Robert started his career as an electrical engineering, as many EEs do, working a lot on the computer. Over time he developed a repetitive strain injury that did not go away with rest. Worried at the prospect of not being able to use a critical tool for his job, Robert had a flash of inspiration: he needed to develop eye-tracking technology, for himself and for others. So he did. Hear his story developing EyeTech Digital Systems in this fantastic episode.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Robert started his career as an electrical engineering, as many EEs do, working a lot on the computer. Over time he developed a repetitive strain injury that did not go away with rest. Worried at the prospect of not being able to use a critical tool for his job, Robert had a flash of inspiration: he needed to develop eye-tracking technology, for himself and for others. So he did. Hear his story developing EyeTech Digital Systems in this fantastic episode.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
The Being an Engineer Podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. Enjoy the show.
Robert Chappell:Sitting in my office there and good, you're feeling a little frustrated because of the issues with my arms. And I remember exactly where I was sitting in the direction I was sitting. And I just was struck with this idea. And I guess I have to call it inspiration.
Aaron Moncur:Hello, and welcome to the Being an Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Robert Chappell, who holds both bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering. Robert is the Founder and Chief Science Officer at EyeTech Digital Systems where they develop and sell eye tracking technology that helps users around the world regain their independence. Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Chappell:Thank you. Glad to be here.
Aaron Moncur:Very grateful for you taking some time to share with us today. I've been looking forward to this tool for a while now. And I'll start with the same question that I asked everyone. Why did you decide to become an engineer?
Robert Chappell:Wow. Well, it was, I think, in my DNA. I mean, my father was a mechanical engineer, and worked in that his entire career. And my grandfather didn't have a college education. But he him and his brother actually started a coal mine and ran that. And he learned mining engineering, on his own, and I believe through correspondence courses, and so on, he was very technical and could just do anything. And my father was the same way. He got his degree in mechanical engineering. But he was just very good at anything, mechanical, built houses and all kinds of things like that. So I grew up with that, then I have some of that DNA inside of me and I and as a, when I was young, I gravitated towards science type things I loved playing with electricity, and I had a chemistry lab in my garage and things like that. So that really, I think, pointed me in that direction.
Aaron Moncur:It's amazing how many people when asked that question, their answer, or at least part of their answer is,'my father influenced me in some way to become an engineer.' That's been a very common theme that I've heard over the course of the past many months doing these podcasts? Well, you finished your graduate degree in 1984. But you didn't start your company EyeTech Digital Systems, which we'll get to soon, until 1996. And so I'm wondering what what did you do for the 12 years in between?
Robert Chappell:Yes. Initially, I went to work for Goodyear Aerospace, out in the town of Goodyear on the west side of the valley here in Maricopa County, near Phoenix. And so I went to work out there at Goodyear Aerospace, and they had a unique thing going on out there it was, first of all, it's out in the middle of nowhere, there was just nothing out there, but a couple of small towns and farmland growing cotton. And it was really considered the outer limits of the civilized area around here. But they had a airport there and some buildings, which got its start from World War II, when they were helping with the war effort when Goodyear Tire was but anyway, they had Goodyear Aerospace. And what they did out there was synthetic aperture radar. And in fact, they were the inventors of that type of radar, which is a type of radar that will create beautiful images of the ground. So it can you can put it on an airplane and you can fly over an area and it will map the ground and make these beautiful images even through clouds and so on. And so I went to work there as an engineer really concentrating on the processing side, the signal processing, some software work, and that was a really valuable experience. For one thing I really sharpened my math skills. I mean, you hear about some engineers how they say, 'Oh, yeah, once I graduated college, I only use 10% of my math well.' This is the opposite. I graduated and I used 150%, I had to learn new math, and
Aaron Moncur:What was some of the math that you had to learn?
