Darin Andersen - Co-Founder & CEO of NXT Robotics

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You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keep accountants counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos El Gordo the taco stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to coast angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Hoya shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside to Tijuana Estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders who who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Come on.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, San Diego's Tech Ambassador and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle.

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Hey, welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host Neil Bloom and I am here with Darren Anderson, co founder of Next Robotics.

That's right. Good to see you.

Thanks for being on the podcast.

We've been podcasting all day together.

It's been great. And we're podcasting in your studio.

Yeah, it's actually really fun. It's nice to be on this side of the mic, so to speak.

Right.

I love watching you work.

It was kind of funny because I almost heard you, I think when the music ended, I was. I think I almost heard you take a breath, like you were gonna kick it off probably.

Yeah. Just like, you know, you're like, in that zone, trying to, like, think of something to start the show off with. A lot of times I'll banter with Mike, who's here in the studio, who also co hosts a couple of the shows that we do together. So it's kind of a formula, you know, but it really is fun being in the studio working with you.

Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having me.

I want to learn about the vision of even starting the studio, but let's dive into your whole history. You've got a history of building tech companies and tech ecosystems, which is great.

I actually started in tech coming out of a real estate job 25, 30 years ago. I worked for a company called Cushman and Wakefield that was probably the most untech company and industry that there ever was. But I did buy a laptop computer, a gateway, the old cow computer.

San Diego based company.

San Diego based company, Ted Wade bought a Dell laptop and was just so enthralled and excited by it that it just made me a tech convert. And that was going back some years. And then I started a company after I graduated from SC with the masters and decided I wanted to go into tech of some sort of. And I was actually building computers out of my house and kind of doing networking work at a time when you could actually still make a little margin in that, you know, it was back in the early 1990s.

Okay, and you're based in L A?

Yeah, I was based up in L A.

What was the tech scene like in L. A at that time?

You know, more definitely around entertainment, with not a lot of tech. You had a little bit going on in Santa Monica, but you had dot com. Right. So everything around you was dot com.

Yeah.

So we actually started building what now would be called a content management system. And at the time, it was very early. It basically gave people the ability to work on their content themselves and not have to get a web master or mistress to actually update their websites. Right. So that actually we were using some tools that were open source, which was a very new science. Then Linux, postgres and some of these other technologies, and we were acquired by Red Hat because we were doing a lot and they were kind of pushing and adopting an open source database. They kind of did the operating system. You think about it, that was their first claim to fame to take an open source software and commercialize it. And that was at the operating system level. So they're trying to do the same thing with the database. Okay, so we were acquired because we were one of the largest users of the database that they were targeting for that.

So. And that all happened in la?

Yeah, all that happened in LA sold that company and that's really what allowed me and my family to move down to Coronado. We actually didn't really move to San Diego. We had been visiting my ex wife's mother with our young kids and just fell in love with Coronado. So when we moved, we didn't really move to San Diego to be honest. We moved to Coronado. But you know, I moved down here with no network. I, you know, I like to say that I got rich, not wealthy in the first, you know, sale and there was an opportunity to, you know, take that and find out what's next. So kind of network building became important to me because I like came down here with no network. So that kind of led me to doing some consulting but also to, to find places to network.

Interesting. At what point did it take you to eset?

ESET was a kind of a consulting gig. I was doing like, I don't know what you'd call life coaching now with the found of ESET guy who's still a great friend of mine, Anton Zajak. And Anton lived in Coronado on our little bubble island over there and started doing some coaching with him. And Ulta became his right hand person and COO of eset which kind of blew up in a great way. I think we started in $12 million kind of globally. And when I left there we were kind of 250, 250 million and it was all about building ecosystems and influencers across the world, basically taking that product and selling it across the globe. And certainly I didn't do it single handedly. There was a whole team of us that were working on it. But one of those rare lightning strikes in life where you just get a great product. ESET's still a fabulous product. I use it and advocate it and we kind of climb from, I don't know, number 35 antivirus company to I think they're now number four or five in the world, you know. So it's a real success story for San Diego as well. That being said it is headquartered in Bratislava, Slovakia. But kind of at the time we were really kind of running it as a headquarter company from San Diego.

Interesting. And they were in Coronado, was the company who kind of started there and then to downtown.

Yeah, it's crazy. You go in the. There's a Bank of America in Coronado and behind it like these apartment buildings and there's still a little E set plaque there, which was sort of like the original logo sign of the company. And so they started in a couple of apartment building or like a condo kind of, and then moved across the street to the bank. Like worked above the bank because banks were closing then, so they had all this extra space above the bank. And then we moved over to Little Italy to the space that the company's still in now. Took one floor, then two floors. And again that time the company was blown up from like, I think when I started there was 10 of us, and when I left there was about 200 of us just in San Diego.

