Rethinking Baxter: How Branding and Culture Changed the Robotics Industry

A lot of people remember the robot. Fewer remember how a word –  cobot – quietly rewired an industry. We bring together former Rethink Robotics colleagues, Ann Whittaker, Sue Sokoloski, and Mandy Dwight, to unpack the real story behind Baxter’s influence: the language that made new tech feel safe, the culture that rewarded questions over ego, and the bold moments when transparency mattered.

This episode discusses the breakthrough of collaborative robots – someone named the space, taught the buyer, and showed the work. Early SEO wins on “cobot,” a disciplined ICP, and relentless field videos turned curiosity into a new category. We also own the hard parts: precision gaps in manufacturing, rushed expansions, and leadership lessons about how fast culture can fracture if you don’t protect it.

If you care about robotics, branding and storytelling, or building teams that ship under pressure, this one’s for you. The conversation moves where most tech stories don’t: into people and the story behind a category defining product.

Transcript

Reunion And Why Baxter Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hi everyone, I'm Mandy Dwight, uh founder of Dwight and Company, also host of this podcast that you're watching/slash listening to, Ross Goss.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

This is a really exciting episode. Um, we don't usually have um a celebratory beverage on the show, but here I am joined by two of my fantastic former colleagues, Sue Sakolowski, who is now a robotics consultant uh for marketing in the space, uh Ann Whitaker, who is um uh um an advisor to Teradar and has been an advisor to many other companies. Um, you know, how we know each other. Uh we're back we're way back from Rethink Robotics. So we have known each other for over decades. Um what these ladies will not tell you is that these are my go-to people uh for mentors. So I call them all the time. So we we are always in touch. They're friends, mentors, uh, industry colleagues. Drinking buddies. Drinking buddies. Oftentimes we we love food, we love going out. We'll probably go down to row 34 right after this. Um but but thank you so much for joining me today for this podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Such a treat, Mandy. Such a treat.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Oh, thanks for being here. And we also have DOS, which is uh uh Dose Whitaker here. Uh Ann's Anne's dog has has joined for the day. So so she's here and um she's she's not gonna pass up a good time to hang up. She's a little controlling.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

She's a good girl.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

You're such a good girl. So, you know, I I had this idea to call you guys because I was reading um LinkedIn, you know, Aaron Prater, you know, industry colleague that I really respect. I was reading something that he put out recently, and you know, it was an article about the 10 most important robots that really kind of changed everything in the space. And number seven on that list was our good old friend Baxter. And, you know, the in that list, I mean, if you if go to Aaron's uh web webpage and take a look at that on his LinkedIn, but there's a lot of impressive robots on that. So, you know, you have Asimo by Honda, you had Roomba, um iRobot, who who else is on that list?

SPEAKER_05 2:09

Oh god.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

The the Unimate was on that list. Um like so many. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:15

I'm trying to think of one that I wrote from the Do we have anyone from Boston Dynamics?

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Yes. Kiva was on there. Kiva. Um Boston Dynamics, the spot was on there. Absolutely. But but honestly, like, you know, it it was an interesting list because, you know, having been there at Rethink, you know, there's a moment of pride, you know. Rethink, you know, it's in the news again this week because the second iteration of Rethink didn't make it again. Um Yeah, so so you know, but but we were there and we lived the the original. And I I would say I lived the original, but you guys really you lived the original, original. You live the original. So I thought it was good to to get in in a room and just kind of you know chat it out about this. Um, you know, Aaron pointed out that you know the term cobalt and collaborative robot, that was really, you know, the first of its kind. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Baxter was the first manufactured humanoid robot.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Yeah, and and I agree with that too, because humanoids are now absolutely full circle in the news.

Defining Cobots And Firsts Claimed

SPEAKER_05 3:12

And we were the first ones to actually use those two collaborative robots and cobots in our marketing on our website, even though others took credit for it. One day, probably in a fit of anger, I did a bunch of research and with the Wayback Machine and looked at a ton of websites. We led the way by at least a year in putting that message out there and getting people to start talking about cobots and collaborative robots. So it it really was it really was groundbreaking. It really was.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

No, I I agree with that. Because, you know, and we're gonna dig into today. Like, you know, a lot of articles about, you know, Baxter, Sawyer, Rethink Robotics will talk about, you know, the collaborative robot and the the joints and things like that in the robot. We're gonna talk about like the marketing and and culture story because that's the things that we don't talk about. And you know, as we dig into marketing, I'm gonna go back to the the fact that if you know what a cobot is or a collaborative robot, it might be because of Sue sitting right here. So so we're gonna dig into that a little bit a little bit later. Um but you're right. I mean, that's the story that's never told is the marketing, the culture that was rethink, and those are the things that I I think it's important that people hear those stories.

SPEAKER_05 4:24

Well, and it's it's hard to uh stake your claim on that when people say, Yeah, but you went under. You're right. We did because we made a bunch of mistakes. Yeah. But along the way, we broke ground not once, not twice, but a dozen times for a dozen different reasons, and it really was very bleeding edge. We didn't end up succeeding, which many startups don't, but but we did a lot of things that nobody else had done.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Yeah, no, I agree. And even this week I was looking at LinkedIn and I saw um, I think it's Julian uh Coonaghan from um Schematic Ventures said something about, you know, rethink is out of business yet again. Um, but there were so many lessons that were learned on like marketing and what to do, what not to do. You know, why hasn't anybody acquired that company just for that reason? To take those brains that really built that marketing, you know, brought the best minds together to work together. Why did nobody scoop that up?

