Skyline Robotics' CEO Michael Brown: Successful Business Model Execution

Innovative technologies present great opportunities. Michael Brown, CEO of Skyline Robotics, shares how AI automation technology was developed to tackle skyscraper window cleaning. Our discussion weaves through the complexity of the technology, the market analysis that identified potential clients’ pain points, the importance of understanding the industry’s existing labor structure, and more. 

As a seasoned growth strategist and having led two previous companies with revenue over $400M, sold to publicly traded companies, listeners hear firsthand how a business leader navigates past challenges, hits milestones, and brings together the talent to succeed.  

Transcript

Jeanne Gray: I'm Jean Gray, publisher of American Entrepreneurship Today and host of the podcast series, Experienced Voices, where I talk with highly accomplished people who share the critical elements that led to their success. Innovative technologies present great opportunities. Our guest today on Experienced Voices is Michael Brown, CEO of Skyland Robotics, an AI automation skyscraper cleaning startup. Michael is a veteran growth strategist, having led two previous companies with revenue over 400 million, both sold to publicly traded companies.

Michael brings to our discussion the perspective of a seasoned business leader, skilled at assessing markets, Navigating the bumpy startup road and driving technology companies forward to sustainable growth. Welcome to Experience Voices, Michael. Thanks for being a guest. 

Michael Brown: Thanks for having me. 

Jeanne Gray: This will be a great opportunity for me to learn more about robotics. And I think you've got a phenomenal story to tell. So share a little bit about skyline robotics. 

Michael Brown: Sure. I had been in distribution service businesses most of my career.

And when I sold my last business I really started to look into automation. And robotics specifically in the assisted living space in Japan. And then I happened to be driving down the West side highway in New York city and looked up at Hudson yards and said, I can't believe humans are still cleaning windows by hand.

So I went out and did a global search. For technology, I thought could work. But cause obviously there was no adoption cause I didn't see it anywhere. And I honed in on a company called skyline robotics which was based out of Tel Aviv, Israel, and I was able to convince. The board and the founders that were originally there that, you know, I could come in, bring a new team bring in fresh capital and bring in a different business model.

Jeanne Gray: So let's speak a little bit about the role of executive leadership in startups and early stage companies. Cause I understand you have a track record being in this area before Skyline Robotics. So share a little bit about how leadership is important in an early stage company or technology company when it's being founded specifically by the.

Technologists, not necessarily individuals who have prior entrepreneurial experience. 

Michael Brown: Sure. So you know, I've done I was in acquisition roll ups. I have done greenfield operations startups, I don't know, you know, startups when I think of startups it's kind of like a skyline for that. I brought in a partner who actually was in startups.

He's. Been my partner since we joined Ross. He's the COO and president and the leadership difference when you've kind of been there, done that is you're not afraid to surround yourself with much smarter people and subject matter experts. In a specific area. So I wasn't looking. I'm never looking over my shoulder that some I'm worried that someone's gonna try to, you know, oust me.

I'm looking to put the best team I can put together and try to make it work. And I'm there to provide. Experience, I'm there to provide a way to figure out how to get something done when they don't think it can get done. And from a resource standpoint, obviously, you know, if I've been in business for 35 plus years, I have a lot of contacts in different call it areas of expertise.

Jeanne Gray: So speak a little bit about. Your actual personal history that sort of put you on the path of, of hanging out with entrepreneurs and, and taking on these early stage challenges. 

Michael Brown: Sure, sure. So my father was. Originally in he had started a distribution service businesses in office supplies. As a child I was very engaged in his business.

He used to go to work at four o'clock in the morning. He would come home at six, seven o'clock at night. And our relationship. Was really talking about business. And he really gave me that bug. My father's father, actually, when I think about it, he was an entrepreneur. He was actually his company actually created the bubble wrap that was eventually sold to a plastic company called sealed air.  

