Dan Wright, CEO Armada | Trae Stephens Next Big Bet

Today Molly O'Shea speaks with Dan Wright https://www.linkedin.com/in/wrightdh/, CEO of Armada https://www.armada.ai/, backed with $100M to date from notable investors like Trae Stephens from Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Lux, Dragon Global, Microsoft’s M12, 8VC, Shield Capital, among others. Armada is a leading edge computing company deploying servers for advanced AI applications in remote locations. More impressively, this company barely started 2 years ago and has been out of stealth for less than a year, while achieving critical milestones like partnerships with Starlink, Skydio, Hallibutron, and more, we’ll discuss shortly. Dan is a remarkable figure in the world of data coming from key executive positions at DataRobot and AppDynamics, while Armada’s COO Jon Runyan https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-runyan-3868a6/ led Okta through its IPO, and CTO Pradeep Nair https://www.linkedin.com/in/pradeepnair83/ was VP of MSFT Azure. This is a great sneak peek into the early innings of one of the next most important rocket ship companies in technology. Disclosure: The Fund Molly works for is an investor in Armada -- Follow on Twitter https://x.com/MollySOShea https://x.com/danwrightsf -- Check out Armada https://www.armada.ai/ -- Subscribe to Sourcery: https://www.sourcery.vc/ -- Sponsor: Archer Archer's Midnight is a piloted four passenger aircraft designed to perform rapid back-to-back flights with minimal charge time between flights. Learn more about how Archer is set to open up a new world of opportunity for passengers by providing safe and efficient access to people, places, and events across the communities they live, visit https://www.archer.com/ –- COMPANIES MENTIONED: Founders Fund: https://www.foundersfund.com 137 Ventures: https://www.137ventures.com Starlink: https://www.starlink.com Microsoft Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com DataRobot: https://www.datarobot.com AppDynamics: https://www.appdynamics.com Okta: https://www.okta.com Halliburton: https://www.halliburton.com Skydio: https://www.skydio.com Cisco: https://www.cisco.com Palantir: https://www.palantir.com Anderol: https://www.anderol.com Rippling: https://www.rippling.com Ramp: https://www.ramp.com Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com OpenAI: https://www.openai.com Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com Databricks: https://www.databricks.com Cockroach Labs: https://www.cockroachlabs.com Metronome: https://www.metronome.com -- TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Introduction & Founding of Armada (01:29) The Role of Early Investors (02:52) Recruiting Top Talent (04:34) Armada's Product Suite: Connect, Edge, and OpsAI (07:55) The Galleon: Design and Engineering (09:58) The Marketplace and Partner Ecosystem (12:30) Building vs. Partnering for AI Applications (14:20) Go-to-Market Strategy and Global Expansion (16:46) The Go-to-Market Team and Hiring Philosophy (18:24) Pitching to Public and Private Sectors (21:01) Addressing the Market's White Space (22:42) Key Partnerships and Building a Moat (24:02) Sourcing Hardware and Scaling Production (25:51) Growth Strategies Across Companies (27:52) Capital Allocation and Milestones (30:39) Crazy Edge Cases, Team Expansion, and Hiring Priorities (33:33) Wrap (34:00) Post-Interview Advertisement RECOMMENDED PODCAST: 🎙️ Unpack Pricing Dive into the dark arts of SaaS pricing with Metronome CEO Scott Woody and tech leaders. Learn how strategic pricing drives explosive revenue growth in today's biggest companies like Snowflake, Cockroach Labs, Dropbox and more. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1765716600 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/38DK3W1Fq1xxQalhDSueFg

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Molly O'Shea?

  Dan, thank you for joining us.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. Good to see you, Molly.

• 0:03Molly O'Shea?

  Great to see you as well. To start off, Armada was founded in 2022. You're barely two years old. And the founding of the company involves some pretty key figures in Silicon Valley. Number one, we have Trey Stevens of Founders Fund and Andurall. And number two, we have Christian Garrett and the team at 137 Ventures. So I have to ask, how did you guys get together?