SPEAKER_05 5:19

They tried. It didn't work.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's that's another story. So digging into it, you know, you know, there are a lot of things that are legacy, right? And you know, I go uh Katie and I, Katie's hiding behind the camera. Hi, Katie. So we're going to PAC Expo next week, right? God help you. You don't want to go?

SPEAKER_05 5:40

No.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

So so um, you know, going to PAC Expo, we will probably run into no less than 10 to 20 colleagues that we used to work. Right. You know. And uh like I think about like, you know, Ann, you were very early. You know, um, you put together this team of like superheroes and built kind of that early culture because you know, a robotics company, there's the technology, and then there's the people that are actually building and doing and executing on that. And the people, Ann, that was all you.

Marketing And Culture Overlooked

SPEAKER_03 6:17

The people were themselves, and that was just you know, making room for so many different kinds of intelligence. You know, in the early days, um, we had a lot of Rod fanboys, um, kids from MIT who wanted to come work for Rodney Brooks because he was Rodney Brooks, and he's you know, admittedly brilliant. Yeah, and uh what a legacy. Yeah, um, but creating a a culture, a community requires so many different kinds of talents and um ways of being and creating and knowing, and it's just so choosing people not only for their incredible intelligence and whatever facilities they bring with them that are necessary to getting done what we want to get done, but it literally creating a community of people who are excited to learn from one another, um, who are all on a single mission. We're all trying to build this robot and get it out there in the world. And that's the thing, of course, the thing that jazzes engineers the most is seeing their designs, you know, out in the wild. Come to life. Um yeah. And um, but it takes so many different kinds of intelligences um and so many different educational backgrounds, and I kind of cringe when I see companies say, Well, we have the world class, this and that. Um, I think you use the world world class, and so I'm not denigrating that, but what does that really mean? Because what does that really mean in a lot of especially in this area of the kind of um education institutions we have and the VCs and whatever it's there's a lot of snobbery around where you go to school, you know, and God, it's like what it is is really bringing in people who want to make something happen, and they want to do it from learning and being with other people who want to make this thing happen and not be the smartest person in the room, not be the one who's credited with this or that. And I don't know, it's like an our our as we all see in our world today, tribalism and getting into a room with only people who think like you is what's killing us. Yeah, and so I think all of us want to be in community, we all want to be around other people, we want to create stuff with other people. That's what's really fun. And I think that that energy suffused to who we were at Rethink, and it's just so cool because everyone had just put so much fun together, frustrations together, and it really really welded people together. And was as we know, so many of our colleagues are all working together in other places or just the relationships that were made and sustained and are kind of moving on into the future. And I think of I think of so many different examples of like someone who had never anything to do with robotics, but wow, he had like this real fire. We brought him in as a product manager, and now this guy's starting his own goddamn robotics company. I mean, so many people got into robotics because of rethink. Yeah, I agree. And there's so many different disciplines that can fuel that fire to go to do do that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

So yeah, no, and and you know, you you are a co-founder, so you were there early, early days.

SPEAKER_03 9:57

I was employee number two.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

And you you were you had a hat a minute ago that said Heartland Robotics on it. Yes, where did I put it? We'll find that. We'll find it. Oh, it's over on the chair there. I'll put it on later. Oh no, don't mess up your hair with the headphones. Well, that's that's really but but you know, people don't know that was Rethink Robotics.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Yes, our first name was Heartlane Robotics. I came up with it. Um, it was deemed too limiting as we grew. Um my ego says no. But yes, we were originally Heartlane Robotics.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Yes. That's way back. And that was that was a team of how many?

Building Teams Beyond Pedigree

SPEAKER_03 10:35

That was 2008. Wow. Yeah. 2008 was when we incorporated. And um, you know, we originally started out, I don't know, we were five, then we were ten, then we were fifteen. Wow. Um I said early days, it was mostly engineers from MIT. Yeah. And uh some really interesting people who were part of that early team who then went on to be founders and co-founders of other companies. Some of our earliest people were like uh Natan Linder of Tulip and and Form Labs fame, um Clara Vu, who then went on to to um work with Patrick Sol Bovaro, who was also involved with us early on. Um and so it was a lot of uh a lot of really interesting talent early on, and then it just kind of kept blossoming and expanding, and it was it was so fun to it was so fun to see it all expand and grow and see everyone just flourish.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Yeah, and how I mean it sounds well, I know that there were amazing people there, right? Because you know, I I was there for a couple years as well. Um, how do you attract those people?

