Tanner Green: [00:00:00] We've gone from having like a vision workflow to solution to having like an end to end warehouse suite technologies that I think are really right at the cusp and right at the edge in terms of like what's possible instead of having like 10, 15, 20 administrative roles where people all have to do a bunch of manual work to how do you go down to just having a handful of folks that are almost watching like an AI model intelligently orchestrate all of the tasks in the warehouse.
And understand its entire footprint. The type of technology that we do is human-centered automation. Mm-hmm . Or it's human-centered ai to be able to look at a bunch of data that a person couldn't possibly be able to spend the time to look at. And then as a manager, you're able to see almost like a scorecard of data that's very proactive, telling you what you need to know about your warehouse.
Imagine if you didn't have to actually be at the warehouse to see the warehouse. Imagine if you could log in and see like a full 3D model of your warehouse and you could navigate it. Almost like a remote viewing into the warehouse.[00:01:00]
Cameron Clark: Good morning, Tanner. Good morning. Thanks for coming on here for me and Nick, the NWA Founders Podcast. Sitting here in your office, uh, kind of on the edge of downtown Bentonville. Will you give everyone kind of the 30 second overview? What is AUX?
Tanner Green: It's very hard to do in 30 seconds. But I'll do my absolute best, and then I'll go a little bit over.
There's a couple different jumping off points, like, to best describe it, depending on your background. The simplest way to think about it is OX stands for Operator Experience. So what that means practically is we provide operators, specifically in a warehouse, with devices. And those devices guide operators and show them what they need to do.
So if you work in a warehouse, you might use OX devices or OX software to perform your work. And then we also provide managers in warehouses with access to tools that give them better visibility on how to run their warehouses. So [00:02:00] practically, that's exactly what it is.
That type of navigation, and if you work in a warehouse and you need to perform a complex workflow or a set of tasks, we provide people with visualizations on how to do that effectively. Um, and there's a lot more to get into, but that's the brief version of it.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, well I'm excited to kind of dive in more.
I want to kind of get into your story first. Tell us where you grew up. Just kind of start from the very beginning here.
Tanner Green: Yeah, I grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas. So specifically, like, west side of Fayetteville, like, outside of the city. It was pretty rural. And then I went to Farmington High School. Um, growing up, my mom was a teacher.
She's been a teacher for 37 years. Uh, my dad worked retail. Um, I was very passionate, uh, at a young age about making things. And, uh, the types of things that I made were pretty dependent on how old I was. What my interests were at the time in particular, [00:03:00] uh, I got like my first computer whenever I was like probably 11 or 12 and I had aspirations of becoming a professional video game player.
Uh, but when I told my career teacher that she was like, that's not a real thing. Uh, at the time she was. She was right. It proved to become a real thing over time. So I think I was on to something. But it was good feedback because, you know, there's more things to do in life than to just think about that.
And so I had a computer and I thought whenever I was young, like how do I join a professional video game team besides playing video games? And I realized that there were different ways you could do that. You could like make videos or you could make graphics. And so I got super into Photoshop and being able to utilize Photoshop as a method for creating graphics and visuals and spent a lot of time whenever I was young, uh, learning that and was fortunate enough to basically develop like a pretty good size customer base doing graphic design projects for whenever I was like a young [00:04:00] teenager, like 13, 14, 15.
And, um. I had like an alias and I would go on the internet and get contracts to do graphic design work and, and some of it was local, but a lot of it was just online and like using Twitter as a platform to gain business. So at a super young age, I was passionate about making things and had a proclivity towards like earning business and winning business, but just kind of doing it with the resources that I had in front of me, which was.
The internet, you know what I mean, and some software I can install on my computer. Uh, what happened was when I got older, I realized that my passion for, for making things could, could be applied in other ways as well. And that was when I really got drawn towards entrepreneurship, um, through Startup Junkie specifically.
So whenever I was like 15, 16, I did like one of their entrepreneurship boot camps and was like, wow, this is really cool. Like, this passion that I have towards making things, a great way to apply that is to start a business. Um, and tell everyone what is
Cameron Clark: Startup Junkies? So everyone knows
Tanner Green: [00:05:00] here. It is a ecosystem builder, I think is how they would describe it, uh, towards supporting, uh, entrepreneurs.
So if you wanna start something, uh, you usually have no idea where to start. Yeah, I think that's goes with anything in life. The hardest part is taking the first step. So Startup Junkies serves as like a completely free and community driven service. Um, that's centered around how do you help entrepreneurs like really take that first step.
And then once they've taken that first step, uh, how do you kind of get them the resources that they need or maybe the feedback that they need to continue developing? And so that was a good experience to have whenever I was 15 or 16, because we learned like startup lean canvas. Um, which is just a methodology to think about how to start a business.
And so that was good exposure at a young age. And, you know, we had like a few days to come up with a business idea and I came up with an idea called Quick Picks, which was basically like DoorDash. You know, it was like you have this, I had this seemingly novel idea of like, what if you had an app on your phone and you could just order from any restaurant and go in and pick it up, because that just, you know, And it just seemed like a very convenient thing, and [00:06:00] it turns out there were companies called like DoorDash and other folks that were doing that, and I just didn't know it.
So it was definitely in the collective conscious, and I was just tapping into that, and it was kind of pouring out of me. But I did that whenever I was 15 or 16, and I walked away from that with the perspective of, Oh yeah, like I definitely want to start a business and do something impactful. But I didn't really know what that was or what that looked like.
Uh, so I kept doing graphic design work and I sold a lot on eBay. That was like a market I was super into whenever I was in high school. Um, just like a top rated seller, basically just like buying things from China. And then they would come and then I would sell them on the internet and people would buy them.
And
yeah,
Tanner Green: it was just again, like working with like the resources that I had in front of me, which. Was enough to, you know, get started.
Cameron Clark: And were you, were you saving your money at the time with the hopes of like, just starting more down the road or what was the just not really, yeah, I
Tanner Green: was just having fun. I was just having a great time.
You know,
Tanner Green: it was like school was a thing that I'd go and I would do, and it was like, okay, you know, this is like how I have to spend my time. But I was just thinking [00:07:00] about like, what do I get to do outside of school? Um, so I was just playing video games and, and thinking about businesses and the money was just kind of like something that was there.
You know, it was like, oh, like how much can I do in sales? Oh, I want that number to be bigger. Um, but I wasn't really like. Saving money or working towards like any other broader goal? I think I was just incredibly in the moment and uh, just kind of using my intuition more than anything.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. And did you have any like partners at the time that were cultivating like that community of just me and my brother.
Really? Yeah.
Tanner Green: So like my brother was just, uh, like when I got my computer, whenever I was 11 or 12, I went to my parents and I was like, Hey, I want a computer. And they were like, no. So my brother was like, okay, let's go to Best Buy. And like, it's like my brother had a lot at the time, but he just went to Best Buy and bought me like an open box Dell, you know, desktop for a couple hundred bucks and like that changed my life.
So it was just, just really him and, you know, having complete access to the internet whenever you're young. If used in the right way is a [00:08:00] really helpful and resourceful tool because you could just go on YouTube and learn how to do anything. And I figured that out at a quick point. So I was able to just learn a lot with what was in front of me.
Cameron Clark: Is that always been inside you, I guess, just like curiosity?
Tanner Green: I think so, yeah. Well, what happened specifically was I had this moment whenever I was like, I was extremely existential for like no real reason at all. I was able to kind of channel that productively. So I was probably like 11 or 12 and I was like, what am I supposed to do with my life?
And so like I, I like Googled some YouTube video and I watched some YouTube, probably many YouTube videos, but one specifically talked about how like, just to think back to when you were a kid and, You had this incredible instincts towards doing things with all the time in the world, and from what I could remember, I remember having like this notebook where I would draw in it, and I would draw, um, I would come up with sports teams, and I would draw logos for those sports teams that I would create, and I would draw uniforms that I would make, and I would like draw stadiums, [00:09:00] so yeah, there was some sort of something there from the very beginning that was just kind of centered around taking ideas that I had in my head and making them, and yeah, Going back to like the resources that I had, I think it was like, okay, I have these like colored pencils and I have this paper, so I'm going to write these things down and draw them.
And then as I got older and the resources changed, I think it just developed, but like whatever it is that is inside, like I think I've just. I've just been channeling that the entire time. And it just, it just looks different as you get older and the context changes. Did you get any of that from your parents?
I don't know. I think, that's a good question. I don't really know. I think my, my, my parents definitely did like the best that, uh, they could with the resources that they had. But like my mom's always been a teacher and has always been like very pro education. I didn't go to college, my dad's like really artistic, but can definitely paint, you know, exceptionally well.
And can just like freehand something and you're like, how did you do that? You know, so there's, there's probably something in there that, that I had exposure to. [00:10:00] Yeah,
Cameron Clark: let's talk about kind of back up to startup junkie and so you have, Let's deliver groceries, let's create an app. Turns out that's already a thing.
So is that when you first came in contact with
Tanner Green: Shiru? Um, yeah. There was definitely like a, a confluence of like many different events. Um, and Startup Junkie was actually really involved because. I, when I, when I graduated from, I graduated from Farmington in 2018, and then I went to the University of Arkansas and I was fortunate enough that Startup Junkie actually hired me as an intern.
Oh, wow. Um, whenever I was going into my freshman year at university. Okay. Which was crazy. 'cause to my, my memory, I think I was like the first person they hired as an intern that like wasn't a graduate. So they like really, there was no one else that applied, I guess, because they, they picked me to do it.
So how big was the staff there at the time? Was it just, it's probably like seven or it was Jeff and Brett and Haley Allgood was there. And Michael Eisemann was who I worked with and Megan was there. So there were just a handful of folks and they were just so [00:11:00] incredibly great. And when I joined, they were just working on starting the fuel accelerator program and I was.
Really, I'm excited about that because I got to make like a bunch of the graphics and just kind of participate in these ways that, you know, I was always looking forward to doing and, um, I got to do all that and, and OcuLogix at the time, uh, was Charu and Charu was a part of that original cohort. And so it was through the kind of like inaugural fuel program.
Where I was able to meet
Cameron Clark: Charu.
Tanner Green: Do you immediately
Cameron Clark: become business partners?
Tanner Green: I was looking to do something and I sent Charu an email because I had seen what she was doing and I had heard about it and I had been exposed to it through kind of my role at Startup Junkie. And I basically sent her a cold email and I was like, Hey, I think what you're doing is really neat.
You know, I'd love to meet you. Here's my resume and all the things that I've done. And, uh Michael Eisman, who I had worked with at Startup Junkie, was my, [00:12:00] you know, kind of like person you contact to talk about me. And that was right after Michael had taken a job at AcreTrader as like one of the first employees.
And Charu called Michael and was like, hey, this random person named Tanner just sent me an email and he put you as a reference. And Michael was like, Well, if you don't hire him, then I'll hire him.
Yeah.
Tanner Green: And so, Charu was like, okay, well, I guess I'll hire him. And so I, I sent her an email on Monday and met her on Wednesday, and then she hired me on Friday, and I signed a job offer making 12 bucks an hour.
And I was so excited. Rich.
Nick Beyer: Yeah, it was all I needed. And was that the goal of the email? Was the goal of the email to work with her? Or was it just straight up to meet her?
Tanner Green: I don't really know what the goal was, you know? That's what it turned out to be. You know, it turned out to be a job. Because to me, like, making 12 bucks an hour was great at the time.
