Full Transcript – Barry Lunn – Wild Business Growth Podcast #206

This is the full transcript for Episode #206 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Barry Lunn – Car Accident Preventer, Founder of Provizio. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Barry Lunn 0:00
There’s one great way to differentiate yourself from people in this industry and that’s actually build shit that works

Max Branstetter 0:20
if you build it, they will wel-come back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode 206, which was the TV channel for SportsCenter on DirecTV growing up, I’ll never forget that. And today’s guest is Barry Lunn. Barry is the Founder and CEO of Provizio – which rhymes so what’s not to like? And Provizio is an incredibly fascinating accident prevention technology company who has some really, really cool technology. That’s a mix of ai and radars and different types of radars and robotics to help prevent accidents before they happen, especially with vehicles in autonomous vehicles as you look towards the future. In addition to that, Barry has founded several startups and sold several startups being in the spaces of aerospace technology as well as security. And in this episode, we talk through identifying problems, focusing building companies around safety, creating better and more advanced and it gets more futuristic technology and his passions for LEGO and the sport of hurling. So don’t hurl. This is Barry’s podcast bootcamp. Enjoy the show.

Already, we are here with Barry Lunn doing some of the coolest and safest in tech savvy and AI focused things in the world as CEO and Founder of Provizio and before that. I guess you’re kind of busy before that as well. Many companies, very tech savvy serial entrepreneur. Barry, thank you so much for joining us today out of Limerick How you doing

Barry Lunn 2:33
tonight? It’s great to be here. Max cheers. Yeah, yeah. I’m interested to see if I can make safety sound cool. We’re about to find out, right?

Max Branstetter 2:41
Yeah, I think so. So we’re going to talk about seatbelts for the duration of that. Now. Just kidding. But I think many, many, many years ago when they invented the seatbelt, that was like a big thing in the car world in terms of safety. And obviously, it’s huge now. And now as we start to get towards autonomous vehicles, which I’m just like applauding myself because I never pronounced autonomous correctly. You are you’re like steps and steps into the future. And literally looking at cars in front of you and using AI to do that and be safe with crazy technology. So we will get into that. But I’d love to start with the fact that you left school somewhere around fifth grade. What was the reason for that?

Barry Lunn 3:22
Yeah. And look, it’s a debate, right? So if in case any of my old teachers are listening, they might say he left I think we pushed him. But yeah, I struggled in school, especially what we call our secondary school, the second level school here in Ireland. It was because what I suppose the potential that I guess teachers as well could see, but mostly me. I struggled with that more with what I could see as my potential and then my performance wasn’t matching it right. And I’ve never been much of a teacher pleaser, right. So I didn’t really care too much what they taught. But I did think a lot of what I taught and my family taught and so I really struggled in school. And with basically much later in life, I was diagnosed with dyslexia. And so there was just a slight mismatch going on at that stage. And it really just came out in those later years in school. And I just really, really struggled with it. So I dropped out. And then I went back again, and I dropped out again. And I ended up doing my kind of leaving cert as we call it here, which is your pathway to university in art and right so this is like a big exam that it all comes out. I ended up doing that year essentially by myself for a finish not attending classes, teaching myself and that worked out and that kind of got me out of that mix. And then once I went on to university that suited me an awful lot more but yeah, this school thing of me just did not mix, right.

Max Branstetter 4:48
I think you turned out okay, you’re fine. You hear about people that were, you know, dropouts in, you know, high school or college and you’re at a much younger age. And so I think And when you do that, there’s probably some, some crazy reactions that friends and family had about like, oh, you know, it’s barely gonna be okay. Like, what’s next? What was the, you know, the chatter and rumor and gossip mill around you, when you when you stopped going to school for a bit? That’s

Barry Lunn 5:14
a funny one, right? Because because again at that time I wasn’t probably performing and so I guess people didn’t have that high opinion of me anyway. Right. So they were like a bum, doing bum things, you know, that kind of way. But at the same time, like, like, I grew up in a, you know, working class Irish background, right? So it kind of didn’t like, it’s not my parents didn’t finish school or go to university or anything like that didn’t know that many people did, right. And to be fair, so it wasn’t like it. I mean, worst thing you could do is not work, right? So I had a job and I went and worked, I went into sales, actually, I followed my dad, my dad was in the in the rag trades, you know, clothes sales, and went and worked with him. So I had a job. And I was selling. And I learned a lot in that. And to be fair, that once I was doing that, you get away with a lot in Ireland, right? If you know, if you’re out there grafting, and you’re you’re going to work. In fact, it probably was going better than me, you know, getting kicked out of school and getting in trouble and doing all that stuff was like, okay, he’s working. He’s he’s going to do that. But, and it was more me, I put pressure on myself to go back, right, like there was, there was no pressure at home. I mean, I guess I would have been quite fragile mentally at that time as well, right? Because I’m struggling with that. And my parents were clever enough to go, you know, as we push him, there’s only one way, you know, this could go right. So I think that that was kind of how we all dealt with that. And to be fair, especially dyslexia. And as you mentioned, you know, lots of entrepreneurs dropped out of college and lots of actually dropped out of school as well, especially more my generation, the older ones. Because dyslexia wasn’t wasn’t known about. And then it’s quite common in entrepreneurship, that there’s a dyslexic kind of a background, because it tends to match with just the way the mind works, suits entrepreneurship, maybe, and sales. But you also get good at covering stuff up, right? And so you kind of don’t, you don’t want to be seen as a dummy. Right. And so you become really good at manipulating situations that your dyslexia doesn’t go against you. Right. And so I think that that was something I learned as well like that time as well. Not not consciously, but just, you know, you subconsciously. And I think those little things can stand you later, with this crazy world of, you know, founding companies.

Max Branstetter 7:29
Do you remember the first time that you got excited or intrigued by this idea of “entrepreneurship?”