Robert Chappell:Well, I wasn't great at Linear Algebra, for instance, and I wound up and, and Three-dimensional Trigonometry and some things like that. So I did have to dive back in and refresh and learn some of those things. But the the math is, is pretty complex with a synthetic aperture radar, and takes a lot of thinking through and getting the details exactly right, and so on. But I spent years doing that and coding it and testing it and writing simulators. And so that was really valuable, just refreshing my math, improving my coding skills. So I did that for most of the time. But then I took three years off, and move to the Oklahoma, the Tulsa area. And out there, I worked for a pipeline services company called TD Williamson. And they were developing a new type of pipeline pig. So for those of you that don't know, she's probably most of you a pipeline, pig is this device that you put in a pipeline, we were working with natural gas pipelines, you put it in the pipeline. And then you put the gas in behind it, and it pushes through the pipeline, like a cork in a tube. So this pig would be pushed through. And as it went, it was sending these ultrasonic, it was generating ultrasonic signals in the metal pipe and looking for defects. Obviously, when a natural gas pipeline fails, there can be spectacular fires and loss of life and this kind of thing. So they're trying to, they're finding ways to look for defects in these pipes. And so they were developing this electronic pig, and they needed signal processing engineers who had strong coding skills. And I didn't really have to leave my previous job I it was, it was going fine. But I saw this ad for this job. And it looks really interesting. So we applied and, I say we, my wife and I talked about it. And I applied and and it worked out, we got the job and moved to the Tulsa area.
Aaron Moncur:What what was it you were hoping to learn? Or what experience were you hoping to gain from this new job that was so compelling that it caused you to leave the old place?
Robert Chappell:I think it was two things first, wanted to see what it was like outside of the defense aerospace industry. So this was more pure commercial work. And secondly, we wanted to try living in that part of the country. And I'd say both of them worked out. The job did turn out to be interesting. It's, it's a really, it's, there's some crazy things you did with this job, we would build this pig. And then we would go on launches. And it's it's almost like a space launch. All these things have to be coordinated. So there's a date and a deadline. And you have to be ready by that date. And then they launch the pig and then you chase it. So you get in a truck and you go and you chase it to different Crossroads across. We went all across Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, chasing these pigs. So it was interesting work that way too.
Aaron Moncur:But it's very interesting for another reason. In fact, I have been our website, we have two websites, I won't get into it. But I would love to have the website pipeline calm. And so I've been looking at sets, I put some of the websites that are pipeline, this pipeline that trying to find one that maybe we can buy because most of them are already taken. And as a result, I have come across a lot of websites that are for companies who do pipeline and oil work, of course, our company pipeline. We have nothing to do with with that industry. But I've started just reading some things on their websites. And one of the things I've read a lot about, or at least read the words many times is pigs and pigging hay and I had no idea what it was before but now talking to you, I understand what it is and this is really interesting. I've just barely started looking at this things. And now I'm talking with someone who was a pigging expert.
Robert Chappell:Yes, absolutely. I know what pigs are now, worked with them. So I coded for that project. I was writing code for an analog devices, DSP processor. And so I wrote that code mostly in C, but I had to actually go down to assembly level for some of it. So that was my job designing the algorithms and the code to run on that thing. So
Aaron Moncur:Well, tell us a little bit about EyeTech. Switching gears here, so you worked at Goodyear, you worked in Oklahoma? And was EyeTech the next thing after that?
Robert Chappell:Well, let me tell you what happened there. So while I was working there in Oklahoma, as I mentioned, these pipeline lunches were scheduled things and a big deal. And so sometimes you would work long hours and overtime getting ready for one. And there was one, I started experiencing some repetitive strain injury symptoms in my arms from too much computer usage. And there was one particular deadline where I was just really coding so much, so long, and my arms were getting pretty sore, but I thought, oh, they'll just get better at that time my wife was pregnant, she was going to have a baby in about a week, and I thought, 'I'm going to take a week off, then I'll get to rest, everything will be fine.' So I just worked really hard right up to that time. And then I took that week off, but everything wasn't fine. It, I had given myself a real serious repetitive strain injury. That didn't recover with a week of rest. And so after that, I struggled with computer usage.
Aaron Moncur:Which as an electrical engineer, that's a problem.
Robert Chappell:That's a huge problem. I struggled. And I tried all kinds of things. I even used some of the voice dictation software they had at the time. And any case, I also switched back to Arizona, they invited me I got a call from my previous boss there, he wanted me to come back and said, 'Well, I've got this problem with my hands. Can we work with that?' And he says, 'Yeah, no problem. Come back.' So I went back and, and still continue to have this problem, though. And I tried different tools for working with it. Fortunately, my work was, probably, it wasn't a ton of typing. It was there was a lot of thinking and working through math problems. And then coding, um, but not a ton. So. But it was a struggle, like I was just struggling and struggling with, with these issues. So that's what prompted the start of EyeTech.
