Angelo Esposito [00:00:02]:

Welcome to Wisking It All, with your host, Angelo Esposito, co-founder of WISK.ai, a food and beverage intelligence platform. We're going to be interviewing hospitality professionals around the world to really understand how they do what they do. So welcome to another episode of Wisking It All. We're here today with the CEO of Tiny Mile, or tinymile.ai, Ignacio. And I don't want to butch your last name. Ignacio Tartavull. Ignacio. Thank you for being here.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:00:34]:

Thanks for having me. And that was a perfect pronunciation.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:00:37]:

Amazing. So for people who don't know, can you tell them what is Tiny Mile?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:00:42]:

Yeah, we do delivery. So this last mile delivery, they're used to, we take food from restaurants and deliver it to people. The only kind of like, different things that we're using robots, and we're doing this actually for free. And so we like this analogy of the Internet. So a lot of the things on the Internet are free and they're paid by advertisers, and that's our business model.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:01:10]:

Wow. I remember actually seeing Tiny Mile before I even knew it was Tiny Mile. So I'm personally based in Miami and I've seen these robots on the street. I had no idea what it was, but I've seen them on the street, so it's pretty cool that, you know, now that I got connected to you, I'm like, oh, wow, he's the guy behind these robots on the street. So just. Just for our guests to visualize, there's these actual robots, just fully autonomous, driving from the restaurant, delivering it to someone's house, you know, last mile delivery. But it's one thing, they just hear delivery, it's another thing to see the robot moving on its own, crossing the street, and you're like, this is insane.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:01:46]:

It's pretty mind blowing. I'm based in Toronto. I go to Miami often, and every time I'm there and I'm walking to the office, I'm, let's say, 20 blocks away. I always encounter a few robots before I make it. People are always blown away when they see it across the streets. Everybody's taking pictures and so on, so it's impossible to not walk in the office with a smile on your face.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:02:10]:

That's awesome, man. So I love to hear, like, obviously that's super technical, super advanced, right? We're talking robots, last mile delivery. So maybe to take a couple steps back. Like, I'd love to hear more about your background. How did you end up wanting to do this? So tell me a bit about Ignacio.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:02:28]:

Yeah, I'm not going to go too far because I don't want to bore you, but before this, I was building autonomous vehicles, and I was part of a very large company who was responsible for the death of a pedestrian in Arizona. And that was a bit of a wake up call for me, because in 2018, if you were to read test crunch or any of these magazines, it really felt that self driving cars were around the corner. Tons of money was invested at the time, and it really felt that no was going to be ready within months. But when that happened, that's really when I started reading and studying the history of self driving cars. And there were early attempts in the early nineties and late 1980s, and it really felt that they were very close. At the time, there was this car that went from, I think it was like Copenhagen to Berlin, say, 400 km, basically, almost purely autonomously. And so if you, let's say, in 400 km or something like 20 interventions. So it's like a five hour trip, and then, you know, someone touched the wheel for 10 seconds, you know, a few times.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:03:47]:

And so early 90’s, it really felt like it was around the corner. Like it was like 99.99% made some time. And of course, it's been 30 years and the problem is still not solved. And so my. My take at the time was that it was probably going to take another ten or 20 years. And so the question was, how can we deploy this technology in a safe manner today to try to bring as much benefit to society as we can? If you can build something so small, so lightweight, something that weighs 20 pounds, that it's inherently safe, then you can really just, like, put them on the streets today. And that's what we've done. But we still have this sort of grandiose idea or this ambition of increasing the speed and the size of vehicles incrementally.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:04:44]:

And so now it's like 20 pounds, and we'll start whooping the speed. One day it's gonna go on the road and it's gonna go at bicycle speed, and maybe we'll win this race to the companies building trucks in 20 years. Who knows?