Barry Lunn 7:38
No, I still, that day still hasn’t arrived for me, right? Like, I honestly, like entrepreneurship. I never even heard of it. Honestly, growing up, right? It just wasn’t a thing, right? You can imagine if I, in our working guys, Ireland, go down to the lads in the pub and say in here, I’m going to be an entrepreneur, that would have went down, well, then great would I get that wasn’t really my thing. But from as far back as I can remember, I just love building stuff. When I was a kid, it was LEGO rooms full of LEGO still some circuit. But building making stuff. My neighbor was a was a latronnik engineering lecturer in the local university. And he had this garage full of bits. And I got into that. And so I was always, like, even with my toys, my mother would always, I’d never had any interest in playing with them. I always like took them apart, like literally on Christmas Day, taking the schematics to pieces, and trying to build it back together. That excited me, and I suppose then I was always kind of into sales, I kind of liked selling stuff, right? And then, you know, just over time, get a dose two things mixed, kind of fit entrepreneurship, right. And I suppose. And I also, as I mentioned earlier, had that issue with authority, right? And so probably was never suited to working in a corporate environment, it wouldn’t affect it, you know, what I mean, and, and the dyslexia thing as well is, you tend to see the outcome a little earlier, they call it that from the helicopter view and dyslexic terms. And so I would always be super frustrated at the pace that people worked at. And at the same time, they’d be frustrated with me, because my mother used to say, when I was younger, I was I was building sandcastles in the sky, could I build some on the beach? You know what I mean? That it was a you know, just maybe that reality distortion field as they call it in Silicon Valley, but just always knew where I was going with something. And if people couldn’t keep pace with that, it just drove me crazy. So that kind of led to just do my own thing. And that that was kind of how I ended up in entrepreneurship was never like, Oh, I’m gonna be rich and build this huge company that was probably more afraid of that, like I wouldn’t have even contemplated that I would that wouldn’t have been an ambition, where I came from,

Max Branstetter 9:59
and looking back now So you’ve always loved building things. And now you’ve built several companies. And there’s some really cool exits in there as well. And so we don’t have the time to talk about every single one of them, although I would like to go through each and one of your your LEGO things that you’ve built. But the one that I want to hit on is your most recent, a recent one before Provizio. And that’s Arralis. This is a company that fits the mold of like, someone like myself, who is who is interested in tech, but not incredibly crazy tech savvy, who I was reading the description for the company, and I saw millimeter wave technology. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. And then I was like, okay, so what was this mean? So it’s a really, really cool company. But can you help explain exactly what you did with Arralis? Alison? What, what kind of problem that you’re attacking there?

Barry Lunn 10:50
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And by God, could we could I bore you to death with what Arralis did as well. But please,

Max Branstetter 10:57
you’re welcome to bore me to any state. You

Barry Lunn 11:00
know, obviously, I’m trying to avoid that. No, I mean, actually, the concept for Arralis was quite simple, right? In a way. I mean, the technology was super deep, higher tech, right. But the concept was pretty simple, right? So millimeter waves, high frequency electronics is becoming much more common now. Right. But it wasn’t when we set up our allies. And basically, it has been the preserve of the military complex for 30 years, right. So high frequency electronics is basically an area of frequency and where the waves are essentially millimeters in size, right, as opposed to, you know, microwaves and all that lower frequency stuff. And so we were looking my co founder, and I’m like, Please, we were looking at that space. And we’d worked in a millimeter wave for quite some time in the area defense industry. And we were going, looking at communications, right, we needed more bandwidth, right, so we were moving up into GS going from 2g to 3g, and we knew this is gonna end up with foreign 5g and they’re gonna go into higher frequencies they have to write, there was no space down there, there’s loads of space of millimeter wave, because it’s a pain in the ass to work with, right. The other side of it then was when you go up into those frequencies, you can really do some nice imaging stuff like radar, and that. So low frequency radar is kind of a blip blip that you’re used to seeing in world war two movies, right. And that hasn’t really changed in a long time. But up in high frequency, you can actually do like, literally imaging radar, right, where you start to see visually what’s going on in four dimensions. So long story short, we were saying the world is moving in that direction. But that’s that was really dominated by the defense industry, which a doesn’t really care about costs, and B scalability, you know, putting, you know, high level radars on an aircraft, right, it’s fine. You can’t put that same technology onto a car, both physically and from a cost point of view. So we were saying, right, we need to bring scale to that space. So basically, we set up the company to try and put millimeter waves onto chips, and make it more accessible to more people. But of course, what we discovered in like all things, right, and that definitely wasn’t foreseen was, yeah, that gave us a few more customers. But it was very few people could take what’s on the chip off offers, right? And so again, you end up in that niche of defense. So we broaden that by just putting a few those chips again, or making it a bit more accessible, slowly, but surely, you just got you started work back, and suddenly your systems company, and then you’re starting to do, you know, the full gamut. And that opens up lots of different customers. So I think that that was really what we did. And that’s how I ended up kind of moving towards the automotive industry, because we were one of the first to kind of bring that 4d imaging radar onto that you could put it on a vehicle that it was at that scale, but it was still ridiculous, right? It was still like the early stuff we built like, you know, AV chips in there and super expensive. But early autonomy didn’t care, right? They were like, Hey, we just let’s stick it on with the $250,000 LiDAR Don’t worry or $100,000 Raider isn’t going to upset anyone. But again, that how scalable could that be? But at that company, like I mean, like you mentioned, we sold it and all of that but it continues right with just without me. And it’s doing quite well. They’ve done some super cool stuff like they were on a satellite launch last year with super high speed interstellar communications. Like,

Max Branstetter 14:18
I mean, who who hasn’t been involved in that though? Exactly,

Barry Lunn 14:21
exactly. Who doesn’t have NASA on speed dial?

