Sow and Scale

USD$70M Committed Before Launch?! A Guide To Robotics Startups (Rishab Patwari, CEO of Hivebotics)

• Eric Tan • Episode 5

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Rishab Patwari is the CEO and co-founder of Hivebotics, a Singapore-based robotics startup that has secured over 1,000 LOIs worth an estimated USD$70 million with USD$500K in pre-orders for their autonomous toilet-cleaning robots—revolutionizing the commercial cleaning industry.

Listen on the go:
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/TC_8ikxPtds
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/73OY2tusErrnZEbwCvUP5d?si=p3P4rpoZS5-DNIMsMXAEaQ
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/usd%2470m-committed-before-launch-a-guide-to-robotics/id1781364637?i=1000684575100

In our conversation, we dive into:
🤖 The large opportunity of robotics and how Rishab found product-market fit
🤖 Securing LOIs and funding—why early validation is crucial for hardware startups
🤖 Building teams and advisors—when to hire, when to outsource, and how to manage them
🤖 Navigating Singapore’s tough hardware startup ecosystem—the real costs, challenges, and pivots
🤖 Achieving PMF in robotics—why functional demos, iteration, and customer feedback matter
🤖 Cash management, debt, and grants—balancing survival versus growth
🤖 Personal growth and founder mindset—staying resilient amid daily “failures” and rejections
🤖 Much more!

Connect deeper:
Substack: https://sowandscale.substack.com/
WhatsApp Community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/CM0YQhhFZF0BfdtmAwTFKb
Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erictisme/
Rishab on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishab-patwari/
Hivebotics: https://hivebotics.tech/

Quick Fire Round

Books:
- Start with Why by Simon Sinek – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7108725-start-with-why
- Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156469-never-split-the-difference
- Culture Map by Erin Meyer – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22085568-the-culture-map

Movie:
The Founder (2016) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/

Rishab:

my competitors burned five to ten million dollars trying to do it themselves and they couldn't get the product out. We burned one million dollars and we're almost out. So that's the difference.

Eric:

When did you start taking on more advisors and building your team

Rishab:

Very early on, we basically found Advisor Lee. She could help us with reviewing our story lining narrative and everything She also actually connected us with a lot of angels and collectively they contributed almost several hundred thousand dollars worth of investment. So an advisor like that is like spot on

Eric:

How do you enter the robotics industry as a fresh grad compared to like someone who comes in from, you know, 10 years 20 years of experience in robotics?

Rishab:

I call it a black box mindset. It's not easy. It took me a very long time to get to it. But, when you're trying to pick up fast, you need to know what's your objective. What do you need to build? And then, what you need to use at a functional level without understanding the details and putting it together. Whoever tells you you need industrial design first is telling you nonsense.

Eric:

Hi, everyone. I'm Eric, host of the Sow and Scale podcast. Today, my guest is Rishabh Pathwari. Rishabh is the CEO and co founder of Hivebotics, a company that builds autonomous robots where its current focus is on commercial cleaning of toilets. Hivebotics was part of the Graduate Research Innovation Program, GRIP Accelerator by the National University of Singapore, for deep tech startups, and have also raised up to one million in pre seed funding. They're just about to launch, so by the time this comes out, you might just see them in action. He studied computer engineering in the National University of Singapore, with a second major in innovation and design, and was also part of the NUS Overseas Colleges program.

Today we explore Singapore's robotics startup scene. It's occurring Allo. Ice or letters of intent and funding, deep tech finches. Building effective teams and advisor networks. Achieving product market fit in robotics and navigating Singapore's tough hardware startup ecosystem. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did speaking with your shop.

Eric:

Rishabh, thank you so much for coming down on the show!

Rishab:

Thank you for having me.

Eric:

So it's great to see you today, and it was nice knowing you as a dorm neighbor in university. You're not just building the future, but you're also a really caring and humble guy. So I'm super excited for our conversation today. Robotics is a super interesting industry the global revenue in the robotics market is projected to reach 24 billion by 2029. domestic services is actually the biggest pie, which seems like what you're working on. It's 31 percent of the pie, followed by medical, electronic and entertainment. So tell me a bit more about Hybotics, the key product and key milestones to date.

Rishab:

Absolutely. So at Hivebodies, we are developing autonomous toilet cleaning robots, which is meant for commercial toilet cleaning. For example, at shopping malls, airports, office buildings. But our vision is really to redefine the next hundred years of work, the workflows which are menial, tedious, demanding, undecided. Hardware, software and intelligence. Three main pillars to drive our automation. And toilet cleaning was a perfect start. Now just to give you a bit of a background, why clean toilets in the first place? Well, if you look into the statistics in Singapore, the average age of cleaners is hitting about 70 years old. And other parts of the world is also increasing in, 50s to 70s. And this is a huge problem. Cleaning companies cannot find workers who are motivated. Or able to do cleaning anymore due to a generational shift in the workforce. And, toilet cleaning is not only a one, but it's actually a crisis for the cleaning sector in Singapore and parts of Europe. We thought that we have an opportunity to help this sector and yeah, that's how we got started. Can

Eric:

you walk me through some of the key milestones? I know you have 1, 000 letters of intent or LOIs and maybe, how much has been committed? Maybe any financial figures as well? Well,

Rishab:

Well, we have over a thousand units LOI, you know, that's worth about 70 plus million dollars worth of LOIs. These LOIs are, essentially a preliminary indication about the demand from the customers, as well as for us to actually indicate to them the price. So when they sign, it's with the understanding about how much this will cost. And they actually commit to the number of units. although this is non binding, this actually gives us an indication and for them as well, how are they going to deploy the robots? Now, how it translates to committed revenue? Well, we have already secured purchase orders for our first batches of robots. So for next year, we have for almost 500, 000 worth of purchase orders and 200 over a thousand dollars worth of, paid pilots scheduled for next year. So very excited about that.

Eric:

Nice.

Rishab:

dollars.

Eric:

where are most of your customer base?

Rishab:

customer base? Well, our biggest customer base is in the US and then of course Singapore itself. just to put it in perspective, one customer in the US is more than the whole of Singapore put together. So, the size of the market matters. The other regions which are very, very, um, you know, attractive actually Middle East and, Northern Europe, so Nordics, all those locations are really, having very strong

Eric:

Having very strong demand.

Rishab:

bit different in each geography. So of course in the Middle East they have no foreign worker restrictions, and there is no, Cost escalation problem, but in the Middle East, for example, the intent is they want to be the premieres, the frontier tech, you know, enablers. So they want to have robotics, even if it costs more. So a bit different. If you look in Europe, it is a very similar problem. You know, they have aging workers, foreign workers, the whole workforce is dependent on them. Some of the locations are such that people don't even want to go even for foreign and aging workers. So locations also matter. That's a similar problem in the U. S. I mean, city is not a big problem getting labor, but if you go out to, like, the counties and the bigger areas which are further away, a lot of foreign workers do not even want to go there. So, you can't get local talent, neither can you get foreign talent. You have no choice. So, these are real, you know, issues on the ground. Of course, we are learning more and more as we go closer to deployment, but I would say that, broadly The issues are common, but how they impact is a little bit different. Singapore, places where there's much more legislation, tend to have, pressing pressure. For other places, it's a slower, like, you know, impact on them, compared to, like, I need to solve it by next year.

Eric:

difference. Well, I mean, there are different factors that affect the

Rishab:

I mean there are different factors that affect the savings. So number one is of course the geography. What is the cleaning wages? Of course, cleaning in Singapore versus cleaning in Australia is very different, right? So those things affect. In terms of percentages, also this depends on the size of the toilets as well as the cleaning frequency of deployment. So we estimate that for large, facilities like airports, shopping malls, where they have high frequency cleaning, we can save up to 60 percent of a cleaner's salary worth of work with our robots and go to medium facilities. It's about 50 percent and then small facilities about 40 percent because the frequency of cleaning is also lower. So that's the range.

Eric:

range. Well, in fact, our first deployments are due for January. These are early adopters, so this

Rishab:

our first deployments are due for January. these are early, adopters. This is not the commercial unit, but they are buying and actually deploying this unit. that's something you're really excited for because we would be tested, you know, all kinds of issues with that. But one thing that makes it really special is our customers have put in the faith and they have taken the leap of faith to actually, kickstart the journey with us early, even before commercial launch. they can also bring in inputs on what to change before commercial launch, which is very valuable.

Eric:

So I think moving more into the origins of Hivebotics, you were inspired to start, the toilet cleaning robot when your friend owned a cleaning company and face staff shortages. So what also drew you personally to the problem to start Hivebotics?

Rishab:

So, a bit of a personal background at that point of time, I had just been evacuated back from NUS overseas colleges, in Silicon Valley. So when I was back here evacuated? Yes. there pandemic.

Eric:

Oh yeah.

Rishab:

there was a pandemic patch. So, you know, I was working in a start up, you know, while I was there, and I came back and I still work in a start up. So what happened is that I was looking for something to work upon. Hybotics is actually an evolution of a previous company idea that we had that was a HR management platform, which was original inspiration from going to my friend's site. So during the pandemic, like I told you, the problem is aging workers and, foreign workers. Well, foreign workers went back to their home countries. Aging workers were too scared to go to work because this is pre vaccine era. So my friend who has contracts, which mandates minimum number of is getting liquidated damages. And you cannot sustain the company because you cannot get any labor. And if you pay labor, you're not getting paid for from your existing contract. They're not going to pay you more money. So that was his crisis. you know, and toilet cleaning was a big part of it. We originally started off by trying to do a worker management platform because in doing COVID there were compliance, like you need to have temperature taking, you need to know who came in and who didn't come. So we tried to create a platform for that, which, well, we started getting adopted, but, very soon we realized like, One is that there are many more competitors. It's not a new problem. And the real problem at hand is not about how do you manage this existing pool of workers, but rather there's just not enough workers. So the problem is the same. It's about addressing the labor, management issues, but how we shifted is from our original startup of a HR management platform to manage the attendance, payroll, all this kind of stuff for the workers. We evolved into solving the root problem, which is that there's just not enough workers and that can only be done through automation. So we did not think of like, I want to do a robot and then come and solve a problem. Rather, we addressed the problem that we were witnessing.