Like, I was going into my third semester of college and I wanted something to work on that kind of fulfilled that thing, you know, and, uh, yeah, I think [00:13:00] the goal was probably to get a job
Nick Beyer: and it worked out, so. And so that was 2018, 2019 ish? Yeah, that was 2019. Okay. That was the summer of 2019. And just kind of bringing us into the inception of AUX.
Mm
Nick Beyer: hmm. Sounds like you were, you were employee number one or, and, and was a partnership started from the beginning or what did that look like? Yes.
Tanner Green: Charu had started the company whenever she was in college. Um, and it had started basically from this inception of a broader idea, which she had done research on whenever she was at Georgia Tech, um, in the College of Wearable Computing, which is a pretty niche thing.
Um, but it's basically how do you use wearable devices and the most practical method of that, that we know of today, is like a smart watch. Um, so how do you use wearable devices to make employees more productive in an industrial environment? So they're not having to carry around something, they're not having to use paper, but they can just kind of have something at a glance, they can have the information that they [00:14:00] need.
Um, and that was what a lot of the research was on, and so she decided to start a company and pursue that. And make something out of it and how do you take kind of pretty simple idea and of that and try to commercialize it and she was from Atlanta and went to Georgia Tech and applied to the fuel accelerator program and the startup junkie team was good at identifying talent, obviously, and they were like, yeah, come on.
And so she, she came and, and we met and, you know, I basically read, um, she had like a brief presentation and like kind of like a research paper because Charu is very research oriented, um, around what she wanted to do and I read it and I didn't know anything about supply chain, I didn't know anything about warehousing, I just knew how to design and I understood, uh, some of the core things that I think you need to know about software and I read it and I thought that the research paper was, made a lot of sense, you know, and, um, yeah.
It wasn't that complicated, uh, at least when I read it. You know, [00:15:00] as someone that like didn't know a lot, it just definitely scratched some sort of itch that was like, yeah, this is intuitive. And, uh, told her I wanted to do it. And then, yeah, joined and we got started.
Cameron Clark: And was the baseline of that research paper what OX is today?
Tanner Green: Yeah, I think, I think that's probably the most straightforward way to look at it because the research was basically like Again, how do you use wearable devices to make folks more productive? So it was kind of like the research paper was like a, a first step, but the difference between like a research paper versus like talking to customers and building a product that's so unbelievably that space in between is so vast.
Yeah. That I think the research paper was just kind of like I talked about at the beginning. It was just, it. That was the method in which like the first step was kind of taken and then there was a whole bunch of work that came after to really get it to where it's at today because what it is today versus what it was then is, is, is significantly developed.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. So at the, at that time there was no product yet. It was, I mean, it was just. It was, it was the idea.
Tanner Green: Yeah, it was the [00:16:00] idea and it was a Google slides, um, presentation and then a prototype. Okay. Yeah. And the prototype specifically was done, um, on smart glasses. And so smart glasses has kind of been, again, like the genesis of really like Charu's research and the idea as well is how do you use basically heads up display technology, uh, to make work really easy in industrial environments.
Like I use the example of a smartwatch. Like, we love watches, right? Like, our notification goes off on our phone, and we can just glance at it and see it. Some people may like that more than others, but it's nice to have, like, that information and that, like, guidance available at your fingertips. And in industrial environments, um, it's very helpful to have that information in your field of view.
Right? Anytime you're working on something and you need to have access to information. Imagine if you could just glance over to the side and it's right there. Um, so, you know, heads up displays like at a consumer level are like not things that are very present right now. We're probably about two or three years away from like consumer smart glasses that look [00:17:00] like the glasses I'm wearing now.
Um, but in an industrial environment. Heads up displays and the smart glasses have been around for about a decade.
Mm-hmm .
Tanner Green: So it wasn't, it wasn't a novel idea that y'all were pursuing. It wasn't a novel idea, like the application of it, where the novelty of it came from, like how we designed it in terms of like that operator experience and the way that the operators actually engaged with it.
That's where the novelty came in. So it wasn't so much the practical application of it that had been around for probably a good eight to ten years, but the way that we did it and the way that we designed it was different than how it had been done. So I think that kind of separated us somewhat from the other solutions that were out there in terms of how do you use heads up display technology to get operators the information that they need.
And again, that was just kind of like the inception. But in terms of like the actual capabilities that we built and what we do, it's grown tremendously.
Cameron Clark: And did Charu have any ties to Northwest Arkansas at the time?
Tanner Green: Nope.
Cameron Clark: So just came for the Felix Salt? Yeah, if you [00:18:00] ask
Tanner Green: her, she had no idea where it was on the map.
And I believe her. Yeah. I mean she's, I don't think she actually knew, you know. So, so yeah, I mean she just. She just took a, took a jump, leap of faith and moved here and I think if you ask her she'll say it was the best decision she's ever made in her life, you know, because it led to what we have now and, um, and yeah, Arkansas is a special place and as someone like her, I mean, she's Indian, she's from Australia, you know what I mean, her parents are immigrants, like, and they're all very academically oriented and her parents encouraged her, like, hey, you can go get a PhD anytime you want, like, you're young and you should start a company.
And like, She took that step and moved here and yeah, that was six years ago and now we have AUX.
So that's special.
Nick Beyer: So I know you mentioned she studied wearable devices and, but how do you, how do you get from studying that to the actual idea? Had she worked in a warehouse before or [00:19:00] what's the, how do you actually get to that product?
Tanner Green: That's a great question. So she had not only done research in that space that you were referencing, but she had also studied and done research specifically. A lot of it's just in applied industrial engineering. So how do you make people more efficient? How do you make processes more simple? Um, and on top of that, to answer your question, she had done research for basically.
Uh, McDonald's, like North American supply chain and the research that she had done for the supply chain for them was centered around building very, very sophisticated automation systems. And when I say automation systems, you can basically imagine like a giant vending machine. Mm-hmm . That's like half the size of a warehouse.
So imagine like. 50, 000, 100, 000 square foot vending machine that has the ability to, like, move product incredibly quickly. She did research, um, on implementing those systems, and what she found was that implementing those systems are incredibly expensive, and that it requires a lot of volume and a lot [00:20:00] of products to be able to implement a system like that and to recognize an ROI on your investment.
And so that also kind of led to this broader idea of, Wow, okay. Automation is not gonna solve all of our problems. And so she was able to pick up on that pattern, I think, really early in terms of like the exposure that she had to it, as well as just in terms of like overall market momentum. Like she picked up on the fact that automation was not gonna be this.
This magical black box that comes in and, like, fixes our global supply chain. In fact, it's, like, very far from the reality. Because she noticed that, like, a company like McDonald's, their entire supply chain, like, automation was only going to make sense in a few different areas. So it's like, okay, automation is going to cover like 10 to 20 percent of your entire volume.
What about the remaining 80 percent? Like, what is practically being done and what is being developed that's new towards how do we solve everything else? Um, so it was not only the research, I think, in wearable devices and applied industrial engineering, but it was [00:21:00] Again, so those broader patterns that she was making across that market.
And then what followed up from that was her making a prototype and going to companies in Atlanta that had warehouses. These were pretty big companies and those companies saying, hey, this is interesting. Like the way that you're thinking about it and the way that you're talking about designing a solution, like those are things we would be interested in testing.
Um, and so all of that I think was kind of the observation that was necessary to, to take that step and, and there was some, some interest in terms of like a large enterprise clients and using those types of capabilities.
Nick Beyer: And just for someone who isn't familiar with the levels of automation, you talked about the massive machine.
Yeah. That's probably at the high end of automation. You have robots, though, that are, that have been for the last probably 20 years in warehouses that are moving things around on the floor.
Tanner Green: Definitely.
Nick Beyer: Is that like mid tier?
Tanner Green: Yeah, there's definitely different tiers of automation, and it's a pretty niche field, um, within like warehousing.
Um, but there's, there's [00:22:00] different types. What I'm talking about specifically, the giant vending machines, those are like automated storage and retrieval systems. Mm
hmm.
Tanner Green: So they're called an ASRS, and they're kind of like the mecca of like a holy automation investment. And is that like Fortune 50, like who's using machines like that?
Like Fortune 1000, very, very large billion dollar enterprises. There's some, you know, maybe nine figure businesses out there that are making those investments, but like the CapEx required on that is pretty significant. More of like the mid tier and what you're referencing is automated mobile robots, or Cobots, or any sort of collaborative mobile robot that is basically Moving a container for you.
Yes. So if you work in a warehouse, it puts you in this position where you don't have to like really operate equipment or carry around a cart. These robots are doing all of those movements for you. And those are more like middle tier investments relative to what automation is out there, because they're more affordable.
So instead of spending, you know, millions and millions of dollars, you're gonna spend, um, several hundred [00:23:00] thousand dollars or. You know, low millions to make those types of investments. And there's some really incredible technology out there, like in the collaborative robotics mm-hmm . Space that, that some companies are doing that, um, will definitely, uh, support that paradigm of like, how do humans and machines work together?
Mm-hmm . Like, there's some incredible stuff being done there. And then there's also kind of, uh, cultural, um, observation too around like the concept of humanoids. Yeah. And building like full robots. And that is something that's like very far, I think, from being practically utilized. So really, you have giant, um, vending machines, and you have robots with wheels that, that move around and move containers around, and then you have people.
And in terms of like the next five to ten years, like, that's, that's pretty much the frontier.
Nick Beyer: Got it. So the, the big machines, that's probably, you know, like you said, Fortune 1000. You've got the, the smaller machines, right? The robots that are kind of doing some of this work, but maybe only automating a percent of the supply chain, like you, you [00:24:00] already suggested.
And then you have wearable devices that are automating 80, 90 percent of the supply chain. I mean,
Tanner Green: it's, it depends on the company's supply chain and what kind of products they're moving and materials. Like if you have a, if you have a business that is, um, Moving, like, a really small amount of SKUs and like a very standard type of SKU count, you can automate a lot of that.
Okay. Um, but if you're handling any products that require, like, really tactical grip or maybe have certain hazardous requirements, for example, um, they're pretty manual. Um, and specifically, one of the big, um, environments that's difficult to automate is, is cases. And a case is just like a cardboard box with something in it.
The case environment too is one that's very difficult to automate. And people being involved in that process are pretty significant.
But typically, I [00:25:00] think the going statistic is like 80 percent of warehouses are entirely manual. So for most companies, like 60 to 90%, I would say, of the products they're moving need to be manually moved.
Nick Beyer: So that leads to the idea, that leads to the inception, that leads to the fuel accelerator. Cheru moving here, you becoming kind of the first person working with her, and kind of take us through the first day on the job.
Yeah. Product that you, you know, y'all have tested, maybe talk to people, has it been tested and y'all have verified statistics saying, Hey, we can reduce, you know, we can improve efficiency by X percent or where y'all at each kind of take us through those first days.
Tanner Green: Yeah, definitely. When I started. With, with Charu, there was, uh, some research and some, like, I would say tests that had been done with enterprise clients on prototypes that proved you could make them 10 to 20 percent less, more [00:26:00] productive.
Um, but those tests hadn't converted into, like, giant contracts. So there was really no revenue coming in. Um, Charu had won Atlanta, uh, startup battle, and she had won about 100, 000 from that. And then when I joined, there was about 50, 000. Of that and so joined and yeah, we had a little bit of capital to get started and we went after it and my job basically when I first joined was, okay, how do we design this product and like standardize this product in a way that we can approach customers and get clients and how do we use some of these initial data points that we have to find our first customers.
Um, and so that was pretty much exactly how I started. I mean, I remember like joining the company and being on calls and like the end of 2019 going into 2020, like the first time ever talking, you know, and like trying to really sell something. And we were talking to like fortune 500 companies. Um, so it was pretty daunting, you know what I mean?
