Pipedream Labs CEO on building underground robot delivery networks and the future of last-mile logistics

right back. Let's do it. Can we bring in Garrett? I will say how I will say what up. How you doing? What's going on, boys? How's it going? It's great to have you here. This is the first time, correct? Do I have an amnesia? First time. Uh I'm surprised it took this long. It's great to see you.

You've got some exciting news today. Uh hit us with a quick intro on yourself and the company and then we'll get into the news. Sweet. Yeah, my name is Garrett, uh CEO of Pipe Labs. Uh at Pipe Dream Labs, we build the infrastructure to make autonomous logistics uh scale. Amazing.

Uh give us the quick catch us up to speed on the history of the company. I know we first met back I think it was in 2021 and you've been very busy since then and then I want to get into what you're uh announcing today. Yeah. Well, likewise, man. Congrats on the show. Uh studio look sick.

Y have to come have to come in person next time you're uh next time you're around. Yeah, I got you guys. Um, so yeah, the the announcement is um something we've been working on for a long time.

Um, you know, the kind of first product we were working on uh at Pipeream is, you know, what we see as like the fiber optic cable for autonomous logistics. Um, how do you move a lot of things really quickly and really cheaply?

So, we put underground pipes uh in cities and then we have these robots that go through the underground pipes and uh deploy orders to what we call portals. but they're like ATPM size kiosks.

Um it's a modular system made to be able to be retrofit, you know, whether that's into a building, an apartment building, um underneath a road, uh and uses just standard construction methods that cities are used to using um for non-invasive construction going into um buildings and through public rideway.

Uh so we got, you know, that's something we were working on. We we got that to a really good place.

And something um that we kind of uh thought about a lot when we were starting was you know if we're working on the fiber optic cable um we wonder if there's also going to need to be kind of like the cloud architecture for autonomous logistics.

Um because as you start to move things really quickly uh and you we've seen this with drones already like drones are like this magical they're magic it's incredible and they're so quick and yet it's still taking like 15 30 minutes sometimes like I had one that took 40 minutes um because it's so uh it's so hard to pick out of those stores that they're picking from um and they're picking out the stores because those are the you know the closest uh storage areas.

is um to where uh the customers are. So, it's kind of like a um an inefficient system. Uh you have this really fast delivery method and a really slow processor um to get that thing out of storage and and into uh the drone. So, that's something we thought about a lot.

So, you know, me and my co-founder Canon, we're huge retail nerds. So, we're always uh diving into Costco and Walmart and Amazon and the history um of just logistics and retail as a whole.

Um and what we realized is like man it is time it is time for autonomous logistics to scale and no one stepping up and building these fulfillment centers um that are made to rapidly dispense.

Um so we had learned a lot um worked with a lot of partners who taught us a lot about how to run those uh facilities and decided you know what it's time to go. So um we just uh acquired our first rapid fulfillment center here in Austin.

um it's going to be what feeds the network um here in Austin and uh yeah that that was the other announcement is so so is this just so I'm getting it correctly so is this set up in order to serve the like you know original pipe dream infrastructure and then also traditional drone delivery as well. Yeah.

So, the way that we see it is if you have something at at a rapid fulfillment center, the goal is how do we get it into the customer's hands as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Um, and a lot of the times that's, you know, u you may want to move it through the pipe dream network to a closer location.

Um, you might just want to put it into a drone directly. Um, it may be a heavier item. Um, it may be a bundle of items. You want to put it into a self-driving car. I think for the foreseeable future, I think it's going to be even like really um load dependent as well.

Um I think autonomous vehicles and uh drones are going to be kind of like the GPUs of the autonomous logistics uh scale up. Um we're going to be constantly constrained by their availability.

Um so uh our goal is to be really good one at dispensing really quickly and dispensing into the right uh modality and you know constantly figuring out what is that right modality for that address, what is the right modality um for that time um and making sure that um that order is getting into that right modality and getting to the person as cheaply as quickly as possible.

So So what is the over the next year specifically what what uh delivery form factor are you most excited about? Yeah, I think the two that we're most excited about is autonomous delivery right now is still pretty cost constrained. The cost per delivery is still really high.

Um, so you're either passing that along to the customer or you see a lot of the times it's heavily subsidized. Um, I think especially on the drone side that's going to come down a lot over the next year. Um, and so that's the one um that we really want to be the best at doing.

We have an internal goal here at the team that we want to uh by the end of next year we want to have done the most drone deliveries of any company. Um which is crazy. It's not like a super high bar right now. Um but I think that is a resource that's really underutilized.

Um and then pick up what is the regulatory framework that uh drone deliveries are are needing to happen within right now specifically in Austin? Like I imagine peer-to-peer I could just put something, you know, attach something to a drone, take it up, fly it over to a buddy's house and drop it.

