Kindred AI: Marin Tchakarov

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Marin Tchakarov’s family moved to the US after the iron curtain fell. As CEO of Kindred AI, he now seeks to use AI and robotics to improve human working conditions.

 

 

Danny:

Alright, thank you for joining me today on the IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by the CEO of Kindred AI, Marin Tchakarov, coming in from San Francisco, California. Marin, thank you so much for joining me today.

Marin:

Danny, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Danny:

Well, I’m excited to jump into today’s episode, but before we get into all the good things here, could you tell me, who is Kindred AI? What do you guys do?

Marin:

Yeah, so we’ve developed an artificial intelligence platform that, through machine vision, grasping, and placement technologies, together effectively solves for complex commercial problems at our customers in real-world settings, in production settings.

Danny:

Excellent. Well, the talk of the town right now, not just right now, but it’s been before: digital transformation. We’re seeing huge leaps and bounds. And, now, because of this fun thing called COVID, I suspect that we’ll get into that; it’s accelerated that conversation for lots of organizations. And I’m willing to bet that you’ve probably experienced the same thing. And we’ll get into that here a little bit more in the episode. But before we do that, I would love to get to know Marin. I want to get to know you a little bit better. Tell me, how did you get into this space? Take me back.

Marin:

Sure. It’s been an interesting, long journey. I was born and raised, I grew up in Bulgaria under the iron curtain, and in a family of scientists. We immigrated to the US just about as soon as we could right after the wall fell. That was probably one of the most transformative changes in my life, really. It was, in many ways, a classic yet modern-day immigrant story where we all came, barely speaking the language and had to really ramp up and immerse in this culture and in this world. That’s taking you far, far back.

Danny:

No, that’s great. I love it.

Marin:

I’m extremely fortunate and proud to have had a relatively long career in technology and, so, it’s been a path of building a brand, for one, for myself in terms of what I’m passionate about with respect to trends, technological trends and how I, for one, perceive them enveloping in the future. And, so, most recently, prior to joining the artificial intelligence and robotics world, I was in the connected devices, smart devices world. I was at companies like Jawbone and Pebble prior to Kindred.

Danny:

Okay, so I’m always fascinated by hearing stories of people, particularly immigrant-type stories. What was it like transitioning from coming over and, then, starting anew? What was that like?

Marin:

It was a massive shock to the system on so many different levels. Obviously, the language barrier. Look, I knew just about enough English, based on what I’ve learned from watching American movies in Bulgaria.

Danny:

Yeah.

Marin:

So anything from the very basic language barrier to culture to just completely different economic and political systems where the abundance that we have in our world here and how fortunate we are was a staunch contrast to where we came from as a family. So it, to this day, continues to be the most formative inflection point of my life. And that’s probably because of how incredibly hard it was to tackle all of those things in as fast as possible type of fashion and be able to integrate, really. And, so, I would say that that was incredibly formative for me and put me on a very different path.

Danny:

I can only imagine. What were some concrete examples? Obviously, it’s not easy. I can only imagine. I haven’t been in that– the only thing that I can maybe relate to is when I lived for a year in Mexico City. I’m half Mexican, so it wasn’t– it was still culture shock and language barrier and all that stuff, but I didn’t traditionally speak Spanish. I learned it. But I can only imagine your entire– that’s a huge lifestyle disruption. Everything.

Marin:

Yep.

Danny:

But what were some of those concrete examples you said you’re drawing on that today that was, from a formative standpoint?

Marin:

Yeah, yeah, many of these experiences were effectively learning how to swim in the deep end of the pool, metaphorically speaking. It was one of those things where, for instance, I had to learn English very quickly. I immediately enrolled in college, and there was no ramp-up program. It was just full immersion with what you knew, as little as that were. And, so, the ramp-up time was very compressed, and the stress levels were pretty high. And, so, that was an example. I still remember, to this day, reading a chapter in my psych 101 book in freshman year of college here, which took me three hours to do because I had a Webster dictionary next to me.

Danny:

Wow.