SPEAKER_05 11:40

I was gonna ask that too.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Like how do you how do you get them? As I said early on, of course, it was a draw of Rodney. Yeah, because the early people were engineers who knew of Rodney and his incredible legacy as a roboticist. And then it I think we kind of just we did a lot, we did it a pretty equal um distribution of um both hiring you know from within our network um and of course some recruiting. Um but I think that as we grew, what attracted other people really was what they heard, how excited the people who were already there. That is very true. And they wanted to be a part of that. And for me, you know, interviewing because I picked every single person who came in there just about no, I'm not gonna say everybody. Yeah. Um don't take credit for some people. Yeah, no. But really wanting to see people who just wanted to engage and who had, you know, and of course with engineers. Engineers are you know tough, you know, not always the most open. Quirky. Quirky, I believe, is the word you're looking for. Yeah. Um but even in someone with that very kind of linear mind is it that is just so brilliant. I wish I had the the ability to think like an engineer. But it find places where they go, yeah, but I want to tap into this part of my humanity. It is with people like really, I mean, I think all of us just want to be seen and recognized and appreciated. You know, there are people that that doesn't matter for there's very few people who don't want to be seen and recognized and given a platform to shine. Um but I do think that it was a lot of people knowing what was going on, knowing some of their friends who had joined, and then it was just sort of a groundswell. And then yes, we had to do also do some recruiting, getting some people, you know, yeah. I mean, and then weren't looking for jobs, but and then you scaled it. Yep. So the most people I think we got up to as many as 140 people. Oh my god, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Yeah, we did and internationally as well. Yes, that's right. Yep. Well, I'm how do you how do you go from this tight-knit team? And and I think you do a lot of advising on this now because you still work with with uh high-tech teams on you know, culture and people and things like that and supporting them. I mean, how do you scale something? You have this really great team that is fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

And it's difficult because uh company that I'm working with now, it's there's a lot of people are really upset because they're losing what was early on, where everyone had a hand in, and it's like, well, wait, we're losing that. You're morphing it. You're not losing it. You're morphing it exactly. And as a company grows, those people who are so tied to how it was aren't gonna they drop off anyways, they're not gonna be part of what's new. The culture really is defined by founders, by mom and mom, dad and dad, mom and dad. It's a family system, really, and people are going to respond to the health of the people quote at the top. And I hate to say, I hate to use those words, but it is there we we are uh we are made we are made to kind of uh honor a hierarchy. That's just kind of in our our DNA. Um when you see people uh acting in a way that's respectful, listening, inclusive, that that permeates it. So those things, those key ways of being a human and engaging other humans, that that scales. Yes, do you lose some of the attributes of an early start? Yeah, but everything is we things all we know, things are always changing. And people who can go along with changes can go along with those changes when they have a trust that the container for those changes is healthy and it's gonna bring them along.

SPEAKER_05 15:57

The no assholes policy helped that too.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

We weren't able to keep them all up. No, I you never you never can.

SPEAKER_05 16:05

But it was but everybody knew that policy, everybody wanted that policy, everybody lived that policy. So everybody was always on the watch for let's make sure.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:17

Let's make sure.

Heartland Origins And Early Talent

SPEAKER_02 16:18

And you know, before that we started rolling, you know, we we were kind of talking about rethink in the office and things like that. And and Sue, you made a comment like, you know, everything was just kind of open, like open door policy.

SPEAKER_05 16:31

You could go to anyone, I you know, you could go, you could knock on Rod's door and say, listen, I I want to ask you something. No one was more engaging than Rod. I mean, he truly loved to be asked, he was He's a professor at heart. Just gonna say, he's a professor to teach people at every level, right? And if he was asked something, it was like you were giving him a gift. Yeah. He was gonna be able to teach you something. That's a fairly unique quality.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

That is unique.

SPEAKER_05 16:59

And he a personif I'll never forget one time we had a we had a media guy in who was oh, I'm sorry, but he was dumb as a stump.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

That could happen.

SPEAKER_05 17:10

And I was I was like sweating and losing my mind because he was asking Rod really not very good questions. And Rod took me aside and goes, You really need to calm down.

unknown 17:23

And I'm like, What?

SPEAKER_05 17:25

I got this, he goes, I can teach him. I'm like, okay. Who does that? Yeah, right? Most bosses would be like, Yeah, don't ever let that guy. Nope. Nope. This was like, I got this, so no problem. That's awesome. We can do this. I'm like, okay, here we go. And it was like two hours later, and he's still explaining the most simple simplistic thing about the robot, but okay. It was his choice.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:49

And he did have, everybody had, come sit down, ask me a question. And they loved it. I loved it too. Yeah. Come sit down, ask me. And people would, they'd come in. Why are we doing fill in the blank? It doesn't matter for marketing. And I'd be happy to go through it with them. Yeah. And they walked away thinking, I'm more a part of this now.

SPEAKER_03 18:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:08

I'm I'm I'm in the family. I'm not somebody looking over at the table over there thinking, I want to sit at that table.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

No, you're at the table. Everyone's at the table. Everyone's at the table. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

And Anne, you you built that culture. Oh my god, yes. I just back to the thing. If you hire people who want to learn from the other people around them, that is that there's that famous Thomas Zaz quote I I always refer to when it says that um something like you know, uh the reason that children learn is because they don't have that ego structure to say I should already know. Oh yeah. But that's what keeps us like when you want to continue learning, there's that means that there's an opening for you to say, you know, I I don't know, and I want to learn. And when you're eight, when you want to learn, that indicates an ability just to be open and that there can be a back and forth.

SPEAKER_05 19:00

And that was very prevalent. Yeah. Everyone with everyone.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

I like because I, you know, I'm not an engineer, I'm a like a journalist. I just like to figure shit out.

