The Dan Show

Inside Arrive AI’s Leap From Startup To Public Company And The Plan To 10x

Dan O'Toole Season 1 Episode 12

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0:00 | 19:56

We share the highs of our first earnings call as a public company, the boardroom energy that followed, and the hospital deployment proving autonomous handoffs can free clinicians to focus on care. The plan is bold: protect IP, scale to 100,000 units, and execute with rigor.

• first earnings call prep and key takeaways
• five-year roadmap to 10x company valuation
• patent strategy and recent heating and cooling win
• full C-suite participation and channel ownership
• investor relations support and lessons learned
• board expansion with FedEx, USPS and payer expertise
• Hancock Health deployment and route performance
• autonomy partner integration and first asynchronous handoff
• hiring momentum, HR lead and new VP of sales
• Nasdaq visit and planning for a closing bell
• stance on share price and forward-looking focus
• where to follow and how to listen back

Click on the link. It takes you that, just it takes two seconds literally to fill that in, and then it takes you straight to the call recording and you can listen to it at your leisure

Hey, go on all of our socials and like us, friend us. Yes, go on my LinkedIn, Dan O'Toole, follow me. I put a lot of stuff there first. Go follow us
 

Milestones And First Earnings Call

SPEAKER_02

Hi, everybody. Happy Friday.

SPEAKER_00

Hey.

SPEAKER_02

I like to say Fri A.

SPEAKER_00

Why is that?

SPEAKER_02

It's a celebration. We've got a lot to celebrate today.

SPEAKER_00

Every day.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to the Dan Show. Um, don't know if you heard. Big milestone yesterday at Arrive AI.

SPEAKER_00

Which one?

SPEAKER_02

We've had so many this week.

SPEAKER_00

It was a busy week, right?

SPEAKER_02

It was. It was our first ever earnings call as a publicly traded company.

SPEAKER_00

But before that, we had our first ever public company board meeting.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We had all of our board members here on site. Fishers, Indiana. Thank you, Fishers.

SPEAKER_02

And you know, yeah, thank you. For the first time, you know, um, you have you've got people you've got to bounce ideas off of. Well, it's not for the first time, but well, you always get people's ideas, but it's a different type of structure.

SPEAKER_00

Is that what you're saying?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Is that what you're saying? It's not true. Not true.

SPEAKER_02

He does.

SPEAKER_00

He's very receptive to ideas and I always say I renamed the company from Drone Deck, which was my idea to arrive AI. If you're willing to give that up, you know, everybody knows what an ego guy I am, right? So for me to re-vent on that, I I could do anything.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

That's his claim to fame. He he made that choice early on, so he can always say, hey.

SPEAKER_00

That's why I did it. It was the one thing I ever gave up on, but I can always I'm gonna get the the ROI out of that.

SPEAKER_02

Nice. I like how you got that in there. Always looking for their ROI. Um, we have so we've got a lot to get to. But earnings call. We'll talk more about the board members being in town. Um, Hancock Health. We had installation successfully done. It's been a big lift.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Um wait to sleep this weekend.

SPEAKER_02

We're all a little tired.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, you know, getting ready for our first earnings call. That was like uh like getting I I thought I was back in college. It was adrenaline for a big presentation, you know, how hard that is, and um just getting it right and going over it a hundred times. Yep.

SPEAKER_02

Realizing what you can and and can't say what we're not ready to say.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, that's right, that's right. Walking the public line, right? Yeah, we want to we want to give news in real time, right? Yeah, that's that's who we are, and that's the fun of it is sharing it. And uh, but you have you have the time out, right?

SPEAKER_02

It's hard. We just want to say we're gonna do everything and be everywhere.

SPEAKER_00

And but we did have a great narrative.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You know, um our forward projections, our five-year plan uh to 10x the company valuation. Yep, right. So that that's

Crafting The Narrative And Guidance

SPEAKER_00

a big in five years to 10x would be huge.