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:05:01]:

That's amazing. That's it. I didn't realize that that's how far back, you know, self driving cars went, but it makes sense and it's true. I do remember in 2018, it felt. It literally felt like it was around the corner and apparently not right. And what's, what's your kind of maybe educational background? Because obviously, this is something you don't just pick up on the side randomly. Like, I'm assuming you studied something pretty advanced. So I love to hear, like, where'd you go to school? What did you study?

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:05:27]:

Just a little more history before you landed that kind of job in that field. And what led you to this startup, this venture?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:05:35]:

Thank you. Well, I did my bachelor's and masters in industrial engineering, which is a lot of math and optimization and so on. When I was finishing school, that's when I got started in the AI world. That's when I heard machine learning for the first time and so on. And we're talking now, it's been 15 years, maybe 1015 years, so it's been some time. And after that, I went and worked at a computational neuroscience lab in Princeton. And so it was a lot of slicing brains and taking pictures of your slides and doing computer vision to reconstruct it. And so that was a very large scale inference.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:06:17]:

And so a cubic millimeter brain was like a hundred petabytes of images. And so let's say hundred million dollars to process just a cubic meter brain. And there's not enough disk storage in the world if you combine all computers to store a single human brain.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:06:37]:

Wow.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:06:38]:

And so that was a very large scale computer vision project. We did a lot of progress. We learned, we discovered a bunch of, like, neurons that we didn't know we had. We learned how it stores memories. Basically, neurons are like simple electrical circuits that once you extract it, you can simulate it and understand it. And from there, I got to work at Uber in these autonomous vehicles in mostly mapping. And so if you have to build maps for all of North America, it's also a fairly larger scale machine learning project. Right, similar to the brain in some sense, that's the connection.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:07:21]:

Wow.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:07:22]:

And from there, the story also sat on before.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:07:25]:

Wow. And so, and so what led you to Toronto? Did you grow up in Toronto? Or, like, tell me a bit about that. Like, where were you based? How'd you end up in Toronto? And I'd love to understand that kind of journey.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:07:36]:

Yeah, well, it's quite a story. So I. I was at Princeton again, and I wanted to go to the industry after quite a few years in academia. And so I went and interviewed all the big companies, and you want to make them compete between them for salary. So this is a fun game to play. Everybody wants to give it offer less so that they have the best number and so on. And so I had put certain rules that I think was by July, all of them had to tell me their offer, and otherwise, you know, it was not going to be considered. And so I planned everything around that.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:08:21]:

I broke my lease so that I would make a decision by the month and so on. And when I was two days from making the final decision, a recruiter, I believe it was, like, from Apple. She calls me and she said, it turns out that your h one b visa from Princeton is a nonprofit, and we made a mistake, and we thought that, you know, it could be transferred to Apple, but it cannot. And then I called, you know, the recruiter from Amazon to double check if, you know, it was the same for them, and then the recruiter from Microsoft. Anyway, so I had seven offers and they all banished. And then I didn't have a job anymore at Princeton, and then I didn't have a house anymore. So I was literally sleeping, you know, first time, literally, in Congress, sleeping on the streets, showering in the gym. And then I had an email in my inbox from this company from, you know, from Uber, from Toronto.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:09:24]:

I didn't even know where Canada was at the time, probably, but I, you know, I agreed to interview, and, you know, it's a super fun and interesting problem to work with, so it was a lucky choice.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:09:41]:

That's crazy. Wow, that's super interesting. So when, just out of curiosity, because now I'm invested in the story, when you found out the visa was expiring, like, how long did you have left in the states before you had to, like, leave?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:09:54]:

Um, I think technically be there for three months.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:09:58]:

Okay.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:09:59]:

And I stay for, like, a month or so. Month and a half. Um, yeah. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't that terrible. It's not that I was, like, homeless in New York. You know, I still had friends that I could, like, crash if I.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:10:15]:

Right, right.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:10:16]:

Was rainy outside, and I actually was, like, enjoyable. Yes, because I used to go home and watch tv from 06:00 p.m., until, you know, midnight. I go to bed. But now that I didn't have a place to sleep and I had to kill time, you know, to get into my hammock, I was just go and do every random sport that's to sign up for. And so I, you know, I don't really fit. I met a lot of people in that month, and so it's good memories.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:10:45]:

