Honda Xcelerator Ventures

Welcome to Impact TV, a corporate venture video series in collaboration with the Kaufman fellows. Hi. I'm Jack Crawford, a founding general partner at Seracap Impact Venture Capital. Alongside my colleague, Pat Bumpus, and my Kaufman fellow co chair, Alessandro Centro, we're thrilled to welcome to today's show, Raymond Zeng, senior managing director at Honda Accelerator Ventures.

Raymond, how are doing today? Good. Good. Fantastic.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Hey. Congratulations on being named to the power list by the Global Corporate Venturing Group. Jim and the GCV Group are doing some amazing things.

Are you pretty active with regard to their events or other activities? Yeah. Well, thank thank you very much for that first. Yeah.

So, Janice and Jim, great team. In the CBC community, as you know, it's a really precarious community. Right? There's there's up and downs.

And I really I think what Jim and Janice did together with this community, putting great events together for networking, trainings they provide for newcomers. It's just fantastic. And and as a member, we are we are a member of paying a due as a member. We just want to contribute more.

Sometimes we sponsor events with them as well. And and I think this community, it's actually going through some cycles right now, is the best place at least for our profession to kind of get together, talk about best practices, share pain points, show the scars, and just be therapists to each other, actually. The organization's amazing, and Jim is is is is just been a great collaborator on on building out the the corporate ecosystem. I got a chance to see him in London briefly as the Kaufman Fellows celebrated their thirtieth year anniversary of the Kaufman Fellows program.

So that was quite fun earlier this month. Let's talk about your background at at Cisco. So you spent about fifteen years there. It's iconic Silicon Valley company.

Maybe just talk a little bit about your role there and then how that sort of was, I guess, a bit of a stepping stone into what you're doing now with with Honda Accelerator Ventures. Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, the fifteen years is, is not right.

I kinda cut that short on the on the LinkedIn because usually the relevance are are the shorter term. Anyway, so I think the Cisco experience, in my view, I mean, my own it's kinda defined me and really drove my passion, what I wanna do, and actually shaped my career in general. It's that pretty impactful. I actually started as an engineer when Cisco had about 2,000 plus people very early at a time.

The stop went up and up. Right? What I've seen in Cisco was pure professionalism across everybody on a team. It's teamwork.

It's doing the best to design, to build, to validate the software and the hardware for the networking. Right? There are driven by a lot of excitements every couple months, the stock doubles. Right?

It is at that time, it was I believe it's, like, the best, you know, best scale technology and capitalism coming together. Right? What it did for me is actually offer me a lot of opportunities to inside of the bigger company like sis Cisco to kinda work on different technologies. I work on gig of Ethernet, fiber channels, optical networking, video conferencing, security, blah blah blah.

Many things I came across, at least 20 plus projects, different ones. And it's I can always find, like, the next interesting and challenging things to do. That's what I like about, you know, Cisco. And before I knew it, I was sort of knee deep into business.

Right? I'm using my technology and analytics skill, trying to help Cisco to buy companies. So I involved about 20 odd m and a projects, and it was a crazy busy time at a time. At one point, we did about 14 m and a's in twelve months.

And I have this is the the worst like, not the worst, but the busiest time I've worked. I have done, like, thirty six hours, no no sleep. Right? And we were driven.

Really, it was exciting time. And and then in the last gonna last few time periods in in Cisco, actually, I can also work, with start up a lot. I was sort of the acting CTO for, you know, the global innovation center. I work with start up to build joint solutions, and I get a taste of the innovation, the creativities out of entrepreneurs, which kind of, you know, kinda leads me to this this, you know, this direction of working with start ups.

And my epiphany is that I know our value is best if I were to take advantage of my technical analytical skill, but also on the business knowledge. I compared to an engineer, which I was on a path, now I'm more of a journalist, right, not a specialist. I it's funny. Actually, I did a Toastmaster, session that talked about how am I being very proud of myself being a journalist and how we can contribute.

So, yeah, that that's my time in in Cisco. It was, pretty great. Talk a little bit about how maybe that set the stage for you migrating to Honda Accelerator Ventures, and give us a little bit of an overview on what you're actually doing now. I mean, most people know Honda, the automotive company, but maybe they're a little less familiar with with Honda Accelerator Ventures.

