286 How Category Designers Create The Future with Lauren Dunford of Guidewheel & Kevin Maney of Category Design Advisors

Thanks for pressing play and I sure hope you're great.

Right off the top here. I wonder if you can hear this, Bean. Hi, Bean. I don't know if you can hear, but our cat, who actually identifies as a dog, Bean, is sitting right here next to me and he's purring and sitting literally on my forearm as I do this intro. Anyway, he just jumped here and I thought you might like to know that that's what's going on sometimes here in our world headquarters. The follow your different world headquarters. All right, on this episode, we're going to address some powerful questions. How do you create a company that makes a difference and makes money at the same time? How do you change global manufacturing to become more effective and powerful, to lower costs, optimize energy and help the environment all at the same time? These kinds of questions are the big kinds of questions that legendary entrepreneurs tend to ask. And we've got a legendary entrepreneur. Actually, we've got two legendary entrepreneurs today. By the end of this episode, you'll learn how a small group of entrepreneurs starting in Kenya created a radically different future. And it'll inspire you and educate you as to how you can too. The two legendary entrepreneurs are Lauren Dunford and and she is the co founder and CEO of an extraordinarily exciting new company that you're about to hear all about called Guide Wheel. That's Guide Wheel. And our other guest today is my brother from another mother, a guy that I have known and done business with for a very long time, Kevin Maney. Kevin is a legendary journalist and writer. He is the co author of Play Bigger. He's the co founder of Category Design Advisors and that, you know, he really is one of the godfathers, the original OGs of category design. I think he's one of the smartest people that I know. If you care about building companies that change the future, I think you're going to love everything about this episode. Now, if you believe that real dialogues matter and that real dialogues are how we learn, connect and inspire each other, and if you believe we are at a time in our history where real dialogues and the ability to, as folks say today conversate, to listen, to learn from each other and as a result create different futures, is in the decline and you want to do something about it, you're in the right place. This is Christopher Lockhead, Follow youw Different. You see, we are the number one real dialogue business podcast. Some people call us an oddcast and we hope our goal around here is to inspire different thinking and breakthrough thinking through Different D dialogue now, as Joey Ramone said. Hey ho. Let's go.

Lauren. Kevin, it sure is great to see you.

Great to see you. And you know, we got. We're sharing, you know. Well, you can't. I guess the. You can see my background guitars here and you got yours.

Yeah. What. What guitars are in your background right there? What do you got going on?

I. I have this kind of a Korean made. Now I'm gonna completely. What the hell's the George Harrison guitar? I have a completely mind fart on this one. The record Rickard rocker knockoff. And. And take a look Takamimi acoustic guitar back here in a really shitty bass that I just have. So I could have a bass.

I have a really shitty bass for that reason too. It's like an epiphone bass I bought for, you know, at a garage sale or something. Right.

Right now.

Lauren, do you have any guitars or basses or drums or.

I have no guitars. I just have three massive whiteboards and some whiteboard erasers.

Well, that's a great way to drive some innovation. Whiteboards are very helpful.

I'm a big fan.

So I think we want to do a deep dive into category design and sort of, you know, I'm sort of slightly educated, but mostly ignorant about the journey that the two of you have been on for the last little while. So take me into your business and take me through your category design efforts.

Let me kick off that. Lauren and I know each other because we worked on a category design project for her company. And there are actually two tracks of reasons that I'm very interested in Lauren and, and her company, Guide Wheel. And one is the category design aspect, which I feel like was a very exciting project. And it seems like from what I know that you've actually done really well with it since then. So that's all really fun. But then also there's another track of the book that I wrote that came out earlier this year with another one that I wrote with Heman Tanesia from General Catalyst called Intended Consequences. And the idea behind that book was that there's been lots of conversation out there about responsible innovation and how companies, ESG and companies have to do good and everything. And Heman and I got together and we were talking about the fact that there wasn't really a real playbook for like, if you wanted to start a company that was like this, how do you think about that? And when I was doing the book, I realized all those conversations that Lauren and I had about what they were doing lined up very well, with what the kinds of things we were talking about with the, with the book and how to set up a company from the beginning that is actually going to be a profitable business that does something really good and as, as you know, they are doing with, you know, in the climate change space essentially. So that's kind of my tia, but it's really like, you know, this is, you know, Lauren's got the good story to tell and from what I remember going all the way back to Kenya.

It'S just a cool story. So dive, dive in.

Definitely so passionate about this area of how do we think about business as a force for good. My co founder, Weston and I met when we were undergrads because we were actually running competing climate change groups on the Stanford campus. I ran Students for Sustainable Stanford and he was running Energy Crossroads, the clean energy group with Guidewheel. What we've aimed to do is really build in, like Kevin said, a very profitable business objective that is geared to have massive impact on climate change at scale. So we work with factories. The category we're building is factory ops. And our goal is let's have all of the world's 10 million factories having the tools to reach sustainable peak performance. If we can do that at scale, huge for their businesses and then of course a massive impact for the planet because of how much emissions results from how we make those guitars and everything else on the planet.

Thank you for that, that's great. Lauren, can you sort of pop the hood for me on what is factory Ops?

Yeah. So basically what we've done at its core is take the kinds of real time tools that historically the biggest factories in the world, you know, Tesla, Bosch, ge, all the names you see in the news, have been able to use to be incredibly efficient in how they manage the factory floor. And we've democratized access to those tools. We've made them plug and play so that your mom and pop guitar manufacturer, or manufacturer of glasses or bottles or anything else you, in their daily life can have access to that visibility as well. And the unique way that we've done it is that we use the fact that a lot of these manufacturers will have old equipment, new equipment, different types of equipment on that floor, but it all uses electricity to run. So we actually use the electrical draw of these big machines as a real time proxy for how that machine is running, whether it's running on load dry running, idle off, and now even what speed. Kevin, this is actually new since we work together what speed it's running at and we have a simple sensor that clips on kind of like a Fitbit to that power cord of the machine clips on in minutes you can have visibility right away. And then we're using that power draw for the factories to optimize their operations and also over time. And Kevin, I know you touched on this in the book as well. That's exactly what you need to run a more energy efficient operation to size and finance Renewables, clean power, all of that kind of smart grid infrastructure can come from that same sensor and visibility used every day by the factory team to optimize their operation.