But then if you're trying to do this at scale, I imagine like you you have to uh keep uh keep a lot of other things in mind. Yeah, it's right now um it's not such a straight pathway to being able to do it city by city. Um so each company who is doing the drone deliveries has to get their own um regulatory clearance.

Uh and so it is like pretty uh pretty big hassle that that's changing pretty rapidly. We just had the executive order um to make that pathway uh clear up. I I really think um especially as we start to get more consumer demand uh for it.

I mean it's just if you go and look at the reviews from people who have experienced a a drone delivery uh it is it's it's borderline a religious experience. it really changes like how you think about commerce as a whole. So, um I think that's going to change over the next couple years.

Um you know, I think there's a lot of companies that have died uh saying drone delivery is going to, you know, scale the next two years. They've been saying that for the last like 15 years. Um so, it's a tough thing to time. Um that's why, you know, we want to get really good at drone deliveries and be really careful.

Um and just kind of learn right now. Um be ready for that scale and really focus on pickup as well. Pickups is a huge um uh industry. Um it's one that doesn't have a lot of infrastructure to it.

So, it's still such a bad experience, but it's still one of the fastest growing um ways that people experience retail is ordering ahead and picking up, especially in grocery. So, that's one where we saw the ability for us to go into um grocery uh make it a really really great pickup experience.

That's something that you can do um right now make really good margins on um learn and then as uh those autonomous methods um decreasing costs uh specifically due to um uh better regulation um then we'll start to add that on uh as we go along. Amazing. Anything else? I think that's it. Good to see you again.

The last time we talked or I mean we've talked a few times but uh uh I interviewed Garrett like two was two three years ago or something all about how Amazon had been talking a big game about drone delivery and I was like let me talk to everyone else who's been uh uh been been working in this space and uh it's it's a fantastically massive market that is incredibly difficult to actually get things to work and once they start working it's great.

Um, so yeah, I think the key thing is staying in the game, finding finding a sustainable business model that's not dependent on, you know, dependent on adoption over a 15-year period versus a 15-month period.

I remember when we were when we were talking, we were we were n like it's just such a it's it's one of those businesses that you just like naturally noodle on like, okay, should you go to like people that are building new prefab home communities and install a bunch of pipes in the ground when they build the buildings?

Or should you do some sort of Boring Company thing where you get really good at drilling into old old, you know, uh neighborhoods? Or should you do flying or driving? Like there's so many different modalities. So, uh very exciting that you're that you're kind of exploring all of them now. So, congrats and good luck.

Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Great stuff. Yeah, we'll talk to you soon. Talk soon. Bye. All right, see you guys.

Uh, in other AI acquisition news, we almost missed it because it, you know, Sundar did everything he could to drown this out, but we surfaced the post and it's about Mark Zuckerberg acquiring Play AI, poaching the entire team, and they are joining the Meta Super Intelligence Lab next week. Zuck cannot be stopped.

He has the Thanos gauntlet there. Um, they completed his Who's on the Who's on the the who's on the cap table or Oh, it's the researchers. I guess it's it's the it's the team.

I I feel like I feel like we were played a very big role in this meme becoming bigger, but a lot of people have run with it in different directions and it's been amazing watching it watching it grow like this. Um, the Play AI group will report to Johan Schulquick. Cool name. Not sure how to pronounce that.

Who recently joined Meta from a separate voice AI startup called a Sesame AI that I remember this that was a controversial one because Sesame is a new new company and you know shouldn't be losing people to Zuck already.

Um, but uh the entire Play AI team is coming over and I believe uh it's a YC company because I saw one of the YC partners posting about, hey, this is uh this is the another 100 million for Gareth. The Dark Knight, the Dork Knight rides again. Never go up against him.

Well, in other news, over the weekend, Janick Center made history as the first Italian man to win a singles title at Wimbledon. Naturally, this is uh according to Bezel, he celebrated with a rose gold uh Rolex Daytona Oyster Flex on the wrist. So, thank you for doing the most important work.

Uh it looks absolutely fantastic. Yes, cover of the Wall Street Journal for this by the way. Um in Bloom, Italy's Yanuk Center celebrates Sunday in London after his men's singles championship win over Spain's Carlos Alcarz. I don't know follow tennis enough to know how to pronounce that.

Uh Poland's Ego Suat defeated blah blah blah and uh yeah more coverage but he's looking happy with the trophy. I love how how I know sports little attention you play to tennis. You you know what I do follow though? I follow hitters.

I follow watches and Jensen absolutely mogged the rest of the tech world with one of the most insane Mills. You don't see him in a short sleeve t-shirt much. No, he took off the leather jacket for this.

And this is such a come from behind moment because we've been talking about his the lack of wrist game and we've been doing wrist checks on Jensen for for months now. Karp was was early and right. Karp's Yeah. Oh, for sure. He the orange with the orange strap. Uh Zuck's been ramping up putting up insane. Really?