Maybe describe the kind of the program and how you're how you're engaging with the venture ecosystem. Yeah. So so it I joined about eight years ago. Just give a little background.

So when I joined, the Honda in Accelerator Venture actually started way back in, let's say, I think it's twenty two thousand five. Honda was actually pretty innovative. They are they were actually the first kinda OEM to step in the Silicon Valley and have a CVC unit. Right?

But this is part of learning. After a couple of projects later and some reorg, that things went away. So so then then people will say, what do we do? Right?

And we still have this very vibrant Silicon Valley ecosystem. So, you know, they decided to do, to tap into the software developer ecosystem. And this is this is team this location where we started really the first kinda Apple CarPlay Apple CarPlay Android Auto. Right?

So it progresses from, you know, in the beginning investment to engaging with startups, working together with startups to bring the technology into Cisco's I'm sorry, Honda's product. And then in 2017, this is where I was joining. It is called Honda Accelerator. Right?

And that the focus there is to introduce interesting startups connecting with the Honda r and d team, facilitating paying for POC so that the the technology can be demonstrated to the business units so that they can adopt it. Right? So that's sort of a Honda accelerator. Three about three years ago, the corporate of Honda said, well, you guys did a great job.

I think we need to put the money behind where my our mouth is and to start it to invest in the early stage startups. So that's where it came about, Honda Accelerator Venture. Kind of a from a collaboration model to more of an investment model. Right?

A traditional VC. I see. And then can you just talk a little bit about kind of stage sector geography? Sort of how do you think about what what's the optimal stage?

Are you thinking about sort of industry sectors? I know bit of focus on mobility, obviously, safety, things like carbon neutrality. Maybe just go a little bit deeper on how you think about sectors. And then geography, I'm assuming globally given the the Japanese parent.

Yeah, stage sector and geography would be great for you to comment on. Yeah. Thank you, Jack. Thanks for actually doing the homework.

And, Bobby, look at some of the some of the, the areas we covered. Just to recap, and I'm gonna break it down a little bit. So the mobility side is really about moving people around. And not just moving people around, but moving them and creating joy when doing it and the cons customer having that.

And that's really about the different type of transportation vehicles, car, motorcycle, on the land, and then we have motors for boats, recreational boats. Right? And that's on the sea, and then we have planes, and we also have retail projects, which transporting people in the air. And part of this mobility is also we look at different from modality of transportation as well.

So that's part of this investment kinda scope is looking at what are the upcoming kind of new way of transportation. When we're doing that and transporting people, we wanna do it in a safe way. So the one of the mission from from Corporate Honda is to say we want zero fatalities by 2050 on our vehicle. I mean, that's a really high goal.

Think about it. Right? There's a lot of things not within our control, but within our vehicle, we wanna be as safe as possible. So this is actually achieved through autonomy, assisted driving, sensors, sort of intelligence, hardware, software, all these robotic related technology we are all interested in investing.

And and if you look at sort of a carbon neutrality side of things, Honda was and I think it still is the biggest internal combustion engine maker. If you include cars, motorcycles, and everything else and the lawn mowers, power generators. Right? So it was great before, but now it's become a challenge to us.

How do we make sure the world is clean and and sustainable with our product? So we're exploring into kind of three areas. One is energy, kind of a renewable energy sourcing. The second one is recycling.

How do we make sure we can build a car from an old car, so to speak? And the third one is carbon neutrality within our factories, within our own company. So any technology or start up that deals with those deals with those areas, we're interested in take a look at them and see how they can be part of us, we can part of them to kind of change to a transformation. Beyond that, really, the core real goal of our investment is to discover and create and capture opportunities, for new business and technology for both Honda and industry.

And that's really the goal. It's it's not so much breaking out of the mobility, fatality, all that stuff. But, you know, that's why we're looking at other things such as quantum space, advanced materials, sort of all the deep tech that relates to mobility in general, but also relates to what could be Honda's new business. You mentioned earlier in in during our prep call, sort of, internal language, Horizon one, two, three, sort of how you're how you're sort of thinking about different states.