Max Branstetter 14:26
Space dial I think inventing a new technology there. Now that you’ve officially bored me to death now I’m just getting let’s get to the previous story. So as if you weren’t already up do some cool crazy cool things and you know, having NASA on speed dial and now you’re into this world of autonomous vehicles and safety and AI and it really it all goes back to safety of the people which I think is obviously an incredible goal to build a company around you alone. bid to how you got kind of segwayed into the automotive space. How about the safety space? What is it that drew you in? About? Hey, there’s there’s got to be a better way to make people safer on the roads.

Barry Lunn 15:14
Yeah, yeah. And actually, you know, we’ve led to quite nicely, right, because it was kind of automotive and autonomy came to us in Arralis. Right? Like they, they kind of picked up the phone when we want to put this military grade level radars onto vehicles. And the reason was, because the industry was failing, right? And it was failing because of the edge cases. This really intrigued me about the autonomous space because coming from an error defense background, that’s really obvious, right? The analogy I often use is like if I went to NASA or the European Space Agency tomorrow and said, right, I have this incredible idea for interstellar communications or for this radar that will go on next fillet lander, right? First thing they say is right, okay, let’s look at it. What materials can this operate in space? I’ll be like, no, no, no, no, you can’t work in space. But we’ll get at work and in Arizona, and then we’ll work out space later, right? I don’t know how long I’d last in that building. But it wouldn’t be very long, right. But that’s exactly what the autonomous vehicle industry was doing. So we were working on some of these programs. And like, I was flabbergasted like, you know, they were like going, they’d send us a document and say, These are the edge cases we can solve, right? And that’s everything. The only thing you’re actually good at is driving around in fucking circles, right? And sorry.

Max Branstetter 16:36
No, it’s the podcast has an explicit rating. So you can talk about fucking circles all you want. But that’s great. I’m just that worked as a metaphor. And literally, I know that, you know, they’re testing I’m driving in circles.

Barry Lunn 16:51
Absolutely. And then they were like going to tougher circles. And then they’re doing it all in Arizona, because it was a perfect optical environment. And I’m from Limerick in Ireland, right west coast of Ireland. sheeting rain, like all the time, we love the misery here, fog, it’s got everything. And these are the like the list of things like we can do everything except everything that is a problem, right? And so in fairness, we were brought into that, and that attracted me, right. I like her problems. And like I was going, oh, yeah, this is interesting. So let’s try and do this. And to be fair, I could see how we could do it. Again, they weren’t concerned about costs. And all that long story short, after I sold the company, I kind of took a break, and really didn’t want to do the deep tech thing started building some other stuff again, and I’m just going, but you know, you have that niggle and it just was there. And it was constantly there. And it made me this is where the ego is. And maybe it’s a bit of the Dyslexia as well of seeing the end result. But I kind of had in my head, you know what, a these guys are taking all the wrong approach. It’s not about driving around in circles, right? We actually have a huge problem in automotive. And the same edge cases these guys can’t solve autonomy is the actual same reason why we have carnage on our roads, why we have so many roads. That’s why we have so many road accidents, like all these edge cases are on reasons we crash, right. And so again, building a system that replicates the human use an optics and trying to put a brain in there just seem dumb as hell to me, because all you’re gonna do is replicate what humans are doing. So these are the things that bother me when I should be relaxed. And so I just started working on it. And going back to kind of physics first principles, which is the thing I love to do and go, actually, let’s forget any of this technology ever existed. Let’s forget the whole autonomous things. Let’s pretend that didn’t happen. If you were approaching this as a problem. If you’re approaching driving as a problem, how would that look? And in the midst of this, by the way, I had a car crash another one? Oh, my, that was probably the thing I was on my own. I don’t advanced driving courses. So I was able to save the car and bring it back. And it was it was somewhere around and seen ahead. And it was it was something like 14 crashes that day in the same stretch of road, right. But I came home and I was going right? Like, seriously, we have to be able to solve this, like, come on. And it just started working on it. I’m working on what with the sensor look like? And what would the software look like? And how would you do it? And then I was like, being obvious, the first thing you do is you’d augment human drivers. Right? You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t come out and tell all the truck drivers in America, you’re gonna be out of business, because we’re so smart down here in Silicon Valley, we’re gonna put you all over the war, and then fail, right? You’d actually go and then everyone says we don’t trust autonomy, right? And rightly so because it has been proven that these people didn’t have the best of intentions. So I started looking at it going, Yeah, you augment human and you learn from the human driver as well as trying to teach them right. So you give them the the perception and the foresight that they don’t have, right like we have weaknesses as human beings in a car that cause crashes, right? And you don’t keep blaming them you try and help them along, and that’s kind of started sketching that up. And then I went down To the smartest people I knew, right? So I’d started working with a Software Group at Carnegie Mellon Software Group. Back in my days in the autonomous industry, we were put with them by one of the big autonomy groups. They said, Oh, if you put your attack with these guys, you could solve a lot of problems. Went to them, show them what I was doing, went to the core IP team in my old company in mirallas, like the boffins there and said, Look, here’s an idea I have what if we were to try and build this by 5D perception was what I call it, right? And so you know, and I honestly, genuinely wanted them to say, Barry, this is the dumbest idea you’ve ever had go and go to the beach. And they didn’t. So all the smartest people I ever knew also, yeah, you’re onto something here. And, and they all quit what they were doing and join me. And then provisional was there all of a sudden, right? And that was it. And we said, Right, let’s, and then we started talking to the big car manufacturers in the tier ones and these guys. And to be fair, they were starting to move in that direction as well. Right? Autonomy was failing. And they were and so this was it had it opened a year, I would say. And even though they were continuing with some of that stuff, they were going Yeah, look, more better advanced driver assistance systems is certainly the way for the next 10 years. And we were going to build that it had a good audience. So that was kind of where it came from.

Max Branstetter 21:23
Not to compare you to Sir Isaac Newton. But he made me think of though, you know, the old story of Isaac Newton, like getting hit in the head with an apple falling from a tree. And then it made him think of the Laws of Motion. Same thing with Barry Lunn and getting in a car accident and kind of like triggering like, Okay, we have need to act on this now. So there you go. It’s probably the first time you’ve been prepared compared

Barry Lunn 21:44
compared to a lot worse. I’ll take that one.