SPEAKER_02

It's a roadmap to that.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. 100,000 units out in five years. You know, we're getting there. It's a it's a hockey stick, just getting going, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and and Dan had everybody, all the C team on the call. So there um you have different recommendations. There's so much to consider when you're hosting these calls. And Dan wanted to make sure, especially for our first earnings call, that all the C-suite was in there. So we had we heard from everybody. We did, and everyone did such a good job owning their channel.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And so we had we had Markham, our COO, Neer Shaw, our CSO, um, John Richeson, who was great to have on there. He's done all of our patents, he's our chief legal officer in Todd PetMai, our CFO, and then of course Dan, CEO.

SPEAKER_00

Dan Kyle.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I was on there as well helping.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I was gonna I was gonna show the picture.

SPEAKER_02

Sure. Right?

SPEAKER_00

Let me find that.

SPEAKER_02

We did a selfie right before the call started, um, which it wasn't on our minds to really do that because we're so focused on what's coming up.

SPEAKER_00

But let's show this. I think you can see it on our socials now, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I posted it on socials.

SPEAKER_00

That was in the war room right there. So that was a lot of fun. Uh that's uh iconic photo, one of the one of the first big milestones here. So excited.

SPEAKER_02

And a big thank you to Alliance Advisors. They were in that war room with us on a daily basis leading up to this call, just going over that's our IR team, investor relations team, outsourced, and they're great uh consultants for what we're doing. So thanks, Carolyn and Alex and Alyssa. We appreciate it all.

SPEAKER_00

And Jody.

SPEAKER_02

And Jody, yeah, Jody was on the call last night.

SPEAKER_00

And uh we wanted to show depth of bench. Uh, you know, it was probably a little much for a small startup.

SPEAKER_01

I liked it.

SPEAKER_00

But we wanted to show the team and how we think about things and what goes into what we're doing. It's not just uh uh you know a hope and a prayer here. We're out we're very I think we're very sophisticated. Uh we've got a real great plan that we're executing on. Really proud of our IP, right? The patents that we have here, the the one that we recently got and we announced on on uh June 10th was a big one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Uh that was a heating and cooling.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. Stock traded 41 million shares that day and nearly tripled in value. That was a good day. So let's get some more of those guys.

SPEAKER_02

We're never we never stop working toward more, that's for sure. I mean, I know you and several others on the team are constantly thinking of ways to protect our IP. It's pretty

Team On The Call And IP Wins

SPEAKER_02

cool.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there's there's a lot of ideas. Uh we always say there's more we don't know what we're gonna do than we do know because it it's a it's just a white uh canvas. There's a lot of lot of opportunity and we're gonna we're gonna grab it all, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we're going to so if you want to listen to the earnings call, you can. It's not a super easy link. I can just it's not hard, but you can't just click on the link and listen to it. You just have to enter in a little bit of information.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, put your name, email, um, what else? I think it asked your company name, just put whatever.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. We it that's for us, it's not being sold or anything. We just we want to know who's listening to our calls. Yeah. And so we can do add you to make sure we're doing outreach.

SPEAKER_02

So click on the link. It takes you that, just it takes two seconds literally to fill that in, and then it takes you straight to the call recording and you can listen to it at your leisure. If you have a Q mute meeting. Wasn't that a great call? It was. You know, it started off. I think the first the first part of it is the best because Dan, the CEO that he decided to give me a heart attack. You and started with a joke.

SPEAKER_00

I think a few people have had a hard attack.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, Mark and Todd were talking about it. Like, what? What were they what were they saying? Oh, they were laughing. Yeah, it was just a surprise. So Dan had given me a little, like, you know, hey, I'm I think I might do something. I gotta have some ad lib because that's just who I am, and uh, and I wanted to have some fun with it. And he he had said like a very normal joke. This is the day before the earnings call. And I was like, okay, yeah, I I can be on board. And the joke you came out with which one was it?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, the one I came out. Okay. Listen to the earnings call. Let's not let's not tell. Yeah, I stepped out on a limb there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you did.

SPEAKER_00

I did. You know what? But you only have your first public earnings call for the first time one time, right? And I'll never forget it, right?

SPEAKER_02

And nope, none of us will.

SPEAKER_00

So and and going in, everyone was a little tense, right?

SPEAKER_02

It's a lot of pressure.