SPEAKER_05 19:10

Well, and imagine trying to translate some of this stuff into marketing speak. Like what? Say what?

SPEAKER_03 19:17

I think uh for all three of us, how we were able to learn. Yeah, and it and so much fun. I mean, not just Rod, but everybody. I think everybody. I think about it. Like a Walid or I just Oh I know Oh, yeah. So many people we yeah, Waleed. Yeah, we just, you know, can you explain that? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:35

Yeah. Uh no, mind you, it'd be an hour and a half later, but But you knew it. But you knew it. And it was thorough and and it was not condescending, but it was at your level. You know that that's a gift too. Yeah. When somebody can explain knowing what you know or figuring out how much you know and not make you feel like you're really not up to no, come down to my level and explain it to me from there. Yeah. And that was a lot of the people there could do that. And I always thought, wow, that's that's a talent. That's a huge talent. Made made different people from other companies I had worked with where they wanted to share their information. They didn't want to keep it to themselves. They wanted everybody to know. That's unique. I think that's quite unique.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yeah, I don't think I've found another place like it, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_05 20:22

I don't I haven't and I and I was with several many startups before that, even some that went public. Um it always became so territorial. Yeah. So it terrible. They always became, you know, uh I'm the reason I'm we're successful. It it was not as we grew at Rethink, that just didn't happen. Yeah, yeah. It was a collective collaborative effort, and it and it stayed that way to the bitter end, frankly. And and I think that's quite unique. Quite unique.

Scaling Culture And No Assholes Rule

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Yeah, no, I you know, one thing is I you know, and I I think you guys share this, I want to see our colleagues do well. Oh, yeah. When we hear them out there winning, oh, we get so excited. It means it because you know, we went through a thing. Yeah, you know what I mean? We had a loss, like we, you know, for whatever reason, we're not felt like a death in the family. We're not gonna unpack it, but you know, we were at a great company, it didn't work out, but you know, we are still, you know, case in point, I talk to you guys a lot, right? I talk to other people a lot. We're still in this tight-knit kind of circle. You guys get calls all the time from people.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

And I just feel like, I mean, our our mom thing comes out totally when you just see like when I hear from different people and I see them together or I see that what they're doing, it's just like or you see them featured somewhere, you're like it's like, yay, good for you.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:41

It is, it it's a it's a pride thing. It's like we did well. We did well with that person. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

I mean, honestly, like for a company that you know, sometimes companies don't don't make it, and then everyone just kind of goes off and it's it's kind of a bitter thing, nobody talks anymore. But we're not like that. We're very much the opposite.

SPEAKER_05 21:58

That's a great question.

SPEAKER_02 21:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:00

I think it is what we went through because we did build something very special.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:07

It just couldn't meet market demand.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

Yeah. We you know, I'm gonna go there. Do you think that we were too early?

SPEAKER_03 22:15

No, I think we were there were some strategic errors for absolutely sure. There was some yes.

SPEAKER_05 22:21

I think we were a little too proud of our technology to see the flaws that perhaps were embedded there.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

Yeah, yeah. You have to sometimes look at your baby and say, Yep, that might be a little ugly.

SPEAKER_05 22:34

That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

And then there were some other business decisions made, especially internationally, that were fraught with peril.

SPEAKER_05 22:42

Fraught with peril. Yeah. Some of the the thoughts of grandeur of going international very quickly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

That's hard. Like scaling can kill you sometimes.

unknown 22:52

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

That and dishonesty. Um, yeah. No, I I agree. I mean, it's it's interesting to see, you know, we were, you know, uh rethink, you know, first cobalt, one of the first cobots, we had you are, of course, breathing down our neck, and and they won the you won you are. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_05 23:10

By the way, it's a great robot. It is a great robot. It is a great robot.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

It is a great robot. So I I do get it. But again, now we have humanoids that are on the scene on the scene. And I see a lot of people that oh, is that Baxter on wheels? Or it's like, oh, you've created the Baxter. Congratulations, you know. But oh, wait, it has AI.

SPEAKER_05 23:30

Oh wait. Oh, wait. Much different. No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

So how are you thinking about, you know, every time you're like, oh, why does that guy look familiar? Are you are you seeing that or am I just a crazy?

SPEAKER_05 23:41

No, I see it all the time. Okay. I see it all the time. Because fundamentally, we were watched probably more than most companies ever were watched.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

I think you're right.

SPEAKER_05 23:50

Everything we did was copied.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Yeah. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_05 23:53

Uh everything.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

You would get so mad.

SPEAKER_05 23:55

You would get so mad. And I'll never forget that Scott would say it's a form of flattery. No, it's not. It's plagiarism. Tell me it's flattery. Our words were literally taken off our website, and I'd be like, I spent days coming up with that. And now everybody's using it. That's great. But we I think that's it. I think we had something and people realized how good it was, whether it succeeded or not. And therefore they copied, borrowed whatever word you'd like to stole, yeah, use. And um, yeah, we see it everywhere now.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Well, let's talk about marketing. I mean, that's and I do joke, if you know what a collaborative robot or a cobot is, it's likely because of you.

