Georgie

Hello, and welcome to In the Blink of AI, where I took the brightest AI startups and innovators. Each week I did that from memory. This time guys, 30 episodes and I can do it now. I’m Georgie Healy and this week I am speaking to the incredible Aonghus Stevens from Asseti. I actually met him last year as part of the AI accelerator at Google.

And I’ve been impressed ever since. I knew he would be great on the show because he’s really not afraid for a spicy take, and he is a deep thinker. So I could kind of hit him with any of the headline news and questions. I knew he would dive right in. We spoke about Aonghus’s very early start as a teenage entrepreneur.

We asked the drone King, as I’ve called him, whether headline drone companies were lame or lucrative, and why unsexy in inverted commerce AI-enabled industries such as asset management are actually pretty exciting, especially if you’re an investor. As always, we share our top AI hacks of the week, and we have our spicy takes to finish.

This was a pure joy. Thank you, Aonghus, for being on the show. Let’s dive right in.

Georgie

Hey Aonghus, thank you for joining In the Blink of AI. Before we dive into what you’re building now, you are one of the most interesting backgrounds, I will say. And so I do want to dive into that a little bit.

First, how does it feel to be 24 and interviewed by Forbes? You’re not 24 now, but when you were 24.

Aonghus Stevens

No, I’m 24 now and I’m a long way past that. But, uh, you know, you just gotta get on with it. You just gotta keep doing things. It’s, uh, it doesn’t matter what sort of. What happens? I guess customers expect things from you and they’re the ones that ultimately judge.

So yeah, just gotta get on with it. Don’t think too much of it.

Georgie

So you weren’t like me, and just sharing it with and dropping Forbes magazines into like people’s pathways as they were walking past. You weren’t, you. Ego didn’t inflate at that time.

Aonghus Stevens

Pushing them out of the back of a plane. I was just, no, none of that.

None of that. We, uh, you know, it’s good for exposure, those sort of things, but it doesn’t, uh, it doesn’t necessarily deliver on what, what we need to as a business. So, gotta gotta balance it.

Georgie

Yeah. There’s a very adorable baby Aonghus photo, uh, still on the internet for, uh, Forbes 30 under 30. Everyone, check it out.

It really speaks to what I find fascinating about your background, which is this passion for drones. I don’t know if you’d still call it a passion now, but tell us the story about how you first found drones compelling and yeah, where that came from.

Aonghus Stevens

This, it actually, I’ve been doing drones half my life now.

So I, uh, I’m 32 and I, uh, I first read about drones when I was 16 or 15, so. It does consume a bit, but I was reading a history textbook about, you know, drones

Georgie

As one does.

Aonghus Stevens

In sort of, well I was at school.

Georgie

Okay.

Aonghus Stevens

But, uh, it was about how drones, you know, had been used through sort of, through conflict from very severely stages and I knew nothing about that.

Uh, and so I did research and, you know, one thing led to another and I sort of had stitched up 15 or 16 drone distributor agreements from, from companies across the world. They were very different back then. You know, it’s almost 20 years ago, it was a lot used in agriculture and, and sort of really large, uh, large fixed wing drones.

I could never see someone, you know, flying a drone for fun, basically, which I clearly misread that. But yeah, the industry was, was very different back then. But it’s been, you know, it’s been a journey to, you know, do I love drones these days? Or, I don’t know, I love what they can do. Um, you know, and I think more and more.

It’s about enablement and, and using technology to, to do things. And, and that’s where, you know, now drones are a, a, a fraction of what the sort of product is in its totality in a city. And I think they’re an incredible enablement tool for, for enterprise particularly. But there’s so much more, you know, there as well.

Georgie

Uh, you said fixed wing drones. Uh, how many different types of drones are there and, and what’s a fixed wing drone?

Aonghus Stevens

Drones, sort of largely similar to aircraft, fall into, uh, two or three, uh, categories. So fixed wings, like airplane style, rotary wing has like a, a rotor, like a, a helicopter basically. And then the multi rotor.

Georgie

Oh, I’m familiar with those ones. Yeah.

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah. The drone, you see people fly in a park that’s multi rotor. Yes. And then there’s some hybrid versions of them as well. So there’s like VTOL, which might be fixed wing with sort of vertical takeoff capabilities and things. So they largely follow the, the classes that exist in manned aviation as well.