To like walk into an environment where. You don't really have a [00:27:00] product, but you have some research and you have some prototypes, and you're talking to very large companies on how to sell it. Um, but we knew we could make it. You know, it was just a matter of finding the customers and getting started. So that was really, when I first joined, what it was all about.
It's, it was taking the prototypes and making them real, and talking to some of the biggest companies in the world, and trying to figure out how to get them to
Nick Beyer: buy it. Awesome. And for, and you said 20 to 10 to 20 percent more efficient for someone who's like, Oh, that doesn't, that doesn't seem like that much more efficient.
Talk a little bit about that.
Tanner Green: Yeah, for sure. So I think the best way to think about it is, you know, if you have, let's say 100 employees, um, that are performing a specific use case across a few warehouses, if you can make them 10 to 20 percent more productive, you're going to save. A couple million dollars annually because what happens is employees essentially have a certain amount of products that they need to move per hour.
So let's say, you know, they need to move 100 products per hour and they can start using Ox and move 120. Well, that's 20 additional products per hour times 100 [00:28:00] people. You break that out over 52 weeks. All of a sudden, you know, your capacity has improved by a couple million dollars. Um, or you've reduced your cost by a couple million dollars.
And so a lot of the, the customers that we work with, um, it's, it's about how do I take my existing workforce that I have. And increase my capacity, because as we all know, there's a pretty, uh, significant opportunity to, I think, make our supply chain more productive. And then how this translates down, down to a consumer, consumer is like when you go into Walmart, for example, how do we make sure that products are on the shelf?
Right? So if I can get people to be able to productively move more products in a warehouse faster, um, and make that easier for people. When you go to the store, hopefully there's more eggs. I mean, it's, it's that type of, of translation and it very practically benefits people and it very practically can save companies money and allow them to do more with their existing workforce or it can increase their capacity.
Uh, which is very relevant and directly [00:29:00] impacts consumers.
Nick Beyer: So, you'll have a product, you're starting to sell it, and at this point is it just one product, right? I know now we've got four products, you know, based off the research we've done. Totally. Um, was it just one product and was it a wrist piece? Was it Heads up display.
Where did y'all start?
Tanner Green: Yeah, so I think the, the, there's, there's language to kind of give, um, the, the, the suite of products that we have structure. And so I think the language I would use is we had a, what I would call like a vision picking solution or just a vision based workflow solution. And ba what that means is the original product was giving operators a device.
That device could be a heads up display or smart glasses. It could also be a smartwatch or a mobile device or a tablet. The actual device that you're running the software on doesn't matter. Um, but it's taking a device and being able to run a workflow on it. And a workflow is a simply, is simply a set of instructions.
So it's go [00:30:00] to this location and scan this and then grab this amount of this product and put this product here. Um, but it's very visual. So you're able to look at it and immediately know what you need to do. Versus Historically, a lot of, um, the technology you would use in a warehouse is not visual. It's looking at a screen with a bunch of text.
Um, it's hearing it, like actually in a headset, being told what to do. And so there was significant opportunity to introduce very visual driven workflows. So that way when I show up in a warehouse on my first day, I can look at this visual workflow and I can know exactly what I need to do. That can minimize my training as well.
Cameron Clark: And how much time were you spending in the warehouses at that time? Um, like personally? Yeah, you and Charu.
Tanner Green: Um, we were going to visit prospects. Um, so we were traveling, you know, like monthly. You go visit a prospect in a warehouse and spend time in their environment and understand their process. So it wasn't like constant [00:31:00] because warehouses are not like.
The easiest places to get into, you know, you have to like obviously be able to meet people there and coordinate with customers and go into that security and
Cameron Clark: yeah,
Tanner Green: yeah, for sure, but but being able to get on site with folks that are interested in the product is like the tangible first step that's that's required to be able to sell them.
Cameron Clark: And each so each warehouse that you're going to visit, like for these prospective clients, um, are you building custom software for? Them that, that shows those
Tanner Green: workflows. That's a, that's a great question. So, and, and going back to your question as well, I can kind of put both of those together. That vision based solution, we basically developed, um, pla a platform or an SDK, depending on how you wanna think about it, that makes building those workflows for each customer very easy.
Mm.
Tanner Green: So we ba imagine like. I put a bunch of Lego blocks on the table and there's like 20 different Lego blocks. We basically built a platform that allows you to pick up any of those Lego blocks that you need and sequence them in a particular order. So like in terms of the product, it's [00:32:00] a set of these blocks that I can put together for each customer depending on how they want to use it because operational processes look different across customers.
But we kind of built that foundation for building those workflows very quickly and easily across customers. So for example, if you go into customer A that's using aux, The actual workflows look exactly like they do for customer B, but the sequence or the steps in those processes might be a little bit different.
Um, so it's, it's a combination of building out that original like vision based workflow solution and then for different customers. Being able to configure it and tailor it for them very quickly and easily.
Nick Beyer: And how are, I mean, how are you getting all of the products? Let's just, let's use a, let's just be super real here.
Sure. Go into a Harps warehouse. Yeah. They've got a ton of products. Are y'all like Matterport scanning the warehouse to figure out where all the products are in that warehouse before you sequence them?
Tanner Green: Yeah.
Nick Beyer: For someone to actually see it? Yeah, that's a great [00:33:00] question. getting that data into
Tanner Green: Yeah. So you basically Described a warehouse management system perfectly
Nick Beyer: and
Tanner Green: those already existed pre ox exactly.
Yeah, and so that's where We've been able to differentiate ourselves as exactly what you just described Exists and it is essentially no companies when they have a warehouse that utilize this system called the warehouse management system And the best way to think about it is it's a database Or a giant spreadsheet that has all of your locations All of your products, how much product is in each location, and some of those specific requirements.
And so we're able to integrate our platform with that system and pull that data out of it that we need to do all the things that we're talking about. So that existing, like, uh, Master, uh, data is, is there. And so that's what we connect into. And then when operators perform work on the floor, we update those systems.
And so that's where there's also been a significant opportunity to help some companies is [00:34:00] traditionally updating those systems as manual. Someone has to go out and perform work and then come back and someone has to manually update that system versus with Ox. When operators are doing work on the floor, it's automatically updating that master data.
So you're able to see faster than you would previously how products are being moved around. Sure.
Cameron Clark: And at the time, are you focusing primarily on the hardware? And is Charu focusing on the software? Or is it both things? What's the? Yeah, both split up roles,
Tanner Green: both things for sure. I think my biggest role early on in building the product was like practically, uh, designing like the experience on the software.
And then, uh, Philip Cannon, who was like our founding, like CTO, uh, me and him building the actual software and getting it ready for customers. Um, so yeah, we were doing all of it, you know, when there's just like a few of you and you're working to close a customer, like everyone plays a pretty significant role.
So
Nick Beyer: you close your first customer. What is a contract like that? I know they're all different based off where [00:35:00] outside, but first customer, was that like a big tailwind? Is that a big, it's like, yeah, it's a lot of work.
Tanner Green: It's, it's crazy. Like the, we are very, one of the, one of the ways that's, I think, very helpful to think about the businesses.
Our business is not software as a service. Our business is enterprise software. So when you sign contracts, you're doing implementations for, you know, three months to a couple years. So like our first customer that, um, we originally signed with, we've been working with them for three years, and we've been continuously developing and building solutions for them for three years.
So they're very, uh, enterprise focused. It's not like you are taking, um, something off the shelf and just like handing it to somebody and sending them a box and telling them to go use it. You are, you know, a very strategic partner for them that's continuously helping them improve their operations because kind of tying this back to we're collecting a lot of data about their warehouses that they don't have access to.
And then we're able to utilize that [00:36:00] data to help continuously make them more efficient. Um, so these are very, Um, strategic, you know, partner driven customers. Um, so one of our customers, for example, the system that they've been utilizing in their warehouses, they've been using for like 30 or 40 years.
Their warehouse management system. Mm-hmm . Okay. Exactly. Um, and those are kind of considered legacy systems 'cause they've been around for decades. But the point isn't so much that as much as. This is like core infrastructure to the supply chain. So when you integrate these pieces and you hook things up and you change how it works, like, these pieces are going to be in here for a long time.
So for us, like, the value of the business is finding the right folks to work with, who we can work with for years and provide significant value towards. Because, kind of like I mentioned, we're increasing their capacity or saving them millions of dollars annually by continuously driving improvement and efficiency in their warehouses.
Cameron Clark: What did the team look like at the time of
Tanner Green: We were able to raise venture capital, [00:37:00] um, as we were pursuing and closing our first customer. This is a friends and family round? No. Um, we raised, uh, three and a half million dollars in seed funding. Okay. Um, in 2021. And that was kind of on the back of, of pursuing and closing our, our first enterprise customer.
And that was, um, co led by Mac Venture Capital in Los Angeles, and then Cortado Ventures in Oklahoma City. And then there were like 10 other venture capital funds that, that got in on it. And that was mostly driven from, um, Charu's network and the product we were building and the first customer that we had.
And, uh, just a, a significant interest in Northwest Arkansas. I mean, there was a lot of momentum at the time, and there still is, obviously, around like, Supply chain in Northwest Arkansas and this being like the place to build a supply chain company. So it was, there were a myriad of narratives that were kind of at play that on top that and on top of what we were doing is I tried so hard to [00:38:00] not use the word AI so far and I've done such a good job, but we were, I mean, we were very far ahead in terms of thinking about how you could apply some of those really advanced capabilities to this space.
In a way that like folks just weren't doing. And, uh, yeah, in 2021, we were able to utilize that to, to raise capital. I think like not every business should raise venture capital. I don't think that's the goal, but when you're building like a technology company, that's going to take 10 to 20 years to like really get to where you want to go, um, and you're serving the largest enterprises in the world, you.
You have to have a lot of money in the bank to be able to do that productively. And so that was, that was kind of where we were at in, in 2021. But y'all operated for
Nick Beyer: two years without raising funding. Yeah, totally. 2019 to 2021. And went months without being paid to, I mean.
Tanner Green: Yeah. So talk about that.
Nick Beyer: Cause that's totally very
Tanner Green: rare for
Nick Beyer: a tech company.
Yeah.
Tanner Green: I mean, practically I'll tell you exactly what happened was like. We were working [00:39:00] with a, with a company right whenever COVID happened that we were working to close and be our first customer. So
Nick Beyer: Inception's 2019, COVID happens 2020.
Tanner Green: Yep, and we're freaking out because like the projects that we're working on, everyone's like, Hey, we're not talking about projects right now.
Yeah. global pandemic are warehouse employees coming in. Yeah, exactly. Like those are reasonable questions to ask. And so, yeah, we went like a couple months with, without, you know, being paid and just kind of having a lot of faith in the fact that all of this was going to work out. And so when we weren't getting paid, we started a, a grocery delivery company.
Um, just in the thick of COVID because we needed some way to get some money and we had built all this technology around like picking orders in a warehouse, which is really funny because you can practically apply that to going into a Walmart store and like pulling products off the shelves. So we were like literally going into Walmarts during COVID me and Charu and Philip and like our friends and we were.
Picking grocery orders for people using our software in [00:40:00] Walmarts because Were you wearing heads up displays or? We were using our mobile devices.
Okay. Yeah.
Tanner Green: We weren't gonna walk in there with, with heads up displays, , because that might be a little bit distracting. But we were using our phones Okay. And like downloaded our technology and we're using it to, to go and pick orders for people.