SPEAKER_05 24:38

We we were s we were early, back to your point. Yeah. Um I just remember from an SEO point of view, uh you know, nobody was using COBOT. Nobody was using collaborative robot. And then when we got to paid keywords, we we were paying so little for that word because nobody was bidding on it.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Oh yeah, you know what that word is worth now? Oh, like it's ridiculous. No, yeah, we have Katie Katie praises it out all the time.

SPEAKER_05 25:03

I and And it was just a very well, first of all, social media was very different back then. It was very simplistic. It was very it wasn't mean spirited, it was there was some honor within social media. There is none now. But we everything we did was for the first time.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Yeah, how do you brand something that doesn't exist?

SPEAKER_05 25:22

Well, I think the work that had been done in those early years, and I think of Mitch all the time, to understand the target market was exceptional work.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

Yeah, Mitch was pretty brilliant.

SPEAKER_05 25:34

I don't think I've worked for anybody that good before. And we understood who we were selling to, and that I think made all the difference in the world. What we had to learn, which I thought was really hard, was how to speak to them, how to get to them, how to how to how to teach them, how to educate them. We knew the who, we didn't know the how. We didn't know how. And that you do by trial and error.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:56

Um, whether it's SEO, whether it's social media, whatever you have to do, you just keep trying until you get something that sticks. And and over and over again.

Open Doors And Teaching Mindset

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Yeah, and you built the foundation. Like, you know, that's one thing, you know, when Dwight co-works with companies, we're like, hey, who is your your ideal customer profile? Who's your persona? And building that out, people are like, oh no, we we don't need that. We just let's just get going with social media, and it's like, no, we're we're kind of wasting our time. So true.

SPEAKER_05 26:23

I see that all the time. People are, no, we know who we're selling to, okay. Tell me. Yeah, get get specific. And most young companies can't do that. They actually can't articulate to you the the person or people they are going after and the personas they want to pursue. Yeah. And Mitch had all that worked out, absolutely worked out. And the other thing we had, back to what you said, was Rod Brooks.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:47

Right? We were a PR machine. I had never in my whole career we would turn down two out of three inquiries.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

That's yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:57

Incoming inquiries. Because it'd be like, eh, no, that's not a friendly, we're not gonna go with you. That's not really our sweet spot. We're not gonna go with you. When do you get to do that? Yeah. I mean, it was it was mind blowing to me. So that when we did get coverage, it was spot on. It was so spot on. And that was the education that we needed to provide it to our target audience who didn't really understand what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Yeah. I mean, uh last time I think we got together, you know, we were talking, we're I I think we were on a um I I don't remember if we were on a call or a chat or something like that. And I was like, hey, let's do this podcast. And I said, think about, you know, some some of the cool things, and you told me about your first day at rethink.

SPEAKER_05 27:37

So my first day at rethink.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

I was floored.

SPEAKER_05 27:41

Which three days before the announcement. Now you have to realize I was recruited and I couldn't enter the building, enter this space without signing an NDA because it was about to launch.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

And I thought And by it you means back Baxter.

SPEAKER_05 27:57

And I thought, well, aren't these people pretentious? I have to sign an NDA to get interviewed? I'm like, come on. And I walked in and there was Baxter.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

That was probably, did you send that?

SPEAKER_05 28:10

I walked in and there was Baxter. I'm like, oh, what is this? I mean, it was that kind of reaction, like, give me a minute, I can I gotta I stand myself. What is happening here? And then it, you know, I got hired, which was very exciting. And my husband was like, Are you sure you want to commute downtown? I was like, oh no, I don't want to, but I do want to work for this company.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

And by the way, her energy, I mean, like w when I met you, I was like, oh yeah. Send that chick in the ring. Good.

SPEAKER_05 28:51

So I I I come in my first day, it's September 10th, and it's Monday, and I'm all excited. And I walk in, go into my desk and I look over. Oh, there's a video going on. There's a that's interesting. What's happening over there? And I got myself collected and realized it was Scott Pelle from 60 Minutes. And I'm like, hello, what what? Am I I am I dreaming? And Mitch and I looked at Mitch, he goes, mm-mm. I'm like, okay, that's Scott Pelle from He goes, I know, I know. I was so blown away by that, I can't even tell you. We were featured and and the announcement was three days later, right? It was Wednesday, September 12th, I remember like it was yesterday. Wow. And I'm thinking, wow, this is something very, very unique. Like I had never in my whole life experienced anything like that. And as we prepped for the announcement, again, it was day one, we're thinking about how to prevent the website from crashing, how we were gonna handle all the incoming stuff. There were all these contingencies because of it was

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Yeah, how do you know that? That it was big.

SPEAKER_05 30:06

Just from the volume. Oh really? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

I mean, I mean the guy had amazing star power back then. He did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:20

And everybody, all the media was on hold until that day, so it all hit together.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:25

Which I don't think he can pull off anymore. I really don't. I think it'd be very hard. And it was it was stunning. It was it blew my mind. It blew my mind in a way like I've been through a lot of very interesting announcements, going public, going this, did all sorts of stuff. This was not like any of that. It was quite exceptional.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Well, I think there's a lot of noise. Like there's a lot, there's a di a launch every single day of some robotics company.

