A grasp on robotics

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Hit it. That’s what I’m talking about. Wait. Okay, now from the beginning.

Nathan Anibaba:

Locky Wright is the commercial lead at Touchlab, one of the most exciting startups of the past decade. Touchlab manufactures e-Skin, thinner than human skin, which can be wrapped around hard or soft surfaces to sense pressure and location in real time. Locky is responsible for sales and marketing, finding and onboarding new large scale clients and developing VC fundraising strategies. Locky Wright, welcome to ClientSide.

Locky Wright:

Thank you for having me, Nathan. Yes, it’s really good to be here.

Nathan Anibaba:

Super excited to have you on and even more excited to speak to you about Touchlab, who I said in the intro are a really exciting tech company, probably one of the most exciting of the last few years. I really mean that, because you’re solving some really fascinating challenges that have stumped businesses since the dawn of the industrial revolution. I don’t want to overstate this here, so maybe we can start with who are Touchlab and what problems are you solving for your customers?

Locky Wright:

Yeah, I’ll just start and say you’re exactly right. I mean, Jeff Bezos actually remarked at this problem a few years ago at the re:MARS conference. And he said, “If you went back 30, 40 years, people would’ve expected the grasping challenge in robotics would be quite simple to solve and it’d be solved quite quickly.” And in reality, it’s… I mean, luckily for Touchlab, it’s turned out to be an incredibly difficult problem. So we’re an Edinburgh based team of we’ve just turned seven people actually. And we’re looking to expand quite a lot further, because we’ve just closed a seed round just at the end of February of £3.5 million, which is led by Octopus Ventures, which is pretty exciting in itself.

And what we’re looking to do is solve the touch challenge in robotics. So we’ve developed this electronic skin technology, like you said, which can be conformed or shaped pretty much to any surface. And in doing so, we’re allowing robots to understand what they touch and interact with, which has traditionally been a massive missing sense in robotics. It’s quite obviously a massive challenge, but it’s also quite almost abstract to think about. If you went into a room, went to pick up a glass like this, you know exactly how hard to squeeze in order to appropriately interact with that object. And then if you went on to pick up something else or interact with something else, you know exactly how hard to squeeze when you touch the object, now robots don’t have this.

So it makes it basically fundamentally a challenge for robots to be applied to certain applications, where they’ll be interacting with a lot of different things in their environment. So a fantastic example is in retail, where currently retailers will have thousands of people picking and placing. I mean, they’ve got thousands of stock keeping units, so they’ll be interacting with these in thousands and thousands. Now that could be automated, it’s really simple, picking up an object, placing it somewhere else. But robots can’t understand the grasp strength of these different objects, so it can’t be automated. And in the long term, we’re developing this to be wrapped around tele-operated robots. So we’re actually finalists in the ANA avatar XPRIZE competition as one of only 15 teams globally. And what we’re doing here is, we are applying this technology to a robot that can be operated over a hundred kilometers distance. And now an operator can hear, see, speak and feel through the robot, so you can effectively have true presence in a remote location.

Nathan Anibaba:

Okay. Now you’re giving me goosebumps.

Locky Wright:

Very sci-fi.

Nathan Anibaba:

It really is sci-fi but it’s right here. So of course, you’re right, because when it comes to picking up things like glass or sensitive objects, you want to make sure that the robot has some sense of what the item is, so they’re not breaking-

Locky Wright:

Exactly.

Nathan Anibaba:

Or damaging the item. And you can see the applications in retail quite clearly. And I can also see why Jeff Bezos has an interest in this, because it’ll probably be applied to his factories.

Locky Wright:

Yeah.

Nathan Anibaba:

Why has this problem been so hard to solve? And what is it that Touchlab is bringing to the innovation that is finally solving this challenge?

Locky Wright:

Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. So I mean, at a base level, I mean, we’ve got thousands of different receptors in our skin and our skin is the largest organ in the human body. And it’s also got a lot of different functions that we use it for, so sensing pressure and pain, but also things like temperature control through sweating or operating the hairs on our skin. So there’s lots and lots of different functionality there. And we’re trying to mimic effectively, thousands of years of evolution in our senses. So just in the nature of it, it’s obviously a very, very complex challenge. So another great example is how durable skin is, but also the dynamic range of skin. So a person that’s probably quite a lot bigger than myself, could go to the gym, pick up a really, really heavyweight, but then also blow on their fingers for example and they’d be able to feel that difference, so that’s a massive dynamic range.