And we were doing like probably 10 to like 25 orders a day. I think we grossed like a hundred thousand dollars in sales over like six months just by like standing up a Shopify website and helping people and. Not really like profiting off of it either, just like being able to use our technology and have some money coming in to like pay for rent, you know, and, and then pay for gas to like drive around and deliver people groceries.
And so that's what we were doing in 2020, um, whenever enterprise customers weren't wanting to talk to us because they had other priorities that were more important than us.
Nick Beyer: So
Tanner Green: that's 2020. Is that most of 2020? Uh, like half of 2020, I would say. Yeah, from like March to like September, that's what we were doing.
Um, and then towards the [00:41:00] latter half of 2020, we started to, to pick up a bit of momentum. And then we, we went out to raise our, our, our venture round towards the end of 2020. We closed that, like, the, like, right around Christmas 2020. And then we announced that towards the beginning of 2021.
Cameron Clark: So is the second half of 2020, are you both on the road a whole lot, like, raising the round, trying to acquire customers, or what does that look like?
What's
Tanner Green: funny, what's funny about that is, like, because it was 2020, like, no one was traveling. Yeah. And when we raised our, our venture round, um, We talked to, we got really good advice, um, from this guy named Mark Lorry, um, who's like a serial entrepreneur and, and Mark gave us the advice of, Hey, whenever you want to raise venture capital, you need to talk to like a 100 or 200 investors and you need to do all that within the span of like three or four weeks.
So we were like, okay, that sounds like a lot of work. And so it was just sitting in this room and having like three to five investor meetings a day for like probably like six to eight weeks. So they would
Nick Beyer: come here?
Tanner Green: [00:42:00] No, it was all virtual. It was all virtual. Yeah, which made it really easy for us because we were able to have a lot of meetings in a very, very short period of time because everything was virtual.
I think if the expectation was that it needed to be in person, it probably may have been impossible to do what we did because of just the amount of travel and like not having the resources to do that. And then subsequently it's difficult to schedule meetings with people in person relative to just like hopping on a Zoom call, you know.
So yeah, we got after it.
Nick Beyer: So kind of, but before we move on to like the business scaling, so we'll say 2021 to 2024, mid, mid life cycle of the business, y'all have only been around what, six years?
Tanner Green: Yeah, I mean, we've, this company was started in 2019. We like really went to market with our product. Uh, in like 2022.
Okay. And then it was really, it's really only been commercialized for about two years. It's probably the right way to think about it. Um, because when you do these, these projects, like I said, they take time. You don't just like turn them on and they start. Uh, [00:43:00] so I would say we've, we've been commercialized for probably about
Nick Beyer: two years.
Okay. So kind of last inception question, as you're reflecting on all of that, 2019, 2020, You coming on, Shahrou's experience, were there any big mistakes that y'all made early on, whether it was the way things were formed or, uh, you know, your first hires? Like, what were some of the big mistakes that y'all made?
Made so many
Tanner Green: mistakes, I probably can't talk about a lot of them. Uh, because those are things you just kind of have to, to clean up and, and, and fix, I think. Yeah, that's an interesting question.
Nick Beyer: Um, and I think what we're trying to get at Tanner is, People see the outside of Ox, they see, you guys just raised 12.
6 million, you know, last year, 2023. They see all the flash in the pans, but they don't see all the nitty gritty, the hard work, the Yeah, definitely. Army crawling through mud to get to where you're at. So I think that's really what we're trying to highlight.
Tanner Green: Yeah, no, I think that's super important. [00:44:00] Um You know, it's funny when you ask that question of like what mistakes you made.
I just immediately went back to like, so many different moments where it's just really, really challenging. Um, yeah, I would say, um, the hardest part about building, uh, a company and the hardest part about communicating and selling it is especially with what we were doing, because it was, it was pretty niche and specific.
The hardest part about doing it is being able to effectively communicate. To people what you do. And I think like the last five or six years has just been a constant pursuit of trying to figure out how to do that. There's different ways to think about businesses and there's different ways that businesses are kind of, um, how they are kind of created.
And for us, I think one of the biggest challenges was how do you get in front of a customer and when you have like 30 minutes of their time, how do you tell them what you do super effectively? That took a [00:45:00] lot of time to get right and figure out. And I actually don't think you ever figure it out. I think it's kind of a constant evolution in terms of like how you communicate to folks.
Because we're kind of creating and inventing in a space where there's a certain way things have been done for a very, very, very long time. And so when you talk to someone that's been working in that space for like 10, 15, 20 years, how do you very concisely communicate to them exactly? Uh, what you do, that was like a constant pursuit.
And so there were plenty of mistakes that I think were made or lessons that were learned in being able to do that well. Um, that's one of the things that come to my mind. And then there's just like really practical things that I wish we could have probably done better early on. But I won't get into all of that.
Yeah.
Nick Beyer: Was there any, uh, I know you talked about Mark. Were there any mentors or people who came alongside of y'all who really helped you dial in? Because you're selling a really technical product.
Tanner Green: Definitely.
Nick Beyer: So, and you're selling to, I mean, I don't know what percent of people work in warehouses, but [00:46:00] it's not a, it's not a large percent.
And so you're, you're also to get someone to understand that he's never been in a warehouse, maybe never walked in a warehouse, doesn't understand what operators are going through every day. That's a challenge. So was there someone who really, obviously you learned through your mistakes, but like was there someone who helped y'all effectively?
Tanner Green: Yeah, you're definitely onto something there. 'cause that was one of the things that we kind of realized over time was like we were trying to sell to people and explain our product to them, but those folks like hadn't actually been to a warehouse. So like you're sitting here trying to tell someone how your product is going to help make them more productive in a warehouse, but like they don't actually know how the warehouse works.
So like that in itself, kind of going back to like those early mistakes, like that was proven to be a challenge. Um, yeah, there were definitely folks that helped tremendously. Um, we're really fortunate to just have great investors and like folks that have our best interest and have the company's best interest.
And they've given us so much good feedback over time. Uh, Mark. Laurie early on gave us [00:47:00] very, very good advice. Um, and we'll get into all the details of it, but, but specifically it was about, okay, you've raised a couple million dollars. Like now let me tell you how you spend that very, very effectively to get you to the next stage, which is just something that like, I remember having that moment of just like you talked about, like raising the money.
It's like, okay, great. You have the money. Now what do you do with it? Because you can have a plan and talk about all the, the theoretical things that you're going to go do. But. But when it comes down to it, you have to be able to spend that money very, very well and effectively. And when you raise venture capital, there's also this expectation that within about a year and a half, you're going to spend all of it and you're going to spend it really well and more money is going to come out.
And so there's, there's challenges that are presented with that. Um, but yeah, I would say our investors and like folks like Mark gave us some really good advice early on, um, that were just kind of small things that helped us, I think, take the right steps. So that,
Nick Beyer: I mean, I think that brings us perfectly into the midlife of the business.
Y'all have raised money, three and a half. Where are you deploying it? What are you, what are you doing next to like [00:48:00] really start the growth engine? Definitely. That is ox.
Tanner Green: We've, we've spent a lot of capital on building the product. Because the, the, the real strategic advantage of OX long term is the fact that I think we're building a solution and we're building a product in a space that is ripe for, for innovation and is ripe for a new way in which something is being done and that's the warehouse management software space.
Um, so most of the product has been spent on that and implementing customers and acquiring customers. Um, all with this broader goal of, you know, either building a very large business over time or building a product that's got, you know, really great capabilities and, and someone comes along and thinks that, hey, this is something that we want to acquire and, and integrate into our systems.
Um, and so, yeah, that's, that's the goal really of the product is to keep growing it as a, as a business and hopefully one day find like the right strategic partner to really help distribute it. And when you
Cameron Clark: talk about building the product, are you Talking [00:49:00] predominantly on like hiring engineers or, or are you this more like, hey, more the manufacturing side actually, like building the, the actual
Tanner Green: hardware engineers and software.
Okay. Specifically. Yeah. So I mean, the vast majority of our team is, is, is software engineers, you know, and our sales team is like me and our COO and like, you know, one other person. So the sales team is like relatively small. Um, and it's mostly focused on. Engineering and integrating with systems and getting customers up and running.
And then when those customers are up and running, kind of like project management, industrial engineering related activities to help, kind of like I mentioned before, drive that continuous improvement. Um, and then the nature of the product has really evolved over time. So we talked about like. Those visual workflows and now that has basically grown into, essentially what we have today is like a full digital warehouse solution.
So it's kind of, I think like the next frontier in terms of how warehouse software and systems are are going to [00:50:00] work. And so we basically help companies build like a full 3D. Digital twin of their, of their warehouse. And then we do a bunch of like optimization and simulation work as well for the warehouses.
Because what we've found is that with these workflows that we've built, we can collect a lot of data. And then we can use a lot of that data to help drive like a lot of optimization in the warehouses to make them more efficient. ,
Nick Beyer: you're deploying that seed round? Mm-hmm . You're building the product.
You're hiring software engineers. Are they all coming in northwest
Tanner Green: Arkansas? For the most part, yeah. I think consistently our team has been about 80 to 90% based, based here in the office and. As of today, I want to say it's about over 90 percent of folks are here and like we were talking about, we're in the office three days a week and work together and behind you there's a bunch of things written on the window that are secret and are things that we're working on.
And so, yeah, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's really just. [00:51:00] How do you find the smartest people that want to have a lot of autonomy over building software and helping us build products and, uh, are very good at, at communicating and, and understanding the environment that our customers are, are utilizing. And then also understand that bigger picture that we're working towards, uh, in terms of, uh, our warehouse platform.
And how did y'all go about finding those people? Um, well, for the most part it was just kind of through our network and finding the right folks that have had, um, I think relevant experience. Um, about two years ago we invested in like hiring, we have someone on our team named Stephanie who's like our head of people and recruiting and she does a great job having a recruiting pipeline of, you know, many, many candidates that are interested in coming to work for OX.
And so Typically like when we have a role it's kind of like we have a handful of folks that we know to reach out to and um, having a good pipeline of talent is very, very [00:52:00] important.
That's good.
Nick Beyer: And so y'all are deploying the dollars, the products being built really well. When are those customers starting to kind of like trickle in?
Is that 2022? Is that 2023? You've got a few customers. Definitely. Talk about what the sales process looked like, what it looked like bringing on clients, how many y'all were bringing on? Like, can you bring on five clients at a time? Or is that, just talk about that.
Tanner Green: Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of things related to like the business development side that I just can't speak to because they're not public, but the right way to think about it is, yeah, in 2021, 2022, we brought on like our first.
client and that client helped us really develop that initial product and then over time that client and other clients has helped us develop kind of this broader solution that I'm speaking to and kind of like I mentioned, I would say the last two years we've been like commercially available, meaning that like an enterprise can come and inquire about ox and we have the resources to be able to [00:53:00] implement them.
So yeah, it's been customer growth and you know, we don't have that many customers when you're in the enterprise space like we are. The goal is not to have hundreds of customers. The goal is to have a handful of very strategic partners that you work with for hopefully a very, very, very long time. Um, so the, the business growth has been strategic in that way.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, talk about the relationship maybe with your first client or as you're building these clients. I mean, because you're still at the beginning stage. It's like, hey, we've got, this is the product we've got. Yeah. We're willing to learn with you. And, I mean, are you in their warehouse? Yeah.
Tanner Green: Constantly?
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the first customer, um, is a Fortune 500, um, transportation company. And, Yeah, I mean it was basically being in their warehouse for about a year straight, just iterating and trying to get it right. And that first customer gave us a lot of grace in terms of like where we were failing, but also where we were performing very well.