SPEAKER_05 30:48

Yeah. We were unique.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:50

Singular. You know, everything was timed and executed perfectly. And from that moment on, it was just, whoo, here we go. There was no like, you know, lots of times after an announcement, there's a big lull. We had no lull. It just kept going. It was quite something.

Media Moments And Launch Day

SPEAKER_02 31:07

And for Anne, like on the on the you know, the people side, right? Like leading up to a launch, like how was that for you? You know, keeping because engineers had things to do, tight deadlines. Like, how did that affect what you were working on?

SPEAKER_03 31:21

I'm trying to think about what that felt like. And I think that all I can remember is everybody's excitement. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I just remember their excitement. Yeah. I mean, up to that point there was a yeah, there was a lot of of late nights. And yeah, people, yeah. There was a lot of tension and people being pissed off. And yeah, I mean, that that there's that classic, you know, mm-mm between marketing and engineering. And there's all that stuff that always happens. But um, no, there was just an incredible level of excitement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

I mean, how I think of it, like whenever whenever I'm going to do a robot demo, I'm always like, is this gonna work today? Right. Like, was there any of that? Oh, there was always always that. Yeah, always.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Oh, I know that because I used to sell them, so I'm asking you guys. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_05 32:13

Oh, God. Yes. I remember one trade show. Oh. One trade.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

That's a robotics demo.

SPEAKER_05 32:20

I can't remember the city. Actually, I can't remember the city, but not the show. It was Vegas. I remember it because I hate the place so much.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Oh, I'll I'll let you know how it is next week.

SPEAKER_05 32:31

And we had two Baxters there, and honestly, they weren't ready for prime time. They weren't, they just weren't. But we had were smart enough to bring the engineer. We had brought all the people necessary.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Ah, brilliant.

SPEAKER_05 32:43

And of course, one of them completely crapped out. And the engineer said, I have to take it apart. You know, and here you are on a show floor, not something you really want to do. So we positioned it as a demonstration of our capabilities on bringing the robot back if something should happen.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Oh, that's brilliant marketing.

SPEAKER_05 33:06

It was a last ditch effort.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:08

And we told people, now you're going to see us perform some customer support. Took it up. It was and people bought it.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

And we had such charming field service engineers, didn't we? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 33:21

We did. We couldn't have done it.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Think of the Nates and the, you know, oh my God. And they they rose to the occasion.

SPEAKER_05 33:27

They were now what I'm doing is taking off the bat.

SPEAKER_03 33:31

And they were so freaking charming and lovely and so able to just be playful together. I mean, that's a that's a thing. Yeah. Also, when you're looking on how you hire a team, is when you get people who want to be playful together, they can be really creative together. And creativity is not just, you know, in the actual design of the robot. It's also in like, what do you do when you're gonna take this fucking page?

SPEAKER_05 33:56

It was a stunning moment for me. I was like, nicely done, boys.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

And they do it all with a smile.

SPEAKER_05 34:02

I'm like charming as fuck. People were talking about did you see that? That was really cool. I'm like, whoa. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

It was, wasn't it? Well, nobody ever did that before.

SPEAKER_05 34:12

I don't think anybody would. They would take the robot away and try to fix it. No, we left it right in. I swear to God, it was right in the middle of the booth, and they took it all apart and they were explaining every piece of it, and people were like, ooh, ah.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

But also, nobody had seen anything like that.

SPEAKER_05 34:28

I think that was a lot of it. Yeah. To be able to see the insides of something. Yeah. People were like, they're willing to show us the insides. They've got nothing to hide.

SPEAKER_03 34:37

Yeah. And it was a beautiful inside. It was. I mean, come on, that was I am not an engineer.

SPEAKER_05 34:43

It's a beautiful robot.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

Oh, yeah. It was a beautiful robot.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

Yeah. We had one in the conference room that was uh didn't have the red shell on some of its arms. Some of its arms only in two. But yeah, but that was always really, really cool.

SPEAKER_05 34:57

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

You know, because it looked like this very plasticky robot, but you know, it was very mechanical and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 35:02

And they still have b Baxter parts. I might have some over there actually. But I just, you know, that I they're just so beautiful, just as like I have them. Some of our series actuator.

SPEAKER_05 35:12

Who doesn't love a good series elastic actuator? Love it. Yeah, yeah. But I think you're right. Again, something nobody had ever done on a show floor. I'm certain. Just take the robot apart and talk and talk your way through it. This is what this does. This is what this does. People were in awe. I was in awe. I didn't know all of that either.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Yeah. Well, I think you guys very much thought, like, that's an example of you really thinking outside the box in a lot of different ways. And I think that you did that with actually building a whole new category of robot through marketing.

Demo Risks And Radical Transparency

SPEAKER_05 35:43

It was it was challenging because as much as we knew about our target market, we also knew they were super conservative. Yeah. They were really risk-adverse. They were uh a fairly narrow demographic, but how do you educate that group? Yeah. And as we got into it, we could see especially uh trade shows were a key part, right? They had to touch it, they had to play with it, but also that's a show floor. They wanted to see that robot doing real things. And that's when we embarked on the videos, right? We we were constantly producing videos of Baxter on site, and that's what really I think finally got kind people to say, yeah, I guess it does work. It does do real things, it's not just a toy, it's not just a cute robot.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

Yeah. You know, you said the word education, and I felt like we did a ton of that as a company.

