you know, the answer to your question is I'm seeing the older guys who are very set in their ways, put on a pair of glasses very quickly mm-hmm.

And adjusts to eyeglasses very quickly. I'm seeing the younger guys not have a problem at all. Like the out the box slap on a Quest three. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I've done, you know, I've, I've played games in this No problem. Mm-hmm. So, you know that, so that adoption goes there. Mm-hmm. Um, I see executives. And marketing people and you know, those types of people, their like aha moment is when you show 'em the data mm-hmm.

And show 'em the results of using that process. They're like, this is incredible because the data, it's everything is about data, you know, it's about data and processing. And NAPA has probably one of the most [01:05:00] incredibly rich data sets. Mm-hmm. And I just didn't know what to do with it. Right. You know? Um, and so working with them and showing them kind of the, the results of that mm-hmm.

Has been, I mean, I've been working with them now for two years. Mm-hmm. And just. The daunting, like, as the more demos we made, the more work we've done, the more we've, the more they have started being like, oh wait, like we can do this with this and we can do this with this. Mm-hmm. So when your, when your client starts telling you what to do with your solution mm-hmm.

Then you're onto something. Right? Right. Mm-hmm. Like, that's the other thing that I think a lot of entrepreneurs forget. I mean, and it's, again, it's cliche, but it's just so true. You know, the customer's always right or you know, like, you know, listen to your customer, like yes, have a vision for what you want to do, but I.

Like going into the, so right now we started pre-sales for the Napa Accelerator. Mm-hmm. Why? It only comes out in March. But I am having [01:06:00] basically focus groups, interactive groups, and I made them put down money. Like you have to put down money as a pre-sale, but I want qualified input from the buyers.

Mm-hmm. To say, yeah, that's great, but this is the part of what you can do that I really want. Mm-hmm. Right. As I finish the feature set, I'm constantly listening to my customer. Right. And I'm constantly thinking about, 'cause something that I think is cool, an actual technician spending time in a bay making things work.

He may be like, yeah dude, like I can just pick up this piece of paper over here and it's much easier. Or I can pick up this tool and it, you know, so it has to have value to your customer. Mm-hmm. Um, so. Beyond the technology form. As a technologist, you kind of need to get away from the technology. You need to think of that as almost invisible.

Mm-hmm. And really focus on the day-to-day [01:07:00] real problems that a tech in a bay actually has. Mm-hmm. And if you, if you can step out of your own bias, your own shoes and really understand what they're going through in a daily basis, then you start to actually, you know mm-hmm. Make, make some progress. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I have a friend who adopted the, uh, meta glasses with her business and she seems pretty happy with It. Is, it's a great form factor. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure it's gonna be improving. Yeah. With integration of AI in the future. Um, so with Skillmaker? Yes. Is it software and hardware or, or just software?

We are, we are basically. Um, so, so there's another problem. This is why I know I'm in a good business because there's lots of problems. So the other problem is if you're gonna make VR or you're gonna make content this way, you have two sets of people that are really, really important. Mm-hmm. One is the learning and development people.

The l and d people, these are the people who [01:08:00] talk, in our case with Napa, they talk auto repair, right? Mm-hmm. They know they can talk all day long about, tell you how to fix a car. Problem is they don't speak XR development speak. Right. And then you have all these fantastic developers who've been making VR and they can't tell you the first thing about fixing an automobile.

Right? So in a way, what Skillmaker is, is a Rosetta Stone. Mm-hmm. We're a bridge between l and d and XR developers. Okay. And we speak automotive speak, and we speak developer speak, and we translate the one to the other and back and forth. Mm-hmm. And traditionally when you've done development. There's all of this painful, like getting to, getting to understand what they're talking about from an xr, they have to really step out of their comfort zone mm-hmm.

To learn all this stuff and it just takes time and then a lot of manual data entry. Mm-hmm. Instead, what we're doing is we're using data science and [01:09:00] AI to essentially build this, this, this multimodal knowledge base around the job. And all the l and d guys need to worry about is like, what, what is the background information?

We'll automate the script for you. We'll, we'll draft that script the first time the l and d people come in. Mm-hmm. So our platform, they read what looks like a movie script. That is a first draft of the training module, and they haven't done anything yet, right? Mm-hmm. And they just say, oh, you got 90% right?

Right. Here's the 10% that I need to iterate, right? Mm-hmm. And then we lock that and we turn it into XR speak. Okay? So the whole process, then when the XR developer comes in and looks at it, all of a sudden, oh, these are my failure states. These are the, the actual mechanics that need to go behind this tool.

These are all the, you know, so like, these are all the questions that, for me, I've been doing this for 30 years now. Mm-hmm. I know what all the questions are for a developer, so I'm just getting ahead of their pain. And they go and they go, oh, well, you know, 90% of this is [01:10:00] right, but this is the 10%. So all of a sudden I've shrunk the dev process as well, right?

Mm-hmm. And, and that, um, is incredibly, incredibly powerful. So, yes, the answer to your question is, I. We're essentially like SaaS or AI as a service. Mm-hmm. We're really a software tool that bridges that, you know, that level. Mm-hmm. And then the people who are in the weeds are the XR developers and the l and d people.

