Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek inside from the reporters and editors
Speaker 2: who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business,
Speaker 2: finance and tech news as it happened. Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 2: with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: It is a Bloomberg Business Week, that is Carol.
Speaker 4: Masser, I am you are, Tim Steneveek.
Speaker 3: I think you don't know what man flu is.
Speaker 4: Don't even go there. I'm not even going to do it,
Speaker 4: all right, Listen. We spoke earlier with Accentures carollly close
Speaker 4: about how AI and other tech will affect the workforce.
Speaker 4: But I really think about robotics robots in particular, they're
Speaker 4: going to.
Speaker 3: Affect that because the big question is, you know, what
Speaker 3: about actual robots affecting the workforce?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: What if I were a robot doing this? Yeah? Just
Speaker 5: a disembodied voice. Well, rich Tech.
Speaker 3: Robotics lug you occasionally rich Tex Robotics as you wish.
Speaker 3: It's a publicly traded company that builds robots that clean,
Speaker 3: They make deliveries, They help with food and beverage preparation,
Speaker 3: and more. Clients include Hilton FedEx, Nike, and the Boston
Speaker 3: Red Sox. And we're also told, Carol, the robots are
Speaker 3: even friendly.
Speaker 4: I gotta tell you, Matt, we've been excited to get
Speaker 4: to you and talk to you. Matt Cassella is president
Speaker 4: of rich Tech Robotics. He joins us from Newport Beach, California. Matt,
Speaker 4: it is really nice to have you here with us.
Speaker 4: Tell us about your company, the type of robots that
Speaker 4: you're seeing, and how AI might be changing, the type
Speaker 4: of robots in the future that you're going to be
Speaker 4: involved in.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, thank you, Thank you very much for having me
Speaker 6: on today, Carol and Tim. First of all, I should
Speaker 6: probably say that robots do not get the man flu.
Speaker 7: All right, all right, enough nice among many others.
Speaker 6: No, we're really excited at rich Tech Robotics because we
Speaker 6: are a hospitality and service sector focused robotics in AI company.
Speaker 7: And what that really means.
Speaker 6: Is that our products, through a few different lines that
Speaker 6: we have, are the robots that really are going to
Speaker 6: be interacting with the general public. Right They're robots that
Speaker 6: people are going to see whether they walk into a
Speaker 6: coffee shop. Our barista robot Adam, which is a dual
Speaker 6: armed AI enabled robot.
Speaker 7: Could be serving them coffee.
Speaker 6: We have a variety of different on site delivery robots
Speaker 6: from our Matre D that would be available in restaurants,
Speaker 6: would be carrying the food from the kitchen to the
Speaker 6: dining room, or medbot which might be carrying pharmaceuticals from
Speaker 6: an on site pharmacy at a hospital up to the
Speaker 6: nursing stations throughout the facility, all the way through to
Speaker 6: our various cleaning products. So we're really excited about what's
Speaker 6: to come.
Speaker 4: We just saw the coffee serving robot. I am wondering.
Speaker 4: Rian Nichol is now at Starbucks. He was very good
Speaker 4: about automating some stuff over at Chippotlan's cardline company Autoco.
Speaker 5: Know.
Speaker 4: Are you guys talk I mean, I am wondering how
Speaker 4: because they talk about just the mobile ordering and it's
Speaker 4: just a lot of ordering and it's hard for the
Speaker 4: baristas to keep up with it. Is Are you guys
Speaker 4: talking with Starbucks about helping them out?
Speaker 7: You know, I can't.
Speaker 6: I can't talk about any specific conversations that we're having,
Speaker 6: but we are very excited about continuing to explore some
Speaker 6: some paths into the coffee world right through a couple
Speaker 6: of a couple of different ways. And what you touched
Speaker 6: on there I think.
Speaker 4: Is so Starbucks, Joe's coffee, Starbucks.
Speaker 7: Well, we'll find you, know what, Carol.
Speaker 6: I promise we'll find a coffee vendor near you so
Speaker 6: that we can put a robot as close to you
Speaker 6: as possible.
Speaker 3: I will say, Matt, they're building an office for Brian
Speaker 3: Nicol and Newport Beach, so he won't be far from
Speaker 3: you if you do need to talk to him anyway.