Eric:

Than you address the problem that we were witnessing up front. So, I was in the NUS Overseas College Silicon

Rishab:

I was in the US Overseas College Silicon Valley program in 2020 where, I was interning in a med tech startup. That's about the main. focus of the program while taking classes at Stanford for Global Entrepreneurial Marketing which was very valuable as well as NUS and Berkeley courses on Entrepreneurship, so it was a very big deep dive into the entrepreneurial world because you're thrown right into it how it shaped me was that I participated in a lot of hackathons there, personally, you know, hacking away, developing things. I did participate in Singapore as well previously, but the difference was the community of people around. in Singapore, we are very aspirational, but still very, conservative in a sense, like we want to do things step by step. Over there, I saw people who would go all out.

Eric:

In what sense,

Rishab:

uh, yeah, I'll give you one illustration of it. So in Stanford, I heard from a friend that a school band. there was, I think banned in 50 states in the U. S. and multiple airlines. I think the latest creative thing they decided to do was when they were taking a flight, the band members decided it would be fun to congregate at one side of flight midair to try to tilt the plane. So that kind of like all out, right? And what it made me realize is like As a Singaporean, or even an Asian, we tend to have this obligatory mindset of like doing things within a constraint. And I felt, enlightened really that, well, the world doesn't necessarily conform to this same set of, constraints, Silicon Valley, it may be good, it may be bad, but I felt like that pushes you to your potential. You're in the same, institutions where some of the greats, were as well, I was at Stanford and then you're thinking about it, you start thinking that, okay, if they were here, maybe 20 years ago, I got a chance now. can I also do something with it? Like, it's essentially, you start comparing yourself. Um, not in a negative way, but rather like in a way like, Whoa, if they can do it, can I also try something like that? What's stopping me?

Eric:

What's stopping

Rishab:

Yeah, absolutely.

Eric:

true. I was there for 4

Rishab:

there for four months and then you know, evacuated back. Then I actually interned for Silicon Valley Company remotely from Singapore.

Eric:

Company remotely from Singapore. 10k each

Rishab:

Oh yeah,

Eric:

these startups. How do you, how do you spend your first, you know, 10k,

Rishab:

it was 3 0 3. Um, the first one we didn't take it up. Okay. So my first startup attempt while I was going through the MOC program, was, build a med tech startup, which was essentially autonomous build dispensing machine idea. I hated the idea. I just didn't like the product anymore after a while, so. We actually won a VIP grant. I had a team. I said, I want to leave. You guys can take it and carry on. So I think they took it and carried on. and I also won two more VIP grants. One was for the HR management platform, which we did use and build a platform. That was something, that we caught towards the end of NOC. And then the third one was, for the autonomous monitoring robot. So, interestingly, the HR management and toilet cleaning robot are evolution of each other. Because it started from HR management. Now, HR management is still existing as a separate company. We are just like, when we have time, we manage it. It's just now given for free at this time because we have no time to commercialize it. But, it gave us very strong, experience because you can actually build things. Um, whereas when it came to Tolkien Robot, initially we were, we had to change our strategy completely. It was no longer about building because, you cannot build a Tolkien Robot without resources. Whereas you can build software without resources. So that was the difference. It became more about understanding the business, broad market fit. And communicating the, narrative so we can get the resources to get the building done.

Eric:

Yeah, I think we'll get there later. So do you always want to graduate as an entrepreneur, or do you consider working for other companies as well?

Rishab:

Okay, interestingly for me, um, it was quite it was quite, persistent in the back of my mind, that I wanted to do

Eric:

My

Rishab:

So my personal background is my family is a business family. My dad has business. So, you know for me Corporate job was never really on my agenda. I was looking at it from a perspective of like Creating a high value business from day one. So before I joined university But as I joined university in the earlier phases, you know, I signed the engineering and then you're looking at all the engineers I did have a big

Eric:

outward pivot

Rishab:

from the original entrepreneurship direction for a bit like I want I was like Oh, maybe I can do a software engineer because it's like interesting, right? I start off with a business direction I veered into I want to do engineering as a career and then get back into business And I think there was a very nice merger because what I'm doing now I had a chance to go really deep dive engineering in every single domain, software, hardware, electronics, mechanical, and also get to pursue my passion of business.

Eric:

Yeah, that's really nice. I think robotics is also super complex right, as an industry. So, Entering as a fresh grad, there's so many technicalities to learn, so many research papers to read, so many moving parts. How How do you enter the robotics industry as a fresh grad compared to like someone who comes in from, you know, 10 years 20 years of experience in robotics?

Rishab:

I think one is you need a crisis because there's so much you need to, you need to overcome the motivation hurdles by having a big enough crisis that you just have to start absorbing things faster and making sure you feel less. So, I think in our case, it's because we started a startup and we had no money and I needed to build something before I run out of money. So I was. Again, like, we didn't have enough resources to build a full robot, but what can we do? What can we build first? So me and my co founder, we started, you know, picking up what we could. I spent hours online trying to read through, figure out how to do robotics on the fly and interestingly ended up becoming a consultant myself to some other people within a year. So I think it's a case of like, you know, Engineering, especially in the robotic space, it's very complex. It's years of experience that people need to pick up, but it can be short circuited. You know, you have to learn how to black box certain things. Like, you don't need to know everything into super detail. You gotta, like, I call it a black box mindset. It's not easy. It took me a very long time to get to it. But, when you're trying to pick up fast, you need to know what's your objective. What do you need to build? And then, What you need to use at a functional level without understanding the details and putting it together. So it's a bit of an integrator mindset because that's what you can actually use to deliver at this point of time. And then once you have a bit more time and bandwidth to go deeper, that's when you can really start playing with the fundamental level programming

Eric:

Well, I think this is my views. I was told that half of the team

Rishab:

this is where Silicon Valley shaped my views. I was told that half of the team in the Apollo mission, was actually undergrads, or fresh grads, that basically created the first Apollo mission. So, that being said, it's like, I don't think being an undergrad is any excuse for you to be not able to do things. I also see this a lot with some of the potential hires we see many of them, you know, They have this mindset that they just graduated. They're here to learn but you know There's no excuse. You gotta deliver from day one. So, if you have gotten a degree, you have had four years of engineering, that's four years of experience, what have you done with it? And you get out, you gotta start delivering, and come on, people from MIT, straight out of university, they can build a rocket. First in the world to go to space, so there's no good excuse. What were some

Eric:

were some useful resources for you online?

Rishab:

Well, I think, for robotics, ROS Construct is a very popular resource. I think I'm a very visual learner. I don't like to read a lot. So I need something that's hands on to learn. So the Construct has like a simulation environment where you actually write code and they have guided code training for robotics. So I think that's, perfect stuff for robotics.

Eric:

I was looking out for people, because I was also working on this thing,

Rishab:

So for me, um, I was looking out for people, because I was working on this thing alone for the initial phases. Then, the original team that was working on the HR management platform, you know, left to be on the graduated. Some of them were like, okay, you know, this was fun, but like, I'm not going to do it seriously. so the original team left. After that, I was, looking for.

Eric:

co

Rishab:

I had a few things in mind, but I want to make sure that I have working experience with them before I take them on. So, how it began was that, I was still in university. I haven't yet graduated. I stayed in here to clear my dissertation, for engineering. So I decided that, how about, let's make Hybotics my dissertation. The idea of building a telecom robot, so I can kill two birds with one stone. And I also had the idea of getting four free interns, because, you know, you have four, team members. Okay. and then Zeng was one of those that, you know, I actually posted out in like a engineering class group chat you know, Zeng and three others, expressed interest. They joined. So that was really the start. Um, you know, it's a very sneaky strategy, but the thing is that it's a one year dissertation project, right? So, months of working together, with Zeng, some of the other guys, Started to see what I like and what I don't like. In fact, Zeng and I originally were, not getting along because he's very structured. I'm very last minute can hack through and he's beautiful. So it's two different strategies, right? But I think the thing is that, there were also other people, right? In, in a sense, like I was evaluating who should be a potential co founder. what I liked that for Zeng, He is very committed, when he says some he will do his best in his capabilities to get things done. The second was also accountability is high. So that was something I like about my co founder. And the third one was really that, I looked at his background. I think it's very interesting. his family has a public company in Vietnam that manufactures aeroplanes. I saw a lot of relevancy because I can get operational background from the family. Um, I also, okay, this might be controversial, but I was actually looking for a co founder with a business family background. It's very specific. I,

Eric:

I

Rishab:

think, for me, I wanted to make sure that someone I have is committed to the business and not too deep in the tech, because, my view was that because people who are too deep in the tech, when, you know, the tech is. Less exciting because you may have to do all other things. They may not put in the motivation and business also means that I felt that there'll be a bit more creative on solving certain problems, which is, you know, you need to have engineering experience. That's for sure. I cannot have a complete business co founder, but someone would have the hybrid of business engineering was, what I was looking

Eric:

I was looking for. I want to have

Rishab:

like a business people necessarily this is something you know like a business culture in the family I think that's very different. You can go to business school and have zero Abilities to run a business. Let's be honest. You can have an engineering degree may be the best and a businessman as well But I think it's a cultural thing in mind, which is like it's a risk taking appetite meaning like You know if I tell you can you take a half a million loan and you never take a loan in your life before? You do a calculator like, okay, these are my risks. Makes sense. Let's go. That is a risk taking appetite. The second is like frugality. It's like, you know, when you're a bit more business minded, you'll be thinking about like, you cannot be trying to build everything yourself. you realize the value of labor leverage, capital leverage. These are two different things that give you leverage. if you have money, you can buy time, you can buy other people's time to get things done. And so you can get more things done. If you don't have money, the only thing you have is time. But if you spend your time on every single thing yourself, then you cannot cover all the work. You need to have leverage with other people, network.