But they could also then go to the gym every day for, I mean, tens of years and their skin would still be functional, so exceptionally durable too. Now what we’ve got effectively is, what we believe to be the closest sensor on the market to real skin and the main, I guess, USP of this, alongside the performance aspect, where it’s quite comparable to the gold standard sensors in the market, is the fact that it’s a skin-like sensor. So it’s thin film, it’s actually thinner than human skin. And what that allows for, is it can be shaped or conformed and wrapped across any surface. So if you look at a competitor sensor, what they do is, they’ll have to replace kind of like the fingertip of a robot gripper, but that’s obviously not how we pick things up. You don’t work like a claw in an arcade machine, you grasp using the whole hand. So what this allows for, is a complete sense of touch across whole surfaces, which has really been a missing aspect to this challenge.

Nathan Anibaba:

When you break it down like that, it’s amazing really what the human skin is and what it does.

Locky Wright:

Yeah.

Nathan Anibaba:

We take it for granted.

Locky Wright:

Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Anibaba:

You can pick up and feel these really heavy weights, but you can also feel the most delicate of blows from a bit of wind or what have you.

Locky Wright:

Yeah.

Nathan Anibaba:

It is truly remarkable. And you manage to distill millions of years of evolution into this innovative new product, which it’s fascinating.

Locky Wright:

Thank you, yeah. I actually read somewhere once that if the Earth was, I guess, compressed to the size that you could hold it in your hand, you’d be able to feel the difference between a house and not having a house there.

Nathan Anibaba:

Wow.

Locky Wright:

So just having that, I guess, accuracy in the skin, trying to replicate that-

Nathan Anibaba:

Incredible.

Locky Wright:

It’s obviously… Yeah, it’s quite incredible.

Nathan Anibaba:

So let’s talk about the business side of this now. What markets have the biggest opportunity for you? We’ve touched on retail, but maybe you can give us the size of the total TAM, the total addressable market, which segments are most appealing to you guys? Just give us an idea of what you’re looking at there.

Locky Wright:

Yeah, definitely. So I’ll steer slightly clear of TAM, because when I was working previously, at Creator Fund, we found that often it can be quite arbitrary saying we will capture X percent of the market and whatnot. So instead, what we’ve been trying to do is a bottom up approach. So understand the client problem and from there, how big is this market? So for the retail application, so the picking and placing, an example client of ours has 15,000 people across the UK, that they are literally picking up items from a tote and putting them into another basket or a bag. That can’t be automated at the moment, because of this missing sense. Those 15,000 workers, if you assume they take a salary of £20,000 per year, which is, I guess, fairly modest, that’s £300 million per year, they’re spending just on completing this task, which at surface level you’d look at it and say, “It should be able to be automated.”

And that’s also just the salary, that excludes any managers, sick days, pensions, national insurance, holidays. So as a matter of fact, it’s much probably closer to about £400 million, so it’s an insane cost for something that’s very, very simple. On the other side of it with the tele-robotic side, what we are looking to do there is, as I mentioned earlier, enable true presence in a remote location without having to have a person in that location. So this is actually really, really prevalent in any environment that’s potentially dangerous to people, but that they have to still operate in. So a fantastic example, which is, I guess, more prevalent than ever, is in the medical sector.

So healthcare acquired infections are actually a massive global problem, which the World Health Organization before COVID was saying, would effect seven to 10% of all inpatients worldwide. So seven to 10% of patients that is, are going to acquire at least one infection whilst being treated for something completely different in hospital. That’s an insane figure and that’s global. So the 7% is actually attributed to developed countries and 10% to underdeveloped countries, so that’s huge. And actually, unfortunately, since COVID this problem’s actually only got worse. So there were some hospitals in the UK that over a nine month study period had over a third of the COVID infections treated at the hospital, acquired from the same hospital.

Nathan Anibaba:

Ridiculous. You actually go to hospital to get an infection.

Locky Wright:

It’s bizarre, and it’s really under spoken about. But this is very obviously from that, a very, very real problem. So what we are looking to do here is, have the tele-robot, have nurses control the tele-robot, so complete day to day tasks through the robot. Now this won’t be things like surgery, which are very, very high level, and that’s a different ballgame that other companies are looking at. This is very, your basic day to day. So checking monitors, your pulses, delivering food or medicine. And we’d like to build up to things like wound care and even injections through the robot.