Speaker 4: Have you driven there lately?
Speaker 5: He's there right now?
Speaker 4: Have you emailed lately with him?
Speaker 5: Matt?
Speaker 3: Are consumers ready for this though? Are they ready to
Speaker 3: walk in somewhere and see a robot doing this? I mean,
Speaker 3: I think, Carol, you and I were out in l
Speaker 3: a year ago. I went to Newport No. I went
Speaker 3: to Santa Monica and they have these little delivery robots
Speaker 3: and I'm.
Speaker 5: Like, this is kind of nuts. Yeah, on the sidewalk.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I believe.
Speaker 6: I really believe the consumer. The consumer is and it's
Speaker 6: it's because people are seeing them more and more throughout
Speaker 6: their lives. As you just pointed to, it's it's now,
Speaker 6: it's it's more common than not that when I'm talking
Speaker 6: with somebody they're referencing a robot that they've seen out
Speaker 6: out in the world.
Speaker 7: Right, So I really believe people are working for it.
Speaker 6: I think I want to go back to what Carol
Speaker 6: touched on earlier, that the ways in which we interact
Speaker 6: with food specifically, and how we order food and get
Speaker 6: our food, whether it's beverages like coffee or or your
Speaker 6: happy meal at McDonald's, right, all of those things are
Speaker 6: happening in different ways. We're ordering from our phone, we're
Speaker 6: ordering from a screen, and so what what really only
Speaker 6: matters is that we get our food hot, we get
Speaker 6: our food consistent, the taste is delicious. Those are the
Speaker 6: characteristics really that people are focused on specifically when talking
Speaker 6: about food. So for me, I think it's really easy
Speaker 6: to understand that robotics and automation really can help with
Speaker 6: a lot of those things that are critical in the
Speaker 6: dining experience.
Speaker 3: Matt, let's talk to BIZ because we have an investing audience.
Speaker 3: Whenever we have company CEOs come on, people want to
Speaker 3: hear about what's going on with the stock price.
Speaker 5: We're Bloomberg.
Speaker 3: We'd be remiss if we didn't ask about what's going
Speaker 3: on with your stock price shares down more than eighty
Speaker 3: percent so far this year. What, in your view is
Speaker 3: the market missing what's going on?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's the enormous opportunity that we have
Speaker 6: in front of us. I think, you know what you've seen,
Speaker 6: this is not an uncommon occurrence. Right, stocks are subject
Speaker 6: to the whims of the public market. So what we
Speaker 6: need to continue to do is tell our story about
Speaker 6: how powerful this opportunity in front of us is. The
Speaker 6: customers that we're engaging, the client the partnerships that we're
Speaker 6: forming both with end users and with suppliers.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: So, as the big elephant in the room, right as Nvidia,
Speaker 6: we use a number of their products within our robots
Speaker 6: to help, you know, to help bring that AI to life, right,
Speaker 6: which which is which is a critical thing. Everybody's talking
Speaker 6: about AI and the power behind it, And I think
Speaker 6: that that comes in a couple of different ways, you know,
Speaker 6: for us, really it's how that AI will help the
Speaker 6: customer interaction, the food production, et cetera. But also comes
Speaker 6: on how we're able to train robots so much quicker
Speaker 6: for any type of environment and really be able to
Speaker 6: get them, you know, trained to operate in new and
Speaker 6: dynamic ways.
Speaker 4: So what moves the needle that you think gets investors
Speaker 4: more excited about the company because.
Speaker 7: You know how it works.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're you know, we've said this before with
Speaker 4: companies that are really small. I mean, we don't do
Speaker 4: a lot of venture conversations here too, of startups, but
Speaker 4: you know, it's a buck of share. It's not the
Speaker 4: typical conversation we have. So how do you get investors
Speaker 4: ex I mean, what's the potential here?
Speaker 7: You know, the potential is continuing to fill these pipelines
Speaker 7: that we're that we're actively you know, growing right, and
Speaker 7: and I think the the important thing to remember is
Speaker 7: that we're still really at the infancy.
Speaker 6: I touched on the idea that you know, people are
Speaker 6: starting to see robots out in the wild, but it's
Speaker 6: still we're still really really.
Speaker 7: Early in this game.