I'm going to hijack a bit of Lauren's origin story and then you can correct me with all the things I get wrong. What was really cool about this? So when she started telling her story to us that she is married to a Kenyan and after, after school, you know, doing this, studying climate change, having all these ideas and you know, you worked at another social good company before that and got made some observations about how factories worked. And so she goes to Kenya and realizes that there's all, you know, in a country like that, especially a lot of small manufacturers that don't have, you know, don't have a lot of resources and had a, a passion for how do you help? Not like she said, not the Tesla's in General Electrics, but how do you help these, you know, these 100 person, 200 person factories in a place like Kenya start to operate in a way that's much more energy efficient and you can help with climate and all of that. So that's where they first came up with this really cheap clip that at the beginning you could just, they could just go around and clip it on every one of the wires in the, in the factory and start to get some insights without having to like buy some big space shuttle of a piece of software and equipment to do it. And then everything else. Kind of flattered up from that. Did I get it right or wrong?

Yeah, no, totally. And then what was particularly cool was we built this system to be so robust and first principles and easy and just actually worked. And then Covid hit and we were on one of the last planes out and it turns out that as Covid hit a bunch of factories in the US and North America, so Canada, Mexico, etc. Also could benefit a lot from what we had built. So it was very cool to see it continue to thrive and grow in Kenya, but also be so applicable in North America as well. And we're now live in, I think seven countries growing super fast. It's a fun Space to be, to be building.

And so let me make sure I understand, Lauren. So essentially you start with a sensor. That's a clip.

Yep.

On the plug.

Exactly.

Did I get that right?

We would probably say electrical disconnect or power source. Just because these are huge three phase machines, they're a little different. You can clip it on your toaster if you plug it in. But you might, you might in this factory setting, say electrical power or disconnect.

Right. So they look a little bit different than the plug from my recording system here into my wall. It's an industrial plug, so to speak. Yep.

It'll work just as well on the recording system, but it'll look a little different.

I see. So I have this clip. It's a, it's an IoT sensor. And the first thing it gives us is a reading for the power usage through that pipe, so to speak. Is that correct?

Exactly.

And that gives you a baseline for how much that piece of equipment, manufacturing component, whatever it is, whatever, whatever is using that power, it gives you a baseline for this is how much power, whatever the thing is, is using through this pipe.

Exactly. It looks like if you see it, kind of an electrical EKG from your heart, it's the heartbeat of the equipment.

And then once you get a baseline reading on all of your major sources of power usage, then I assume you can go down a path of, okay, so how do we optimize this use so that we're still effectively doing what we need to do here in our factory and making what we're making and at the same time lower our cost and lower our US and therefore lower our CO2 of electricity?

Yes, exactly. And the first thing folks will usually focus on is, is my equipment running when it should be? If you make money when your machines are running and producing things, because you sell those things and your machines are down, you are not making money. And it's surprising often to many people how often machines are down. In a factory setting this downtime, sometimes it's a mechanical breakdown that's really unexpected and unpreventable, or once a day or once a week. But there are all of these frequent human driven incidents of downtime that happen many, many times a day as well. You're switching over a machine from product A to product B and the person switching it forgot the right material and has to run and grab a forklift and Suddenly you've lost 40 minutes then and there on that single changeover. That kind of human thing is happening all day, every day. So visibility into those incidents of Downtime is typically where we can start and help the factory teams really achieve massive benefits.

So in that situation, you're bringing visibility into electricity usage. You're surfacing a situation where power is being used to do nothing. So we are spending money to drive power, drive electricity into, in this example, a machine that's offline or not working, which does nothing for our business, increases our consumption, increases our cost, increases our CO2.

Exactly.

And if we can find all of those pockets, some small I would imagine, and some much bigger, where those sort of, that leakage, that wastage in the chain of electricity occurs and we can stop that or shut it or do whatever we do, maybe you'll tell me, but ultimately what we're doing is not using electricity we don't need and therefore not polluting the planet when we don't have to.

Exactly. And to boot, we're getting more out of our machines and factories. And team we already have.

And Chris, to go back to the category design question to your life with is that, you know, so in a, you know, our classic, our classic formula, Chris, is it starts with what problem do you solve? And so Lauren came to us and said, like, look, there's, you know, the ges of the world have all the money in the world to do, to do this kind of stuff in their factories. But there's, you know, maybe there's 100,000 GE sized factories in the world, but there's 10 million of these factories that are smaller and can't afford this. They're doing this kind of stuff on paper and with post it notes and stuff like that. We believe we found a big problem to solve and want to create a category that is designed to solve it. So that was where the whole conversation started.

It's such a powerful insight and it reminds me one of my favorite sort of cocktail party questions now that we're allowed to be in the world at least a little.

Is name me something that's not going to be connected to the Internet. And it begins to be a tough question to ask, you know, so people say something like, oh, well, you know, my floors aren't going to need to be connected to the Internet. I say, okay, maybe. But you know, my wife and I built our home about 10 years ago and we put this thing in called radiant heat because it's more efficient, it doesn't blow things around, I have bad allergies. There's a lot of positive reasons for radiant heat. Yes, it's more expensive, feels real nice on your fucking feet, et cetera. Right? So Somebody said to me a while ago, your floor, why would you ever have your floor connected to the Internet? So I explained I had this radiant heat and I said, you know, it would be cool if on my smartphone I could just say, well, keep the floor temperature at X. And if the floor was aware of when we're in the house and not in the house, when it knows we're not in the house, turn the fucking floor off. Right? And then when it knows we came back into the house. And so in this case, this person was looking at me, eyes open, jaw open, going, holy shit. There's actually like a really compelling reason for why you might want to connect your floor to your Internet. Now, I'm sure there are some things we're not going to connect to the Internet. But most of the time when I ask the question, either the person I'm talking to or myself comes up with a reason. Even if it's a little bit of a stretch for why fill in the blank is probably going to get connected to the Internet.