Max Branstetter 21:47
Yeah, 5D Perception. What is that?

Barry Lunn 21:51
So basically, when you break down the driving problem, right, there’s certain things you need to be able to resolve, right? Like, you need to be able to operate in all weather, you need to be able to see beyond line of sight, you need to be able to see beyond, you know, cars in front of you, you need to be seeing 360 degrees, you need color and contrast. You need to be able to read signs and all that right. So those are the things you need to solve. So when you break that down, right, you need to be able to see the world in three dimensions. Firstly, right? So you have to understand where everything is along that. Then the fourth dimension, right, which is often referred to you hear a lot about 40 radar now, that’s knowing where you are, we call it slam, but it’s basically localization, where am I? Where is everything else? And where is it moving to? Right. So that’s really, and that comes built in with nicing. But radar and white radar, so big in the automotive space is because Doppler is inherent, right, so you know, the exact velocity of every object you can see. So if you could see the world in three dimensions, and then the fourth dimension is, you know, the velocity of every object in that world. And you’d see maybe on him, now, you’ve gone a long way towards resolving all this. The fifth dimension, then is the perception side, right? Making Sense of all that data. And a big part of that is the semantic data as well. So you actually need to be able to read signs, you need to be able to, you know, so it’s one thing known there’s an object going at 100 kilometers an hour, 80 meters away from you, and it’s decelerating. Right. But what is that object? You know, and that’s where that that’s the fifth dimension. That’s the perception layer. And as it was, that’s what we wanted to see, could you build the ultimate sensor that could do that, and that’s where we came up with. And it was basically, could we, so your traditional radar is two dimensional, right? So it’s basically flip out flip in, and it has a Doppler. So those are the two dimensions, right? So you can and that’s what it sees. And then your vision is kind of one dimensional, essentially. And then you fuse the two. And this is this is what’s on like, 99% of vehicles out there, you fuse the two, and then you are able, you’re getting some level of an image, and you’re getting it a Doppler and you know what it is, right. So that wouldn’t be enough. So we needed to build a four dimensional radar. And I’ve done this before, but what I wanted to do was build a completely Software Defined four dimensional radar, right, which is a completely different thing to do. So that you have this imaging radar. So you get that light, like Lidar is very popular, you get LiDAR like point cloud, but at every point in that, you know, the exact velocity and range and all that orbit, right. And then if you built it fully software defined, and I get into technical on this one, you could then fuse it at the edge right on on the sensor, you could fuse it with vision, the vision feed, and now I can apply that all that lovely color contrast data, that ability to read and extract all that I can combine that in. So now I’ve got this really unique view of the world. And when I go back to all those things, all those edge cases that I need to solve, if I get that right, I can solve all of those edge cases. So that was really what it was about again, by the way, it was a concept right? I mean, we I definitely there was an awful lot of stuff. We had to work out Along the way, and one of the big things we did that I think is different. Everyone write to you, your traditional sensor has a front end, that’s out there gathering the data, right? And then it has like a digital signal processing there, right? Another, another big board full of logic and all that stuff that’s processing all that data, right? That goes in a black box. And someone says that right? Bosch candy, all these guys, they sell out to the automotive guys, they take what comes out of that box, and they go off and try to do some cool AI shit, right and try and build an autonomous vehicle, right. And that’s kind of how it works. But I want to fully self defined. So we wanted to do that entire back end, all on a GPU, right? So GPUs, Nvidia, GPUs, Intel, all these guys that make that so really doing all that in software, right. And that, what that means then is, you’re able to influence and apply AI across the sensor. So basically, the black box is no more the day you get that sensor is probably the dumbest it’s ever going to be. And you’re going to keep improving that over time. So that was the first big challenge we had to do. And we cracked, so we were able to. And what that allowed us then to do is because cameras and vision is already doing GPU processing, right and VPU processing. Now we’re able to fuse the two and get some really unique insights that could never been done before. So that they were kind of the big, technical challenges to kind of prove we weren’t completely mad. And it works. I’m almost as surprised as anyone like it works. We now have a belt and we’re demoing and it’s it’s really cool.

Max Branstetter 26:28
Can you demo what it? What does it actually looks like on the road? Like if somebody has a car that uses you know, this technology that you’ve created? What does that actually mean for how it interacts with the world?