And so yeah, it took about a year. [00:54:00] To really get that product right, that first version of it, and get it successful. And then where the difference was made was once we got it right, the results were, like, significant. I mean, that customer has saved, like I mentioned, millions and millions of dollars because of the results.
But it was, yeah, about a year of work and a lot of people being in a warehouse and working themselves very, very hard. Not because they're physically moving cases, but because they're, Right there, kind of iterating and developing the solution to get it how we need it. And when you
Cameron Clark: first started having that live data, like, was it what you expected?
Was it the 20 percent margin?
Tanner Green: Yeah, that's basically the right way to think about it. Um, there's like some details in the data. Um, and there's always like some variance in terms of like you might. Make one operator like 35% more productive, you might make another operator the exact same as before, but generally speaking across the board, yeah, it was a clear 15 to 20% increase in productivity and then over time, that's just continued to grow for customers.
Wow. Yeah, so it's, it's [00:55:00] significant. And then on the business development side, the reason why, you know, like a lot of who we work with and what we're doing is just. Completely discreet is because, you know, we have a very strategic vision for how we're wanting our platform and our capabilities to develop and so it is advantageous for us to kind of do all that work without any anyone really in the market knowing what's going on because that that's really how you build the best company is you just kind of build discreetly and build the right partnerships and.
You don't really do it for the PR, you know what I mean? Especially when you're building something new like we are. Even our website, for example, I mean it speaks very high level to what we do, but like the actual product and what we do, no one's really seen it besides our customers and us. And so there's also that component of it as well, and that inherently also drives up the value of the product that we do.
Because it's not like anyone can just Sea O and be able to recreate it, [00:56:00] um, which is, which is very relevant in terms of, um, the strategic nature of what we're doing over time.
Nick Beyer: And so you, your, your argument then as a co-founder is the discreetness of the product is worth more than inbound sales.
Tanner Green: Yep. Okay.
Because it's enterprise. Yeah, like if you were SaaS and like you had like if I had an off the shelf product like I was saying earlier that I could just go install with a customer and my incentive is to have as many customers as possible, that's a completely different narrative. You know, that's like, let me show you everything that we do.
But for us, it's. It's having very large enterprise customers for decades, you know, where you're continuously developing and, and, and creating more value and trying to develop technology in the warehousing space that doesn't exist, you know, and then like that is kind of it's, it's own thing.
Nick Beyer: And this might, this might be too personal, but.
If you're saving these company millions of dollars, why don't they just offer to buy you as soon as they're That's a great [00:57:00] question.
Tanner Green: Yeah, I mean there's, there's, there's different paths. And we're at a really interesting, like, juxtaposition, uh, the juxtaposition as, as a company in terms of like Do you keep raising more money and do you keep trying to build a large company or do you find the right acquirer to be able to help you on the distribution side?
I mean, that's like a very, very relevant question that we're thinking about and trying to figure out what's next.
With the expectation that by building the best product possible, you're going to find the right partners to help you distribute it globally over time. And so it's less about having a specific number of revenue. It's, it's less about being acquired. It's more about, I know that if we can make a warehousing product in the way that we're trying to make it.
And no one else has made it. The right outcome will come. [00:58:00] Exactly. Yeah. And so I think that's the right incentive structure, more so than being focused on, you know, publishing your customers and focusing on that inbound because it's not, it's not like an off the shelf product. Yeah.
Cameron Clark: So are there, I mean, 21 through 24, I guess really 22 when you kind of, Your first customer here, are there, is there any competition in your space?
Tanner Green: Yeah, there's comp. The competition in the space is less on the technology that we're building, and the competition in the space is more from the perspective of as a customer. Let's use an example. Let's say as a customer, I have a $10 million budget annually that I'm gonna spend on warehouse automation.
The competition is. Where's that money going to go, you know, but then the advantage to that is I'm not going to get all 10 million of it, you know, so how do I communicate and build the relationships in the industry where if someone has a 10 million budget, they're going to give us a percentage of that.
Um, so you're really just competing for resource and capital allocation. Across [00:59:00] different types of things that are available, like we talked about automation and, and robotics earlier. Mm-hmm . And an automated storage and retrieval system. If a customer has a $10 million budget and they decide, Hey, I'm gonna spend all $10 million on automated storage and retrieval system, inherently that's my competition.
Yeah. Because the resource in the capital that they're allocating, um, on an annual budget isn't going to me. Um, but in terms of like exactly the product that we're building and the way that it's being done, um, there's not like, I can't point to one company and be like, they're doing it exactly like that.
There's several companies that have been around for the last 5, years. That are all kind of doing things tangentially related. Um, but even at the core, within warehousing software, because there's not like really a standard for how it's done. Every company looks a little bit different, so it's not, I'm also not saying OX is like we're the only warehousing company that's completely novel.
You know, at the end of the day, like a lot of warehouse automations and solutions are unique. That's kind of the nature of it as well.
Nick Beyer: Are there legacy? Yeah. I mean, [01:00:00] because you said wear wearables have been around for decades, so like are, what are, who are those legacy companies that. Oracle, SAP, Blue Yonder.
But they're, they're more breadth rather than like the depth that y'all are Yeah,
Tanner Green: and that's where we're able to build, that's frankly where we're able, why we're able to build a business is because if you're a large enterprise and you go work with one of those companies You know, they're like a giant, they're a giant ship, you know, and like, even if you're a big company, you're like a really small part of that puzzle.
But for us, if you work with AUX, you have like dedicated resources and 24 7 support. So like someone's going to call and an employee is going to answer the phone. And at those big companies, you know, when you work with those. Big folks. It's like there's really no one to call. Yeah, and then when you call they're charging you 1, 000 to get on the phone
Yeah,
Tanner Green: so it's just that level Again, that's kind of where the value comes from is being like a really trusted advisor and partner And the [01:01:00] the honest part is that we understand our customers operations and warehouses just as well as they do So think about how valuable that is at scale.
Yeah, and
Nick Beyer: I think that's really like, if I'm capturing the value of aux, that's it. And I assume there's things that y'all have learned. That inherently weren't the goals when you started, but like I imagine now you could probably, you have a good idea of what the best layout of a warehouse looks like. Is that, is that true?
Tanner Green: Yeah, you're onto something there because there's a, there's a broader again with how you develop the business. There's, there's different ways that it can grow over time. There's a world where we just focus on building a tech company and building really specific technology and the tech is valuable.
There's a world where Ox keeps growing and we expand more into, I think what you're describing would be like services and consulting, um, for how you do broader network design. All those things are, are very relevant. And even today with our customers, we do some consulting work as well. Um, [01:02:00] but you know, we do it because we're trying to help our customers be better or we're not doing it because that's the goal of the business is to be a consulting firm, right?
Um, so there's very, yeah, you're, the commentary is accurate in terms of how we think about growing the business, I would say, for like the rest of the decade.
Nick Beyer: So you're just trying to determine, do we stay focused on the product we're selling or is there a world where we do other things like that?
Tanner Green: Yeah, definitely.
And at the end of the day, like, it's not really me making that decision, it's more our customers, you know. And then the broader, I think, market pool in terms of, of what, of what they want. Um, so yeah.
Cameron Clark: So your first few customers you're acquiring, I mean, Is, is the main goal grow within those at the, at that time?
That was just, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Tanner Green: Land and expand. Yeah. It's like, you can pay me a little bit of money to like, do a pilot and kind of get started and show you some results and I'm going to show you results that are very promising and then you're going to keep paying me and then it's going to, the account's going to keep growing and that's, that's [01:03:00] proven to be the case.
In the
Nick Beyer: monetization structure, is that, is that relative to the size of the warehouse? Yes. To the amount of products in the warehouse, to the volume they do annually, how are you monetizing? You can describe
Tanner Green: the business just as well as I can. Yeah, that's it.
Nick Beyer: Okay, all of those things. Basically, yeah, it's a
Tanner Green: function of all those things.
Because inherently when you make investments in these solutions, you're building a business case. In the business cases, based on how big is the warehouse, how many operators are in it, what is the volume, if AUX delivers this expected savings, that creates 5 million in savings, so then AUX gets a percentage of that inherently.
Okay. So that's exactly right. So that's what I
Nick Beyer: was going to ask, because some of the, some of the companies like, Not like y'all, but saving company's money will offer, will base their monetization structure off the percent of the savings.
Tanner Green: Yeah, and there's different ways to think about it, but it's like, yeah, it's value creation.
So if I can create five million dollars, then I get a percentage of that, and the company recognizes the rest is savings. [01:04:00] Is that common in your industry? Mm hmm. Okay. Yeah, definitely. Um, I'd say like across the, the broader warehouse management, execution, orchestration, which are all just words of saying warehouse software.
Yeah. Um, it's typically very, very value driven unless you're a company and you're starting out and you don't have any system at all, right? Because if you don't have any system and you don't have any operations, then it's hard to say what the savings are going to be if you're starting from ground zero.
Uh, but generally speaking, yeah, the goal is to drive productivity up. And, uh, help sustain the operations, make it more efficient. And in doing so, you get a percentage of that. Uh, that's pretty standard.
Cameron Clark: So, leading up to, you know, raising Series A, how many employees do you have, kind of, right before then?
Tanner Green: Um, we've always been right around that, like, 20 to, like, 30 range.
Okay. Yeah, we have found that that is the, the most. Uh, productive size to stay at because you're not so big where you have so many things going on that [01:05:00] your chances of like quality decrease, but you're the right size where you can support enough concurrent projects and focusing on delivering really meaningful solutions.
So we've always kind of been like pre series A. We were around, I think 20 post series A. We've always been around 25 to 30. Okay. Okay. So that money. Both times has really just gone into the product. Yep. Okay. It's gone into the product and the development and then by way of building the product has come sales and growth.
Nick Beyer: My last question before we move on to like where the business is at now, how hard was it raising your seed? Raising Series A, being in Arkansas, being 24, 27, your, your kind of age scope, like, Totally. Lack of experience, like, what barriers did y'all overcome and how did you overcome those?
Tanner Green: Yeah, a lot of barriers.
Um, both rounds were incredibly challenging to raise. Um, [01:06:00] Cadron Capital, which is like Jeff Ammarine and Brett, they're the only Arkansas investor that we have. So it's disappointing to raise 16 million and like barely have any capital allocation from anyone in the state. That's crazy. Um, because I think that like Arkansas is a wonderful place and I think that investors should invest in Arkansas based companies and we can all grow together.
Um, but, but the reality is that all of our capital has come from Oklahoma, Missouri. Um, California, New York, D. C., Florida, Atlanta. So it's just kind of been a confluence of different areas that believe in the state. What do you think drove that?
Nick Beyer: I don't know.
Tanner Green: Yeah. But the challenges that we faced were pretty significant.
I mean, we raised our seed round whenever I was 20, 21. We raised our Series A whenever I was 22, 23. Charity was a couple of years older than me. Um, [01:07:00] I mean, just statistically, if you just want to look at the numbers, it's like less than 1 percent of venture capital goes to women. Charity was the CEO when we raised that money.
So it's difficult. It's very difficult to raise money. We raised our Series A in the driest capital allocation ever. I mean, it was into 2022, beginning of 2023, there was literally no money. That says something, I think. Um, and it's always funny because I think there's kind of that stereotype of like, oh, companies can just go out and like raise a bunch of money and oh, like, look at them.
Like, they raised money. Oh, companies do that. But it's like, to raise 12. 5 million as an Arkansas based company with a female founder in the driest capital period that we've probably had in the last 10 years. That's pretty significant, um, and to do so without basically any capital coming from the state as well.