That's a great question. You got me thinking here and drawing a blank.

Well, you know, and as a side note on this, it's interesting, one of the things that's been funny for me over the last handful of years here as the pandemic has played out is, you know, there's this whole group of people who think that Bill Gates has a Bigfoot farm and he trained the Bigfoots to install the corona misters on the 5G towers so that we could all get sick, so that he could give us the vaccine and put the chips in us so he could monitor what we could do. Right. That's like some version of that is out in the world and Big Brother and freedom and they want to control us and all that. Here's the interesting thing to me, I just heard this. So on the east coast this summer, there has been off and on a pretty significant heat wave going on. Right. Where are you, Lauren?

I'm in San Francisco.

You're in San Francisco. And of course, Kev, you're in. Yeah, you're in New York, right, Kev?

I live in New York.

So I read this story very recently about how companies who employ people who work outside and millions of people work outside in all sorts of different jobs, are now starting to offer their employees the option, if they want, of using some kind of an IoT device to monitor their heat and their hydration levels so that this device will tell them when it's a good idea to take a 10 minute break or Whatever, get in some shade, maybe have some water, calm down, cool down a little, and then get back at it. And the article I read about this is how many of these employees, when given this option, are like, yes, please give me that right away. And so my point in sharing that is we now, as a culture, as we become more native digital and less native analog, are actually saying, yes, please put the sensor on me and make my life better so we don't have to have some Bill Gates conspiracy theory. People are raising their hand going, yes, please allow my employer to monitor my physical being. And so what happens over time, Lauren, as most manufacturers in the world sort of adopt this factory ops, optimize my electricity kind of paradigm in the way they think and build their businesses.

Yeah, I mean, it's exactly what you talked about. With more and more connected devices. It starts with the most important problems and then layers on from there in the same way that we're seeing more and more consumerized tech across other businesses. Manufacturing has been hit to a lesser extent by a lot of that so far. But all of that gets to start taking off once there's a real time layer of visibility to build on. And over time, I think where it starts to get really exciting is not what any one company builds, but what an ecosystem of developers and manufacturers and other companies creating innovation on top of that layer can build. And that's when it starts to just become even more of a blast to be in this space.

So in that regard, one of the things that we worked on for years written about and play bigger and since play bigger is this idea of an ecosystem and this idea of a flywheel of data where the category queens and kings of the future and really the category queens and kings of today are capturing some kind of or some massive data set that they're using to gain a deep, deep knowledge of the use of their products, what's working for customers, what's not working for customers, et cetera, et cetera. And so if you look at, like Tesla as an example, most people don't realize that Tesla is not a car company, it's a network company. And so they now have the biggest data flywheel ever built around how people use cars. And in their case, I'm sure you probably heard this, they've now entered the insurance business because they're monitoring your fucking car. And so they could, if you're a good driver, they're going to offer you insurance that they would not offer, say, for example, somebody like me who likes to drive at 100 miles an hour and do it fairly aggressively. And so my point is, there's this magical data flywheel that happens across. It's Metcalfe's law, right? The the value of the network expand or the value of the network grows exponentially as more people, more nodes on the network. And so maybe tell us a little bit about like this data flywheel you're building. Because now you have insights into many, many, many different manufacturers. And because you started in Kenya, you know you have geodiversity in the data as well, right?

Oh my gosh. And this is just where stunned me if I start nerding out too much, because it is such a cool space, because we've got this real time visibility into any manufacturer's machine across all their equipment. What they add to that is they layer on more and more context for that data, not because they care about the value of that ecosystem, but because it's immediately useful to know if a machine was down, why was it down? Was it a changeover, was it a setup, was it a mechanical breakdown? And then for them to be able to run and see where are they losing the most time on their equipment. What that looks like in practice is that they have actually asked us to be able to tag anything going wrong. So they are tagging the real time streams of data from their equipment with the things they care about. That starts, of course, with the reasons for downtime, but it can go into reasons for speed loss or quality problems. And what we're building, therefore, is this tagged real time data set where our users are engaged in tagging all day, every day, because they're using and vetting the quality of the tags for their own continuous improvement. This continuous improvement philosophy is something where they're doing it every day and then building, of course, this system that is getting smarter and smarter because of that context for every other machine and user and manufacturer who joins in in a way that's just so exciting.

And so we've all heard the term wisdom of the crowd, right? So if you think about Wikipedia is sort of the ultimate example of that. And this to me really is like, yes, wisdom of the crowd, but it's wisdom of all the nodes, it's wisdom of all the use cases. And of course, if I'm the manufacturer using your technology, I'm doing that myself, to myself. But then of course, people have an aha that says, well, wait a minute, Lauren, you've got the greatest data flywheel in history around manufacturing, factory ops, use of electricity. Sooner or later somebody says to you, well, how do I compare against other like businesses. Yes. And so now there's an entire benchmarking conversation that you can have that's not a bunch of arm waving bullshit, that's not a bunch of survey data about what people think. It's actual real time data in the stream.

Exactly. And of course you know, all anonymized, but we already have thousands of machines with thousands and thousands of tags added every day, so it's very easy to drill down and specifically benchmark for geographies or machine types. Whether it's thermoformers or blow molders or palletizing machines, it can get very specific while remaining anonymized in a way that's super exciting.

Yes. Now interestingly enough, we've had conversations with other legendary entrepreneurs like yourself who are doing this exact thing building a data flywheel because they have a native digital business. And aha. They have is.

This from a business model perspective opens up a new window because we can sell our technology to an individual company for their use case and then if they want to tap into that benchmark, that comparative data, then they pay extra for that data insight. And then even further as we move to ML and AI type approaches, there's an anticipatory future oriented forecasting capability that we can start to build and we can do that not just for ourselves based on our own prior usage, but of course if we have best practice real time data in the stream from like manufacturers, I can now look at what their forward leaning usage looks like as compared to mine and then even think about optimization into the future in a different way. And so as, as I think about those, A, they are incredible opportunities for customers of a technology like yours and B, and this, this is leading to a question. They add to an interesting new data insights, packaging and selling and marketing opportunity for you. Is that where you're thinking or what are you thinking in that regard?

