T-25-008 : Justin McAfee - Mechanical Engineer to Hardware as a Service CEO
Investors are stupid. They're all so stupid. They don't get your product. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're really trying to do fundraising, don't focus on the people that say no at the very beginning. They're a waste of time.
Nate:You're listening to TRADEOFFS, a podcast about the trials and tribulations of designing, building, and manufacturing hardware and the people that make it. Each month, we sit down with founders, engineers, and other hardware professionals to understand the unique trade offs inherent in building a business that makes physical products. I'm Nate Padgett, hardware community guy and founder of Informal, a freelance collective that helps companies of all sizes design, build, and ship world class hardware.
Chris:And I'm Chris Rill, startup founder, engineer, and fractional CTO, where I help hardware and software companies build and scale their products. TRADEOFFS captures the best of these conversations so you can learn about the numerous skill sets needed to successfully bring physical products to market.
Nate:For today's episode, Chris and I talked to Justin McAfee, engineer, entrepreneur, and booster from Bridgeport, Connecticut. Justin's fostering something of a hardware renaissance there, a fitting throwback to a time when Connecticut and the Northeast were industrial mechas. We had a fascinating conversation about Justin's background as a hardware innovator and his efforts to build a robust tech ecosystem in Bridgeport that's infused with its industrial roots. We hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as we did. Thanks so much for joining us, Justin.
Nate:I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about what brought you to where you are and the really awesome stuff you're building on hardware.
Justin:Yeah. So the introduction that I typically make is that I'm a mechanical engineer. I graduated in 2016. I was working with a graduate professor as an undergrad commercializing a grenade launcher for firefighters, which was how I got bit into manufacturing. I was so successful at pre selling that product that the two inventors that gave me exclusive rights to use their patents wrote me out at the age of 23.
Justin:And we didn't have any documentation. We didn't have anything in place. It was just a class project and it exploded. And then I walked away from that. I worked with a tier one automotive supplier where I was commercializing door hinges, checkers, mechatronic devices, active aero systems for General Motors, Jeep, Chevy, you know, the big three in Detroit, which is where I was focused.
Justin:But I was working with four factories across the globe. So this whole like tariff thing with Donald Trump and 25% between Mexico and Canada, you know what my tariff cost is for my product coming in from China? It's 47.3%. My gosh. Crazy.
Nate:Call it 50. Crazy. Nuts. That's wild. I like all
Justin:the I know. Right? But here I am. Yeah. Starting another hardware venture.
Justin:Hardware is hard.
Chris:Can we go back to the grenade launchers? Because that doesn't sound intuitive. Grenades usually start fires, not necessarily put them out. So what were the mechanics of your grenade launcher?
Justin:Yeah. Think of, like, a T shirt cannon that had a or the firefighter would actually hook up to their oxygen tank and then they would just load a water cartridge and then like throw it or launch it into the second story building. And the way that we pitched it was for rural Georgia. So it was more than 75% of the state was actually in rural counties. So majority of fire departments were volunteer.
Justin:And the average response time for fires was thirteen minutes, which equals death versus in like the city of Atlanta, the response time is a dedicated fire team and it was three minutes. So they were less concerned about it in Atlanta even though the chiefs actually wanted to purchase one because it was like a rifle that was in the back of their pickup truck that they could just pop out and be like, I'm Sylvester Stallone versus in, like, the country where it was actually a lifesaver, and it was super necessary. That's awesome.
Chris:Sorry it didn't work out.
Nate:Amazing project to yeah. Right. Sorry it didn't work out.
Chris:Through that, I'm sure there's learnings that you're taking to future projects.
Justin:Document everything. If you are an entrepreneur and you're just starting out this process, I know that you feel like it's been documented, but make it so stupid that you record yourself twice, that you get them to sign triplicates in terms of documents. Otherwise, it just isn't there. You lost it. It's in your email inbox somewhere.
Justin:You actually switched over to like your domain name, and so you lost that that inbox, and it's gone. Everything's gone.
Nate:Did you say that this was a, like, a class project, something you were doing as associated with school? How did the school not protect your involvement? Where was the institution? You know?
Justin:Yeah. So So that's actually a really good story. So Mercer University was my third university that I attended for mechanical engineering undergrad. And at the time, I got so burnt out from mechanical engineering. I was approaching like year six or year seven of my mechanical engineering undergrad degree.
Justin:So I approached the school, my advisor was like, wow, you have so many credits, you should have graduated three years ago. I'm like, I know, thanks for pointing it out. And so I was like, I wanna take some business classes. So I started taking these undergrad business classes, but I quickly got bored. And so I started really trying to figure out how to start a company.
Justin:So I came up with this idea. I wanted to pitch it. The pitch was actually at a separate campus in Atlanta, Georgia. So I was in Macon. It was a one and a half hour drive to do this pitch where I pitched against eight other MBA students.
Justin:And at the time, I thought that I was hot shit. Like, I I had this pitch down. I practiced it. I, you know, I was the real deal. So I showed up to this thing.
Justin:I pitched. I came in dead last. My consolation prize was an umbrella. And, the teacher was like, I I love how it is that you're approaching this. I would love for you to be in my course this next semester.
Justin:Remember, this is an MBA level course that he was inviting me to. So I approached my advisor and he goes, Well, if you could get the signatures. And I I got all the signatures. He signed off on it. And then every single week, I drove an hour and a half to this course and then it would drive back afterwards.
Justin:So three hours every single week, I would actually call my family. I would do routine phone calls. I would listen to audiobooks. It was really a productive period of time for me because I just wanted to keep taking these courses. And so I started getting a ton of signatures from all these MBA courses.
Justin:And so one semester it got so bad to the point where the undergrad business dean, he actually called me in with my adviser into the president's office. Then he goes, you know, he is diluting the quality of the coursework for these MBA courses. Yeah. Like, he shouldn't be doing this. And the president looks at me and he goes, you're driving an hour and a half to this other campus twice a week and then driving back afterwards?