Speaker 6: And so for us, these are really really sticky sales.
Speaker 6: Right when we can start to build a relationship and
Speaker 6: build a partnership with our clients, Uh, they're going to
Speaker 6: become clients for a long time, right, It's not going
Speaker 6: to be a one time sick. We're really positioning ourselves.
Speaker 6: And I was listening a little bit to your early conversation,
Speaker 6: and you touched on recurring revenue, right, we are we
Speaker 6: are building our business to be a robot as a
Speaker 6: service business, right because that's why that's going to give
Speaker 6: our customers the confidence to partner with us that their
Speaker 6: robots will be will be there working for them well
Speaker 6: into the future, right, and that will continue to show
Speaker 6: us that smooth recurring revenue that investors will you know,
Speaker 6: all right, very a track.
Speaker 4: Well, look forward to checking in with you in the future. Macsella,
Speaker 4: he's president of rich Tech Robotics.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg, Okay, Carol.
Speaker 3: Since the twenty twenty two mid terms, about eight million
Speaker 3: members of gen z have joined the electorate. It's a
Speaker 3: demographic shift that's quote unprecedented. This is according to Henry Elkis,
Speaker 3: the founder and CEO of Helena. It's a nonprofit group.
Speaker 3: It recently helps support a study from the Stanford Deliberative
Speaker 3: Democracy Lab that our team at Bloomberg News wrote about.
Speaker 3: And by twenty twenty eight, this voting cohort is going
Speaker 3: to make up nearly twenty five percent of the electorate,
Speaker 3: meaning their voices on social and political issues could have
Speaker 3: a real impact on election outcomes.
Speaker 4: All right, so listen up. Gen Z is right there
Speaker 4: and soon they are going to be powerful to help
Speaker 4: us understand the shift. Let's bring in Aaron Llewellyn. She
Speaker 4: is the CEO of Tilting Futures. It's a nonprofit that
Speaker 4: sends students. This is really cool. I kind of wish
Speaker 4: I was a student doing this on a three to
Speaker 4: four month overseas trips during gap years or even during college.
Speaker 4: Joins us right now from Oakland, California. Aeron, Great to
Speaker 4: have you here on Bloomberg Business Week. Tell us little
Speaker 4: bit more about Tilting Futures, how it came to be,
Speaker 4: and what's the mission in terms of working with these
Speaker 4: students and sending them overseas.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm happy to thanks for having me so at
Speaker 1: Social Futures, our north star is really about equipping young
Speaker 1: people from all over the world with the skills they
Speaker 1: need to create meaningful social impact. And we've served thousands
Speaker 1: of young people from about one hundred different countries. And
Speaker 1: the way we do this is we believe in experiential education,
Speaker 1: and we select a group of young people ages seventeen
Speaker 1: to twenty one, bring them together either to South Africa
Speaker 1: or Malaysia, and they spend several months together, living together
Speaker 1: in a global community, learning from social impact leaders in
Speaker 1: one of our two current theme areas, which are not
Speaker 1: going to be surprising, climate and human rights, something gen
Speaker 1: Z cares very deeply about, and they do an apprenticeship
Speaker 1: with local leaders working in either of these two themes,
Speaker 1: really learning about how does social impact happen, what are
Speaker 1: my pathways for social impact? And then we wrap that
Speaker 1: entire experience with a curriculum that helps them kind of
Speaker 1: maximize the meaning out of the experience.
Speaker 3: Aaron, do you think the sample of students who go
Speaker 3: on these incredible trips, I mean, these sounds awesome, awesome
Speaker 3: do you think, but do you think they're representative of
Speaker 3: the wider population? Because my thought, my first thought is,
Speaker 3: you know, somebody who seeks this out, you know, might
Speaker 3: have a bias toward those qualities that you bring up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I will say
Speaker 1: that we launched this new program with these themes and
Speaker 1: this really rooted and experiential learning learning from leaders doing
Speaker 1: social impact about a year ago, and the demand has
Speaker 1: been something we've never seen before. So I think that's
Speaker 1: a little nugget of information in there. So we've had
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand young people apply in one year for this
Speaker 1: program and we just launched it. The organization's been around
Speaker 1: a while, but this is new and we've never had
Speaker 1: demand like that. And I think that speaks to seventeen thousand.