SPEAKER_00

It is, you know. Um, so we wanted to, I wanted to break the ice a little bit.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It was uh, and I was thinking in my mind right up to that moment. I was like, should I go for it? You know, and I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna regret if I don't do it. So I went for it, and here we are. I did get a little pushback from our IR team, I think. Oh, really? I'm a big forgiveness versus permission guy, though, right? We all know that. So so here we are. You can't take it back.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so listen to the call. You might get a little chuckle.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe not. I think it was pretty good. Some people did send me a note and say, get out of the joke business or stick to what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02

Was that your son? No, you're kidding.

SPEAKER_00

Among others, probably, yeah. No, some investors. Thanks for the love the comments. Yeah, I think it was all on fun. I I don't think they really thought it was that bad.

SPEAKER_02

What'd Stacy say about it?

SPEAKER_00

Uh she she uh she's like, You pick you had to pick that joke.

SPEAKER_02

Yep, Stacy, he did.

SPEAKER_00

Yep, of course. I did, I did. No, I'm gonna go that way.

SPEAKER_02

If I have a choice, that's where I'm gonna um okay, so great earnings call. Dan, congratulations.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Big deal.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so do you thanks for your help. You kept it all going, kept us all together.

SPEAKER_02

It's happy to be part of it. Um, so the board meeting, yeah, they it was scheduled for three hours, went four hours, lots to discuss.

SPEAKER_00

Several hours. We we usually do like an hour, hour and a half, and this one was five, probably.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and let's talk about who was here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm glad you said I was gonna go there. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so who do you want to start with? We'll start with Lori Tucker, um Lady Storm. She's the and she's the newest member. So she flew in. Um private plane. Her son flew her, which is really cool.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's cool.

How To Hear The Earnings Call

SPEAKER_00

From Memphis.

SPEAKER_02

From Memphis. Um, so he brought her up, he stayed, then they had dinner, and then just flew her back. But she is um she's a wonderful human, first and foremost, because that's the most important. Like to talk to her is to know her and to love her.

SPEAKER_00

That's with everybody here. That's the number one reason we get people, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but you you shake your hand and you have zero clue of how brilliant this woman is. Um, and then you get to know her a little bit and you're like, oh my gosh, you've done this and done that. And so she had started at FedEx and um just I mean, years ago, FedEx was four years old or so, four or five years old, and stayed with a company um until she retired a few years ago and ended as uh the senior vice president of marketing for FedEx. Um so she knows logistics, she knows uh.

SPEAKER_00

She's also been on public boards, other companies. She has a lot of experience that we're able to leverage here.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So and and like Mark, so Mark Ham, she's Mark and Mark worked at FedEx, so they know each other really well. But as Mark will say, um to get in a conversation with Lori, it always starts with a great story.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, we're back.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome back. Our video are we are we like this now? We were like that, now we're like this.

SPEAKER_02

Maybe we are. Here, let me fix that.

SPEAKER_00

Kylie um tipped the desk, knocked the phone off, and the recorder fell over.

SPEAKER_02

Long winded.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. You know, we run out of time here.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, well, okay, so Lori and Mark worked together, started uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

FedEx, all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, John Galena.

SPEAKER_00

John Galena, Elvance CFO, Blue Cross Blue Shield, uh amazing guy, retired earlier this year, and his first act was to join our board. How about that? Huge. How about that? That's huge. Uh $180 billion company. He was the CFO, you know, one of the top guys in that whole company. They get like 2,600 people working just for him. We have 26 people.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You know, one one hundredth of for our whole company. And he had a hundred times that in his whole just for him.

SPEAKER_02

The perfect people to help us scale, right?

SPEAKER_00

That's

Icebreaker Joke And IR Boundaries

SPEAKER_00

right. That's what's so exciting. The greatest minds out there, respected, experienced, great track record on Wall Street, John Galena, every quarter was better than the last for his whole tenure. If we could do that, you know, we it's we're gonna do some big stuff. But he joined our board, great experience, um, very warm guy. Uh wants to share his experience. Um, and just like everybody on our team, just amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Uh he and Lori were at the bell ringing in New York, and when John was here, he was showing me some of the pictures from the fireworks and Statue of Liberty. He was just he's like, it was so cool.