Nate:And I go, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. So I'm taking these courses. And he goes, then I don't see a problem. Like, the guy wants to learn. And that was it.
Justin:Like, he completely shut down this undergrad business dean.
Nate:Wow. I ran into something similar in the mechatronics department at NYU when I was in ITP, and I wanted to take mechatronics classes. And there was initially some resistance because it was like, oh, well, you know, people apply to get into this program. I ended up reading really bad at the class, so they probably were right that I shouldn't have been there, but I'm glad I had the opportunity.
Justin:Yeah. It's the prereqs. Like, it's the ironic thing about being an engineer at the very beginning. Like, you have to go through the foundation before you can actually get to the specialized courses. It's basically just two years of pure hazing before you get to the really fun stuff.
Justin:And even then, like, I'm terrible at dynamics, yet my company is basically just pure dynamics in terms of, like, the airflow and the compression we're working on with this electric propulsion module.
Chris:Wow. Did did you have a moment in your program where the professor would be there, like, look to your left and look to your right, and, you know, one of those people are not going to be next to you when you graduate?
Justin:No. They act one professor did something a little bit different. He schooled a student because he got the answer wrong and then he pulled him up and he was like, you know, you should become a doctor. And the student's like, why? Why?
Justin:I only got the question wrong. And he goes, well, if you're a doctor, you only kill one person. But if you're an engineer and you get the answer wrong, you kill hundreds.
Chris:Oh, boy. Listen. That's a really powerful statement. Yeah. I disagree with the approach that professor took, but it sounded like it landed.
Justin:Oh, it it sure did. Wow. I had a had a few nights questioning my own resolve. Let let me just say that.
Nate:Well, it takes it takes balls. You know? It does. But so you you did automotive. At what point did you start moving in an entrepreneurial direction?
Nate:Because you were working in house for this automotive company. Right?
Justin:Yeah. So at the time I was I think I was working on like 16 vehicle lines. I would actually work the entire chain. So I started work with the engineers. We would actually customize the product with the customer and then we would go into prototyping, testing, and then we would move into soft tooling and then hard tooling, full scale production.
Justin:But, you know, I did that a few times. That's kind of how I got bit into hardware manufacturing beyond the grenade launcher for firefighters. So that was about 10,000 units.
Chris:Wow. So I think that's a good segue into, you know, what you're building in Bridgeport.
Justin:Yeah. Absolutely. So right actually it was a couple hours ago, I was looking at an 85,000 square foot warehouse to onshore our manufacturing process from China because of these tariffs that the Trump administration is landing on entrepreneurs, which look, in terms of the bigger vision and like the goal that Trump is looking to accomplish, like yes, absolutely. Bringing manufacturing back to The United States, yes please. It's just poor timing on my part.
Justin:Like there's nothing that I could have done to actually circumvent that. And for everyone that's in hardware or if you're just starting out in hardware, creating a hardware product and then getting it to the point where you're starting to go into hard tooling manufacturing, you really don't touch the machines afterwards. You tolerance it, you hone it, you make sure that the product is getting manufactured and then you don't touch it. Because if you do, it's another ninety days or otherwise like you're not going to be making products. And for an entrepreneur, a hardware entrepreneur just starting out, that's a death sentence right there.
Justin:So you just eat the tariff cost and then start to onshore.
Nate:Do you see tariffs as like an effective way manufacturing and driving growth and interest in American manufacturing? Like, are you supportive of that, or is it really just more general manufacturing is good?
Justin:I I think that there's two ways to actually look at this particular coin. So there's the one side, which is, thank goodness for tariffs because we're really driving a bunch of the industry into The United States, which only spurs our economy. And then there's the other side of the coin, and it's really more geared towards entrepreneurs like me who's in hardware where we're was just so close to launching our product. And, you know, it just feels like it's another step back in this already difficult and hard journey, to actually launch a particular product.
Chris:I have mixed feelings about it. Right? Because the way that I recall manufacturing leaving The US was the result of a drop in prices. So, you know, the work went to where the labor was cheap. And so now we're raising prices as a forcing function to have that production be done locally for significant hopefully significantly less, which will then spur the economy.
Chris:So I do think in the short term, it's going to be very painful for all companies that have chased margin by producing products overseas. But I do think that in the long term, it's going to be beneficial for this country, especially, you know, in in anticipation of some some conflicts if the detentions haven't been able to be reconciled peacefully. But the expertise just is not here at the quantity that's required. You know, ten years ago, I built a camera product in Asia, and the only reason we built it in Asia is because our technical partner said we only work in Asia. We work in very specialized facilities that understand optics and camera systems.
Chris:If you wanna use us, you gotta use our suppliers. That was it. That was the choice. I would say a lot of the capabilities that we require in manufacturing are specialized, and those specializations don't exist
Justin:Currently.
Chris:Yeah. At all. Or they do an in just so low quantity that the demand is too high, and so now you have an issue with, you know, the cost to develop products.
Nate:Justin, before we dig in too much about what you're doing at Rite One, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about Bridgeport. Like, what brought you here? That's what brought you and I together. You were really, really bullish on what's happening there, and I was obviously looking to collaborate with people who are working in the hardware ecosystem. But you're not even from Bridgeport.
Justin:Yeah. I'm not even from Connecticut. I was born in Concord, California. My dad worked for ExxonMobil for eighteen years, and so I moved to five different countries. I've lived in Texas three separate times.
Justin:But why Bridgeport? I constantly get that question from everyone. And there's two main reasons. The first one is my lawyers approached me with a grant opportunity, the federal grant for advanced manufacturing that's here. And I started looking at my three biggest competitors, GE, Pratt and Whitney, and Rolls Royce, and was like, well, all the talent is here in Connecticut.