Mm-hmm. They're using our platform because we're an amplifier, um, for solving the problem. Right. And do you integrate with meta glasses or off the shelf type hardware? Yeah, so, so we've gotta be, look, the hardware is changing so fast. The frontier models are changing so fast, the data science is changing so fast.

So in a way, we're kind of the core fiber that knits everything together. Mm-hmm. But we need to be hardware agnostic. Yes. Right now we're using the Quest three and we're using smart glasses, but Samsung's got a really cool look set of headset, you know, headsets coming out and Google, Google's got a whole [01:11:00] set of smart glasses coming out.

So like, uh, and every day there's a better and better frontier model, right? Mm-hmm. So you better be building these days with, you know, being completely agnostic. Now you've gotta make some decisions, you know? Mm-hmm. You've gotta. Build your cloud infrastructure, you've gotta build, you know, what, how are you, what's the basic information?

But fortunately, you know, APIs and SDKs and, you know, everything else sa even SaaS is very inter interoperable. Mm-hmm. Um, and even in, uh, frontier models now you, you have a, a data exchange that's basically very recently, you know, formed, so. Mm-hmm. Um, so, so the answer is, you know, don't, don't build what you're doing around, you need to be very, very flexible within your architecture.

Right. Um, and, and definitely don't be hardware, um, you know, set on all the hardware. You gotta, it's changing. Mm-hmm. Too fast for that. Have you used any [01:12:00] AI tools in the development of skill making? Oh, yeah. If so, which, which ones do you No, it's integrally, I mean, everything, um, I, I use as a company, we, we use, uh, GPT Pro.

Mm-hmm. Um, and, and, and, and, uh, I think it's called team or whatever the tier is. That's where you can basically integrate the whole team in into that. But we also use Gemini. Um, we're, we're, uh, Napa themselves have a very big relationship with, um, with go Google Cloud. Mm-hmm. Um, so ultimately, you know, the great thing about Gemini is it's natively involved in everything that Google touches, right?

Mm-hmm. So, so we're using Gemini, we're using, um, all, all of open AI's tools. Um, but I'm also using Claude. So, um, yeah, the thing about each one of those. Models is the, the frontier models are starting to specialize in certain ways, right? So mm-hmm. Claude for various different coding is just, you know, phenomenal, right?

Yeah. They're just really, really strong. Yeah. [01:13:00] Commenting on Claude, I, I tell all the companies I work with now as to, to please adopt that, to start, you know, looking at using for code generation and things of that nature. So, um, it's exciting that you're using those, that type of deep. Technology to, yeah, I mean, like each one of the frontier, uh, companies have different things that they're really strong at.

Um, you know, anthropic, uh, is, is, is really a great company and Claude has done a tremendous amount, especially in the cogen space. Mm-hmm. Um, but they're not alone. I mean, every, everybody else, right. Uh, all the other frontier models are, are making great strides. In fact, I would almost say, you know, I mean, right now.

Very, very, very broadly speaking, um, OpenAI is doing a phenomenal job on the reasoning, uh, models. I think O three is like my best friend. Um, and I spent a lot of time there. But, you know, the, the details of Claude, you know, obviously when any anybody thinks about, uh, frontier models in [01:14:00] ai, they, they're gonna be worried about hallucinations.

Mm-hmm. And so, you know, we use what's called retrieval, augmented generation or rag. Um, so we always have a ground truth for our data. Um, and, and so there's a number of. Companies that are really good at, at backing Rag. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and so, you know, we've gotta do that. So, um, so for, for tool use or, or, um, coding, you know, Andros really strong, OpenAI is right up there, but then of course, because we're using the llama stack mm-hmm.

Um, for, or, or, or the Meta stack. Um, you know, LAMA four is fantastic for fine tuning and mm-hmm. Um, you know, uh, everything there. And then, you know, Gemini, uh, with what Google is doing and obviously with, with. With deep mind and, um, you know, it's, it's multimodal out of the box, which, you know, means that you're, you for what I'm doing, I'm, I'm using audio and video and [01:15:00] text and data feeds and, you know, everything like that.

So being modal, multimodal out of the boxes is really important. So, mm-hmm. You know, Gemini is, is got a big win there in, in that, in that way. So, um, you know, as far as frontier models are concerned, we're, we're testing in all directions and, and using in all directions. But the other thing that you cannot ignore is both a agentic thinking and agents themselves.

So a agentic thinking is just, you know, don't think of these frontier models as the. Do all and be all of everything. Obviously the easy way to think of it is, you know, when you're using, uh, chat GPT and it's connected to the internet mm-hmm. You're gonna get a different quality of results because it's using the tool of accessing the internet or, um, if you're doing deep research reports, um, where it's going in and getting a lot of detail on those deep research reports, again, I mean, all of them have them, but the, [01:16:00] uh.

Uh, GPT Pro is really extraordinary. Mm-hmm. That is the beginning of age agentic thinking, where you've got these large language models that have now been empowered by all kinds of other tools. So, you know, in the case of Rag Okay. Vectorized database that it can call on and memory, like memory is a, a huge thing now where it knows who you are and it can, you know, keep track of your memory and all of that.