Marin:

It was a 20-page chapter. And, so, every third word, I’d have to go back to the dictionary and do that akin to–yeah, as I went, I had to really power through full immersion. So, on that vector, that was incredibly challenging. Culturally, we–again, there was no training wheels. I couldn’t understand folks and what they were asking or saying. I had to ask people to repeat numerous times and roll with that. And, of course, economically and politically, the system was so different that there was this complete shock in the way of perception of our reality where there were just so many choices that it almost–not almost. It actually made us all, I speak for my entire family–made us all feel bad based on where we were coming from. There were just so many–you could just walk into the grocery store, and there would be 55 different types of cheese, and we were used to two or whatever.

Danny:

Wow, wow. So I imagine gratitude is probably a good word to describe some of the—

Marin:

I think that’s an excellent way to describe it. I think it’s been a mixture of gratitude and responsibility and fortune, so gratitude that one has gotten the ability or has gotten the opportunity to find themselves in a situation like we had and the responsibility to do something with it.

Danny:

Yeah, well, so—

Marin:

Not to lay it to waste, yeah.

Danny:

So this whole thing is a great story, but you were talking about in your freshman year, it took you three hours to go through that. Psychology isn’t exactly the easiest thing to go through anyway, so we’ll start with that. But after college, what did you do? How did you start, and what did that growth track look like?

Marin:

Yeah, great. So I grew up in a family of scientists. My folks were PhDs in chemical engineering. I, for one, was incredibly, very scientifically inclined throughout my whole adolescent and early life. I was on a very firm path to be a physicist. In fact, that was what I was going to declare as a major after that freshman semester back east where I went to school. And I changed my mind. I discovered an affinity for business which, certainly I had always had, but we were in a different economy. We were in a different world back in Bulgaria under the iron curtain, and that wasn’t viable and, so, I always had that affinity. I just sort of changed gears and said, “Listen, I’m going to change. I’m not going to do physics. I’m going to do finance,” finance and accounting and just a general business focus for my career.

Danny:

Excellent. I find that fascinating. I love hearing these stories. My grandparents have some similar stories, and it’s always– I feel thankful just hearing– You’re right; we have so many opportunities, and we take this for granted or sometimes can take it for granted. We need to be appreciative and be thankful and actually have that responsibility, the duty to do something with it. Looks like you have done something with it. I’m sure you’ve done a few things. Tell me a little bit now, as you transitioned a bit more into this space. Obviously, we have this COVID situation. We have digital transformation disruption that’s happening. It’s being accelerated. I’m hearing from people saying, I think we’ve been pushed, maybe, five years, if not more, out of necessity. What are some of these big challenges that you’re seeing in the industry right now? I think maybe, specifically, with some fulfillment issues and sorting and picking. You were mentioning that you guys have some experience in that.

Marin:

Yeah, challenges, and I would actually probably look at them as, or I do look at them, much more from the angle of, actually, tremendous opportunities ahead of us. What we’re seeing in industries, yeah, look, the pandemic’s been a tremendous catalyst to the growth of certain segments within the industry like ecommerce versus brick-and-mortar businesses. And, so, all of our customers are, most all of our customers are retailers with brick-and-mortar presence as well as ecomm business. And, so, what we’re seeing is certainly a very significant shift in that proportion of ecommerce growing by leaps and bounds since the pandemic unfolded. And that’s creating, we’re deserving unprecedented levels, far beyond what we had seen previously in any peaks. We’ve been in, I should mention, we’ve been in production for almost three years with some of our customers and with a growing fleet throughout that period of time. And, so, we’ve been through a few peaks. We’ve been through three peaks now. And every peak’s been more and more busy, and there’s been a growth in ecomm just generally in proportion to overall business. And this has just catalyzed it to a very different level. So I see opportunity there with us to capture that growth potential and to continue helping our customers with the excellence that we committed to provide in the way of service. And to scale, to scale ahead of that growth that we see that we’re in the midst of and that we see continuing indefinitely.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. I think right now, what we’re hearing as well, is just, the big– there’s a big, big word. I think right now, it’s probably just uncertainty, so the ability for actual resource planning, the ability from demand forecast, right now, it’s incredibly difficult. I was talking earlier, we had another interview earlier today. We were talking about, obviously, looking at, sourcing suppliers. You’ve got offshore suppliers in China, Asia, and everywhere else. And everyone’s scrutinizing their supply chain right now, looking at saying, “Wow, we really need to make sure we have depth in our chart,” so to speak–I’ll pull some football terminology here–to make sure that we’ve got a diverse portfolio so that if we have a major disruption, that we’re able to respond.

