Good morning.
Hi there, Matt. How are you? Good. Very good. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today for the podcast. We really appreciate it. So how it’s going to work really quickly is I’m just going to do a quick introduction, introduce you as well, ask you a few questions, ⁓ and then we’ll wrap up. And from there, my team will compile the information and we’ll share the information with you. And you can use it on your website or however you want to share it promotionally as well.
So thanks again for being with us today and I’ll just go ahead and get started if you’re okay with that. Perfect. Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Growth Challenges for Manufacturers and How to Overcome Them. I’m your host, Katherine Seymour. This episode is brought to you by MacRAE’S, trusted of North American businesses for over 100 years. As a leader in B2B digital marketing,
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crucial in today’s highly competitive digital landscape. Learn more at mcraze.com today. Today I’m joined by Matt Bush, the co-founder at Hirebotics, a company that is refining how manufacturers bring automation into facilities. Unlike traditional industrial robot firms, Hirebotics offers cloud connection cobots that are programmed via an intuitive app.
eliminating the need for in-house robotics expertise and drastically lowering the barrier of automation. Mark’s background in electrical engineering and decades of hands-on experience in automation makes him a go-to voice on what’s next in smart manufacturing. He and the high robotics team are helping manufacturers solve one of the biggest problems today, labor shortages. And they’re doing it in a way that’s scalable, affordable, and surprisingly user-friendly.
Matt, welcome and so excited to dive into this with you.
Thank you for having me today.
Thank you so much. So let’s start from the beginning. What was the aha moment that led to you and your team to create and launch HiRobotics?
So, you know, I spent my entire career in manufacturing, mainly on the operations side of the business. And, you we were facing labor shortages at the time. It was always hard to get employees. We were looking at automation. Cobots were relatively new. This was about 11 years ago. ⁓ So you are just entered the North America market, I think in 2012. ⁓ And so we were, you know, we had been exploring Cobots. We had bought a bunch, put a bunch into our manufacturing plant. And we, you know, we came to this realization that most manufacturers are pretty risk averse.
Right? We have limited capital resources. We don’t want to waste those capital resources. ⁓ And so we came up with this idea of like, how do we make automation easier so that more manufacturers can adopt it? And we said, Hey, the one thing all manufacturers know how to do is hire people. So let’s develop a business model where we can hire out robots. So we started Hirebotics. That’s the genesis of the name. And so back in 2015, when we launched, we focused on
Robots as a service business model, we were the first company that we’re aware of that was doing that. And really doing full turnkey integration and deploying robots into the field. And so we did that up through early 20. In 18, we were approached by a division of air gas and said, hey, we rent welding equipment. You effectively rent robots. Let’s come up with a way to rent a robot welder. So we developed the first generation of Cobalt Welding System and sent that to market in 2019 at Fabtech in Chicago.
And then of course the pandemic hit in 20, which slowed us down a bit, but we kind of saw an opportunity to kind of pivot the business away from these very bespoke installations, very labor intensive on our part. You know, we were having the exact same struggle trying to find enough engineers to put these things in ⁓ and really go focus on solving a very big problem in the skilled trades around welder shortage. Because everywhere we turn, manufacturers were really struggling or continuing to struggle to hire enough skilled labor.
Right. So, you we sat down, we redeveloped our entire software stack from the ground up in 2021 and launched in April of 21, the Cobot Welding System that we currently have called Cobot Welder. And then subsequently in 23, we launched the Cobot Cutter. You know, and it’s really designed to be accessible to the workers. It’s not a, you we don’t think of it as a robot system so much as a tool for your welders.
And so we’re really focused on building something in a language that they’re familiar with and an environment they’re familiar with, which is why we use smartphones. That, you know, enables them to very quickly pick up a tool and use it to improve their job. You know, we’re really looking for, how do you take away that monotonous, the mundane welding from the welders and free them up to go out and actually do the more critical welding that takes more brain power, takes more creativity.
Right.
Is it the same world a thousand times a day? Kind of the genesis of where everything came from.
For sure, for sure.
Awesome. So your model is so different from traditional robot integrators. ⁓ You sell software and you provide a solution and that are cloud-based connected and app driven. What kind of reaction are you getting from manufacturers when they first hear about it?