Georgie

The listeners would be so mad if I didn’t ask why you’d use one for one case and one for another. Is there any clear cut reason why you’d use one and not the other?

Aonghus Stevens

It sort of all revolves around, you know what the use case is. So fixed wing, large drone, much like if you, you know, you fly to Europe, you’re not gonna fly there on a helicopter.

Um, true. It usually inefficient. Um, but if you, you know, wanted to, you know, fly around the canyon, you, you do it on a helicopter, not on a, a Boeing. And so it’s a similar thing, you know, agility. There’s a, there’s a trade off between the, the things usually to do with. Scale accuracy of data, um, and those sort of things.

The, the most pervasive drone is definitely multi rotor. Yeah. They’re, they’re tiny, cheap to make, very easy to control, which means they, uh, yeah,

Georgie

That’s the ones I see at the park. Yeah. My son really wants one. I’m like, you are five. Calm down. But if he starts reading history textbooks, I’ll know, I’ll know that, uh, he could be Forbes 30 under 30, so maybe I’ll get him one.

Look, before we dive into to more of the, uh, the AI, you know of it all, you are my go-to person to ask about the Southern Highlands, ‘cause you’re, you are often there, right? What do tourists get wrong about the Southern Highlands? What should they do when they’re there?

Aonghus Stevens

There’s so much to Southern Highlands.

I think that’s the greatest sort of thing about there’s so many little villages and, and those sort of things. Uh, if anyone wants Southern Highlands tips, hit me up as you know, I, uh, the best. I can tell you where, you know, good vanilla slice is. Mm-hmm. Uh, where to get the croissants, where to get the coffees and you know, probably where to go to buy chickens.

But that, um,

Georgie

Chickens to eat or chickens to have as pets? There’s a distinction there.

Aonghus Stevens

I can, I can tell you both that I would’ve actually, I was more for ownership of chickens, but.

Georgie

You are like lemon slice, coffee, chicken,

Aonghus Stevens

They all weren’t falling into the same category. I did actually mean live chickens, but I can probably, you know, good, uh, I actually dunno, a good chicken shop down there, but, um, I’m, I’m sure there is one.

I’ll, uh, I’ll circle up for our next chat.

Georgie

Like I can help you with silky bantams, but if you wanna eat one, I, I got nothing. Amazing. Look, we’ve got this part of the show where we call it hack of the week. It’s a lot harder for me because I have to come up with a new one of these every week, and the guest always looks incredible because you’ve just got one.

Um, so we’re gonna do that again this week and you can blow me outta the water. Can you share an AI tool or use case in AI, uh, that you try, uh, you’ve tried recently and you love, um, that the listeners might benefit from?

Aonghus Stevens

More of a workflow that I like doing. So I’m, I’m big on data. Yeah, love, data, love. You know, we’ve got dashboards all around the office.

Like everything in our business. We’ve got dental system, data warehouse, which inherently means you’ve gotta use, you know, SQL or something to interact with. And I’m absolutely woeful of that. I’m completely hopeless, but what I do in yeah know, chat fatigue, Claude, any of the, the sort of interface, those dump.

All the database structures, uh, tell it what I’m trying to achieve. And it writes like thousands and thousands of lines of SQL and it’s amazing. And, uh, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s been running joke in the office, so

Georgie

That is awesome though.

Aonghus Stevens

I can write a weapon. Well, no, it might not even be a good query. Someone probably looking about what is, what Absolutely is this thing.

But I can show you,

Georgie

But you get the outcome. Yeah, yeah,

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah.

Georgie

Um, we were forced to do SQL at uni for Masters of Commerce with data analytics in it, and it already felt so archaic two years ago. So I, I think that that’s a great hack. Like why would you be learning SQL at this point? Right. It seems kind of a waste of the skillset.

Aonghus Stevens

I don’t even read what the errors are. I just like paste in back what the errors are. I’m just so lazy with it. But it nails

Georgie

If it can do it, um, mine is. Kind of hacky as well. Um, I’ve been using chat GBT to come up with learning courses for me, and actually I’ve been using it as of the last two days to write gym workouts for me as well.