So all of this tool thinking leads to agentic thinking, which ultimately leads to agents. Mm-hmm. And agents are these things that instead of just giving it a prompt, um, you can set up a whole series of things that that agent can go and do and then come back and, and, and, and bring things back to you. So, you know, this is the year of the agents for sure.

Um, so anyway, what I'm saying within the world of. Artificial intelligence, there's this entire stack of frontier models, agentic [01:17:00] thinking tool use, um, code, you know, coding tools and agents themselves mm-hmm. That are completely changing, um, the process of, of creating a, a startup company. Mm-hmm. I mean, I can do so much with a small team.

Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah. We use, I use, I personally use AI all, every, just about every moment of the day. Yeah. Um, and I, we're using, you know, all of the, all of the various different tools that are, it's, it's very hard actually mm-hmm. To stay on top of it because it is so dynamic and it changes. Right. You know, so much.

And then because we're at the intersection of AI and xr mm-hmm. That's a whole nother stack that is evolving, um, really, really quickly. Mm-hmm. So. It's, it's a lot. Yeah. There's a lot going on. Your comment that you said you're doing so much with so little. Yeah. Uh, reminds me of a recent [01:18:00] venture capitalist, I think it was Mark Anderson made it.

Yeah. Dreesen. Yeah. Yeah. He said, um, we're, we're about to see a one person unicorn. Yeah. Or, or, 'cause I think about, you know, just one person kind of orchestrating this whole startup mentality, building something with all this Yeah. You know, uh, AI and VR tools, you know, it is a phenomenal time to be an entrepreneur.

Um, is it, it, it is truly, truly, I mean, just from everything that you don't like to do, you have potentially hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of digital workers that can greatly speed up a process. So even in like contracts and, and legal agreements, you know, the way I work, I've got a fantastic attorney.

Um. But he now kind of polishes the work that I generate off of. I do the business stuff, I work with my ai, I get the legal document, [01:19:00] and then he makes the correction. Mm-hmm. So, you know, he does 20% of the work that he used to do. Mm-hmm. But it's actually more important because. You know, there's limitations on what the AI can do.

Right. But now he gets to spend more time on making that perfect. Mm-hmm. Um, and then you just take, that's just one position. You take that in every aspect of running a business. Mm-hmm. And you can see what the multiplier is like. Right. Have you, speaking of, of legal services in ai, have you heard of this app called Harvey?

Yeah. Yeah. Harvey's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, again, that's a lot of Sam Altman Harvey came out of open ai, out of the, uh, out of that world. And Harvey is a rag based, right, exactly. Rag, rag based company. Yeah. And it's, and it's extraordinary. And, and Neil Bocce, Bachi is my attorney. Neil and I have had a lot of discussions about, um, law, um, and it, you know, I mean, it's probably a good time, you know, going back to Skillmaker, [01:20:00] I, I had this.

Uh, really? 'cause we're raising a seed round right now. And, um, so I was in Silicon Valley both meeting with Meta and Google and a bunch of people like that, but also meeting with, with, um, investors, you know Yeah. With in, with investors. Mm-hmm. And the one investor, uh, that I had, he got all excited and he was like, oh, you know, this and on fast food, like, oh, you know, you've got this massive amount of people on fast food.

It's like, well, yeah, can I train people in fast food? Yeah. I can, can I reduce it from five days of training to a couple hours of training? Yeah. Is the value stack there like really worth it right now? Mm-hmm. Eventually, yes. But, but I think there's a many million other ways, or, or it, it's just, it doesn't have.

Like, when you're talking about technicians mm-hmm. People working in energy or people working in, you know, transportation overall or, or tele, uh, [01:21:00] uh, you know, uh, telecommunications. Mm-hmm. Infrastructure, like a lot of the co you know, the country as a whole, if you look at it mm-hmm. We're going through this massive.

Change of, of industrialization again, and, you know, the new, you know, all the infrastructure that we've gotta put on those jobs that are highly technical high, but, but you're also using your body and your hands to do that. Mm-hmm. I mean, when you're splicing fiber or, or if you're, you know, building a, a big data center, these are very technical, difficult jobs.

Right. And if you can reduce the amount of time that it takes from like two years to 25 days that we're doing mm-hmm. If you can do that, that has massive value. So fast food, maybe not so much, right? Mm-hmm. Um, but on the other side of it, you know, everybody asks about healthcare and the thing is that the human body is so many orders of magnitude more complicated mm-hmm.

Than a car. Right? Right. And so. To use a game [01:22:00] analogy, you know, the, the ultimate way was you play a side, side, a side crawler, right? Where you'd have this game move across and there's only a limited number of it's on the rails, right? Right. There's only a limited number of choices of what you do versus an open world game.

Mm-hmm. Where. You can do anything in that open world, and there's multiple ways to win and there's, you know, all kinds of win states. Mm-hmm. Healthcare is kind of like that. Like, yes, there are some jobs in a healthcare, which, you know, radi, radiology experts or whatever, there's only a certain limited number of things that you have to know mm-hmm.