It's just been embedded into I would say how I grew up around entrepreneurs. interesting. There are academics, there are professionals like lawyers and whatnot. For some odd reason, my circle was always gravitated towards operational, independent people that were. Running a business or trying to build a business and they were entrepreneurs no matter what area so and I love to talk business.

I mean I couldn't talk about college sports. I couldn't talk about, you know, nba basketball or major league baseball But you want to talk to me about what's going on in in different businesses. I love it 

Jeanne Gray: So do you think you have a different perspective on risk having hung out with your, your father and being, would you say he was a mentor?

Michael Brown: Yeah, there's no question. My father was a mentor and you know, risk, my father was a very risky he built his businesses. Doing it through highly leveraged capital structures. I, you know, they can be good and they can be very stressful. But I just, from my standpoint. It, when I'm in business, every, every day's a risk and what I'm just trying to do is to take the least amount of risk possible to get to what I would call the end result.

When you get into something like what we're doing, where the, there are 150 companies that have tried to do what we've done. Prior, no one has really had any success. I try not to focus on that. I try to focus on what I believe can work, what didn't work. It is kind of obvious. So for us, when we came into this business, we kind of knew.

What the best way to approach called the ecosystem of the industry. 

Jeanne Gray: So there's a term where they call de risking the startup or de risking the venture. So would you say with your problem solving and the fact that you drive, it's very milestone driven, that you're basically executing that, that term that you're taking as much risk out of the business to get it to the next stage and make it an investor attractive.

Michael Brown: We, well, so yes, because we're very focused on the industry and the marketplace that we're servicing. So we're taking in input from the people or the, that are the stakeholders, whether they be the developers or the service providers or their construction companies, and we're not coming in and saying, Hey, here's our technology and this is the way you're gonna do business.

We have said, Hey, this is what we kind of built. Tell us what you think we're missing. Tell us what you think will be more of an added value for you so that I can become important into your ecosystem of business. 

Jeanne Gray: And you're, you're basically taking in a very adaptive approach. 

Michael Brown: A hundred collaborative adaptive.

non friction. And to the best of our ability, we are trying to be a supporter from what I would call cradle to grave, whether it be the employee that is currently a window cleaner. All the way to a tenant that is within the building that's being cleaned. 

Jeanne Gray: So let's step back a little bit and describe for the listener your technology, because I think everyone, I wouldn't say everyone, but most people know about people who on skyscrapers and there's the movie scene where they always are winching their way down and there's some guy, you know, washing the window.

That's pretty easy to envision. So how does one envision? Something that's automated that what do you add and what do you take away? 

Michael Brown: So funny. Most of us that have been in, you know, buildings have gotten stunned by all of a sudden seeing someone on the outside of a window cleaning and what they, and how they get there usually is through these cranes with cradles.

What's different about our technology is that our approach to the market is We are utilizing the current infrastructure. For the service industry on how it's built. So it's all regulated. So what we've done is we've taken our robotic arms. And when you think about a robotic arm, you know, it's got a, it looks exactly like an actual arm.

It's got, you know, six joints so forth. And people have seen these arms in car manufacturers. It's not, this isn't, you know, like a humanoid looking thing. And it's very basic. I mean, we're. When I say basic, it's, it's a very basic motion and it's very basic for someone to look at. Oh, you put the robots in, oh, it goes from side to side and cleans the window.

Makes sense. Now, all the technology behind it that allows for that to happen at, you know, hundreds of feet in the air. Is not exactly easy. A lot of the technology that went into this product did not exist years ago. So when you think about autonomous cars, we're using the same type of mapping so that we can see the building.

The difference, though, for us is we're trying to map you know, a translucent window. So what we've had to do is we've had to create technology that we can pinpoint on , called the borders of the window so that we can, what I would call, clean between the lines. So. We have technology that makes sure that we don't go through the window.

We have technology that make, whether it be a force torque sensor or we have ultrasonic sensors that bounce sound waves off of the building as redundancy to make sure that there is a safe operation. And we're utilizing, you know, what people now are referring to AI agents. We have an AI agent that is recalculating our robots path 250 times a second by doing predictive, you know, analysis, taking into account wind temperature you know height, because we have many different, we've a distributed robotic system.