• 0:24Speaker 01

  It actually started as more of a friend conversation where we were talking about things that were changing in the world, specifically a few macro trends. One is Starlink rapidly bringing connectivity to all these remote austere locations. The second is just the explosion of IOT with the cost of cameras, sensors, drones and robots going down 10x in the last five years. And then the third is in the wake of ChatGPT, everybody trying to figure out, how do I use large language, multimodal and predictive AI models in operations as opposed to just for customer support or for coding? And Armada just seemed like inevitable, like we needed to have infrastructure

• 1:08Speaker 01

  in these remote locations to enable that and to sort of complete the rest of the compute stack along with, you know, Starlink and the other satellite ASPs that are bringing the connectivity to all these remote parts of the world.

• 1:29Molly O'Shea?

  So how did Trey and Christian help set the early foundation of all of this?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  So Trey and I have been friends for a really long time and we just were kind of kicking this around as an idea of something sort of that the world needed that it didn't have yet. Trey, at the time, was writing his article, which I would highly recommend, called Choose Good Quests. And as I was thinking about my next thing, Armada seemed to both of us like a good quest. It was something that was worth spending a lot of time on and trying to make work. And, you know, if the company succeeds, the world's going to be a lot better placed for it. And so we both got just sort of captivated by the idea. Fired by the idea, decided to work on it together. Trey led our seed round along with Lux and Shield.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  And then Christian and also Justin Fischner-Wolson and Alex Jacobson from 137 were really important as well. They helped us to really think through, you know, what are the partnerships that we're going to need to make it work? Actually, like, worked on a financial model with us early days. Worked on kind of an early deck that we were doing to sort of iterate on the concept. And then, you know, also helped us to meet some of the right people at Starlink to enable that partnership, which has been a great partnership for us. So they've both been extremely critical from the earliest stages of the company.

• 2:52Molly O'Shea?

  You've managed to recruit top 1% talent. You led app dynamics and data robot. Your COO, John Runyan, led Okta through the IPO. And your CTO, Pradeep Nair, was VP of Microsoft Azure. How did this team form and what was your recruiting strategy for them?

• 3:10Speaker 01

  The unique thing about Armada is that the mission is so big. The mission is to bridge the digital divide. And when I started to talk to John and to Pradeep and to others that we brought in the company, they were just inspired by the mission of the company the same way that I was and saw that there was a real need and nobody else is doing it. That's one thing that we talked about from the beginning, the three of us, is that like the problems that exist at the edge, whether you're talking about the public sector where you've got remote battlefields, where you have to make split-second life or death decisions, or you're talking about, you know, responding to hurricanes or to avalanches like we were doing with the state of Alaska. Or you're talking in the private sector about, you know,

• 3:54Speaker 01

  oil and gas companies that have oil rigs in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico or the middle of rural parts of Canada or Kazakhstan, where they don't have any infrastructure and all this data is sort of trapped. And you can prevent, you know, accidents that cause people getting hurt or even dying. You can prevent oil spills in the middle of the ocean. And the same thing's true in mining and manufacturing and logistics, whether you're talking about trains or maritime companies. And so we all just saw that there was This massive need and nobody else was going to be able to do it and felt like we needed to do it. And, you know, I think that's a special thing about our company. Everybody that joins is really committed to the mission and, you know, we've been able to get some of the best talent as a result of that.

• 4:34Molly O'Shea?