Barry Lunn 26:40
Yeah, and by the way, this isn’t the decision we make, right? So this is where the automotive guys get to make that decision and the OEMs. And they will make that a linear decision process, right? But okay, let’s look at three years down the line. Choose your favorite carmaker has put our technology onto their vehicle. First thing, by the way, is it doesn’t look like an ice cream van. There isn’t technology all over the room. And it isn’t a million boxes of technology, right? It’s low cost sensors built into the body of the vehicle, right? That was really important to us at low costs, right? That it could be ubiquitous, right? So you won’t even see the sensors, they’ll be just in your in your vehicle, right? In terms of how the I guess the end user would see it right and how they will interface with it. Obviously, you want to as little as possible, right? But in a scenario where you’re in a dangerous scenario, first thing you will be getting will be audible and visual alerts. Right? So kid walks out in front of you, and you haven’t decelerated, it warns you and you you decelerate, right. But in the cases where you don’t write, or in the scenarios in fog, for example, where you can’t actually see what we can see, well, then the vehicle would take over, right and that that’s how my approach to autonomy right and that’s a provisional sees the future of autonomy, right? Is that you don’t it’s not about achieving some level of l want to tree autonomy on a highway or on a road in Arizona. The way we should look at the autonomy question is, when is it actually unethical to let someone drive that’s the bit that’s really interesting for me, so when I’ve only censored and I can prove it by the way, only when I can prove not when you know, I need to get my share price up when I can prove in this scenario, this technology is safer than the person that’s behind the wheel, I take over to driving. And that that’s I think where it becomes really important and that already happens with emergency braking somewhat, but you are talking on a completely different level here. And so for example, you’re driving down the highway right? When do you apply the brakes is when you see the brake lights and the guy in front of you. But realistically you needed to see the guy five cars ahead, right because that’s when the problem started and there’s this latency and domino effect that comes along right so the next guy is slower not next guy still or not. So the chances are you’re gonna rear end him right so we almost half of accidents, right? It basically it’s rear ending right? And it’s that it’s lack of foresight, we can see it we can see it like six 800 meters out in front of the vehicle we bounce around all your vehicles we know the exact velocity of the mall so we see the guy breaking up above for whatever reason and then we start slowing you down in a manner that the guy behind you doesn’t hit you either right and slowly but surely you’re building up all our data so we see the world enters again today that car ships you is the worst it’ll ever perform and over time because all the physics are there and this is an argument I always have people like because there’s an awful lot of like dumb stuff out there about autonomy and what over the air updates moderate God like like the crap that people talk about over the air updates right like you cannot update physics over the air right is not not possible, right? So if it isn’t capable, it will never be capable right in terms of On a physics level, right? So really what we’re looking at doing is making sure you’ve all the physics there that can that can achieve this. And slowly over time you build up the scenarios you build up doesn’t you train the driver? But also, I want to know why if I tell a driver to break, and he doesn’t, why, so I need that data feed men. And that’s where AI healings, really good at the heavy lifting of stuff like this, that you can put it out millions of vehicles, and get kind of consensus data back and build stuff from that. So I think like, to me, honestly, I just think it’s a no brainer, right? Like, it’s very obvious when you build up the trust, right? So, so like, autonomy, guys, we’re calling for years that over 90% of accidents are caused by human error, right? That’s the kind of thing and it’s true, right? When you do an analyzer, but it’s, I mean, it’s because the car and the human to get around very good combination. Right? So anyway, that’s over 9%. But no one ever quotes that 86% of consumers don’t trust autonomy, right? So you kind of have to bring them along with you as well. So that’s how I look at it right? And three years time you’re in that vehicle, the car saves your life, you can see it we’re not idiots, we know that tire intervene, that I didn’t see that I didn’t I went to do that stupid overtaking maneuver, you certainly not going to be as distrustful of autonomy, right? And then as the features grow, and they’re safe, and you’re seeing that no deaths are coming down, basically, you won’t have choice, your opinion won’t matter if ethically society won’t accept it anymore. It’ll be like cigarettes, right? And we look back at that and go, How the hell did we accept that? We’re going to look at road that and road crashes like that. And in 10 years, right there, we’re just gonna go well, what the hell are we thinking?

Max Branstetter 31:34
It’s a crazy, it’s a huge, depressing problem. But it’s very exciting to people like yourselves, and companies like yourselves that are tackling it in the in the technology has come so far that that, like, I’m fascinated by your example of not looking just at the car ahead of you, but looking five cars ahead of you. Because obviously, what’s immediately close to you, obviously, that’s super important. But if you can get to like the root of what’s causing these accidents in these, you know, car pile ups and chain reactions like that, that’s even better for everyone with the AI and like the actual testing of this technology. What does it look like? When you test and slash train slash refine this technology?

Barry Lunn 32:19
I’ll tell you what it does look like looks like a hell of a lot of data. And that’s fine. I can tell you, right. And by the way, that’s one of the big reasons we had to solve this GPU thing as well, that we could do it all and that because it mean, like when we started out, and we were testing, our first boards just give you an example, right? We when we would go out and do a five minute data collection, it would take us a week of processing to get that into the point cloud. In a year, we’ve gone from that, to now we do that live real time, you know, 2030 frames per second, processing all that data, true GPUs that’s incredible stuff. And that’s a combination of, you know, just pure software engineering and AI. But when I think about AI, I think like, again, one of the myths that’s been put out there and and for various reasons, right? It’s like, people think of the camera as the eye. And then the AI is the brain, right? And like there’s this brain in the middle that’s doing all this thinking like we do, right? That’s not how it works, right. So basically, there’s multiple, multiple AI cores across our platform, right. And it’s doing different things in different places. But we also do things in the traditional way, right? So we do, I would much rather a direct detection than one that the AI came up with, right, so and so that’s how we keep all our streams separate. So even though I talked about fuse point clouds, we also have just the radar string, we have just division stream, we have aI applied to the radar stream, we have aI applied to division stream, then we have AI is applied to the fusion of the two, right and AI fuses the two, right? And machine learning AI, I’m interchanging them here just for ease of use. And then we’ve improvements that we’re applying, right, so we can do some really cool like we can improve the angular resolution of our devices using AI and things like that. So that’s, that’s almost like free upgrades. Right? So like, like this is, this is the kind of stuff AI enables that people just never even conceptualize, right. So like, traditionally what you did like your radar, you bought it and had an angular resolution to that. And it added range, and it had whatever it did out of the box. And then you waited five years for the next generation on it. Right? So the devices we built a year ago are now three times as good just just through development in training and AI and ML, right. So like, that’s insane stuff. And you can imagine and that gets better the more you have out there, right? So once you get into millions of vehicles that just keeps getting better. So that’s how we think of AI rather than on the pure decision making thing a IML is being applied all over the place to make every little piece better. And then it’s also been double checked by others right so that you’ve got all this redundancy built into your system, then you start to come back to the, you know, the decision making stuff. But when people talked about the decision making stuff, and I guess it was just the immaturity of the market as well, in the early days, you know, the trolley problem was always brought up, right, you know, Oh, am I gonna knock down the kids? Or am I gonna not? Like, that isn’t how we think about it, right? We want to avoid a situation where you ever have a ludicrous situation like a trolley problem where I’m going, you should never be in a situation like that. And that’s not just as as, you know, automotive robotics guys, right? That isn’t art, like this is regulation as well, right? Like, like, regulation has a huge role in this right. And they have a very important decision to make on where they’re going to fit into this. And because, I mean, we have many, many years of history to prove that the automotive industry isn’t going to behave in the best interest of safety, if it’s not forced to right, like, like, we have all these roads that it hasn’t changed in 20 years, like seatbelts had a massive impact. But we still have 1.3 5 million people being killed on the roads every year. So basically, that that’s where we’d see, you know, it’s a combination of all of those things. It’s the expertise within the automotive space, where you make sure you have a situation where that never happens when you never, and I do believe we can get to zero deaths. Absolutely, I think we can get to zero crashes, right. But we can’t get there with ridiculous million dollar sensor suites. running around in Arizona, the only way we can get there is if we build technology that can be ubiquitous, that can be there for everyone, and that it shouldn’t be the preserve of rich people. Right?