And I sent it to a friend who has had like. A million hours of personal training and she’s like, I, I actually back this. I wouldn’t pay for a personal trainer to use it. So in terms of learning courses, I’ve been asking it for AI specific courses, you know, getting the difference between tokenisation and embedding, um, versus like when tokenisation, is it using a sub word or the history of it where they used to use a whole word and all of that stuff.

I’m getting through asking chat GPT to uh, teach me a learning course. As

Aonghus Stevens

Well as the week suggestions.

Georgie

Yeah, I should use it for hack of the weeks. ‘Cause these are weirdly specific. I wanna have a. Gym workout routine that exclusively uses handheld weights. It’s pretty cool for that.

Aonghus Stevens

For my legs,

Georgie

For my ankles.

All right. I’ve called this section Drone King. How do you feel about being the drone king?

Aonghus Stevens

I probably deserve to be in a mausoleum or something. I’m more like the old grandpa. He’s loving it. Dirty grandpa. Dirty drone grandpa.

Georgie

Yeah, I could’ve, I could’ve been way meaner drinking.

Aonghus Stevens

I’ve got so many grey hairs these days.

Georgie

Well, it’s ‘cause you’re a ripe old age of 32. But, but seriously, you have been in business for long enough that I’m not surprised. You’ve got a few profitable business at 15 and then, you know, VC backed, AI enabled startup. What are some of the misconceptions that you have around drones now that you are at that stage though?

You talked about, you know, hobby drones, you’ve talked about, you know, them used in your past, but now that you’re, you’re building a scaled VC-backed company, is it so much about drones or a bigger picture and, and what are we getting wrong there?

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, and answer the question in sort of both parts, like it’s, it’s never in a commercial sense.

It’s never about the drones, so. Why does someone buy a drone? They need. Photography, they need to be able to do something with it, or they need delivery or, you know, they need space in the drone to do something. But no one, unless you’re a hobbyist, you don’t buy a drone just for fun and they’ll wear off very quickly.

It can only do so many things as up and down, left or right. It’s like, okay, well there’s, there’s not much else to it. And that sort of, you know, the utilisation of drones to achieve something is where if you look at a city and what we’re doing today, we’re an asset management solution around, you know.

Sort of predicting planning and operating property assets at scale. Um, and, and it’s much like drone delivery. You know, it has a space in a coer framework potentially, but realistically people are gonna use trucks to do this sort of stuff as well. You know, no one’s just gonna use a drone to deliver everything in the world.

And so, mm-hmm. For us, drones play a part in our product internally, you know, across sort of Australia and the US. We’ve probably got five or 6,000 pilots in our network now, but it’s a very hyperlocalised model where this data goes out and gets collected and, and comes back in and then it. Is a source for us to do a, a bunch of other stuff, um, in the product itself.

And so that’s really where the, I think once the, once the drone is flown and that’s where everything starts rather than, you know, some people sort of view that as like, job done, but that’s, that’s just an enablement of a, a much bigger picture.

Georgie

And the bigger picture in asset management. So those listening at home, Asseti Asset Management, why was this, uh, an area that you thought was particularly compelling, especially after years working in drones and the space?

Why were you like that’s where it needs to be disrupted?

Aonghus Stevens

In our drone business, and we still have a drone business in, in the aesthetic business as well. It sort of sits in there and. We were basically making PDF reports for people and, and they would get a PDF. It was like, digital PDF report is the easiest way to explain it.

And they’d sort of print that off and, and do their thing with ‘em. They’d pay us a lot of money for it, but they never used it again. And so it was like, well there’s actually a lot of value to this data. You know, an asset lives and breathes in its environment. It’s like a person, if you put a person outside for 50 years and did nothing with them, they’d be looking pretty weathered as well.

Yeah. And you know, that’s, that’s the same with an asset. It’s okay. Each of these assets has its own independent like little personality. And how can. How can we use data to better understand these assets? How they are now and how they live and breathe in the environment they’re in effectively. Uh, and that’s really what I said is about, uh, delivering for customers at scale.

The ability to manage asset network. So it might be 10 or 20 warehouses here in Australia, or it could be a few thousand sites in the US. You know, across areas is a massive scope, and each of them has the same challenge of, you know, their assets degrade, you know, and, and that’s essentially what it is.

It’s like, how can we slow down asset degradation or how can we make it cheaper to manage degrading assets? And that’s, that’s really like the, the trade off at the end of the day. And that’s what we’re trying to, trying to build with Asseti.

