91. John M. Madura | From the Rowing Boat to Robotics: Physical AI, Engineering & Seizing Opportunity

In this episode of the Grand Slam Journey Podcast, host Klara Jagosova speaks with John Madura, mechanical engineer, 2x USA Rowing National Team Member, and robotics innovator at Dexterity. John's journey spans from being recruited into rowing over pizza in a college lunch line at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, to representing the United States at the World Championships in 2012 and 2015, earning a PhD at UC Berkeley, and now building physical AI and autonomous robots at the cutting edge of the industry.

From an unexpected lunch line recruitment to the USA National Team, John's path is proof that seizing unlikely opportunities — and refusing to let go of them — can lead to a life you never could have planned.

The conversation explores: 

• How John discovered rowing by accident and made it to the USA National Team
• The parallels between elite rowing and long-cycle hardware engineering
• Building physical AI and autonomous robots at Dexterity
• Why hardware is the unsung hero of the AI revolution
• Teamwork, ego, and the 2016 Olympics sculling miss
• How to spot opportunities and seize them before they disappear

Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-m-madura-0651a82b/

Connect with Klara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/klarajagosova 

Key themes: robotics, physical AI, mechanical engineering, elite rowing, USA Rowing, Dexterity, performance mindset, career transitions, STEM, discipline, opportunity, resilience.

This content is also available in a video version on YouTube.

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Transcript

Pizza Recruit To Team USA

Speaker 1 0:00

Rowing, it was never in the cards for me. I went to a division three school, like all engineering division three school. And I was in a lunch line one day, and the coach's name was uh Larry Noble at WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. And he came up to me in the lunch line and said, Hey, you're pretty tall and strong, unlike the rest of these kind of engineer kids that are kind of short and strippy. You should come down the boathouse because there's gonna be pizza tomorrow. And I said, Well, that's cool. I'm new to college and I don't have any friends. And I was excited just to have some friends as I need to do. So I went down to the boathouse and I was just putting a novice crew in and started rowing with them. And it's a Division III school, so it wasn't very serious. Like we practice once a day, which for rowing is nothing. Like rowing's a high dedication sport. So that's how it all started. It was just um kind of a random occurrence. And how I even got a chance to row at a higher level is just by chance. I graduated first of my class, bachelor's and masters from the API, and I had a job at the time at Siemens. I wasn't really excited about the job, but it was a job. And I ended up kind of getting pushed out of the job after I graduated. And I thought, well, I saw all these people rowing, and I wanted to know what I could actually do because I excelled at my industry school. I wanted to see if I actually had it to go to the higher levels. So I ended up getting off in USA rowing that summer to still at least at the quad camp. We're just going. I never sculled seriously. I just kind of did respond up to that point. And I ended up going, and it turns out I was pretty good at sculling. And I made the under 23 worlds that summer. And we didn't do very well at worlds, but from my perspective, I was just amazed he even had a chance to go to that.

Klara Jagosova 1:46

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast, where we explore the intersections of sports, business, technology, and leadership. My today's guest is John Madura, Mechnical Engineer, two times USA rowing national team member and robotics innovator at Dexterity. John's journey spans from being recruited into rowing over pizza in a college lunchline at WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, to representing United States at the World Championship in 2012 and 2015, earning a PhD at UC Berkeley, and now building physical AI and autonomous robots at the cutting edge of the industry. In this conversation we explore John's unlikely path from a bullied kid in New Jersey to an elite athlete, the discipline and pain tolerance that defines elite rowing, how engineering and sports reinforce each other, the future of physical AI and robotics, and how to recognize and seize opportunities before they pass you by. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing with someone who you believe may enjoy it too. This is your host, Klara Jagosova. Thank you for tuning in and enjoy the listen. Hello John, welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast. Happy Wednesday. Really excited to dive into this conversation with you. We have met through a join community, The Post, which is a community of former athletes built by sports, headed by Christian Ponder, who was also a guest on my podcast. And uh I have been connecting with a few people, found you actually. I thought you had a really interesting background in rowing, which is a sport I was know nothing about. So I'm curious to learn more. And now are in quite deep technology working around robotics. So maybe we'll dive a little bit about how AI and robotics are shaping the future and obviously your journey from rowing to the deep technical expertise. But uh before we kick off and get on this podcast journey, anything you want to share before we dive in? John, introduce yourself to the listeners.

John M. Madura 4:07

My name is John. I'm from New Jersey. Never thought I had the opportunity to do things I've done, and I got really lucky a few times and took advantage of some opportunities that were in front of me. And I think I've had a pretty cool life and nothing that I would have expected that this would have happened.

Bullied Kid To Confident Athlete

Klara Jagosova 4:22

Yeah, I love that. We chatted a few times before this, and I conquer. So I'm curious to dive in and have listeners hear that for themselves. So, what was your upbringing like, and what led you to finding rowing?

How Rowing Works And Why It Hurts

Speaker 1 4:36

I'm just a typical American guy. Like my dad had done a few different businesses in his life, eventually became a high school teacher when I was probably five or six. And my mom was a nurse for her entire career. She actually just retired this year, though she still works part-time. And I did kind of typical things like marching bands. I played baseball and you know, just general school things. And my family was really close. So I was really lucky that almost all my entire family lived within New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York. So we all live really close together. So I saw my family all the time when I was a kid. I think the only thing unusual about my childhood was, and it's not that unusual, I was just bullied kind of badly in uh grammar school and middle school and into high school. That was really the only thing unusual about it. And very typical things, like I wore glasses and I was nerdy and I didn't communicate well with other people, like most kind of science-minded people do. And I was overweight when I was younger, which I grew out of, think, thankfully. But kind of easy targets for people to make fun of you when you were a kid.

Klara Jagosova 5:39

You did a few different things. How did you find rowing specifically? Or is there somebody particular who influenced you in trying it out?