Eric:

So,

Rishab:

my, another thing that my co founder had was he was from ACSI. So, originally I thought that would be very useful. To be very frank, in hindsight, it didn't really turn out to be useful, the network from ACSI. But, my view back then was that ACSI is very well connected. So, this was some, they may not be major factors, but the combination of all these factors really made me very keen on my co founder. And the fact that we disagreed more in the initial phases was also good because the common goal was the same. His approach was augmenting the success of the whole project.

Eric:

Actually, what was the dissertation key focus on?

Rishab:

robot development

Eric:

Oh, everything. Yeah.

Rishab:

of course we can't finish it, with, you know, resources you have in university, but, um, yeah, like I was sharing, I think we disagreed more, and then he just said that, in fact, we quarreled. He was the only one I quarreled within the four people, but he's the one I chose for co founder. And the reason was that the others would be like, okay, lor, just, okay, lor. No, it's not, it's not really that, but it was more of, like, the commitment to a common project was very different. So it's like, you know, This is the person that really cares about you. You know what he's doing and he's his own personal reputation on what the work needs to be done The others would be more like, you know, okay. I mean It's not my i'm not a leader. No, I don't need to do so for me That was good because for me, you know where I am strong at Then and areas where I'm weaker at, he may be stronger at it. So that was complimentary. So you see there's a There's a you know working professional complimentary areas there's also, you know a background which I felt was very complimentary, you know business background with engineering and third fourth, you know, I generally feel like having someone from East Asia In a company, it's also good because it's a bit of like cultural, diversity as well. So Zheng is from Vietnam. My impression of, Vietnamese culture is that they are really hardworking, very committed. So I think having that kind of a diversity for Indian side, you know, I'm Indian, so I have certain Cultural strengths and weaknesses as well. So having that kind of diversity I felt would strengthened the overall team and that's how I got my co-founder.

Eric:

Oh, how do you manage disagreements and at the same time manage to, you know, have a common vision or be able to build it? How have you managed your co founder relationship so far?

Rishab:

I would say that, you can have all sort of disagreements because if you don't have disagreement, you're not being useful, let's be honest. So disagreements is not a bad thing. But I think it's about how you manage it. It's a very good question. I think we generally do not go personal ever so You can have all kind of difficult discussion even for equity to like money, Putting in your own money kind of things but at the end of it was like look this is my risk, this is my reward. I need you to come in with this. you know, this is what I can put in. If not, these are the things that I hope, will be reasonable. For example, let's say, if you cannot put in money, then I might need more equity. It's very straightforward. So this kind of discussions, in a sense, it may help that we are engineers. Engineers tend to be very nice to each other. My view is that generally, disagreements wise, it's like, laying out a logical reasoning of why I disagree with you. This is what we want to achieve. So whenever you're disagreement, the first thing is like at least common agreement on what we are trying to achieve here. Okay. And what are we disagreeing on? And then, um, you can always meet a path or so like, this is something I learned because I used to always like be very middle ground. Okay. I think everybody happy. No, no, no, no. As I learned through, I realized like you may need to pick some battles and win. Some battles you may need to like, just let go because maybe the consequence is not high enough. So it's a balance, like if it's something that you really feel strongly about, you know, it's like you may need a veto, he may need a veto for certain things. But for certain things which are like of very high value for your domain, you may need to just say, look, I need you to trust me with this. We have to go here with this. Can you reorganize? And I think that's when the role differentiation also comes in because like at the end of the day, you need to choose a CEO, right? And, there's a reason why I'm a CEO because you are actually managing a few domains. So I think this helped in a structure. It also probably helped a little bit. I'm older than my co founder. So, you know, a bit more commercial experience as well, obviously. So that helped with the dynamics, But, yeah, I think there is certain battles where you got to win. Like you just gotta put your foot down and win certain battles where you just gotta like, is it worth winning this one? No. Just let go and let other person win. You know?'cause maybe they feel very strongly about it and it might be for the good because everybody's on a common vision.

Eric:

So how do you kind of split the roles in the early days with Tang?

Rishab:

think in the super, super early days, it's about product development, right, like, limited resources. he was a mechanical guy, I was the software guy. So that I think, there was, there was, when it comes to hardware and electronics, what happened was that I would say that, Okay, so this is a bias. I'm a computer engineer, so I would think that You know, computer electrical engineers tend to be better at code. I don't trust mechanical engineers with code. So, it's a, it's a, it's that tuffle, right, you know, where like, You have a certain, training on how to get things done. For mechanical side, I touch very briefly and after that, I trust my co founder with it. But, I think, what we realized was that, in the initial stages, this is a pro development phase, right? Well, this is the place where most quarrels happen as well, because, it's all logical, you know, with different viewpoints. For me, I never trusted his mechanical, cause it's like, it didn't look or feel good. It was the one that works, but then it's like it's not repeatable or reliable. That was the challenge I had. His side is like, the software is like, he's like, he would say I'm, he's forgot the software, I would say because of the hardware. I think, in the end it was like, you know, if the things are not working, right, we are very strongly believing that it's because this thing is not working because of our scope of view. Yeah, so those kind of things, and then, you know, how to overcome those was like, For hardware electrical, I think, you know, you need, especially when you're just out of university, I think you need experience, software as well, but, for hardware electrical, for prototype phase, also you need experience. I think what I realized was that FreshCat cannot. That's the truth. You need, you no, masters cannot also. You need experience in the industry. So we actually engage outsource partners. And then we learn from them because we saw them doing it, right?

Eric:

How do you find these

Rishab:

You gotta pay money and, engage them, right?

Eric:

And then they couldn't, do a good job?

Rishab:

the earliest one in Singapore did a good job for the scope of work that we gave them. But then we realised like, and that's when the real shift in thinking happened. We cannot be doing the development work ourselves. We need to control the product because at the day, if I have 15k, I try to make it myself, you test it in the market, straight away it's a no go. Then you just wasted your time.

Eric:

I have

Rishab:

If I have 15k, you pay 15k to a party, you get something out, you quickly test, you realize a failure, you just burn 15k and you burn less time. And then you can get the next iteration, next iteration, next iteration. I think that was a learning. One thing that struck me was that we need to control product testing. We need to do product testing. We cannot be in development mode forever. Because if you're always in a lab, you're not even testing it on the ground. You're getting nowhere. So the fastest way to get something out that you can test. Is to de risk on all the things that we can't control and then double down on a secret sauce We know a secret sauce will be software, you know AI and

Eric:

and software.

Rishab:

So secret sauce initially We basically started doing all of those things ourselves We tried to you know, so Zeng's role became from doing the mechanical design and electrical design work to managing it And for me, was like, software was something that was too expensive. So we couldn't outsource because the cost outside was too high. That's why I was doing it myself for a bit. And then we started hiring in house team. You know, once we had funding, the first team that we hired was software. So that, you know, that can also become continuously developed. And it's, it's still not easy. I think we have come a long way. Now we have, continuous momentum in software development and even mechanical, electrical, we have a strong party to work with. But, Yeah, it's a shift and what this shift allowed us is now we can focus on product.

Eric:

We can

Rishab:

focus on testing the customer requirements. You can focus on testing all the parameters of success. And of course there's also drawbacks. The drawback is that now your dependencies, you know, on partners, you've got to communicate those things and make those changes happen. Instead of doing it yourself, which is always faster. But the good thing is that once you pay them, they have to deliver, you know. On the point of outsourcing, actually, there's a lot of early stage advice out there that says

Eric:

They don't deliver. You burn the money, but you still grow the output. I would say

Rishab:

as a hardware, hardware startup? Because there are founders who are told to just try to learn everything themselves

Eric:

Because there are founders who are told to just try to learn everything themselves and build everything because if they outsource, then they might end up, you know, getting something they don't like, having to reiterate and ending up wasting more money, right? So how, I guess, what you managed to do here is you control the outsource process quite well and you are very sure about what you want and you actually get what you want at the end of the day. How, how do you, how do

Rishab:

you actually get what you want at the end of day. By communicating what you need to the parties and then making sure it's within the budget and then you get things moving So I think that's a difference You're still the one because you have full visibility and control over what exactly is being put in How are they doing this stuff? And there's also knowledge

Eric:

also knowledge transfer walk me through your experience at GRIP. How did that help you?