Can you describe for the outside world, you know, what does that mean horizon one, two, three, and and what phase of engagement are you thinking about in each, of those horizons? Right. Oh, yes. Thanks.

I I I forgot one answer I wanna give you is the stage of investment. So we invest into early what we call early stage startups. And if you look at the bell curve is series a is where, most of our focus are. However, with that said, we did invest in a seed, and we did invest into b and c.

And if there's even later stage, we consider ourselves as the gateway for corporate Honda if they wanna invest into a d. You know, it usually come from us to say, hey. This is good for you and, you know, and the money will come come out of the corporate. But, so that's that's that.

So horizon one, two, three. So if you think about Honda's current project current product and future technologies, what I call horizon zero is whatever Honda already has in our company. Right? Cars, motorcycles, manufacturing, like, things you see Honda building.

So within those horizons, you know, horizon one, Honda is very good in our engineering. We pretty much knows everything that needs to be done and how do we optimize things. So that's horizon one. So horizon two is where I call it the kind of emerging area.

So these are adjacent area that today is not a Honda's business, but maybe in the future, it could be. Right? One example of such could be battery recycling. Right?

If we have we right now, building batteries, putting the cars, that's horizon one. But the recycling part of it, we don't actually have that business. But if we have a lot of battery, perhaps we could turn that into a business. Right?

So that's kinda horizon two. Horizon three is what I call moonshots. These are things, you know, maybe 10 out, fifteen years out. One of such could be nuclear fusion.

Right? So that's sort of what we see. So if we will engage in horizon one with the startups, most of the chances are we we need to have the BU buy in. Right?

Because they they are the expert, and they has to be the customer. So it has to go through a sort of validation with the business unit. Horizon two may or may not be. Horizon three usually not.

Yeah. That's super helpful. We've we've invested in I guess, would be in your horizon one or two mostly in the AI chip space or AI infrastructure space. In doing some homework on your background, I saw you recently joined as board observer at Silk, a four d imaging company in the chip space.

I thought maybe you'd just describe sort of a just a high level. What what's that what's that company? And and, maybe tell us a little bit about that company and and your enthusiasm for that particular industry space. Yeah.

So the it's a great company. I don't know how many people heard of Leida. I'm sure anybody now knows what the Leida is. Basically, a Leida is a sensor.

Not a visual sensor, but it's it's based on different technology. You can sense not just as the the objects, but also the distance and and in some case as the speed. So Silk, the company, is one of the best, I would say, so far, one of the best LIDAR sensor that uses the latest and greatest what they what they call FMCW technology, which gave them almost like the radar. They can actually tell the speed of objects coming your way or leaving you.

Right? And I do believe Silk is has the highest accuracy and and resolution in the LIDAR space, so it's very accurate. On top of it, they are doing silicon photonics, which means that their technology can be massively produced. What implication that is then it can actually drop the price to low $100 range.

Right? 200 maybe or even less. Now Honda builds cars. We build kind of mid range cars and maybe lower range cars like Civics.

Right? CRVs, those are 30,000 around there. We cannot afford to put very expensive LIDAR in our cars. So that's why we work with this company trying to co develop something that can be, you know, lower cost, high performance.

So that's that's Honda's sort of, you know, kind of selfish goal, right, working with this company. But the company itself actually has other business as well, other applications. One of them is robotic vision for automation. This indicates, for example, you they can put it on a conveyor belt on top of conveyor belt.

They can measure the dimension of packages going through a conveyor belt. Right? And then kinda educate down the line how the robot hands can handle things. They can tell the material of the package.

Right? So that's the for industrial application, that's pretty powerful. And then the last one they do is on the sort of a do you side, the defense side. Because the fact that they have such a great technology and this is I never heard about this, but this is the first time I heard about it, is they can detect a drone for two kilometers, five kilometers, even 10 kilometers away.

Right? Think about that application for for for security and surveillance. So, yeah, I'm excited about the company. And if, know, just if you wanna know they're raising serious b.

So Oh, okay. Okay. That's interesting. So I I I love learning stuff like frequency modulated continuous wave.

Okay. So now this is about distance. Right? Distance control and measurements.

