Techstrong Gang – April 8, 2025

Hello, we've got tariff traumas, robotic Rivalries, and Flourishing in Florida. You're watching Textron Game. We'll be back in a minute.

Hey everybody, welcome to the latest episode of the Techstrong Gang. We've got a strong lineup today. We're talking about a hot topic though, so stay tuned.

I wanna introduce our guest first. Camberley Bates, who's a Chief Technology advisor for the Tuum Group, who is joining us once again from, I assume you're in Colorado, is that correct? I'm in Colorado, yes, I am.

Alright, and then Mitch Ashley, I can tell by the guitars, is in Colorado and is a dead giveaway in Colorado in my studio slash music room. And then Bonnie Schneider is home in Florida, correct? That's Right, yeah.

I'm in Boca Raton, Florida. Great to be joining you today. All right.

And I might be the odd one out. I'm actually not home. I'm in the west of Ireland.

So this is a new venue for the text drawing gang. We'll see how it all goes. We're gonna talk about tariffs.

They're on everybody's mind lately. I think they've been dominating everything in Wall Street, and folks are trying to figure out, well, what does this mean and where do we go from here? And I know it people, some of the smart ones anyway, have been thinking about this issue for a while.

Kimberly, um, do folks need to start loading up on parts and laptops and servers now because the cost of these things are about to go up considerably? Or is this gonna be a blip? Well, I'm kind of waiting to see what's, what's happened in the LA next 36 hours, because, um, the noise that was coming out of, uh, and DC over the weekend was that we were gonna see quite a bit of people stand down, um, which means that we stand down as well.

Um, this seems to be a massive negotiating position as well. So I, I'm, I'm on a positive side as opposed to others that I know that are like in the mess of like, even though, you know, of course, yes, everybody's investments kind of took a hit last week and we're probably gonna still get some hit this week personally, so you, we go net. That's not advice, investment advice at all.

Um, but I, one of our guys at futurum did a really good job of putting a piece together that was talking about the actions that folks like HPE, um, Dell, Cisco, NetApp, and I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other people had already taken going into this. So like any executive does, you always have a list of what are the risks that are happening, what are the actions you're gonna take? You know, what are the, what's the pol, you know, what are you gonna do around that?

And that's, you plan for that. And they should have been planning for this since the election, since this has been on, on president's Trump's minds for decades. This is nothing new.

So I think with that, what we're gonna s you know, many of them have already put contracts in place. Um, you know, they're looking at what, how that changes. Some of them are not even gonna raise their prices.

Um, so I think it really varies between who they're negotiating with and what the issues are. But there, there are some definite decisions that have to be made. And, but you know, as you're getting into with, if you have an immediate purchase right now, that's, that's gonna be the tough position.

That's gonna be the tough place to, to play out. Um, because you really don't know where this is gonna land out. Hopefully it's gonna land out to the point that we've got.

We we're not as injured as, as some of the people are thinking we are going into it. Mm-hmm. Mitch, every now and again, there is a downturn in the economy.

We've seen these things before and the boss usually turns to it and says something to the effect of sweat those assets longer. So, um, can we kinda live longer on the infrastructure we have and make it more efficient? I wonder, we've talked about on previous shows that well, the utilization rates and a lot of that infrastructure is not so high in the first place.

Well, even, even after Covid and the, you know, we need, uh, more productivity from our developers' cost, you know, this constraint around, you know, finances in IT and certainly 2008 and Covid itself. Yeah. That, that always happens.

And I'm sure there as expecting it hopefully if you've been in it, you know, to expect that. I think, I think where the, the bigger impact is, is the longer this goes on, the greater that LEC affects the supply chains of products coming out of other countries. So if we exhaust within the supply chain now, um, for example, you know, upgrade, doing a, a laptop refresh for, you know, AI powered laptops or, or whatever it might be, server technology, you know, then when that supply chain exhaust, those people tend to either shift to other businesses or go outta business and were backed like we were in 2008 where it took two, three years to really build back the supply chain.

And in this case, we've got not just disruption, but is this, is the trust in the US still there? Are we willing to kind of go down this path again? Um, we got jilted at the altar in 2025.

Do we wanna really, really sign up for that possibility again? So I, I think that's the really complex part of it. And, and Kimberly, as you said, this decision to pull that trigger, I want cash or do I make that investment now while I, while it's still possible, is a big dilemma.

I, I agree on the, what Cam Kimberly said about the 36 hours. I think a lot is gonna come out, um, today and tomorrow, um, from, probably from the administration of any of these deals. Apparently they, they said over the weekend 50 countries have already come forward.

And maybe it's more than that now, I'm not sure. But, um, I think that announcements like that with more details specifics, um, would help, uh, the situation a little bit calm down right now from, from the panic that's ensued. And regarding the, um, IT community, one of the things I think is interesting just from the sustainability angle is we've been talking a lot about how sustainability measures in with, um, good financial decisions in terms of being more efficient.

So it'd be interesting to see if people within that sustainability community in IT are, are saying, well, this is a time where we really need to be more efficient with our energy and refocus on that. I haven't seen that yet, but I'm gonna be looking for those signals from that community today. Mm-hmm.