So it's not just the robotic arms. We also have a whole entire system that's built off of how you run water from called 300 meters in the air all the way down to the ground level without it exploding. Because when you think about the, you know, the, the pressure we have to have air and water going through there.

That's being handled by an AI agent to make sure that it is, At that right level. So communications, when you think about, you know, cities, there's nothing but different types of metals. So you need to have constant communications with your robot to make sure that you have continuous, you know, operations.

So it's, it's really, there's a lot of different pieces. And if you go back to where we started, not being an engineer, but just being a businessman, I never thought of all of those things before I got involved. 

Jeanne Gray: Okay. So that leads to my next question is, so now you're involved, how long or how many iterations did your new team have to go through with the technology before it was ready to be, you know, real world tested?

Michael Brown: So we had been doing testing in our home market, which is our R& D market. In Israel, we've cleaned 25 buildings. they don't have the regulations that we have in New York. So it wasn't really that big of an issue. What we really did was built a team. What you really had when I got there was about eight employees One was founder that was in the technology side. One was a founder that was in the business development and fundraising side. And then you had five or six people in R and D that were all focused on trying to get this to work. Some of them had certain skills, some of them had other skills. What we needed to build out was the R& D team, have a algorithm team, have a mechanical engineering team, have a software engineering team, you know, have quality controls.

So now we have the disciplines across the map to be able to handle the hardware, the software, the communications, and everything else that we're trying to accomplish. That approach allowed us to get to a safe commercialization of a product that had to be industrialized. Cause originally when we got there, it was really a prototype.  

It was not industrialized and to get industrialized, you have to go through a lot of different. Iterations and so forth. And then in 2020, even though I started at the end of 2020 at the end of 2021, we did our first proof of concept in New York city at Hudson yards, which is kind of funny given that I was looking at Hudson yards when I thought about the idea.

So we were there and, you know, we learned a lot because in Israel. The buildings aren't as big crane, the cradles are much smaller in New York. You've got cradles that could be six meters, eight meters, you know, which is 30, 60 feet long that can have two to three people on that, that can clean it.

And originally when we did our first test, we only had a single arm robot and the people in New York said, listen, unless you've got two robots that can go on. One of these rigs, it's really not going to be cost effective. So we went back and started on that project. And then we came back into the market for three more proof of concepts.

One was at the current headquarters, JP Morgan at 383 Madison. One was a Durst building. 875 3rd Avenue and one was one of the Silverstein building seven World Trade Center. So we were able to meet with regulators. We were able to meet with the developers. We were able to meet with the service providers.

Get input, go back and, and continue to make sure that we're ready for a full time deployment in August of 24. And in August of 24, we got all regulatory approvals from New York, which were the first autonomous robot to be able to have regulatory approval to work at heights. And we had a very successful cleaning.

At 1133 six Avenue where we were the first, you know, autonomous robot to ever clean a skyscraper. 

Jeanne Gray: it's pretty awesome. I have to say, so share a little bit about cause we talked a little bit about risk and, and the fact that you kind of understood how to adapt and build to get to where you had this success, so where's the funding part of it, and it may be explained in terms from an entrepreneur who's innovating.

To understand that how the money flows in or what the expectation of the money that the entrepreneur puts in and, and the expectation of what money needs to inflow in to keep passing these milestones. 

Michael Brown: Yeah. So in our case. This wasn't, it really was almost a turnaround because you didn't know, I didn't know the four years of history of, how they were raising and so forth.

There are only so many questions that you're asking. And when I was coming in, it was about, okay. I think I have a better model. I think that, you know, I can build a team to, to continue the development here. So from a fundraising standpoint, we had to rebuild our whole entire credibility with venture community.