So what’s interesting is, know, cause we’ve been cloud-based since day one. So our very first robot ever deployed in 2016 was cloud-based. Gave a lot of data. As we’ve been told over and over for years, manufacturers will never let stuff on the cloud. They’ll never do that. But what you find is when you’re there to solve a problem, most don’t actually care. They’re like, you solve my problem in an easy way that my operators can learn in a matter of minutes. Okay, yeah, sign me up.
Right.
⁓ We do have some customers that like, they love the fact that we’re on the cloud because they get access to their data. You know, our robots always send up data at the end of every process cycle. So every time they finish welding a part, they send up a whole data packet of here’s how long it took to weld, here’s how much gas I used, how much wire I used, the cycle time, the part number I made, the quantity I made. And then they can track all of that data in the system. They can chart it, they can download it, use it in other systems. ⁓
They get real-time support. So when we talk about real-time support, you reach out in an app. If I have a problem on the floor, it’s not like a traditional system where I’m walking over, I’m finding a phone, I’m calling an integrator or calling the OEM that made the They literally go in app and say, support, type in their question. And then our AI agent kicks in almost instantly and 60 % of the time gives them the question, the answer they’re looking for. And they go, great.
Waiting on the line
awesome and walk away with the answer they need. If not, have an agent or a human agent will jump in. I our average response time currently is under three minutes. Very fast.
Right.
So it’s more of an extension of what they already do ⁓ in terms of data and what they need. it’s more, obviously it’s something different, but it’s something that’s definitely workable for them. So that makes sense for sure.
So
many companies have gone to cloud tools, whether it’s Google workspaces or whatever that they’re using, it’s all cloud-based. Office 365, when’s the last time somebody installed Office on a laptop? it’s become more prevalent and people are really adopting it.
Make sense. From your conversations on the field, what are the most pressing challenges that your customers are dealing with right now? Is it primarily labor shortages or is there other issues that are coming up as well?
I mean, right now we’re still seeing the labor issues, especially around the skilled trades. I’ve been out at customers all year, and we continue to hear that theme. ⁓ With all the economic uncertainty right now, it’s maybe a little less pressing than it’s been the last few years. We’re definitely hearing tariff concerns ⁓ and more just general economic uncertainty. But what we’re finding is that people have kind of gotten comfortable with where we’re at economically again. It’s only taken a couple of months.
And they’re now looking at how do I continue to bolster my business against that uncertainty? How do I spend the time now when maybe I’m a little bit slower, but I’m still working to put some new technology in place and, feel like I actually have time to learn it and not feel like I’m under the gun. Like the minute it shows up, I’ve got to learn it. The second it shows up because every second I lose, can never get back. Um, and so we’re actually seeing a lot of customers kind of reenter the conversation around putting automation in their plans.
Awesome. So how do you help hesitant manufacturers? I know you mentioned that normally if you can just fix their problem, they’re happy to hear it. But especially the ones that never used automation or don’t feel confident in terms of something like high robotics, how do you work with those potential clients?
So we have a couple of different ways that we work with clients that are a little hesitant. Maybe they’re a little nervous. Maybe they’ve got experience with automation and it didn’t go well. So we will always make the offer. Anybody is welcome to visit us in Nashville at our headquarters. We’ve got a weld lab. We can weld, can cut, ship your parts in, come in and play with the systems, spend as much time as you want on them. Yeah, so we’ll have guys come in and spend a full day, day and a half playing with the systems, running out their parts.
really gets them comfortable with how easy the system is to use. And we really focus on it’s them doing the work. It’s not come in and watch us do it. It’s come in, we’ll do an hour of training and then we’ll hand you the tablet and we’ll walk away and let you pretend like you’re on your shop floor. We’ll be there to answer any questions. We’ll, you know, we’ll hand hold as much as we need. So that’s one way we do it. We have a lot of people that take us up on that. We had a customer in maybe a week and a half ago, came in on a day.
They’re relatively local to us. They drove up, brought up a bunch of parts, walled them out. They were on the phone with their plant the entire time they were doing it was the owner and talking to us while they’re sending them pictures. my God, we can’t believe it’s this easy. And then they placed an order like 48 hours later. ⁓
Amazing.