Well, it's interesting 'cause I'm here in Europe and so the conversation on this side is, uh, cautious. They are evaluating what the real impact is gonna be and they're considering their options and how much they wanna have a hardcore fight about this or escalate it further. And not everybody is on the same page.

The French are kind of being more aggressive about it. The Irish are urging caution. However, um, you know, Ireland's big trade with the US is in pharmaceuticals and guess what's exempted from this here tariff thing.

So, you know, no wonder they're being a little more cautious. So there's a lot of things headquarters in there. All the companies move there.

Yeah. So, but Kimberly, a lot of business executives will look at this situation and uncertainty equals caution. So no matter what happens here, will there be a, at least some sort of chilling effect on buying motions?

'cause everybody's gonna freeze while we wait to see how long this might play out. You know, I don't have a good answer to that one. Um, and, and that's gonna be clouded unfortunately by my own personal feelings is that we will way through this and way, and actually I, I'm in the process of buying a car.

Here we go. Okay, so, so let's talk about it. So I'm, I'm like in the middle of this thing, like going, okay, so what does this mean?

And, and how does this impact that kind of thing. So, and I'm proceeding ahead with that. Um, and part of it is saying, okay, so am I gonna pay, when I say say I'm gonna be paying, some of these folks are saying they're gonna hold the course with terms of the pricing.

Um, they're not gonna raise the prices immediately. So I think in each and every purchase, the conversation has to happen between what they're, what they're doing and the vendor that they're gonna be buying from. Because I think it varies that much between, it's not, we see this blanket ubiquitous 34, 30 7% that's raising, but when you dig down into the numbers, there's variations all over the place.

I mean, it's everywhere. You think about how NAFTA stuff, NAFTA does not anything that's under NAFTA right now doesn't apply to this. That's auto parts.

That's all kinds of stuff. So what, how does, does that do to the supply chain? So I think there's, just to have an absolute statement about this is what's happening.

My costs are gonna be 30% more. I think you have to have open conversations with the sales rep, the sales executives at the vendors that you're purchasing, um, your asset from what the plan is, how they're managing it. Um, and I think that it's, it's an opportunity to, uh, to negotiate, um, possibly, right.

You want me to buy it now this quarter? Thank you very much. Gimme another 5% discount.

Thank you very much. Um, it's an opportunity to ne negotiate. It's also an opportunity to, you know, create stronger relationships and long-term relationships.

You're not buying a Range R for chance. 'cause they announced that they're suspending shipments to the United States. So just in case you are buying a car, No, I'm working on A BMW, which I said I would never do A BMW, but here I am working on A BMW replacing my convertible, which is like 12 year, 13 years old.

So I definitely so many options for that. Crossing our fingers for you, Kimberly. Alright.

13 years. Talk about sweating an asset. That's impressive.

I, I I sweat my, my car assets, believe me. Yep. Getting that value, Mitch.

One of the things that will happen though is places like China will look to become less dependent upon the US and as they reallocate maybe where they are sending hearts and demand for it might be harder in the future. The supply chains may be extended longer because a lot of those companies will be like, well, we're gonna prioritize trade with whether it's Europe or Africa or Australia or wherever over the us. So there could be some lasting implications here in terms of, you know, just who's on the favorite trading nation list.

Uh, very much so. Because if with a slowdown, 'cause the slowdown in orders, right? Or you stretch out like Kimberly's 13 years for that, for that convertible, you know, instead of six years, we're gonna get 13 outta this.

Instead of ordering the entree, we'll order a small plate off the, off the, off the appetizers. So, so that's what happens. And of course the bigger deals will get better economics.

So maybe Europe and, and others will get, uh, more favorable deals because China wants to push more product their way. Now that said, what's the economic impact in those environments? You know, uh, is there any kind of a slowdown globally and how has that happened?

So I, I just think it's, it's, you kind of have to stay very fluid in this environment. com site, um, you know, being fluid kind of going by the moment, I think we're back to, uh, monthly and quarterly budgets. You remember, we were there not too long ago, a year or so where we, when us talking to customers, they didn't know what their budget was past a quarter, maybe even shorter timeframe than that, almost on an ask zero zero based budgeting basis.

We could be headed that way as well. Bonnie, walk me through this logic a little bit, but you know, who could be really happy about all this? The people who are building refurbished equipment.

'cause they're gonna be like, Hey, more demand. 'cause people are gonna be like, I can't find new gear. I'll go with the refurbished stuff.

This could turn out to be, to be great for the climate. Yeah, I absolutely, and and those areas are, are just growing so much. You know, I did a report on human IT that, that resells their, their, uh, refurbished equipment, but at a great rate for people in need, which is a really, uh, worthy cause.

And then of course you have, um, HP with HP Renew solutions that's very big for them and very successful where they're um, not only just help like reselling, but they're helping the whole process. They, they pick it up, they, they do everything and they refurbish it themselves with the, with the guarantee that it still works well. So I agree this is only going to help, especially as there is gonna be this uncertainty in this frozen moment where, well, what do we do?