Aaron Moncur:Interesting. So this was a problem that you personally had, and you were trying to solve it, I guess, for yourself and then saw a need in the market.
Robert Chappell:Exactly. Yeah, I started getting interested in alternative computer inputs. Like I tried some crazy keyboards, had weird designs and different types of mice. And of course, voice dictation was becoming a standard, although back then they didn't have the natural speaking it was more you speak one word at a time, which was really slow and annoying. And sometimes even a little dangerous. I got my voice sore a few times doing that. So I thought, 'Oh, great. I'm gonna ruin my voice too.'
Aaron Moncur:Geez. Just not one thing, it's the other.
Robert Chappell:But it would recover. So there was all that going on. And then I can still remember sitting in my office there in Goodyear feeling a little frustrated because of the issues with my arms. And I remember exactly where I was sitting in the direction I was sitting. And I just was struck with this idea. And I guess I have to call it inspiration. I mean, I believe God sometimes gives you flashes of inspiration. And I just had this thought you need to build an eye tracker that would let you use a computer without using that mouse. And and I knew other people had done eye tracking and that's one of the things I had seen. But I thought, 'Okay, let's look into that.' And so at that point, I set out to build an eye tracker to test the idea. And the idea was, it would run under Windows there. There was a product out there for the severely disabled from LCD technology. But it was like it didn't let you move a mouse cursor, and it only ran in DOS, it was just for very basic communications. And I needed a mouse really, something a pointing device. And so I set out to, to do that at that point.
Aaron Moncur:And do you use your own software these days to control your computer?
Robert Chappell:Yes. So I have a tracker that I slap on my laptop here. And I use it almost every day. Now, I also have some more resources now. So I have an administrative assistant who I'll work with as well, which is still more efficient, it's more efficient if I can have an administrative assistant, so we work remotely. And that's, that's like the best the best possible thing, but then you have to consume another person's time. But yeah, even today, my arms do not work on computers for more than just a few minutes at a time. So I have to be careful. I can't get on there and do any lengthy projects with my arms. Voice dictation is much better now, though there's a lot of better tools as well.
Aaron Moncur:That must be really frustrating to not be able to work with your arms for more than a few minutes. But at the same time, what what a huge blessing that you've been able to build this company that has solved your problem and the problem that so many other people share?
Robert Chappell:Yes, I think, it's one of those things that it was felt like a catastrophe. At the time, I thought I was thinking of all these things, well, maybe I'll go into teaching school where I'll just be talking all day or something different.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Robert Chappell:I can't keep doing this engineering work. But then started, started developing that technology. And at first, I just put together very crude little tests based on the little bit that I knew about eye tracking, and using some of my image processing skills that I had learned from working there at Lockheeds, by size back at Goodyear, which was sold to Laura, which was eventually sold to Lockheed. But anyway, that's another story. But I was back there in Goodyear. And yeah, so I developed a very crude little prototype, and I could see that it would work that had the potential to work. And before that, let me back up a little bit. So when I had this idea to do this, I talked to my wife and said, Hey, I think we need to spend like 1600 dollars and buy this packard bell computer so I can test this idea. And she's like, 'Ah...' well, because in our family, you have to work together for an expense of that magnitude. Sure. And she's like,'I'm not sure, I'll think about it for a week.' She didn't say no, but so a week later, I'm like, 'Yeah, I still think I need to do this.' And she's like, 'Okay, do it.' So I did and put together a test that that actually worked enough to make me think it was viable. And so the next step
Aaron Moncur:This was all under your own time, at that point, you hadn't started a company yet?
Robert Chappell:Yeah, at this point, it was just evenings and weekends and being very careful. And with my arms as well, and it was hard because of my handicap. But, so that prototype worked. So then I went into my company there when I was working for Lockheed and said, 'Hey, I'd like to take a six month leave of absence, without pay.' And they granted that. And then that allowed me to really get some progress done and basically produce and even sell the first. The first tracker that went out the door was about during that time period, if I remember right.
Aaron Moncur:In six months, you built it and sold the first one?
Robert Chappell:I believe if you know the best of my memory, I'm pretty sure that's right.
Aaron Moncur:That's impressive. Tell me about the first sale, that must have been such a triumphant moment for you.