So what's meaningful to me about raising that capital, aside from like the challenges of the fact that we've been able to attract external capital to the state of [01:08:00] Arkansas and create jobs, that's very significant and meaningful. And a lot of that as well should be credited to the Arkansas Economic Development Commission because the AEDC has incentives for outside capital coming into the state.
So whenever we raised that series a, if I went to an investor, um, it asks for a million dollars. The state of Arkansas would actually give them 333, 000 back.
Wow.
Tanner Green: Yeah. So that's significant, you know? So although we haven't raised capital from investors in the state at the same time, the state, uh, and the AEDC has done a great job incentivizing investors.
I mean, I can't tell you how many investors I went to. And I was like, yeah, if you give me a million dollars, I can give you 333, 000 back. And they were like, That's a scam. Like there's no way, I mean, we literally had investors that like didn't take it because they didn't think it was real.
Wow.
Tanner Green: And then we have some investors that took advantage of it and, you know, have given us millions of dollars and subsequently have been given a lot of money back.
So I, I credit, um, the [01:09:00] investors that like, took the risk on us and take the chance on us. I mean, there's, there's also, I think something important to notice is like our, two of our largest investors are Mac Venture Capital, which is one of the largest black-owned venture capital funds based in la. And then BBG Ventures, which is an investment fund solely built for investing in female founded companies.
Mm-hmm. You know, and there's no reason that, you know, those are some of our largest investors. Um, as well as like Revolutions rise of the rest, which is Steve Case. And Steve Case, who is one of the a OL founders of a OL, has a huge thesis and he's an investor in Acre Trader as well around, hey, companies in the middle of America are the ones who are like really gonna build great things.
And so I give them a lot of credit. As well as like Cortado Ventures in Oklahoma City because we were one of Cortado's first investments when they started their fund a few years back. Um, and they've been a wonderful partner. Um, so it's, it's just, it's good to see that. That people believe in the state and will allocate capital and subsequently the AEDC I think has done a great job [01:10:00] incentivizing that capital to, to be invested.
Cameron Clark: And how long was that process? Of raising? Series A.
Tanner Green: Series A. Um, about six months. Okay. Talk about some of those late night, early morning. Gosh, it's so hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The hard part raising about raising capital in that period too, aside from the fact that like there just wasn't a lot is raising capital is, is very challenging.
And you know, a lot of times what happens every single time, as you go through this process of like people saying they're going to give you money and they give you numbers and then it ends up not happening, you know? And so it's, it's a lot of work in terms of having a lot of.
Um,
Tanner Green: you have to have many, many conversations going on, you know, cause you can't really just trust that just because someone says they're going to give you money that they're actually going to do it.
Um, so it's a lot of work that goes into having a lot of conversations and kind of how I've been describing the nature of my business. Like I'm sure you guys have. Picked up on the fact that OX is pretty unique. It's not like a standard, you know, SaaS company. So it's also, the other challenging [01:11:00] part, to the investor's credit, is the fact that we do have a really unique business.
And there's a level of detail in terms of like describing what we do, and then there's a level of detail, I think, understanding where we're trying to take the company. That, like, if you don't know a lot about warehousing or supply chain, it can be difficult to, like, understand some of the nuance of it. On us really to be able to explain.
And so subsequently that also makes raising capital a little bit challenging. Um, it'll be interesting as we kind of move out of early stage and more into growth stage capital. Um, if that narrative changes at all, it'll be interesting.
Nick Beyer: Well, to your credit, I think you did a great job at the beginning. I know Cameron's question, the 32nd deal, like that's not, that's not a fun question to answer, but I thought, you know, even the name operational experience kind of really captures which all are trying to do.
And, and I think. Dumbing it down to apple maps within a warehouse. Yeah, right straightforward. Yeah, it's taken
Tanner Green: and that's kind of what I joke He's like, what's what's the hard part? I'm like, ah, just explaining to people what we do Yeah, that's definitely been a difficult part
Nick Beyer: last question [01:12:00] on the on the capital raising You you've talked a lot about being discreet When you're raising capital, does that curtain come off or
Tanner Green: that's a good question?
I think, yeah, it depends on the investor. You know, like some investors just care a lot about the financial side of the business. Other investors want to really see the product. Um, I, I, I joke that we were probably one of the first companies to raise a Series A, and our Series A deck didn't have our product in it.
Our Series A deck was just a pure macroeconomic analysis of like capital and how much capital there is to spend on automation and the different forms in which that capital can be spent on and why this unique form about what we're doing will be able to allocate capital towards, and that was the pitch.
This is abstractly what we do. Um, and so yeah, there's, there's different, uh, investors that care more than [01:13:00] there are other investors that like want to see a demo and they want to see, you know, some of the components of it. And so of course, you know, you do that, but, but investors, um, depending on, I think their background, they care about different things.
Some folks just want to know who your customers are and then they see the logos and they're like, okay, got it. Yeah.
Nick Beyer: Message received.
Tanner Green: Yeah,
Nick Beyer: that's good. Well, I think so. So bring us up to speed. It's 2025. Yeah. Uh, Charu exited to be on the board a few months ago. Yep. Uh, walk us through that transition. Walk us through just the scale of the business, whether it's number of clients or whatever you're willing to share.
You know, you already talked about employees. Yeah, definitely. Um, just get, paint the picture of where Ox
Tanner Green: is at right now.
Yeah.
Tanner Green: Um, so to your point, Charu obviously founded the company. Um, I was the co founder. Um, she transitioned into the role of chairman of the board, um, last year in like that August September October timeframe and I transitioned into the role of CEO.
It's been a good transition, like Charu kind of like I mentioned at [01:14:00] the beginning, like she's a researcher more so than she is like someone that wants to run a business day to day. And so it was good to get the business to the point to where she's able to focus on things that like really excite her in developing new technology.
Um, that's very relevant to OX and what we do. And then it was able to put me in the position to kind of historically I've been very focused on the product and the tech and now being able to focus more on like the business development side and strategically how we want to grow and how we want to think about the business is what I spend most of my time thinking about.
Um, so the current state is. Essentially, you know, we've gone from having like a vision workflow to solution to having like an end to end warehouse suite. It's basically a bunch of different tools that are centered around optimization. We use a bunch of different technologies and we've been utilizing a bunch of different technologies that I think are really right, right at the cusp and right at the edge in terms of like what's possible to be able to optimize the warehouse.
So today we've been building our own like artificial intelligence models in [01:15:00] terms of how you completely automate a warehouse to where you can go from instead of having like. 10, 15, 20 administrative roles where people all have to do a bunch of manual work to how do you go down to just having a handful of folks that are almost watching like an AI model intelligently orchestrate all of the tasks in the warehouse.
Be able to look at the warehouse digitally and understand its entire footprint. Like you talked about how, you know, there's locations and there's products and there's data. And the great part is you can utilize all that and train models to be able to really intelligently allocate work. And kind of do what's necessary or what previously would have been done manually.
And that type of work is really important because today we're in a bit of a labor crisis. And the knowledge required to run a warehouse productively is immense. You need to have Decades of experience. And on top of that, you need to have an entire mental map in your mind of the warehouse. [01:16:00] So it's basically impossible, at a certain extent, to be able to run a warehouse with like a level of detail and precision that that's necessary.
Um, and so there's, there's a right combination here. Like we really coined the term back in like 20 20, 20 21, around the type of technology that we do as human-centered automation. Mm-hmm . Where it's human-centered ai because it's centered around how do you utilize kind of these agents and these systems to be able to look at a bunch of data that a person couldn't possibly be able to spend the time to look at.
And then as a manager, you're able to see almost like a scorecard. Of data that's very proactive, telling you what you need to know about your warehouse. So I think we're right at the edge of, of utilizing that. And then we're also right at the edge of being able to develop, um, capabilities for how you build like a full 3D, like digital twin, uh, or digital model of your warehouse.
So going back to that, like Google Maps, Google Navigation, how do I be able to kind of show someone exactly where to go and how to get there? And on top of that, [01:17:00] imagine if you didn't have to actually be at the warehouse to see the warehouse. Imagine if you could log in and see like a full 3D model of your warehouse and you could navigate it almost like remote viewing into the warehouse to see exactly what's going
Nick Beyer: on.
Are you familiar with Matterport? I mean, they do that with real estate, like homes and commercial real estate. They'll take this crazy camera in there and then you can walk through it. Is that?
Tanner Green: Yeah, that's a great way to think about it. Yeah. The, the interesting part is that we've been able to figure out how to do that without a camera.
Okay. Just through the data? Yes. Yeah. Just through the data and some resources that are available. We figured out how to build the 3D model of the warehouse without using a camera.
Cameron Clark: And how big are these warehouses? 300, 000 feet? A million square feet? What's the
Tanner Green: That's, yeah, great range. Sometimes they're as small as like 75.
I mean, we have some customers that are running like one and a half million square foot warehouses. So there's a good, good size range there. And to your point, and your point as well about the camera. You know, you can use a LiDAR camera to map a home because it's 2, 000 square feet. You can't use [01:18:00] a LiDAR camera to map a 1.
25 million square foot warehouse without it catching on fire or probably like exploding. So it's, it's, it's significant and it's at the edge in terms of being able to build these digital models in the way that we're doing it.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, I think it's important for everyone who's listening to realize what you're saying, like, you can't just can't all be in your head at that point.
Tanner Green: Yeah, exactly. And kind of the joke is like, if you have to use like a LIDAR camera to map a warehouse, I mean, it's literally like a million dollars. To go in there and spend hours and hours and hours of like annotation and meshing the images together to be able to make that feasible is, is not really realistic with current capabilities.
So being able to build these digital models, um, in the way that we do it is, is relevant. And so that's, that's really where we're at right now is investing in the product and investing in these capabilities because we believe, Aside from having customers and having revenue, what's really valuable is [01:19:00] building a novel warehouse solution.
And that's where the market cap on the business and the capitalization potential I think is significant. And it also speaks to distinguishing the fact that OX is not a growth stage company. We're not a company that has raised 20, 30, 50 million dollars to exponentially grow our revenue and be a growth stage company.
You know, 16 million relative to venture capital is still an early stage company. Um, and so at its core, we're still trying to build a great product. And when you're building enterprise software, and you're building technology in the warehouse management space, like that, that's, that's what we're focused on.
What's, are you profitable right now? What's the timeline of profitability? That's, that's a great question. Um, Yeah, I can't really answer that. We're not profitable. I can say that. Which,
Cameron Clark: which in, like, people listening, it's, it's very normal. It's like, it's not, it's not like in, you know, you're raising money.
There's, there's a timeline. There's a, everyone's on a different timeline to expect that. Definitely. [01:20:00] Yeah.
Tanner Green: And that's kind of, of course, like the joke with Amazon is like, they've never been profitable. And there's different kinds of businesses. It's very rare to have like an enterprise software company be profitable unless you're at a point where you're just like not trying to grow in this space.
That's just not typically, um, the standard.
Nick Beyer: Now you're at end to end. I mean, does that mean you're now, you now have your own management system? Did y'all replace? I mean, you're asking all the questions. You started and you tacked on, you bolted on
Tanner Green: now. I mean, are you doing it all? Yeah. You're asking all the right questions that that's the goal.
Okay. You know, the goal is to build like an end-to-end solution that can replace a lot of the, the legacy solutions and some of, with some of our customers we're deployed end-to-end, like running all of the operations in their warehouses. But we're not to the point of entirely replacing their warehouse management system.
Um, and that's about all I'll say.
Cameron Clark: Let's, let's go back to, so it seems very clear to me. Hey. Your [01:21:00] role as CEO, it feels like that's your personality. That's where it feels like what you're focused on here right now. What I don't initially understand as much as you said, Charu's like, focus was a lot on the, uh, the data side.
