David Fuller on building the first-of-its-kind Automation Platform with Artificial.com

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

My background is in building platforms and tools that integrate and standardize heterogeneous equipment in multiple markets. For the last 25 plus years, I have held positions in business and technology spanning Measurement, Automation, and Industrial Robotic and Logistics Systems. As VP of R&D at National Instruments, I built platforms and ease-of-use tools for complex cyber-physical systems as diverse as Space X Ground Control and the CERN Hadron Collider. After my time at National Instruments, I became CTO of the KUKA Group and managing director of KUKA Robotics. At KUKA, I led the development of robotic systems with applications ranging from high-throughput automotive production to lights-out wafer fabrication utilizing industrial arms, cobots, and fleets of AGVs.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Artificial is developing a first-of-its-kind lab automation platform with a suite of software applications that orchestrates a lab's operations. With our software, any lab and anyone can leverage the power of automation.

What is the origin story?

Starting as a hatch company from Playground Global, we initially sought to build a generalized software platform to help people manage and program robots. However, after learning how slow the adoption of automation has been in the life sciences, we were inspired to explore how we could address the key barrier to adoption - siloed software and hardware systems without data and connectivity standards adoption that people with specific backgrounds can only use.

For me, a critical element of the life sciences is the domain is so much more complex than classical production automation. Internally, we have a phrase, "life is more complex than a car." Because of this, even in highly automated scenarios, scientists will remain at the center of lab operations for years to come. As such, we decided to build a "human-centered" automation solution that augments people and guides them in how to interact with the automated parts of the system. We call this keeping the human-in-the-loop. This is a facet I love about Artificial's approach. We want to make automation easier and we want to make it an augmented and rewarding tool for people to use.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

Our team is a group of extremely dynamic, intelligent, and hardworking experts coming from industrial automation, robotics, life sciences, and lab automation. Our team has built and scaled tools and platforms for Space X ground control, CERN hadron collider, LEGO Mindstorms, cloud labs, complex lab automation systems, and much more. Bringing lessons learned from these experiences, our team is uniquely well-suited to take a complex field such as lab automation and make it accessible, flexible, and scalable.

We are constantly improving a diverse culture of very nice people, with high motivation all focused on the same goal together. The creative energy we generate is amazing and I am inspired by the reality and possibility of what we can and will achieve.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

I love computers. I have been entranced with them since I was a young boy and my dad brought home an Altos computer from his work. I just got lucky that my interests and hobbies translated into a rewarding lifelong career in technology. In my free time, I still love to learn about computing in general and I love to program. If I wasn't hyper-focused on growing Artificial into a successful company, I would likely start another software company that also aligned with a purpose that has a positive impact on society. I would either do that or develop Indie computer games. ;)

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

We currently measure success by product-market fit - ultimately, how many labs can we help unblock and help them adopt and scale their automation. To measure this success, on the commercial side, we measure sales pipeline conversion, deal closure, and specific value and impact on each customer. On the Engineering-side, we measure the cost of customer acquisition with regard to integration versus how generalized can we make our offering. We want a highly scaled repeatable product.

We are making a first-of-a-kind, not a one-of-a-kind.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

It would have to be companies we collaborate with - industry leaders in the life sciences like Thermo Fisher, newer biotech companies such as Beam Therapeutics, who pioneer the use of base editing for gene therapies, and tech leader Microsoft. It is great to see our mission and work resonate with this caliber and range of companies. It really validates our product strategy and development and helps us build more quickly and efficiently.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

At Artificial, our tech stack combines the best building blocks of the Internet with the best practices of Digital Automation. We really like key technologies like Kubernetes and container-based development methodologies. But, we love them when applied in the context of creating Cloud-2-Edge scalable digital twins, lab orchestration software, and augmented digital cocoons for scientists. But, I am most excited about how to take our digital twin technology and apply it with mixed reality interactions enabled by platforms like Microsoft's Hololens2. We are just tapping into the potential of these devices when coupled with platforms like Artificial. So, I am most excited by our digital twins and mixed reality interactions. I am most worried about how to build these mixed reality systems as the hardware platforms mature and how to ensure that scientists PREFER mixed reality interactions over their current un-augmented interactions.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

HackerNoon is an incredible resource for learning about new technology and hearing honest commentary on recent trends. Rather than only publishing standard "this is how we do modern software development" type of articles, they are willing to share opinions that may be unpopular. They are willing to push back on the norm and encourage people to explore other perspectives. As well, HackerNoon provides great "how-to" articles for when you want to try out new technologies.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

I am not sure we have room for all the advice I need to give to my 21-year-old self! But, my top-of-mind advice would be:

Be patient while learning. Be kind while striving. Be confident and follow your own technical and business intuition earlier. Essentially, have the confidence to bet on yourself earlier. I stayed too long at "safe" mid-sized to large multinationals before starting my own efforts.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

You can thrive as a startup in the "post-place" digital world. For most software development, location does not matter. We doubled the team size during the pandemic and I have never met over half the team in person. We gave countless pitches to VCs via video calls. We ultimately successfully closed our Series A and developed relationships and confidence with our investors and we still have not met in person. We are only 22 people, but we have colleagues in Augsburg, Germany, Boston, a farm in New Hampshire, Omaha, Austin, Palo Alto, Portland, Hawaii, and Seattle. I have helped build and lead teams all over the world.

The key to successful execution is not an office, nor being in a specific region, it is rather having a great group of people with a strong culture focused on execution.

With the Internet and the wealth of tools like Slack, Zoom, Notion, and others — productivity and efficiency are massive and the team feels like they better control their own time and energy.