Yeah, great question. What we always try to do is stay as close to our customers as possible and as close to what value are we driving for them and how does it help them succeed as possible. So lots of interesting opportunities, so many ways that we can work with partners and all of those things. I think what we want to do is make sure we prioritize what's going to make our customers the most successful. So if there are ways we can package that data that help them succeed and win and make guide wheel customers the best positioned to win in their own markets, that's going to be something we prioritize. Anything that takes us a little Further from that, I think we'll probably kick the can down the road a little bit on that. I firm believer that making our customers successful and really staying tight with them, especially as we're in this growth stage, is the best way to succeed.

Now, have you had any of the manufacturers of the technology, the machines, et cetera, that your customers are using come to you and say, hey, Lauren, we'd like to understand in the real world from an energy management consumption perspective, how does our product operate in a real manufacturing factory ops environment and we'd like to buy that anonymized data from you.

We get approached all the time by the machine manufacturers, so the mill crons and compressor manufacturers. What we've done so far is actually not prioritize those partnerships. We just focus on people using machines to make things or stuff who are our core customers and have all of our attention focused on them. I think there will be a really interesting place for partnerships with machine manufacturers and others in the manufacturing ecosystem to help our customers. But for now, my co founder says, he says there are very few startups in the world that can do one thing exceptionally well and even fewer who can do many things exceptionally well. So right now we focus on doing our one thing for one core customer. And over time I think there will be many more possibilities to layer on.

So this leads to a fun question, maybe for you, Kev, as well, which is, as you think about category design, what Lauren's saying is absolutely right. Most startups, if they're run by people who have creative and innovative minds, end up discovering multiple opportunities, multiple categories, and in some cases, right, Lauren, it's clear. It sounds like you guys are very clear and it makes 1000% sense to me. And sometimes it's not always obvious, you know, what's the tail and what's the dog? And so, Kev, you've talked about and written a lot about this idea and, you know, we've talked about it of the adjacent possible. And so when working with a company, you know, when working with an entrepreneur like Lauren, on one hand, hey, let's niche down real hard. Let's get this one specific category, this one specific use case, this one specific set of products and technologies to really deliver massive value. And at what stage in a company's growth is it helpful to look for this thing you call the adjacent possible? And at what stage, like this early stage, is it actually detrimental? How do you find that magic line?

Yeah, and that's a big part of a conversation to have with companies that we work with. Or any company that's trying to design their company and their category. And it's a crucial thing. So let me explain a little about this adjacent possible idea. So we borrowed it from a book by Steven Johnson called Where Good Ideas Come from and modified it a bit so it fit our category design sort of program. But if you can imagine that there's a vertical axis, which is what technology can do in a very simplistic way, just what technology can do. And a horizontal axis is what society or what people can actually adopt and accept into their lives. And so everything that is, there's this whole sort of space on that chart and that axis in the bottom left corner would be, there is all the stuff that technology can do and we all accept and that's all the stuff that's possible in the world. And so television sets or laptops and smartphones and they're all in that part. And then when you go outside of that space to the stuff that technology can't yet do very well and people can't yet quite adapt into their lives, you start to get out into this space of like what's not yet possible, what's not really there yet. And as Johnson points out in the book, is that things that really catch on and make a difference hit a particular moment in time along this thin band between the, the possible and the not possible. He calls it the adjacent possible. And that's just pushing the technology a little beyond what it's been and pushing our mindset a little bit beyond what it's been, but not enough, not so much that we can't kind of get it and really use it. So we have a conversation and from the get go, I think that guide wheel, Lauren, were hitting the adjacent possible. But we've often had conversations with a company who had this really interesting vision that then we go, well, you know what, that's probably 10 years out from the adjacent possible. We need to pull you back and hit that spot today so you have a business and with, with an eye towards how do you get there. Now an interesting thing about that axis, that two, the two axes is that there, it's always expanding, right? Every, every day there's new technology. Every day we, we adopt new things into our life. So that space where the adjacent possible is keeps moving out. And what we would say to a company like guide wheel is wonderful. You hit the adjacent possible now and you got to prosecute that as hard as you could possibly can. But you also have to keep an eye on where that line is moving and make sure that you're moving with it, because if you don't, then you're going to start to either seem old.

Or if you're not paying attention and you try to leap too far ahead of it, you're going to find that you're spending money trying to build something that's not quite there yet. But the important thing is to revisit all the time where that line is between those things.

Thank you for that. The other part of this that goes off in my head is so there's people who their relationship with the way that it is.

Is equivalent to their relationship with the weather.

And if you read the Wall Street Journal by way of example, the Wall Street Journal believes the way that it is is the weather. And so when you read the Wall Street Journal, you'll see things like, Amazon's revenue was up this quarter because demand for cloud services and their AWS offering was high.

Like, oh, in Santa Cruz and in San Francisco till approximately 11 o' clock this morning. We anticipate fog.

And of course, what the Wall Street Journal misses is demand is not fucking fog. You and I can do shit about the fog. I mean, unless you're building some technology that deals with fog. But other than that, you and I wake up and there's fog or there's not fog. Or maybe we're bringing a sweater. Or maybe we're not bringing a sweater. It's the weather. And we are, you know, we deal with the weather, the weather does not to deal with us. Right. In that sense. And of course, market categories are not like that. Demand can be created from nothing. We just had the anniversary of the iPhone. Right? 15 years. Is that right? Was it 15 years? I think it's 15 years. And the demand for smartphone apps 15 years ago was fucking 00. And you could have surveyed hundreds of thousands of customers and asked them, would you like an app store full of apps to download onto your phone? And. And 98% of them would have said, I don't know what you're talking about. And probably not. And here we are. And so people tend to forget everything is the way that it is because somebody changed the way that it was. Now, this leads me to a question for both of you as you're playing with this adjacent possible how do you walk the line between.