So I'll have to do a little bit of research and and come back to you with some follow-up questions. It sounds like very interesting technology, and an interesting company. So, congratulations on the board observer role, and look into the the the series b. Let's talk a little bit about how corporates are adding value beyond capital.

We've had some experience with in in corporates providing market insight into, you know, new opportunities for startups. Being an early customer, beta customer, collaborating on a prototype, being a partner, certainly being an investor. Corporate venture now represents, I think, somewhere between 4045% of all venture backing comes from from corporates. And then they always represent, you know, sort of an acquirer, hence, you know, some of your background at at Cisco and acquiring companies.

As you sort of think about Honda Accelerator Ventures working with founders, is there a particular area where you find yourself adding more value or well positioned to add value? Yeah. Definitely. I think one thing that I think is different, I would say our differentiation for as a Honda Accelerator Venture is that I think you you kinda coined this term to multi touch point.

Right? So if you look at our name Accelerator Venture, there's two pieces. One is Accelerator piece. The other one is venture piece.

The Accelerator accelerator piece is really about engaging without the funding, engaging with startups, introduction of startups with our the proper r and d team. There are many in in Honda. Our role is to find the right one, knowing what their requirements are, and then find a start up and bridge them together. So we actually knows what different business unit wants, and that is a value add, I think, to kind of, you know, for the stop that we engage with is not just the customer, but also kind of proving for from a cons from a start up perspective, proving their product market fits.

Right? And even improve that product market fit. So that's why I think the accelerated piece is very it has offer tremendous value to the startups. And that's, I would say, at least half as much as we do, like, our our mission.

The second piece, of course, is investment is, we also, you know, put money in in different early stage. Now if you think about from a start up perspective, what would be the outcome? Right? There are many path.

Right? It could be just if sometimes they're happy to hinder a big customer for them. Right? Pays their bills and part of the bills at least.

Sometimes could be developed into kinda joint development, joint research, and maybe co co sharing IPs if Honda contribute part of our expertise into it. So maybe we go to market together. Right? M and a is one method, but our we are actually not necessarily kind of fixated on m and a being the ultimate goal.

Really, the question to ask is what would be the best long term relationship and partnership between Honda and the start up that actually can create the maximized values maximum values for both ends? It could be m and a, but sometimes it could be I IPO. Right? If we can help to get the funding from the public market, continue to help and drive at certain stage of the startups that continue to turn out innovations after one out of the other, and Honda be a partner with it.

We'll continue the industry will continue to enjoy the benefit of the innovation. So that's really what our thoughts are about. Like, what is the best outcome? It's pretty flexible, and it's really in for kind of win win situation.

I think your flexibility and your view on sort of building a long term relationship with the founder puts you in a great position to add a lot of value beyond beyond capital. Because I could absolutely see Honda being a valuable customer, work you know, you funding joint venture opportunities to bring something new to market. Clearly, you could add value as a corporate investor. And then, you know, always maybe with some visibility to does it make sense to acquire this and bring it in house?

So that that thanks for that explanation. That that that makes great sense. Let's talk about structure for the CVC aspect of what you're doing. What we're seeing is some evolution in the corporate venture world where, I mean, you know, another Japanese company, Sony, is bringing in outside LPs, right, as part of their their last fund.

There's there's certainly CVCs that are spinning out and rebranding themselves, so they're not so closely tied to the the parent company. They're operating a bit independently. Can you just talk a little bit about the structure? Obviously, you're taking advantage of a globally recognized brand, probably top 10 brand in the world, right, with regard to recognition.

So it seems like there's real value to to, embracing that brand. May maybe talk a little bit about how the fund itself is structured. Yeah. Yep.

So just on the background, I totally agree with you. I mean, since I joined this field, I've seen, you know, having a independent unit, their own fund is a trend. And in many case, the goal for many of the CVCs for a good reason. Right?

The good reason is you can be able to you you'll be able to hire more experts in the investment side. You have you can make a quicker decision. On the other kind of flip side of the coin is that, well, they are then kinda separate from the corporate side. Right?

At certain point in time, the CEO or the CFO will look at them and say, what value do you add to the company besides the the return, which could could be, you know, interesting to them? What I'm trying to say is there's actually no good answer to it really depends on the culture, and the risk taking level. What and and the the key one is what do you really want to achieve with that unit, CVC unit? Mhmm.