Speaker 1 5:48

Yeah, rowing was never it was never in the cards for me. I went to a division three school, like all engineering division three school. And I was in a lunch line one day, and the coach's name was uh Larry Noble at WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. And he came up to me in the lunch line and said, Hey, you look like you're pretty tall and strong, unlike the rest of these kind of engineer kids that are kind of short and strimpy. You should come down to the boathouse because there's gonna be pizza tomorrow. And I said, Well, that's cool. I'm new to college and I don't have any friends. And I was excited just to have some friends as something to do. Like I want to be part of a team and have something to do with my time because I knew if I didn't, I'd probably just I don't know. I don't know what I would do, probably just go fishing too much. So I went down to the boathouse and I was just putting a novice crew in and started rowing with them. And it's a Division III school, so it wasn't very serious. Like we practice once a day, which for rowing is nothing. Rowing is a high dedication sport. So that's how it all started. It was just a kind of random occurrence.

Klara Jagosova 6:54

Actually, curious, there's two different types of rowing. I've only done the concept to rower in CrossFit, which I think is challenging enough. Actually, my back doesn't handle rowing anymore, so my rower just sits in the garage and is collecting dust. But it it's always interesting to me the synchronization you have to have when you're rowing. And I've seen a few movies, actually, can remember the name, but there's some really good movie that sounded almost similar and bringing like you, somebody who just started rowing and pretty much made it all the way to the world championship. I will see if I can remember the name of the movie. But curious how that is trained and what type of rowing did you do? Was it two or four people?

Speaker 1 7:41

That's probably Boys in the Boat, probably the movie you're talking about, which is now famous. So in college, almost everybody in the two kind of styles of rowing, ones with one oar and ones with two oars. So everybody in the United States, or pretty much everybody, especially if they're in college, learns with one oar. And that's called sweep rowing. And typically you row in eights and fours, so it's either eight people or four people in a boat in college. I did that through college, and like I was pretty good at it. Like I had all the school records at my school by the time I was done. And like I was a standout at my college, which is just a D3 school. But then what I got really good at was sculling, which is two wars. And in sculling, there were three bow classes. There's a single, the double, and the quad. And I got the best at the quad. In the highlight of my career, I was really good at rowing a quad. And my body type lends itself really well to sculling. I have a pretty short torso, long legs, um, really strong upper body, which were all more geared towards sculling than they are sweep rowing. And so I kind of recognized from when I was younger that I was never going to make it in sweep rowing. And how I even got a chance to row at a higher level is just by chance. I graduated first of my class, bachelor's and master's from WPI, and I had a job at the time at Siemens. I wasn't really excited about the job, but it was a job. And I ended up kind of getting pushed out of the job after I graduated. And I thought, well, I saw all these people rowing, and I wanted to know what I could actually do because I excelled at my Division III school. I wanted to see if I actually had it to go to the higher levels. So I ended up getting a call from USA Rowing that summer to fill a seat at a quad camp, which is sculling. I never skullled seriously. I just kind of did it for fun up to that point. And I ended up going, and turns out I was pretty good at sculling. And I made the under 23 worlds that summer. And we didn't do very well at worlds, but you know, from my perspective, I was just amazed to even have a chance to go to that. So that's kind of what started me rowing at a higher level, and how I found I was kind of better at sculling. And after that experience, I recognized that I was a lot better at sculling or would be better at sculling than I would be at sweep rowing.

Klara Jagosova 9:57

So what are the differences? So I'm actually curious. For somebody like me, I again, other than the concept to rowers, you described a little bit the body shape. I guess there's different, probably body structure that allows you to be better in one versus the other. But I'm guessing there is quite a bit of strategy when you have obviously more people and just following that rhythm. That's always been something quite interesting to me. How do you train dad or become great at it?

Speaker 1 10:24

Rowing is a really simple sport. You can learn almost all of rowing in one week. You can learn 90% of rowing in one week. You can find out if we're gonna if you're gonna make it or not make it in about a month. You're gonna know. It's not a very hard sport. You need to have the physical ability, the mental ability, and the determination to go do it. So to be good at rowing, you need to be large. It's a power-dominated sport. So you need to be strong, long legs help, long arms help. And then you need to have the correct genetics to be good at that type of anaerobic and aerobic endurance sport. It's six minutes of pain. So you have to be able to sit through six minutes of absolute pain once you'd be good at it. And then as you progress, you'll find out where you fit in. So generally, younger people with more fast reach muscles are better at the larger boats because they go faster. You're able to move quicker through the water in the larger boats. And the smaller boats take a little bit more experience and skill and it's a little slower. So generally speaking, older athletes excel in the smaller boats, like the pair, the double, the single. And the single, if you want to do well in the single, you have to be like a physical anomaly. If you're not, you're not just not going to make it. Where in the quad and the eight and a double, it's a lot of team stuff. So if you can fit well on a team and you have the right traits, you can do well in a team sport boat.

Klara Jagosova 11:49

Going back a little bit, even to your beginning and the journey, you pretty much got recruited by a person that thought, oh, this guy may be strong and might be able to potentially push through pain. Let's see if we can start him on the roller. How did you then even have the audacity to stick with it and continue to push through the pain? It seems like you got pretty good quite quickly. You mentioned again the ability to be able to push through the pain. I'm guessing in through some of the conversations we had, that's a skill that you may have had or had acquired. Share a little bit more about that and how um that helped you pretty much all the way to the championship.