  It's excellent. It's really fun to watch. Before we go too deep, we need to talk about the product. The product is extensive. It's a full stack edge computing platform. It includes three products, Connect, Edge and Ops AI. So what are each of these products and how do they work together?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we are building full stack, which is another thing that's a little different about Armada. And we have a platform which we call Commander. Everything is in the Armada theme, so you'll spot a common theme throughout all of our products. The first product is called Connect. And Connect is a SaaS product that allows us to connect into all the different data sources that our customers are using, all the different IoT devices, as well as any connectivity that they're using. So we can plug into obviously Starlink, but also other satellite connectivity that they might be using. We can plug into any cameras, sensors, drones, robots that they're using.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  And then what we get is a lot of data about how much data are they producing in what locations? And then the, the second product is a, is a natural extension to that, which is called Edge. And it's the same exact platform, same exact user interface, but it also includes these modular ruggedized mobile data centers, which are sort of undescribably cool until you see them and they're called galleons. And that's really when I think customers can see just insane amounts of value because you can process all that data that's trapped at the edge, that's being generated at the edge much more efficiently. You can actually do it at significantly lower cost when you look at the total cost.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  You also have lower latency, more security, and also a lot of these companies have data sovereignty concerns. And so it meets all those needs. And then each one of those is like a node in your own distributed cloud. For the edge and you can send any metadata back to any cloud, any public cloud you would like or to another data center. And so we are sort of one stop shopping for the edge. And then, you know, obviously the cloud is going to continue to be critical for everything else. And then the third product is Ops AI. And Ops AI is really unique in this sense. We're taking all of that data, largely unstructured data that's being generated from all those different data sources.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  We're training models in the cloud and you can actually run Ops AI in the cloud, these different applications. Like there's one that we actually just launched last week called Ops Safety that people are quite excited about, where we're doing real time monitoring for safety for industrials, but also for public safety and different applications in the public sector. And you can take that, you can train it in the cloud, but then what's really different about us is you can run it at the edge. And so that solves all those problems that I was talking about where you're getting real time intelligence to make better operational decisions and it's much more cost effective than trying to run that in other ways. And so it's a really good solution. And there's also a marketplace that's again, one stop shopping for the edge.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  So you can buy connectivity, you can buy Starlink directly from us, both the terminals and the plans, but you can also buy cameras and sensors and drones and then different first party and third party software and AI applications that you want to use at the edge.

• 7:51Molly O'Shea?

  Certainly full stack. That's a lot.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  We're not bored. We have quite a bit to build.

• 7:55Molly O'Shea?

  I can't imagine you'll be bored with that much work. On the Galleon, the Galleon sounds awesome. I know it's incredibly comprehensive. Some would say bulletproof, some would say particle proof, maybe, probably it's both. What kind of factors do you have to consider for building the Galleon? And making sure that it can withstand these very like sensitive environments on remote locations?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we knew from day one that these were going to the most hostile environments in the world. You know, they needed to be able to stand up in the hottest deserts and in, you know, Antarctica. If the situation calls for it as well as like the middle of the ocean. And they also need to be able to move around. And that's something that's different because the mobility is a huge feature for a lot of these different use cases. And so. We have built them to, one, you know, they're designed to just sort of work, be plug and play anywhere in the world. If you have power that's available, we can use any power source. We can put them on most every surface. They can move around as needed. You can keep them permanently

• 9:01Speaker 01

  mobile if you want. And then they're designed to hold up for decades with very little maintenance. Because, you know, the people that exist, the people that are working on the oil rigs in the mines, you know, on the battlefields, they are not IT people and they don't want to be IT people. They want to just do their job and use their data to do their job better. Right? And so that's what we're enabling and delivering at the edge. And we have designed it also for massive scale. One thing that we really focused on in building our team is we have best in class talent at every layer of the stack, like top 1% talent from hardware to software to AI. And that talent also has operated at massive scale.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  And so every component that we use is something that we know can scale to not just 10 or hundreds of galleons, but thousands or tens of thousands of galleons, which is what we're going to need in order to fulfill our mission and actually build, you know, the cloud for the edge.

• 9:58Molly O'Shea?