So Anton's son Peter started a company in Coronado. Was it in the exact same apartment, do you know?

Yes. In fact, Anton.

I've been in that apartment.

Yeah. Anton bought that building, I believe, and then went and kind of created a little Slovakian accelerator, which I helped him on a couple projects. Oh, cool. And Peter just got funded.

Yeah, search logs.

Yeah, that's right.

They just raised like 5, 6 million.

Yep, yep.

I just moved over to downtown as well.

Oh, he is okay. I didn't know that because I know that I know Peter, like since he was a little kid.

Sure.

You know, literally like he was. Would show up at our events, you know, and he was a young man then. I watched him go through college and he went on to do his PhD. Brilliant. Like his dad. You know, all those folks are just that whole Zajak clan. They're just literally like Anton won something equivalent to like a Nobel Science Prize, you know, years back in Slovakia. Just brilliant guy.

Wow.

Still investing. I just, I talk to Anton by text all the time. He's either sending me pictures of big fish because we're both fishermen and love to. He loves to skin dive for fish. He and I have like shot fish and skin dived all around the world, you know, but he still does that. He's probably in his 60s now. Yeah. Walks around like he's 25, but.

And his son is building the next great company, which is super cool.

Yeah, Son building. And you know, he's got another younger son who's like really smart, but kind of the wild child, you know, the fast car driver, which Anton has that aspect to him as well. But the young boy, it's yet to see what he'll do. Also, like PhD, these are all physics people, you know what I mean?

But what's cool is to have built a company like Eset that has spun out, in a sense, talent.

Absolutely.

Who have gone on to help other great companies or people like you who've gone on to build ecosystems. Right. So you really big in the cybersecurity space, smart city space, and the tech ecosystem. Is that what eventually. What led you to eventually starting Cyberhive?

So I. Because I was working in cybersecurity, one of the projects that Issa did was to help people understand what cybersecurity was. And I literally remember the conversation with Anton in his office, and he said, you know, Darren, he goes, we're seeing things out of our labs in Bratislava that are very concerning to us because they're not technically based, they're human based. And what's happening is people are clicking on things that they shouldn't. And what he was describing was fishing. You know, he was describing spamming. And, you know, there was really no answer to it. So we determined that, at least in the short run, while we were building new technologies, that education was. So we started something called Securitary City. This is now 12 years ago. And it's interesting if you go back another generation, there was a group of guys that started what then was called information security. And they also positioned San Diego as an information security hub because of our connection to the Navy. So I had met all those guys and was talking to them and building kind of an ecosystem with them. And then we sort of modernized that by taking cybersecurity kind of more to Main street here in San Diego. So we were working with the Chamber of Commerce. Like, I remember Reuben Barales, who preceded Jerry Sanders, like, said, ruben, we want to do this education program for cybersecurity. He goes, we don't. I don't even know what you're talking about, like cybersecurity, because none of my members are talking about cybersecurity. The term didn't even exist really at the time, like, it had been coined, and we were starting to use it so early days. So we organized San Diego. We identified, just like you've done so well with so many of the startups, the cybersecurity cluster here. There was already over 100 companies in San Diego because of our Navy history. And if you really look at it, there's three Kind of major hubs across the United States. There's what I call the government hub of cyber, which is the three countries of the D.C. area. You've got D.C. virginia and Maryland. You have San Antonio, which is sort of the hub of the US Cyber Command, Air Force, primarily. But they do some serious deep stuff in cyber. And then you got San Diego. And those really, when you boil it down from a practitioner standpoint, is where the hubs of cyber exist. And this was the idea that we were building at the time with EDC and the regional chamber on, hey, let's adopt this as a new cluster. And it took probably eight, 10 years to kind of get the message across. And I think cyber continues to be a strong cluster. I just saw a study that said about 200 companies in cyber now in San Diego. And so I was very interested in cyber, obviously. And I still am a practitioner. I do some cybersecurity consulting. I'm on the Governor Cybersecurity Task Force. And still involved, I'd say, in a quiet way, because the work that we do is not something that is heavily promoted. A lot of kind of inbound customers. But I think what I did see was what was coming next, and that was the Internet of Things and what we now call smart cities, which I call sort of IoT 2.0. So you had kind of all these things that were coming out of the smart, clean tech building movement to have buildings that manage themselves better, in a sense. And that was a very early component of the Internet of things market. And what we now call smart cities, which is, in a sense, kind of taking many buildings, transportation infrastructure that we call mobility, cyber security. Because one of the positions that we've taken at Cyber Tech, which is an evolution out of Cyber Hive, which was our, and still is our accelerator, is you can't have a smart city that's not digitally safe.