We can't really buy anything right now. Alright, what do we have? Um, can we fix it?

Can we keep it living longer? Um, I agree. I think this is gonna be a moment for that.

But we'll see because this is, this is the different type of administration where every hour something different happens. So we'll see how the, the next 36 hours goes, um, how long this will all last with the tariffs. You know, it's, I've heard everything, you know, this is gonna be for sure for months or weeks to, this could end this week so that it's still uncertain.

But in any case, it's always a good idea to refurbish and and reuse devices as much as possible. Kimberly, do you think also that there will be further exemptions, right? We've seen, uh, you know, TMSC show up at the White House and pledge a bunch of money to build some plants here.

And funny thing is, we need a lot of those GPUs that they happen to make in Taiwan to drive our AI stuff, which is kind of important to us as a country. So we'll, uh, some rational thought could selectively apply to maybe some tariffs may not be as, uh, aggressively enforced as others. So I, uh, I think so.

Um, I listened to, um, this last week, um, both Howard Lutnick, who is the secretary of Department of Commerce. Um, he was also the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, so no slack. Um, and he's been part of this transition team and involved with this entire process for quite some time.

So it's not, you know, we see the end result of something that's been going on for whatever, six months or something like that. And he's talking about how, you know, those people are coming to the table and negotiating to bring things. I mean, the entire purpose of this process is to bring manufacturing back OnPrem, um, and to increase the manufacturing jobs, um, to lessen our dependency that we saw very clearly in 2020 on overseas and what that, so that takes a long time to happen.

And he's talking about how there is this transition period of the tariffs to the building out to the labor force that would have to be available in order to, you know, do the manufacturing that's gonna be manufacturing is gonna be more robotic than it is overseas. So maybe Bonnie is gonna be cleaner or more respectful of the people then than what we've seen in some of the overseas manufacturing. So, you know, it's not a, this is not in the next 30 days.

This is a, this is a direction that somebody is tr they're, they're trying to lay out that is a many, many years long direction, um, to get to where they're talking about, which is manufacturing jobs less dependency on overseas. Well, and there's a lot of caveats at, at play here, right? Whether congress stays on board is unknown.

Meanwhile, the Coch brothers have launched a lawsuit saying that the authority under which the president is using or flying those tariffs does not actually exist. So there'll be a court case winding through challenging the president's authority as a single person who will apply tariffs. And then we're probably also gonna see, um, folks decide that, um, there could be, uh, somebody's just gonna blink and the issue that they're gonna blink over is the same one we blinked over when B Hayes and Ho Herbert Hoover tried the same thing.

And you're staring suddenly at the potential of a, uh, something that feels more like a depression than a recession. You know, the average person in the street's not gonna actually play for that. And last time I checked the next election cycle for the midterms is less than 14, 15 months away now.

So we'll see how this all turns out at the end of the day. Cross your fingers, everybody and hope that, uh, it gets better before it gets worse. 'cause the ride can get bumpy.

We'll be back. Get the M bmw, Kimberly. I might need a ride.

It's, it's, it's not, I'm, I'm ordering a new one. So, so, so we'll see how that goes. I keep in touch because they have to order, you know, place the order.

And then we got the other thing called the shipping container that has to happen. So there's probably all kinds of things that I'm gonna get to see how this happens. They Have, they have some awesome, they have some awesome visualization software that you can at least watch your car go nowhere, You know, that, you know, they have an app for me to track the manufacturing of the car.

Yeah, right. It's coming. It's Coming.

All Right, folks, we're gonna move on to our next topic. We'll be back in a minute. Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

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All right, folks, we're back. And we're gonna be talking about robots. Well, specifically robots manufacturing in the us There's a group that's already calling for protection from unfair competition globally, namely point Fingers at China.

Um, and this in itself is not necessarily net new because we've been pointing fingers at China for undercutting pricing on cars and all kinds of stuff that's closing us out on not just the Chinese market, but Australia and other places. Um, so my question to you, and I'll start with Mitch on this one, I guess, um, is this, you know, too familiar a ring to it? And if this is the case, every time we turn around and manufacture something, we're being undercut by China.

Can we win this thing? Because if I don't have enough market for us, uh, robots outside of us, I can't support an a robot industry on US sales alone. So how do we kind of get past all this stuff that's going on?

Do we, is there just a higher level of conversation that needs to be had between adults? Because right now, if we're gonna have just kind of a US focused market for anything, I feel like we're in trouble. Yeah.

The, the irony of the timing of this, right? We're clo closing ranks and putting tariffs in place and say we want global markets for robotics. Um, I, I'll, I'll, I'll ride the coattails of Kimberly on the, on the positive side of this.

Things will work out. We'll move forward. People making money tends to drive action.

So as that comes to the forefront and Trump being able to make announcements about that, I think that will help loosen up some of the discussion about that this is being compared. And it's happened with AI too, is another moonshot moment, right? That the, the, they're asking the federal government to declare this is, uh, you know, put a robot in in every, in, uh, everybody's home by whatever date like, uh, the moonshot or going, uh, getting to the moon.