  Wow. I'm quite curious about the marketplace because that sounds like a lot of bells and whistles. But it also sounds pretty instrumental to the total package. So what kind of role does that play in terms of the stack?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny. I remember talking to some of my VC friends and they're like, you're building a marketplace from day one? Like, nobody does that. And nobody also builds their platform to be ISO and SOC certified out of the gate, but we did that too. And the reason is we knew that both those things were going to be really, really important for the customers that we're dealing with. What, what the market told us from the very beginning is that they, that it wants this one stop shop for the edge and nobody else is doing it. And also, you know, my CTO, Pradeep Nair, our founding CTO, he was one of the critical, like founding engineers that built Azure at Microsoft. So he had seen this play out with Azure.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  That you know, the marketplace was critical to its growth, where people could use the cloud for a lot of different use cases, a lot of different applications. And they knew that if they went to the marketplace, they could find everything that they would want to use. Well, we need to do the same thing for the edge. You know, it's very similar. And so we do that is really important. We are constantly on the lookout for marketplace partners, you know, with op safety, we built our own, um, you know, application for this critical safety use case at the edge. But as much as possible, we're looking to partner. And you know, the analogy I draw for people is Apple with the iPhone, you know, when you, when the iPhone

• 11:32Speaker 01

  first came out, Apple delivered some applications itself to show what's possible. Once you put this thing in people's hands. But then, you know, what they did is they opened up this ecosystem where everybody's developing their own applications for consumers. And the way that I see the world, we're doing the same thing for all these organizations that are looking to solve problems at the edge. And we want to be that one stop shop where they can come to solve all those problems. But we're gonna have to do it through partners. And so we're, we're always looking for the latest and greatest, you know, drone or sensor company where we can help with distribution through our marketplace, make that available for customers, and then it automatically shows up in our fleet map, which is the, the

• 12:15Speaker 01

  front page to commander, our operating system and kind of the, the UI. But we're also looking for, you know, the latest hot AI application company that wants to build apps on top of our stack to solve these important problems at the edge.

• 12:29Molly O'Shea?

  Of course, we need more AI. And given there is a lot of AI, I'm, I'm really interested to know why you guys decided to build out your own application with op safety and not work with someone on that. Like, are you going to be building more custom ones?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  We have the same strategy with every AI application, which is we look on the market and we say, if the problem's important enough, right? If it's coming up from customers and they're like, this is not a nice to have, this is critical. We look on the market and we say, is anybody else doing this? Like, who can we partner with? Because the last thing we want to do is reinvent the wheel. We want to scale and so we're going to partner as much as possible. But if the problem is big enough and nobody's built a solution for it, that we can just integrate and run on top of our platform, then it's like we have to build it because we have to solve the problem. And so, you know, that's the way that we're approaching it. We're always looking to partner first, but if the problem's big enough and nobody else is solving it, you know, we have the team to do it ourselves.

• 13:22Molly O'Shea?

  So why is no one else solving it? I mean, edge computing is not new and large traditional data providers have been around for quite some time. So why is there such a white space?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  There's always been a blocker to AI at the edge, which is the, the infra, the infrastructure. And so I think a lot of people never even really thought about these problems or how they could solve them with the data that's trapped at the edge. But once you have the infrastructure there, it's actually amazing. Suddenly you start thinking about thousands of use cases. And as much as possible, we're looking to partner with companies that want to go after those use cases. So if you are an innovative tech company that wants to work with us, please reach out, but sometimes we have to do it ourselves. And I think it will kind of evolve like the iPhone did with, with Apple, which is once you start to show what's possible and like the big problems that can be solved now that this infrastructure is at the edge, suddenly everybody's going to be popping up, all these developers wanting to build on top of our stack

• 14:18Speaker 01

  and solve more problems for customers.

• 14:19Molly O'Shea?