Robert Chappell:Yeah, it was, although it was, I would be really embarrassed to ship something like that now, it was a little bit embarrassing. But it was definitely a homemade-type thing got the software working to a certain level. But of course, back then eye tracking in general was quite immature. I mean, it had been around for a while, but it was still pretty immature and how it worked and so on. And I can't remember we advertised it somewhere on some groups or something. And it was actually a little defense contractor on the East Coast that bought it to experiment with and, and he reported that it was working for him. And that's about all I heard from him. I don't know, really what happened to it. So that was like the first sale years ago.
Aaron Moncur:Well, yeah. How did you go about gathering feedback from the market and validating that? Clearly, it worked for you it was a solution that you needed. But how did you go about validating that there was a true market need that was big enough to sustain a company?
Robert Chappell:Well, so my need was because I had this repetitive strain injury. So initially, I thought, 'Oh, well, lots of people with repetitive strain injuries want to use this.' But that didn't turn out to be the case. It turned out that we learned over time, and we attended some trade shows, and so on, which, which is, I highly recommend going to trade shows. If you're trying to get into an industry, you learn so much there. That's where we learned a tremendous amount met a lot of people, had a lot of conversations. But that's when we began to discover this industry, which is called AAC, alternative and augmentative communication. And so this is an industry that serves those people who are much more severely handicapped than I am typically, they, these people have no use of their arms, but they also can't speak or can't speak very well. So they're left pretty much with their eyes as the only option for communicating. So there's a... they need that like we need oxygen. And so eye tracking, just gravitated to that area. And that's where we started seeing sales, and the industry was starting to grow at that time.
Aaron Moncur:That's, that's really interesting to hear you talk about it like that you had this original idea, you pursued it, what you found was that the idea needed to be shifted a bit into a different market to really bolster the company, I have found the same thing to be true in my company, we started a little over 10 years ago, doing general product design, maybe it was an iPhone case, maybe it was a medical device, maybe it was some photography, equipment, whatever. We did a lot of these general product design things. And then about five years ago, one of our medical device customers said, 'Hey, we need a test fixture designed. Can you do that?' We said, 'Sure, why not? How hard could it be?' And we did and they liked it. And they said, 'This is great. We need more of these.' And over the past five years, we've really just been pulled in that direction by the market more and more people now approach us saying, We need a piece of custom test equipment, can you develop this for us? And that was never the plan when I started pipeline 10 years ago, but the market has directed how we moved into that space? I guess that's probably how it goes quite often for for startup companies.
Robert Chappell:Yes, I would say so. And I think that it's always smart to follow the market. And you may start out trying to do a and then the market pulls you over to B. And that's just a smart thing to do. Oh, I have a brother in law, John Paul Strain. He's an artist, and he's a fine artist. He does beautiful paintings and earns a living at it. But he changed his style and went into civil war paintings, because that's where the money was. So you got all the magnets, if you if you're gonna succeed commercially, you go with the markets.
Aaron Moncur:That's great. Can you share maybe some of the technical challenges that your team had to overcome developing the eye tracking software?
Robert Chappell:Okay, well, in the very early days, I wrote most of the software myself. And fortunately, the Windows operating system was just getting upgraded to the point where it was a solid 32 bit operating system with Windows 95. And so we were able to operate on that platform and do the 32 bit code, which was a step up from what was available previously. You don't I remember those days, but there was the old 16 bit code and the small memory sizes and so on. But anyway, so that enabled a lot of things. So the coding wasn't too hard to do on a on those Intel Pentium computers with the Windows 95. So initially, it was a put together system where you'd have a frame grabber and an analog style camera that would attach to the frame grabber. And then you would process and then do your stuff in Windows. It was a big jump, when we went to an all digital camera with a USB plug in and we were the first company to do that we were the first company to come up with a usable, I mouse for Windows, as far as I know. And then also the first company to come out with a little eye tracking bar that sits at the bottom of your screen, and that plugs into a USB port. So that's, that's an all digital solution. No analog camera involved and no frame grabber. So then I could go on laptops, and so on. So that was a, there's a technical challenge with getting those digital cameras up and running and all the mechanical design, there's quite a bit of mechanical design for the housing and and then you have infrared lighting, and and then working that into the timing, because we strove the lighting and so on.
Aaron Moncur:What are some of the granular details for how the software works? I mean, as a user, I get the eye tracking part right, moving the cursor around that's, that's straightforward. It just tracks your eyes. But what about when you need to right click, or when you need to highlight a segment of text or double click? How do you do those things?