So I dunno if it's truly a moonshot moment. It may be though, if you really believe the impact of AI is gonna be that great, and coupled with that is delivery of AI is in robotics, right? Could be small processors, could be, you know, physical robots we think of moving around.

Could be robotic automations, whether those factories that we're building, maybe we're gonna build some of the factories with robotics rather than just inside of the factory. So I, I think the ti you know, the timing, the irony of it aside, it, it is a, a good time for us to really double down and get into robotics. Are we ever gonna stop the Chinese from changing the value of their currency and manipulating that and, you know, copying our stuff, all that kind of things.

I'm not too optimistic about that happening, even with the tariffs in place. So just play in that world. That's the world we live in.

I'll, I'll play the other side of this though. We're already walking around and flipping over our routers to make sure that they don't say made in China on it. So what are we gonna do with robots that are made in China?

Because we don't understand for sure that, you know, they're not gonna be embedded with all kinds of nasty firmware. And, um, you know, if you think your router's buying you on you as a problem way, do you, a robot is showing up in, at your worker in your house and sharing all kinds of stuff. So Kimberly, do we need to look at robots maybe differently than we have other things that we have manufactured in the past in China?

So I'm thinking through, we have Alexa in our house, or some people do, I don't, I don't want it listening to me. You have ring watching your door, you have rumba rolling around your house and, and Lord Lee knows what else that you have running around your house that is, has a element of technology that has the ability to do whatever we're worrying about in terms of what these other robotics can do that's already there. Um, so if you're like, worried about what this could possibly do in the future, I'm sorry, you need to go button down your house then and figure out what you're doing.

And the same thing goes with American manufacturing, American, you know, companies or whatever. We have so much technology that's already placed in there. So it's some of, I don't know the robotics market.

I know I, I saw we were gonna talk about this. So I was looking up and saying, okay, so where are we at? What, what the poli, what are the policies they're asking for?

And um, I think there's two sides of it. One, one from a manufacturing or development side. They're looking for policies around regulations that could get, you know, stop the development of it.

They're also looking for some investments. I think they're also looking for standardization. I think industry can do that themselves without the government getting involved.

Um, then, and then on the other side of it, you're talking about, okay, so what can we do as consumers, whether or not it's a corporate consumer or an individual consumer to protect our privacy, which is, I think is what you're talking about, Mike, is that privacy that opened the door. So I think there's a lot of pieces that have to do it, but it's not something that is new. We are already in the middle of this.

Everything being watched, heard, talked about, recorded, Documented, whatever. Mitch, what do you say? We get some firewalls together and install 'em on these robots?

Well, You know, I think, I think we're blowing this way out of proportion because we just let go two of our cybersecurity leaders general, uh, Timothy Hugh, I think is his name, uh, head National director of the NSA. Um, so i, I have a recommendation. There's actually a really fine tried and true method of protecting yourself around the home.

And by the way, every TV has a camera and a microphone monitor and who knows what else. So, um, I think we'll see a run on, uh, buying electrical black tape that you put over those cameras and over those micro, it works really good. And, uh, you can, you can spout the name of whatever, you know, voice automated device that won't respond.

It works pretty good. So, you know, just kind of, let's go with the classic solution here. All right, well, if we're gonna go old school, what are you saying?

We just go, everybody build one room in their house, that's their safe room. You know, you just kinda isolated from everything else in the house. It's just place to go in the corner and, you know, nothing in there is connected to much of anything.

And god knows, maybe we'll start reading books. Holy crap. We make our homes Faraday cages.

Just build it properly. It depends on how, how good these ro robots are. Because, you know, everybody knows the experience of a, of a parent with a, with a kid.

Let's say they're, they say they're not listening, and then all of a sudden there's a reaction in the other room. Let's say if you're on the phone, I, I, I used to happen to me with my mother and she's like, I'm not listening. And then I'd say something funny and I heard her laughing and I'm like, you are listening.

So I think that these robots, um, are, are, um, you know, you, you have to take into account. I, Kimberly said that they, with all our devices, and of course we forgot this one, the phone, they're, they're always listening. Uh, you know, they're what we're, we're typing on there.

So I think that it'll depend on how they're programmed. Um, but keeping all of our data private is gonna continue to be a challenge. The thing about robots, that'll be interesting, just like, I don't wanna say Alexa 'cause I do have it and she is always listening, but, um, what they say back to us, because I think that that's when people get more surprised when it comes right back to them personally.

When they hear something that they said or something, they were searching on the internet and then all of a sudden the, that ad pops up. That's just my own experience where people are, are shocked. Wow, how do they know this?

So I think the robots might draw more attention, more attention to that, to people, more awareness of it. Um, as well, I don't know, our Alexa doesn't seem to be too smart. The only thing she says we need to build or buy, restock our supply of is dog biscuits.

So always, you know, the only thing she says, you need to put more. I think our dogs have figured that out. Oh, that's So funny.