It feels like there's still a lot happening with that here. Yeah. What is, so is she still really involved in that or what's the, I guess I just don't really understand why she's stepped back.
Tanner Green: No, that's a great question. I mean, I think there's, there's certain responsibilities that come with like being a CEO and running the business every single day.
And I think. Everyone kind of has things that like they like to spend time on and focus on. And yeah, I mean, she's still involved to the extent of like helping us like do research and think about how to solve problems. And I think that people have gifts, you know what I mean? And her gifts relates to figuring out how to solve very complicated problems.
And so it's like when you can take her brain power, you know what I mean? And like if the brain is like an electrical outlet and there's voltage coming out of it, it's like, You know, most of us are walking around at like 110, you know what I mean? And she's walking around at like 220, so how do [01:22:00] we take like a 220 and have it just focus on solving complicated problems?
Like, that's the best use of that time.
Yeah,
Nick Beyer: but to be clear, some of those problems are outside of Aux now. Is that, or are they all inside of Aux? They're really
Tanner Green: just all centered around AI. Okay. Yeah, so some of it is definitely related to Aux, and then some of it is just very open for kind of interpretation and application.
So, it's good stuff. Yeah.
Nick Beyer: So growth now, are most of your customers coming inbound through hearing from other clients like these guys are, these people are saving us 10 million a year?
Yeah,
Tanner Green: totally. Like we had, um, one company that approached us. Uh, at the end of the year, beginning of this year, and they saw our technology deployed with one of our customers and reached out.
Um, so that's one way. Another way is just all network driven. Because people hear, you know, like it's a very network driven business, and it's all about relationships. So when people hear about things that are going on, they reach out. Um, and that's kind of why, [01:23:00] at least for where we're at now, like you don't really need to have like a giant sales team because a lot of these opportunities happen that, you know, certain level, uh, in terms of like decision makers.
Um, and so the business kind of grows naturally from there.
Cameron Clark: What is your day to day look like right now?
Tanner Green: Um, I spend most of my time, uh, interfacing with prospects, um, that are interested in OX. I spend most of my time interfacing with. Existing customers and prospects that are growing and are trying to figure out how to, um, think about it as they have their existing operations, and I'm helping those customers develop a road map with ox to get to somewhere in the future.
And so it's a lot of pattern recognition around how some customers have been successful and then hearing about how these current customers or prospects are wanting to grow and. Observing those patterns and then helping communicate effectively how we can help them grow over time. So it's mostly like building [01:24:00] relationships, nurturing relationships, and, and, and helping folks see what's possible.
Um, so it's a lot of, yeah, business, it's a combination of like business development, um, and like product strategy. And relationships. Yeah. It's a combination of all those things. And then I like to, my favorite thing to do is to like really tactically get involved in like the design of the products. Um, but I don't have as much time to do that now.
So we've put together like a really good team that I think can do it better than, than I could. So that helps.
Cameron Clark: I was like, that's your superpower.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. Right. That's good. That's good. And your products now are the S one. T one. Mm-hmm . Those are our, those are our hardware devices. M1? Yeah. In the VX 40. 40. Yeah.
So,
Tanner Green: so there's a couple different, so the way to think about it is all the hardware is off the shelf. So we don't manufacture and make any of the devices. Um, but we have devices that customers can use. So we have a mobile device, we have a smartwatch, we have a tablet, we have scanners that companies can buy.[01:25:00]
Some companies buy those scanners from companies like Zebra or Honeywell, who are just kind of like the leading hardware providers. Um, so we do all that. And then the Vuzix M400, Vuzix is an investor in our company, and Vuzix is an American company. They're publicly traded. They're headquartered in Rochester, and they manufacture heads up displays here in America.
Um, and so they're a partner of ours and we resell and work with them on some opportunities to, to deploy heads up displays. Um, so yeah, they've been a great partner and Paul Travers is the CEO there and he's a wonderful person and he's been committed to developing like smart glasses and heads up displays for the last 25 years.
So. In a few years, when smart glasses like mine have a digital screen that's basically, uh, projected into the field of view, a lot of that will be because of him and the work that him and people who are tangentially related to him have developed the optics and the manufacturing capabilities to be able to do that.
There's smart glasses right now that are commercially available that look a lot like mine and have a full display in them. [01:26:00] Um, but it's a single color display, so it's just green and it's kind of like right here in your field of view. And then I've seen, you know, various prototypes for. The next phase, which are going to be, uh, glasses that look like this, that have a full screen in your field of view.
And then the interface for how you interact with them is all using your eyes. So instead of using your phone to tactically tap and swipe, you'll use your eyes and there will be a cursor in your field of view. And so in the future, I'll be talking to you and I'll get a text and it'll, I'll have like a little text message icon that pops up on my screen and, you know, I can look at it and.
And just literally by looking at it, I can tell it what I want to do. And so, yeah, I've seen some pretty incredible technology as it relates to that, as well as like just, I would say like the interface between, you know, cognition and the brain and where, where all that's going to go is going to be pretty fascinating because it's interesting to be kind of on the industrial side of it because there's a lot of capabilities.
That get [01:27:00] deployed in industrial environments before they ever make their way to a consumer environment because on the consumer side, you have to be able to present it in a way where people feel comfortable and that takes time and Google Glass kind of was like that first step in that direction, but they didn't get it right.
And so it takes, you know, by the time it's. Normalized it'll have been 15, 20 years after that, so. But we're headed in that direction, and the technology is incredible, and it's much farther along than people realize. So the Vuzix,
Nick Beyer: you, for, for someone to be a customer or client of AUX, they don't have to use the Vuzix.
Y'all can integrate with other heads up displays.
Tanner Green: Yeah, I mean, we would only integrate with a Vuzix heads up display, specifically because they're an investor, but, um, there's, Any other device on the market as well in terms of like a mobile device or a tablet device or anything, uh, with that nature
Nick Beyer: in there.
Are there efficiency levels when you're talking to clients like, Hey, if you six will give you, we average 20%, whereas, you know, your wristwatch is maybe only 10 percent and they're the [01:28:00] capital required for them to bring up. Okay.
Tanner Green: And you're spot on. So like a lot of our customers. What's very typical when you're a large logistics company is you kind of have your model warehouse and I help a lot of companies.
Think about that, your model warehouse is your really nice facility where you bring customers. It's your really nice facility where you show off your automation and your capabilities, because you want your customers to come in and you want them to see your model warehouse and be like, this is incredible.
So for a lot of our customers, they deploy the heads up display in their model warehouse because they can bring in a customer and be like, yeah, check out our operators. They're riding around on electric pallet jacks with lights. And they have full heads up displays that are projecting their field of projecting a screen in their field of view.
And they're talking to it in different languages. I mean, that's like, yeah, it's pretty impressive and, and customers like that. And so AUX is also able to help a lot of companies because we demonstrate a lot of innovation. Which helps them win more [01:29:00] business.
Nick Beyer: And so you started with operators, I think when we started talking about where the business is currently at you, you went into the end-to-end software, you talked about administration.
Yep.
Nick Beyer: So is that the next level of automation that's happening in your field?
Tanner Green: Yeah. I would think about it in terms of like you have like the operator experience, which is what we were focused on really in the beginning. And then it rolls up more into a manager running the warehouse and being able to provide them with the data that they need.
And that's usually one person, or you said that's Many people. Okay. Yeah, typically you'll have, you know, 5, 10, 20 people. Kind of contributing to the warehouse, depending on the size of it. Um, so then there's that and then it also rolls up into one more view, which would be like being able to see your entire network.
So being able to see like a full map of, uh, You know, the world and little nodes on it are your warehouses and you can click into them and like blow them up and kind of see everything you need to know about it. And then, like I said earlier, almost like remote view into it and see your warehouse.
Nick Beyer: I think one place we haven't really touched on is the [01:30:00] product makes 100 percent for any enterprise.
I think it's. The value is clearly communicated through how much you're able to save them. What has the feedback been from actual operators? The people who are using your heads up displays.
Tanner Green: Yeah, what's funny about that is if we can go in our office when we're done, and I can show you, um, like a graphic that an operator made.
He literally like took a photo of himself wearing the device, and like made a graphic, and it was like the future of You know, customer name and literally took a photo of themself. So what's funny is you go talk to operators in a warehouse and you ask them about like automation. You ask them about robots and all these systems.
And they don't like it. They don't like it because there's this cultural, uh, fetish that we have around automation replacing people's jobs. Yeah. But you go talk to the actual operators in the warehouse like. That's not what they want. They don't like when companies invest in solutions that make them feel like they're being replaced.
And so we're able to go in and rewrite that narrative. And we're able to go in and talk to an [01:31:00] operator on the floor and be like, Hey, your company is investing in you. They're investing in the operator experience. Um, and we're going to make you feel like Iron Man. And they love that because they work very hard.
They work much harder than I do. They work much harder than y'all do. They're sitting around moving
5, 10,
Tanner Green: 25 pound cases all day for 10 hours a day, four days a week, you know? So it's like, that's such hard physical work. And when you can go in and make their jobs a little bit easier. And on top of that, consider the fact that a lot of folks wearing, working in warehouses are English as second language.
They're refugees, they're immigrants and a lot of times they're really smart, but they've just come to America and they need to have a job and they need to get started in a warehouse is a great place to start. So what we've proven is that we can make these operators feel and receive the benefits of having a better experience.
Um, I have examples of folks who have started using Aux and have become passionate about Aux and have become [01:32:00] like the trainer in the warehouse for showing people how to use it. And then they've grown into higher roles in the warehouse. And there's a specific example of the person I'll show you in there who we have a photo of.
Like, he was a refugee from Africa, came to 17, 18 years old. We went in and deployed Aux in the warehouse. He loved it. And started training people and now he's a manager in the warehouse, you know. So for him, he's gone from making probably 15 bucks an hour to like 30 an hour. Wow. And like that's significant.
So that's an important, that's a really, uh, important part of the narrative. And there's a human component too that we've really honed in on that like other people are just not really thinking
Nick Beyer: about. I love that. I mean, we're, we're humans, we're touching grass every day. I think when I see some of this stuff, it's It's hard.
Yeah. It's, it's hard as human. You're like, you know, a lot of people do those jobs. So I think, I think you're, you're [01:33:00] talking to heartbeats and I think that's inspiring. Um, so people who argue, you know, who throw the argument at you, like, have you seen these humanoid robots that they're, I can't, Brett, I can't remember his lab, Arter, the Archer guy.
Um, yeah. Figure what they're building deep. I mean, what do you think about that? And does that scare you?
Tanner Green: No, it doesn't scare me. Um, I mean, I find it really fascinating that institutional investors will spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing robots. I just find that really fascinating in itself.
Um, developing robots where, you know, like in the example of some companies, like they have one or two customers. So it's, it's a fascinating observation to be able to make that's entirely objective and to look at the fact that companies can raise hundreds of millions of dollars with one or two [01:34:00] customers.
Uh, to develop, uh, like proto human being. Mm hmm. It's a fascinating observation, you know? I don't really have any opinions on it, other than it's interesting to see that, that that's there. Um, and I just think people are special and I don't think that humanoids, uh, will replace them. I think where there will be significant value created is through mobile robots and through collaborative robotics.
That's where companies are going to have a really big impact. I think one of the companies that I admire the most in that space is a company called Cobot. And they raised, um, like a hundred million dollars last year. And they've built, um, seemingly a pretty impressive robot that is, uh, you can basically think about like, we all have carts that we move around.