Robert Chappell:Well, that's where you have a toolbar. So we have a piece of software called Quick Access. And so it shows up as a little toolbar on your screen. And so if you want to do a right click, you click the right click button first, then you go click on the object, and it does a right click, or if you want to drag, then you'll do a click the drag button, then you'll click somewhere else, then you move your eye through the drag and then you click again. And so I can drag and select. And then we have a zoom button as well, because eye tracking isn't as precise as you can do with a mouse, it can't be pretty precise. But still, sometimes you want to use that zoom, and that'll zoom up part of the screen, so you can click better in it. And with your previous question, I should add one thing. I mean that there was always a challenge with the image processing and making that better and better. I mean, you get the eye tracking working to a certain point. And then you find out, 'Oh, it doesn't work so well with glasses.' So then you have to upgrade it again. Okay, it's better. But, and even today, our eye tracker, anybody's eye trackers always have failure points. Certain if they have too much occlusion of the eye, or certain nasty reflections off glasses and so on, there's things that can make it fail, even today. So it's an ongoing effort to improve that image processing and the robustness and so on. That's always a challenge
Aaron Moncur:Is blinking used somehow, can you blink or something like that?
Robert Chappell:Yeah, with the toolbar, you can set it to click with a blink, and blink where you close your eyes for about half a second, then open them.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, interesting.
Robert Chappell:Or you can do dwell. And I think most of the AAC users just use dwell. And that's where you just stare at something for a certain length of time and automatically clicks.
Aaron Moncur:Clever. Okay, I see. Nice.
Robert Chappell:Right?
Aaron Moncur:There, there comes a point in a small business where the team grows large enough that the founder can no longer really direct all the areas of the company and he or she just has to start delegating, at what point did that come for you? And how did you manage that transition?
Robert Chappell:Well, it started happening, I mean, a few years ago. And we started bringing in more people. I mean, we had our ups and downs as a business, started getting some serious competition and a lot of different things happen. But especially the last couple of years. I mean, we brought in venture funding about two and a half years ago. And that's when I definitely and I it was my goal. Before we did that I said hey, I want to make myself a lot less impatient. Hear and delegate a lot more. And then we had the funding to go out and grow as we needed to we just been operating off sales previously. And so with the funding, a lot of things have changed. And yeah, definitely I've it's been a gradual process, but I'm no longer the CEO. So I've delegated all that off. And I'm really glad for that I have a much better job now. So
Aaron Moncur:Your role now is Chief Science Officer, right?
Robert Chappell:That's right. So I look ahead, I look at new technologies, new ways, we can do things, new applications. And I, I write documents on that I talk to people in different industries. And I have a phone call set up with a university professor about a half hour after we're done here today, for instance. And so I'm just looking ahead and planning things that are more a year or two out. Which for me, is is fun, and less, less stressful than the day to day grind of getting projects done on time and so on.
Aaron Moncur:That that sounds like a lot of fun. I want to ask you about the the venture funding, what can you share about that process that might be helpful for other small technology businesses to to know who are looking for funding?
Robert Chappell:So you can, I mean, the way we got into it was maybe a little bit unusual. We decided at some point that we would be open to it. And right about that time, I actually got a call, they reached out to me to join this founders group in Arizona. And this was started by this venture fund, just a group to get together and talk different company founders get together and talk about issues. And of course, they were looking to use that group as well to possibly find some companies to invest in, which they ultimately did. But, so that's how we got there. But parallel to that we didn't really think of that as so much as a investment option. Initially, I did look into some angel investor funds, here in Arizona, I mean, one thing you learn is that most of the money is not here in Arizona, it's in Northern California. But there are still some options here. And we looked into these angel investors, and we went and presented at one group. And they gave us some interesting feedback. He said, 'First of all, we think your idea is worth a lot more than you think it's worth.' And so we thought, 'Oh, wow, that's interesting.' And we tried to be conservative, so we weren't exaggerating, and so on in our presentation, he said,'But secondly, you need to put together a quantitative business plan,' which was something we had never done. And so he pointed us to a place we could go to get help with that. And so we were planning to do that. But then about that time, this venture fund that ran our group started doing the same thing, they started visiting us and helping us put together quantitative plan. And so a lot of are coming to...