As you I've just mentioned before, as we started as a journey as a accelerator sort of collaborating, collaboration with the startups, we are very much strategic focus, and we actually don't have an independent fund. We all of us, pay by salaries in the corporate. Right? And we have about you know, Japan have allocated 10,000,000,000 yen every year.

So it's a $6,065,000,000 dollar depends on the exchange rate every year that we can invest into startups. And doing that, I think and the the way that we structure and organize, the goal here is to really have a good tie into the internal r and d team. Right? And we don't wanna be too far away in organizational wise so that they will ignore us.

So that's why we structure it this way. Do you ever make independent investments, or does it always require some level of business unit sponsorship? So if it's horizon one, absolutely. Horizon two, case by case, there are there were some cases where we did not actually have, view buy ins, but horizon three, because just brand new to Honda, we usually don't have the expertise anyway, so we go outside for for evaluation and decision making.

Any co investments with, Alphabet on the moonshots? I know that they have a a whole sort of a strategic investment arm just focused on things that have an investment horizon of, you know, ten, fifteen years out. You know, I don't know I don't know if this is data centers on the moon or or, you know, what what we're talking about, but there's a but they definitely have a long horizon. Any co investments with Alphabet or others that are really focused on the moonshots?

Not yet. Looking forward to to the opportunity, but not yet. Right. Awesome.

Let's let's Data center. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. Data center space. That's a that's a new new things.

Right? So let's talk about speed required for operating, in the venture ecosystem at the seed and early stage. Right? Oftentimes, you meet a company and and hot companies, you know, publish their their ARR results after a couple months and and sort of the trajectory looks amazing.

Or, you know, maybe hardware is functional hardware is just released, and some of these companies move pretty quickly. So what I'm seeing is is corporate venture groups develop a bit of a an investment road map or, proactively develop, investment themes in what they would consider investable areas so that they're already well versed on what is an investable area. And when they see it, they know it, and they can move quickly. Right.

Mhmm. What's your sense on is there anything that you're doing to ensure you're operating at the speed required for success here in investing in in early stage companies? Yeah. Thank you for the great question.

I think I got these questions every answer panel that that talks about CVCs. It's definitely on top of mind of ourselves and also a lot of, startup as well. What I can say is this, what I find interesting, it is a a legitimate concern. Right?

The way because we're doing strategic investments, a collaboration, many times, the b u is in the picture. So we think of ourselves, the CVC unit, as a synchronizer on both sides. And the key here is to communicate, to communicate to a start up why we are deliberate and and such therefore, it takes a little bit long time to make certain decisions. And communicating to the business unit why is a start up doing and need something quick.

Right? So that's that's one way to do it. And the other way is really for us, what we learn and and become more effective now was to engage with the start up early even before the fundraising. Even if they are coming to say, hey.

Can you invest in series seed? Of course, we can't move that fast, but let's look at a. Right? Series, like, a a raise and see how that looks like.

So if we we give ourselves a bit more time that way, yeah, and have more understanding of the the context and environment. Makes sense. But but what what I wanna say also is that this seeming similarly a problem, but in effect, in our context, it many times, it's not. Many of the start up that we work with are, hardware centric.

Right? Some with software. There's one for the two days, software. But this these are type of things what we call hard tech.

It takes time to develop. It takes time to be proven. And and MIT MIT called it tough tech, and some people call it patient capital. Well, whatever you call it, it basically means it takes a longer time, more money.

Like so it's different than you say investing to a SaaS or AI application where you have to make this decision tomorrow, otherwise, you'll miss the window for high return. But in those the case that we work with, these start up understand it's a longer journey than most in most cases. So I think what I observation is that many of the startup we work with, it's okay for for, you know, for for us to doing sort of slow and deliberate, progressive. Yep.

Mostly hardware companies, or what what's the balance of hardware and software investments? Well, hardware, it's a loose term. So if you think about our portfolio, I would say many, actually, most are not software, I should put it right. Sometimes it could be, kinda chemical related, like, you know, you know, a power plant or a battery, a battery recycling.