Justin:So, obviously, they're really good when it comes to specialized manufacturing. So bringing in the the concepts of what it is that we wanna do with RightOne and our advanced manufacturing principles, we could just roll in a bunch of this unique talent into our product development. And that's how I ended up here in Bridgeport.
Nate:Wow. That's fantastic. There are a
Chris:lot of cities in Connecticut, aerospace, defense. Are those companies in Bridgeport, or are they just in the surrounding area?
Justin:So what you're referring to is actually Aviation Corridor, and it kinda extends north into New Haven into Hartford, that particular area. And there's been quite a bit of conversation and talk about recruiting me to Hartford. But, honestly, I I really wanna stay here in the Southern Portion of Connecticut because it's closer to New York City, and I just I like to go clubbing. It's just a thing.
Nate:That's a good reason to be near New York City, you know, plus plus capital. Right? Plus access to capital. So
Chris:Are are you saying the clubs at New York City are better than the clubs in Hartford?
Justin:You know, what's really ironic is the number of DJs that I have recruited from Hartford here to Bridgeport to actually start a underground nightclub scene. So jokes on Hartford.
Chris:Wow. I I thought you were gonna say, oh, my favorite club is in Hartford, but for, for the other aspects of clubbing, New York City is a better, a better city.
Justin:So I think that this all actually encapsulates itself into what what it is that I'm doing here in Bridgeport. And a lot of the success is because of the community development things that I'm I'm working on. Like, I'll talk to you about my Wednesday dinners here in just a second. But I have this vision. I'm articulating it on a regular basis, and then I'm emphatically just pulling everyone into this delusion that I I have, to the point where people just show up.
Justin:So like these Wednesday dinners, I moved from Dallas, Texas in August, and I knew that I needed to actually meet people just fast and furious. And so at the very beginning, I just made it a queer dinner and just invited a bunch of gays, to actually come over every Wednesday, and we would have dinner. We would socialize. And then repeatedly, people just kept showing up. And now I've got 15 to 20 people that show up every single Wednesday.
Justin:We have dinner. We drink some wine, and we socialize. We catch up on everybody's week. And now my goal for this year is to actually move it to the rooftop because
Nate:You gotta expand.
Justin:That too many people are showing up.
Nate:Yeah. And you're doing some pretty hardcore engineering and development on the hardware side. Have you found that this is introducing you to local hardware pros? Like, is this helping you with building your team, meeting investors, or is it more just the the social side and more of a reflection of the vibrancy of Bridgeport?
Justin:It's kind of both. So the hardware meetup that I run monthly, it's on the second Tuesday of every single month. There's a lot of founders and investors that are coming into this particular space, And a lot of them actually hear about the hardware meetup either through my public speeches that I give to city council every single month or it's the Wednesday dinner and then they tell friends and those friends actually bring them to the hardware meetup as a way of actually creating that socialization here in Bridgeport.
Nate:I love it. I'd I'd I always say when I'm talking to people who are interested in hardware meetup or the studios that we have in San Francisco, you know, when they're asking, like, do I need to be a hardware person to participate? I'm like, no. This is about hardware curious people too.
Justin:Yeah. I get the same thing. And what I keep finding out is that because we do it on such a repetition, it is the same time, same place, the same food, and the same beer. Everything. And like some people, they think it's monotony, but I think that it's actually a psychological thing.
Justin:Like it actually drives people to actually self select themselves out if they don't feel like it's for them, and they pull friends in because they know exactly what the community is going to be like.
Nate:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You get that familiarity. It becomes a regular touchstone for engaging. Yes.
Chris:Have you had the, have you had the homeless people come to your meetup to eat? I'm asking because the New York hardware meetup, was feeding the homeless accidentally.
Nate:I will say we we've solved that problem, Chris. We have solved that problem.
Chris:I don't know. I think it's just hardware meetup giving back, so I don't know if you really
Nate:need to solve it necessarily.
Justin:No. We we haven't had that particular issue. I think that that's, more because we have
Nate:a door person. It's funny. I I find that increasingly part of our job as people in the community that are organizers, as you and I are, Justin, really is to evangelize hardware. Right? Really is to evangelize these career choices and to make it just seem really cool.
Nate:Right? So I love the idea that you're doing a bunch of general community organizing to help you integrate within Bridgeport, but it's all feeding work that you're doing within the hardware community, bringing more people into it, which is essential. So this being as impactful of a tech sector, right, as something like SaaS is.
Chris:It does sound like you're creating this flywheel. Right? So everything that you are doing is additive. Right? And so whether it you're speaking to the local city council, whether you're having an EDM party on the roof, it all comes back to why you're in Bridgeport and why Bridgeport is important and integral to your success and vice versa.
Justin:Yes. And the the people that are here in Bridgeport, they just it's not that they desperately need it. It's that they want something to really work towards. And you talk to these people who have been here in Bridgeport for so long, and their family has been here for so long. They talk about how Hitler had Bridgeport as the number three target during World War two.
Justin:They talk about the manufacturing sector and how one by one factories just shut down and moved out. And one thing that's really interesting about Bridgeport today is that the current mayor has actually been convicted for the misappropriation of funds. And it's one of the reasons why the state of Connecticut refuses to work with Bridgeport. And so one thing that I'm doing is creating this community surrounding entrepreneurs, trying to build up a form of confidence to the point where we're creating a local TV show, where we're investing into these local entrepreneurs, whether they're hardware or not. I mean, I'm focusing on hardware, of course, Nate, because I'm a hardware entrepreneur.
Justin:But just doing this, the number of investors that have actually sought me out and said, I will invest not only in that TV show, but in your own company so that you can expand your footprint here is outrageous. Like, guys, this is this was an afterthought. I literally had a bottle of wine with a couple of friends, and we were like, what if we just did this? Yep. And then it just exploded from there.