Aaron Moncur:When you say a quantitative plan, what does that mean?
Robert Chappell:So that's a basically a spreadsheet with maybe a few tabs in it, where it's full of numbers of what your sales volumes will be, and what your expenses will be, this year, next year, so on what the ultimate profits will be. And of course, it's inaccurate, because nobody knows the future, but you do your best to map it all out. And then investors want to see that to see if there's at least a reasonable chance of this thing paying off. And but it has to be very quantitative hard numbers in there, and we had never done that, so and we didn't know how to do it. And so we were planning to do that and go back and do more presentations. But then things started moving ahead with fino ventures. And so we just went that route, we didn't have to actually do a lot of pitching.
Aaron Moncur:They made it easy for you.
Robert Chappell:Yes, but I would expect most people should go out and pitch to several and do the quantitative work. So my recommendation would be to go somewhere. There's like some, I don't know what, they call them incubators and so on where you can go in and they'll help you with those plans. I would go get those plans together, make sure your spreadsheets are 100% ready, and then go do your pitches. That'd be my recommendation.
Aaron Moncur:Great. That's great advice. So you've been leading your team at I take now for coming up on 25 years, which is a tremendous accomplishment. I'm sure that over that time, you have had high points and low points. And I was hoping, can you share maybe one of each and what you learned from those experiences?
Robert Chappell:Well, I'd say some of the high points are when you get an email from a customer saying that, 'Hey, this has made my life worth living.'
Aaron Moncur:Wow, that's a big deal.
Robert Chappell:Because they can communicate, yeah, and we got emails like that sometimes, or you get some positive feedback, how it's working out. Low points, I mean, we started getting into a situation where there was more competition coming in that was well-funded. And so that became more of a problem, which is one reason why we decided, well, we got to get funding to eyetracking became a hot commodity. And in fact, three smaller eye tracking companies, I say smaller, they're not necessarily. One of them was about our size, I think are a little bigger, but they were mostly smaller. There's three tracking companies that were bought, within a period of three months, one by Facebook, one by Google, and I can't remember the third one. But anyway.
Aaron Moncur:Oh wow, bought by big companies.
Robert Chappell:So boom, boom, boom, they were bought and Apple, Apple bought one. So that was, the market was things, a lot of things were happening, the market was becoming very dynamic. It wasn't this small assistive technology, field or business anymore, it was becoming bigger business. And so we needed at that point, we said, well, I think we need the venture backing as well as the expertise that comes with it. And that's been good, haven't regretted that. So
Aaron Moncur:That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I imagine, I mean, 25 years, you've been doing this, that's a long time. There, there must have been points along the way, outside of just the venture funding that you recently, were able to receive, but there must have been points when you could have exited the company, whether it was simply throwing in the towel, because this is too hard. We're not making the progress we want. I don't know if that ever happened. But could have been that it could have been moving on to another venture or, or acquisition opportunities or different exit opportunities altogether. I imagined there were some of those along the way, what what was it? Or what is it about running your company that has motivated you to keep going as opposed to exiting?
Robert Chappell:Well, I think part of it is that I don't consider myself a serial entrepreneur. I mean, you hear about these serial entrepreneurs, and I was happy working in this field. I mean, it's it's very satisfying seeing the people that you help so many people with this product, it's also satisfying, thinking through and solving as an engineer solving these technical problems. And, I saw both sides of it. I mean, I did traveling, in the early days, I sometimes went into people's homes and set things up and so on. So it was a pretty satisfying and interesting business. I enjoyed my co-workers, why would I dump it?
Aaron Moncur:I feel the same way. I read this book maybe a year ago called Small Giants. Have you heard of that book?
Robert Chappell:I have not. What's that about?
Aaron Moncur:It's a terrific book. It's about, it's about companies that are really truly great companies that could have grown to be, giant behemoth, but didn't they chose to say, and when I say small, they might have 500 employees or 1000 employees, but they didn't become Apple or Facebook or things like that, and how the founders made an intentional decision to stay smaller, and really focus on just being a great company, as opposed to a big company. And that really resonated quite a bit with me. I say this sometimes, I think that I'm kind of a slow learner. And so I like the idea of staying with a company for a long time and just building it gradually, but steadily over time. That really resonates a lot with me. And I love I love novelty. I love new things. Maybe a lot of people do. But I do think of myself as an entrepreneur, maybe not a serial entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur. And if I if I'm doing the same thing for too long, it gets stale and I find myself very disengaged from the work. In fact, I had that problem earlier on as an employee, and I did not last very long as an employee.