Speaker 1 12:31

Yeah, well, I was just luck, to be honest. I happened to be laid off. Like if I if I had a job that summer, I wouldn't have gone to that camp and I would have been done rowing. Or had I gone to a D1 school, there's no way I would have ever got to where I was. I went to a D3 school where I was one of the best or the best on the team. So I could kind of make my own schedule. I could do my engineering, which was more important to me, and still row. And I've kind of unknowingly, I was in the best environment for me to get good at rowing and still pursue engineering, which was really what I wanted to do with my life. And then things just happened to fall into place. And I remember there was a point in my career where I had started a PhD at WPI, I mean, on the grad institution, and I wasn't happy with it. I'm not really sure why I wasn't happy. You know, as I got older, I think they made me just things that didn't really matter why I wasn't happy. But I remember leaving and going to a rowing center in Connecticut, and it's called GMS, GMN Systems Rowing Center. And I was living in the office trailer on the site, and I thought to myself, well, this is kind of like a a fork in the road. Like you don't have an engineering job, you're not at a rowing, like a big rowing camp, like a US rowing camp, you're just training. So you gotta figure out what you're doing for life. So I remember applying to Berkeley, MIT, and Stanford, and I said, if I get into one of these PhD programs, which is like there's no way I'm gonna get into one, but I'm gonna try anyway. If I get into one, I'll keep rowing and get a PhD. Because that's the only way I could think of to be able to row at a high level and still be an engineer without giving up engineering, which would have been very stupid of me to do, because I was obviously good at engineering. And lo and behold, I got into Berkeley. Had I not gotten to Berkeley, I'd be done then too. So it just kind of worked out that way. I almost didn't have a spot at the rowing camp. I remember showing up a few times and I was a nobody um at California Rowing Club in in Oakland, which was one of the US training centers. I remember showing up a few times and I was a nobody there, and just through some determination and thinking there's no way I'm going to let these people beat me, like I'll never get a shot again. Like I'm just a guy from New Jersey and now I'm training with all these great people. And I think recognizing the opportunity I had, and I would never have this again, kind of pushed me to do as good as I could do in the sport.

Klara Jagosova 14:56

I want to dive also a little bit into the engineering because you mentioned you were really good at it early on. I find it's unusual to have those two strong drives that seem to be different, but maybe also complementary. So I'm kind of wondering that engineering, how did you uncover that is what you wanted to do early on? And was there actually a path where the rowing helped you solve some of the engineering problem or like a different part of your brain and skill set to help you continue going with things on the engineering side?

Speaker 1 15:36

So I think a lot of this experience is I didn't have any other good options, is kind of where I wound up. And it just so happens that the things I was good at and I liked doing were also really smart things to do. So when I was younger, I was obviously good at building things. Like Legos, projects in the backyard. My dad was a construction worker or had a small construction business when I was young. So I kind of wanted to do the kind of building thing when I was young. That's what I was exposed to. And then as I got to progress through school, I got better and better at school and better and better at mathematics and physics. And it turns out I was pretty good at physics. And I think a lot of that why I got so good at it was, you know, perhaps the natural aptitude, but also I didn't have many friends. I had nothing else to do with my time. And I wasn't really a computer scientist, so I didn't really spend a lot of time at computer coding. It's just not what I enjoyed doing. I like building physical things. So I got really good at school and engineering young, and then I had to like up in the competition, and so I just kept going with it. And when I got to WPI, it became more obvious that I was good at engineering and specifically mechanical engineering. But I also think that like I had a trip to my shoulder at that point. Like I wanted to prove that I was worth something. Like I kind of had the ambition and reason to go do so well at school.

Klara Jagosova 17:00

I see I guess the through line, the drive and being able to commit the time and hours needed. And that seemed to be actually the same path, whether it's engineering and building things and making things work, or whether it's rowing, which seems to be, again, the way you describe it, just brute force and being able to suffer through pain to go as fast and push your seems like VO2 Max all the way to handle as much pain as you can within the time of the race.

Speaker 1 17:33

Yeah. And if you talk to high-level rowers, we're kind of all similar in that respect. Like if you want to be good at rowing, you gotta be able to deal with the pain. You can't get around it. And also, maybe not surprisingly, a lot of rowers are also pretty intelligent. And I think, well, two things. I think that because a lot of rowers come from high prestige schools, you get a lot of smart people. Like you have to be pretty smart to get into Harvard or Yale or Brown, Cal, UW. So you get a high concentration of smart people in the sport. I I also think that having some intelligence and you need to have a lot of discipline, determination. You need to be good at doing repetitive tasks well consistently. And these are all traits that are also common in successful people. So you kind of get a high concentration of people who will achieve future success in rowing as well.

Technique Plateaus And Team Sync

Klara Jagosova 18:22

As you mentioned, you can learn to be a good rower in one month. I actually find rowing to be quite difficult. I had only learned rowing in CrossFit. So I had people show me a little bit the technique and how you pull and kind of the rhythm, which is, I'm sure, nothing comparing to the real rower on the water. I find there's probably much more just balancing. I feel like if I tried that, I would probably flip over right away. Going back into the technique and just to break it down, you share a little bit about the mental aspect, but on the physical side, what else goes into it?

Speaker 1 19:00

It's a really simple sport. The objective is to go from point A to point B faster than everyone else. That's it. Very easy. In principle, anyway. And then to do that, there are two things you need to do. When your oar is in the water, you need to pull as hard as you can to make the boat go as fast as it can. And when your oar is not in the water, you need to not slow the boat down. That's really all the sport is. And if you're in a teamboat, you need to do that together so that the masses are moving at the same time in the same place in the boat. And then there's only a few ways to do that. So if you try a few things early on, you'll figure out what motions move a boat fast and what don't. And in history, it took us a while to figure out what the optimal rowing stroke is, which is kind of you drive the legs first, then you swing the back, and then the arms are last. You go through the strongest to least strong muscle groups, and you're kind of trying to put the maximum force on the oar through the stroke to propel the boat without what they call ripping water. So that's moving the oar through the water without moving the boat forward. So you can kind of figure that out one by watching someone else do it, and then by feeling the oar in your hands and the pressure on the footboard, which are your feet go. And if you're kind of looking for it and focused on the right thing, you're gonna figure out pretty quick. If you're focused on things that don't matter, like getting a good workout in as opposed to moving the boat forward or looking good for the coach instead of moving the boat forward, you're not gonna go very fast. So having the right goal in mind is gonna help you go move the boat quickly and and towards the finish line faster.