I came at my background was really with more traditional banks that was lending on inventory or assets. I was never in the, in the venture capital space. However Ross, who's my partner being in startups, he had successfully raised in the venture space before really wanted to take this down that venture spot.

I would tell you that fundraising is the worst part of the whole entire journey. It is just a tremendous amount of nose. Tremendous amount of disappointments. And you have to be able to literally take a lot of heartache to pursue your passion. And if you're not passionate about it and you can't have that translate to the people that you're asking money for, You really don't have a shot.

So our case, we have, we do have venture capital. We do have high net worth capital, but most importantly for us is that we went to the people that are in the real estate industry , that are developers, that are a service provider, that are engineers, architects, construction companies.

And we have gotten millions of dollars. from the people that will benefit from the technology, not from an investor return, but for their own businesses. So they have seen where the technology is. They're a believer in promoting this technology because they've all seen different products before. And that's a huge validation.

When you can get the industry, To invest in what you're building and become an active participant in its success with gaining traction. That to me is the best way to approach any business, like what I'm talking about, where you're building something for someone else. So for, me, you know, distribution of products, I allow Energizer Battery to do all the branding.

For us. If I'm creating product, I have to be able to have the people that I'm selling to believe it in enough that they want to participate in bringing this to market as well. So that is really how we've gotten adoption by working with the people within the industry and focusing on hitting those milestones.

Which are usually operational milestones. For efficiency and automation. 

Jeanne Gray: So you're, you're addressing industry pain points that resonated with your potential investors. So I imagine safety is something of one of their concerns and what other aspects really hit home to them about the technology?

Michael Brown: So safety is. Number one for sure. But number two is the workforce. So if you look at the window cleaner union for New York City, 76 percent of their employee base is over the age of 40. And 15 years ago, you had over 1300 people in that category for the union. Today, there's less than 500.

Now, if you look at it, The building that's been going on, let's just take New York over the last 10, 15 years, we've had tremendous amount of new construction. So the problem is that when you look in certain markets around the world, is that their labor is not there and it's not available for that. we're really helping the service providers augment their capacity so that they can actually handle their workload for their businesses.

So we're supporting the real estate industry, especially from the service aspect to be able to bring you know, window cleaning for skyscrapers that are needed. 

Jeanne Gray: So if I'm looking around buildings in New York City, I'm thinking, wow, you know, there's an endless number of buildings, but, but I have the impression that you did a very detailed market analysis to understand where your technology fits best.

So explain a little bit about how you. dissected the market to confirm that there was what they call the addressable market. 

Michael Brown: Sure, sure. So when you look at real estate as a total asset class, it is the largest by far in the world by, know, almost two thirds. within the real estate stack, there's class a buildings, mostly in office, some, I would say residential.

hospitality that have to utilize these building maintenance units. And there are 68, 000 building maintenance units that have been installed globally. We saw the opportunity that this is usually when people are in those buildings, they're paying very high rents for Beautiful offices to have really nice views and usually within those lease agreements They're guaranteed a certain amount of cleanings a year So this is something that that the building has to do for certain types of buildings so for us we saw that that is where the largest share of spend for making sure the building is clean and so forth.

And we started focusing on that. So for the existing built environment there are specialty companies that just focus on building maintenance units that just do cleaning for these high rises. And that's really one of our customers. And then when you look at new construction, What we were able to do was we were able to make a deal an exclusive deal with the largest BMU manufacturer in the world that is in 120 countries.

And that gave us global distribution. So now that deal took four years in the making and we had to prove we'd hit many, many milestones and so forth. It's a publicly traded company, but it was well worth it because We're coming in with very credible known entities within the industry, whether it be a service provider or whether it be the way to get to the building and maintenance the building.

And I would say that the biggest. Change the window cleaning. is very intriguing. But they do worry about, well, are you displacing people and their jobs? And we are in fact, retraining people that are in the baskets to become robot technicians. They're earning more money per hour. And where we used to have three people, they used to work at one building.