Robert Chappell:Right.
Aaron Moncur:But what I found is that, in my own company, there have been so many opportunities for me to grow with the company. First I was the technician. In the beginning, it was just me. And then I hired some people and I became the project manager, and that was new and novel, and I had to figure out how to do it.
Robert Chappell:Right.
Aaron Moncur:And then I became the the business owner and and that was new, try to figure out okay, what are KPIs? What should be my KPIs? What are the core values of the company? Why do we exist? What are we trying to accomplish? All those things
Robert Chappell:Exactly
Aaron Moncur:That come up as you start to build a real company. But yeah, so Small Giants great book. And and I fully hear and and understand what you're saying about wanting to stick with one company for a long time?
Robert Chappell:Yeah, I'll have to check out that sounds like an interesting book, I have to, I wrote it down here, I'll have to check that out. Small Giants.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Robert Chappell:I agree with you, though, that you learn so much as a business owner. And the CEO, you you have to step in and fill new roles, you have to learn about marketing. You have to learn about finance, you have to learn about managing projects, and people. And so all of that I have some experience with, I can't say I'm fantastic at it, but I have gained experience with it. So that's all good.
Aaron Moncur:Well, let me ask one more question. And then and then we'll end here, what are one or two of the biggest challenges that you have at work?
Robert Chappell:Like, currently?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Or even if you can think of big challenges that maybe you had in the past, and you found a solution to it something that others might find valuable to hear that we can all learn from?
Robert Chappell:Well, as you grow, you need new types of organizations. And it was becoming a challenge. Managing people's and projects, especially when I was managing and I was not trained in didn't go to business school to learn those things. And so I was just learning. But our current CEO, Rashid, he organized a system of what you'd call circles, and I think it was great, the way he set that up. This sounds fascinating. My ears are burning right now. I'm all ears. So it's not a the system is not super hierarchical, if I'm saying that right. But it's pretty flat organization, but we have these things called circles. And then we do have circle leaders that are over different areas, but they they interact and overlap with the other circles. But that's been a I think that's helped a lot. And
Aaron Moncur:How does that work? This sounds fascinating. I'm very interested in flat organizations and different ways of organizing and managing. Tell me more about the circles?
Robert Chappell:Well, when we first when he first drew it out on the board, he listed the different things that need to be done, like hardware, software, finance, firmware, and started drawing circles. And hardware also is influenced by software and finances influenced by HR and so circle these things in. And then we assigned different leaders to the different circles, but it was clear to them that they had to cooperate, they weren't there to build little kingdoms, but they had to cooperate and share and help each other as the circles intersected to have some joint responsibilities and help. And I'd say it's, it's not perfect, but it's worked pretty well. So, and I'm not an expert on this, but it's looked pretty good.
Aaron Moncur:That makes me think of one more question, I would love to ask you. I have found, I am finding more and more the importance of placing the proper incentives for your team, which can be really tricky, because you might think you're incentivizing a team to do one thing and maybe it actually incentivizes them to do something else. But have you found any incentives that you have put in place in your company for your team that's that has proven to be very beneficial?
Robert Chappell:Well, I think everybody has a very clear picture as to where we're going and so we have pretty good company communication. And as I mentioned earlier, we use Slack, which has been really great for communication. So everybody has this clear vision, and we have periodic meetings of the leaders and the entire company and so on. Lately, they've been virtual meetings, but they still work well. And so you give everybody this clear vision of where you're headed and show this, that you have a good plan. And there's a sense of excitement. And you don't need a whole lot more than that. People get on board and we'll make it happen.
Aaron Moncur:So clear vision and excitement. All right.
Robert Chappell:Exactly.
Aaron Moncur:Words to live by. Alright. Well, Robert, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. How can people get ahold of you?
Robert Chappell:Well, probably just go to our, I mean, I am on LinkedIn, they can reach out to me directly, Robert Chappell on LinkedIn with EyeTech digital systems. We have a website, eyetechds.com. So either of those places.
Aaron Moncur:Perfect. Well, all right. Thank you again, Robert. Really appreciate it. I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design & engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at testfixturedesign.com Thanks for listening.