We have invested a couple of software before. One is helm.ai, which is autonomous driving, pure software. The other one, which we eventually invent work together, invested, and we acquired is called DriveMode, which is was a bit like, you know, Android Auto before Android Auto's time.

Right? So, yes, there are there are there are a mixed software and hardware. I'm back. I was muted for a a moment there.

Pat got me off mute. Thanks for that, Pat. Let's talk about syndication for a second. How you're working with traditional VCs or other CVCs and co investments.

Yeah. It'd curious. And then maybe in addition to sort of syndicating rounds, maybe you could also mention, are you looking at actually making LP commitments in the VC funds? You know, sorta what does the collaboration look like between you and VC firms, traditional VC firms and traditional CVCs?

Yeah. Yep. You know, traditional VC firms are really an important part of our ecosystem, and I would say constituents. Right?

We as expected, we work with them very much on working deal flows for the ones especially, you know, specializing in some of the areas that we are focusing on. And we also talk very frequently and talk about different trends. We look at co investment opportunities. Sometimes we look for help on the portfolio companies on each on both sides.

Yeah. So typical collaboration, we don't typically lead around. If we and when we do, we will definitely tapping into the the all the financial VCs. And we do invest in funds.

Historically, we invested in funds where we, for lack of a better word, dipping our toe into something. Right? Geographically, for instance, when we started back in 2017, as accelerator, we actually invested into funds in Europe, in Israel, and even at the time, China, and also North America. So that it's a way to kinda get our, you know, get our food get our feet wet and understanding what are we dealing with, who are the, you know, who are the players, you know, to get educational purposes at least.

Yeah. The two things I've seen are, LP commitments by geography to get visibility into deal flow from maybe a geography that or an ecosystem that you don't fully have access to. The other thing I've seen is by industry sector. If you feel like, hey.

This team has particular experience in AI that we don't have or or in cybersecurity that we don't have. Those those are the two things that I've seen. Is there anything that you're targeting now? I guess it's a bit of a self serving question.

Is there anything that you're targeting now that we could be helpful with or that other VC firms that are out there could be helpful with? Very interestingly, yes. That's a good question. We we do look at specific, like, specialized funds to look at certain sectors.

Anyway, so we did not invest into sort of mobility funds in in in the last few years. We nowadays, we intend to continue to invest in funds on a specific kind of a character of investments. And what we're talking about is what we call wow startups. Startup that actually has founders that are have bold ideas, unique implementation or unique IP or technology, and can create great impacts for the society and for the company.

So that's that is much broader than than just, like, certain sectors. But it tends to be more deep tech focused, let me put it this way. Let's talk a little bit more about your KPIs. In addition to sort of impact, I'm assuming, investment returns, strategic value.

You know, how do you balance sort of the the clear mission driven corporate organization that is always looking at impact? I mean, mobility for to to create joy is a pretty mission driven, you know, statement at the, you know, at at the, at the parent company, level. How do you balance sort of investment returns, strategic value back to the parent corporation, and positive impact on the world? How do you think about those things?

Yeah. So I think the highest priority is the last two, actually, is is what's the impact to to the company, company's product, the future, and what's impact to the society. For the financial side, we don't wanna lose money, so we we still do this the diligence as people do. Look at you know, one example could be, what people say, three t's, like, technology, and the TAM.

Right? But our focus really is on what does this technology bring to the future of Honda, what it mean for newer technology that could be part of the business, and what it means for the society. We track you know, for for this is I would say, actually, rather difficult to track, but the track record would be looking at is this product have a gen JDA or joint research or joint development coming out of this collaboration? Does the investment you know, is there a customer engagement?

So these type of things is kinda solved, I would say. And other KPI, just looking at the team performance, really just day by day. How much deals are saying? How much, you know, proposal we are making and these type of things.

Yep. That's helpful. Raymond, you and I have just set a record. There were two investors that have been having discussions about technology, and we haven't mentioned AI in forty minutes.

This is amazing. I'm convinced that we absolutely set a record. To, though. Right?

You have to. So so we gotta make sure. We we've only got a few minutes left here, but we've gotta talk we we we've gotta talk about AI a little bit, don't we? Yeah.