Justin:Well, it
Nate:shows that there's a hunger for it. More manufacturing. Right? More hands on hands on industries. That's fascinating.
Nate:I didn't know that about Bridgeport that it was such an important manufacturing hub that it was a a target during World War two. That's pretty astounding.
Chris:Nate, can you tell me what one of the more famous mills are called?
Nate:I know Bridgeport. I know that. I know that part. Like, it's I don't know. I didn't
Chris:realize that manufacturing was such a big part of Bridgeport, but I do know that tooling and things coming out of Bridgeport has always been
Nate:Yes.
Justin:Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.
Justin:So there are a few technical colleges that are here. There it's like ITT Tech or some something like that, where it's it's more focused to the trades. And it's one of the reasons why I'm just so bullish towards Bridgeport, because there's such a rich history in manufacturing, and everybody would love to actually have manufacturing stations here. So one of the terms that keeps getting brought up is let's make Bridgeport the Silicon Valley of manufacturing. Like, you get all the resources that are necessary at the beginning of the stages in terms of prototyping all the way to full scale production before bringing it in house to actually manufacture it yourself because you're scaling so rapidly.
Justin:And one of the things that's interesting about the the comment that you made, Chris, is that my contract manufacturer manufacturer is is open open to just completely reshoring the entire facility. It's more not a question of can we? It's more a question of what's the cost and how do we make sure that it actually makes sense for both of us. And it's one of the unique things that's happening with the two sides of the same coin that Trump is really pushing, which I think is unique in terms of a president. It's just really interesting times.
Nate:Really, really, really interesting times. You know, it's funny. During the first Trump administration, there were obviously tariffs on China. And at the time, it was still cheaper to get things made in China and ship them and eat the tariffs. And from what I'm seeing right now, that dynamic isn't exactly different.
Nate:Like, it's still especially consumer products, simple, you know, enclosed electronics. You you've got alternatives. We've got some clients that are manufacturing in India. One of our members is out in Vietnam touring facilities right now. But in most cases, China's still the best, cheapest, fastest option for building your product, not just because of the price, but because of the willingness of those vendors to really work with you.
Nate:Now if we're dealing with heavier industrial products, we're dealing with turbines, which I know we need to get into RightOne and what you guys are building. Potentially, it's it's a different scenario. Right? But well, so, Justin, let's talk about RightOne and what you guys are trying to accomplish because I know there's, like, a huge vision for it. Right?
Nate:There's what you guys are building now. There's the technology around that, and then, you know, how you can scale that, which I've been watching it firsthand, and it's been amazing just to see your progress.
Justin:Yeah. Absolutely. So currently, what we're launching this year is a CPU cooling fan that's more energy efficient. And it actually enables miners or cryptocurrency miners to have zero downtime in terms of replacing failed units, which is a unique aspect Huge. In terms of yeah.
Justin:It's massive in terms of the CPU cooling market. Like, nobody has touched this particular market for decades. So for us to come in and completely overhaul the entire product, we came up with this really unique design. And, Chris, I could just, like, see the question that's coming up right now. So, like, so what what is it that you wanna ask?
Chris:How do you compete against water cooling and other approaches that are not forced air?
Justin:Yeah. So we have a drop in replacement. There's no infrastructure that needs to be put in, and we are the cheaper solution as compared to current CPU cooling fans. So what we do is a product as a service instead of a outright purchase. So instead we have a five year contract with our customer, which actually reduces the cost of air cooling for them, not only from an energy cost, but also from a product cost.
Justin:And so, because we're doing a product as a service, we can actually future proof the module through a chassis like the fan casing. So as we do additional product development with our turbine, we can literally just drop in the same technology into the same fan casing over time, making it better and more energy efficient over time.
Chris:That's really interesting because it sounds like you're applying what call it, like, the airline propulsion industry, you know, the the Boeings or the Rolls Royces and the GEs, and you're applying that to another industry. So it's cooling as a service.
Justin:It is cooling as a service, but one thing that we do differently is, Rolls Royce has their Total Care maintenance package. So usually what'll end up happening is they drop the turbine off the aircraft, and then some tech works hundreds of hours to actually maintain this engine. It's 25,000 parts. They're all highly specialized in terms of manufacturing, and that's the reason for the cost of the turbine. I applied for jobs at those turbine companies and they all rejected me.
Justin:One reason is because the question they asked them was, what are you guys doing to reduce the cost of the product overall? Are you increasing the volume so that you can decrease the price? And they just looked at me with blank stares and they were like, why would we do that? Like, we have a monopoly on the market right now. Why would we do that?
Justin:Like, it doesn't make sense. And then I just I was like, what? Wait. Like, are we do are we going towards flying cars, or is this not happening? Like, we we were promised flying cars.
Nate:We were. Did you see that flying car that was at the Silicon Valley, auto show? It was just like a quad drone, and it hovered over another car. I was like, that's not what we meant, guys. That's not what we meant.
Justin:Yeah. So, what we did is we've got these four modules for our fan system. And I know that I'm showing you guys on video, and this isn't gonna be video.
Chris:So It's effectively a coil that Yeah. You know, is integral component to an electric motor.
Justin:Yeah. It this is the stator. So this is a critical component in terms of the electric motor system. There's a rotor where it actually has a fan blade system. What we found is that in aviation, have a highly cyclical market depending on the presidential administration and what it is that they'd like to accomplish.
Justin:And because of this cyclical market, you're actually seeing a decrease in the quality of maintenance or manufacturing capability because jobs churn. And instead, we want to actually flatten out that cyclicality and copy paste the same electric motor into alternative industries like aviation and CPU cooling. So as we increase the volume of our production, we're not actually decreasing it because of cyclicality in the market. What we're doing is we're flattening the curve because we actually disperse the risk across multiple different industries. And that's what we think is the secret is and it's the reason why we wanted to get into aviation in the first place.