Klara Jagosova 20:40

But actually what you had described seems like maybe the mechanical engineer or physics and mathematics and being able to understand how just a smidgen of a different form either helps you go faster or slower, is probably quite important. And being able to observe what is slowing you down or what's speeding you up, and probably like a small different angle in your seating or positioning probably makes it sometimes big difference whether you win or lose.

Speaker 1 21:13

Yeah, that's what I said. You can learn 90% in a month. The 10% is gonna take you years. So that's why people generally stop rowing. Um, is because you learn, you get a huge uh advancement in the sport really quickly, and then it's a giant plateau, both technique-wise and uh physically wise. So you have to train your body for unless you're already trained for that type of sport, it's gonna take you four years before you're anywhere even close to being ready to uh go row well by the time you transform your body into that person you need to be. And then learning all those little tiny things, you're constantly making these minute changes uh in your technique uh so that you can move the boat faster. And then every time you bring a crew together. You all need to come together and move the same way. And everybody's body is a little bit different. Like I have a really short torso, so I had to move my body in kind of strange ways to match other people. And I would have to change how I moved with different people to make the boat go fast. And I think one of my strengths I had when I rode, because I'm not I'm not a physical outlier rowing, like I'm average to somewhat smaller in height. I was pretty fast on the running machine, but not crazy fast. I was maybe top half, but not like the best on the running machine. I think what gave me a shot at doing well was that I was solely focused. I was going to do whatever I could do to help the people in the boat move the boat as fast as possible. And it takes these little tiny small movements of your body and changes to get that to happen. And I was solely focused on every stroke being as efficient as possible. Every stroke is a new opportunity to make the boat go fast. If you mess up the stroke before, that's fine. You get another shot, next stroke. Every second's a new second.

Klara Jagosova 23:04

That's interesting. Just the speed of repetition. I actually love that. I mean, that's also true probably in any sport, even in tennis, every point is a new point and having that mindset. I guess the difference here is also being in tune and observing other people on the boat and just moving synchronously and to a point that takes uh a while. How do you create the best team? Because again, you made it all the way to the US 2012 uh World Championship. You also competed in 2015 in the senior world championship. So, what is that process and preparation? I'm guessing you have to have that team training. How much do you all train together to get that synchronization in?

Speaker 1 23:49

Yeah. Well, I should say I didn't make the Olympics. So obviously I didn't get the ultimate goal. It's like any team. A lot of it is trusting your teammates. If you don't have that trust, you're not gonna make it. Especially in a rowing boat. Like if you don't move together and one person wants to be the ego one and be right all the time, the boat's not gonna go anywhere. You're gonna go slow. So you gotta be willing to work together to move the boat. And you have to understand everybody's personalities. From little things like this person needs to do the stretch in the morning or they're gonna be all kinds of messed up. Or, hey, this person had a fight with the girlfriend last week. That's a problem. That's gonna mess the boat up. And those little things matter when you get to be at the top level. Stability. Because the rowing is such a repetitive sport, stability matters. Anything that's gonna screw anything up is gonna be unplanned and you is harder to deal with. Um, there's enough things that are harder to deal with. Like that little wake in the water that, you know, if you just look at it, you're not in a rowing boat, it's like, oh, there's a little ripple. You hit that with your oar and you've got a problem. So there's plenty of unplanned things to worry about. So keeping the team, you know, in the right mindset and moving together correctly is pretty key to winning a rowing race.

Klara Jagosova 25:01

How did you all learn to communicate then? Is there like a checkpoint before you get to the boat, or do you all get to know each other so well so you can kind of tell who needs more or less communication or how to support each other?

Speaker 1 25:15

Yeah, you just get to you spend a lot of time with your boatmates. So like you row a lot. You row millions of meters a year, maybe two, three, four million meters a year in uh to get ready to row. That's a lot of time. You're gonna spend at least two hours a day together, if not more, probably four. If you get older in a sport, you actually spend less time together because you have other things in your life going on. So you'll have other things to do. You do kind of urgent workouts on your own and gym workouts on your own, but you definitely row together a lot. So you're getting to know your teammates is mostly done by just spending a lot of time together. And then like you're gonna have just blind trust. You can't really be thinking this person is gonna screw me over every day. When you get in the boat, your ego's gone. You see us a lot of younger athletes. So Liganton and they want to beat everyone in the in their own boat, and they want to show that they're the best. And it's like you miss the opportunity to do that if that was your goal. Your opportunity to do that is in the winter time when you're always on the running machine. When you get in the boat, you're no longer trying to beat everyone in your boat. You are trying to beat the other boat. That is the goal. So you all need to work together to beat the other boat.

Rowing Parallels To Engineering Work

Klara Jagosova 26:26

Yeah, and centering that mindset just around that. Um, I love that kind of selflessness. It seems like you all just in it together and trying to figure out how to play the strategy and be most effective and efficient. Moving on to your quite technical engineering, mechanical engineering roles that you have had for quite a while. How do you see those skills translate to your profession now and being good at what you do, which you're building with a team? AI-driven robots now, actually, that's what's kind of the world is heading towards. I've been recently watching even the Elon Musk Shareholder conference where he released his Optimus Robot, stating that robots will take over the world. So I'm curious, maybe we can dive later on into that area of what you see. But from skill set perspective, how do you see those rowing skills complemented your mechanical engineering and leadership in that area?