That when you get to the order of like a, you know, an advanced nurse or a surgeon or a doctor, like, then, like really getting, there's so many different choices. So I think the application of XR and AI to healthcare is gonna be a, some of it will be relevant. Mm-hmm. But some of it will be slower. And I, and, you know, always with a startup, you have to narrow your focus and you need to concentrate on something.

And right now [01:23:00] I'm like, Mr. Napa, like, I'm literally wearing a NAPA shirt because my, my, my target is launch March, make something awesome for Napa, bring value to Napa. Mm-hmm. Which brings value to GPC. And then if GPC has value, then. I can bring value to transportation. Right. And then transportation. Well, there's a lot of electrification in transportation.

Mm-hmm. So it naturally goes over to energy. Mm-hmm. Which naturally goes into telecommunication. Mm-hmm. So those are kind of the three verticals, right. That I have this vision for. Mm-hmm. But if you ask me, what are you doing today, Rob? I'm like, I'm thinking about Napa. Napa, I'm Napa all the way. So I know recently you were in Vegas with this, uh, auto show with Napa.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How'd that go? And tell me how are things with Napa? Yeah. Actually the, the last four weeks have been, uh, incredible. Um, so Napa now, uh, 14,000 people. Um, we were, uh, part of the Auto Tech booth, which was kind of right in the center of the, uh, of the floor. Uh, I did [01:24:00] three masterclass workshops, um, with a guy named Jim Bilski, uh, who's the head of training for napa.

Mm-hmm. And basically, um, we did demos of all of our technology in VR and ar. Mm-hmm. So we had smart glasses going, we had all the. You know, all the things. Um, we put over a thousand people through demos, which was really incredible. Mm-hmm. Um, and each class that I did had a, like close to 3000 people mm-hmm.

In, in the master classes that I was doing. And then we started pre-sales. Mm-hmm. So, um, we had about 2000 shops that attended and we're closed over a hundred shops. That's great. Which is amazing. So, so these are pre-sales? Yeah, these are all pre-sales. So we've got over a hundred shops sold out. Okay. You know?

Yeah. Um, and then, so it was a huge success. The for, for Napa was a huge success. It's a hundred year old company. Right. So this was their celebration of a hundred years. Mm-hmm. And so a large part of the message was, you know, this is where we've been, but this is where we're going. [01:25:00] Mm-hmm. And so the, the, this is where we're going was our show, you know?

Okay. So that was our, our part of the message. Um, so, so Napa was great, but then. We went to a SC. So there is a gold standard if you are a, a technician, a repair technician. Right. If you have an a SC certification, not only do you get paid like 40% more, but um, just historically like retention of that technician.

Mm-hmm. Uh, quality of the output, like just by every standards, if you have an a SE certification. Mm. It's outstanding. Mm-hmm. Challenge is currently you have to have two years of on the job experience before you can get an A SE certification. Okay. Before you can even apply for the test, right? Mm-hmm. We have now done an exclusive partnership with a SE that if you use the NAPA accelerator.

Then we will reduce that. Now we haven't come up with the final thing, but right now we're [01:26:00] talking about two months of on the job experience. Mm-hmm. So two years of on the job experience to two months down to two months. Right. So again, reducing the amount of time and we've essentially worked with Napa and the a SC team mm-hmm.

To make sure that our curriculum, all the details of what we're doing, basically translate the real skills into the test skills. Mm-hmm. So that, you know, really prepares you for a SC testing in the, in the process of doing that. Right. So we went from Napa, now in Vegas to Atlanta where I was the first speaker up, and there were 90 other versions of Napa.

Mm-hmm. Toyota and you know, Nissan and Ford and like all of those companies. So I was presenting to them. Mm-hmm. Huge success. And it generated lots of conversations with all of those good people. Mm-hmm. Um, so then went to, uh, Santa Barbara. My daughter got married, so Oh, congratulations. Thank you very much.

Yeah. It was the most amazing, special, special day. It was, nothing prepared [01:27:00] me for how. Beautiful and joyful. It was, it was her best day for sure. But definitely, like my wife and I had such a good time. So beautiful wedding, and then I went to, um, to Palo Alto. Mm-hmm. And spent a week in Palo Alto meeting with some of these frontier labs.

Mm-hmm. Um, meeting with, uh, basically we're, we're raising a seed round now, so, um, you know, meeting with, with companies there. Um, but also like talking about. Where this is going, you know? Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, LA la Mcon was, was there, and you know, there's, there's so much stuff that is breaking right now.

Mm-hmm. Um, so I spent a good week there and then went to Salt Lake City, so had a bunch of meetings in Salt Lake City. So, uh, yeah, it's been quite a run, um, over the last number of weeks. So where are you on your fundraising? So we're, we're basically roughly, uh, a, we did a pre-seed round, which mm-hmm. We're not sure yet if we're gonna cap it at, at a million.

We're originally going for [01:28:00] 500,000 in the pre-seed. Mm-hmm. Uh, and that's really to cover us going into capture right now. Right. Um, but I think we're gonna raise the ceiling on that to two, we're not sure. Um, but we've got a lot of interest in the meanwhile, we're working on the seed, which will be three, 3 million.