Justin:Like, we imagine the flying cars being like the next model t with Henry Ford. This isn't some craft that's only gonna be for billionaires. This is gonna be for everyone. And this is what I keep trying to tell people as well, is that for flying cars, you've got two different types of customers. You've got that, know, I just I want to have a couple of drinks.
Justin:I want to go to the bar with my friends, and then I want to have a ride home, which is you get into your flying car, you plug in your home address, and then it just takes you there completely automated. And then there's the other type of customer, crazy ones like me, who have been pilots that want to pilot their aircraft because we just have to do it. I started flying at the age of 12. My father, got his multi engine pilot rating. And what we would do is we would fly from Houston to DFW to actually see my cousins, like, for lunch or something like that.
Justin:And then on a Sunday, and then we would fly back to Houston.
Chris:There was, you know, something in the notes here, you know, around you having a near death experience. I'm curious if you'd wanna share that story because I feel like moments like that may have altered your aviation or at least your draw towards aviation.
Justin:So it's it it hasn't been just one near death experience. It's actually been around five, maybe six now. The most recent one that I had a moment where my life was actually flashing before my eyes. My entire family was in the aircraft. We were flying our g 58 Baron, and, it was a brand new airplane.
Justin:G 58 Barons are just beasts.
Chris:And how about the propulsion? Is it like a turboprop? What what what is it?
Justin:I think it was a turboprop, but you're you're thinking about, like, a turbine prop. Yeah. So this was actually a smaller airplane than that one.
Chris:K.
Justin:So we're flying out of Denver, and, we're all sitting in this airplane and it's a snowstorm. We take off, no problems. We start climbing out towards Dallas from Denver and we encounter this just freak storm. So it's not the snowstorm, but it's it's something where it's like freezing rain. So it's literal water droplets, and it touches the fuselage of the aircraft and then freezes.
Justin:So it creates this very clear ice. It's rhyme ice or clear ice, I think it's called. So we can actually, like, see it happening. We were having about three inches of ice buildup taking place over thirty seconds. So on the leading edge and the propeller for the airplane.
Justin:Yeah. Massive amounts of ice. And what ends up happening in terms of dynamics is that because of this ice, you're spoiling the air across the wing. And when you do that, you slow down the aircraft and you're also gaining weight because of the ice, which means that even though you're flying at straight and level and full cruising speed, you're about to stall the aircraft, which is where my life started to flash before my eyes. So we have these beautiful switches.
Justin:They're called boots. You can actually pop off the ice through these pneumatic boots. And when we started doing that and popping off inches of ice, chunks would actually, like, pop off and then hit the fuselage. So
Nate:you
Justin:were basically, like, hearing bullets hitting the plane as this ice was actually popping off the leading edge. And, again, life flashing before my eyes. I like it where my dad and I were literally sitting at the cockpit going, should we should we say something? Like, oh, everything's good. You know?
Justin:Everything's great. But that was the most recent near death experience.
Nate:So then is it love of flying that is driving the enthusiasm to push the envelope on technology that enables flying cars? Is that like a driving force for you in Right One?
Justin:Yeah. The main driving force for me is being able to have the maneuverability that we haven't seen before in terms of aircraft. If you look at the flight capability or the flight envelope of an f 22 or an f 35, like in an air show, the the capability is just mind boggling. And then just to actually see that taking place, like, I just am so jealous that I can't do that. And so what what would it take to actually make something like that happen?
Justin:And I started to look at the drone racing pilots. So there's a a league. It's called the drone racing league. And one of the champions, his name is Alex Vanover. He just happened to be in Dallas Fort Worth.
Justin:And so I reached out to him, and we had a conversation. He ends up flying his drone at around a 130 miles an hour around these courses because that's the drag capability of the open prop design. By the way, 130 miles an hour is, like, really slow, especially for airplanes.
Nate:By flight standards. Yeah.
Chris:I was gonna say that sounds pretty fast for a bicycle.
Nate:Yeah.
Justin:So if we're to actually move any faster than that, we have to have a much more drag efficient type of propulsion system. And that's really where the drive for right one actually took place is that turbines are incredible machines. So if you look at them from a commercial aviation standpoint, the engine itself is terrible at every single stage except for cruise flight. The efficiency is around 95 to 98% because you have stable airflow that's actually flowing through the nacelle and its engineered design point. So you're able to optimize everything about that particular system.
Justin:The only problem with that is that flying cars are taking off and landing routinely. And so you're not at cruising flight speed all the time. So we have to flatten the curve, which is exactly where the concept for Right One came in. You know, you start looking at the cost of flying, it's around $250 an hour. So we started looking at how do you decrease this cost?
Justin:And for airplanes, it's not the cost of the airplane that is the heaviest toll, it's the ownership, the maintenance, the FAA certification and regulations to maintain airworthiness, the engine and it's also the fuel. The fuel is the biggest kicker. So if you can actually reduce any one of those four, then you're on a game winning path. And so we said, let's go ahead and electrify it, which increases the reliability. We can actually increase the volume, which also further decreases the price because it's no longer an aviation specific component.
Justin:It's just a mechanical thing that is used across a variety of different industries, and that's what we came up with in terms of our turbine design. That like, that's the goal is create the next model t.
Nate:Very cool. I love I love the vision. Do you see yourself building the vehicles themselves or building the turbines and then selling them to vehicle manufacturers?
Justin:So at the moment, there's 250 particular flying car concepts, and it seems like every day there's a new one that's popping up. So for us to actually try and really enter into the mix, especially with the funding that we have at the moment, it doesn't make sense. So instead, we just want to look at the market and say, Wow, there's a lot of people that are approaching this particular market like Joby Aviation. What they did is they completely vertically integrated their entire manufacturing process, including their electric motor design, which is just like mind boggling amounts of money. Yeah.