It's.

It's an oxymoron. So they have to go hand in hand. So we started about five years ago, the Smart and Safe Cities Initiative, and we do kind of annual programs around that, whether it's small educational events. We did 12 annual conferences, literally with partnered with ESET. Even after I left, we were all very committed to that. And, you know, and I think you have sort of like Smart City 3.0 coming or maybe Web 3.0, which I think is all about experiences. So I want to really know Neil Bloom's personal life. Not personally, but like to really get more intimate with what your life is about and to experience that through social media. And I think that's what you'll start to see with kind of Web 3.0. And I think that's going to require even more detailed focus and, and designation and lines of delineation around things like privacy and your physical and cybersecurity and that sort of physical security question and interest and the Internet of things is kind of what led me to my latest startup, which is Next Robotics.

Ah, okay. Well, tell us then. Tell us. We got to hear what Next Robotics is.

Yeah, so I worked with the original founder of NEXT Robotics at eset, guy named Jeff debroce, still a friend. And Jeff had this idea of doing like, concierge robots. And he worked out of the accelerator here, like, literally like across the hall. And I had some office, I had a large office at the time, and I said, hey, I got an extra desk. Come in here and, you know, set up shop and I'll help, you know, introduce you to a few folks and help you get some funding. So we did that. And I remember he was driving back from his fourth trip to Amazon, where he had taken a couple of these robots and said, you know, I just terminated my CEO. I'm looking for somebody to help, you know, take that place. Do you know anybody? I said, you know, I'd be interested in signing up for that job or at least talking to you about it, because I've been watching them grow and struggle and, you know, for. I mean, I look back and I go, for whatever crazy reason, because, you know, doing hardware robotics, which is kind of how we started, I think I've turn the vision more towards what I'd call a robotic platform. So our concept coming out of the hardware robotics idea is to connect many robots to many sensors. So if you go back four or five years ago, there was always this kind of vision. Like you'd have all these devices, sensors or things like cameras, video, audio, and you put that together with rolling chassis, which are robots, right? And you make those chassis autonomous. So I love this, like, solving this problem because it's like, all right, I'm going to take a chassis. And that could be something that we actually ended up inventing a rolling chassis with mechanical wheels, adding the electronics to make it autonomous, adding sensors, which are in the form of video cameras and audio. And our first take was instead of doing concierge robots, which were serving people mainly indoors, we wanted to pivot and focus on outdoors. One of the simple but difficult problems on doing anything robotic indoors is how to manipulate doors. And there's really not too many folks that are doing well. Most people have seen like the Boston Dynamic videos of them going in and out of doors. And even that looks awkward and weird to me. You know, like a kind of like, you know, mechanical arm flipping into this door and, you know, but imagine, and you've got, like, doors that open in and out and you got, you know, handles that are more like levers and some that are more round. And as a robot, let's say on patrol, you've got to, like, figure all that stuff out. So that was, at the time, too difficult. So we kind of pivoted to outdoor.

So what's the use case for?

The outdoor use case is you've got the physical guard market, one of the highest retention and turnover gigs on the planet. 400% turnover. Security job. Not looked at necessarily as a career job, but more as a temp job. And yet, you know, you're essentially handing the keys to the kingdom to that security guard while you're the CEO and you're off duty. So it's a big responsibility. And the idea was, what can we do to help automate that process? You know, not taking jobs, but complementing and. And allowing tech enabling. Tech enabling and really giving the guard the opportunity to have a career job.

Right.

So we've got guards now that are actually operating robots. Right. So they become roboticist, you know, as part of what they're doing. You've got this younger crew and folks that are interested that are some cases coming out of different countries with, let's say, computer science degrees, but have no place to use it. So start in the security guard world.

That's pretty cool.

So they see that and they're like, wow, that's amazing. I can actually, like, work in robotics like I was doing in the place I came from.

Yeah. So this brought you at some point to the San Diego Airport Innovation Lab, right?

Yeah. So we were lucky enough to be selected one of six companies, I think, in the third cohort at the airport Innovation Lab. We worked with the crew over there. Great crew of folks. I think they.

Rick and Gina.