But at the same time, you’re also looking at it from a forecasting and demand standpoint to be able to say, “My gosh, we have no idea if we’re going to have–” hopefully, we’re not going to have a return of what we did in February and March where, from a retail, specifically let’s say on groceries, standpoint, and other products and services, massive runs and having inventory issues. So these giant spikes and, then, these drops, but having no way of being able to really forecast. Unlike, we’re mentioning ecommerce. Okay, well, actually, this is a great example right now. What is Black Friday going to look like this year? Who knows? It could be off the charts. Obviously, there’s been a huge growth trend for the last several years. But is there going to be a certain amount of fatigue? Is it going to be huge? What does the economics look like? Obviously, we have an election coming up. These are major, major things. What are your thoughts? Loaded question.

Marin:

Yeah, no, it’s an interesting environment. We’re small; we’re a nimble start-up. We have just shy of 100 employees across, between two offices in San Francisco and Toronto. So even pre-pandemic, we were very nimble and flexible with respect to how we work with one another, obviously 2500 miles apart. And, so, we are trying to be very nimble and flexible and respond to the market forces as real-time as we can. That being said, we’re preparing for a big peak season this year. We’re seeing that, with many of our customers, there’s still some backlogs with respect to COVID peak, shall we call it?

Danny:

Yeah.

Marin:

It’s been a prolonged peak. We’re seeing a major shift towards ecommerce activity and boost in that channel for businesses. And, so, there’s no reason to believe that this upcoming peak would be any abatement from that, or at least we’re not banking on it. We’re preparing for a big peak this year, and we’re trying to, we’re doing everything we can to stay ahead of it and prepare and serve our customers with the right excellence and service that we’ve signed up to do.

Danny:

Now, that sounds great. One question, and we get asked about this, especially as we’re looking at new technology and certainly when you hear AI, machine learning, all these really cool, exciting terms. From a practical standpoint, how are you able to help manufacturers or helping in the distribution centers or any type of fulfillment activity? How do you guys tangibly– what does that look like? How do you actually employ AI to solve some of these challenges?

Marin:

Yeah, so, and again, I’ll bifurcate the answer into pre-COVID and now timeframe because a lot of the trends and discussions are about what a catalyst the pandemic has been with respect to automation. But the reality is that, again, we’ve been in operation and in production with a growing fleet for the preceding almost three years prior to this pandemic. And, so, we’ve been watching these trends unfold pre-pandemic which is that, with growing ecommerce volumes and activity and just in general with the growth of that channel as a business from any of our customers, it’s just simply been hard to overcome labor shortages, whether that’s due to weather, whether that’s due to sickness and other illnesses and issues, or whether that’s due to local labor market shortages, it’s one of those aspects where our robotics system, which we call SORT, our AI-powered robotics system SORT, basically steps in to fill in that void and help with productivity in collaboration with humans on the floor and increase that productivity for fulfillment centers. The nuts and bolts of it are that our robots, through their artificial intelligence-powered machine vision, and, again, grasp and stow capabilities, effectively do the most mundane, repetitive set of tasks that otherwise, in history, humans would have done. And, so, SORT complete end-customer orders that are, then, packed out by associates of our customers.

So what we’re having is a very different way that humans collaborate with machines that we haven’t had before, even a decade ago, let alone prior to that. And, so, today, in many of our customers, what’s fascinating to me and incredibly endearing is that, many of our customers, those associates actually anthropomorphize their robots. They call it “my robot.” They name them. A customer associate could work alongside three to four robots and help, basically, effectively, supervise three to four robots at the same time. And they take ownership for those robots. Like I said, they name them. They have friendly competitions with others in the fleet. And, so, it’s a pretty neat thing to see how humans and robots who do the mundane and repetitive work, work alongside one another to make for a more engaging, basically, work for the humans in that environment.