Nate:I was about to say that's that's what happens when you've got the Google gun of money, the Google cash gun. Right? Just like Tesla could do it because they had the Elon money gun.
Justin:Yeah. I heard an interesting the other day. So SpaceX still privately held is going through its series n at the
Nate:moment. Didn't even know that it was in series n. That's crazy. They going into series z? What?
Nate:And
Justin:Like, crazy. Absolutely nuts.
Nate:That's gonna be a crazy IPO, though, when it when it happens.
Chris:I wonder what the record is.
Nate:Yeah. That's a great question.
Justin:I think they held the record at series n.
Nate:Really? I heard they were
Chris:gonna spin out Starlink and have that be a separate company.
Nate:Yeah. I've heard that too. That would make sense, honestly. That would make sense.
Chris:Amazon's done well internalizing adjacent businesses, but I do know that the federal government wants to break them up too. So, yeah, maybe it makes sense to strategically separate yourself than to chaotically have somebody else do it for you.
Nate:Oh, okay. So you'll create the turbines that that could contribute to the flying cars. Can you talk a little bit about your design? You described it as ducted electric propulsion with contra rotating stages. Is that the long term architecture for the right one, or is that the design that's deployed in CPU fans?
Justin:So it is a decentralized power structure. So it's a electric duct fan that is periphery driven contra rotating fan stages. So in a jet turbine today, you have a single shaft with multiple different fan stages that are attached. So the RPM is the RPM, which is always the RPM, which is the reason why at cruise flight, you have a really good energy efficiency versus what it is that we came up with. It's a completely decentralized structure, meaning that every single fan stage operates independently across the entire turbine.
Justin:And turbine is a little bit of a misnomer. So whenever we say right turbine, those that are in the know in terms of the industry thinks that it's a combustion variant. However, we're 100% electrically driven. We can create a hybridized model, especially for larger aircraft, but we are really, really focused on electrification and creating a much more flat energy efficiency. And we wanna be a part of the solution for decarbonization, across airlines.
Justin:We haven't been able to see a particular concept that matches our capability. I mean, there's a there's a couple periphery driven motor systems that are out there, but they're really, really focused on regional airlines. And we're focusing on the smaller particular aspects starting with drones and then scaling up the solution over time so that we can keep the cost low in terms of manufacturing.
Chris:And and what are you anticipating the costs for some of these initial turbines?
Justin:For these initial turbines, you're talking about a low volume. So it's definitely going to be a little bit of a higher price, but we've got a few different pilot programs that we're hashing out and nailing out. So one of them is actually at an El Salvador coffee farm. They basically need 2,000 pounds lifted from the mountains in El Salvador and then brought to a processing plant. So they currently use a $75,000 Toyota Tacoma, and we envision the drone carrying this 2,000 pounds being $25,000 for four turbines and a frame that can withstand 70 mile per hour winds.
Chris:How large of a turbine are we talking in terms of diameter?
Justin:About, like, 10 to 12 inches in diameter. It'll be it'll be about maybe a foot, foot and a half in terms of length, but this is all still in development.
Chris:I was not imagining that size of turbine. A lot of what I deal with is your traditional drone system where you have a exposed prop and, you know, having a, call it, a 12 inch prop, you're not lifting 2,000 pounds.
Justin:So that's that's kind of the beauty of the contra rotating system is that when you have contra rotation taking place, and you can see this on open prop designs today. So air hits the first prop and it gets curled in a particular direction. And then with the contra rotating prop right underneath it, it actually corrects the curl, which creates a more focused column of air, which is where this thrust efficiency kind of takes place. So for us to actually duct it and then have a much cleaner staging through the system, we're able to have a exponential thrust factor as compared to some of these other systems.
Chris:Wow. That's pretty incredible. So talk about some of the trade offs that you've made in getting to where you are today. Because I'm imagining that it's like Dyson building, you know, hundreds of vacuums before he came up with his design. Where are you in your progression towards this vision?
Justin:So we're we're launching our CPU cooling fan this year. We're actually scaling up the manufacturing to around 516,000 units per month. So a lot of my focus is actually geared towards the cryptocurrency market right now. And that means that my focus is not particularly on the flying car, even though it's part of the overall grand vision. And through this process in terms of trade offs, like you're, you're talking about multiple different pivots.
Justin:One is the compromise to be able to use a contract manufacturer in China. The second is just being willing to actually working with the contracts manufacturer to actually develop the intellectual property on the products that we're creating. So the guy has decades of experience in CPU cooling fans. And he was like, why do you want to create a modular system? Nobody is doing this.
Justin:And I was like, exactly. And he goes, I don't get it. And then we started doing it and getting all of this attention in terms of cryptocurrency because of the downtime that you need to be able to replace one CPU cooling fan on a system that has four of them. And so for us to actually just push a button to cut off the power so that you can replace a couple modules is cheaper, quicker, and it's more effective. Came back and he goes, I get it.
Justin:I totally get it. And so it's working with people who may think that you're crazy up until a certain point in time and then they get it. And they're, they're just fully on board, which is why the contract manufacturer is actually open to opening up a facility that's here in The States. It's just really about the volume that we can create and making sure that he can produce or achieve a revenue status by opening up a facility that's here in The United States. And, really, that just has to involve tariffs.
Chris:You know, oftentimes moving parts fail more often. So is this something that the industry is plagued with failing fans and this is the solution to their problem?
Justin:So the simple answer is hell yes. And the reason why is because these cryptocurrency farms, you've got hundreds of thousands of these particular fans, and it's typically the ball bearing system that fails first. And so for us, the accepted market failure rate is twenty two percent. That means if you have a 100,000 fans, 22,000 of your fans are failing every twelve months. And in some cases, this ball bearing system actually fails multiple of those fans depending on the environmental conditions.