Speaker 1 27:24

There's a few things that cross over. There's a few things that I wish cross over and don't. Things that do cross over in engineering, especially hardware engineering, things don't happen immediately. It takes time. If you want to develop, let's just pick a car because everybody knows what a car is. Cars have a four-year development cycle. So four years minimum, most of the time longer than four years. Four years minimum for someone in an executive boardroom to say, hey, I want a car for this class of people to actually have me a car you can go buy. And that car you can go buy, if it's a first of that model, it's not gonna be that great. There's gonna be something's wrong with it, and it's gonna take even more time to make it really good. So you you need to stick with that for a long time and deal with all the ups and downs. So I think a lot of the rowing kind of translates to that, because it's not like let's pick another sport, baseball. There's I forgot how many games there are a year in baseball, but it's a lot of games. And in rowing, there's not that. There's one race a year to World Championships. You might not even go to the World Championships, you might only go to the Olympics. So you have four years of almost no real joy, just misery, and then you get one shot at six minutes to actually prove that all the work you did over four years, those millions and millions of meters of road, actually meant anything. And that's a lot of what engineering is. So you toil away on your cab machine and with your prototypes and your development builds to release your product to the world, say, here it is. And no one sees any of that work you did. They just care for that one little time. You show the product off.

Klara Jagosova 29:07

I love that uh analogy. I guess if we can dive a little bit into the robotics to you and AI, and I guess the physical AI that's been a theme that even Jensen, founder and CEO of Nvidia, has been talking about. I'm just looking at your website. Dexterity is physical AI-powered industrial superhumanoids for large enterprises. The way I understand it from your website, uh, feel free to correct me, it kind of helps with pelletizing or robots for imagining UPS or Fed extracts, loading and loading boxes, et cetera. How do you describe for listeners, anybody who's thinking about mechanical engineering and kind of the future where it's heading, what would be your guidance uh from your perspective?

Speaker 1 29:56

Okay, so let's break us down to a few things. So we got the what I do at my day job and what they're doing. And I should mention I'm just an engineer there, I'm not a company officer. So the amount of things I'm gonna be able to say is pretty limited. And then we have where I see physical AI going, the future or robotics, and then we have if I was uh giving a STEM talk, what I would tell young engineers to do. Which one do you want to tackle first?

Klara Jagosova 30:18

Thank you for breaking it down. I love it. Take whichever you want, whichever order, John.

What Young Engineers Should Learn

Speaker 1 30:22

All right, let's take the young engineer first, because I actually like doing STEM talks a lot. When you get to college, let's just say you identify you want to be an engineer. I'm lucky in that I knew what kind of engineer I wanted to be fairly early, and I was right about it. I could have been wrong, I would have had to switch careers or switch engineering fields. Well, let's say you've correctly identified you're an engineer, or you think you have. So you get to your first real core class in your discipline. Let's for any mechanical engineering is stress and statics. If you don't like stress and statics, you're not going to be a mechanical engineer. Go find a different engineering field. You're in the wrong one. And it's fine to say that. Like totally fine. And maybe it's a little too simplistic. There are other kinds of branches of mechanical engineering you can get into. But the principle is if you don't like your like first core classes, go find one you do like. If you don't like engineering process solving, you're not an engineer. That's okay. There's plenty of other things to do in life. You don't have to be an engineer. Go find something you like doing. If you don't like it, you're not going to succeed in your effort you're doing. And if you're of the mindset, I want to be in business, well, that's great. You need to find what you're in the business of. Are you in the business of healthcare, in the business of engineering? So you need some core skills to actually get good at business, whatever business you're in. So liking what is a key core of your profession is important. Then, specifically for mechanical engineers, kind of the time of pure mechanical engineering, like I'm going to make gears or whatever, is kind of over. Mechanical engineering is a really broad field. So be really open to learning or at least understanding other types of engineering if you want to succeed. You need to learn some coding. Whether you like it or not, sorry, you gotta learn how to code. Um, you need to learn some electrical engineering, especially wire harness routing, because you're gonna be doing that, whether you like it or not. And no one likes wire harness routing, by the way, but you still have to do it. You gotta learn materials. Mechanical engineers need to be the broadest of all engineers. You're kind of the system integrators putting everything together into the physical product you make. That would be the advice I give to young engineers and mechanical engineers specifically.

Klara Jagosova 32:38

And then uh moving from there into even just some of the prediction, or if you can share a little bit about dexterity and what do you do?

Speaker 1 32:46

Dexterity, we have a small engineering team, but we're a fairly experienced engineering team. It's been fun to work with a lot of smart people as a startup too. So you need to be fairly quick and good what you do in agile. So it's a fun environment to work in. It's very fun to be in an environment. And it was fun in rowing too. If you're with everybody having a mission, this is a thing I wish was more in corporate America. In rowing, there's a singular mission. Everyone's aligned to the mission. If you're not, you fail because you lost the mission. In corporate America, it's easier to get through without being aligned on a singular mission and still succeed. Or you succeed, but not as well as you could have. So I wish there was more of that mindset in corporate America. But going back to dexterity, with a small team that I have there, it's been a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed working with a lot of people. They're ensuring focus. There's less kind of like just trying to move the corporate ladder, which you typically get in startups, you get less people just trying to climb ladders. So I spent a good time there with dexterity. And I work on mostly mechanical things, but I also do a little bit of electrical work. And like I said, you need to be good at all engineering at this point. You can't just be a good at one thing. Well, I shouldn't say that. You all know if you're the type of person who wants to be good at one thing. And if you are, your best path is going to be going all the way to get a PhD and being the world's expert on anything. But those people are pretty rare. And if you're one of those people, you'll find out pretty, you'll know you're one of those people.