SPEAKER_05 36:40

We did. We did. It was always I think we erred on the side of education, which was very smart, versus promotion. Yeah. Right? We didn't do a lot of the the silly, you know, buy one get. We did it once in a while.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

We may have done that. I was on the sales team. Yeah, we did that. When we didn't know, when things got a lot.

SPEAKER_05 36:58

When things got rough. But the fundamental was always let's get them educated so they know what to ask. And that was a long journey. I think that was a fairly long journey from a marketing perspective.

SPEAKER_03 37:10

What was amazing for me, you know, as I think of of you too, and I think of all of the people, but right now here we are, and I'm thinking, well, yeah, I was kind of there in the beginning, and I was lucky, you know, lucky that I that I got that opportunity and everything. But I think about like how people like you who weren't there from the beginning, even though you weren't, like, you came in and like you owned, like you, you fell in love with what we were doing. And you I mean, you you guys were bled, Baxter bled, rethink just as much as those of us who were there in the very, very beginning.

SPEAKER_05 37:46

And uh I think most of the people you found were like that.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Yeah, I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_05 37:52

Right. A good percentage. You didn't we didn't have that many people who were there just to fill their resume. Right. Yeah. You know, I see that much more nowadays. People, I gotta get this on my resume. Yeah, people there were committed. Yeah, they were they were very committed, they were very, very dedicated to making it successful. Yeah, I think it was very unique in that regard.

SPEAKER_03 38:13

Well, I just want to really shout out you you two too for I mean I mean It was fun. It was fun, it was fun and until it wasn't.

SPEAKER_05 38:21

Until it wasn't, you know.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

I I mean the thing that so I came in to fill a very interesting gap. Yes. Because Tom Munger and I actually shout out to Tom Munger. Hey Tom. Hi Tom. Um so we we came in from El Debrin, who had been acquired by Softbank, and we we had education sales over there. And Ann called me up and um said, you know, I or I think it was the recruiter that actually called me up and said, you know, we want a um a review for Tom Munger. And I was like, I want to tell you very terrible things because I don't want him to leave. And they're like, and the recruiter's like, let me call you right back. And I'm like, okay, so I she must have talked to you, Ann, or Jason or something, and called me back and said, you know, would you want to come here too? And I was like, Well, Tom might be coming to get away from me.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

Not a chance. Not a chance.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

But yeah, and and really, you know, I came in to solve the problem that Baxter, you know, for whatever reason was not selling as well as it should have been for manufacturing. Yes. But where was it selling at full margin into ED, into education, into universities, into RD commercial settings, and we sold a ton, and I see them out there all the time, still in use. Yes. They were the most fun.

SPEAKER_05 39:33

We do need to give a shout out to Chris Harbart, who's gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 39:35

Yeah, Chris Harbert, yeah, we really got the EDU thing happening. Yep, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:39

Well, it you know, the the robot wasn't meeting the precision requirements for manufacturing. It just wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't. But for the research and education market, it was all and more than what they needed. And it was often a showcase.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:55

It was often something uh, you know, the entire department was built around it.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:00

It was incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It got us another few years, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

I I think so too. And you know, the the best thing that anybody ever said to me was a professor over in in California, I'm not going to name the school, said, I really love this robot, and I'm waiting for something very deep. And she says, I'm never gonna find a dead undergrad in the lab in the morning. I said, You're you're absolutely right. I know exactly who that was.

SPEAKER_05 40:29

I know exactly what that was.

Educating A Conservative Market

SPEAKER_02 40:30

I mean, if we could help help a f professor sleep better, I mean I I'm fine with that. That's awesome. Yeah, but they they taught a lot of skills. So the engineers that so not only the engineers that and people at Rethink that we worked with at that company out doing great things in the universe, these students that worked on these Baxters, learning to code, learning about robot trajectories, learn learning about vision path and path planning, yes, they're out changing the world with the things that they learned on their Baxter through Ross and and whatnot.

SPEAKER_05 41:00

Yeah, no, I I agree. It it it was vital at that moment. If we hadn't had that, we would have gone out of business much earlier earlier. Yeah, yeah. No question about it.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

I agree. And you know, as far so we've moved on. That was many years ago. We're not we don't talk about years, we don't, we don't age. Um but you know that was a good side. Yeah, that was a very appropriate side. But we brought a lot of things, you know, back to what that VC said, like people learned lessons there, and why aren't those lessons, you know, purchased by another company? But you know, we we have within us those lessons that we learned. So, you know, what types of things did you use or did you learn over there that you use when you work with companies on, you know, advising consulting roles now?

SPEAKER_05 41:45

Well, it's back to what we were talking about. People people have an idea. They think it's you know, it's a founder, it's it's their baby, it's the the best idea ever. And then you start asking the basic questions and who do you want to sell that to? Pretend that and they they don't have a real answer.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:06

Uh or uh tell me give me your value prop. Tell me why somebody would buy it. And they they you see it all the time, you see it every day.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

I I I do, and and actually, you know, our our business is calling that out if we need to, because we want these people to be successful.