We're able to then retrain those people and have. One or two people at each building. So now instead of doing three people doing one, you could have three people doing two in a certain market or three people doing three different buildings in the market, depending upon the regulations. So the, the, the opportunity that we saw was most of the technology that was out there to go clean buildings was focused on getting away from.

The regulated way of doing it and then bringing in these vacuum cleaner type or car wash type cleaners and just, you know, let them hang down and you would get exactly what you get when you go to a car wash, you'd get clean, but it's not exactly clean. Now, what the real estate and developers were mostly interested in was being able to understand what is going on.

On the outside of their building. So what is, are there windows that are cracked? How do I, how do I know if I need to re glaze? How do I know if I have a window sill seal that is allowing wind air and water filtration, which then, you know, it is a carbon issue. It gets into ESG, it gets into the HVAC over working.

So. What we are iterating on is we've built a map of the building, basically a digital twin, and that's all done autonomously through the LIDAR and building of this digital twin. We are adding cameras to our operation that are specific to get certain amounts of data that , no one can get today.

So one, there's what's called a hyperspectral camera. A hyperspectral camera today is utilized. In the agricultural industry for picking out fruit and it's able to look at its density and its coloration to know if it's ripe or not. And it's also used if you think about semiconductor chips to find if there are any silicone issues in that.

So it's a proven technology that we believe will work. For what we're trying to accomplish. And in now, when a building is getting cleaned, we're also now taking in all this data on the outside of the building, where we can now present to the asset owner, a real, what I would call a facade balance sheet, a facade health profile of, Hey, you've been doing everything best practice.

Now we're going to give you the data that says. Here's when you need to do the work because there are preventative measures that can be done to avoid these wind air and water filtration situations. And when you're building a building that could be. 200 million, 300 million, 400 million of facade on the outside is usually 20 percent of that total budget.

So if you take a 400 million building, when I, when you think about an office skyscraper, that's not a crazy number. That's an 80 million spend, and you have a 10 year warranty on that facade. And I'm going to be able to clean that and give you that information that says, your facade is not holding up, or your facade is holding up.

And really give them an understanding of how they're building is doing from a structural standpoint. 

Jeanne Gray: That's a lot. I have to say. Sorry. So, I'll, I'll throw you, I don't know if this is a softball or a fastball, I'll throw you. Is, I'm thinking of, again, terms in the early stage company, the proving out part of it.

Financial modeling seems to be an important part that a technology or an innovator has to work through. Now, of course, you can go out in the marketplace and see what the competition, if there is competition, what they're paying and then kind of work it off of there. So maybe I don't know specific to your case, but maybe in broad terms is how do you think through?

Financial modeling, you know, I mean, the, the investors, when you're speaking the business language, the investors, I think are more open to you, but entrepreneurs often do not speak in a business language. So when it comes to financial modeling, they know your assumptions only go so far, but they do have to be based in reality.

Michael Brown: Correct. 

Jeanne Gray: So share a little bit about the angst of coming up with a financial model that says. We can make this a profitable business. 

Michael Brown: Sure. So we took the approach of entering New York because of the wages that are paid. So when you look at this is labor service. And the good news is that the rates that the union People are making are published.

It's public. So we knew that if you take New York, London, certain markets were very high paid Markets. So that's where we focus because obviously that's going to make our model look very good. If I went to Saudi Arabia or I went to, you know, India, I think that, the labor market is much different and it was not as high.

So we really went. And said, okay, we know that their costs are only going up every year because they have to pay more insurance They have to you know, the the labor rates are are negotiated. So we know exactly where it's going to be and we saw that just from a Calculation of how fast is my robot?

How many hours , does it take clean a certain area and then look at what has been done already at a building at the current rates that are being made. And we were able to really come up with a very good model to show payback. And while you're building out your business, you know, before the product was done, we were already making a deal in New York because we needed to get traction.

So for us, we knew that out, that was going to be the worst deal that we made because we had to get it. So for us, the payback was 18 months. Our next deal, which was more towards London and was going towards being able to do a leasing and get financing that became a six month payback. So being able to show.