So it’s really just kind of showing them that they’re still doing their own processes. This is just an extension of their own business or their own. Awesome.
The other thing
we do is we also have a try before you buy program where for a certain monthly fee, they can actually get a system on their floor, get it for two months. If they purchase within the two months, we rebate a portion of the cost that they’ve spent towards the purchase price. And we’ve got customers that have done that. And some people are like, hey, we just want to keep it long-term and we do long-term contracts. And therefore, they’ll have it for maybe six months to a year before they do the purchase. Maybe they’re trying to get into their capital acquisition cycle.
And so they’re trying to accelerate ahead of, you know, capital being approved for 2026, for instance. So we have that program as well. And we’ve had guys literally do a try before you buy, have it a week and go ahead and buy it. Because once they got it in, they realized, oh yeah, this, this fits my business. This is exactly what I was looking for. We’ll just write the check. And we literally just rebate all the money back to them. Cause we’re like, you had it, we’ll just send you the money back.
Right, right.
But it also gives them the opportunity to have that safeguard that if it doesn’t work out or they don’t think it’s going to work out, they have that trial base, which is really amazing. That’s really cool.
Yeah. So for instance, we had a customer that they love the system, but they’ve realized they need to go spend more money upstream to fix upstream processes. So they need to buy a new tube laser before they invest in the robot. So they’re going to take the money they were using for the robot and go put it towards a tube laser so that they actually have processes that fit the robot and are, you know, are able to be robotically welded. Cause at the end of the day, it’s still a robot. needs the right fit up. It needs the right part presentation. ⁓
And so, you know, it was great for them. were like, they were able to figure out, my God, we need this upstream thing fixed before they invested the cash. And now they still had the cash to go fix the upstream process. And then they’ll come back probably in the 26th capital cycle and get the robot.
Amazing. Is there any specific industry that has the use case more so than others when it comes to cobots that tends to thrive in welding, machine tending, or packaging? Is there any specifics that you see in that?
So, I mean, we’ve been fortunate throughout my career and then throughout the company’s history that we’ve done pretty much everything. We’ve packaged parts, we’ve assembled parts, we’ve machine tended. it’s really, know, cobots are very flexible. They’re very ubiquitous. ⁓ It’s really up to the imagination of the person that’s putting it in. So the biggest challenge we’ve always seen with cobots isn’t the cobot itself, you whether it’s a UR, an ABB, a FANUC.
You know, they’re all relatively simple to use. They all have hand guided teaching. ⁓ Where it becomes the challenge is having the creativity and the knowledge to actually implement a robotic system. ⁓ So that’s where, what you’re really finding the major uptake and where you’re seeing the fastest growth in Kobots is around solutions providers, guys that are actually coming in and developing a product around the robot and saying, here is a solution to your problem that you’re not what we call a DIY or
science project, right? You’re not buying all the piece parts and trying to figure out how to put it all together. Whether that’s in machine tending, there’s companies out there offering machine tending solutions, welding solutions, finishing solutions, packaging for palletizing. There’s some guys doing some small packaging lines. That’s really where, as we talk to different robot manufacturers, where we talk to you are a lot, ⁓ they’re seeing the biggest uptake as well as in all these solutions and really.
Not de-emphasizing, but less emphasizing the do it yourself, buy all the peace parts and put it together yourself.
makes sense. One of the things that stands out is how easy it is to use the app. ⁓ It’s like programming the robot with zero code. how important is ease of use ⁓ in getting adoption, especially for small to medium sized manufacturers?
We think it’s the most critical thing is having a platform that’s not only easy to use, but approachable. so, you know, obviously,
or not, this is a lot more approachable, right? My cell phone is a more approachable than picking up a robot teach pendant. And so it doesn’t intimidate the users. And so they’re willing to get in there and jump in it and play with it. The other thing we find is because of how we’ve developed it, because we are cloud-based, we have things like auto version. So every time you make a change, we create a version of that program that you can always go back and recover from. So suddenly you’re like the barrier to making a change and being scared you can’t get back.
to what you had goes away because you just go in there, you click history, you go version, and you go, I want go back to this version, compare it. Yep, that’s the version I want, restore it there, and the system just restores it. Not only that, but we are fully backing up everything. And so suddenly, you’re not worried about, I had a power outage and I lost everything I was doing. Or my robot got corrupted and I lost everything, and now I’ve lost six months worth of work. Ours is all stored in the cloud, it’s backed up.