Oh, it follows you. Yeah, exactly. They, we all have carts that we move around and, and a company like Cobot has figured out how to basically take a cart with wheels and put like a, [01:35:00] almost like a robot, uh, interface on it and a bunch of technology that allows it to autonomous, autonomously move things around.
So like where you can get so much value is around alleviating a person of fatigue and there's so much fatigue with like pulling a cart around all day or a U boat or anything with containers on it. So. I'm just so excited to watch companies like that do incredibly well and be able to deploy solutions in warehousing and in healthcare environments where, hey, guess what, now no one's having to deal with the strain of pulling your cart around all day and a robot can, can navigate that environment like that is incredible.
And it's a wonderful example of. Using robotics and automations to assist people and make their jobs easier. And so I find that technology to be inspiring and I find capabilities, you know, in hundreds of millions of dollars of capital being deployed to build like a replica of a human, just interesting.
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Beyer: I like that. What does keep you up at night in relation to your field, in relation to aux? [01:36:00] I mean, I love,
Tanner Green: um, I love growing the business, you know, and so, because I'm so passionate about growing the business, that's what I think about all the time. And I think sometimes what keeps me up is being excited about what we're doing and sometimes what keeps me up is, is being nervous about certain things working out the way that I want them to.
Um, but I think that's not really anything to do with the business. I think that's more to do with just like as a person, you know what I mean? Being like oriented towards like wanting to do something impactful. And being oriented towards making things, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff.
So inherently that, uh, keeps me up at night or wakes me up early in the morning because I start thinking about things and I just can't stop thinking about it. So, but it's, it's good stuff. It's, it's typically related to, uh, yeah, growing the business and building products. You know, it's like the best time to have a good ideas.
Like when you're in the shower, you know what I mean? And you're just like sitting there and you're just like, mm-hmm . Eyes close and you're just thinking, and you're like, oh my gosh. And [01:37:00] I mean, I was, you know, taking a shower last week and had an idea and I was like, oh my God, I gotta write that down. So that's, that stuff is, is inspiring.
And that stuff keeps you up at night and, and wakes you up early. But, but you do it and, and you feel that experience because, I mean, it's just a privilege, it's a privilege to be able to pursue creation, uh, as a career. Mm-hmm . And like when you're starting a company. And that's why everyone that ever has aspirations of starting a company should start a company because ultimately there's nothing more fulfilling than pursuing what you believe you should create.
Um, and I think, I think that's like why people are here is to be able to pursue that and it's very fulfilling.
Nick Beyer: I think your, your perspective is unique in that maybe you're the first founder we've interviewed who hasn't had a normal college experience. Yeah. And, uh, so I think we'd be remissed. What are your thoughts on, on college or if you're.
If there's a younger person listening who's considering college relative to an idea that they get excited about, could you speak to that a little
Tanner Green: bit? For sure. And for context, I went to the University of Arkansas for a year and a [01:38:00] half, and then I dropped out to do the AUCS thing. I was really fortunate because when I dropped out of college, I was a finalist for the Thiel Fellowship.
If you're not familiar with the Thiel Fellowship, it's a Essentially a thing that Peter Thiel does. Peter Thiel founded PayPal with Elon Musk, um, and the team back in the day, and has founded companies like Palantir. It's basically this thing you can do, where if you drop out of college, Peter Thiel will pay you like 100, 000 to, to work on your idea.
And so I was really fortunate, um, to be a finalist for that, and Charu was also a finalist for that. Whenever she was in college, so it was cool that we both kind of had that, that shared connection. And what was the idea that you, was Ox the, okay. Yeah, exactly. Um, and so, call it, I have a lot of opinions on college as, as you would imagine.
Um, I think college, If you are able to pursue a college degree debt free, you should do it. You should do it because it'll be, I think, a wonderful experience in [01:39:00] life to be able to build those relationships and the relationships, like, with your peers and the relationships with professors and the opportunity to grow personally and to be able to have internships is super important.
Um, I think, If you're considering pursuing college and you have to take on a considerable amount of debt, I don't think it's worth it, um, no matter what you're pursuing. Um, but there's also a risk that's associated with that, you know, like if you're, if you want to be a doctor, you know, obviously you're going to have to, to take on some debt.
If you want to go to law school and pursue other things, you might be more willing to, to take on, Um, for me, like I wasn't, I didn't have a high ACT score. So I had to go to college and I've had no scholarships. I think I had a, you know, like a freshman academic scholarship and then like an alumni scholarship.
So like I had to pay for that myself. So for me, it was just like, it didn't seem like the best use of time because I wanted to make things. But, uh, if you can go to college debt free, you should definitely go. Um, if you have to take [01:40:00] out a significant amount of debt. Maybe don't. Maybe pursue something that's a little bit more personally fulfilling and recognize the fact that like, you know, you have to take a risk in life to be able to get to where you're at.
Like, for me, like, Ox was a risk. It was going to my parents and sitting down and saying, Hey, I'm not going to go to college. I'm going to do this instead. And them being like, Crazy. Don't do that. You know, but in the most loving way. Yeah. Because they care about me and they want what's best for me. Um, but inevitably, like, yeah, I took that risk and it's paid off.
You know, like the last five years I've learned way more than I would've learned in college. Not because college isn't good, but because like. The real world experience of having to navigate how to start something from scratch is unique. And it's a moment in time. There will never be another moment in time in my life or in anyone's life where they do something like AUX.
It'll be unique to them. And so me being able to have that unique experience and just have like no feeling of regret. And so [01:41:00] that would, that would be, that'd be my, that'd be my advice for what it's worth. It's inspiring.
Cameron Clark: Hmm. And so kind of getting toward where we're wrapping up here, you alluded to it a little bit, but what's next?
What's next for you? What's next for Ox, um, here in this next phase?
Tanner Green: Yeah, I mean, continuing to develop a product that's more end to end in terms of its warehouse capabilities is what we're working on, and continuing to grow with our existing customers and add new customers
Position where we have to decide, hey, do we keep raising more money and go down the growth path? Do we focus and hone in on what we're doing now and just build the product in the best place possible? Do we look to eventually be acquired by someone that has like the distribution to really scale locks like these are all.
Great questions that like we have to ask and kind of work towards day in and day out to figure out where we're going to get in the next one [01:42:00] year, two years, three years, five years. Um, so very natural, uh, progression I think in terms of like where the company is headed and when you get to the point where you have a product and you have, customers paying for it, like what is the most secure and responsible way to grow the business.
Um, and given the fact that we have kind of a unique business by nature, um, those are the right questions to ask and answer. So I'm going to spend the next hopefully several years answering those questions and doing it in a way that like serves our employees and serves our investors and hopefully serves our customers.
Um, that's what I'm focused on.
Cameron Clark: Is there pressure from your investors to go down one of those paths?
Tanner Green: Not really. You know, I think that every investor has their own perspective because they should, that's why they're investors, but I wouldn't say that, that there's pressure. Um, you know, when you, when you raise capital, you sign up for goals and you try to hit those goals and inevitably some you hit, some you don't.
And then from there, that's [01:43:00] just. Kind of data and information that you use to make the next best decision moving forward. And so, that's what we're navigating.
Cameron Clark: How do you define success?
Tanner Green: Um, escaping the, the time space. And I, what I mean by time space is just like Like if you're waking up and you're looking at the clock and you're waiting for it to be a certain time and you're waiting for something to happen, inevitably you're not present.
And so another way to answer that is I think success is just being present and being able to be in the moment and feel good about being in the moment. Um, and so I think that's what we're all trying to do. You know, we're trying to figure out how to do work and to do things where, like this, we can sit and have a conversation.
And this is success right here, being able to sit and talk to you guys. Because we're just being present and we're enjoying it. And I think that that's really what it is. And then that can, [01:44:00] that presence can exist in any form. You know, it doesn't have to exist in business or starting a company. It can exist in being a teacher.
It can exist in being a dog walker. It can exist and I think just being able to like when the day's over feel good about what you've done So I think I think that's that's success
Cameron Clark: and kind of last question here wrapping up, you know Northwest Arkansas focus podcast you're from Northwest Arkansas What's your vision for the region for Northwest Arkansas over the next five ten years?
Tanner Green: Yeah I think I just want Northwest Arkansas to To be unique and to leverage this really wonderful foundation that we have in terms of having some of the largest companies in the world. Um, and I think a lot of people that. Over time, I think we're just trying to build a culture where people feel more inspired to, like, [01:45:00] create things and to pursue things.
And, uh, I think that you guys going around and asking people those questions helps contribute to that. Uh, but I think I just want Northwest Arkansas to be a space where people Feel the support from the community to be able to pursue things that they're interested in because I made comments earlier about how like no one in Arkansas is really a big investor in our company and I can talk out of both sides of my mouth because that's true and at the same time what's also true is I feel a lot of support from people in our community to to pursue these things and to do ox and so I hope that.
Things are going to change and things are going to become more expensive and there's going to be more buildings and there's going to be buildings like we were talking about where like they're not there anymore and like that's all very natural. But at the end of the day I think that if the person living in northwest Arkansas can feel the support to pursue the things that they want to do like that is what hopefully northwest Arkansas can continue to grow and look like.
And the more we can encourage people [01:46:00] to take those risks and pursue things the more great things we're going to get, right? The more cool businesses we're going to get. The more restaurants we're going to get, the more interesting people we're going to get, and, uh, that creates culture. And, uh, I think Northwest Arkansas has a unique culture because of the foundation that has been established over the last decades, and then we all try to play a small part in contributing to that, and I think that's what we're doing.
So, hopefully that's what we get.
Nick Beyer: Thanks, Tanner. Yeah. Well, kind of at the end of every episode, we like to, to really reflect on the things that we took out of it and the things that we learned from you, and, uh I think probably the most clear thing that you're gifted at in that. I think if I was a customer of, of OX, I would be super honored by is the way that you talk about growth and growth is not number of clients, it's not, I mean, revenue, those are all important things.
We're operating a business, right? Those are all important things. But the way you really define growth and [01:47:00] it was through the conversation was. Are we serving our clients? Are we providing value to our clients? And the clients are enterprise, right? You're driving value through how you can save the money, but they're also the people on the front lines.
And I think that's really powerful. And I think there's a vision there that people can really get behind. And it goes into the second kind of piece. Real, real big takeaway for us is just this idea of being human centered.
Yep.
Nick Beyer: In a world that is increasingly Um, there's no phones on this table, you're fully present in this conversation, the way that you talked about robots in, in a way that actually honors people like, Hey, we, we believe in automation.
That's, that's the thesis of our business, but it's in a way that's supporting humans. And I think that's a vision that a lot of people can get behind.
Tanner Green: Yeah.
Nick Beyer: Um, and so really, I mean, really awesome to hear about what y'all are doing, Tanner. Awesome business in OX, it's really fun to, [01:48:00] to support you and Sharu and what y'all have built.
And, uh, just if anyone wants to find out more about OX or, or reach out to you, how can they do that?
Tanner Green: They can go to getox. com and then they can email me at tanner at getox. com. Um, that's probably the easiest way to do it. So, yeah, I appreciate you guys for coming here and taking the time to talk to me and to learn more about OX.
And I'm glad you are, uh, Making some conversations happen. 'cause I know that people need to hear those conversations and, and hopefully it can serve as a, uh, fertile ground for inspiration. So, thank you. Thanks, Tanner.
Cameron Clark: Thank you for listening to this episode of NWA Founders, where we sit down with founders, owners and builders driving growth here in northwest Arkansas.
For recommendations are to connect with us, reach out at NWA Founders. Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, [01:49:00] LLC.