That's amazing. That's amazing. So I love to kind of, you know, take it to the. To the next level, which is when it's obviously now. Now. I think our audience is getting a sense of your background. You're quite a bright guy, to put it lightly. And now I understand the passion, you know, behind Tiny Mile, but where does the restaurant side come? So I see the autonomous of self driving.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:11:07]:

What made you want to solve this problem for the hospitality space?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:11:11]:

Yeah, well, it's a, it's a huge, huge industry. If you look at companies like Doordash and Ubereats and graph, those are only the companies in the US. You can go to Europe and to India and to South America. And so they say 20 or 30 of these companies, and all of them are doing hundreds of millions of deliveries, and all of them are paying, you know, a few dollars per delivery, let's say between five and ten. And so we're truly talking about billions and billions of dollars. And so if you can make that incredibly cheap and capture some of the value, then you can build a business.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:11:50]:

Wow. Wow. Okay. So you got into this. You guys kind of maybe kick things off. I love to hear maybe the journey, like, you know, so now you're in Toronto, you guys have this idea. You're like, hey, I got all this knowledge on, you know, self driving vehicles. We see this niche, or more than a niche, because of the massive market.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:12:06]:

But we see this, you know, let's call it market fit that we want to, you know, test. So then what's the next step? How do you kind of, where do you go from there?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:12:17]:

Yeah, it was a pretty humble start. So I bought this RC car from Walmart, took it to my apartment. I had a raspberry PI, and then I spent something like two or three weeks at home putting this Tupperware and writing this little website so I could drive this thing from my bedroom. And so I remember, like, putting from first time on the sidewalk and then going back to my apartment. It was like winter, you know, getting back into bed and just driving around Toronto. And I was blown away that it worked. Basically, I drove for an hour. And so then I started messaging people on LinkedIn, and I got connected to someone who run one of these big delivery companies in Toronto.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:13:10]:

And so I had a coffee, and I told him what I had in mind, and he took a checkout. He wrote this $5,000 check. And I was shaking. I went home and my arms were shaking, like, holding this check. And I just couldn't believe that someone just wrote me a check, you know, that would allow me to pay two more months of rent. And that was a start. That was something like four years ago. So this was 2019, okay? And since then, we raised something like 10 million.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:13:53]:

So a lot bigger checks, you know, this simple Tupperware RC car has been rebuilt many times by very, very capable engineers. A lot more capable than me. And now we have an incredible robot. It looks simple from the outside, but, you know, the years of work that has gone into, let's say, building the perfect cameras, it works great at night and rain. It's just the engineering behind this is absolutely mind blowing.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:14:29]:

I can't even imagine. And I hope you kept the RC car, like, as a souvenir. Maybe you guys have it framed in the office or something, because that must be pretty cool.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:14:39]:

It's funny that you ask. I am not emotionally attached to things. So I did a triathlon with my partner a couple of weeks ago and they put the melon on me and then we took a picture and immediately took it out of my shoulder, of my neck and just like, throw it to the garbage. And she was like, you're a monster. I can't believe you just did that. And a few months ago, we were cleaning the old office and we had all these early prototypes and I was just like, you know, breaking them into pieces and put them in the trash. But a few people were able to stop me and, you know, took some of them home. They're not all gone.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:15:19]:

We have picked.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:15:20]:

That's something we have amazing. Yeah. Because I'm sure that to see that evolution and to look back must be so cool. Okay, so I love where this is going. So then talk to me about, like, when you got your first client, right? So right now I'm, like, invested. So, you know, you go from seven job offers that now you don't know what to do. Go to Toronto, first check of 5000, which, you know, in retrospect is not a lot, but I know the feeling of someone believing you and it's, as an entrepreneur, it's the best feeling ever to go on and then raise $10 million. Now, obviously, properly investing in R and D, building this robot up, all the complexities.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:15:55]:

How do you get your first client to be like, hey, restaurant, I got this robot? Like, the first pitch must have been a little tough. I'd love to hear how that went, you know?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:16:03]:

Yeah. Something that we discovered some time ago, and by surprise was the power of advertisement. We were trying to do delivery first and our robot just wasn't as good as people. So it was slower. Humans are like 99% reliable and robots were 90%, and that was just not good enough. It's ten times worse than people. People know what it's going to use it and so on. And so the first thing, two or three years was pretty uphill.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:16:37]:

People kept asking us, like, can I put my name on the side of the robot? I was like, no, that's a distraction. We need to make deliveries and so on. And one day we said yes. And so we had our first advertiser. That's the next day, the Strokes. This rock band I absolutely love, they go by, they take a picture of the robot, put it on instagram, and they get something like 10 million likes.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:17:06]:

Wow, that company must have been happy.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:17:09]:

Whoever advertised, they got really lucky, and that was not exceptional. It still happens every other week that someone makes some viral video and gets, like, millions and millions of views and all these wow. Social media platforms I'm too old to use.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:17:25]:

Wow. So how does that model work now? Do you guys charge, like, a monthly fee for advertising is a one time? Because that's smart. They're going multiple times a day, I'm assuming, in high density areas. So it's kind of a walking or a moving billboard. So how do you guys kind of think about monetizing that?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:17:44]:

That's exactly right. Yeah. So we charge a few thousand dollars per month per roller, per advertiser. You know, they get their back. Back. So it's a really good advertisement.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:17:55]:

Wow.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:17:55]:

And the other thing that happened is, like, now the robots are better than people are delivering, and so their reliability went super high. And that, combined with people doing a lot of batching nowadays, also made the quality a lot better. So a person takes 45 minutes because goes through, like, three places a robot is parked outside, and so there's no time to pick up. And then you put it on and it just goes in 20 minutes at your place. And so super reliable and super fast. That's really how. Yeah. So now restaurants really want to use us for delivery as well.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:18:37]:

That's awesome. And so what did it look like when you got, you know, I totally get it. Uphill battle, 90% sounds good. But compared to, like you said, a human at 99. So it's really cool that you guys have crossed that, that boundary or that difference, I should say. How did you guys get your first restaurant? Like, you just approached them and, like, how did you, how did you frame them? And how did you get them to, you know, give you a shot?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:19:01]:

It was actually kind of easy. So the robot is so magnetic. Like, people see them and they're blown away, and so they really approach us. Like, people have always come to us with crazy ideas of things they want to do, and it's always been us saying, no, I've been more shy than the other way around. For example, now there's a bank who wants to put a QR code on the robot so that you can scan them and open your bank account on the street. And they want to put, like, a gift inside the robot. So you sign up there, and then you get, you know, a messy jersey on the spot. Like, people always come.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:19:44]:

We get crazy ideas every day, so it's. It's hard to keep the focus. We always want to try them.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:19:51]:

That's funny. And so, just for our listeners, I'd love to kind of, like, walk them through, like, the. Like, just so they can visualize, because, you know, it's a very visual thing. So can you walk them through, like, what it would look like, let's say, from the restaurant's point of view? And then, I guess, from the clients, too, like, the end customer. So I'm at a restaurant. I'm in, let's say, Brickell in Miami. I want to use Tiny Mile. So tell me what happens.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:20:15]:

Is the robot there? Does it come once I accept orders? Like, I'd love to understand the kind of logistics of it.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:20:22]:

Yeah, we have optimized it and made it quite smooth right now. So we have integrations with the major pos. And so you see a notification in your point of sale and that there's an order that's going to be fulfilled by your robot. A ticket gets printed with a little logo with a QR code, and you come outside with your bag and the food. You show it to the robot, and now the robot knows exactly where to deliver. So you just, like, put it in, and there it goes.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:20:52]:

Wow. And so when someone places an order, like, just. I'm just trying to envision this. You know, I'm placing an order on a delivery app. Whatever, let's say Uber eats or doordash, doesn't matter, but I place the order. Is it. Then it goes to the POS, and then how does. Is it based on the postal code or something or the zip code that it'll assign to the robot versus a driver? Like, how does that process work? I'm just trying to understand, how does it know not to assign it to a delivery driver and assign it to Tiny Mile?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:21:22]:

Yeah, we do that optimization. So, for example, if it's raining in Brickell, there are basically no human careers, and humans would be a really bad service. And so we always use robots when it's raining.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:21:35]:

Okay.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:21:36]:

The robot doesn't mind getting wet if we have. We have a limited capacity now, so all the roads are fully utilized. So if we don't have roads available, then we have to send a person. And so there's an entire soft, like, optimization that we do. We saw. We also want to start doing some sort of, like, synergies between humans and robots. So maybe you pick up from two places with robots. They meet at some point, and a person does.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:22:08]:

Yeah, fix it up. And so it's quite a complex, you know, optimization. Yeah, yeah. That we're just starting to tackle.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:22:17]:

Wow, that's super interesting. And so at any given night, let's say, like, you know, I know you guys are in Miami. I assume you're probably in other markets, or is Miami the main market right now?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:22:25]:

Now, we're very much focused on Miami right now.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:22:28]:

Okay. Okay, cool. And so, like, how many, let's say, how many robots do you have on a given night that are kind of roaming the streets?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:22:35]:

Yeah, maybe a hundred robots could be roaming on a given night.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:22:40]:

Wow. Okay. It's super interesting. And if it's, like, a high end restaurant or not high end. Sorry, high volume restaurant, dude. Does it ever make sense that, like, certain restaurants, you know, keep a robot there for the night? Cause they have so many orders? Or is it really that when the orders are made, the robot, you guys have enough robots that they'll know which place to go and pick it up and deliver it?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:23:00]:

Yeah, we have a central hub that the robot leaves in the morning, and they come back at night. And it makes my day seeing this. There's nothing more fun than opening the door at night and see all of them just come after a long day of work, and it's just plug them in, and they all recharge with all recharge. I fed them one by one. But it's that kind of, basically, the cost of moving the robot is very low from our have to whatever merchant. So instead of explaining them how to store it, how to take care of them, asking them for space or anything, it's just more efficient to, like, centrally located.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:23:47]:

That makes sense. And I'm curious to know what kind of, you know, with any venture, there's always, you know, things you stumble on walls you hit. I'm sure you've hit a ton of walls just with the complexity of what you're building. But I'm curious with on the robotic side, like, what are some walls you hit that maybe you didn't anticipate, you know, being in Miami? Like, I guess weather overall is not bad, right? Like, you're not. You don't have to worry about snow or. But, like, I'd love to hear, like, what kind of walls or things that you hit that you're like, oh, shit. We didn't think about this.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:24:17]:

That's a good point. We used to operate in Toronto, and snow was such a hard challenge that we had all these big snow inside our office, and we run them over like five or six inches was super hard. When we went to Miami, it was so easy in comparison.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:24:36]:

Wow.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:24:38]:

One of the biggest one has been the rain. When it rains in Miami, it rains hard.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:24:43]:

Yeah, yeah.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:24:45]:

Rains are. Yeah. We thought we had, you know, something watertight, but water kept coming in.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:24:53]:

And now, would you say it's pretty watertight? After, I guess, a lot of iterations.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:24:58]:

It'S a lot better. It's never perfect. Like, we're gonna keep improving this for the next hundred years. But they work well on the rain and comparatively better than people. Right. It's like, impossible to get anything delivered in the rain in Miami. And, you know, you have to wait 2 hours.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:25:17]:

That's true.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:25:18]:

So it's good to be able to provide that kind of, like, differentiated service in the times where it's most needed.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:25:25]:

Right. And I'm super curious for the restaurants, like, obviously, it's super novel, super interesting. I think for the client, like you said, it makes sense they maybe get it faster, it's quick. What are the main kind of benefits that the restaurant gets? Gets, is it cost savings? I love to hear kind of like. Cause we have a lot of restaurateurs that listen. So if they're in Miami and they're thinking about like, oh, this sounds interesting. I'd like to try this. You know, check out tinymile.ai.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:25:54]:

What are some of the benefits that, you know, they can realize by using you guys?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:25:59]:

Yeah, it's quite a combination. So most, the average restaurant that does, let's say, 20 or 30 orders a day, they're saving something like thirty k per year. Buy workplace, you know, that's a little money for a small map and pa restaurant. But then there's other advantages. So the advertisement is included, and so they get more customers. The reliability is very high. There's a great trackability. Now, it's common that the either complains that the fries are missing and so on.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:26:35]:

Well, we have a lock container that can only be unlocked with someone's phone, with Ader's phone, and now we have video tracking and so on along the way and don't really guarantee, you know, what we're carrying. And then this opportunity for interaction with the eater, it's also kind of fun. So the robot has a little speaker, so can say, Angelo, thank you so much for ordering an ice cream. Why don't you try a coffee next time?

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:27:04]:

Wow.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:27:04]:

And so they sell these little things to delight the customer. And so all in, it's a good service.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:27:10]:

That's really interesting. And so logistically, when you guys go to a city, in this case Miami, what's the radius that you guys. Because I imagine obviously you have to stay within a certain radius, right. Last mile delivery. So like typically, I'm assuming you go to like the downtown cores or the densely populated areas where there's high volume, high traffic, you know, good amount of restaurants. So I guess in Miami, probably downtown Brickell area. How far can these robots go? So, like, when you look at a geographic area, what's Tiny Mile’s current radius?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:27:42]:

Yeah, you're right. So we built sidewalk robots and these are best suited for the dense cities. And so we can do about a mile and a half to 2 miles in this 20 minutes time.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:27:54]:

Okay.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:27:56]:

And so that's really where we can offer a great service. If we need to do any more than that, that's when we start combining humans and people.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:28:03]:

Okay.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:28:04]:

To get you three, four, 5 miles. And so it is a good service for the dense cities. Eventually we hope to again increase the speed, maybe do something that goes on the road. And that's when the doors open to now start doing five, 6 miles. And that's pretty good for most American cities.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:28:26]:

That's really neat. And I'm assuming these robots like that so there's enough power that they can be out all day or do they often go back to the hub to recharge or just end of day?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:28:36]:

No battery lasts the entire day. The real distance that the robot can do, it's like a hundred miles. If you want to go in a straight line for 20 hours, you can go pretty far with them.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:28:49]:

Wow. Okay. So now I hear a bit of the restaurant side, a lot of benefits. It doesn't sound like there's much setup either. Right. Because you integrate with their pos, so there's not much friction for them. So what about the client side? So, you know, you mentioned the lockbox. So is there anything the client needs to on their end? Is it, is it an app they have to download as a web based? So just to, you know, I'm at home now.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:29:13]:

I order, I'm living, let's say downtown Miami. I see a robot at my front door of my condo. I'm assuming I go down or does it come up that'd be really cool if it came up. Does it go to the lobby?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:29:24]:

It doesn't know it's curbside.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:29:27]:

Okay. So it goes right outside. Okay.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:29:29]:

That's right. So, as you said, you get a text message with a tracking link. You can see where the robot is, and then you press a button in this app, and you unlock the leader.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:29:40]:

Okay, cool. So it opens that up in a browser. You don't need to download anything. You have a code. The robot comes on the curb, open it up, you're good to go.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:29:49]:

That's a tough ride. And it's also a good experience. Like, the thing can wait for you if you have a little delay. And experience is very reliable, you know that nobody messes up with your food, and it comes quicker. So instead of waiting four or five minutes, you wait, you know, depending on this, maybe ten minutes, maybe 15.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:30:08]:

Wow. Wow. And I can. Yeah. That's so cool. I can only imagine one thing that. Yeah, I mean, many things, but one thing I'm thinking to your point about before, with the ads and that virality, I'm imagining almost every guest or every, you know, consumer, I should say. The first time they order, I imagine they're taking, like, I'm putting myself in their shoes.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:30:28]:

I'm for sure taking a picture and uploading it to my instagram.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:30:32]:

Everybody. Yeah, right? We see the entire family. We see a lot of people just ordering to see the robot. Like, families with kids.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:30:40]:

That's awesome.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:30:41]:

I get so many emails every day from, you know, my kids love the robot. It's perfect. Today. Can I put the cake inside? And can you deliver to the park? That happens all the time.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:30:53]:

Wow. That. That's awesome, because you guys have this, like, organic virality of just, like, people want to share because it's such a novel thing. It's so. It's so neat, so new. It's so futuristic. I know it exists today, but it, like, it feels like something you'd see out of a movie. Right?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:31:10]:

Yeah. I really like the model. And so I really like, basically what happened with the Internet. Like, the Internet made the cost of moving information basically zero. Like, before, I had to send you, you know, a fax, and I had to walk to the fax machine. It was so much effort. Now I can send you an attachment for, you know, basically nothing. And it's so quick.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:31:31]:

And so if we could do the same things with objects, like, if I could send you something, it's never gonna be as good as the Internet, but if we can send you something for ten cents and arrives to your place in 20 minutes. I think that opens the door to build so many companies on top, same, same way we built so many companies on top of the Internet. And so now, you know, you're good at, you know, building a flower set if you like. If you want to sell flowers now, you just prepare the flowers in your apartment and put them in robots and then you send them all over the city for a few cents, you know, super quick. Or you can share things. There's so many things you can build. When you basically make transportation so much more effective.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:32:15]:

That's super interesting.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:32:16]:

And that's basically what we've done. So we can now deliver for free. So anybody can use our API and build whatever they want and deliver stuff super quickly and for free. And we are lucky enough that all these people are fascinated by the robot. And so all these eyeballs help us get advertisers to cover the cost of the business.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:32:40]:

That's unreal. So I'd love to hear, what would you say? And I think you touched a bit on it there, but what's your vision with Tiny Mile? I mean, it sounds like you alluded to a bit of it there with the parallel of the Internet, but I'd love to hear from you. Like, where do you see Tiny Mile the next year, the next three years and beyond?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:32:59]:

Well, it's very hard to imagine that, you know, all deliveries that can be done by robots won't be done by robots. And so anything under these 2 miles that can basically be done by free and, you know, such a safe way and so on, like all that has to be done by robots eventually there might be some percentage that kind of go to the curve side. I want to pay $8 and way longer and so on. But I think the large majority, we still have horses, even though we have cars. And so not 100% will be done by robots, but I think the majority will be. And when that happens, now we're talking again about these hundreds of millions of deliveries that happens every month. And so it's hard for me to imagine any scenario in which that doesn't happen.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:33:56]:

Right?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:33:57]:

And of course that's just the start. We're already doing a lot of R and D in increasing the speed, 20% in two months and 20% the next month and so on. And so at some point it's not that we're 2 miles but 4 miles, and now it's only like 20 pounds. At some point it's going to be 50 pounds and so then start becoming that not only, you know, all the meals that you eat, it's going to be all the groceries that you eat and so on.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:34:28]:

That's awesome.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:34:29]:

And I think it's like a cool vision in which we can save tons of time to people. So now, hey, hundred years ago people, or a few hundred years ago, everybody used to make their own clothing, and now it's ridiculous. We buy our own clothing, but nowadays we make our own food and spend 2 hours a day cooking, cleaning, taking the trash out, going grocery ship and so on. Yeah, but if you can make delivery absolutely cheap, then yourself paying $8, you pay cents. And if you can manufacture food at a scale in a central location, I think there's a point, it's a threshold in which making a burger at home costs, you know, $4, but getting one delivery costs you $3.50. That's amazing. And so I think it's a threshold in which even when we get to that point, we can say, let's say, 20 hours a week to, you know, a hundred million people. So 200 million hour, I don't feel that far.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:35:38]:

That's really cool. And, you know, one. One question I have to ask, because I can imagine, like, people are thinking this. Do people mess with the robot? So I wouldn't, you know, I'd say a robot. I would probably take a picture of video. But you have you found that anyone's, like, messing with them or kicking with them? And I guess a are people doing it? And then do you guys have a way to, like, track it if it happens? Like, I'm just wondering, like, I feel like as you guys expand, it'll probably happen at some .1 of the things.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:36:05]:

That blown my mind the most as an Argentina, who never put a robot in Argentina, is that we haven't had a single robot stolen. So when I. When I put my Tupperware robot in Toronto and I put it there, I was like, there's no way I'm bringing this back home. You know, I'm gonna drive this for ten minutes, someone's gonna take it. And, you know, it's been four years and we still haven't lost a single one.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:36:34]:

Amazing. That's awesome.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:36:36]:

We have people who, like, put a sticker. You know, we have, like, very mild, like, vandalism, like that. Some people want to, like, communicate with us and put their business card and put it on the top and so on. On the contrary, what has happened that has really blown my mind is how kind people are to robots.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:36:55]:

Interesting.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:36:56]:

Really enough. I feel like they're nicer to the robot than to other people. I think they see it as a dog or something like that. It's like, you know, the stray dog from the neighborhood.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:37:06]:

Right.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:37:06]:

We have had cases particularly, you know, the beginning with the road of sleep or anything like that, and people, like, immediately, within seconds, like, come and help out.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:37:18]:

Wow.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:37:19]:

Actually, some of the videos, like most watching TikTok and whatnot, are these videos of the, the roll getting stuck in the snow in Toronto and someone, you know, running with their phone, and I'm making a video coming to help, and the ro says thank you, and it's, you know, it's just crazy.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:37:37]:

That's amazing. And I guess just to give our listeners an idea. So right now, Toronto, Miami is the main market. Where do you guys see yourselves going? Is it really just focusing here and growing here, or do you have plans to go to other big metropolitan areas?

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:37:52]:

Well, there are tons of economies of scale that one can have in cities. And so I would love to be in Miami and have thousands of robots and have all these amazing synergies before we move to the second city.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:38:09]:

That makes sense.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:38:11]:

So we'll be in Miami for another one or two years.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:38:14]:

That makes sense. That's awesome. And so for people who are listening and they want to learn more, can you tell them where they can find you? I mean, I know you mentioned TikTok videos, your website, so this is a chance for you to just kind of maybe share. We have a lot of listeners that just like learning about hospitality, and we have a lot of restaurateurs, so there's kind of both sides. But anything you want to share of where they can learn more about Tiny Mile.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:38:34]:

Yeah, go to our website, tinymile.ai. You can see our products and you can get in touch. You can benefit from advertisements. You can save 20 grand per month, per year if you're a small business in delivery. There's a lot of good service that we're offering these days.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:38:51]:

I love it. Amazing. Well, Ignacio, thank you for being here on Wisking It All. It was a pleasure to learn about Tiny Mile. I personally had the chance to see them around Miami. It's really novel when you actually see them in person. But to know that I'm now speaking with the guy, the brains behind it, is a really cool thing. I wish you all the best.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:39:13]:

And for everyone listening, tinymile.ai, check it out. For our restaurateurs, if you're in the Miami core, it might be something you want to offer, you know, to get better, give better service to your clients.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:39:25]:

Thank you so much. This was fun.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:39:27]:

This is awesome, man. We'll be in touch.

‍

Ignacio Tartavull [00:39:30]:

All right.

‍

Angelo Esposito [00:39:31]:

Feel free to check out WISK.ai for more resources. And schedule a demo with one of our product specialists to see if it's a fit for.

‍