Yeah, Rick and Gina. I knew Rick as the CISO originally at the airport. And, you know, Rick was involved in the San Diego tech community. Still is. But I mean, at the time he was kind of a CISO here in town, kind of, you know, sharpening his skills and then went over to the airport. And I think he had this very visionary idea of starting an innovation lab there. It's not the place that you would think that there'd be a lot of innovation and I'll tell you, there are definitely challenges to innovating in a place like the airport, which is very kind of governmental and bureaucratic. But my hat's off to him for having that vision to do that. Because I think it is one more thing that makes San Diego quite unique.

Yeah, definitely. So what was the experience like going through it? So the program is like really, they're trying to gear you up, get you ready to be a contractor.

Yeah, it's unlike other incubators, accelerators here, they're getting you airport ready. And they're not only kind of walking you through the bureaucracy that exists only at that airport, but a koretsu of airports that they're involved with. So once you get vetted there, you have the ability to work at many other airports. Literally. They're part of an authority organization that's primarily focused on the west coast, but they have all these contacts. So if you can survive the process of going through a kind of slow walkthrough of how that all goes, I think it'll be a great opportunity for us continue. So we're in kind of statement of work discussions with them now. We have a contract with them. We're just now defining what our role will be there. And we did. Yes, the kind of the process, four month program, first two weeks. Sorry, first two weeks are kind of sharing strategic vision. They're doing a lot of training on entrepreneurship and then you're like, you know, hands on and you're deploying your solutions inside the airport physically. So you have to go through all the screening and training to work in an airport. So we were running the airport parking lot for several weeks with our robots. Great experience, you know, seeing the reaction. We worked in the employee parking lot during most of that time, which is a very large parking lot on the north side of the building. They had had some incidences there, some security incidents there, so there was concern about it. So we worked with their partners, Ace Parking Elite Security, developed a plan to leverage the use of the robotics in night day shifts. And so that's sort of what we're continuing on now.

Okay, very cool. So that so and the end goal is that the airport can use the robot on their own or they will always have like next robotic staff who are kind of contracted to run it.

Yeah, well, I think one of the things that was attractive to them about us is we are a San Diego based company so we could provide support. But ultimately we are turning over those keys essentially to the provider. Now the provider is rarely the airport. They contract Most things out. So Ace Parking essentially manages all of the airport parking lots, including the security contract. Including the security contract, goes along with it. So they actually do both. So for us it was a great. I don't know if you know, but about two years ago we announced an initiative with Ace Parking as our first go to market partner. So we've been working with them. Keith Jones, who's third generation over there, I think had a good vision and we were having conversations going back because of his interest in the Internet of things. And I think he sees that his competition is not another parking lot. It's actually Lyft and Uber. Right. If you think about how disruptive Lyft would be to airport parking.

Sure.

Or you've got, you know, these two smart kids. I'm just talking metaphorically, although there do happen to be two smart kids over at UCSD that started a parking IoT company. Right. And they're going into a parking lot and they're like, you don't need booths or people. Like, we're going to put up cameras and they're going to like smartly and with AI figure it all out for you. And then, you know, companies like ours, so I think for them it was sort of like, let's join, not beat and. Or get beat, you know, because that's where the disruption occurs a lot of times. So I think very visionary. So we've been working together on the parking lot at the airport. We've worked at Padres, we've worked at the convention center, done some testing, and I think that we'll be implementing across a couple of those domains. You know, these are kind of large organizations. They move kind of slow. The ideas are ones that have to be sort of fully baked all the way through the system. So it's definitely an enterprise sell.

Sure.

You can appreciate.

Yeah, yeah. Where's the company based? Right now we're in San Diego.

We actually work headquarters out of Nest Cowork, which I have a part in, but totally separate. We have a lease here. That's the only affiliation. And then we have actually a workshop where we build most of the robots in El Cajon.

Oh, cool.

So we found a space out there. You know, it's a testing ground. There's a large yard area where you can test the robots, run them, you know, all night long. If we want space where we can build a number of robots. And then we've outsourced construction of those chassis. We've tried Reno, we've tried China. We sort of always come back to San Diego. Because at this stage, trying to control the development of a piece of hardware like that, really it's helpful to have it here. So it's been good lessons about outsourcing and managing that project.

Sure. Another program I think you went through is with Qualcomm, right?

Yeah. So just coming out of the Innovation Lab, we were fortunate enough to be contacted by Qualcomm, the head of the smart cities program there. And they invited us to join their accelerator. During this cohort, which we're in process on now, they basically said, hey, we're sort of going to nurture up 7 San Diego Tech companies. We like what you're doing. They have some interesting news that I think will be coming down. It's not secret, but not well known about things we're working on at the San Diego airport, the port.