It'S too far forward for a technology and or people's readiness to accept the from to accept this new and different future. And so therefore that where we're thinking is too far and we need to pull it in. Kevin, as you Just described to sort of land where people are about to be.

So that's a great strategy. And.

Something moves people to that place as well. They don't just get there accidentally. And so how do you trade this off in your head between sort of a tailwind trend that you're trying to get a few years in front of, which is a smart thing to do, and at the same time realize, hey, fuck, we can create our own tailwinds as well. How do you think about those things as you're designing the business, as you're designing the category, as you're building the technology?

Kevin, you want to take that first? I definitely have strong thoughts, but I.

Can address it just maybe more universally. And then because Lauren can dig in on what it means to a real business, it's actually having to face those questions.

But yeah, I mean, and I think where you're going with this, Chris, is that this is actually part of what category design is about too, is about creating a new space in people's minds.

And having to, as we, you know, as we tell all our clients and as you've been telling people for years that you, you have to, you have to create that space. It's, it's, it's your duty as a, as a, you know, creator of a new category to make people understand what can be and why they need this thing. And, and as we always said, if you could describe somebody's problem really well and describe to them that there is a solution to that problem that they never thought of before and it's real, then you start to change people's hearts and minds about where things can go and what they can be. But again, there's always that fine line between how do you make it sound.

Interesting and new and real versus starting to tell somebody a science fiction story which people immediately start to shift their brain, sort of turns off and says, well, that's cool, but that's like telling me there's going to be Star Trek Beam Me Up, Scotty stuff in the next few years. But that's sort of the universal answer. But Lauren, you've been having to deal with that on a real day to day basis.

Yeah, definitely. The universal resonates really strongly. And I'll just share very specifically how that looks for us is our manufacturer base always talks about rolling out change in crawl, walk, run, and each of those stages unlocks the next adjacent possible. We actually originally started by saying, hey, let's run to this vision where everyone cares about optimizing their electricity use from a climate perspective. And that was too far out. So Kevin, I think you tell the story in the book of we launched this amazing intuitive energy management system and noticed that no one was using it for that every day. What they were using it for was the crawl piece, which was let's manage this downtime. It seems straightforward that when our machines are down, we want to intervene, we want to get that time minimized. Now what we do is we don't actually talk about the energy stuff when we're having initial conversations with customers, we talk about crawl, walk, run with them, articulating what that eventual vision will look like, but always starting with the crawl of let's take the times when your machines aren't running and you aren't making money and let's make that time less so we can increase your revenue, drive more profit straight to the bottom line in a very straightforward and very easy way. Click these things on. Get started with that. Your team knows how to fit into their existing workflows. And then let's start thinking together about what walk and run are going to look like once you have that real time data which opens up such amazing new adjacent possible. So a concrete example of what that's looked like for a number of our customers now is they start by managing downtime. They see the great revenue improvement, profit improvement from that and then they actually come to us and they say, hey, remember that thing that we talked about way back when where because you got the electrical data on our machines, we can actually start managing that energy consumption and tying it in not just to how we reduce energy use from our existing products, but how we actually are able to do ESG reporting and open up new markets for ourselves through other sustainability initiatives as well. And then we say, great, absolutely. We've got all of the ways to make that very possible because it's already in a system that your team is using all day, every day across CEO through operator, every plant, every machine, we can switch that on for you in a heartbeat and easily. See, I think for one of our customers, we ran an analysis of their 500 plus machines. There were five that were driving 20% of their idle energy consumption. And they didn't need to care about that a year ago to get started with us, but were able to suddenly start accomplishing amazing things in that walk and run area after they've got that crawl step going. Sorry, that was a little bit of a longer example there. But this is such an important topic because that's how change happens, especially in this world of manufacturing.

Is Karl Machron and I mean this in a strictly platonic way, Lauren, as a man who is deeply in love with his wife, I am fucking now in love with you.

And you know, this is another one of those magical lines we're trying to find in category design. It's something, Kev, we should probably write and talk more about, which is this idea of we have this giant vision, but you gotta meet that category where it is, right? Henry Ford says horseless carriage, because if he says automobile, nobody knows what the fuck he's talking about. So you gotta meet people where they are, provide them with something that's provocative, different, non obvious, interesting adjacent, possible curiosity raising. And then, you know, we've even perfected the noise. Kev, you'll love this. The noise people need to make was like this, huh? Ah.

That'S so good.

And what I love about what you're saying, and I think this is a mistake certainly I have made, I think it's a mistake that's a prevalent mistake in Silicon Valley because those of us who like to live in the startup, innovation exponential, possible different future world are always wanting to be the Babe Ruth in the batter's box going, you know, 20th floor bleachers or 20th row bleachers, right? We're always going big, right? And this, this crawl, walk, run thing is amazing because a mistake that we make is we don't meet them where they are and then we don't gently grab them by the hand and say, hey, let's go on a fucking walk to the future. And it sounds like that's what you're trying to do.

Absolutely. And yeah, no one wants to just immediately, especially when you're working with real machines and real people every day. It just actually doesn't work. To start too far into that run stage. It has to be a more gradual journey.

You know, in the category designer, in my mind, when I hear about what you're doing, I think, okay, here's what we're going to do. There's a carbon credits tie in here. That means we're going to be dealing with the blockchain, maybe. Are we our own crypto? Are we going to sell carbon credit blockchain crypto. But are we going to trade them? Are we going to. No, no. We're going to create this whole new exchange and this whole new economic store of value. My brain as the category designer, as the person who spent 30 years in Silicon Valley living, trying to live far in the future, our friend Mike Maples says all the time that legendary entrepreneurs are visitors from the future, telling us how it's going to be. And so that gets me fired up and you're like, no, what we're going to start with here, handsome, is we're going to take an IoT device, we're going to monitor the electricity and we're going to fucking start there.