Klara Jagosova 34:22

I guess people do know naturally whether they like the broader view or they like to focus on a specific expertise. I mean, for you, it seems the way you tell the story, it seems almost too simple. Like you knew rowing, you were good at it, you knew engineering and mechanical engineering, so you sort of went that path and you put all your focus and hard work into those categories to become as good as you can be in those fields. But was there a specific moment if you reflect that you were pondering whether this is the right path or not? Or how do you really recognize that where you're putting your time and effort is the right path or right thing?

Speaker 1 35:04

Yeah, it's a good Mark Cuban quote. Nobody quits anything they're good at. That's true. If you find you're good at something and you have a competitive advantage, you're not going to stop unless there's some other reason, like it's detrimental to your health or whatever. But I was good at it and I liked it enough that I kept doing it. And I think that's the people who get good at one thing, I think that's a lot of what they find is that they are gifted in a very specific thing and they really like it. And their personality is that I want to be the best at this thing. And Dallas show up, you know, in their mid-20s, they'll find out that that's them pretty quickly. I'm not one of those people, I have tons of things that I like more than other things. And some of those things I don't get to do a lot. Like I love material science. I don't get to do material science very often, but it's one thing that I love to do. I have a pretty strong depth in that field of engineering. And like also, just because you like something doesn't mean you should do it all the time. Because if you're not having any success in it in the world, then it's probably not what you should be doing. Or you should find something else to do for your career, and maybe that's just a hobby for you.

Klara Jagosova 36:06

Another Mark Cuban quote, actually, that I remember him saying is follow the effort, not your passion. Because they always say he loves basketball, but even if he put all of his time into basketball, he would never be best at it, from his view. So what is it that you're willing to put your effort in every day on a repetitive day over and over? And that ultimately will help you be great. Because yeah, in life there's a lot of repetition, and we often gotta get up and do the things over and over, even if we don't feel like it, which I think is a synonym or what I'm hearing from your journey that's the same, whether it's a rowing or mechanical engineering, you put a lot of time and effort to build something that ultimately hopefully becomes a success.

Speaker 1 36:54

Like everybody believes that everybody gets the same opportunities. That's not true. You don't. I'm sorry. If you get an opportunity that's better and you can win at it, take it. I remember being one of the like, I was so unhappy. I didn't know I was so unhappy because I know I ain't different, but I was pretty unhappy in my childhood because I didn't have a whole lot of friends. I felt like I was bullied a lot. I went from that to being one of the more popular kids in college in a day, which is a very strange experience. And that was because I I saw an opportunity and seized it. Right? I just got lucky. And that might happen to you. And if you get the opportunity, take it. You know, there's kind of the thought that you can do anything out there is a little far-fetched. You you can't. Not everybody gets the same opportunities.

Physical AI Robots And Safety

Klara Jagosova 37:37

Seizing the opportunities, seizing the moments. Speaking about opportunities and where things are heading now, I'm curious since you're working now with autonomous robots or creating autonomous robots. Where do you see the world heading if you think AI or even the physical AI that's now been talked about a lot? How does that connect to your mechanical engineering skill set and actually helping robots be autonomous and perform their own actions?

Speaker 1 38:07

It's kind of a cool time. Or it's not kind of, it is a cool time. So we kind of had this step change, or maybe we people don't believe something until they actually see it. So, okay, here is something which is AI, and look, it's real, it does things. We can make it do some stuff. And then once people see this, their imagination goes off and they say, Oh, we can do all these other things because now I saw this one thing. So we're at this time where that's happening. So everybody's getting really excited, and there's kind of a lot of expectations. Some of them are unrealistic, some more realistic. We'll find out as the future unfolds what we can actually do, what we can't do, and then what timeline. Obviously, now the spotlight is on the AI software stuff. And all the other engineers, the spotlight's not on us, but we're exceptionally key to making this all happen in the real world. If you don't have good hardware, you can't bring all this stuff to reality. It's just in a computer code. So the other engineers play a really important role in making this stuff happen for the future. Without us, you wouldn't have anything. You just you just have ideas and imaginations, which aren't real products. Real products are things you can hold and touch. Well, real physical products are things you can hold and touch. They aren't renders on a machine or anything.

Klara Jagosova 39:22

What I'm hearing you, I don't know if this is accurate, feel free to correct me. It's that the interoperability and the connection between all the different parts of the stack, whether it's a hardware, software, obviously AI, is perhaps becoming even more important now than before to work in parallel and synonym to make the machine do whatever the AI and the physical AI enables you to do. Is that accurate?

Speaker 1 39:52

That's right. We just talked generic, not related to anything I've ever made. But you know, let's say you have a widget and it's doing something and it's controlled with some software. If the mechanical engineers design their or the physical engineers designed the products before the software knows what they're gonna do, you may not have the sensors on it that you need to get the job done. And then you're gonna have to add them later. And if software tells the hardware engineers, just make it fine, we'll fix it in code, that never goes well. So you should you need good hardware if you want to make a real product. Like let's just say you had a home robot, and in this home it gets to be 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but you select hardware that only goes to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Well, guess what? Then you're not gonna be able to run your robot when it's over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and then your customer's gonna be unhappy. So you need to have physical hardware that's gonna be able to meet your requirements for your software team and vice versa. If you don't talk together, you're not gonna operate as a team together. And then everybody's just gonna be mad at each other and you're not gonna do very well.

Klara Jagosova 40:55

Now that you mentioned robots and home robots, I'm curious about your own perspective. I'm personally a big fan of robots. I've been following three different companies. One is in your backyard. Obviously, there's a lot of companies in your backyard and SFA area. One X Technologies. I found them actually listening to the Nvidia AI podcast, and they recently released you can put $200 deposit and then order your own robot, which costs either $20,000 all in, or I think they have 400 or so subscription, and you have to train it on what you want to do. And I've been so pondering, do I order one or do I ship one for my mom? Obviously, it's super expensive, so there's gonna be very limited amount, I'm guessing, of people who will order the first version and also how useful it will actually be and how much you can train it. But curious, since you're working around the robotics, would you order one if it was affordable yourself? And do you think also the risk of the AGI robots taking over the world? That's another thing that when I talk to people that are quite heavy in the field often bring up is one of the first things they have top of mind. How do you look at those things?