What exactly though, does it mean to like have something that says made in USA on it these days? 'cause when I go look inside it, it may have been assembled here, but the parts seem to come from somewhere else anyway. And a lot of times they're coming from, uh, China where they might, where the motherboard was created, but the thing was technically made in the USA so can't really, if we're gonna being this kinda hardcore about things, do we need to be clear about what it means to be made in the USA or any other country for that matter?

Well, I think what you're getting back to is the concept of zero trust. And that if you look in the, you know, infrastructure build out, I, you have a principle of zero trust that, that if I'm buying my server, if I'm buying my, you know, whatever I'm buying, how it's going, is the, the company that I'm buying from know exactly where all those pieces are coming from and how that gets to me. So I think that's the basis of that.

Now you're, you're asking about on consumer side, are we gonna have a consumer side? I don't think so. Um, but on the corporate side, they're definitely driving with that.

And that is part of the CISO's responsibility. I had the privilege of listening, fascinating presentation by this, um, at, I was at the, uh, mountain West Cybersecurity task force, which is put on by these, um, secret service. It's a combination of everything from local to local to FBI to secret service, to vendors, to whatever.

And, and we get together about once a quarter. And they had presenting to us somebody from New York City, she was the person that came in to harden their IO ot. And if you think of IO ot, that's everything from the cameras.

It's in the tunnels to all the cameras that the police are wearing. I mean, it's everywhere. And what they went through, which is a model actually, it's a model for the, for other cities, if they can do it, anybody can do it in terms of how many devices they have.

But what they went through and the processes and the principles they put together about how to acquire, you know, signing off to saying, this is secure. We can deploy this out there. We don't have the exposure, um, really, really interesting process of what they did in order to get through this.

So hopefully we'll see more of that, especially as we get more and more new robotics into the iot world as well. Mm-hmm. I don't know, I think I could see a way as a consumer that you'll get the visibility that you're talking about.

Mitch, walk me through this for a minute, but I expect the not too distant future. I will take out my phone, I will take a picture of something and an AI agent will come back and tell me the providence of every component that's in that thing. I don't see why that's not doable.

I, that, that's realistic. 'cause they have to maintain that supply chain. It's just does it get it, does the AI get access to that?

Uh, maybe it goes out and scans, uh, Tom's hardware and sees what the, what they, what they found in the breakdown? Not sure. I don't know, man.

I'm in a sassy mood today. Sorry. It just, just, you know, but it also, in my mind, it, it raises the importance of the software supply chain as well, right?

And the security of that and where we're sourcing who that from today, it's an international, everybody contributes open source world. And uh, when I was at, um, coup con last week, they introduced you, you'll remember the name of it, the eco stack, whatever it was, of the European stack of software that didn't depend on the us, uh, for its kind of open source contributions for that. So it, it's already having an effect.

And that, that you could argue is, is also corporately driven because that stack's gonna run in data centers and, uh, in the corporations and, uh, hypervisor or hyperscalers and people like that. So I think the software supply chain's gonna get a lot more attention as well. I think you're right.

And you're seeing a lot of chatter in the open source community among the maintainers about not taking code from people they don't know. Now, it's equally troubling that they haven't taken code from people they don't know for a long time. But at least they've kind of recognize that this is an issue and they are working with people to kind of say, these are best practices for, um, building this stuff.

'cause you, you need to have it be not just people, you know, but it has to be signed and you have to be able to trace where it came from. So I'm hoping the software situation gets better. Uh, I kind of feel like maybe we were a little freewheeling there for a while.

Maybe it's, you know, roughly the equivalent of, uh, a disco era in the 1970s where people weren't as discriminating. But here we are now in the open source world is kind of maturing. So is that where we are, Mitch?

I just wanna know what you were doing in the seventies reference. But anyway, I was gonna high school, but that's a whole nother, um, nothing like the disco era, you know, I think to your point, Mike, it's this is causing us to examine everything kind of, well, what about this, right? What about the iot, what about our stack corporate software stack?

What about, uh, devices that we're buying? And should zero trust be in there? Yeah.

And I'm not saying that suddenly we aren't gonna buy anything if it's not trusted, but it does raise the level, uh, especially in a corporate buying scenario of requiring providence of where things came from, both physical devices as well as, as well as software. Now, you, you add to it of, well, there's also tariffs. So did those, the things that should have been tariffed, were they, or did they sneak into the country through, you know, undetected or black market or whatever, and now suddenly you bought, you know, 5,000 servers for your data, data centers across the world and you owe us some extra money because the, somebody didn't pay their tariffs on that.

Yeah. Well, I'm actually trying to figure out where software sits in that tariff spectrum, because technically services are not counted in these equations for the tariff, right? So it's basically all hard goods and software.

Is that a service or is that a good, I don't know. Do you have any thoughts? It's a good service.

I'm happy with it. No, I mean, software is a product. It's a product, it's a thing, it's a thing you ship.

I mean, it's taken, taken a different form of time, used to be shipped on physical things, you know, disks and, and, uh, on drives and things. But now it's delivered over the internet just like any other service. So it's, it's a service.