Danny:

So I’m going to ask you a question that I ask–we’ve talked to a lot of different robotics and technology-type companies, and, obviously, the number one question– I think it’s the number one question that we hear, and I’m sure that you hear as well– is, are robots taking over jobs? Are they going to push people out?

Marin:

No, no. Well, I’ll speak to us. I won’t speak to other robotics companies or other robotics systems. With respect to Kindred AI, our robots are designed to work alongside humans. They require humans in the loop. They’re collaborative in nature in that respect. On one hand, I’ll say we’re incredibly proud of the solution we’ve designed and developed over the years. We were founded in 2014. We made our commercial debut in 2017, and we’ve been in production since. And we’ve been fine-tuning and refining the speed, accuracy, and reliability of our systems since then, and we’ll continue to do so. And, so, today, I’m incredibly proud to share that our robotics systems are over 99% autonomous within what they do, but they need humans in the loop in order for the whole function, for the whole cycle to be completed. Without a customer associate supervising and managing those robots, the whole situation comes into a halt within hours. So we absolutely need humans in the loop, and that’s the design. The design is to have a collaborative system that creates a safer, frankly, particularly in the COVID era, safer, more healthy environment for those workers at our customer sites to operate alongside our robots while increasing throughput and productivity.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. So pull out your crystal ball for a second for me. What’s the future look like? Where are we going?

Marin:

I wish I had one, but I would think that–look, these trends that we are observing and the vector that we’re on, it’s safe to probably conclude that it’s here to stay in that this pandemic has been a major tide in that harbor that’s not going to abate in the future with respect to requirements and desire for automation and with respect to the growth of certain trends within the industry like the proportion of ecommerce. It’s simply safer for folks to shop online from their homes. That’s just going to continue into the future with certain growth vector of its own, whether we come out of the COVID pandemic next year or whenever, I think that trend is here to stay. And, so, I think the name of this game is more automation and smarter ways to address these complex problems that many of our customers are seeing.

Danny:

Excellent, Well, listen, I could probably go on all day, just talking about– I’m fascinated by everything and all of the changes that are happening, specifically in this field in regards to all the digital transformation and all the technology and all the solutions that are rolling out. It fascinates me, and it’s exciting. So thank you for taking time out of your day to spend some time with us here at IndustrialSage. For those who would love to learn more about Kindred AI, what’s the–you got a website we can go to and check you guys out?

Marin:

Yeah, www.kindred.ai.

Danny:

Perfect–I don’t think it could be any easier than that. So, yeah, for those who are interested, go check out kindred.ai. And, again, thank you so much for your time today and your insights.

Marin:

Danny, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Have a great day. Cheers.

Danny:

Thanks, you too. Well, there you go, another great episode with the IndustrialSage Executive Series. It was just a great story. I loved hearing his story just about how he came in and all of the… some of the struggles and the challenges of going through and how he’s drawn a lot, from a formative standpoint, from that experience. Anyways, and a lot of other great nuggets, talking about robotics and AI and how that is disrupting the industry as we know it, and that ecommerce–we’ve been hearing that a lot–that’s the future, and that’s where things are going. So super exciting and interesting there.

Hey, so listen, if you are not on our email list, I highly encourage you. You need to go to IndustrialSage.com right now, and you need to subscribe to get on our email list or lists because you’re missing out. And you’re missing out on great content like this. We have other things. We have other shows that are coming out soon. We’ve got news and all kinds of content that you don’t want to be missing because things are changing so quickly, you need to hear from other companies. You need to hear from other leaders. What are they doing? How can you bring that into your organization? How can you solve some of these challenges from an operational standpoint, from a lead gen, sales, and other areas? So, hey, don’t miss out. Go do that, if you haven’t. If you have already, thanks, awesome. So I will be back next week with another episode on IndustrialSage. I’m Danny Gonzales. Thanks for watching or listening. Bye.

 

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