Max Branstetter 36:38
And what are these car manufacturers saying about your technology about your company like about the possibilities that you’re creating?

Barry Lunn 36:46
Yeah, it’s been really good, right? Because and that’s to be expected a little bit, right? Because this has been talked about for quite some time. And we consciously did this at the beginning, right? So we talked to them all at the beginning. Literally everyone, right. And we had context, obviously, from years of work and in there, right, and told them what we were going to do and got feedback. And that altered how we what we built and how we built it, right and all of that. And then we went into the, into the basement, right? And just started building this and proving it because there’s one great way to differentiate yourself from people in this industry. And that’s actually built shit that works, right? And like, you would not believe how narrow the field becomes, when you actually go, can you show it to me? Can I drive around in it? Not No, no, not a snippet that you like curators from 1000s and 1000s of hours of stuff, and that you’re able to in this note, let’s go for a drive. Let’s see how it performs. Right. So that was kind of how we chose to differentiate ourselves. So pretty much a big thing for us was that cracking of the everything running on the GPU, once we have that we’ve started doing demos now with the big OEMs and the tier ones and these guys. And to be fair, the reaction has been incredible, right? Because like even, you know, I did see all the major OEM out for a drive a couple of months ago. And like, his reaction was incredible. Like he turned to me. And he was like, I didn’t think you could do this. I’m like, you couldn’t I couldn’t do it two weeks ago, like like, you’re the first to see it right? And even since then it’s improved incredibly, as well. So like, yeah, the reactions been good and even even talking to because again, we’re agnostic in terms of sensing, right. So we use LiDAR, by the way, and we use all that. And it’s really good for benchmarking, really good for training, but like it’s expensive as hell, right. But the big LIDAR guys have, you know, I’m talking to them as well. And they’re going this is pretty cool. And this can do a lot of stuff like they expend an awful lot of their time trying to solve problems that physics isn’t really with them on. Right, like like that’s an optical sensor, it’s not really good at and processing, right, and having to do all that neuron, you guys can do all that heavy lifting. We could focus on a bit we’re really good at and that. So that reaction from that perspective has been pretty good, right? And then the guys in the middle like you’ve the Qualcomm’s and the Nvidia as these guys who were becoming almost the kingmakers, now we’re kind of jumping in the middle and going right where the guys will process all the data and do all their reaction has been really cool as well. Right? Because they’re going wow, this is this is exactly what we were. This is what we’ve been saying. Right? You can do all this on our, on our technology. So yeah, it’s a good phase, I guess my axe I suppose, right? But I’m also very conscious of like, smiling CEOs of OEMs won’t feed my kids, right. So we got to turn that into serious production, right? And let’s not underestimate that, you know, like we, you know, it’s no problem get and get it into, you know, onto vehicles and underground route vehicles and POCs and all that fun stuff. But that path to series production, millions of units, shipping consistently into this space that like that. That’s where an awful lot of startups have gone to die. So we got to make sure we’re to guys to get that right to What does OEM stand for, by the way? Original Equipment Manufacturer? Yeah, sorry. So the big debate a lot of eyes, right. So that’s your being perfect as you You’re

Max Branstetter 40:00
all that perfect all the ones interested in your ice cream fans.

Barry Lunn 40:03
Exactly, exactly. And traditionally, I guess that how to structure was you kind of had the big OEMs. And then you had the big tier ones, which are also monsters, like some of the tier ones or, you know, Bosch continental these guys, you know, and these vehicles are covered in this tech, right? And so so some of the tier ones are bigger than the OEMs. Right? And and then you the tier twos that sell into those guys, right to build chips and do all that. That’s all blurred now, right? So we’ve almost kind of we’re having our bit of an iPhone moment in the automotive space, right? Where, because it basically cars have gone from being very complex hardware with pretty shitty software, right? That’s what your traditional car was right? Now with EVs, right? It’s like really basic hardware, right? It’s a, it’s a battery with a top hat, right? And really complex software, right? So that transitions happened really, really quickly. That’s completely upsetting that whole nature of things, right? Because because the, the big automotive manufacturer isn’t going like Oh, tier one, tell me what are provisional working on down there in Ireland, and that you will feed it to me in 10 years time, when you see fit, the OEMs or GM doesn’t know that it’s some cool stuff. Let’s get that going. And then they’re bringing the tier ones in on the journey and we all work together. Happily, that’s the division.

Max Branstetter 41:26
Amazing what you can achieve with a strong vision. And amazing what you can achieve in the podcasting world with a strong podcast vision. I’m inventing a term podcast vision. And if you are looking for help in the podcasting world, and help refining that podcast vision, trademark, copyright, libel, slander, you can gain insight in the world of podcasting by going to MaxPodcasting.com and signing up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, all you got to do is go to the homepage, scroll down a teeny bit, put in your email, sign up. That’s the Podcasting to the Max newsletter full of podcasting tips and behind-the-scenes insight from the Wild Business Growth Podcast. Now let’s get to a combination of segways in acronyms that will make you ROFLCOPTER. So from OEMs to OMG, what’s very, like behind the scenes, that was I have to pat my back, pat myself on the back for that segue, which I’m currently messing up because I’m stumbling over my words. But anyway, let’s get to you on the personal side, a bit of kind of you as a entrepreneur, and, you know, in business owner, inspiration, creativity. You mentioned before that you often take this approach, which are or which is physics first principles. Can you give another example of that? Like, what, what does that mean, when you’re attacking a tricky problem?