All right. Therefore, it is exempt from tariffs. Awesome.

Can, will you run for congress or would be good? I'll be issuing a a an executive order this afternoon stating, There you go. All right.

It's Ashley Free Services. Here we go. S All right.

Well, folks, I don't know how this whole robotic thing is gonna turn out, but I would just say that this is a different class of things that are being manufactured that are unlike any other thing that we've ever got from any other country somewhere else. So, um, a little more caution might be warranted. We'll be back in a minute.

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Welcome back to the Techstrong Gang. Recently I was at Emerge Americas in Miami, talking to a tech moguls, tech startup founders. And it was interesting to talk to someone that speaks to these folks really in their early stages.

I had the opportunity to chat with Charlie Esna, who's the CEO of ManTech, which is a very popular spot for entrepreneurs and in the, the South Florida area, but also internationally since a lot of them are coming in from other countries. So here's a little bit about what he said of the areas of interest for these entrepreneurs and where they're finding success. I'm Here with Charlie Esal, who is the CEO of Monotech in Miami here at em, emerge Americas.

And Charlie, it's great to have you on. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me.

Sure. Tell me about Monotech. I know it's designed for entrepreneurs, but a lot of people might not be familiar with the concept.

Tell me about what it is and how you got it started. Sure. ManTech is an entrepreneurship hub that we're building in downtown Miami.

It's part of the vision of Mochi Manana who owns now 72 properties in the downtown area of Miami. It's a very historical area that we are revitalizing the whole neighborhood with a focus in technology and innovation. And ManTech focuses on supporting entrepreneurs, connecting them through mainly we do events.

We had 130 events last year. We also bring companies from all over the world to Miami. Last year we brought 120 companies from 19 countries, and we also give them support with mentoring and, and well connections in the ecosystem.

So in essence, we're like the, the door of entry into the ecosystem here in Miami, It is called monotech. Do you have a lot of companies that are involved in technology? Yeah, all of them.

All, all of them are tech entrepreneurs, startups in different stages, and also from everywhere in the world, you know, because Miami is becoming a global tech hub. But that's our, our goal also to support Miami in that path, to be the place to go. For anybody that is international that wants to come to the us, they should come to Miami first.

Since you're covering the international tech scene, I'd be curious what kind of trends you're seeing. I know we are, we are seeing a lot of AI and quantum here. Are you seeing that within your entrepreneurial community as well?

Definitely. I think that AI in particular level the play, uh, a little bit for anybody in the world because it's, it's such a new technology that is out there that all the creators are, you know, bringing up solutions that it doesn't matter where you're, you can be in Italy, you can be in in Argentina, and, and you can come up with something that is really new and innovative. So I think that AI is, is, you know, breaking the ground there.

Um, and then anything that has to do with Miami as a, as a tech hub as well. Miami, we we're a lot about health tech, a lot of FinTech as well. Climate tech is the new that is coming to Miami now.

So those are the verticals that we see that are more, uh, you know, focused in Miami now. That's great. Yeah.

I know that climate tech is talked about here in south Florida because of the location. Are you seeing any more innovation in that space? Definitely.

And also, not only innovation, but a push by the whole community to make it happen. Because we know that if, if we don't do something in Miami, uh, we're gonna be underwater at some point. So, uh, you know, from the, there's accelerators like the Seaward Collective that does that, that focuses exclusively on solutions for water.

There's also now a, a push from the, even the federal government has, uh, provided some funding through the EDA to the Miami-Dade County to establish a risk resilience tech hub. And that's, that money's now flowing to FIU, like to universities and to other players so that we can create really an ecosystem to support all these innovators in finding solutions to, you know, make the planet livable in the future. A lot of people that are watching this work in tech, and maybe they have an idea, eventually they wanna be an entrepreneur or part of some sort of entrepreneurial team.

What's your advice for people that are thinking about making this move? Uh, definitely reach out to your community. You know, there's a lot of support from different, uh, actors.

You have accelerators, you have government programs, uh, connect with us, of course, because we, we do that. We support entrepreneurs from the earlier stage to the later stages. We have physical spaces also like, you know, coworking spaces where the community gathers.

This week we had over 10 events in, in just one week, uh, where we're connecting all these people. So I think it's that it's network. Go out there, talk to people, uh, you know, talk to founders that have done it before because most of the people that have gone through their entrepreneurial journey, they're willing to give back, uh, and, and support you.

So it's just go out there, you know, on LinkedIn, on your real life, go out to events and, and talk to people and get, get like out of your comfort zone and, uh, you'll find the support that you need. Charlie, as now, thank you so much, CEO of Monotech. It's great to be speaking with you here at Emerge Americas, and I'll be following all the excitement with Monotech and all the great entrepreneurs that you're supporting.

Yes. Thank you so much for having me. One of the areas he said that's particularly popular in Miami, which of course interests me is climate tech because of the effects of climate change really being felt, um, in that area.