Rishab:

I would say GRIP was a very, you know, good starting point for us. GRIP, you know, is a rigorous accelerator. my challenge was I was the only startup that was still undergrad while doing GRIP. Most GRIP startups are. That's why it's called Graduate Research Innovation Program, right? And not Undergraduate Research Innovation Program. Well, I was having a bit of a time management challenge because, you know, there's full time university essay on my classes. A little bit of social life. I was an in house RA at the same time. And I was also doing GRIP. So, that one was mayhem for me. It was like, no sleep at all. GRIP was quite rigorous. I think they really went through product discovery phase. You know, how do you do market validation, product validation, all of those things. Specification determination because deep tech. So some of the things were a bit more deep tech focus as well. How do you get certification? How do you plan for certification? How do you plan for IP? All this kind of thing. So that was very valuable. I think we still tap on to it sometimes. I think the other thing that GRIP was very strong at is the network. NUS GRIP just called me into a meeting one day. It's like, oh, this is Klena Perkins right in front of you. The partners are right in front of you. Come pitch your startup to them. This is NUS GRIP. So they are really connected. They have a lot of strength. it's an institution. Sometimes it can be a bit academic. Sometimes it can be a bit slow. One thing I would say is that, you know, tap onto the strengths of NUS ecosystem. But don't follow blindly for any, founders who are interested in GRIP because, you know, even with the best intention, use your lens or filter to understand whether the person, what he's saying for a certain domain of, comments is justified with experience in that space, or is it just a observatory, you know, remark. Why I say that is because the NUS GRIP team is a wonderful team. Some of them are really experienced business people with traditional business background because that's what Singapore's, ecosystem is. But when you are looking into the high growth startup, advisory, I think there's a limited pool and hence, limited, resources that they have on their front, but they do have it. Especially the senior leadership, the kind of contacts they have, I'm mind blown.

Eric:

they have, but it might grow. Well, when were building ourselves, we were trying to build together

Rishab:

Well, when we first were building ourselves, we were trying to build together a prototype that we can use to demonstrate a showcase to potential customers. So we can get resources to build further, right? most of it is a disaster. You go there, half the things don't work, and suddenly things don't work here and there, and then you start stabilizing things. Mostly with hardware and electrical, because, you know, that's the things that is most unstable in the early phases. for testing, we basically went through one of the things I learned from the Chinese companies is they actually put together concept videos, which was very cheap and very good way to test. We put together concept videos, of what we want a product to look like, just cost a few hundred dollars, you know, get an Indonesian animator to do it. And then, we show it to customers like this, what are you trying to build? What's your comments on it? So that's one layer of testing. We also went in as cleaners ourselves to intern for a week in a hotel. Within one hour, we know that hotels shouldn't be our target market segment initially because the toilets are too small and much more variety. And from a technical feasibility standpoint, it was not easy. So there's very good, invalidation, right? You know, then you know that you don't position yourself in hotels. How did, how did the

Eric:

when you walk in there, you're telling them, Hey, I got this video, I have this product, but it only comes in two years. Like, can you sign this for me? how

Rishab:

explain this to me? How does it work? Yeah. Yeah. We tell them that, look, you know, can you help us? You know, essentially we are a start up. These LOIs will help us with fundraising. This will cost you nothing. And, you know, this will also allow us to kickstart as a company. As a committed early partner, we'll be working very closely with you. So I don't want to, you know, some people, right, they give away things like exclusivity and things like that for allies. No, that's ridiculous. Don't go do that. One thing is that I'll call it be a little bit cocky. You cannot be like begging for things. People want what they cannot get. It's a freaking mantra of life, whether it's dating or it's set up or even client. So you need to present leverage. how do you present leverage? Look, you want a toilet cleaning robot because this will disrupt your operation, which is very strong validation as well, you know, on the product demand. And you go and tell them that if you sign me this, I will prioritize you. Now I need 1000 units LOI from you. Can you sign? And I give you the cost as well. We can have further discussions. You know, this is non binding. You help me, I help you.

Eric:

love how you're pitching it to me right now. Okay, okay. Was there a point where you realized, okay, there's, there's some sort of product market fit after speaking to a few more customers, you know, was there a certain point, like, after your 10th customer or something?

Rishab:

Because the demand or the urgency is so high, customers are starting to give us POs, pre orders, waiting to pay up front. that

Eric:

orders that are going to come a year or two later? Yes,

Rishab:

they are willing to not pay one year in advance, but give us orders. And then once we are ready, with two or three months payment terms, they'll pay up front.

Eric:

Wow.

Rishab:

So that's kind of things. Of course, we are not Elon Musk to go and take all the money first. We are Asian. this is something could be a weakness as well. Like we were hesitant to take money. In fact, we were delivering pilots where we didn't take money for a long time locally, because we wanted to meet our milestone requirements because once you take money, we feel that we have a responsibility to give a successful, result or customer, even if it is a pilot phase. So I think we were hesitant. Now I think our confidence is much higher to start taking. That's why we are kickstarting the pilot sales. How did

Eric:

spend the first 100k of funding? And, how much did you pay

Rishab:

of funding and how much did you pay yourself? When you're doing a great program, they also give you 10k so part of 100k goes back because you need to pay back, the 10k that you they gave you earlier because that's supposed to be reimbursed from the investment Then your 90k then you have to pay for a license fee. So I did all those things You don't really have a lot left that's what and then the thing is we are doing hardware, assembly manufacturing or anything like that You engage contractors. It's not cheap So that also disappears some of the cash. So all in it was very fast within like three months, you know 100k will disappear for hardware, but It's not really paying us salary. So we were quite clear that with that 100k we need to build our next milestone and the next milestone essentially was Getting to a demonstrable unit, you know something we can demo to people. So, um, actually Before the 100k my family actually put in about 30 40k

Eric:

same as well.

Rishab:

So I had to use my own money for a bit. And then my family actually invested a hundred K as well, So that was what was necessary. You get it off the ground. We were struggling a lot to get angel investors. We were working very hard to get it and get the narrative right. So it's also partly the ecosystem was a little bit early when it comes to hardware in Singapore. So we struggle a lot. So until we found our pre seed VCs and you know, it's interestingly how we found them was I flew to Silicon Valley. And then like, in Singapore, we met some VCs who were local. I told them, look, Silicon Valley, I got this, this, this offer. You want to take it or leave it? And then they were like, okay la, take it.

Eric:

Oh, we'll get more into your fundraising stories later, but maybe back to product market fit. how do you find product market fit as a hard tech hardware startup with super long development cycles? I guess there's, things you have to tweak in between that your customers want and certain things that, eventually feed into the ultimate end product. Right. So what other things do you do in terms of product development?

Rishab:

I guess, like, what's the MVP like for you? MVP is something that you roll out fast, fail fast, you get all the issues fast. So MVP is like what you think, you get it out first based on your assessment. You get it out, you get in an operational environment, you learn all the things that you don't know.

Eric:

learn all the things

Rishab:

Oh, we had an extra robot to bring down, yeah. it

Eric:

it was first the video, and then after the video you

Rishab:

You have to get a robot,

Eric:

building

Rishab:

A simple robot.

Eric:

probably that few hundred K went into like, you know, a robot

Rishab:

So, the first 100K actually went into a very basic robot that can't really clean, but can show the cleaning concept. So the steamer inside is like a 100 steamer, which can't really be used for real cleaning. But, you know, those kind of things integrate together, try to make it look, feel, and demonstrate. And then from there, we get a feedback from our customers.

Eric:

we get feedback from the customers. All done by ourselves. I think, when we

Rishab:

The videos and stuff is, you know, one layer. It helps for two purposes. It also gives you the concept communicated to investors and clients much better. What exactly are you looking at? Because when you show them a real, then they will pick on all the things that will technically get resolved by commercial. So you want to tell them, look,

Eric:

that,

Rishab:

instead of trying to show them something physical first and then get bombarded by unanswered questions, show them the final concept. Okay.

Eric:

and then we will be able to upgrade it. Right. I think, um,

Rishab:

stakeholders, investors, your clients and internal teams. Very informal communication. So we update them on good things, bad things. We just share with them. So of course, if it's a bit more different profile, investors might be a bit different. we may have to actually prepare formal, things to share, but my investors have been very close with the founders. So I think that's what our VCs, when it comes to clients and my internal team, To start, The organization took a while. Let's just put it this way. To organize internal team communication towards getting things moving, we required role identification. You cannot everyone Doing everything. So between me and my co founder, of course, we had role splits But we had overlaps as well because there's only two right? But once we started having hires, things started getting much more clearer So because then we had a head of engineering that helped to manage engineering team What happens then is that you actually have distinct roles for the C suits So then engineering once you have a head of engineering and engineering team you should not technically have to do that anymore. And then product is like something that my co founder evolved into taking on. So he communicates with engineering team to get everything internal, because COO everything internal is being managed while I get more time to focus on a strategic and external. So this is a transition, not easy because. You were the one doing a lot of things yourself first, but the communication cycle becomes better, you have processes in place, sprint, meetings, you have weekly, goal setting meetings, all these things are coming into play.

Eric:

Yeah, moving into advisors and team, when did you start taking on more advisors and building your team as compared to, you know, two of you, you all were building this product in the early days?

Rishab:

Very early on, we basically found Advisor Lee. She was a former APEC Director of Sodexo, one of the world's largest cleaning companies. So, we thought that having her on board has a multi pronged, value for us. One was that she was running a business consultancy that included startups. So, she could help us with reviewing our story lining narrative and everything for us. Fundraising and that was one domain other domain was a context being one of the largest cleaning company in the world So she can understand how to structure things to sell the cleaning companies because that's an pre loi era We don't even have any loi set so having her on board and she also actually connected us with a lot of angels And collectively they contributed almost several hundred thousand dollars worth of investment. So an Advisor like that is like Spot on, you know, that's the kind of advisors that can help you to really get past your finish line. We also had a technical advisor, so we basically engaged a PhD in robotics, who at early stages, writing the code together with us, when we couldn't really pay. So, it was expensive on equity wise, but, at that phase of time, to cross that, hurdle, we needed to use that.

Eric:

Money

Rishab:

Because no money, right?

Eric:

Okay.

Rishab:

Advisor is all equity, yeah,

Eric:

yeah. Okay. r and d at Hyper is different from, NRF or like a national, robotics Right. Foundation.