Barry Lunn 42:52
Yeah, it’s literally going and you use the right word. It’s focusing on the problem rather than the technology. And assuming that nothing existed to solve that problem. What’s the best way to solve the problem? I’m worried about the technology later, right? That’s kind of the physics first principles approach. It’s pretty common actually, in the era defense space, right. And that’s why you get some really funky blue skies stuff coming out of that. That’s what attracts me to it, by the way, like, like, I’m really attracted to cool technology that solves big problems, rather than this boring thing of like, you know, I’m gonna build another SaaS product because the markets huge. And, you know, the plumbing of the internet is actually exciting. I don’t know, doesn’t excite me, right? I just like, Let’s build cool shit, right? And that’s why all the cool shit came from the air defense industry, right? We wouldn’t have TVs, we wouldn’t have mobile phones, we wouldn’t have interstellar communications without that industry. Right. So and that tends to be how it works. It’s like, here’s the environment. Here’s the problem I need to resolve. And then how do we solve that? And that’s the physics first principles approach that kind of suits I guess, my brain as well. Because that tends to be how I think about things rather than like, definitely wouldn’t be. Well, we’ve always done it that way guy, right. I always be like, Oh, I couldn’t do that. Which is, by the way, really annoying when you’re younger, I’ve noticed right like that, that really annoys teachers and things like that as well. Right? Because it’s like, that’s because it’s in the book. And you’ve got to give me back what it says in the book. So you can imagine right? It was a two way thing. I mean, I didn’t like teachers but God they didn’t like me either. So that yeah, that’s how it might kind of mind works in in everything by the way that that that like, it’s not just in like solving problems. Like if I’m sitting in a bar like I’m just constantly seeing inefficiencies in the bar and I could be in the next thing I know I’ve got an Excel sheet working at the price if you know distilling whiskey and just go oh, we could solve that way better. These guys, you know that it’s just yeah, I wish I could turn it off. By the way, it’d be nice.

Max Branstetter 44:54
That’s a really fun problem as well though, just anything in the distilling whiskey space. I think it’s a good thing to to put some time to, especially in a bar, but I mean, you’ve you mentioned time and time again that how like your brains kind of always ticking and you’re always thinking of different problems to solve, which I think is an innate trait of a, you know, a true entrepreneur. So that’s cool on so many levels. But are there any hobbies you have that help to somewhat use your mind and help to, I guess distract you from this constant problem solving thinking?

Barry Lunn 45:25
Yeah, yeah. It’s it’s really interesting, the way you frame that Max, right, because that’s how exactly how I think about it. And, you know, always interested in my own mind, after 40 odd years, the Oh, it’s like working out how do I think and it’s almost as well, how I think about the radar problem, because I always looked at it from the point of view of noise is a big problem in radars, right. And it’s one of the reasons the imaging radars haven’t really taken off because there’s just too much noise in the in the signal. And so the signal noise ratio is wrong. So therefore, you don’t get to clear one thing we became really good at is quietening the noise, right? And I often make that analogy to my own brain that I need to find ways of quieting the noise within my own brain, right. And it’s funny in terms of hobbies, like like, so I’m big into sport, like mad at the sport, right? So the adrenaline of even watching it does it for me, but also playing it and that’s the things so I do kind of a lot of things like there’s my favorite sport is Irish game called hurling. Right. And basically, an English commentator once described it as a cross between hockey and war. And it’s really fast game with sticks. And, you know, people get busted, oh, it’s fabulous, right? It’s like hardball, it’s like, and I go do it now and my kids played and all that. So that takes up a lot of my time. And it’s fabulous. And I love it. But you know, I play it a bit as well. COVID shut down are over 40 steam. But we’re trying to get that going again. And like, and I often notice like that’s when I’m calmest is when I’m in the midst of battle in the middle of a field with early swinging around my head. I just that now I got a big grin on my face. Like, I love that. And so I guess I’m always looking for that type of thing. So my, my big hobbies would be kind of sports, and gigs like I love I’m a big a big into music, and live but live music and I don’t care what it is, I’ll see anything like, and the whole art scene, I’m just I just love. I’ve always loved art, a lot of the creativity a lot of older people think so that that’s kind of how I how I spend my time and and I’m lucky that my my wife and my kids are into the same thing. Right? So we kind of have a good life together and doing that. So because I see it with other people, you know, that can be a pretty miserable existence when that because it’s all I want to do. And I’m not because I’m not big into the whole socializing thing. You know what I mean? Probably a bit of an introvert. So, you know, I need those things to get me out.

Max Branstetter 47:57
So you hurled that perfectly to some Rapid-Fire Q&A. So let’s wrap up with some Rapid-Fire Q&A. You ready for it?

Barry Lunn 48:04
Well, we’ll find out in about a minute.

Max Branstetter 48:07
Okay, perfect. All right. Let me pause take a sip of water for a minute now. All right, let’s get wild hurling that’s a sport I think especially in the states and probably many parts around the world that people maybe have heard of hurling but don’t know too much about it. You kind of gave like the intro background to it. But what is one tip that makes you a really good hurler

Barry Lunn 48:29
bravery. Yeah, I always looking for it in kids as well looking for bravery if you’re, because once you work that out, the kids that get hurt are the ones that are timid, because if you stand a little bit back from a guy swinging a stick, you’re gonna get hit by it. If you’re up on top of a guy swinging the stick, you’re barely gonna get any impact. So if you have the bravery and the balls to work that out, you’re going to be great, harder,

Max Branstetter 48:50
imperfect. Well, you just described me perfectly so I think I need to take it up. What is your favorite thing you’ve ever created or built built a better word built with LEGO?