That you're moving towards profitability, that the model is working, that you've honed in, you're starting to get traction now in your next deal that you've made, you've made a much better deal, much better profits and so forth. You have a story to tell. So that's really what a lot of the from a people want to know about payback, right.

And, you know, I could tell them, Hey, listen, we're three times faster. And by the way, I can clean at night and you don't need sunlight, all those great things, but at the end of the day, to your point. They want to know, okay, when are you going to make money so that you're self generating cash rather than people having to continue to invest into, you know, a category that unfortunately, hardware and robotics is a very difficult category.

Um, don't think you could name forgetting about the Explosion. I don't think prior you could name many companies that are, you know, a recurring revenue robotic company. And I don't think that you could today name more than three or four globally that are actually deployed. 

Jeanne Gray: So there's a few elements here that I'm hearing is there's the risk taking in that you believe in the technology, but you have to prove out the acceptance of the market.

Michael Brown: Correct. 

Jeanne Gray: And then another big aspect is your strategy on how to introduce the product. And, and this is what does resonate with me is, you know when you're trying to get into a company or get into industry for the first time, you really don't have a lot of bargaining power at all, but the benefit is if it proves out that you're a good company or you have a good product.

You're off to the races. 

Michael Brown: Yes. And I would tell you historically, when you are launching technology and one of the technologies that I launched. In 1994 was a single cup coffee maker made by M& M Mars called Flavia. And then they came out with curing the K cups. So we were the first people to do distribution for that product in and around New York.

We became the largest dealers throughout the United States very quickly. Demo to deal is the easiest way. To close a deal. It's also the most expensive, but it is the easiest way when you can walk in and say, Hey, it's going to cost you nothing and you can test it and you'll see the benefits. That's when it works.

And Being able to walk in, show the customer the product, that has been what's closed. I have videos, I've got PowerPoints, all those fun things. At the end of the day, what's closing the business for us, is when the people come and see it in action, that closes it. So we actually in 24, when we got regulations approved, we brought in six or seven different customers that we had been talking to for a long time.

And that then wound up closing those deals this summer in starting, I think in June, we'll be doing the same thing. I have people flying in from all over the world, some of the biggest companies that you've heard of that want to just see it work in person so that they can sign off on it. the people that are coming in to buy the technology or make that decision, Have no idea what it is that they're buying or making a decision on.

So unless they see it and then they have someone that's a subject matter expert that says, Hey, I'm not going to lose my job because of this, then you're getting that done. So we have really worked towards building that sales model of Being able to show the customer in person takes a it's a long time sale But once you have educated the customer and that customer could be a developer that develops 20 buildings could be a construction company that's on a global scale so there aren't like, you know a million people i've got a educate on this I need to educate in each market, one of the better developers and strong developers.

A service partner and then everyone should be following suit, right? Because then it's proven, right? You've got well, it's over there Why can't I get it? So my hope is that and I believe that once we start to announce These new construction projects that we have, it will domino effect. And when you're in 120 countries, you're, you have a real shot at getting a lot of business.

Jeanne Gray: So I was going to say is you, the narrative has changed. And when the narrative changes, the Approach to the investors often changes as well. So is that something that you're teeing off now where you're going to your investor base and saying, you know, games on or do you think that through? 

Michael Brown: so we are, have been games on since day one.

And the fundraising never stops. we've. Invested 20 million into the business over the last four years since I got here. We've raised every one of those pennies. And it just, it gets easier when you get customers. However, geopolitical situations don't make it easy. what's going on around the world has made it difficult to raise capital.

The VC industry over the last two, three years has plummeted. And you know, listen, if I was two years earlier, I could have walked in and said, I have a toaster that cleans a building and I could have gotten 100 million. My issue was that I came in after the original people were telling people that our company should be worth 200 million or a hundred million dollars.

And the VC community said, F. So I had to, we had to rebuild that whole entire credibility and showing that we can hit milestones as a business. 