We're going to make sure your machines are running when you want them to be and then we may go on a journey to do all of that other stuff at the right pace. That works for you. But first, if your machines aren't running, you are very unlikely to win. So let's get your machines running when they should be.

And now the other interesting thing, and this is true of technology products in a way that it's not true for analog products and it used to be not very true in the consumer world. And interestingly, as more things are native digital, I believe it's now true in the consumer world too. And here's the thesis. In the old days in the B2B enterprise world, we would say, well listen, the reason the customer wants to sit down with you, do a corporate visit or have you visit them and spend two hours with your senior vice president of products and meet your CEO and your CFO and your UFO and hear about your vision for the future and all that shit is because they understand when one company buys a piece of important technology from another company, they're not buying the thing now. They know they're making a long term commitment. Anybody who's ever bought and deployed software knows once it's fucking in here, getting it the fuck out is almost impossible. Like you are easily making a ten year commit. You know, when you go to buysalesforce.com, you can fucking hate that shit three months in, but you're not getting rid of it for probably a decade, right? So this need to understand the company, where you're going, your vision, your story, your product roadmap, your category blueprint, all of these very fortunate future leaning things is because they know we're not just going on a date, we are actually getting married. Interestingly enough, that's now beginning to be truer and truer in the consumer world because we now understand when you buy your first iPhone, you're now living in an Apple world because they've done exactly what you're describing, which is they start with this and they open it up and open it up. I've been seeing a lot of the nest, excuse me, not nest, ring marketing lately and it's very clear what they're doing and they're Very explicit about it. And they essentially say, hey, you started with our doorbell. But you know, we do this and we do this and we do this and now you can sort of smartify your entire house with ring, right? And they're doing the exact same thing. And so this leads me to another question about your category design and your vision and therefore your product vision, which is how do you on one hand.

Communicate the value of the crawl immediately? I want the roi, the benefit of the problem that you now articulated to me and achieve that crawl outcome that I'm very excited about. And on one hand, you don't want to get them confused about the run shit that you're building for three, five years out or whatever it is. But at the same time, they do want to know that there's a vision for this. They want to understand the product strategy, they want to understand where the category design goes. And so this is another line I'd love for you to explore with us, Lauren, which is how do you sort of sell what's on the truck today and yet market the vision so they're comfortable making a long term commitment.

I feel like I want to punt and ask Kevin to cover the big picture on that first because I feel like I'm learning this every day. Kevin, do you have big picture thoughts on that? We are constantly getting.

Well, no, I mean, you know, I mean. Well, Chris just pretty much articulated it and it, it is, it is exactly what you're talking about, like, look for. And this just takes it out of the realm of what, you know, Lauren's doing. Just, you could answer about that, but just to your example of, you know, of ring. For how many, you know, you've been around as long as I have. Chris's. For how many decades?

Who you calling?

Or actually haven't been around as long as I have. But, but for how many decades?

It's not the years, it's the miles.

Were we being, we being sold, trying to be sold on the idea of a smart home. And it went nowhere because it was like, it was this vision thing. It was like, do I have to buy everything at once? And like, how does this work? Whatever. And the brilliance of ring as it comes in, and this is exactly what Laura did in a manufacturing. It comes in and just says, no, just. How about a doorbell? Oh, I can get my head around that. Oh, I got a doorbell now that actually I could see it. And then, you know, and then it becomes that journey that you're talking about. Now you have a doorbell. You know what? Now if you can hook it up to your thermostat and then it starts to become something you can get your eye. And it's exactly that of taking people on that journey from the adjacent possible, that is that line today to where it's going to be tomorrow, where it's going to be the next day. But you have to do it consciously and intentionally. And this sounds exactly what you've done, Lauren, with the way you've approached it with Guide wheel.

Yeah, we try to do it intentionally, we try to do it thoughtfully. I always think we could probably do it better. I will say one of the interesting nuances that we always try to think about as well is it's not like we're just taking people on that crawl, walk, run, journey into the adjacent possible. They're informing what it looks like. Some of our best ideas and best features have come from our customers themselves. What we always try to convey is, hey, it's not just about what this journey looks like today. Yes, all those exciting things can happen and can get layered on. It's also, you're becoming part of this journey and helping articulate and define what that adjacent possible will look like through the creativity your team at every level, CEO down to operator, every geography, will actually bring to this as well.

Fucking A. I love you. And there's a learning here, Lauren, that I think is so powerful that people skate by, which is there's the idiot thinker that says, oh, business is really easy. Just ask customers what they want, build it, and give it to them. Right. Well, if it was that fucking easy, right. And of course, what we know is Henry Ford, I would have built a faster horse. Steve Jobs, they don't know what they want until we tell them, et cetera. And so that can lead to a place that says, okay, well, ignore the fucking customer. They have no idea. And I like that. I do. However, what you're describing is what legendary companies do, which is they have the vision, which I think for the most part, they can be fairly dismissive of feedback from others. Right. Once you get to the place where you are, where you're in market, your technology is working. The category is building. People are having the aha. Customers are getting value, their costs are coming down, their enthusiasm is increasing. Now there's two ways you can talk to them. The historical approach is the product management approach, which is, all right, here's what we're going to do. We can do a focus group of our top 200 customers and we're going to get a survey or we're Going to videotape them in a room and we're going to ask them questions. Then we're going to get the feedback and then we're going to stack rank the things and then the first three things that people voted for, that's what we're going to build. That's what morons do.

What you are talking about is actually, in my mind, I want to check this out with you. Fundamentally different. Which is what you're doing is you're co creating this category, you're co creating this technology, you're co creating the different future with a customer who's sort of having the insight Aha. About the new possible as you are. And I guess my point is, and I want to check this out and see if it's what you're experiencing is the difference between sort of stack ranking features and desires versus co creating a future with customers.