Speaker 1: I mean we served next year, we'll serve two hundred
Speaker 1: a year. We are doubling in size because we've got
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to get these kids off
Speaker 1: the wait list.
Speaker 3: So you're harder to get into than the hardest colleges
Speaker 3: and universities.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't that's not something we're trying to
Speaker 1: grow so that we can meet demand. We don't want
Speaker 1: to be elite and you know, sort of hard to
Speaker 1: get into because we want to tap this spirit that
Speaker 1: we see in gen Z.
Speaker 4: Can I ask you something, Why are you doing it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think we're doing it because I think there's
Speaker 1: a there's a gap in between skills. So there's a
Speaker 1: gap of skills as it relates to what the future
Speaker 1: of work is going to require and what is being
Speaker 1: taught right now in a classroom, and we can bridge
Speaker 1: that by bringing together communities that are very different than
Speaker 1: each other. They can be in dialogue with each other
Speaker 1: that when they don't agree for long enough to understand
Speaker 1: each other, they can do creative problem solving in ways
Speaker 1: that we don't typically see right now, a lot of
Speaker 1: times we're not seeing they think. We teach systems thinking,
Speaker 1: so they're understanding how systems work together or don't work
Speaker 1: well to then think about how to get to the
Speaker 1: root of some of our challenges and why not take
Speaker 1: this appetite that gen Z has and give them the
Speaker 1: foundational skills to them go be able to realize the
Speaker 1: solutions that we need.
Speaker 4: Before we pivot. I want to ask you, though, having
Speaker 4: said what you just said, well, then maybe we need
Speaker 4: to change education, whether it's high school, whether it's college,
Speaker 4: and maybe we need to rethink about I mean, you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying, Like, if we're creating graduates who
Speaker 4: spend all this money on an education, especially at the
Speaker 4: college level, and yet, as you say, there's things that
Speaker 4: are missing that are kind of real life experiences and
Speaker 4: kind of getting along, then maybe we've got a bigger problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say that there is a need
Speaker 1: for higher education. The academic components of higher education are
Speaker 1: necessary to create an educated society, but.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying pulling something of what you guys are doing.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's not just the year abroad to
Speaker 4: go to Paris and Equissants and learn you know, use
Speaker 4: which cool. But I'm just saying something that's a little
Speaker 4: bit more productive and giving you some real life skills.
Speaker 1: I completely agree, and that is where we're headed. We
Speaker 1: are working with colleges right now to try to figure
Speaker 1: out how do we embed something like this in the
Speaker 1: higher education pathway because study abroad is it's exactly what
Speaker 1: you said said, it's really a missed opportunity and there
Speaker 1: is a way to embed experience and community with people
Speaker 1: from very different cultures. That opens your perspective to what's
Speaker 1: possible that could be embedded in a higher education pathway
Speaker 1: and should be Aaron, do you.
Speaker 5: See this at a time.
Speaker 3: Like the backdrop of what's going on in the US
Speaker 3: right now and sort of a shifting view on America's
Speaker 3: role in the world is sort of move to isolationism
Speaker 3: that we're seeing from many members of Congress, this idea
Speaker 3: of the definition of America. How do you see that
Speaker 3: playing into what you're doing at the program?
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for asking that, because I think about that
Speaker 1: almost every single day, and that's not just happening in
Speaker 1: the US. That's happening actually globally in many different ways.