Should You Buy a Robot?

Speaker 1 42:08

Yeah, so there's two concepts. Uh, we'll briefly touch on robotics. So I won't get into anything specific because I'm in the industry, but just generally, they're cool. They're really cool. If you have the right expectations and what they can do, like they're not gonna change your life right away, but they're fun and cool. So if you want a really cool toy to have, and they're gonna be toys for you for a little bit, like we have to train them in all things. I don't know how long that's gonna last. I can't tell you that. But they're cool. Go buy one if you want it. Just don't expect it to change your life right away. Unless changing your life is smiling, and then you might smile a whole lot. So please go get one. And that goes for anything. Like if it's new technology, new technology, it's always exciting, it's always fun. If you have realistic expectations for new technology, it's great to have in your life. It helps the entire world move forward. As a society, we we're humans are unique and we use tools to live. Like we're one of the only creatures out there who uses tools. Without all these tools, we would not have the society we have today. So unless we all kind of move forward in direction and together put up with the ups and downs of it, we don't advance as a society. So that's that. And then the second one was taking people's jobs away. I think software is going through this right now where everyone's worried about them losing their jobs and coding. Like to me as a mechanical engineer, I saw this coming because we already had this twice. You know, we had CNC machines come out that put thousands of machines out of work. Or they had to adapt new skills. They had to learn how to program machines. And if you didn't, you were out of a job. If you weren't willing to adapt and accept the direction the world was going, by the way, that's not just like going with the flow and not saying anything. Like if you see a problem with something, like if you see the industry moving in direction as creating unsafe technology that's going to hurt people, you need to say something. And there used to be some conversations to move it in the correct direction so that things are. Safe and they do what you want to do. But if you don't adapt, they're going to be left behind. So we had two instances of this happening. One was CNC machines and manufacturing. The next was computer assistive drafting. That put a lot of drafters out of a job unless they're willing to learn how to use AutoCAD. So we already had these two giant leaps in mechanical engineering, and we're seeing one of these happen in software right now. So unless people are going to be able to adapt to this, it's also the opportunity to get better. You're reducing the amount of mundane, non-value adding tasks to focus on more value-adding tasks. So focus less on doing the mundane things and more on the exciting things that are like new frontiers. That's where you want to be. That isn't to say you shouldn't do anything mundane because you need to do both if you want to do well. You can't just do the fun things. Life is mostly unfun.

Klara Jagosova 44:52

I agree. Actually, that's often I get a comment from clans or friends I talk to about AI or the resistance of AI. I actually think we tend to lean towards even just adopting and testing these AI tools to use them on things that we actually hate to do. That creates more time for actually the things that you enjoy doing. So if we just all hone in on that. When I think of robots and having robots, the first thing that comes to mind, I hate cleaning shower. That's the one thing. I'll clean other parts of the house, but if I only had a robot that would clean the shower every day or every other day, I think that sounds uh pretty fun. And yeah, the mundane things. I was watching, I share the Elon Musk shareholder meeting this morning, so it's fresh top of mind, but I was checking his Tesla Optimus, the first two sentences he has here. It's general purpose, bipedal, autonomous humanoid robot capable of performing unsafe, repetitive, and boring tasks. So actually, exactly what we humans don't want to be doing or is too risky to do, or the things that we don't enjoy.

Speaker 1 46:00

Yeah, you hit it here and everything. That's that's what technology does. Technology allows you to live a better life. The reason is you do technology, if you're not in it for those things, you're I don't know what you're doing.

Will Robots Take Over the World?

Klara Jagosova 46:10

Question about uh artificial general intelligence that is quite often tied to robotics, or people often think, well, I'm gonna have a robot in my house. Is it gonna take over or do things that is not programmed to do and start thinking on its own? And am I gonna be in danger? How do you assess that world, John, or that risk?

Speaker 1 46:31

I mean, there's always risks, and we put up with them. Like before the automobile was invented, no one got into 100-mile-hour crashes. Now we do. The world moves on, you can't live in a bubble. That's my general thought of it. But it also takes people having conversations and discussing on safe ways to do things. It's very fine to create new risk in life. Go for it. We do it all the time. But you better understand the risk you're creating and you better make it so that everybody can accept that risk. And you know, just because one person accepts a risk doesn't mean another person is going to accept the risk. If person A accepts a risk, and they are by accepting their risks, they're increasing the risk of person B. Like that is a potential issue there. And that's where most of the problems we have in society lie is one group accepting more risk than the other group. Because generally, people's main concerns are personal safety. So if somebody's choices affect their personal safety, they get mad.

Klara Jagosova 47:27

Actually, there is a good example we have been seeing this is with the autonomous self-driving cars. I personally have Tesla on a software 12. So I'm waiting. I actually bought the car earlier, so it's not in the top self-driving 14. I know some of my friends have the version 14 software that seems to be doing fantastic. But that's another thing that I feel like I always get angry at the car when there's that one split of a second you want to check your phone, and that's when the car should drive itself, because that is where my focus is limited. And Ela and Ashley literally talked about it. Everybody just wants to drive a car and check their phones. That seems to be the super use case for it, which I conquer with. But yeah, that's when the car should be paying 100% attention. Instead, they reverse engineered the software because other people took advantage of it. And so I cannot now be on autopilot and check my phone, which is actually the natural thing that it should be able to do when I'm less focused.