You know, your robot goes down. You can literally deactivate that robot, put a new one in reactivate the same machine. And suddenly all your programs are on that robot. And so.
So from my understanding is you’re basically just taking items that they normally would use like your cell phone on your regular every day and just implementing into like their processes, but with a safeguard, a safeguard with backing up that they don’t have to ⁓ be stressed out from like removing data, et cetera. Is that correct? Correct. Amazing. Amazing. ⁓ Also, like you offer real time cloud monitoring and support. You did mention that in the beginning of the-
like our podcast as well. How does that help change the experience for your customers compared to traditional robotics setups?
So, what it really gives us, especially for smaller businesses that generally don’t have any sort of data collection, automated data collection tools, it gives them the ability to really understand how that robot is running. And to be able to see how not only is the robot running, but how their different operators are utilizing the tool. ⁓ We have a customer down in Miami, he can tell you which of his operators best uses the equipment, because he can look at the charts that he’s created and see who has the best productivity.
⁓ Who’s keeping it busy the most? Cause he can see every time a part is being made and knows what the rough cycle time is. So it suddenly gives them the ability to see how the plan is running. And what’s important is because it’s cloud connected, you don’t have to be at the plant to see how the plant’s running. You could be, you I always joke, you could be sitting in Tahiti sipping on Mai Tai and still know that the plan is running. You know, that was as an ops guy, that was always my dream was to be able to be on vacation, know, look up and go, yep, everything’s good. ⁓
everybody’s dream. ⁓
I can continue to relax. ⁓ And so we’ve had that since day one. That was one of the very first things that we developed because of our background in operations. was like, that’s important to our customers. And so early on, this was machine tending days, back probably 2016, maybe 17, we deployed at a very large automotive ⁓ tier one supplier. the first night we got the cell up and running, we were actually running test equipment.
the plant manager was sitting at ⁓ a local diner with his wife and was looking in the app. It was like, my God, he messaged us. He’s like, I can see what the plant’s doing. Because historically he would leave at five o’clock and it wasn’t until he came back in the next morning and went and looked at the data that he knew how second and third shift ran. He only got to see roughly a third of the day when he was there. And so it was suddenly, you the operator’s like, great, he’s now messaging us asking us to wind the cell down for seven minutes. You know, but it was eye-opening to them.
And it continues to be eye-opening to a lot of our customers.
I would say especially for the small to mid-size manufacturers as well, because just like you mentioned, if you leave at 5 PM and you don’t know how things are running till the next morning, if there’s a massive issue, how do you action that until hours later? So at least they have the option to be proactive, which is amazing. ⁓ Can you share an example of two or one or two actually you have experiences or examples that help change your customers drastically?
in terms of output and how they help them solve the staffing solution using your technology.
Yeah. So one customer, D’Angelo Marine, Justin’s been fantastic with sharing his story. You know, when they bought the system, they had a pretty long lead time or backlog of products. And the issue with their company is they build custom exhaust for large yachts. So think Jeff Bezos’ job kind of stuff. And obviously when they get a job, the yacht’s only going to be in port for so long. And so they only window to,
build, deliver and install the system. And if they can’t get it done within that window, they will go find somebody that can. And so they had a fairly long backlog. They were missing out on work because they just couldn’t get to it fast enough. They were TIG welded in by hand within just a matter of weeks of bringing the system. And they’d worked their backlog from I think like six days to like, or six weeks to like four days. ⁓ And so it’s enabled them to go out and actually grow their business. They garner not only more
business in their core market, but actually look at other products that they could, or other markets that they could go after. ⁓ So now they’re doing some higher volume work that they would have turned away before because, you know, they just, by hand welding, they just didn’t have the bandwidth to do it. But now with the cobot, they’re able to look at jobs, you know, that are higher volume. Maybe they’re making something for an OEM like Generac. ⁓ And so now they can take on more work.