Of course. The application, of AI to security, to finance, digital health, to energy, it really is amazing. Then there's infrastructure, with regard to sort of how to make, you know, sort of, artificial intelligence faster, more more secure, more more sort of energy efficient at the data center level or the infrastructure level. How do you think about sort of AI as an industry sector?

And what any subsectors that that Honda or Honda Accelerator Ventures is looking at as it relates to AI applied, to to some areas that are relevant? Yeah. What you said was actually you know, you know, hit it right on now is the last piece is what does it apply to us. Right?

Of course, you guys this, you know, this Hypes about gen gen you know, gen generative AI, the agent, the Gentic. But what we're really interested is how do we help the product and the people. In our case, would be related to robotics, related to physical world. Right?

So I think the term physical AI is a bit overused. It kinda losses the meaning, but it is, you know, how do we understanding the world around the card robots is what we are most interested in, from an investment perspective. Will that be, robots in the homes of elderly, helping them to move things from one side of the house to the other, helping with cooking, helping with notification camaraderie? Will that be things on on the outside of a residential home?

How what do you envision the early adoption and early applications will be in the robotic space? I think well, it's it's the dose. That's sort of I think it's the future, but the most immediate one is specific use cases, for example, in the factories. Right?

Sometimes we call cobots. Sometimes we or in an environment where human doesn't go in or is too too dangerous or sort of maybe on the moon. Right? How do we have drive a robot going there with the AI help to understand better about the environment something's in and then taking actions and considering consequences when take certain actions?

I think some of these robot robotic, humanoids or whatever that new forms of robot would have to first serve the industry first to get proven. And then we talk about more general purposes, more generic things. I was able to get a backstage pass at Sony, on some of their r and d efforts. And one of the things that was introduced to me was a robotic pet.

And I thought, wow. That's kind of an interesting stepping stone to getting humans comfortable with a robot in their house. This robotic pet that you don't have to clean up after, and it's quite friendly all the time. So my wheels started turning about sort of, you know, how will adoption actually take place and how will humans get comfortable with some other movement in their home besides the besides the human.

That whole space is is is fascinating, and so we'll have to watch closely to see if there's opportunities to collaborate there. Okay. I'm gonna shift to the rapid fire portion of the program, the last two questions for you. Mhmm.

Just quick response. Your favorite podcast or industry publication? I always like to hear what people are reading or listening to. Anything that's captured your attention from a from a podcast or publication?

Yeah. So, I listen to different podcasts. In the early days, I I was started here at smoking tire. It's it's really about automotive cars.

But right now, my favorite is has been acquired. Have you been listening to yeah. That was that was fantastic. It's very entertaining as a business focus.

Yeah. So and thanks for for cluing in the all in. Like, I need to remember to go back go back to that again. Last question for you.

As part of my Kaufman Fellows experience, I, I my thought leadership project was on strategic planning for life and and how you, you know, basically take business practices and apply them to your personal life to help live your best life. Actually, at the thirtieth anniversary party in London, I distributed a book that I wrote on strategic planning for life for entrepreneurs. So as they're building their companies, they could also build their lives with maybe a similar tool set.

But I I mentioned that as a preface to, I started to look into how people start their days, how they kick start each day because sometimes that can, lead to optimal performance, superhuman performance. Is there anything special you do in the morning to sort of Yeah. It's very good. It's the same almost the same every day.

So my cat actually is my son's cat. It's the alarm clock for me. So she woke me up every morning, and I started my my morning feeding her. I don't know if you know about this, but cats always feed themselves if they have to, but they love being fed hand fed.

Right? So I do that every morning. And after I feed the cat, I cook breakfast to feed the humans. And then after that, I go off, have breakfast, and then run on the treadmill.

And then after that, shower and off to start my new day. Okay. So I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna make a bold forecast that sometime in the next five years, you're gonna have a robotic cat and an actual cat in your home, and and we're gonna see who gets the most attention and who gets hand fed. I still I think still to live.

Yeah. Thanks for thanks for sharing that. On behalf of Seracap Impact Venture Capital and the Kaufman fellows, thanks to Raymond Zhang for spending a little bit of time with us. Thanks, Raymond.

Thank you very much for the conversation. My pleasure.