Barry Lunn 49:02
Oh, it’s it’s the Millennium Falcon. Right? joyful thing to build because I’m a Star Wars guy as well. And on that one, because my kids are big into LEGO. They left me alone on that one. They were like, no, he needs this. He needs this one. And yeah.

Max Branstetter 49:18
They can recognize it in you when you need the alone time. What’s a in addition to building Legos and your interest in music and the arts and hurling and bravery? What is a weird talent or party trick? You have something that you’re really really good at, but it doesn’t necessarily impact your your day job.

Barry Lunn 49:37
Do I have a party trick anymore? I think probably one of the weirdest things that people find out about me from when I was a kid was that I played the accordion. And

Max Branstetter 49:47
I was actually gonna guess that you gave off accordion vibes. Exactly for

Barry Lunn 49:51
a long, long time. I like a played orchestra. Right so like yeah, so that definitely shocks people when it gets mentioned, but I’ve pretty much killed all the people let know that so it’s

Max Branstetter 50:03
okay. All right, next question. Limerick. I think Limerick is and I I’ve been to Ireland once spent a weekend there and bounced around to a few different cities and absolutely beautiful country and also think it helped that when we landed it was perfectly sunny and the grass I’ve never seen greener grass and I know it rains much more often than that, but just absolutely beautiful country. But I think Limerick is one of the most beautiful names for a city I’ve ever heard. But I don’t know too much about Limerick. What is what’s like one must do thing if you’re if you’re visiting Limerick.

Barry Lunn 50:35
So we’ve got we’ve got a castle here in Limerick under river like the river is the river and I can see the river from where I’m sitting when I’m talking to here now right and so we have the largest river in Ireland come stores its mouth and in Limerick and out to sea right so we’ve got this incredible castle on King John’s Castle and like it’s just perfectly preserved beautiful place I like just that. The serenity of the castle. There’s gigs on the castle tonight and tomorrow night like going to a gig in the castle is unbelievable. Like you just feel like you’re on a different level. But I love Limerick. And I think like because, you know, Limerick isn’t the flashy town of Ireland. But I’ve my wife and I kids we chosen deliver, right? Like we live all over the world like like in about 10 or 12 different places all over the world, right across Asia and America and Europe. And like we chose to come back here because it’s just it’s a fabulous place. And the thing about it is, it’s because it’s not the capital city aren’t a tourist attraction. So the people have a great edge in their self depreciate, no one gives a shit. We don’t care what you think of us. It’s just it’s good, fun and great work ethic. So I love it here. Yeah.

Max Branstetter 51:43
And then last one, what would be your dream car to use your technology?

Barry Lunn 51:49
Ooh, that’s an interesting one. Because I was gonna say My dream is actually not to own a car. Right. And I’ve been there before and that’s a really cool like, you know what, right my kids and I were were super into Defenders, right? Just just love them just the shape the the older one that is 16 on right, maybe rather than the new one. So maybe Defender but that DeLorean, right. Like, yeah, I want it on a DeLorean to me made a mind that did an autonomous DeLorean over at Stanford. And it’s like so cool. Right. So yeah, are actually to be honest. Now I’m going to tree right. But a tractor would be pretty cool, too. Right? So again, like I like my cars. I like my, like my farm. So yeah, and an autonomous tractor be pretty fucking cool, too.

Max Branstetter 52:37
Perfect. Well, I can already envision you captaining the autonomous Millennium Falcon as well. So without, I think the possibilities are endless. But Barry, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. And really, really appreciate your story. And all you do and it’s it’s a really strong mission and problem to kind of rally around and your enthusiasm and passion and skill for what you do is just off the charts. So this is really really been special. Where’s the best place for for people to connect with you personally, as well as learn more about Provizio.

Barry Lunn 53:09
Cool, and look. Thanks for having me as well, Max. I’ve really enjoyed it. Your questions have been super. It’s like we’ve known each other years, Max.

Max Branstetter 53:16
Well, I think we’re not supposed to tell people that.

Barry Lunn 53:19
But in terms of connecting with me, look, I’m on the Twitter machine. As an evasion, I guess like obviously true pro Visio you can definitely get me there are websites about to be updated soon. Apparently I’m not not really good on the marketing side. Or, you know, if you really want to connect with me, you know, JJ Bowles pub in Limerick, you know, it might be a guy at the bar with a pint of Guinness. That could be a really good way to connect.

Max Branstetter 53:45
Perfect. I think I think that’s my absolute favorite way to connect. And last thing, Final Thoughts. The stage is yours. It could be a quote, it could be reenacting your favorite scene from Star Wars, whatever you want. Just send us home here. Oh, no. No, no, no, just Final Thoughts it could be quotes or just words of entrepreneurial advice, whatever you want. Yeah, no,

Barry Lunn 54:05
I think the only advice I ever get give to people is to be themselves and dilute everything anyone else stood in with a lot of water. Right? Because I think we spent too much time trying to hone people into into a thing right? And I would never limit yourself by what people told you. You’re, you’re good or you’re bad at like I see it in coaching. Like so many kids coming into parents tell me you know, he’s not sporty Are you know, are similarly my kids are big into art like, and people say he’s not artistic. Never put that limitation on yourself. Yeah, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it so much evidence of it. And so yeah, I would definitely say don’t limit yourself.

Max Branstetter 54:47
I’ve seen it too and sky is the limit for you. Oh God. Thank you so much, Barry for coming on the podcast sharing the Provizio story. All you do for safety and tech and hurling. And thank you Wild Listeners for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite app and tell a friend about the podcast and then invent some really, really cool technology like like Barry’s doing because it’s it’s really cool. You can also find us on Goodpods where there are fantastic podcasts and podcast recommendations and people and for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and scroll down and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. Until next time, let your business run wild. Bring on the bongos!