So that’s one advantage or one example. We have another customer on the East coast that builds storage and shipping systems for the automotive OEMs for doing like sheet metal parts, castings, things like that are being moved from the tier suppliers to the OEM plant. And, you know, they bought the first couple of systems, a large OEM came in, saw they had the Kobots and went, can you buy more? And they were like, yes, here’s a $3 million contract. Buy more robots.
Another OEM came in. they bought, I think six more. Another OEM came in and was like, can you buy more robots? Yes. Here’s a contract for several million dollars. So they bought 10 more robots. So they went from having two to I think today they have 24 robots on their floor. And so they see it as a lever, a lever that they can literally just pull this lever and suddenly increase their capacity and take on more work without having to go out and try and find and hire and train more employees.
And the employees like it because a lot of the parts that Cobalt’s making are just repetitive welds. It’s the same weld all day long and the employees just don’t like doing it. They would much rather be involved in the final fit up where they’re actually trying to take all these subcomponents and actually make them fit within the engineering prints in relatively tight tolerances. Where there is some fabrication skill and understanding how metal is going to move and how to move metal around to make it actually fit the tolerance.
That’s excellent. it kind of gives welders the chance to be welders versus like use their expertise. Yeah, that’s really cool. So as a startup in the industrial space, how do you approach marketing and customer acquisition? Is it mostly word of mouth or do you use case studies or is it something more powerful in traditional channels?
So historically we have been an inbound marketing company. So we rely on publicity, magazine articles, case ⁓ studies. We’ve done a number of case studies with customers ⁓ as well as case studies with manufacturers such as you are, hypertherm. ⁓ So that’s been our traditional way. We’ve done a lot of work around SEO to really rank high ⁓ on the searches that we’re
we’re wanting to rank high on. But that drives our inbound marketing engine. And that’s really fueled us to where we are today. And then word of mouth, we get a lot of customer referrals as well, which we continue to do the things that empower our customers to do that by having the faith that we’ll meet their referral. But we are working on a lot more, trying to develop a lot more outbound strategy as well around whether it’s, I hate to use the word cold calling, because we all hate getting the cold calls, but.
How do we reach people before they’re necessarily ready to look? So we are engaging with different agencies on ad spend, trying to optimize our ad spend to make sure that we’re getting the right click through rates on ads, ⁓ that we’ve got the right strategy around if we are going to do outbound calls, that we’ve got the right strategy around who to call, that we’re not just randomly calling somebody that, like I got a cold call the other day, the guy wanted to know.
if they’d be a good fit and asking what they did, it was nothing in our market, like nothing in what we do. Like I don’t sew clothing. So I don’t know why you’re calling me. So we want to avoid that because that just aggravates people and gets a bad reputation.
Yeah, yeah.
So you have, obviously you’re already halfway there, because you have a vertical in mind who’s your ideal client. It’s just a matter of how to target them in more of an outbound approach. that correct? Amazing. So you built a brand that feels modern and accessible, even in a pretty technical space. What is the role of digital marketing playing higher botics in front of your audience? So I know you already mentioned you’ve already done some
That’s great.
So the other thing we’ve done is a lot of YouTube videos over the years. ⁓ Some of very short, some of more technical. ⁓ We started doing something a few years ago when we go to trade shows, we actually bring a film crew with us. ⁓ cool. And they film live at the trade show. We’ll actually put up, not live, but in near real time, video snippets throughout the show. So Fabtech, IMPS, Automate. And then we’ll use those in our digital marketing efforts.
Uh, but one thing that was really cool was we did interviews like, you know, basically man on the street kind of interviews, talking to existing customers at the show that, you know, happened to stop by the booth, asking them how it’s going, you know, what they, what they like, you know, what empowered them to do what they’re doing, how it’s helped them. Uh, but then also doing before and after videos of users that have never seen the system that get a hands-on demo. Right. When we’re at the trade shows, we do something pretty unique in that, you know, since 20.
21, we’ve put the tablet in the user’s hands at the show. So we don’t do a canned demo. We have the user teach the robot at the show, show them and just a matter of minutes, I can teach you how to program this robot. So we’ll do interviews with them if they’re willing before, like you’ve never used this. Nope, never used it. First time we’ve seen it. We’ll kind of film over their shoulder of them actually using it. And then we’ll do a few seconds follow-up and just ask them what they thought.