But in doing so in having this proxy between the patient and the healthcare provider, what we’re expecting to happen is this healthcare acquired infection rate to fall quite dramatically. We’ve actually got a pilot study running next year in a Finnish hospital, which is the first study of this kind with tele-robots in an actual hospital, to prove whether or not this hypothesis is the case. But I mean, we are quite confident that it should be. And then I guess moving on from medical, other applications can be seen in nuclear decommissioning, nuclear fusion, space in the much longer term.

Nathan Anibaba:

Aerospace, yeah.

Locky Wright:

So there’s quite a few different applications for it, but we’re starting with medical, because I guess, it’s the lower hanging fruit there and it makes most sense and you can build up from there.

Nathan Anibaba:

So talk us through the plan for capturing the opportunity then, what’s the go to market strategy here?

Locky Wright:

Yeah, so we’ve actually spoken about this quite a lot with Octopus recently. And the plan in retail is effectively acquire two to three main clients and really focus on their needs. So this is obviously quite a big aspect of being a startup, but making sure that what you are building is actually what the client wants. So absolutely understanding the client problem and how you can add value there. So initially we start our sales pipeline through selling dev kits, which is basically just quite an easy way for a client to basically get a sensor and test the technology for themself, understand how it works. Because obviously, it seems we might be overselling or saying that we can do whatever you want, we’ll be able to do it. So this is quite a nice way for them to see that we actually can deliver on what we’re promising.

From there, we tend to want to go to a demo and we’ve actually got quite an exciting demo in America in a few months, to one of the biggest retailers globally. And this will be a innovation day, where we’ll be displaying the tech in the pick and place application to their leadership team and decision makers. So this is a really crucial aspect again, in our pipeline of basically, really showing them that we can deliver on what we’re promising and just wowing them. And then as soon as you’ve managed to wow them, they understand the value of what you can bring, that then they’re deep enough in that onboarding process, that you can convert from there.

And then on the medical side and the tele-robot side, because of one, just the medical industry and all the legislation and regulations and difficulty in actually accessing that industry, but two, because of the nature of the products being very innovative and quite novel, it’s really, really difficult to access. So the main thing here, is having people to support us that are in positions, where they can influence other decision makers that would be important. So again, unfortunately I can’t go into too much detail, but we’ve got a stakeholder that’s very invested. That’s very high up in the EU government, and also the tech side. But what this basically allows for, is they can help push us into these sectors, help us with all the legislation stuff. And I think especially to any listeners that are looking at the medical market or anything that’s going to have quite a lot of regulation, having these people that are bought in and influential and can help push you into the markets, is such a crucial thing. We really wouldn’t have been able to get this far without them.

Nathan Anibaba:

Yeah. I’m sure that definitely helps. How are customers or prospects responding when you come to them with the proposition? Are they just like, “Huh? Like, really? Does this really exist?” What’s their initial response? How do they take to it? Because to them, it must be mind blowing.

Locky Wright:

Yeah. So I think because of the people that we’re speaking to, it tends to be people that are… Their job role within these big organizations is onboarding new and emerging technology. So they’ve seen anything and everything that exists. So I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily completely mind blowing, but just because of the nature of startups being quite high sell, they’re always very skeptical.

Nathan Anibaba:

Sure.

Locky Wright:

So I think that kind of goes back to the dev kits and the demo side of it, where it’s great, we can say we can do X, Y, Z, which we know we can, but then it’s really important to get them to that next stage and going, “Okay, you try the tech, we’ll do a demo for you and show you what we can do.” And that’s the turning point in the sales process, where you can really see in their head they’re going, “Okay, yeah. We trust you enough, now let’s go from here.”

Nathan Anibaba:

Talk us through who the founders are of the company. What was their original thought or insight that led them to where they are? And give us an idea of what the ambition of the founders is.

Locky Wright:

Yeah, definitely. So there’s two founders, the CEO, Zaki, who founded the company and then the CDO, so chief design officer is Laura. So Zaki actually founded the company with Laura when he was doing his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in electronic skin and sensing. So because of this, we feel we’re in a fantastic place and we’ve actually hired another doctorate in e-Skin as well since then. So we’re in a really good place to really do understand this technology. And he’s PhD focused on trialing lots of different types of these sensors to figure out which one actually worked best and that’s what we’ve ended up with. And then Laura being the chief design officer, so she did a master’s in design at the University of Edinburgh and that was very much focused on sensor integration into things like wearables as well.