I remember when I was studying climate change more in depth on a science level, it was often said that Miami was the bellwether for climate change with sea level rise and things like that. So it, it's not surprising that that's a strong area of focus as well with, um, the ocean and, and, uh, the blue economy that that's down in this region. But it's also interesting, of course, that all of Mana Tech's, uh, entrepreneurs are in tech and of course in ai, which was heavily represented at this conference for AI and Quantum.

So it is kind of interesting to see where the younger entrepreneurs are going with their ideas and, and which ones are successful and how they're connecting internationally, uh, right here in America. I think this is the beginning of something larger. I think there's a lot of, uh, entrepreneurs who are not excited about doing business with VCs in Northern California, flat out, um, there's too much political noise in that climate.

There's too many, uh, opinions that borderline on arrogant, and a lot of them are like, Hey, at the end of the day, I have to find, I have to set up three different companies successfully to actually have a, a formula where I'm gonna make enough money to become a multimillionaire off my efforts. Because, you know, a lot of times what they're left with after all that negotiation with those VCs is a nickel on, at least on their first startup and maybe even their second. So, I don't know, uh, Kimberly, maybe I'm crazy, but, um, is there, you know, an opportunity here to diversify, at least geographically where innovation is being driven from?

Well, we started doing that a long time ago, especially in Boulder. Um, uh, well over 12 years ago or so, Techstars started here in Boulder with Bradfield and, um, that expanded across the United States. So we had this techstar, which is, you know, essentially what that was was early on it was, you know, a bunch of 20 year olds that were sleeping on couches, getting, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars to develop something.

And that did go on to, um, spawn a lot of industry here in Boulder that got bought by the Microsofts, the Googles, the Yahoos, the Facebooks, et cetera. Um, so it span, spun, spun our stuff, so then they spread it out. Um, and that was, you know, almost every, a lot of the big cities where those Techstars were coming.

So I think we've already done that. I think what I'm hearing from Bonnie, it sounds like there's another slice there because this group had a very, very, very focused on Silicon Valley, because that's where their ties are. Um, hopefully Mannatech has got ties into other places, um, and not just, you know, those companies that are outta Silicon Valley that can purchase them.

And I think that's probably true because, uh, you know, tech is, um, spawning all over the place. It's not just, it's not ju it is not a Silicon Valley dominated industry. And shout that Means Something In here.

And I was gonna say, shout out to David Cohen, by the way, a Techstars run Tech along the, sorry, I didn't hear your question. Well, and David Cohen is now running Techstars back again. So they brought Techstars.

Yes. He is all now leading, and Brad is not, but, um, Brad and David started it together. You're right, right, right.

Mitch, and now Techstars has Brian brought back from the headquarters back here, and David is now in the lead Min stone. You have history with these people, Brad and crew? I do, yes.

Um, but we're recording this, so I can't talk about it. What I say, no, Brad, Brad was an investor in a couple of companies that I was in. Wonderful version, uh, in, in, uh, he really has contributed a lot to the community.

And I don't know how Brad and David got connected, but um, I was an advisor for a short period of time with Techstars kind in the early days. And it was a lot like sleeping in the dorm room, you know, saying, okay, now get up and present what you're doing. Uh, you know, this is the, the next generation of that.

And what stood out to me, and Bonnie, I'm curious this, if this came up in your conversation with Charlie, is the industries that they're focusing on, FinTech, healthcare climate, those are industries that are tough to break into. They've got entrenched layers and, you know, just don't go into healthcare and say, I've got a, uh, you know, I've got the next better mousetrap buy mine instead. Right?

They are, they closely control a lot of those, uh, product, uh, ecosystems and very large contracts and vendors. So a lot of what, uh, companies struggle with startups is how to get in to the markets because they just don't have the chops to bring, to get to, to, you know, get to that level where they can actually get in front of customers and deliver Their products. You know, that's a great point because I, I, I took a walk through.

I was curious, you know, what are these companies doing? And in order to break in, it seems like a lot of the ones, especially the ones in in health tech, um, and even, uh, just in AI in general, we're building on already successful solutions, um, and coming up with building on what was already successful. And it seemed to me that that was a way that they could, they could take, whether it was for banking or for, um, things that we kind of know that are happening, like those full body scans that are able to kind of predict the future of health or how to manage, um, healthcare technology between doctors.

I saw a lot of that kind of stuff. So it seems like they're building on solutions that we know are successful. And the one thing that, that, that, that Charlie was talking about is that the international, which is funny 'cause this was before the tariff announcements really came full force, but about the international market and the, the, especially South America, which is very connected to the South Florida region, um, of trying to get into this US market.

Um, and that's been, that's been interesting. I also heard a lot of chatter about, um, the venture capital and, and having a separate community in South Florida away from Silicon Valley. I heard one, um, founder, or maybe he was a venture capitalist, but speak, and one of the things he said was the distance between, um, west Palm Beach, or maybe it was Jupiter, you know, or Jupiter to, um, to Miami is like Silicon Valley to San Francisco.

Like they're really trying to create a community, um, here for that as well. Um, and finally, I just wanna put a note. I didn't know about the connection with Techstars, but another entrepreneur that I have yet to interview on camera, but I've spoken to him, um, because he's based in Boca Raton, and he and I both spoke at a conference in September, um, is, uh, a company called Carbon Light.