Rishab:

Hybotics is a commercial company. We're not a research institute. So, a lot of things we do, it's under very strict timelines, and he needs to go commercial. So that's the two pressures when it's more research oriented, there's less, focus on the repeatability reliability is more towards groundbreaking innovation. I think hypothetics is like, you still need to do some groundbreaking innovation, but it's about how do you stabilize as quickly as possible, because we need to deliver this thing to a real customer.

Eric:

Yeah, and I guess there is some sort of commercialization in NRF, I think they do.

Rishab:

try but

Eric:

I think it's

Rishab:

I think it's a mandate, so, I mean, for, it's like percentage, right? Hybotics would be like 90 percent focus on commercialization, NRF maybe a different percentage, share But, you know, it's very important from my observation that, you know, Companies like Hybotics and institutions like NRF and Aritian Institutes work close together Because they may have complementary strengths and weaknesses.

Eric:

you mentioned product development as an expedition. Do you wanna talk more about that word expedition or is this not worth talking about

Rishab:

more about that word, expedition, or is this? Sure, sure. Is this not worth talking about? Starting to also start thinking about like, okay, the consultancy and outsourcing has gotten us to a baseline. Now we can actually start taking over our own thing. We may not need the consultancies. So it's a very different shift. So it, but what I realized is we didn't do it this way. My competitors burned five to ten million dollars trying to do it themselves and they couldn't get the product out. We burned one million dollars and we're almost out. So that's the difference.

Eric:

How much run rate do you have?

Rishab:

this is confidential, but Hibotics is fundraising currently. we technically in the runway we do have, you know, because we have pilot revenues coming in, we do have good, healthy runway ahead. But, we are looking for fundraising in order to really commercialize successfully and fast because Without raising our next round, we won't be able to upgrade the hardware to certified level performance and we need a bigger team to support our operations.

Eric:

team to support our operations.

Rishab:

I won't call it temptation. I think we always were committed because we saw the market demand for this, the demand, once you have so much demand and LOIs and sales, that's one thing that my mentor, who actually led one of the largest, public companies in Singapore actually told me is that, sales validation must come before product. You need to go and validate your product, demand. When you have so huge demand, you yourself know that this market can work. It's just, you need some resources to get there. the incentive to pivot is less. The incentive to pivot is when you are unknown, you know, market demand, right? That's when you have incentive to pivot. Here is a case where you know that this thing will work. You just have, we need to build and you don't have resources to build. So you start channeling a lot of your time and resources towards finding the resources. we had some moments where we were like thinking about maybe for survival purposes, it might be easier to do something else. That, that's a very different kind of a thought process. It's not an invalidation

Eric:

it's more of a short term Revenue generation or something along those lines.

Rishab:

So, that's some of the things. I think having those options available to you is good. If I had a chance, I would actually Love to have. I mean, this is something you don't tell VCs you have it internally. I would love to have a service team, you know, that is actually generating some revenue. So I never come under financial pressure and you know, completely independent on VC money. Yeah. So that would be awesome. And you can scale up and down your r and d efforts

Eric:

YC actually, uh, had a podcast where they were saying how the success rates of, deep tech and software startups are actually very similar. Even though you would think that, hardware would be a lot more risky with, huge investments, but I think it's because of what you said about the demand being validated very strongly, the main risk is whether you can build it or not. Whereas for a software startup, it's more of whether what you're making is even worth anything.

Rishab:

You need to ask YC how come they are not investing enough in hardware. Okay. What I also learned as I was going into this hardware journey is that a lot of the traditional hardware companies make huge amount of money and they are not valuation game. You won't even know their names, but companies, they can be making aircraft part one part, and they can be making like 30, 40, 000 profit on one part. And they ship like 1000 parts per month.

Eric:

So there are

Rishab:

are these kind of companies and you never hear about their name. They are run by X, maybe members of like GE, Collins Aerospace, all these kind of companies. Those who leave the company, they go and create companies to supply to these companies. Huge money. And I was like, wow, that's like actual, forget about startups, forget all these things. These guys make actual millions of profit and they can pay themselves that profit a hundred percent if they want to each year, year on year. The evaluation, nobody knows. It's like, you don't care. It's all about churning out the cash. Like, so, it's very interesting. Um,

Eric:

I

Rishab:

mean, it's a different type of business opportunities, but hardware on its own. It's not necessarily, you know, you can make 60, 70, 80 percent profit margins really well. What we are doing is we're productized hardware. Think instead of like, you know, supply chain hardware. Productized hardware is, a bit harder. But, that's when you have to Your price is set by the market's,

Eric:

your price

Rishab:

Yep, yep, yep.

Eric:

there's no equivalence.

Rishab:

looked a bit more scrappy, and now it looks like super futuristic. Do you have anything, any lessons around

Eric:

think the design

Rishab:

I think, design for robotics is that, whoever tells you you need industrial design first is telling you nonsense. You need functionality first, but don't make it look like a metal, like go and paint it. Go and do something basic to make it look pleasant or palatable. Right? I think at least that is good. So I think, it's a good balance. You don't need to look super fancy. people care about functionality most in your video. Definitely make it fancy. You know, it's animated anyways. Make sure it looks good. Looks, feels, touches like a great thing, but, you know, don't spend too much time there design wise, design for functionality first. Okay. But at the same time, Try to make it modular such that you can, quickly switch things out. Think a bit about like, what if this fails? This doesn't, it's invalidated. So you need a change. For example, in our case, it's like seat lifting. It's a very complex process. We had multiple design iterations for it. The ideas were failing. We chose to use aggregated, you know, Designs, for example, we use steamer, but the same equipment can also blow dry. It can also water jet, you know, so this kind of things. Oh yeah. I think something very interesting to share is that for hybridics, we try to minimize reinventing the wheel. Like we are not cleaning equipment manufacturers, like we don't make steamers and things like that. So don't be an Idiot, like I'll use the word idiot and try to build those things yourself at the earliest phase because you don't have time that it's not Something you should be building. You should just go and buy a damn steamer, hack it apart, put it into your system That's literally the fastest way to get a steamer working into your system Yeah, that's exactly and then you hack it apart, right? So we now work very closely with the global cleaning equipment manufacturer because even at commercial scales We think that this is the best way to move forward because one it gives you Dedicated cleaning quality that's already validated for years and is sold, It also gives you access to their customer base because they themselves have an incentive to publicize and market you So it's a multi factor value add, so I think that Those that's why back to the question about should you build everything in house yourself? There's strategic value not to do so

Eric:

In terms of building your team now, you're currently in a Phase 3. What have you learned about hiring from Phase 1 to Phase 3? Right. Hiring

Rishab:

Right, hiring for phase 3, I think, in the first phase, there was no hiring yet. You know, it was more of outsource and consultant hiring. experience was that, consultants, you have good consultants, you have bad consultants. don't put your eggs in one basket. Be ready to fire. fire fast, hire slowly. this is the mantra that I learned. Don't waste time, fire. in phase two we had some hires. We were really nice people were great, motivated people, but we hired them based on personality instead of like a skill sets fit. So, you know, it's very, it's very ironic, right? So when I was looking at my co founder, I had a very clear sets of, you know, things that I was looking for when we were hiring, we were, because of our experience with consultants, we were hiring based on people that have above and beyond motivation. I realized that if the skill set fit is not there, you know, then they have a hard time because they need to pick up things very fast. And they're not founders. That's the difference. You cannot put employees on the same level of expectation as founders. That's my learning lesson. They are not the same. It's just different.

Eric:

different.

Rishab:

And so the thing is that, as founders, you need to burn the midnight oil. You need to stay overnight, do whatever needs to be done to pick up the skill sets, you better do it. And even then, like if you have someone who has a very big gap, it's going to take forever to catch up. I think this is a learning for me. My original philosophy was, I was focused on individuals and the character, rather than skill sets. I believed that everybody can learn everything. I've been proven wrong. I don't believe that anymore. I think character alone is not enough. Character is very important, for sure, but you need both. Like, now it's just both. You're doing something

Eric:

a

Rishab:

and difficult. in robotics, I'm guessing your salaries are pretty

Eric:

to let him go. Yeah, I did.

Rishab:

qualified people. Fire fast, hire slowly. That's why consultants, you know, agencies are good because you pay based on success. If they don't deliver, they don't get paid. If you hire wrong people, you're gonna be paying salaries and you don't get delivery. So that's why I say fire fast. Is success based agencies, was that part of how you outsource things? Yes, yes. Yeah, so you basically give a milestone. We also had bad experience. We basically went to Vietnam. We engaged a hardware company there. It was a terrible experience because we learned out that what they promised us, like they have 10 people of engineers, you know, PhDs and all that kind of thing go there. They're all interns working on the project. then they are PhD, all these guys are all remote, you know, from different countries trying to look, tap in. The experience was, the engineering quality was utter rubbish. So bad that like, essentially it, we had a terminate contract. So that's where contractually doing things is very important. We had contractual protections, every single thing we went through lawyers, we insisted on going to a lawyer, making sure everything is contractual. So you see, whenever you start a relationship, it's always honeymoon, right? But it's when things don't go well, you need the way to divorce nicely and make sure you get alimony. So I think for us, we had to terminate contract without having to pay for, you know, non deliverables from the contractor. So I think that was not easy because the contractor also feels like, they did their best, but incompetency is something you cannot fight. Incompetency is something you must just cut. That's what I learned.

Eric:

I learned. I a lot of it now is about reliability. A lot of issues we

Rishab:

think a lot of it now is about repeatability and reliability. A lot of our issues we face is no longer functionality. We can clean, you know, we have demonstrator cleaning. You saw the videos, they are real, they are not orchestrated. They are just speed up for the sake of LinkedIn. But they are actually real time videos with no intervention in between. So we can clean, you can see it. It's what you see, it's exactly what you've done. Speed also, we have already addressed most of it now. functionality wise, yes. The problem is, you know, soft failures and hard failures. When soft failures happen, they are still becoming catastrophic. You know, hard failures are also happening too often. So

Eric:

and heart failures.