So any new gripper technology that we might be looking at or a robot arm, the whole tele-robot, all these different things, there’s a massive component before we start sensing and delivering that feedback to the robot, which is just getting the sensor attached and integrated into the robot system. So the sensors can be integrated or retrofitted, which is quite useful for us, because we can add it after all in the manufacturing process. But I think in terms of a founding pair, having deep technical experience is really, really important for the type of technology that we have. So the design side and the integration, but also just the fundamental, how the technology works, why this is the best sensor and all that stuff.

Nathan Anibaba:

Really fascinating. And as far as the rest of the team is concerned, you said, there’s the seven of you now, how do you see the team growing and expanding and the company scaling over the next 12, 18 months, would you say?

Locky Wright:

Yeah. So we’re definitely looking to hire quite a lot. As I mentioned earlier, we’re in, I would say, a really, really good place now. So it is a team of seven and everyone does wear a lot of hats, because of that, but everyone does a fantastic job. We all get on, the culture’s fantastic. So there’s almost a bit of a, I guess, resistance to bring in a lot more people, because you know that might change that. So the plan is at the moment to hire quite slowly, we’ve been advised to onboard no more than I think, it was one or two people every one or two months-

Nathan Anibaba:

Okay.

Locky Wright:

In each team. And the reason for that, is you do not want to… If you take on three people to a new team and there’s only three people there already, that culture is just completely different now.

Nathan Anibaba:

A hundred per growth, yeah.

Locky Wright:

You’ve got so many new opinions, cultures.

Nathan Anibaba:

Right.

Locky Wright:

Everything else brought into the mix and all the learning obviously, will slow everything down. So and this is a very fundamental aspect about building companies, but being really, really picky with who we actually hire, making sure that there is a culture fit that they share the same ambition of the founders, to grow this company as big as it can be and to fundamentally change the world. So taking our time with this process is a really, really important part. And I think you’ll find that any successful founder will really draw on the importance of hiring a great team.

Nathan Anibaba:

You touched on it there, but what is the ambition of the founders?

Locky Wright:

Yeah, so I think definitely unicorn status. I think we are looking at this, what we’ve got in terms of the technology. I mean, we’re very, very early stage, but the initial traction we’ve received, the interest we’ve received and from investors as well. And yeah, I mean, I wholeheartedly believe this could be a unicorn. I think for the Scottish side of it as well, there’s only three other unicorns in Scotland at the moment. So I mean, there might be a few more between now and the next 10 years, but-

Nathan Anibaba:

What are they incidentally, do you know what they are?

Locky Wright:

Skyscanner-

Nathan Anibaba:

Oh, right.

Locky Wright:

And BrewDog are definitely two of them. And I can’t remember what the third one is.

Nathan Anibaba:

Yeah, okay.

Locky Wright:

But yeah, I think in 10 to 15 years, I really don’t see why there’s any reason why we can’t be along that mix. So yeah, I think definitely that is where we’d like to push to.

Nathan Anibaba:

Super exciting. Last couple of questions and then I’ll let you go. What are the applications that are most exciting for you personally? Maybe if you can just start by talking about your own history and background and journey, to where you are. And then specifically, what applications are most exciting to you?

Locky Wright:

Yeah, definitely. So my background’s actually completely business. It’s only ever been the business side of it. So going into such a technical company I guess, is quite abstract. But when I was working at university, I actually worked part-time in a venture capital fund called Creator Fund, which it’s a fantastic VC. And basically, they focus on student and academic founders, which is typically quite an underrepresented portion of the population. Whilst working at Creator Fund, the Edinburgh student investment partner discovered Touchlab up here, discovered Zaki and his PhD found it really, really exciting. And then I was luckily put on the due diligence team to help scope out the company and see what we think of that. And then from there, I really fell in love with what they were doing. I think that what they were doing was really fascinating and super exciting. So yeah, I pushed quite hard to end up here with the help of the Creator Fund CEO, Jamie McFarland, who’s a fantastic guy. Luckily, yeah, I managed to get the role.

Nathan Anibaba:

You’re on the rocket ship.

Locky Wright:

Yeah, exactly. Managed to jump on the rocket and at a really exciting stage, I think being such a small company, lots of growth potential. So yeah, I couldn’t really ask for anything more. And then yeah, I mean, in terms of exciting applications, because everything that we’re doing, I mean, it’s just very, it’s very, very technical and then there’s a lot of it, which is very humanitarian, like on the medical side. I think that’s something that we’ll be achieving over the next several years, so that is very, very exciting.