Absolutely. I think fundamentally so different. And I'll add on to, I think the importance of co creating that adjacent possible, not doing it just by asking people what they want. Everyone in our industry is going to say, okay, I want 15 to 20 different sensor types all over my machines. It's instead digging much deeper, of course, into jobs to be done and how you think about the actual ROI on the ground. But also we are big fans of watching what people actually do versus what they say that they would like. And so the ability that this unlocks for us is if we've got all of these customers on this crawl, walk, learn, journey, we can ask them, and we do ask them lots. What do you wish were possible? What is the job to be done that's most important for you? Where are the biggest opportunities in your business? But we also look at how they're using the platform where they're getting stuck and the unique and creative things that they're doing with it and double down on the creativity that we see within our user base from their actions in addition to from their words.

You know, it's interesting as you're saying that people don't understand the powerful exponential difference between analog and digital products. And for some reason this popped into my head. Lauren, do you read Kindle books?

A little bit. I don't love it though, to be honest.

I don't either. I like analog books. I'm a native analog. I like to write in that shit. I'm dyslexic. There's a bunch of reasons I like a physical book, highlighters all the way, all of that. The interesting thing though about the digital Kindle books is they show you what other shit people are highlighting in the book. They're showing you that other data in the flywheel. And Amazon, of course, when you realize what's happening, what you realize is just like you're monitoring the electricity in a factory to know what we're really doing versus what we say we're doing or what we think we're doing. And Amazon knows how we really read more than we know how we fucking read. Because just like Tesla, Kindle is not a book reader. It's each Kindle is a node on a network that creates a data flywheel.

It's so fascinating. Oh well, just to kind of double click on what that can look like in our space as well is we can actually see where people are finding things that matter to them within the data. Of course, if they tag it, but even if they don't, because we can see where people are looking, what the anomalies are, what's actually useful, what analyses they're running in ways that are far more powerful than just the data they're layering on on top of the platform. And when anonymized across all those different nodes, just create this amazing web of where do we build next and how do we help people even more.

Yes. Now just maybe moving off the products and the technology and the category for a second, you strike me and I know you are because I know Kevin as a mission driven founder and we talk a lot about this. And Kevin and I know it's very clear once you have this lens who the fuck you're dealing with. And if you're guys like us who you want to deal with, I don't mind that there are mercenaries. I don't have a negative judge, I'm just not interested. And so you strike me as a super mission driven founder. Is that how it feels to you?

Oh yeah. I mean it's a privilege to get to wake up every morning and work on something that's so tangibly beneficial to our customers, but also so important to the future of clean energy and fighting climate change. We incorporate it as a public benefit corporation as well. So we're not just in it to build a category creating more than public worthy company, we are in it fundamentally for those broader stakeholders according to our bylaws as a BBC.

So I would, I want to say something. Why, why what Lauren just said is so important for others that might be out there is that the really cool companies from, you know, going forward are, are going, are will be ones who are solving some of the big problems we have and we now, for the first time really have the technology to take on some of the climate change and social inequities and wealth gaps and healthcare inequities, all these big things that we have the technologies and the ability to do it. But what's so important is not just this idea that we're going to have this mindset of we want to solve these problems or whatever, an esg, which is just measuring stuff that's already happened and not even there's. Nobody is accountable for any of it. It's kind of, to me, it's kind of bullshit. But what Lauren's done is she built a company that profits by doing what we want it to do, but it's actually a profitable business that in the end helps in its own way towards this idea of helping with climate change. And so the new companies that are the, to me, the coolest companies out there are the ones that have a mindset of I want to do something really important for the world, but actually have built in a business model mechanism that becomes profitable when you do that. It's not just a bunch of like, you know, greenwashing, like get nice public relations stuff, but it actually is the business model. And when you can do that, especially in this era when by being that kind of company, you draw some of the best talent because people want to work for those kinds of companies, you draw the kinds of investors that you want to draw and you have the kind of public image you want to have.

That's where it's at today.

And I think just totally agree with what Kevin is saying, particularly as well, because having that impact in mind from the beginning forces scale to be important. We could not, or at least I did not want to build a small yet profitable business because I want to have us make a difference in fighting climate change. And we don't do that with a small business that works with five manufacturers. We only get that opportunity to have a meaningful impact on these big challenges if we build a profitable business that is scalable and can reach factories worldwide and get as close to those 10 million factories as we can. So it's been interesting from the start to think not only about the positive impact of all of the units, that kind of unit level impact, but also of the importance of building scalability into the model in order to have an impact that makes a real difference.

Yes. Now I'm also curious. Most entrepreneurs who start the way you and your partner started and are missionary and have all the attributes that you have don't have a category, design, lens, Most of them, whether they realize it or not, have a lens that says the best product wins, the best brand wins, the best business model wins. And all we have to do is show the world our technology.

And our legendary business model. What we really need is a great demo on the homepage. And once they see that shit, you know, we're going to be the next Google. And Kevin and I hear things like, you know, marketing is what you do when you have a shitty product. Right. Or another one of my favorites is we sell shit and we make shit and everything else is bullshit. And, you know, we've heard it all. And so what's it been like for you having acquired this new lens on business and added a category design component to the overall product, company, business model, culture, all the other things that are more obvious to more people?

Yeah, I just think it's so, so powerful. So I read Play Bigger. Gosh, I guess it must have been towards the end of 2021. And Kevin, I got in touch with you right after that. You and Mike and I just. The concept that resonated so strongly with me was this thing should exist, Factory Ops, which is the category we designed. But at that moment, it just felt. I felt that it was a category, but didn't know what the name was or how to define it. But it mattered so much to me that it existed in the world. Not that guy will be the only company to do it. That reading that book, it was like it unlocked. This doesn't have to be just about us winning or us building something valuable. It's that we can catalyze that something valuable. This Factory Ops category exists in the world, and everything about that approach just clicked.

Hmm. Now, a lot of people have a hard time getting their head around category design. And one of the things that there's many, but one of the things that they find challenging is. So you're telling me you want me to dedicate my life, raise a bunch of venture capital, do all this shit, to go chase a market where there's zero demand? Kevin and I and Damp and other category designers look them straight in the face and go, that's exactly what we're telling you to do.