SPEAKER_00

It was, yeah, that was awesome. That was a great trip out there, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02

It really was. It really was. Kevin McAdams, he wasn't able to make it out to the bell ringing.

SPEAKER_00

But he came to the board meeting.

SPEAKER_02

But he was at the board meeting, yes.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Kevin McAdams, past vice president of Last Mile Logistics for the U.S. Postal Service. There's 165 million addresses in the U.S. And he goes over every one of them. So every one of you goes over your address. So and that number grows by 4,000 every day, and he's helping us uh with the post office and other opportunities, a lot of experience there.

SPEAKER_02

So you can kind of see how these board members have been strategically selected to bring um not just a wealth of experience and knowledge, but um diversity in what they're experienced in. Right, right. It's pretty great. Um, and then we've got our internal team.

SPEAKER_00

We've got Nero.

SPEAKER_02

We love Nero. Do you guys know Nero if he's our trampoline? He's our professional trampoline trumper.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know if I love him.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, you do. They're BFFs.

SPEAKER_00

I love the guy. I love everybody. My default is in love. So if you're not in love, you did something wrong, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Um John and oh John Richardson.

SPEAKER_00

John Richardson.

SPEAKER_02

You'll hear him on the earnings call.

SPEAKER_00

Everyone's crazy uncle, John Richardson.

SPEAKER_02

He's just the best.

SPEAKER_00

We love the guy. He was here since day one. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So he is the guy who filed Dan's foundational patent beating Amazon by Fridays.

SPEAKER_00

He did it. And when he called me up, he he goes, I'm sorry to tell you you're gonna have to write a check because we got your patent. But he made me think we didn't get it. Yeah, that's his joke. That's awesome. He thought I had some good jokes. Yeah, John.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh who else?

SPEAKER_02

Uh Mar. Oh no, LSC.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Mark.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, Mark was in there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, of course, everyone was there. Hello. Mark, Mark Ham, COO, Past FedEx, brought Mori in, actually.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Uh great guy, great visionary for uh what we're doing here. Um helping uh you know shape the AI vision for what we're doing, right? That's the board.

SPEAKER_02

That is the board.

SPEAKER_00

And then we had uh you were there.

SPEAKER_02

I was there that day, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, uh Todd was in there.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

So uh yeah, it's a great group. Um we're all working hard to leverage what we have in front of us. You know, we're doing something that's never been done before in the world, right? We've got all the intellectual property around it. Yeah, where autonomous delivery starts, that's where our patents start.

SPEAKER_02

And we're witnessing that happening in the hallways of Hancock Health right now. That's right. It has been so cool to see.

SPEAKER_00

You look at you. How did you think of that? That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Um, but it's it is really, really neat to see this robot in action, going to our arrive points, picking up um, you know, they haven't put biospecimens in it yet. We're still just making sure it's smooth without any kinks whatsoever. And the past 24 hours, it is

Deep-Dive Board Meeting Highlights

SPEAKER_02

smooth sailing.

SPEAKER_00

So we've got two arrive points there in one robot, and we're running two different routes.

SPEAKER_02

So one unit is outside the lab, and another unit is near the cancer center. And so it just does those laps. Um, we've talked to nurses and staff and have gotten such great feedback to help us with um refining our use cases and and helping with their efficiencies.

SPEAKER_00

I know you have some pictures.

SPEAKER_02

I do.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe when you put some pics up there.

SPEAKER_02

Got video.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's awesome. And shout out to Autonomy.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my gosh. Autonomy, so autonomy is our robotics partner.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02

Um, it's a ground robot, and they have worked hard to um fit the robot and our arrive point to send and receive these packages. And they've been sending team members over from India who are working out of our office of Hancock.

SPEAKER_00

It's amazing support. You know, we're all um you know turning over new ground here. This is something that's never been done before. In fact, this use case is the first autonomous asynchronous handoff in the medical uh world that we know of the tap and so far.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, of its kind. So and that's specifically what um I would say no, the people who have a job to do, who have to stop that job to then go walk laps to deliver a specimen, their mind is going that this is gonna save me so much time um and focus on what I'm supposed to be here doing.