But I think in terms of a long term, super exciting to push towards, which will be over 10 plus years, I think space is one which really does fascinate me and I think fascinates a lot of people. We’ve actually had conversations with NASA already and some other stakeholders in the space ecosystem. And I think we’re definitely too early at the moment, where we need to flesh out the tele-robot a lot more and actually make it suitable for the space environment, which it will take years. There’s lots of regulation around that as well. But I think that is definitely exciting, it’s very Elon Muskesque.

Nathan Anibaba:

Yeah, sure. It is.

Locky Wright:

But building bases on the moon.

Nathan Anibaba:

Right.

Locky Wright:

And all the things that can come with that.

Nathan Anibaba:

Musk, Bezos.

Locky Wright:

Yeah.

Nathan Anibaba:

Go down the list of all the biggest-

Locky Wright:

Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Anibaba:

Tech entrepreneurs.

Locky Wright:

I mean yeah, maybe in a few years, you’ll see Zaki and Laura up there, which will be pretty exciting. So yeah, I think definitely space. And there is actually quite a big… Obviously, it’s a very much growing economy, but it costs about $50 million to get an astronaut up to space and maintain them for six months and bring them back down.

Nathan Anibaba:

50?

Locky Wright:

Five zero million, yeah.

Nathan Anibaba:

Incredible. Wow.

Locky Wright:

So it’s not cheap, obviously it wouldn’t be cheap, but $50 million, it’s a hell of a lot of an expense. So if you could just have a robot up there, that’s waiting to be operated, it’s going to be far cheaper. So there’s definitely going to be at some points I’d say, in the next 10 to 20 years, significant demand for this technology in the space ecosystem.

Nathan Anibaba:

And if the technology that you’re developing, it achieves its growth potential, if the founders are able to sit back in five years and say, “Yes, we’re on the trajectory that we set out on.” What would’ve happened do you think, that would’ve enabled that to happen between now and five years time?

Locky Wright:

Yes, that’s a really good question. I mean, it’s going to be a combination of things. I won’t reiterate too much, I think having a fantastic team is absolutely vital and with that, maintaining the culture, all that aspect is super, super important in growing a company. Alongside that, in the nearer term, it will be customers in retail would be a massive one. We are not going to be able to fund this big tele-robot project over 10 years without raising a loss of capital or having some, I guess, bridging money in the meantime, which will be these earlier applications of the technology. So delivering on what we’re doing at the moment is really important for the long term trajectory. And with that, capital as well, raising hopefully very big fundraising rounds. I think next raise, so the series A will probably look to Silicon valley and try and get some of the big investors out there on board and hopefully some big valuations with that.

But any capital injection due to the nature of the technology being very, very long development cycles and just a long term company, but also hardware just being more expensive. So the phrase we keep on hearing, is hardware is hard, which is obviously quite true. So because of that, it actually puts off a lot of investors. So software investors obviously tends to be a much quicker turnaround, you can get your cash out quicker. But I think what we’re doing is, it’s going to require a lot more time and money. So I think understanding that and having investors on board that also understand that, so choosing the right investors, all these things are really crucial.

Nathan Anibaba:

We’re going to watch this space with eager anticipation. My final question, Locky, what’s the biggest opportunity for you in your own growth and development?

Locky Wright:

In terms of my own growth, I would say, and I’d say this to any listeners out there that might be young in their career or starting their journey as well, definitely being in a small team is super, super important. So at the moment I’m sharing the office with the two founders. So just having that constant exposure to all the workings of the businesses. Yeah, it’s quite invaluable, but then moving on from that, would be a case of staying involved, staying senior, any opportunity for work that comes up, seizing it as much as I can and just as much as possible delivering on the stuff I need to do. So at the moment that is bringing on these few big clients and then starting to deploy across them. If I can start doing that, I’m obviously showing my value to the company. And then from there, I’ll get more opportunities to grow, I think.

Nathan Anibaba:

Super exciting. We’re looking forward to seeing how the company grows over the next few years. Locky, thank you so much for being on ClientSide.

Locky Wright:

Thank you so much for having me. That was really fun.

Nathan Anibaba:

If you’d like to share any comments on this episode or any episode of ClientSide, then find us online at Fox.Agency. If you’d like to appear as a guest on the show, then please email ClientSide at Fox.Agency. The people that make this show possible are Zoey Woodward, our executive producer, Hannah Teasdale is our podcast executive, Jennifer Brennan is our digital strategist, supported by Sophia Ravanis and Alice Winterburn, our social and digital experts. I’m Nathan Anibaba. You’ve been listening to ClientSide from Fox Agency.

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