Mm-hmm. Um, and so we've got a lot of interest on the seed. Um, so. We're, we're basically gotta make a decision this week on Okay. Who's in on the Prese? Mm-hmm. Close that off. Mm-hmm. Great. Go into production nine on the 19th we go. So what we've done so far is we've, we've made, there's 56 lessons. Mm-hmm.

We've written them all, we've done all the research for that. We've made one completely end-to-end. We've done all our demos. We've, I call it a vertical slice. It's the same thing that I did. Mm-hmm. At ea you make one thing that basically from a content and creative point of view, does everything. Mm-hmm.

And from a technical point of view, proves out everything that you've gotta do. Mm-hmm. Now, [01:29:00] once you've got that, it's almost like having a recipe. 'cause now I've got a scale. Mm-hmm. So I'm going, so all the learnings that I have, I can now apply to my capture schedule, which starts May 19th. Mm-hmm. We start our capture schedule again.

And so now between now and when we ship, we've done all the thinking, all the work, all the writing, all the technical stuff, all of that is done, done, done. Mm-hmm. But now we make it. But at the same time, we've got presales going. Mm-hmm. So we're constantly listening to our, our clients, and we have, you know, those hundred plus shops, we can say, Hey, here's a ta, here's a taste.

What do you think? Give us feedback. Mm-hmm. Here's a test. Put you in a headset. What do you think? Hey, let's install us into your shop. What do you think? Right. So that you're constantly adjusting the final product. Mm-hmm. Um, again, they do this with gaming all the time. You're, you're constantly testing, um, to make sure that you actually have the traction.

Mm-hmm. Um, so we're in that process right now. Right in the middle of it. Okay. Um, so gotta close off the [01:30:00] seed. Gotta close off thee. Close the seed and then, uh, yeah, just, just ship in in March. Yeah. Yeah. I may know a few investors that might, uh, be interested. I, I would love, I would love to, uh, yes, yes, yes.

And as they say, yeah. You and Cam have been great to work with. I awesome. I appreciate all the information, detail, data room due diligence. I like the fact that you're tough because here's the thing, if I as a CEO, as a founder of a company mm-hmm. Can't answer the, the hard questions mm-hmm. Then I, as the founder, I'm not gonna succeed.

Right. So, I know it's hard. I know. I mean, this is my third company. Mm-hmm. I know that first time founders get overwhelmed and it is overwhelming. It is, yeah. It's very difficult. Yeah. But it's kind of, if you think of a [01:31:00] blade, it's forged in, you know, it's forged in fire. Right. And so the forging in fire is the important part.

Right. The fact that you're tough. 'cause I'm hoping that you're gonna ask me a question that I haven't thought of yet. Right. Because it might be that question that saves the business. Mm-hmm. So if you have really quality and, and there's some people who they just don't, they don't care enough. Mm-hmm. To ask the hard questions.

Mm-hmm. Um, and you need to. Nobody is. This happens with a team. Mm-hmm. This happens with incredibly talented people. When I build my people, I hire them because I can't do that. Right. Because they can do that better than me. They're in that particular domain. They're smarter than me. Mm-hmm. And if you build that, and it's, it flows through to the investors too, right?

Mm-hmm. Like the people that we have on board in our team, they're way more experienced than [01:32:00] me in certain areas. They, they have a perspective that's, and then that, that's how you build smart, right? Mm-hmm. And I learned that from boy Witch 'cause I lived it. Mm-hmm. I saw the power of all those other people outside of the five of us.

Right. And, and so, and that goes through that. Also choose your customers. Mm-hmm. Like a lot of people just like, oh, I'll take whatever customer comes in. No. Like, that's a big mistake. Mm-hmm. Napa is such. An incredible group of people to work with, and I'm adding value to them. Mm-hmm. But they're adding value to me.

Oh, yeah. Right. And that, that human thing flows through all of this. Right. Yeah. Plus working with your father, I'm sure has made a tremendous impact. Yeah. Pops is cool. I mean, you know, I'm trying, I am, I seriously am trying to get him to retire. Like, but um, something tells me he probably won't, you know, then he is just in the blood.[01:33:00] 

There's a part of him that just, um, you know, he right from those gold miners, right? Mm-hmm. In the beginning. And he just loves, there's this kid on the electrical stuff. Mm-hmm. And he was 19 years old, and he came to me and said, Mr. Cowie, I am now the highest. Earning person in my family. And I'm 19.

And he goes, 15 days ago I was the lowest earning person in my family. Thank you for changing my family's life. Right. That's awesome. And I was like, oh my God. Like, okay, this is like, movies is fun. Gaming is fun. Changing lives. Changing lives. Mm-hmm. Having that kind of impact. Right. Yeah. And my, that's been my dad's thing, right.

For 50 years. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. So finally I'm like, okay, puffs, I get it. It's cool. I couldn't have, I [01:34:00] couldn't have gotten here if I hadn't gone down my path. Right. But now, like, I'm, I'm, it's really his legacy. It's really his mm-hmm. Foundational things that I'm getting to do. Mm-hmm. And, um. In my own way, you know, I am the boss, so I get to, I get to override his, uh, his things.