Rishab:

Hard failure would be like, say, a robot going into a collision, with a wall. Or, for example, there's a lot of mechanical parts. Some of the parts may, have calibration issues, so it cannot pick the tool properly, it may collide into the tool. This kind of little things are very annoying. Sometimes the AI, you know, this is a toilet bowl, it may plan like, this is a toilet bowl, this is offset. So all these kind of things, it's about reliability. And that's something where we face challenges because our team is too small. So when it came to reliability, the team was always stretched thin. So, and we have limited resources. So one of the things we are looking at now is we are actually going to relocate some of the engineering to India. So we are setting up our software. We are going to gradually relocate everything now because Singapore is expensive. Unless we have enough funds to sustain Singapore, we are actually relocating by default now.

Eric:

actually relocating by default now. Deep tech hard tech startup ecosystem. So you mentioned that Singapore is a really tough environment to be building robotics. So what more can be done within Singapore? Well, I thought about this quite hard. I think one of the things I saw, like a lot of our strongest interns coming out from NUS, the first thing they do after they came to NUS, go to Berkeley Masters and then they disappear from Singapore.

Rishab:

So somehow creating enough opportunities for them in Singapore to take on the projects here would be really good

Eric:

They disappear from Singapore?

Rishab:

They get out singaporeans get out of singapore Because they get the good ones get opportunities in the u. s. And this is not a singapore specific problem I even went to india, right? I found out from the companies there the good engineers the moment there are two years of experience in robotics They get pushed by us. So there is this and even went to china, right? Interestingly, I found like from you know, some of the guys from india They're freaking CTO in China for a robotic company, which is like bloody funny. So I see that there is this talent drain towards US and China in general, for robotics. That's a very specific thing that I see. Interestingly, Singapore can also be a talent drainer because, ASAR actually gets a lot of robotic engineers from India, for example. So, but what I realized is that Singapore has a few challenges. One is that, for startup.

Eric:

up,

Rishab:

We usually do not have that many hardware VCs in Singapore, very limited. And, that also means that, the capital that we have, we have to deal with like fresh grads and robotics is something where you need specialized knowledge, which is very deep. So that's why it's called deep tech as well. You'll need people with like maybe five years experience in on average for each domain so they can really contribute to fundamental development. You can do POCs and prototypes with fresh grads, but you cannot do commercial grade projects with fresh grads. That's the thing that I learned from robotics. But you don't have the money to hire at Singapore rates for the commercial grade people, even though they are good. So, it's a catch 22 problem. I also looked into Malaysia. Quality is so so, you know. I would say that the best thing for Singaporean startups is that don't try to outsource in Southeast Asia. There's just not enough talent. Singapore is already the best. You need to look at China and India for robotics. That's how you low cost, and you need the early phases. Once you have money, then you can keep, major RD in Singapore, the good thing is IP is protected. Well here, Singaporeans can be really hardworking. I think, that's, my experience, really hardworking. then they can go extra mile as well.

Eric:

Why does it look like Singapore is trying, or at least trying to position itself as like a robotics hub? I feel like the reality feels quite different, right? You see news about robots for cleaning, for more surveillance, surgery, construction, manufacturing, even the software side of things.

Rishab:

I would say Singapore is a robotics hub, but it's not one that develops robots. I think what Singapore is, is it has the second highest robot adoption per capita in the world. number one is Korea, number two is Singapore, number three is Japan. So Singapore is ahead of Japan in robot adoption per capita. So, we are a very strong robotics hub. We have commercialization of robotics at scale. But it's a tiny market, come on. Like, Singapore, even if you do robots everywhere, it's still freaking tiny. So, that's the reality of it. the challenge we have is that, like if you go to Korea, Korea makes some of the biggest robotic companies in the world. Singapore is starting to look into that space. Lionsport being one of the, you know, inspirations. Harbotics want to be number two. Kabam Robotics. So many great companies coming out. But I think at the scale of like, you know, Korea, the amount of investment, even state backed investment, Doosan Robotics, you know, 300 million IPO, all these kind of things we don't see yet. I think, my personal grudge is that essentially I feel like our institutions, right, they have the best intentions, like, you know, we have our government agencies and stuff. But their own bureaucracy or the pivot or the speed of moving into it is too slow. Hyperbolic has gotten zero dollars of grant till date. Which is funny. We are like, you know, doing the thing that is in the mandate for the government, right? And you know what we realized? It's because of accessibility to some of these resources.

Eric:

It's very slow.

Rishab:

So the model Singapore works in, right, is like left hand, right hand. you have to, let's say you have grants, right, if you're working with like a government agency, then, you know, it kind of channels back in, feeds back into the system, which is the traditional model for Singapore. But this model, right, is very disincentivizing for, Private sector growth because VCs may not come in, the local ecosystem people are already a bit conservative because they haven't been exposed to this kind of like higher risk, higher return, ecosystem. So what I see is that It needs to be driven by government. The government needs to start thinking less about ROI, because you are the government. You can take more risks. You need to start throwing money into, like, potentials and expecting not much returns, and then you will have some successes, and that will actually inspire a generation. I think this is what they need to do. The current approach is still very safe. you get the research institutions, they get IPs generated as your KPIs, and If you're looking at a private startup, that is not a research institution, trying to tap onto this funding is very difficult.

Eric:

misaligned incentives there, to be building the next, world changing robotic startup, in Singapore at least. But, I guess one push I have on Hyportics, maybe shifting gears to competition. Competition is mostly now in the U. S., Israel, and yeah, even Europe, and are there any in Asia? and if not, then shouldn't there be some sort of advantage, you know, building for Asia, in Asia? Differentiating yourself, because if you have no competition in Asia, then, you

Rishab:

okay, my competition is coming up in Singapore. Two more companies are coming up in Singapore. One of them is a public company. That's the robot. The other one is a startup as well, but earlier stages in us. So there's combination coming up that's. cash oriented because like, you know, we kind of spurred the competition yeah, so it's Asian thing Um, I think even in China there are people, companies starting on this thing, I would say that Hybotics, what we are doing is that we are in a leading position right now Resources will mean that we can lead further. I see Asia as a potential medium term market I still have a lot of demand from China, from India, from Japan, Korea but I would say my focus right now is to go into our main market with the U. S. a few reasons one is that I see that for hybotics our team profile makes us much more suitable for the western market reason is because let's say I was a chinese background. I can speak chinese and stuff I'll tap on a chinese market. It's a huge market You can double down on it, but I have a different profile. It makes me more suited for the western market That's kind of like a market strategy so I guess

Eric:

U. S. is kind of the main focus for now, um, and yeah, lots of competitors trying to play catch up. So, in terms of some of the failures that you have experienced or rejections as a founder, how do you deal with some of those? And what helps you to

Rishab:

going? I think, rejection and failure, you got a thick skin as a founder, it becomes like daily dose of rejection and failure. Yeah. Gotta get used to it. I think for me, One is of course you'll be upset, you know, I've had pitch sessions where I until damn nice They are going to sign the dot already, right? Then they say a demo, something mess up and then like you're like Okay, nothing in my control. What can I do? Robot decided to have a mess up and team is all frustrated. You crack down on them. Everybody's unhappy together or you're like How can we bounce back and let's come up with a plan and make sure we can minimize. I cannot guarantee we'll eliminate, but let's minimize. So the next time I bring an investor over, at least we do not have that. It happens a lot. in robotics, especially

Eric:

What were some of the most difficult humps that you had to get through as well?

Rishab:

Difficult humps is like You know, it takes a lot of energy to build like a investor lead. So you really have like one chance, you know, you want to impress them. So if things like, you know, and it's very frustrating sometimes when you actually know your team has done a great work, but when it comes to when it matters, things just mess up. Murphy's law, those are refreshing. So now I think I have also started thinking less existentially. Last time I used to be like, You know, really think existentially for each, you know, major meeting. I think I've started thinking less existentially. That helps to ease of pressure. It's like Well, you know, the investors they come here. They might understand this is an early stage company. So that's like you're trying to rewire yourself to justify a little bit but it's to also manage because what's the worst thing you can do? you basically go into a spiral of crisis mode all the time. It's not sustainable. So I think that's something that I learned. second is that, You do need to create some crisis sometimes as a founder, right? You can use external, you can use internal. Internal is like, I want it by this time. External can be like, you take on certain commitments which force a team to work together to deliver. So that speeds things up. So these are some of the things I learned, but It's a tough management. Yeah, I'm still learning. I'm not super good at it yet.

Eric:

a, it's a tough management. I'm still learning, I'm not super good at it yet. Well, I think,

Rishab:

Well, I think every accelerator has a different mandate, so there are different strengths. GRIP was very deep tech in nature. The rest were a bit more, like Plug Play was actually for market entry to the US. So we did in San Francisco Plug Play.

Eric:

That's a six month thing, is it?

Rishab:

isn't it?

Eric:

months. You fly in and out?

Rishab:

It was a two week flying period. So it was designed for international companies going to the U. S. So, pitching in Silicon Valley instead of being the one watching the pitches, that's a huge change. here. I'm getting more comfortable with it, in a very foreign environment. We are also going through procurement accelerators like Resodexo and even Rome Airport, for example. Those are really exciting for us because that is really focused and targeted, some of them. So Rome Airport's accelerator is towards commercialization for the airport itself. So we do the pilots, they pay for the pilots. And then if we like it, they are going to buy the robots. So that's it. amazing roadmap for us. this is all the things we really like and we are hoping that we can successfully, demonstrate those things so each accelerator is a bit different mandate. I would say that some are more External focus on my internal focus internal focus about fixing your internal issues to get shit done and external ones about How do you sell to external to raise capital or get clients?