SPEAKER_05 42:22

And the thing I learned most from Rethink was know who and figure out how. Right? We didn't know how in the beginning for sure, but we figured out how trial and error, you know? Yeah, we our social media started out pretty awful and turned into something great.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Was it good though? You had you had yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:43

We had again we hired Jeff Green.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Jeff Green.

SPEAKER_05 42:45

Shout out to Jeff and Jeff just had that knack, he had that ability. So I think it's those things that you know, make sure the fundamentals are there.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:55

And I think a lot of companies get so excited, the startups get so excited about their idea, they forget those basics. The who, how are you gonna reach them? What are you gonna say? Yeah, it's not rocket science, but it is, you know, you want to build a garden, you gotta start with good soil. And it's so true. And it often is not the case because they're moving a thousand miles an hour and they want to see the next thing happen. Nope, nope, nope, nope, don't plant the seeds until you have the cracks.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:22

But so I learned it, I learned that very well. I learned that from Mitch. I mean, he really understood how to position things in a way that was so oh, it's just so good. Yeah, it's just so specific and so good.

SPEAKER_03 43:36

Yeah. What about you, Ann? I just see over and over um hiring errors how how huge it's it's big and it's hard because it's a it's a soft science. It is a soft, yes, it's a source. And it's not recognized by VCs, by in just sort of the the conventional wisdom. I remember one of our VCs at Rethink saying, Oh, we could have a great company if we just didn't have to deal with people. It's like, dude. That's all this is.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Yeah, it's it's people.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

It's people building this thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:13

And um gives you a little insight into our nightmare.

SPEAKER_03 44:16

Yeah, yeah. And uh yeah, um, I've seen, you know, I always say ego and hubris. Ego and hubris will kill a company every time. Yeah, and just hiring simply on whoa, right school, you know, right connection to uh certain, you know, people.

SPEAKER_05 44:36

Done not enough.

SPEAKER_03 44:38

No, no. Um and and and leadership. Leadership is simply leadership has to understand that leaders their job is to engage people who want to follow them up on completing their mission. Yeah, they need to keep people engaged. And uh wow.

SPEAKER_05 45:00

Um I remember I remember one, I won't say who I was talking to, but I was very frustrated and very angry. And I remember my line was you can't be a leader if nobody wants to follow you.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

That's right. Oh, what an interesting thing.

SPEAKER_03 45:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:15

And I thought, nobody wants to follow you. Yeah, yeah. You're like that, you know, leader is not just, oh, look at that great word, I'm a leader. No. Look behind you. Is anybody behind you? No.

SPEAKER_03 45:28

And we all, you know, we all have our shit. Yeah, yeah. I am just as flawed as the next person. We all have our shit. But if you, you know, are working, if you're working out your shit at work, yeah, you're definitely leaving turd piles that are gonna get in the way of the business. Yeah, oh for sure. And um yeah. Um but if you really respect and really highlight the humanity and just the the natural intelligence of the people around you wow, it can go it can do anything.

EDU Pivot And Real-World Impact

SPEAKER_05 46:03

We had so many people who were so good at what they did. And that's the thing that always I think back to some of the expertise, they were just so good at what they did. Yeah. And they enjoyed it, and it wasn't like look at me, I'm so good at no, it was I get to do this here, and I'm really excited to do it here because this is fun. Yeah, and that I think makes them even more productive, right? It makes their skill even more obvious and usable.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

So Yeah, I mean, so we're we're closing soon, but you know, the I saved this for last. Um, and you know, we were joking before we started, like, you know, and I I said to them, I'm gonna ask you what your favorite story is, your favorite wreathing story. And they were like, We can't tell you till we have excessive wine at row 34. But but and not on camera. And not on camera. So so, but I said, clean it up, ladies. So um, but no, like what are what what's a highlight? What's one of your favorite stories?

SPEAKER_03 47:01

I I for me, it's like any stories when we were coming together, even during really shit times. Yeah. Do you remember like when we had our first really big layoff and how everyone took care of everybody else? It was so I mean that sounds like why would you bring that up as a highlight? It's just again, when you just see how people are able to just be there for one another and and and again offer that respect. And that was that was tremendous. Um I think that was really fun. Uh we're getting signaled over here. I know, she's waving. We have two minutes. Oh, you go, you go.

SPEAKER_05 47:39

I I I can only think from a marketing perspective. And and the you know, when Sawyer was first coming out, again, the robot was not ready for prime time. We had rushed it out. We had to do a demo video, we were under tremendous pressure. We finally got it working, and then someone tripped over the power on my phone and unplugged the robot. I have never felt my heart sink like and seven hours of work down the drain. Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

Oh, still right here. Still right here.

unknown 48:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:19

And I I think one of mine is some of the things professors would say to me. And that was one of the top stories. Not a dead kid in the lab. Which I was like, yes, you got it. I I did bring something for you guys. Um I always bring bring some gifts. So I brought some socks for you guys. Oh, shit, give no fuck up. Because honestly, you guys are some of the best mentors that a woman can have. Um thank you so much for making me here. Um, very fun. Mandy Dwight, Dwight and Company, boutique sales and marketing for automation companies, Sue Sokolowski, Ann Whitaker, Dose Whitaker. We are former rethinkers and we survived it.

SPEAKER_03 49:07

So lucky to know one another. We agree. So all right.