SPEAKER_00

Um how you're ringing the call buttons when you're at a hospital, right? And these nurses or whomever they're running doing these other you know tasks just focus on on care, right? Yeah, and that's what it's exciting, that's what makes it exciting.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's very cool. And it's just the beginning, but um, with each installation, especially your first one, you're learning so much and um you want it to be perfect.

SPEAKER_00

Every time it's gotta be perfect every time. Hiring.

SPEAKER_02

Hiring, we have new team members and a lot more on the way. Um, the team members that we've hired are busy trying to find the next hires. We have an HR director.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02

So our first hire was an HR director, Tom Hunley. Welcome to the team.

SPEAKER_00

As it should be, right?

SPEAKER_02

As it should be. Um, he feels like one of the team from the first day he was here.

SPEAKER_00

He's done great. Really happy to have him on the team. Yeah. And everyone else. I mean, it's crazy. We do have some interns leaving though.

SPEAKER_02

We do. We're having a pizza party today for them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we're gonna miss those guys. One of them is my son. Yeah. So um, but we know he'll be back. Hopefully they'll be back, right? Um, how about July 14th of next year?

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so um, and well then welcome to Robert Rex, too. We want to do that. Our VP of sales, our newest VP of sales.

SPEAKER_00

So we had Rob, and now we have Robert, so we're calling the old Rob Robot.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, we are didn't.

SPEAKER_00

I came up with that. I thought it was pretty clever, right?

SPEAKER_02

Sure.

SPEAKER_00

So Robot, okay.

SPEAKER_02

I gotcha, I gotcha. Um July 14th. We're trying to schedule a closing bell.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. NASDAQ came in and visited us this past week.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Uh yes, it was Ahmad and Eric. Umad and Steve.

SPEAKER_00

They left Eric behind.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, sorry, sorry, Eric for missing.

SPEAKER_00

There was no Eric. That's why we missed him.

SPEAKER_02

Ahmad and Steve.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, the Nasdaq came to Indiana. Yeah. You believe that?

SPEAKER_02

And to the arrival office.

SPEAKER_00

That shows what a big deal we are, guys. We're we're making big moves out here. Yeah. They don't they don't just come to you. They're they're great.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That was fun.

SPEAKER_02

It was. It was great to meet them.

SPEAKER_00

July 14th of 2026. If if you came to our opening bell, I'm sure you're gonna want to come back, right?

SPEAKER_02

Oh yeah, I think most people it would be.

SPEAKER_00

If you missed our opening bell, you're gonna want to be there.

SPEAKER_02

And there's gonna be a cutoff because 350. 350. Um, and that's that's it.

SPEAKER_00

And we're about what at 330 right now? Just kidding. We haven't we haven't opened it up yet.

SPEAKER_02

I'm just kidding. Because it's not it's not fully, fully, fully confirmed and official. So, but just mark that date in your calendar and yeah, start thinking about it. Yeah. Uh, because it'll be here before we know it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Um, share price.

SPEAKER_02

Dude, we're not talking about the share price.

SPEAKER_00

I I can't stop the share price. We're out of time. Come on. Let's get it up, guys. Right? Okay, I'm not gonna talk about it.

SPEAKER_02

We're not talking about it. Um, and we're also not concerned about it, you know? It is what it is. We're doing everything we can on our end.

SPEAKER_00

I know that we have a a five-year planned of 10x devaluation.

SPEAKER_02

So that's our roadmap.

SPEAKER_00

That's it. Share price right there, right? Forward looking.

SPEAKER_02

And that's our goal.

SPEAKER_00

Forward looking statements, not not whatever. May the results may change.

SPEAKER_02

No promises.

SPEAKER_00

We're working on it. We're gonna get it.

SPEAKER_02

No guarantees.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, thanks for being with us, everybody. We want to keep updating you as as we have more to tell you. Yeah, right. Um look out for news. We'll be uh putting it out as soon as we can, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you bet. We're trying to figure out a regular cadence for this Dan show, whatever that's gonna be.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, go on all of our socials and like us, friend us. Yes, go on my LinkedIn, Dan O'Toole, follow me. I put a lot of stuff there first. Uh go on all of the socials that somebody in this room is in charge of, not me. Uh go follow us.