⁓ And put that out there and that really helps to build the confidence in people that have never touched it. That, Hey, that guy sounds like me. He looks like me. He talks like me. He can use it. I think I can use it too. And so we really lean into video a lot. And really it’s all about, you know, one of things that we were just having this conversation yesterday is whether it’s our marketing, whether it’s how we use the app, you know, how we program the robot. We try to meet the customer where they’re at in their journey.
And so we’re trying to develop different media, different messaging that really tries to meet them where they’re at so that they are comfortable knowing that this system is going to work for them and that we can bring them on the journey.
Right. So it’s really just a matter of, like you said, building confidence. And I think that’s amazing. And it is. It’s daunting if you’ve never touched something like this before, but you know it might be useful. Just to find out that you could do it yourself within a couple of minutes, that’s pretty powerful for sure. If we could help you generate 200 to 300 % more qualified leads this year,
What would those leads ideally look like for you? What type of company or challenge would be a perfect aspect for hierobotics to help with?
So generally we’re targeting what we call small to mid-sized business, SMBs that are in the metal forming, metal fabrication business. So we’re not looking for bridge builders necessarily, but we’re looking for the job shop, the small manufacturer OEM, ⁓ as well as we also have, so we actually have an ICP meeting this afternoon to try and nail down our ICP.
And we’re really nailing down too, because we have our, we call, if I had to go find a customer this afternoon, who would I go, where would I go look? And we also have our targeted outbound effort that we’re doing around targeted industry, targeted customer. So those are a little bit different. Those are more enterprise level, large opportunity for us. But that’s kind of, you know, that’s kind of where we’ve historically been.
Amazing. Where do you see higher robotics headed in the next few years? Are there any new industries that you kind of want to break into and what are you excited to tackle next?
So from our vision, our vision is really to stay within the metal forming or metal working space, metal fabrication ⁓ as an industry, but we will be branching out into other applications. we’re looking at, if you look at a, take a traditional metal manufacturer that makes something out of metal.
You know, they’ve got to go, if they want to automate their entire factory, they’re going to one company to automate their welding. They’re going to a different company to automate their machine tending. They’re going to a different company to automate their press break tending. They’re going to get a different company to do painting or finishing. And so we’re really looking at how do you bring all of that under one roof and really reduce the pain point of having seven different vendors, but also reduce the pain point of having seven different platforms that you’re working in.
And how do you begin to narrow that down? So historically most, even robotic integrators, the big ones tend to pick a vertical and stay within that vertical because you get, build such deep domain knowledge. We’re kind of thinking about it as we have deep domain knowledge and how to make things easy. We’ve been fortunate through our career and through our history of the company to really have a very broad look at the entire industry. And so we want to take that experience and help manufacturers.
For sure, and makes sense completely. Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Your passion for simplifying robotics and helping manufacturers complete tight labor markets really shines through. It’s clear that you and HiRobotics are not only solving today’s problems, but you’re also building a future towards more flexible automation. We appreciate your insights and look forward to seeing what you and your team can help contribute next to the manufacturing.
Thanks again, and to our listeners, we’ll catch you on the next episode of Growth and Challenges for Manufacturers. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. So look out for an email from me. I will be sharing the snippets from the podcast with you shortly, and once my team has the time to compile it again. Thanks, Matt. You really brought this to life for me. I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Katherine.
Good. Thank you. One thing in the intro, you said my title was CTO. It’s C-O-O. I don’t want to step on my CTO’s toes.
sorry, well.No, no worries. ⁓
Thank you.
Based on our Growth Challenges for Manufacturers podcast episode hosted by McCrae, featuring Matt Bush, COO and Co-founder of Hirebotics
At MacRAE’S, we've been trusted partners to North American businesses for over 100 years, helping industrial and manufacturing companies overcome growth challenges through advanced AI integration and digital marketing solutions. In our latest podcast episode, we had the privilege of speaking with Matt Bush from Hirebotics, a company that's tackling one of manufacturing's biggest pain points: the skilled labor shortage.
Contact us to explore how we can help your business grow.