Qualcomm specifically. Kind of Qualcomm specifically.

So you may see at some point a big announcement made about how we might be making things smarter at the airport or smarter at the port.

That's great.

And I think that's something that we'll probably see in 2020. They're also talking to the folks at Seaport Village. You know, they've been very progressive about doing smart stuff over there, you know, with, with Gafcon and one of the Jacob brothers is involved in that development project. I think it's Gafcon and then the development company owned by, I think the former president of Qualcomm, their partner. Because that's a big site, you know, it's like a billion dollar plus project.

Yeah.

So a lot of horsepower. But Qualcomm I think will have a role there.

That's great. I mean, the city of San Diego as well is pretty tech forward thinking, right?

I think so, yeah.

They leaned into the US Ignite program and they've got these smart street lights.

That's right.

That they are open to, you know, and are looking for solutions for. And then I think you've worked a lot with those kind of cities.

So US Ignite started here actually at Cybertech. We held the contract first. We did that with Cleantech. So we partnered up and started the program here. It's now, that program is now run by Daniel Ovadanski over at SD Scale San Diego. Sd Yep.

And he's previously of Qualcomm, Qualcomm guy.

And helping me on NEXT Robotics and I'm helping him on a few things. You know how it works here. It's a degree of separation, but you know, big fan of scalesd and you know, they're kind of based out of downtown works. We love those guys as well. And so it's been great. Kind of building ecosystem partners with them and helping to bring this sort of smart city vision. Because I, you know, we, the podcast that we do and you've been on a couple times is, you know, how do you attract the best people? And I think at the end of the day that's what San Diego has been powered by is smart people who do have an interest in living in a great place with great weather, but they also like being around a lot of other smart people. And that's been a real driver.

Yeah. Well, then I have to ask the question, what do the smart people order for tacos?

Well, I'll tell you, I think I mentioned Blue Water on the previous show. I was down in Tijuana and Rosarita this weekend and love Berea Tacos in Rosarita. Kind of just outside the tourist district, kind of where a lot of the locals go. Walked in there, ordered tacos, was sitting next to six Mongol outlaw bike club members.

It's really interesting.

So, you know, it's the kind of stuff that you run into down there. Yeah. And then I think salud also here in San Diego is wonderful.

Don't you have one where you don't know the name, but it's. Yeah.

So going back, maybe the best fish tacos is Johnny Auto Parts down in Ensenada.

Okay.

And I grew up on those tacos because my family, in fact, I went down this weekend and saw the place I used to go. We'd go down there almost every month and you know, towed the bikes down, rode the motorcycles and the quads on the beach and had a trailer down there and skin dived and you know, surfed and all that. But we'd always make a trip in an Ensenada and there was this great little taco, you know, stand and next to it was Johnny Auto Parts. So we always referred to it as Johnny Auto Parts. And I've been going back there ever since. I remember going there in college and you know, I didn't make it down to Ensenada this trip, but maybe next time.

Yeah, we love that, such that cross border connection that we have.

Absolutely.

It's pretty huge. We don't, definitely don't. I don't think people know. People don't even know that we have that, that tight knit community with.

Yeah, I mean it's probably a whole other show. But you know, there's the mega region, which is sort of Baja and San Diego. And there's a great vision that the city's been driving that, you know, other like minded people in Baja have been driving for many years. It's a tough problem to solve because, you know, you have a lot of turnover and political circles and business circles in Tijuana and here in some ways. So it's a, it's a, it's a real hard nut to crack, but real opportunity. We just did a binational event here at Cybertech with Guadalajara, which is sort of like Silicon Valley in Mexico.

Yeah.

And had maybe 100 people here and several people speaking about success stories, you know, where we're exchanging talent. You know, they're, they're actually minting more doctors in Mexico every year than they are in the us. Lots of smart people, which is necessarily not a place to go. Like, you know, you have here, you know, more opportunity.

Yeah.

And that's the opportunity.

Yeah. Well, we're going to foster that because you and I are bridge builders.

Absolutely. Well, you have been a mentor and a friend and so appreciative to be on your podcast and to be able to hang out and talk a little bit about the next story.

Likewise. I appreciate that. Thanks. Darren. Where can people find you and Next Robotics online?

Just Darren@NexRobotics.com that's-A R I N at next with no E. So NXT Robotics with an S dot com.

Awesome. Thank you very much.

Thank you, brother.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest coworking in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom as well as Fresh brewed tech and tacos and tech Pod on Twitter too.

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