  Right. And not only is your product strategy incredibly ambitious and aggressive, I would say for not even being two years old, but your go to market strategy is pretty impressive at your stage as well. Could you share more about how many countries you're currently in and what the strategy is there for growth?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're expanding fast that way. So we're now into it, it's approaching 50 countries. But we have like a very clear strategy, which is, you know, we're sort of following Starlink's growth, right? Wherever Starlink goes, that means that suddenly it's a new world of possibilities. All those macro trends that I talked about are taking hold. And so we, we need to go there to complete the rest of the computer stack to solve these problems. So I think for us, we always knew that we were going to be a global company. You know, the, the mission of the company again is to bridge the digital divide and that is not. One area problem, that is a world problem. And so we're going to cover the entire world at some point. The, the, the way that we are approaching things is interesting.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  We talk a lot about the remote edge being where we focus. And the remote edge is everything that is beyond, you know, public 5G and 4G networks, everything that's beyond the current cloud networks, uh, where now there's connectivity via Starlink or, or otherwise, and we can complete the rest of the compute stack. And that happens to be about 70% of the world. And it happens to be where a lot of the data is. And Gartner says by 2025, 75% of all data is going to be generated at the edge. So that's a massive opportunity, but for us to really establish ourselves as the company for the edge, which is our aspiration, uh, we're going to have to be a global company.

• 15:59Molly O'Shea?

  Makes sense. That is a lot of data. Hey, we'll get right back to the conversation after a word from our sponsor. Sorcery is brought to you by Archer. I'm genuinely amazed at what Archer has been able to accomplish. Archer's goal is to transform urban travel, replacing 60 to 90 minute car commutes with estimated 10 to 20 minute electric air taxi flights. They are safe, sustainable, low noise and cost competitive with ground transportation. Archer's Midnight is a piloted four passenger aircraft designed to perform rapid back-to-back flights with minimal charge time between flights. Learn more about how Archer is set to open up a new world of opportunity for passengers by providing safe and efficient access to people, places and events across the communities they live.

• 16:44Molly O'Shea?

  Visit Archer.com. And so who's the team behind your go-to-market strategy? Cause I can only assume you have to really get in the weeds there and have some one percenters.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have a, a really amazing team that's joined the company. I, I kinda wake up every day, super fired up about the mission of the company and then just like the team that has gathered around the mission. It's like the Avengers for the edge. It's pretty cool. And, um, on the go-to-market side, we have a bunch of top talent. Uh, you know, one example of this is Chris Vasquez, who was like employee number, Chris, don't get mad at me. I think you were employee number four at the company. He actually was at SpaceX for a decade before. He joined us. He leads customer experience for us. Make sure that every customer that joins has like a white glove, beautiful experience that makes them want to do more with us. And we also have great go-to-market talent.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  We have Nordine who joined us actually fairly recently to run international go-to-market out of Dubai. I worked with Nordine at Data Robot, my previous company, and he's truly world-class. And then Vlada Barlow, who joined us really early on, is like a force of nature. She's really been critical for all the high-impact work that we're doing in the public sector. And she also runs some of our most strategic opportunities at the company, just to name a couple of people. But we really focus on setting the bar extremely high for everybody that we bring into the company. I'm a big believer that it's not about the amount of people, it's about the quality of people that you have and how bought in they are to the mission.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  And you know, if you get the right team that's top 1% and you know, really, you know, inspired by the mission and then we all work extremely hard together, we're going to be successful.

• 18:24Molly O'Shea?

  The bar is certainly high. That's an exceptional team. Given that you are going after public and private sectors, how does the pitch change?