But yeah, it's a total joy. Yeah. Just having, being able to work with him and, um, yeah. We, we've always been close, but we're now like Right. Incredibly close. Yeah. Had a similar experience with my dad. Oh, really? Working with him. Oh, that's so cool. Early on. And then brought him into my businesses. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah. We should talk about that offline. I want to hear it, because there's also, there's the other side of that, which is you're working with your dad and then this is hard. Family business is really hard. Yes. Family. That's a whole, we could do a whole, you could do all family businesses. Pros and cons.

Exactly. By the way, huge part of the Napa, you know, store owners, right. Family, business. Yeah. You know, like, so this is [01:35:00] not Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So, I know you were in California and you just recently attended some conferences, and I, I'd love to get your take on. The future? Yeah. Vision and your opinion.

Yeah. Of, of AI and vr. And where, where do you see things over the next five to 10 years? So, so I highly recommend a book, um, about neuroscience. Mm-hmm. Um, called Rethinking Consciousness. Um, it's by a guy named, uh, Michael Graziano, I think, or Graziano. I think that's the, the way you say it. Everything has changed and everything is changing incredibly quickly.

And if you think of what a chat bot does, um, take hallucination out of the equation for a second because A, it's gotten way, way better. And then b, you use rag techniques or whatever. Mm-hmm. Let's put the hallucination part to the side, because obviously I fix cars, the car better work. [01:36:00] Mm-hmm. So if I don't have ground truth, you know, that's a problem.

But this idea of limitless answers to questions. That's, that's done. Mm-hmm. Like moving forward, we're gonna have all the knowledge we need at the tip of our tongue. Mm-hmm. Great. Now, recently you've got, um, you know, essentially thinking, right, if answering information is one thing, but now you go to a level of thinking mm-hmm.

Where you're using a tool to like, think about something in a way that's not your strength, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I'm not a lawyer, but with artificial thinking and in intelligence that way mm-hmm. I can process things way better and that goes across the whole stack. Mm-hmm. But. Information and cognition is not enough.

Um, at the core of all of this is, is huge amounts of compute, and that's [01:37:00] all the infrastructure stuff that we're dealing with. Mm-hmm. And huge amounts of processing. Mm-hmm. Which we're, we're, we're dealing with and huge amounts of data, right? Mm-hmm. The problem from going forward in the future is we've got so much information and so much, I mean, it's really, all of those things are going through a magnitude, uh, boost.

Mm-hmm. How do I, as a CEO, how do I possibly get my arms around that kind of data? Mm-hmm. And that kind of information, how do I interact with all of these microprocesses when everything, the fidelity of the information is increasing? Mm-hmm. The amount of it is increasing, like it's. It's overwhelming today, moving forward in the future, how do I, like, basically have this artificial consciousness mm-hmm.

Of the body. And so, um, I met with this and I've followed [01:38:00] them for a long time. There's a frontier company, uh, called Inflection. Mm-hmm. So Reid Hoffman is a, you know, major founder. Mm-hmm. He was one of the first investors in open ai. He was the founder for LinkedIn. Right. Um, he's on the board of Microsoft.

And along with Mustafa Suliman, they formed this company called Inflection. And when they started, they were really concentrating on emotional eq. Mm-hmm. Because so much, yes, you can give answers, but if I'm not. Contextually aware of the emotional intelligence around that. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, you can be way off.

Right? Right. So when I started, they have a thing called Pi, uh, which is, which is their, you know, chat bot that they launched in the beginning. And, and it was focused on emotional intelligence. And I was a big user for, it's almost like having a therapist, like whatever you need it, right? Mm-hmm. Or, or a coach, like a, a coach.

I was using Pi as a, as a business coach, as a founder coach. Mm-hmm. And Pi is great. It's still there, but one of the things, so that the new Mustafa [01:39:00] Soloman ended up going to Microsoft, he runs AI now for, for, um, I'm pretty sure Reid Hopin like, was like, dude, we need you over here in Microsoft. I'm sure he sure that, I mean, I don't know for a fact, but it seems like that, so he bought in this guy Sean White, who is just a, for me personally, he is a pioneer in xr.

Look him up. I. He's an incredibly intelligent person. Mm-hmm. Um, but also there's just like brave and like breaking down all kinds of barriers and all kinds of stuff. But anyway, one of the things that he told talked to me about that just completely blew my mind is they had this, um, this river that is incredibly important river that all of these industries and farms and all humans use along the river.

And they had, each one of the companies that was around these rivers had installed all kinds of sensors Into the water quality of the river. And each one of them [01:40:00] had detailed information that was purely centric to that business, whether it was farming and agriculture, or whether it was manufacturing or whatever, right?

And what the problem was that the river was dying. Everybody on that river was gonna be completely impacted by that. And so they had tried to save this river in so many ways, but all the information was so siloed. So they ended up applying artificial intelligence to this river ecosystem.

And there was just too much information. But instead of having that information, they started to talk to the river. And they started to have this emotional conversation and this information conversation where literally they gave the river a personality. And they could say, how you doing today?

What's the problem on like that river band or that thing? And they could have a human conversation with all of this data. So I think you're gonna be able to talk to your [01:41:00] car and go, how you doing today, buddy? Like, how's that left wheel going? You know, like there's going to be a different interface with our machines.