And they do carbon clean tech solutions for concrete where they can create this concrete that doesn't have a carbon absorbs carbon. It's very successful. And one of the things he had mentioned to me was they were in Techstars, and after being selected for Techstars, I said, how, how do you get new clients?

And he's like, well, once you're in Techstars, they come to you. So it was pretty cool, you know, to understand all that. So that was just an aside, I thought that it's still, um, you know, obviously very impactful.

And there it is a clean tax solution that was recently in that program and, and doing really well. I don't think a lot of these startups get enough credit sometimes because, and this might be a, an exaggeration, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's probably true is any company that I've seen in the tech sector that's more than 10 years starts to fall off the innovation curve, right? And they wind up buying more companies than they do organically coming up with some new idea.

And, um, I guess that's part of the way the ecosystem works, but I feel like Kimberly, if it wasn't for all these little startups pushing them along, they would just melt the existing technology forever. And the pace of innovation would be much slower than it is. That would be the premise of an innovator's dilemma.

And, um, what pushes us, you know, to be better is that competition, you know, it's, it's, uh, that reinvention of yourself is critically important. And hopefully we're seeing that in some of the companies. That's what Intel is going through right now, you know, reinventing themselves again, well, can they do that?

You know, they've done it multiple times and that's why they lasted for as long as they did. Um, Microsoft doing the same thing, reinventing IBM Lordie. We've seen them go through whatever, and, um, you know, I was there when, you know, in the 1990s when, you know, they toppled it upside down and, and redid it, and red put themselves back on their feet, and then we saw them falter again, you know, and, uh, and now seemingly right back in, they have, and I'll make this one comment, some of these big companies, one of the things I've always looked at is what's the r and d really look like?

Do they have true r and d research and development? Because if you don't have that, you will not stay ahead. And what we do see sometimes with some of these companies and, and how do you take that r and d and move it into productization and delivery?

Um, some of these companies, and I'm not gonna name 'em out right now, but they say they have r and d, but they're not really, they're not really doing that investment. They're, um, your development. They're not research.

And, uh, so I think personally, to see how they evolve, it's important to see where those, what they're doing and how they're going at it. You know, a lot of those startups come from people who were in those big corporations that they can't create what they want to create. Even companies that tried to create sort of a skunk work projects, put 'em off to the side and keep 'em away from the corporate antibodies that will, you know, attack 'em and try to make them heal to whatever policies that's tough to do in any company.

And so, so many people spin out, jump out, do do their own thing, sometimes even sell their company back to the same, like a jump out Cisco, sell it back to Cisco. Um, it, it, the whole startup ecosystem is vital to our innovation. E companies are really good, even if companies have, you know, world class, uh, research use, things you can do in a startup you cannot do in a big company.

How many, how many, um, executives are gonna sign up for a two year or three year journey to get a product market fit right on our, on a product. Mm-hmm. Not much, not not gonna help me with this quarterly earnings.

So I'm expecting when we develop that product, to your point, Kimberly, that we're gonna be making some money at it and being profitable at some point in time. So I love anything that, that nurtures the entrepreneurial people. It gives them an opportunity to flourish and, you know, spread their wings and try and, uh, it's, it's a fun thing to do.

It's a risky thing to do, but a lot of great things get, get, uh, created. Mitch, I wanna add another plank to your presidential campaign tariff exemptions for startups. What do you say?

I'm all for it. I think just, just stay low, fly under the radar people. But, um, I wonder though, and Bonnie, you were talking to these folks, do you feel like we as a national government do enough to kind of foster the innovation for these folks?

'cause it's hard launching these companies and kind of making them work, and a lot of times, you know, the founders are not exactly living large for the three years that they're investing in these things. So, um, as a, as a, as a country, as a government, as there more we should be doing? Well, that's a great question because, um, there was, um, in the last administration, especially in the, um, area of climate, there was a lot of, um, grants and things like that through Noah and, and climate tech.

We were seeing, I know a lot just from my book and from other people I know that were in the, in that industry and benefiting from it. So I think there's a lot of uncertainty now at, at least in that space, uh, about, um, what's gonna happen, you know, with that, with that area. But absolutely, and I'm, I'm hopeful that there will be for these entrepreneurs because, um, I've been to this conference now twice now, and it's the number of participants are growing in terms of companies coming from all over and, um, looking to get exposure.

So, um, hopefully the answer will be yes. But as we've been starting off the show, we're ending the show as well with a little uncertainty in the air. There you go.

And I would just point out folks, or at least remind you all that many, many industries, not just tech ones got started because some grant from the US government helped fund a research project that gave birth to a whole range of things that never would've happened any other way. Hey folks, I think we're gonna end it there. I wanna thank everybody for sharing their thoughts and their insights today.

It was awesome. As usual, of course, there's a huge great lineup of text drawing TV content right behind us. We encourage you all to stay tuned for that as well.

Until then, we'll see you next time.