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, great question. The products are the same. So that was a really important part of our strategy is we do not want to build bespoke solutions that only apply to like one customer. We don't do that. And as much as possible, we would try to make sure that we're focusing on industries or in the public sector areas where we can sell customers a few different products, all of our products, right? And solve multiple problems because that's how you can build a really, really big company that stands the test of time. And you know, in terms of how we position that, we do, you know, sort of package it by the person or the industry that we're talking to. And so we do tailor our messaging, whether we're talking to a manufacturing company or a logistics company or an energy company.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  It is a little bit different, but the underlying technology is pretty much the same. So as an example, I mentioned that we do work with large energy companies, like some of the largest in the world. And so think about oil and gas companies that might have oil rigs in In the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, they might have them in some remote desert, you know, in the North Sea. And they've never had infrastructure to be able to do things like automated drilling, 24/7 monitoring for safety or for emissions issues. And, you know, if you take like a scenario where there's a rig in the middle of the ocean, literally today, they have to have helicopters fly out and, you know, survey it twice a day.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  They have, you know, very manual reports that they have to create for every single rig called well reports. And all of this is happening in a way that frankly feels like it has to be updated. Like you have to automate some of these things. And when you do that, it's way more efficient. You avoid, you know, sort of, they call them non-production days where the rigs shut down when something bad happens, which can impact literally billions of dollars and save people's lives. And so what we do is we enable all of these different applications. And I'd say this is where it's a little bit different by industry. There are especially third-party applications, like for example, the ones that Halliburton builds with its landmark suite of applications for automated drilling,

• 20:42Speaker 01

  where we're not building it, Halliburton's building it, but we're enabling it through our infrastructure and through our platform to run in these remote locations. And so we talk about it together. And you'll see the same thing with the partners that we have in mining and in manufacturing and in logistics. And then also in the the public sector as well.

• 21:01Molly O'Shea?

  Would you say that you're one of the first partners for these legacy industries to actually start activating their data and using AI? Have they been trying? Have they been looking at other things? What has the progression been like for them and their discovery? Or at least like approach into getting into more AI?

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, one reason why I knew that we were on to something with Armada is that when I was talking to companies that I'd worked with at my previous companies that I built, I was hearing from them that they actually were trying to do this themselves. And they were running into like massive scale issues. And they'd have, you know, some, some servers in a closet somewhere. They'd be throwing some GPUs over there and then they We're trying to like B I T people, but that's not their thing, right? They don't want to be I T people. They want to be, you know, people that are solving a problem that are, you know, producing energy that we all depend on, that are producing raw minerals, that are producing, you know, products that we love or that are saving lives, you know, from firefighters to first responders to people, you know, to soldiers, right?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  So we don't want them to have to be I T people. And we're helping them kind of take away all that complexity and giving them a scalable solution that they can just use. And it just works when they need it to. And what was really interesting to me when I looked into this is that there really was no company that was doing anything like this. And when I was talking to Trey about it, he said, yeah, that's a good sign. Because usually the best, you know, the best companies are ones where there is no real competitor. If you're trying to copy what somebody else is doing, you're already losing. If you're doing something that nobody else is doing and everybody's going to have to try to copy you, then you're you're in the right spot.

• 22:42Molly O'Shea?

  I think you're in the right spot. I know that you also have some critical key partnerships very early on in the company, like Skydio and Starlink, Halliburton. How have these fortified Armada's flywheel and moat? What role do they play and what would the dream partnerships be?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, with these industries that we're dealing with, these are like the industries that form the backbone of the economy. And so they're they're not new, right? Like, if you take Halliburton, for example, they've been at it for over 100 years. And they're used widely by many of the top energy companies in the world. And the same is true with a lot of our other partners. And so for us to build the relationships that they already have with all of those companies, it would take us decades. But I really believe that like the company in this space that's going to be the market leader for generations to come is going to establish itself in the next few years. And so we have to partner. We have to partner to speed that up.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And then the way I look at these partnerships is each one of them becomes a moat. You know, each one of them gives us an advantage versus anybody else who would try to do this in the future. And so it's been a key part of our Our strategy from the very beginning, they can help us with distribution, they can help us solve more problems for customers. And then it's also, you know, a moat that we can use to have sustainable growth over the long term.

• 24:02Molly O'Shea?