Mm-hmm. Where. It's not real. It is artificial, but that synthetic conversation, it means that machines meet us where we are as humans. And that whole idea of the evolution of natural language processing reaches this point where I. I don't have to worry about the minutiae because basically the machine has got that.

But what I'm doing now is that I'm emotionally and in a human sense relating to things that before didn't have. A human translator to talk to, right? Mm-hmm. And Sean has done work like this, not only on rivers, but he's done it with whales and like whale communication. Mm-hmm. And like us talking quote unquote to the whales.

Mm-hmm. And it sounds all like fruity and crazy, but when you think about it as a founder, I want to [01:42:00] be able to talk to my company. Mm-hmm. And if I can actually take all of this information and then turn it into like a consciousness mm-hmm. For the startup of my company mm-hmm. All of a sudden. I not only talk to the people, but I, I talk to my, all of the data points that I have this incredible richness of data and I can all of a sudden relate to it.

Mm-hmm. And, and, and emote because at the end of the day, as we move forward and whatever, more of these jobs get automated and robots are, you know, not only here, but increasing in their capabilities. Mm-hmm. Skillmakers focus or its mission, its vision is to be human first, human centric first. Mm-hmm. So how do we get ahead of this and not like, throw our hands up and go, oh my God, the robots are coming, they're gonna run, you know, everything.

No. Right. Like, embrace our tools, but we are still the humans in charge of our tools. Right. So as we move into this future, how do we get to our [01:43:00] tools to literally have a consciousness mm-hmm. And talk to us and we're not there. I mean, the, the, the problem I'm talking about is. Unbelievably complicated.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, there's a great part of the book where it says, well, in 19, uh, 18, I think, um, that, that Einstein said that there was no way possible that we would ever be able to get our head around, uh, essentially gravity waves. He said, I know gravity waves exist, but I, there's no way that no machine would ever be invented to prove that gravity waves exist.

Mm-hmm. And a hundred years later, almost to the day of when he said that a machine was made that could actually do that. So you have to understand, like, you have to be as a, as a. Founder. As an entrepreneur, you have to have one foot in the clouds. Mm-hmm. And one foot in the ground. And I understand that that's a terrible way to stretch.

That's a big [01:44:00] stretch. Mm-hmm. But where we are going is beautiful. Mm-hmm. As long as we keep the human first. In, in the, in lean into what we are good as mm-hmm. Is humans. Mm-hmm. And control the tools, so the bend, the will of the tools so that they serve us. Mm-hmm. Um, and then collectively, you know, there's so many problems.

There's just so many problems. Um, and so I'm, I'm very hopeful for my grandchildren and for my kids and for the future. I'm very optimistic about the synthesis of, um, you know, information and artificial intelligence and, and automation and where that's going from a human-centric point of view. Mm-hmm. But you need, in my opinion, companies like Skillmaker.

You need, in my opinion, companies like inflection. Mm-hmm. Who are putting the human first in all of the technology that they're doing. Yeah. That's, it. Sounds amazing. I know [01:45:00] you've had a phenomenal. Career and you're multi-dimensional. Like, you know, you've got the, the film industry, you've got the gaming, you've got the storytelling.

Yeah. Now you're into AI and virtual reality. I mean, you, you're, you're an amazing individual. Ah, appreciate that. What, um, you've been too kind. No, this, this conversation could go for hours. I'm gonna have to bring you back for part two, maybe three. I, I'm in, I'm in. I'm totally, there's, there's a lot of questions I wasn't able to answer.

I mean, look, we could have done a different podcast. I could tell you all my faults. I mean, I, I tell you what I will say, mistakes are the one of the most valuable thing that you can get. Oh. For learned so much more from your mistakes. Oh yeah, for sure. If there's one skill or mindset that you've learned in your career for entrepreneurs or, or people looking to start a business for founders, what would that be?

Learning. So I'm a big optimist, obviously. I'm a big kind of, I think of energy flow in everything that I do. I think of [01:46:00] information as energy and everything like that. The biggest thing that you can learn as an entrepreneur is that a barrier, a failure, a mistake, a setback. Mm-hmm. Uh, change is not negative energy.

Mm-hmm. It's positive energy. Mm-hmm. Because it just eliminated a place that you were going and said it's, it's an, it helps you because it goes, oh. You weren't meant to go that way. Mm-hmm. And whether you apply faith to that concept or, or whatever, however you get your mind around it. Mm-hmm. As an entrepreneur, your job is to move forward.

Mm-hmm. And the biggest skill that I have, like learned and the hard way is to not, um, you've gotta care. Like, I care deeply, deeply, deeply about the people I serve and the business I'm running. But when something goes wrong and it [01:47:00] goes, you know, in average day, you know, eight things will go wrong and two things will go right.

Mm-hmm. When th something goes wrong, channel that energy into the positive side. Mm-hmm. Channel that energy into a learning or a plus up, or a whatever it is. And never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever surrender like, um, at the same time. Be cognizant of don't be obstinate. Mm-hmm. Like, don't, do not have an ego.