Speaker 1 48:27

Like this is the same category people don't use directionals on the highway, which infuriates me. It's like directionals are not for you, they're for everyone else around you. You're putting people else at danger. But please use your directionals. Same thing goes for less new technology. Like, be responsible. You can spoil it for everyone else if you mess it up.

Klara Jagosova 48:44

Yeah. On the autumnist cars, because you live at the intersection of new technology. Curious, do you have a regular car or do you have one of those smart self-driving cars?

Speaker 1 48:55

No, I have the opposite of a Tesla. I have a 2003 gas-burning pickup truck that gets like 12 months of the gal. That's what I like. I have that and I have a motorcycle. Yeah, I think having a fancy, cool, smart car would be nice, I guess, like my truck. I'm also not a very showy person. Like I don't care what I drive, or I don't care what anybody thinks about me.

Klara Jagosova 49:16

I guess the mechanical engineering goes with more of the real trucks, perhaps, like creating things that last quite a bit. But I was wondering which way are you leaning given your field and what do you do?

Speaker 1 49:26

I was a very technical leader at a Lush Vehicle Company once. Like I was in charge of battery stuff, but I love engines because I'm a mechanical engineer. It's a hobby thing. I like I like engines.

Klara Jagosova 49:37

Yeah, makes sense. So given where the world is heading, obviously a lot of robotics, AI, physical AI, the omniverse thing that Jensen always talks about. And reflecting on your journey, how would you help younger people guide which way to go now? There's a lot of questions that seem to pop up, like what do kids study? The job markets may be changing. I mean, you are still in an interesting spot in profession. How do you distill what might be ahead and uh what to focus on?

Speaker 1 50:11

Yeah, there's a Warren Buffett quote that's like he would give up one year of his life to know what's what happened in the next 10 years. We're an amazing society. We're going to generate all these new cool things. So be excited about it. And then you need to position yourself in a way that's going to let you do that. And it might take some time because like not everybody gets the same opportunities, like I said. But find something that you like to do and are good at and has an economic benefit to it. If you have a passion for medicine, go into medicine and also be really excited about new tech because it's going to come whether you like it or not. So get with the program and use new technology.

Klara Jagosova 50:45

Yeah. Obviously, I'm a fan. I think technology is awesome because it allows us to solve some of the hardest challenges. I agree. Any predictions for where the world is heading? Like if you think of what's ahead, what would you want to inspire people to be doing more for less self?

Speaker 1 51:01

I've learned not to predict things. I'm generally bad at it. Like I can say more teamwork, man. So I made the Olympics, and this is a long story, but no sculling boats from the United States in 2016 made the Olympics. And looking back on it, it was all egos from different groups and people. Because everybody wanted their own team to win. And it was detrimental to the success of the United States in sculling in the 2016 Olympics. So I think from that experience, I'd say, you know, line on a goal and then work together to achieve the goal and define the competition correctly. If you have misidentified competition, you're going to have just infighting and you're not going to beat the competition, you're going to lose.

Klara Jagosova 51:46

How do you correctly observe the competition though in the game? It seems like there is a deeper learning, like understanding what's going on around you and how to play tactically correctly.

Speaker 1 52:00

That's where the real fun stuff is, right? It's like what strategy your team is going to use to beat the competition. That's the stuff that gets people really excited. You know, what tech you're going to align on, what IP you're going to file, where you're going to do business, who you're going to hire. That's the exciting things. That's everybody's secret sauce, and that's where you succeed and not succeed. All these little decisions you make end up helping you succeed or not succeed. And in rowing, your Olympic dreams can be over in a second from one mistake. In business, you get more time. It's usually not like that. So you get to make some mistakes and still win. Like in rowing, if you mess up one of those 220 strokes, you're done at the games. Like that's just it. I'm sure there has been a boat that had a major mess up during the games and still won. But I can't think any off the top of my head.

Klara Jagosova 52:43

Yeah, because you're also competing against the best of the best. And so one mistake within that short amount of time really counts. Perfection is rewarded in those races.

Speaker 1 52:56

Yeah, and in business, you know, if we get to be in a field that's been really well defined and out there for a while, that's what it is. When you have two players going head to head, and there's only two of them, they're the best of the best. And there's real money to be had, which is success. Like life is a competition. You better be on your own game.

Klara Jagosova 53:14

Yeah, that's true. Anything else before we close out, John? Anything that's top of mind, rowing, mechanical engineering, AI robotics, technology insights. What do you want to share with the world?

Speaker 1 53:26

I think like just broadly speaking, one thing I like to put out is I mentioned at the beginning, is the single biggest thing I like people to take away from my short life so far that I think has been cool, but you may not. You can have your own opinion on my life. I never thought that I'd have the opportunity to get a PhD from UC Berkeley and be on the USA rowing team. They were never in the cars for me. The future is it's as bright as you want it to be. So just make sure you're looking out for opportunities as they come. And if you get one take it, you might not get another shot. And smile. Life's good.

Klara Jagosova 53:59

I love it. Thank you for that. And with your permission, I'll add your LinkedIn profile to the episode notes if anybody wants to reach out or connect so they can easily click and find you. Or is there any other best way to follow you and connect?

Speaker 1 54:13

I'm pretty anti-social media. I only have LinkedIn. Actually, I think I have profiles, but I don't use them on the other sites. So LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me and I'll do the best I can to get back to people with their questions.

Klara Jagosova 54:27

Excellent. Thank you. And uh yeah, I appreciate your time. Hope to be in touch. Maybe we'll meet in the Bay Area or in Austin if you have. If you enjoyed this episode, I want to ask you to please do two things that would help me greatly. One, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcasting platform that you use to listen to this episode. Two, please share this podcast with a friend who you believe might enjoy it as well. It is a great way to remind someone you care about them by sharing a conversation they might be interested in. Thank you for listening.