  We love flywheels and moats. I'm sure many are interested in how you're building up the galleon with racks in a very resource, quote unquote, resource constrained environment. Did you pull an Elon Musk and get a super cluster in 19 days? How have you been able to source your GPUs and build up the racks?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  I mean, nobody's Elon.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  No, but we are very focused on being able to scale up extremely quickly. Like, I think that is part of our value proposition. There's kind of this AI gold rush that's going on around the world. And the one advantage of doing these like modular mobile data centers is that you can get to the point where you have continuous manufacturing lines in different parts of the world. And then you can also park them. You don't have to necessarily deal with years of construction and permits. And so you can scale up that infrastructure, you know. Our goal is to be able to go from order to delivery in 60 days anywhere in the world. That's what we're trying to do. And so the way that we've done that is through partnerships. We have partnerships with all the GPU providers.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  We have partnerships with all the CPU providers. We have partnerships with everybody who provides every component that we have in these galleons. And that is what's going to enable us to scale. Again, it would be one thing if we were just trying to build a company that would serve like one market. But that is not the company that we set out to build, and that's not our strategy. And so we have to build with the idea being that, again, anywhere in the world, we can deliver these galleons in 60 days. They have to just work and there has to be like very little to no maintenance. So extremely challenging, but you know, when we do it, it's going to be, I think, a business that unlocks a huge amount of value for customers and that's sustainable for the long term.

• 25:51Molly O'Shea?

  Have you had similar growth trajectories or at least strategies at your previous companies? Given that you've been a part of some really large data companies, how are you handling this?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  I mean, all three companies that I've worked at. So the first was AppDynamics, second was Data Robot, and the third now is Armada. They were all platform companies, but I think what's a little bit different about Armada is that we have really thought about the entire platform from the start. In the other two companies, it was more like it started with a flagship product with AppDynamics, you know, is very focused on application performance management. And then we went more into business analytics as we were getting ready to go public. And then, of course, Cisco bought us for 3.7 billion two days before the IPO. And then with Data Robot, it was AutoML was the thing. And then we went into ML Ops and AI Ops in different areas.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  And with this one, we actually really got a lot of feedback from customers early on that they were looking for a platform. They were looking for a company that would solve multiple problems and be able to meet them where they're at. Where if they're ready for AI at the edge, we can solve that problem for them full stack. But if they just want help with their connectivity, we can do that, too. And so it actually was very, very natural. And then I also, I think we are also students of the game and I looked at lots of other companies that I admire. And they had kind of a similar approach where they were building platform companies almost from the start, ranging from, you know, Palantir and Anduril to, you know, Rippling and Ramp.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of, you know, companies and I think almost like the new breed of companies, the new breed of startups is still starting to think about, you know, this is, you know, a real feature, not a bug. If you can build a platform company that solves lots of different problems for customers, then that becomes also a moat for you because anybody who just tries to build a point solution, it's not going to be as compelling and you can kind of consolidate all of that spend from these customers.

• 27:52Molly O'Shea?

  That's crazy. Not only are you scaling fast, but with this, you do need to raise a lot of money. You've raised a considerable amount of money. You've raised $100 million to date. The last round included a $43 million Series A extension. What milestones are you looking to hit with this capital? I would assume they're relatively Short.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny how that round came together. Microsoft had reached out and at the time, we'd been preempted for the previous round. So we didn't need any capital. We have plenty of capital. But we thought that the synergy with Microsoft was pretty compelling. And we have a partnership with them where we're going to market together. You know, Azure customers can use their credits on any of our products, which is really nice for the customers. And all of the products kind of work really, really well together. And so that's, that's why we did it. And in terms of like milestones, we don't think of milestones in terms of things that are like months or years out. We think of like every day, we need a new milestone. Or we move like insanely fast at Armada,