Justin:Like these systems, they're at power plants that are right by the sea, so high corrosion. Some of them are in West Texas where there's lots of dust and lots of sand, that's actually hitting the HVAC system. And while they have filtration, it's not HIPAA compliant. Like, I don't know what the filtration system is.
Nate:HIPAA. EPA. HIPAA. You're close. That's the one.
Nate:I
Justin:make fans, guys. I don't do filtration.
Nate:So Or medical records. Or medical records.
Justin:So when we created this system, we wanted to take all the 22,000 fan system components that failed and then do a refurbishing program, which is where the sustainability comes in. We can actually take these components. It is a 10¢ swap out, and then we send it back. And it's another six to twelve months for them.
Nate:Very cool.
Chris:It's it's these niche industries that, you know, when you start to dig in and really understand the problems, you can really drive a material solution, especially where there's a lot of money at stake. There's a lot of there's a lot of, you know, ASICs being cooled. Like, there's a monetary incentive to keeping these systems up and cool.
Justin:Yeah. You were actually making a reference towards cryptocurrency and this industry being monopolized by China. One of the things that I keep finding is they're so focused on Bitmain and the ASIC chip that they don't focus on the rest of the product. So for these fan systems, my favorite comment that I keep getting is, why are we talking about fans? And then they follow-up with, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that it was such a problem.
Justin:Because what they're doing is they're landfilling these components, and it takes three minutes to replace this fan system. It takes forty five seconds to replace every single component from my fan system. And that means that it's zero downtime, and it's cheaper from a tech perspective. There is one guy at this press conference that was saying that they could actually reduce their technical staff and save $250,000 in terms of salaries because of a simple fan switch. Wow.
Justin:Wow.
Chris:And and and then are you looking also to apply this into, like, the server market? Right? So many of the historic servers are just all air cooled. Some of the newer ones are liquid cooled, but is this something to expand into the server market as well?
Justin:The simple answer is yes. But there are a few industries that are really hard to target and get into. We started with the data center market in terms of trying to sell our our fan systems. And I just couldn't place the chain in terms of, you know, you you create the cabinet and then the fans get made and they get stuck into the cabinet. But we could never figure out exactly where that point in time was.
Justin:So we we couldn't talk to a potential customer, which is why we focused initially with the cryptocurrency market. And here we are creating this product that everybody is just going bonkers over. Nuts. This is nuts.
Chris:What's the craziest application for your technology that, you know, you've talked to someone and they're like, oh, man. I wish I could bring it to that industry.
Justin:There was a telecommunication company that wanted to utilize our fan system as they were migrating from four gs into five gs. And it's these boxes that are sitting outside those white things typically on buildings. Your cell phone signal has to go somewhere and for five gs, it's a whole lot more computational power, which needs to get cooled. And so in a variety of these different areas, you're you're talking about failed fan systems on a really big scale. Like, this fan system is so ubiquitous across so many different industries, and it's just completely overlooked.
Nate:I wanted to reflect on something real quick and appreciate the fact that we were just talking about cryptocurrencies, data centers, cloud computing, and wireless networks, right, which people who aren't in hardware would look at and be like, wait a minute. Those are all like software. You know? What's the what's the hardware in this? But when you peel back the layers, right, it all comes down to the physical infrastructure that's making that possible.
Nate:Like, these things all come back to to hardware problems, which I think is really, really interesting. Every time I do a hardware meetup, I always start it with saying, like, I want people to build more hardware and stop talking about crypto. But, like, frankly, the more people talk about crypto, the more hardware problems there are gonna be to solve. So maybe it's all related. Thank you for showing me
Justin:the Yeah, light it is an ecosystem for sure. There was one point that I wanted to make in terms of software integration is that Tesla really shined a light in terms of hardware and software merging and really creating this field between the two different industries. So we're trying to take the same approach in terms of aviation. We have the software architecture that's actually built into So one of our pieces of IP is that we can fully customize the performance of our turbine. So there's two different aspects to flight.
Justin:There is a highly efficient flight, which is more for like FedEx. You know, you've got a package and you're trying to transport it across vast diff like, distances. And then there's the other side of the spectrum, which is about power and thrust. Maybe you're moving a piano to the fiftieth story in a skyscraper, something like that. Like, you just need the oomph to make that happen.
Justin:What we found is that we can actually swap out fan stages and turn your f one fifty into a Lamborghini using software.
Nate:Wow. And are do you does your team have a software component? Are you guys right at building platforms, software in order to interface with your fans, your turbines?
Justin:Yes. And and the reason why is because of the failure modes in terms of our CPU cooling fan. So as we're selling this particular product to our customers in a very vast and large quantity, we're collecting the failure mode data through the product as a service contract. So we can actually not only see where it is that it's particularly failing, we can actually predict when the failure is going to occur and then create a just in time system to actually match when it is that it's going to fail.
Nate:Very cool.
Chris:Are there any tangible moments when you look back about some of the decisions you made in designing the hardware? You know, like, where it'd be, you know, making some assumptions early on and then just through trial and error realizing, you know, you came out the other end and the product's better as a result of that journey. Any any lessons learned there?
Justin:One, it was really difficult for me to switch from an aviation product over to the CPU cooling fan, because I just I I thought it was a boring space, and I didn't want that to be the hill that I died on if I were to fail. There was another moment where we went from a product that was the entire assembly of the product into this modular system. And I got called crazy by my own contract manufacturer because they were like, make a perfect product. For us to actually create something that is supposed to be dismantled, are you crazy? Like what what are we doing here?
Justin:And now everyone is starting to see the light at which I didn't actually see until just fairly recently. Like I showed it at this conference, this past conference, thinking no one is going to want this. What what am I doing? And I I basically dismantled it in front of three or four techs, and they were like, we have to have this product right now. Like, when when are you producing this?