The moment you think that, you know, you don't know. Mm-hmm. Right. The moment that you have this assurity in, like, oh, I'm, I'm right. No matter what. Mm-hmm. You failed, you've lost, um, you've got to, you know, the biggest thing, and unfortunately on a podcast, I do a lot of talking, but the biggest skill is listening.

Um, truly [01:48:00] listening. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, it's, it's turning negative things into positive energy. Mm-hmm. And what, what advice would you give to those entrepreneurs entering in today's economy with all the challenges that we're having? Do it, do it, do it, do it. Do it. Don't wait. Yeah. Be a maker. Mm-hmm. Be a builder.

Even like when I started. You know, I made that going back to high school. You know, I made that, that film, the drunk driving film, um, I, I made something, you know? Mm-hmm. My, my son followed me into filmmaking and like, my biggest advice to him was just like, all right, cool. What are you making? Mm-hmm. Like, what are you doing?

The tools are so cheap now, like, you can make incredible things so easily. Mm-hmm. Like, I do think we are headed into a renaissance of engineering and building and making and, you know, doing things. I mean, so excited about like, the future of manufacturing in this [01:49:00] country, the future of infrastructure in this country.

But like, you've gotta do it. Mm-hmm. You gotta make things. Right. So my biggest thing to, to entrepreneurs is like, get out there. If you're doing something that's routine, if you're doing the same thing, like, and if you're not happy mm-hmm. I get really mad. Uh, I get that. If you, that gets me really. You choose happiness.

Mm-hmm. You choose to construct your world. Mm-hmm. So don't complain. Do something different than what you're claimed. Again, take that negative energy mm-hmm. And bolster it. Like turn that negative energy into a plus. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. Now, I mean, I know you're super busy with Skillmaker and making sure NAPA Is, is delivered Yeah.

With, with all the technology. Are there any other customers in your pipeline that you're looking as far as traction? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've got a, a great organization called Fedcap that is, uh, related to workforce development. Mm-hmm. Um, we're talking to a lot of people. We've just had first [01:50:00] conversations with Ford and we've just had, uh, some conversations with, uh, Porsche.

Mm-hmm. The vw and, um, you know, uh, one of our current investors is very involved in energy and utilities, so we're having all of these concentrations, but I would be, I would make a mistake if I'm not like hyperfocused on, you know, launching Napa. Like that's so like the majority of my day, I'm just all Napa, I'm just thinking about Napa understand.

Um, but it's natural that, like, for example, I'm just moving some of my thoughts and some of my meetings. Into like, okay, how do we take what we're building for Napa, for example? Mm-hmm. The Department of Defense has lots of vehicles that need to be fixed. Oh, yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. So everything that I'm building right now for Napa, that will automatically fit mm-hmm.

The needs of the Department of Defense. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Same thing for like Ford, like there's a lot of, you can take the same thing that I've built, just flip it a [01:51:00] little bit and, and serve a lot of other people. Right. So that's, I'm kind of trying to naturally go, okay, well what I got is really, really valuable if I just turn it a little bit.

Mm-hmm. And turn it a little bit and turn it a little bit. So that's kind of where my thinking's going. Just as far as like go to market, growing the business, you know, grounded stuff, you know. Yeah. When you're. When you're ready to talk to some DOD folks, lemme know I'm going to d dc I'm going to DC next week, so we should talk about that now.

Yes, we should talk about that after this interview. Off, off interview off. Yeah, exactly. Off the air. Yeah. Yes. Well, thank you so much. I know this is running up on our time, but like I said, there's so many questions. Yeah. I could have, uh, gone down the road, but it's just, it's wonderful just to have an open dialogue with someone like you who's, uh, so creative and so talented in, in multi areas.

Oh man. Would love to. I'm, I'm sliding him the, the, uh, couple of hundred dollars on across the table, right. Yeah. Love, I'd love to bring you back. Yeah, [01:52:00] no, I'd love to. I'd love to be back. Um, you know, I get a question all the time about, uh, filmmaking. 'cause you know, what started for me was, was storytelling, right?

And, uh, storytelling is very, very important to my life. And we are gonna actually make a really cool NAPA film because the Napa story. Is the most American story you will ever see. Right? Yeah. Like it's, it's a, normally it's a dad and his sons and you know, kids, whatever, working in the shop and like mom's running the shop, she's the first person that people see and the last people that people see and she's counting the money, you know?

Right. That's a typical setup of an Napa shop. Right. And it's as American as anything. 'cause it's grounded and it's real and it's beautiful. Right. So I want to, I wanna make a film about their story. Mm-hmm. Um, and then, you know, I storytelling and filmmaking and game making and all that is always gonna be a part of what I do.

Mm-hmm. It's just, it's evolved now to this immersive [01:53:00] interactive thing where, uh, we take pain away from people and, and help people to improve. Yeah. So, um, yeah. Who knows what's gonna happen next. Yeah. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Take care. Amplified. CEO is produced by Topsail Insider, edited by Jim Mendes-Pouget, and sponsored by Cape Fear Ventures.

For more information about Amplified CEO, Richard Stroupe, or Cape Fear Ventures, please contact Christa at 910-800-0111 or christa@topsailinsider.com.