• 28:55Speaker 01

  which I think is a byproduct of just like the quality of the team that we have, but also like total clarity about what, what we're building. That is, I think, also why we can afford to be really ambitious in our plans in terms of the platform. Is we, we do not have any question what we need to build. We know exactly what we need to build. And it's just a matter of how fast that we can do it. And so, you know, example of this would be we're constantly looking for more connected assets that we can bring into the platform. What's next? A drone or camera or sensor or robot that our customers? Automated trucks, you know, like automated mining trucks. Our customers are using all of these, we call them connected assets. The more of them that we can plug in, the more problems that we can solve for our customers.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  And then those also become modes. And so we're adding connected assets like very fast. It's just one example. You know, another thing that, that we look at is what is the next problem that we can solve with different applications? And we have a whole team that's just focused on what companies, what application companies at the application layer of the stack can we partner with? And we're constantly looking for the next great company that we can bring into our platform. And it's a win, win, win. It's a win for the customer because they're getting another problem solved at the edge. It's a win for us because we're ultimately solving more problems for customers and that drives more compute. And it's a win for all these companies because we're helping them with distribution. They don't have to hire as many salespeople if we're helping them, you know, kind of sell itself, the product sell itself.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  You know, those are just a couple of examples. But for us, it's really about fulfilling the, the vision that we have for the platform and for the company. And milestones are not like a monthly or a yearly thing. They're a daily thing at Armada.

• 30:39Molly O'Shea?

  I have to ask, are there any crazy edge cases that you maybe have in the back of your mind that you want to solve?

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Edge cases, that little joke there? All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna share a story I haven't shared on any other podcast.

• 30:53Molly O'Shea?

  We got an exclusive, this is great.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  It's kind of funny. So as we were getting ready to start Armada, I, and, and literally like, I'm working with Trey on the, the term sheet and on the deck that, with John, on the deck that he can put in front of his partnership. And I am in Santiago, Chile, because my wife and I had planned like way long time ago to go to Antarctica. And we had a goal of going to all seven continents and Antarctica was the last continent. And we go down there and it ended up being an amazing trip. But one of the things that I learned is that there was literally like Starlink had just rolled out in Antarctica. And I thought, how cool would it be to have a galleon in Antarctica? You know, you could use it for research, you could use it for, you know, some really

• 31:40Speaker 01

  interesting use cases. And so I have a lot of edge use cases. I like to think about the far edge. I could say Antarctica is one example of the far edge. And then, you know, I think what is like, the, the edge is going to continue to get redefined, the oceans. And then, I mean, we have definitely talked about putting galleons in space at some point. And so that is kind of the vision of the company is that we have like a distributed cloud that covers the whole world, you know, and, and starting with these more remote locations. And so Antarctica is a good one that I think, you know, definitely qualifies as, as an edge case and definitely the edge.

• 32:14Molly O'Shea?

  That does qualify and I'm rooting for you. I hope you can get to Antarctica and I hope you can get to the moon and then to Mars.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 32:22Molly O'Shea?

  Fantastic. So as we wrap up, how are you guys expanding your team? What priorities do you look for in hiring? And what are the key categories you're, you're looking to fill?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, for us, we, we think about it in terms of just like the quality of the talent. I tell everybody that if you want to join Armada, it's easy. You just have to have three things. You have to be top 1% in the world at whatever it is that you do. You have To be all in on the mission and we don't compromise on that. If you're just like, you know, you think it's interesting, but you're not like truly inspired. Like no, you have to be all in on the mission. And third is you have to be willing to like roll up your sleeves and work super hard because we all work extremely hard at the company. And if you have those three things, welcome to Armada for a large variety of roles. I mean, we're, we're, we're hiring at every layer of the stack. Hardware talent, software talent, AI talent, you know, the best of the best.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  And also on the go to market side, as you were talking about earlier, we have the best of the best. And so if that is you, really almost regardless of a background or role, please apply. We are always looking for great people and that's what's going to allow us to fulfill this really ambitious mission that we have.

• 33:33Molly O'Shea?

  Incredible. Well, Dan, it was a pleasure to have you on and I'm really excited for you and the building of this rocket ship.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Molly. Really enjoyed the conversation and yeah, I look forward to continuing to, to share our journey here at Armada.

• 33:58Speaker 02

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