Eric:

now moving on to fundraising and cash management, walk me through your cash management stuff for building a hard tech startup?

Rishab:

Well, I think cash management is super duper important. We actually do forecasting. I actually have my CFO to help me. Create a template of how do you forecasting. So all our project expenses, we review it once a month, at least on a daily basis, every single expense that goes through, someone needs to fill the form, that essentially is a Google form. And then automatically adds to my Excel sheet and basically every single day, or at least maybe with two days or three days of max offset, I have full visibility on the breakdown of what kind of expense and, this gives me a lot of control. It lets me know when I'm going to run out of money. It lets me know, like, you know, where the expenses are getting shot up. And as you start putting in more processors and your estimation gets better, you start getting closer and closer between forecast and real. I think that's a huge benefit because, okay, one thing is you can fundraise all you want. if you can stretch a dollar longer, you actually have a longer runway. So that's the kind of things that forecasting and cash flow management helps.

Eric:

learnings on fundraising in terms of, structuring, debt, grants, equity. What kind of funding structures do you find most helpful for,

Rishab:

kind of funding structure do you find most helpful for deep tech projects? We already have very strong processes set in place to use those dollars wisely because you may have companies that may spend two, three million dollars, right? Because they had such a long runway that they were invested in the wrong thing faster. Because when you have less money, what happens is that it makes you cut. Your non performing assets fast. It makes you fire the person faster that is not performing. Makes you cut out the contractor faster that's not performing. It makes you focus on doubling down on more clients so you can get more investment. So all these things, I think it can be a blessing in disguise having not enough money. That's how I would put it.

Eric:

a tension because on one hand you want to be able to raise to have enough runway But on the other hand if you have too much then it makes you a bit complacent as well Yeah,

Rishab:

think the time pressure, of money running out can be a huge incentive. you

Eric:

Talked about working with debt, so I'm guessing you also took on some debt. How did that fuel your growth?

Rishab:

I think debt is, important because, you know, one is you don't lose equity, especially with hardware. A lot of it is like, you know, it's a working cashflow, meaning you need debt if you pay and then you get paid back and you make your money plus you're covering the debt, right? So if you structure it well, debt can be very powerful instrument. Why? Because, the need to repay can force you to focus on revenue. Second, debt is cheaper than equity. I think this is a common, you know, powerless in the startup world. The key thing about depth is, I would say, don't take it too early. I think hybridics is taking slightly early than what we would normally like to. Reason is because when you are having active cashflow, meaning like recurring in and out, right? Then depth is very clear. You know what to take depth. But if you're taking it for like R& D, generally I prefer equity for that phase. So you start small, you know, SME working capital loans in Singapore are really good. They have 70 percent risk share by the banks and enterprise Singapore. So let's say worst case scenario, your company closes out. You only really have to pay 30 percent of your debt amount. So, that's a very good opportunity to start taking debt from these platforms. They are rigorous. It's not easy to get this debt because they make sure that you have certain ways of payback. But, you gotta make sure that, you know, you start small. And test waters. You get comfortable how to manage that. Have your very strong cash flow management and payback mechanism. And I think you'll be fine.

Eric:

Moving on to AI and how it's going to change the world. We're in the 4th Industrial Revolution. Do you think robots are going to take over the world?

Rishab:

think robots will progressively increase their visibility in the world, for sure.

Eric:

Take over, I think they're far away.

Rishab:

I mean, for all that's worth, every single robotic companies I'm talking to that are doing humanoid robots telling me it's all nonsense right now. I mean, it's not nonsense, but it's getting at least five to 10 years

Eric:

for X and LinkedIn right now.

Rishab:

like even Tesla, you know, their latest launch video, they basically had robots going around doing weighter, 90 percent of it was actually tele operated by a human. that's an important showcase to show the potential. That's what I meant by in hardware and deep tech, even Tesla, they promise self driving cars so many years on years, it requires time. And sometimes it's a fog of war, which I call in startup. You do not know the complexity. You can make estimation and all your estimation can go haywire out of the wind, which is the risk, because for VCs, that's the risk that they want to de risk on. Hybrids is special because we. Really focus on product development through partners We have managed to de risk very quickly compared to other companies. We have a relatively stable hardware, stable software coming up, and this was just done with very little burn.

Eric:

So I guess you think robots are also overhyped, at least in the current timescale.

Rishab:

current timescale. Do you think there will be a human in the loop

Eric:

Do you think there'll be a human in the loop in the long run?

Rishab:

I think in the long run, no. I think it will be really fully autonomous, because the AI capabilities are also improving. The use cases will be, having bigger data sets, so the robot will just basically like a chat GPT, right? You can have multiple use cases and the robot can perform them autonomously, because it's just like different packages. The more packages you build up over time, it can handle more use cases and become general purpose.

Eric:

least for robotic applications.

Rishab:

I think that's where Hybotics also comes in because, we see that we are not really threatened by humanoid robots because technically they come in and why you need a toilet cleaning specific robot, right? But how we see is we are building application layers, application intelligence layers for different use cases, starting with toilet cleaning, of course. if you have a humanoid robot, you have a hardware, you have general control mechanism. You still need somebody to tell you who, who basically creates an application layer of how the robot can perform for say, like toilet cleaning. Or how it performs for say, like, you know, landscaping. So these are application layers that Hypotix will focus on. And I think

Eric:

I think Gen AI in robotics

Rishab:

Well, I think, Gen AI in robotics is, you know, it helps with autonomy for setup and onboarding. I think that's very relevant. So for robotics, that would mean like automatically generating the AI model for cleaning, you know, right? when you talk about human and loop, I think it's a very interesting startup example I have. One of my friends, he owns a company where they literally have dumb robots. Robots that are not intelligent. Means they have arm and, can move. But they're tele operated fully and what happened is he's solving a very interesting real problem, in America He's doing agriculture harvesting Where all these robots are being operated from India with low cost labor

Eric:

Mm.

Rishab:

So the idea the problem there is labor cost, right? But the technology is not great enough You just got low cost labor and the thing is it's not time rush You can they can slowly do can have ten people working on it. The net cost is still lower than Harvesting the u. s So it's very much like a

Eric:

think it's going to come out. If

Rishab:

look at the progress of humanity, most of us used to be farmers and we came

Eric:

hype about it See, there is

Rishab:

that is very labor intensive will start getting eliminated. Labor intensive and repetitive, there's two main things. I don't think we're at like general purpose niche application, robotics yet. But repetitive and, labor intensive things can be relatively, in the medium term, eliminated

Eric:

give you one example. So when we are doing

Rishab:

as a human species, would there be more interesting jobs that come out? There you have to replace a human, but at the same time, there's a shortfall, which is increasing, right? In terms of labor, we are plugging in the gap and then we are filling it up gradually. The second thing is that essentially, we also upgrading jobs. So a human cleaner is now becoming a robot hygiene supervisor, right? he's actually learning new skills on how to manage robots. He's, learning how to maintain robots. How do you process the information from robots? All these things. So new jobs are created. Now, you may argue that the ratio of the jobs may be like this. Now it's like you have 10 lower paying jobs, but now you have maybe 3 higher paying jobs instead. There is a consequence, but the thing is that, generally if you look at most of the countries, where we are focusing on with robotics, are actually really high cost labor nations, where the population is shrinking. So this is actually quite in line with the whole demographic change. But if you look at countries where there's high population growth, then there's high impact. And I think one of the areas I see in India, for example, they have huge manufacturing automation. All the factories are fully robotified. And there I see like, if they want to be the next China, for example, the jobs will just be automated. So the labor advantage just doesn't come. And even America may be able to do manufacturing now.

Eric:

and I guess it's a, as a country of high population group, you also want to move the economy towards more higher paying jobs and more innovation. developments you're most excited about

Rishab:

So, you know, interesting, even though I'm in this space, I only get to pick up anecdotes these days, but I think what NVIDIA is doing is amazing. I really like what they're doing. I think the integration of LLMs with robots would be very interesting to see, you know. You're kind of giving the general purpose abilities to a robot. I don't think it's easy at all, but, I want to see how repeatable and reliable those are.

Eric:

That would be very interesting to

Rishab:

I think, personally what helped me most is, I think, taking time out for myself. I think that's very important.

Eric:

important.

Rishab:

What I do, I got addicted to chess. I'm not great at it. I'm frustrated when I play it. But I got addicted to chess. Enjoy the frustration. Enjoy the frustration. It's very interesting. I didn't imagine I'd be freaking playing chess, like, you know, every single waking moment when I'm not doing work.

Eric:

chess a lot.

Rishab:

And, um, yeah, I think, for me, I was also trying to sustain a healthier lifestyle, like, going to the gym and runs. partial success.

Eric:

actually slipped down a lot since I saw you.

Rishab:

Bro, I slimmed down to almost 20 kgs minus and then I gained back again. bad. This is a bad case. I was, I would say slimmer than you. you missed it. That was last year.

Eric:

I'll catch it again

Rishab:

So anyway, so the thing is like going to the gym having like some personal success I think one of the things I learned is that if you are having like, you know Rejections and failures everywhere back to that question about rejections and failures. You need to have some meaning personal success, right? So let's say you go to the gym and the things you can control you go and do your normal weight set Okay, wow, I achieved something today. I think that can happen And that can transform your business as well because then you're from that spiral of going into negativity. You go like, okay, not so bad Maybe you get the neutrality may not be positive, but you get neutrality then you look at things more calmly and you can respond better

Eric:

Yeah, I think that's the thing about, like, early stage fondness, which is why I also really appreciate you coming on.