Justin:And I was like, ah, okay. I didn't realize that that was such a critical issue, and here we are. It's moments like that.
Chris:It's moments like that. Is there anything we wanna dive into, Nate?
Nate:I mean, I think the one thing we haven't talked about a ton is fundraising. And, like, you have a particularly hard job because, a, you're raising for a hardware product. B, you're raising for a hardware product where you get a lot of people that are asking, why are we talking about fans? And c, you're raising for a hardware product in Bridgeport. Right?
Nate:Not in Silicon Valley, not in LA, not in New York. Right? How are you threading that needle and making that work for Right One?
Justin:Yeah. So one word that you crucially missed out in terms of that entire explanation, Nate, is that we were fundraising for a commodity product. And so every single time I started the conversation and I was like, hey, we're creating a CPU cooling fan. Like investors literally just glazed eyes. Half of them were like, no.
Justin:No. We're gonna go ahead and end the phone call right now. And it was just always this, like, head begging experience.
Chris:So how did you change your approach?
Justin:If if if you're listening to this episode and you're like, there, I have no hope. Here, let me give you just one dose of hope, and it is that investors are stupid. They're all so stupid. They don't get your product, and it's completely fine. That means that if you are creating a commodity product, talk to someone like me that actually gets it and it's like, I'll find you the money.
Justin:Because truth be told, like, you're the person that needs to happen because you're touching an industry that hasn't been touched in forever.
Chris:I I love that answer. I do feel like some people, while building in uninteresting parts of, you you know, the ecosystem, it I I don't say that to be insulting. I think that the biggest piece is selling. Right? You need to sell Yeah.
Chris:The dream. Right? You don't actually pitch the CPU coolers. You're pitching the propulsion system of the future. Right?
Chris:And product one is in this really ugly market. Right? And no one cares about crypto coolers, but we do. And this is how we're going from cooling an ASIC to moving your children to school safely wherever they may be. Right?
Chris:And how do you convince the investor that may not get it come aboard for the ride?
Justin:Yeah. And this is a this is a perfect segue into a story from last year. So I was full in the thick of trying to do fundraising for this commodity product, And I knew that we had something. I just wasn't exactly sure how to sell it. And so I sent a thousand cold emails to investors and the one investor that responded had experience in aviation and IT hardware.
Justin:So he was the only guy that was going to listen to me, and he worked with me for ten months. And I still keep him updated in terms of where it is that we're going and what it is that we're doing today. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're really trying to do fundraising, don't focus on the people that say no at the very beginning. It's just because they're they don't get your product. They don't wanna develop a relationship with you.
Justin:They're a waste of time. They're stupid. So go ahead and actually start focusing on the investors that are really taking your phone call, and they're like, just drilling question after question in terms of your business.
Chris:That's sound advice. You need to find the people who care about what you're building, and a lot of that is just hearing no over and over and over again. The other part of that, though, is also being able to communicate. Here's what we're doing. Here's why it's valuable.
Chris:So I'm imagining your first conversations, didn't go as well, But then you got really better at telling that story and really good at answering the questions because you heard them 10 times before. And now all of a sudden, through, you know, a little bit of luck and a little bit of hard work, you found those people, and you were able to break through the monotony that is their job. Right? They hear all these pitches all day every day, and they're just looking for something exciting.
Justin:Yeah. And with this particular investor, he was super focused on the business case. He wanted to see how our particular system was cheaper than the current system. And mind you, in cryptocurrency, you're talking about a fan system that costs 2 to $4. So that was the price point that we had to just completely destroy.
Justin:And from an upfront cost, we don't. But over the course of five years, with free replacements with the product as a service, we crush it. Absolutely crush it.
Nate:How did you get to
Chris:the cooling as a service? Because I feel like that is not necessarily an obvious choice for hardware founders, right, where you're selling widgets or software enabled by hardware, but necessarily going to the service model. How'd you get there?
Justin:It was a piece of feedback from the investor. It wasn't something that I came up with. It's just something that I listened to and said, why don't like what if we actually did incorporate that into our business plan? And then we started exploring it. I really started fleshing out the business case and wow, like actually having a sustainability metric, being more cost effective, and then improving my footprint here in Bridgeport, like it checked off a ton of boxes that I was trying to accomplish.
Justin:Like for instance, with turbine, we have intellectual property that we can't manufacture in China. So being able to expand our manufacturing footprint here in Bridgeport was an absolute necessity, and it has to take place at some point in time. But we still had to produce a product, and it was far cheaper and better for us to actually manufacture in China at the very beginning.
Chris:So I I I guess if you had one piece of advice for, you know, a hardware entrepreneur coming up, what would that be?
Justin:Networking is super crucial. You have no idea where you're going to incorporate the advice from over this murky journey. So figuring out who it is that you're going to listen to in terms of actually fleshing out this business plan or this business case is going to be pretty crucial.
Chris:Awesome. Are you guys hiring? Where can folks find you? Where can people learn about Right One?
Justin:Yes. So go to our website, wrightfan.com spelled wright,fan, and see the career openings that we have. And start a conversation with me as well. Find me on LinkedIn. Let's chat.
Justin:Like, are definitely positions that I need that I don't know that I need.
Chris:I think the other piece of this too is you can come meet you every second Tuesday of the month in Bridgeport at the hardware meetup.
Justin:At the hardware meetup. I'll introduce you to all the local politicians.
Chris:Everyone just uninvited themselves
Nate:to the We're correct. Yes.
Chris:TRADEOFFS is hosted and produced by Chris Rill and Nate Padgett. Editing done by the illustrious Alex Michael. Our logo is designed by the talented pixel alchemist, Tanya Chica. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, reach out to us on our website at tradeoffs.fm.