Jeanne Gray: So as we, wrap up I guess one of my broader questions is where is the robotics industry just, you know, in broad terms of is there an inflection point that has now gone on where it's more entranced into the industry?

There's a race going on in more. 

Michael Brown: So, you know, there has been different types of what I would call automation or robotics, right? So if you look at Roomba, Roomba was, you know, this small vacuum cleaner and it would map the area. So it has slowly, but surely in different ways and small ways, been coming out and they're usually singular focused areas like us.

We are singularly focused on skyscrapers. That, and this is the way it's going to work. And we understand when you start going in these general purpose, humanoid type robots, I think we are, the technology might get us that might be ready. I don't believe you're going to see worldwide you know, Call it traction for 10 years, right?

Because society has to, you know, start figuring out how are we going to allow for these general purpose robots that have, it's like the autonomous car. See the autonomous car, even though it's certain markets are allowing it, you know, with Waymo and so forth, other markets are not, even though we know categorically that deaths and accidents and insurance premiums would go down tremendously if everyone was on autonomous driving.

So I think we're a long ways away. I think you'll see it in pockets. I think logistics has been the biggest beneficiary of automation. a very crowded field. I think it amazes me how much money these general purpose robots have been able to raise given, you know, I'm telling you that I've raised.

20 million. And, and I'm literally pounding , with a pencil cup. People are like, Oh, I'm going to build a robot. That's going to be able to do everything. And they're like, Oh, here's 500 million. And you're like, so it's an unusual. Place for venture money.

And just the industry robotics is really kind of in the phase of people are going to start to invest more. But they have to look at a longer term payback because hardware is expensive. And it takes money , to develop these products and it takes time and it takes practice, right?

I mean, for me, I have a customer that is building almost done with a 450 meter tall building. New York City. Well, conceptually our technology will work. However, I've only been able to practice on a 300 meter tall building. So I have no idea yet until this building's built, if the technology is going to work or if I'm going to have to make some changes to it, to eventually work.

But I don't know. Until I get up there because there is no simulation you can build because it's never been done. Everything that we're doing is we're building out something that's never existed and I can't go practice somewhere where, there aren't 440 meter tall buildings. 

Jeanne Gray: It just seems based on what I'm hearing is that it's situationally complex.

And so, so everyone is, as you said, broadly, I'm going to build robot, a 500 million investment. That's going to do everything. But every situation that robot is deployed into has its own unique challenges. 

Michael Brown: A hundred percent. 

Jeanne Gray: And so it has to be worked out. 

Michael Brown: Yeah. And listen, , there are certain people that are focused on.

You know, dexterity with hands. And then you see some people have, instead of a hand, they're using octopus legs. so There's a lot of new, interesting ways. However, when you're commercializing and, trying to build it, unless you have that, someone that's going to be dropping tremendous amount of money in your lap.

You've got to hit milestones. The robotics industry is. In my opinion, one of the toughest industries to get to market successfully. And there have been a lot of great companies, but it's very hard to fund these businesses. Given what's happened in the past. So hopefully with successes like a skyline or others, you'll start to see more investment and a different type of lens and perspective.

of how to, you know, invest into the robotic space. 

Jeanne Gray: Well, Michael, it's been great speaking with you. And I learned a lot about robotics and about how to keep sky cravers clean. so it was a really nice pleasure speaking with you and look forward to keeping in touch and I'm going to.

I'm a New Yorker. So I know what you're up against. 

Michael Brown: There you go. There you go. Well, we love union labor. We love technology and we're going to change the world and dominate the globe as far as I'm concerned. But thank you so much. Really enjoyed the conversation and look forward to, you know, the next time.

Jeanne Gray: Okay. Take care. 

Michael Brown: Thank you. 

Jeanne Gray: You have been listening to the podcast series, Experienced Voices. To hear more and subscribe, visit AmericanEntrepreneurship. com forward slash podcast, where you will also find a form for listener feedback.