Rishab:

I think it's highs and lows. It's like when you look at it objectively, you sometimes realize that some of my friends who remind me that look, if you go out in the workforce right now, you have gone through so many things, you have done hiring before you have done, project management, you have built teams, you have learned the technicalities of you've done technical sales. So there's so many things I learned. one of the things, especially for undergrad founders who came out straight out of university is that you do not actually realize your net worth or in terms of your value. I think there's a lot of value being created and someone will see the value. And so, you know, for us sometimes to step back and look at our own value generation, what we have done is very important. What's the decision making process that helped you? What do you want to achieve? Like, let's say in an earlier phase, right? Why are we doing this? We are doing this because we want to demonstrate enough to get enough resources to build the next stage. So that's a very clear difference. If you are trying at that stage to try to build the actual thing, you cannot, then you optimize for that. So for me, it's a very logical decision making process when it comes to hiring and everything. It's like, why did I hire this person? What is the value I wanted from this? Is it? Taking away time that I have to spend. If it's not happening, then he's not serving his purpose of being hired.

Eric:

Any advice you'd offer to aspiring founders who want to innovate in the robotics space?

Rishab:

open your horizons a little bit, robotics can have very high grade value outside of Singapore because the markets are bigger and the impact is much larger. Singapore is a test bed market at best, so, travel a little bit. For robotics, don't stay in Singapore alone. you can use Singapore to get things started, but before you even get things started, you should go and understand some of the problems worth solving outside because that's the real market.

Eric:

I think, one is that,

Rishab:

one is that, I was a very, what do you call it? Non confrontational person. Not usually get into confrontation. But I think for me, the learning is that I need to stand my ground sometimes. So I think standing your ground is something, whether it's with suppliers, with internal team, sometimes. So it's a confidence that you have to build up, including of upsetting people, because you cannot be, pleasing everyone. So building that, confidence or conviction, like, okay, this one I really have to step in and take it or leave it like that. And then you're the boss, so you really will implement it. So that conviction, took a while because that was kind of needed in order to make certain things happen successfully in time. But you also don't want to go overboard in that direction, right? Then you become like someone where you are. close off to the years of everything else. So I think this conviction is, it's a tricky one. there's no good answer to this, but I would say that it's like, when do you know that you've got to ignore the whole world and just go with your gut? it's a tricky one. And for me, I was never doing that because I told you I'm very logical, right? It's always taking inputs and very logic driven, but, learning to trust yourself and knowing when to step in. I think that's a transformation. It's a very difficult one. Still. I have the tendency to not trust my own gut, I think I am improving, and I think that's a great transformation for me. Very difficult one for me.

Eric:

What's the last reflection question what's the favourite part of your job?

Rishab:

I think my favorite part of my job, on a lighter note, is that actually, it's a real favorite. Is that I don't usually have to set up my alarm clock. I tend to shift all my meetings to second half of the day.

Eric:

You work better at night,

Rishab:

right? I work better at

Eric:

You're always up at night.

Rishab:

So I think for me, that helps because it's like a normal 9 to 5 job, waking up and to reach office at 9 a. m. will kill me. my productivity cycle is better at night. my team may have a different schedule because they are still in a nine to five, but for me personally You know, it makes it very well suited for the role I'm doing that I usually Can sleep in the morning where I'm actually doing most of the work at night and everything I think that helps me because most of my work is also international. So, and it fits just nice into My body's preference. So I think what I like about the job is really that you know it's like I'm just out of university. This is my real world learning. This is my real university. I think personally It's just deep diving into every single crap that you can get, you know, from the business. And you learn how to overcome, make decisions to solve problems, one problem after another. I think that's what I would say, like, I aspire to be as a CEO. Right? Yeah. That's really exciting.

Eric:

there's this book called The Culture Map by

Rishab:

there's this book called The culture Map by Eric Mayer. I think that's really interesting. I'm reading this book called Start With a y, Simon Sinek. Yeah, Simon Sinek. then there's another book, there's a FBN negotiators book.

Eric:

Never split the difference.

Rishab:

Never Split a Difference. I think these are some of the really good ones.

Eric:

what's the film or show you enjoy?

Rishab:

The Founder, the McDonald's Founder movie. I think that's really nice. I love it. I like those movies where it's like, the sports movies, right? Where they run dog and then they go and struggle against the odds to go and win. I like those kind. a completely different genre. I love, You know, those, White House, the series, like, Designated Survivor, The Diplomat, this kind, because, I just like that kind of, problem solving. Political shows.

Eric:

Any podcast you listen to?

Rishab:

Yeah, the Economics Explained. It's something I listen to every single day. I think I love it. I also have a subscription with The Economist. Some of them is more business related, but some of it is like, The Drum Tower is one of the series from The Economist, which is about the history of China and events happening in China. Very interesting for me because as a non Chinese, you know, kind of gives me some of the insights into the history of China.

Eric:

for me.

Rishab:

than me? So what was your

Eric:

episode, so

Rishab:

Favourite meal? So, I know this changes from season to season, right? But, right now my favourite meal has been, There's this Indian restaurant called Kharoos at, Bukit Timah. So, for me, their set meal is, like, very satisfying. before that I was eating salad every day, so, you know, it's, it was a bit of a shift,

Eric:

I don't think that was your favourite meal,

Rishab:

is it? So, but

Eric:

every day.

Rishab:

interestingly, I've gotten a bit of a disdain for pizzas recently because I went to Rome, and I was surprised I don't like Italian pizzas in Italy. Because they're too bland. Like, seriously, they need to put spices, man. I can't. I was crying. Chili oil!

Eric:

spices, man.

Rishab:

They don't, it's just not the same thing, man. It's not the same thing. You need our, pepper, you need our chili pepper and everything. If not, it's not

Eric:

pepper, you need our chili pepper and everything. But it's not nice. Um, I don't actually

Rishab:

I'm just guessing at this point. I would say maybe my, maybe my outward projection would be like, everything is under control and everything is going all right. But internally, you know, man, it's a freaking crisis. So I think that's something that may get wrong about me. Everybody thinks like, Oh, everything looking good, but that's effort to make it look good.

Eric:

Sounds like what you have to do as a tech leader. So if you weren't running businesses, what kind of job do you see yourself in?

Rishab:

I'll be running a business, I'll be running my dad's business, so yeah.

Eric:

my dad's business. Okay. Give me a snapshot of an ordinary moment that brings you joy.

Rishab:

eating carrots was fun, that's a thing that I like, um, ordinary

Eric:

there!

Rishab:

I think what gives me joy is like, When you wake up and then you check the weight right, it actually dropped from the previous day.

Eric:

think,

Rishab:

That will give me joy. I think, lately, I think to be very frank is a very good question to ask. In fact, this might be the most difficult question because I think going through the startup, phase right, the one thing I did notice, especially since I've been doing since university is that, I have been very engrossed, you know, in the startup. I think taking a step back out of it, that's, It's almost confusing. So, it, it's something that like, you know, those kind of like joy moments, like when you're free and easy, right? Don't really have a headache to manage. They do happen, but I don't recognize them. So that's the thing that has happened. That's why when you ask me, I can't even remember. I'm pretty sure it happens, right, on a day

Eric:

day, maybe.

Rishab:

But the truth is that it's quite rigorous. You wake up, you know, you are on to getting all the things done for the day, and the next day, and the next day. So, I think going to the face when you're not firefighting anymore is very important. And, you know, a lot of people say that you should, you know, start with everything, but the reality is that as a founder, you are in the heat of the moment. You cannot just quit in the heat of the moment to take like a two week break. It doesn't happen. But, you need to get out of that phase where you can like, you know, last time, maybe you use your firefighting with like maybe a little, you know, cup of water, but you need to start having a fire engines and other teams around you to handle things. I think once you get there, you will have the peace of mind to move things, you know, with more time for yourself. Can take a holiday, can go and like, spend more time with your friends. I think my time with my friends has decreased a lot, um, because there's just absolutely no time. Um, usually I catch up over lunch or meals with them, but it's always rush. So it's not even fun anymore. Like it's almost like a chore. That's the truth. So for a friend who is in a different mental state, it's like, oh yeah, it's nice to catch up. But to me, you may even be like, oh my God, I need to meet this person Sometimes you just want to eat lunch alone. That's the truth of it. So, I don't know, it's a very difficult question, how do you find joy? Um, I think I need, what would really give me joy is like, I can get out of this firefighting phase to a phase where I can, ah, right. I think I'm grateful for my dad. I think, um, I think, you know, I'll be very honest with you, if my dad didn't chip in with funds at the early stages and unwavering support, Hyperbolic wouldn't be able to move through. I think, the local ecosystem is not strong enough without self funding to move things at an early stage.

Eric:

at an early

Rishab:

think, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I think that's a good platform. I can, you can share my email. I think that's more than happy to do so. It's rishabh at hypbotics. tech. That's literally the email. but yeah, I think, you can email me. I don't really respond on Instagram and Facebook because I am not so active there. But these two are the most important ones. And yeah, if you need specific advice on if you're trying to do a startup, I'm more than happy to, hop on a call to share some of my insights and see if I can help you of any help. I'm more than happy to do so while I can, right?

Eric:

Well, likewise. so much,

Rishab:

Oh, likewise. Thank you so much, Eric. Appreciate it, man.

Thanks so much for listening to the soil and scale podcast. I'm your host, Eric tine. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to subscribe. Like leave a comment follow it in your favorite podcasting app leave a review and share it with your friends. You can also join our WhatsApp group where you can provide me a feedback and chat with like minded individuals. Or subscribe to my sub stack, where I post about business and entrepreneurship. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. And see you on our next one.