Anytime he steps out of the house, he has a cubitus. He's got he's got a stack collection. And everyone was saying even even uh Jensen's uh uh family relative Lisa Sue over at AM AMD was mogging him with a with a Rolex. We saw uh but now doubts never loves this up 3% over the last five days.

So obviously obviously because of this obviously because of this but this watch is is really really special. I mean, what I what I love about it is that it's just so thin.

Like, when I think Rishard Mill, I think of the the silhouette, the outline, this kind of like oh, it's almost like a bowed rectangle, which I think is a very cool unique design. I think of the skeletons. It's checking those boxes, but then it's just so thin. Uh, and it looks fantastic.

And Jensen is wearing it very well. So, we need to do we need to do a deep dive on RM because the story is crazy. was basically this longtime executive who decided he was going to make a luxury watch brand. Yes. And to actually just decide, it's easy to say, "I'm going to start a watch company. " Yeah.

Very very much harder to like actually crack the code and be able to sell watches in the I'm surprised some of our friends haven't started watch companies given how many companies they're spinning up every two seconds. Yeah. Certain one in particular. It'll happen eventually. It'll happen eventually.

Um, the last another post somebody posted, "RIP McKenzie, you don't need a 300K consultant anymore. You can run now run full competitive market analysis using Gro 4.

" And uh, our friend Buco Capital Bloke says, "I'd like to see an LLM provide regular consulting to turbocharge opioid sales, be a trusted partner for autocratic regimes, and help young people get hooked on ecigarettes. " Very negative on the consulting firms.

uh who speaks for them but we got a we got a we got a one let's give them they do a lot of good work for Mckenzie Bane BCG the white shoe firms they do great work yes some mistakes were made but overall good farm team for future PMs in big tech yeah so uh in other news uh Monumental Labs the has raised some money over $8 million most recently in a $7 million seed round led by Alexis O'Haneian 776 this is the Stone carving alert.

Yeah, they're carving stones. They're carving stones. You heard Monumental Labs. You thought new new foundation model. No, AI robots can already carve stone statues. Entire buildings are next. Uh the stone carving startup Monumental Labs has raised money.

They have a new HQ almost 40,000 square feet in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Wait.

So, so the the cool thing here, so so they they are opening this new facility in Greenpoint, which is makes total sense to be the home of what will become the largest fine art stone fabricator in North America and possibly in the world when it opens in the fall. Makes so much sense.

And this, you know, a lot of people would, you know, this company uh was nonobvious. Yep.

But then if you think about what we would pay for stone statues here in the studio and I think what a lot of people will pay of all the mag seven CEOs potentially just hypothetically I don't have like a mood board for that or anything you know it's not like saved on my phone as an idea we want to make the the mount rush rush more of the manosphere you know yeah yeah it's mag seven watching over the manosphere it' be great no but I I think I think you know if they can really crack uh congratulations to the Monumental Labs team.

That's a very exciting company and led by Alexis O'hanian, friend of the show. And also he says, "Looks like the secret is out. Can't wait for y'all to watch because he is going to be a guest shark.

He's going to Shark Tank uh the upcoming season of Shark Tank, which will be uh Wednesdays this fall on ABC and stream on Hulu. Uh he's gonna really have to really go shark mode because Alexis is uh known to just be a really nice guy. Really really found sharky. That's very funny.

Not not I mean uh sharp elbows I'm sure getting into deals, you know, but um but yeah, he's going to uh I mean but there's always room for for just offering an entrepreneur on Shark Tank a nice fair deal. You wouldn't, you know, he's not going to be offering, you know, like just give me 20% of topline forever. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean as a personality I think he'll fit in great. I think he will really add something to the show. So very excited for him. Go check it out. And final post from Adam Singer. I was going to end on this. The uh CMO of AdQ out of home made easy and measurable.

Says, "Love seeing out of home from the new gen of tech media brands. Great brands do things online and in the real world. Uh our software makes this really easy for all. " And I just want to give a quick shout out to Adam uh for betting on us early. bet on us when we just were two guys, two suits, and a stack of posts.

So, we will never forget that. And uh go do yourself a favor and sign up for adqu after you're done with that. Make advertising easy and measurable. Come on, people. I don't even need a It's really not complicated. After that, leave us a fivestar review on Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you listen.

And I can't wait for tomorrow. There there was a couple weeks of news since last Friday. Yeah. And I'm sure there will be quite a bit more tomorrow. Uh the other piece of news, uh the information launched a competitor to us and they had some technical issues. So if you know things about computers, please contact them.

Yeah. Tell them tell them the technology brother sent you. And that's our show. See you tomorrow. Cheers. Goodbye. Have a great Monday.