Speaker 1: And I think it's hard to have that viewpoint when
Speaker 1: you have had a form a of experience on the
Speaker 1: cusp of adulthood, before you've understood your identity, but while
Speaker 1: you're still forming it, and you've had an experience in
Speaker 1: a global community that made you understand that our challenges
Speaker 1: are similar, our approach to solutions will have similarities, they
Speaker 1: will have differences, our human needs are similar, and actually
Speaker 1: our problems our global in nature. Our biggest problems need
Speaker 1: to be solved at the scale of the globe. And
Speaker 1: so to go and focus fully inward, I don't think
Speaker 1: you can do that when you've had an experience that's
Speaker 1: exposed you to the connections of what we're all experiencing
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, it's a super super important point, especially as we
Speaker 4: are facing elections here in the United States, and I
Speaker 4: feel like over the last couple of years, we've seen
Speaker 4: this pushback on globalization or you know, populism if you will,
Speaker 4: you know, in nations around the globe. Having said that,
Speaker 4: I think there's sometimes that people think a younger generation
Speaker 4: or Gen Z ors. You know, they're checked out, they
Speaker 4: don't care, they're lazy, like there's there's some you know,
Speaker 4: but they can vote. So hah, how should we be
Speaker 4: I don't know, thinking about them and some of the
Speaker 4: stereotypes perhaps that are labeled on this group.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the nihilism checked out, I just I don't
Speaker 1: buy it, And the research doesn't prove this out. So
Speaker 1: mckenzy just published something that speaks to this, I think
Speaker 1: so well. And this is in the workplace, but I
Speaker 1: think it translates into voting and into their lives generally.
Speaker 1: But they're entering the workplace. Remember gen Z isn't yet thirty,
Speaker 1: so they're still very junior in the workplace right now.
Speaker 1: But what they're demanding are three things. This is what
Speaker 1: this study found. Purpose and accountability opportunities for people who
Speaker 1: are from underrepresented backgrounds and for people who come from
Speaker 1: diverse backgrounds, whatever that may be in the context. And
Speaker 1: then they want a rigorous commitment to sustainable business practices.
Speaker 1: And for me, the report said that gen Z is
Speaker 1: doing this more than any generation before it, and that's
Speaker 1: not checked out. That's actually the opposite of checked out.
Speaker 1: And it's really holding us to a higher standard. And
Speaker 1: I think that's going to apply to this election too.
Speaker 1: They have a higher standard and I appreciate it, and
Speaker 1: I hope I can live up to it.
Speaker 3: Andarin one thing that I wanted to ask about is
Speaker 3: the cost of these programs. Looking at the website, it
Speaker 3: looks like at least one of the programs is twenty
Speaker 3: one thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: Am I getting that right?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 1: That is the tuition price if you qualify to be
Speaker 1: a full pay student.
Speaker 3: And what portion you do have a couple different financial
Speaker 3: aid options. Tell us a little bit about that, and
Speaker 3: sort of like how you're able to get students I
Speaker 3: don't want to call them kids, but how you're able
Speaker 3: to get people who don't come from families that are
Speaker 3: incredibly wealthy and able to afford intuition.
Speaker 5: Such as this.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I'm very proud of this. But we are philanthropically
Speaker 1: funded by people who believe in this mission, and what
Speaker 1: they believe at their core is that this type of
Speaker 1: opportunity and learning experience is transformative, and our supporters and
Speaker 1: donors know that, and what they believe is that it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be reserved for the few, So about we have
Speaker 1: a mix, and we curate our classes and they are
Speaker 1: from the economic They really run the economic spectrum. So
Speaker 1: about seventy five percent of our young people are on
Speaker 1: some type of financial aid, about twenty percent of them
Speaker 1: are on a full scholarship, and about you know, and
Speaker 1: then there's then they really run the twenty one thousand
Speaker 1: all the way down to full scholarship. So that's something
Speaker 1: that we're proud of. And we have a mix. We
Speaker 1: need young people who can afford to pay for this
Speaker 1: to be going through these programs and having an experience
Speaker 1: that changes their mind and changes their perspective on the
Speaker 1: world and what they're capable of in the world, just
Speaker 1: like we need young people from a background where this
Speaker 1: would be unattainable without assistance, having the same transformational background,
Speaker 1: and that's a big piece of our mission.
Speaker 4: He certainly gave us a lot to think about. Aaron,
Speaker 4: thank you so much for stopping by. Aaron Lewellen. She's
Speaker 4: the CEO of Tilting Futures, joining us from Oakland, California.
Speaker 4: So interesting stuff.
Speaker 5: Really cool stuff.
Speaker 3: Programs like this, we're not really on my radar. Really.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I didn't do a gap year, did you definitely
Speaker 5: regret doing a year I did. Yeah, I did. I
Speaker 5: did a semester abroad.
Speaker 4: I think everybody should do back years. I think it's
Speaker 4: a good thing, like like, get out there.
Speaker 5: My brother did. They're very jealous, right, this is good