And then we say, oh, and by the way, you're not going to market your product. When you go to do marketing, you're actually going to market the category. And like, what? What, what? What? We just spent a bazillion dollars. We have these rocket surgeons. We've done all this shit to build the most incredible carbon dulator in the history of the world and we're not going to market that. Exactly. And so these are ideas and of course there's many others we could point to, but there are many ideas that are so orthogonal, they're so non obvious, that are so counter the bullshit that we've been told that it can be hard for some to wrap their brain around it. And so as you learned about category design, you read and so forth, why did those ideas that seem so fucking stupid and wrong to most people, why did they land for you? And secondarily, why have you and your team had the courage to go do this thing that is really very radically different?

That's so interesting.

Curious that they don't land more for others. For me, it's so much easier to go out and evangelize something that isn't.

Us or just guide me. All evangelizing the category of factory Ops feels more natural to me than talking about why we're the shit.

So I guess it's. It just. I don't know why, but it did resonate quite well. And I think also we're a very customer driven company. So being able to talk with our customers about their problem and talk with them about the kind of solution that will help them with their problem was very natural in our conversations and fits very nicely, I think with that approach of this category is what we care about, not Guide Wheel specifically. It's all about.

So that feels natural to you being that evangelist for the category of factory Ops as opposed to being the number one salesperson for Guide Wheel?

Honestly, yes. It feels so much more natural to evangelize factory apps than Guidewell.

Interesting. Well, I could talk to the two of you forever about all of this. I love what your company's doing, Lauren. You know, bless you. A lot of people criticize me for being naive or whatever. I really believe in the power of entrepreneurship and innovation to change the world. Is there a role for government? Absolutely. Is there a role for.

Cultural institutions and religions and other members of what makes our world great? Yes. And we know that a meaningful, disproportionate amount of the reason the world today is exponentially different and improved than it was 100 years ago is because a bunch of entrepreneurs decided to change the way that it was. And you are one of those people. It's incredibly inspiring.

Well, it is a privilege. Our team and customers and extended team, including folks like Kevin, are just fantastic. I feel like I'm the luckiest person ever to get to build this meaningful thing with such amazing people.

Now, is there anything else that either one of you want to touch on before we wrap?

I don't know. But, I mean, from my point of view, it was. It was so much fun to be able to work on something like this that. That matters, but even more fun to see where they've taken it and, you know, was it maybe two years ago?

I think it was. I think I misstated dates earlier. I mixed up my 2020s and 2021s. I think it must have been a.

Year because two years disappeared for all of us.

I have no idea. I don't know what fucking day it is. It's a day that ends and why? I have no idea.

And, yeah, and, you know, it's just. It's just such a pleasure to see. To see companies that really run with the whole category thinking and, you know, and pull it off and take it to places we never could have imagined. And so it's, you know, hats off to you and everybody at Guide Wheel.

Well, full team, all our customers, everybody else. And Kevin, big thanks to you as well for making it all possible.

Thank you both and thanks for having us, Chris.

Yeah. What fun.

Please come back.

Thanks so much.

All right.

All right. Well, there they are. What an incredible duo. Very, very inspiring. Lauren. You can find her@guide wheel.com that's guide wheel.com and the legendary Kevin Maney. You can visit him at categorydesignadvisors.com that's category designadvisors.com and don't forget to hit follow or subscribe or whatever button you're supposed to hit today on whatever oddcast player you're listening to us on to make sure that you don't miss an episode. We have an incredible lineup coming for you soon throughout the rest of this year. All right, we would like to thank, of course, you. Thank you for your time, your attention, attention, and the gift of you willing to be engaged in real dialogue. Our friends@aclevationeconomy.com are there for legendary insight and analysis on everything happening in the world of technology. Analysis from legendary thinkers like the founder of Cloud Wars. Check out the Cloud wars podcast, my buddy Bob Evans, and check out accelerationeconomy.com to check out their network of legendary. Been there, done that, technology thinkers. My friends@onelifefullylive.org are the nonprofit helping you dream, plan, and live your best life. And One Life has an incredible program called the One Life Roadmap that they are deploying in cities around America to help people at risk, to help people who are coming out of very tough circumstances. Whether it's from coming from homelessness, coming from drug addiction, in some cases coming from jail. And now as they've come out of those environments and they're looking for a roadmap for the future, they turn to onelifefully lived.org and me and my friends here in our area have sponsored One Life to come to make a difference in our community. And if you want them in your community to make that kind of difference with some of the people who need it the most, check out the number one lifefully lived.org. my friends at Otranet have been building legendary B2B websites in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley for over 20 years. Check out atre.net that's atre.net and Halo app is the world's first real life network. We all know that social media is where fake, like fake life happens. If you want to share your real life with only your real friends in real privacy, check out H A L L O a p p halloapp.com all right. I need to remind you that today's information is provided you solely for informational purposes and this Oddcast is a sole property of the Lockhead Oddcast Network and it contains content known to the state of California to cause radically different thinking. All rights do remain perturbed. We are produced and edited by the greatest of all time, Jason DeFilippo. Check him out at Jason FYI. That's Jason. FYI, he's just opened what is arguably the most legendary podcast studio in Los Angeles. My friends Sarah Knox and Jamie J do legendary technical execution around here and they build lockhead.com why not visit locked.com today and subscribe to category pirates show notes by GM Simon. The brothers Bobas. Er and er. Geez Louise Ex and RJ Bobas. Sorry boys do our web development and the handsome and talented Cedric Biros does our graphic design. Our law firm is Weed and Jack and our accounts are three. Three balance sheets to the wind. We record these oddcasts on Squadcast fm. Remember to spread non obvious thinking. Joan Jett was right. Listen to Social Distortion. Thank you, Candy Dandy. She keeps all the trains running on time around here. Love you mom and dad. And hey Colin. This oddcast really ties the room together, doesn't it? Today our deepest apologies go out to Vladimir Putin. Sorry Vladdy, we just ran out of time for you. That's it. Thank you again. Please stay safe. Safe stay legendary. And until we're together again, follow your different.