Georgie

It’s huge, right? Like one of my first jobs out of uni, I had a chemical engineering degree and the options were in very crumbling down manufacturing sites everywhere, I can assure you.

But it, it’s true that that stuff matters. Like if, if we’re working with equipment and machinery that’s been out in the, the Brisbane sun for 30 years, it just has efficiency issues and I can see like. Firsthand how much that impacted the final product in terms of what we were doing in a, in a food manufacturing plant.

You guys use high quality imagery to help with that conversation with your clients, um, and machine learning. Can you tell me a little bit more about that conversation and, and how exactly you, you use that imagery to help them?

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, and that’s sort of where, um, I guess part of the drones come in. So in a drone sense, we would fly a drone over somebody’s site.

Collect a few thousand images that process, um, or those images are, are reconstructed to 3D through a process called photogrammetry. Uh, and then that generates a really high resolution 3D model essentially. So off that, that’s when we do a range of uh, sort of AI layers around defects and, uh.

Componentisation. So breaking your asset down into like how many anchor points or how many fans or, or these sort of things cost the asset network, which sounds super unsexy, but if you’ve got like a thousand warehouses or something, you don’t actually know, you know, what you’ve got. And then from there it’s the, there’s a range of other sort of solutions in the product around using data, you know, to, to do various, the platform’s expanding a lot more as well.

To provide essentially like an end-to-end solution for, for people who own assets. We obviously put data into it at the moment, but more and more it’s around the workflows of, you know, managing condition and degradation in these assets. Um, and so yeah, lots of exciting, exciting things that are happening there.

We launched an expansion of the product early this year, asset OS, which much like it sounds an operating system for asset owners. So it’s, you know, it just does more and more, I guess, of trying to own the workflow for the customer and help them, you know, help them own what they need to.

Georgie

Yeah. And you say unsexy probably, ‘cause you’ve done this so many times too, that it’s, you know, another day in the life.

But if I knew that there was a drone coming to my site and it was gonna take all these pictures, I would be excited. I would be quite pumped. Do you have people like looking out the window at the drone in all the pictures?

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, there’s certainly some characters and yeah, we’ve got hundreds of millions of images now, but yeah, they’ve been across all sorts of size.

It’s like, yeah. Really remote warehouses, prisons, you know, school. Wow. Everything, like, anything you can think of has been being photographed. And there’d probably be, I dunno, 150,000 buildings, hundred, maybe 200,000 buildings in the system now that, um, are in the platform that, you know, actively manage. And so, yeah, we, we’ve seen most of it.

That thing. Yeah. People throw things at it and

Georgie

Really,

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah.

Georgie

And you’ve got an AI engineer that, that goes really deep into the weeds, but just, just for the listeners, what is his role specifically once you’ve got those images?

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, so the AI, um, we sort of think of AI in two ways. The, is someone’s like helping us get to our data outputs faster, which is more like an internal enablement thing.

And then the second one’s around like workflow, more like agent style. Uh. But in the workflow or in the sort of background processes? Yeah, we, we run sort of dozens of like microservices or models essentially that are generating things like what’s the amount of membrane roofing on this site, or how much Colorbond roofing, you know.

Is on this specific asset or how many sky these sort of things. So each of ‘em is specific to each region and use case. Um, but it’s really about building up, yeah. An asset hierarchy on the site and a defect register. So telling people they’ve got 200 instances of corrosion on this asset that need to be fixed and these are the priority of the top five of them.

Or, you know, trim these trees ‘cause you’ve got guttering and. And it’s, it’s an evolving, you know, it’s constantly evolving over time that particularly we’re going to new regions and things, and so yeah, a lot of, I guess, process and, and an album in the backend.

Georgie

And as a business owner and, and, you know, having an AI company compute is probably a big part of what you, I.

What your capital costs go towards. How do you, how do you as a founder consider where to focus, um, on improvement and, and where you’re happy to spend the money versus where you’re like, that is just not helping our customers and our end product, and we can cut that out.

Aonghus Stevens

Compute is, it’s an expensive place, that’s for sure.

Particularly ‘cause in our, so in the drone imagery piece and, and other aerial imagery, 3D reconstruction uses a similar amount of like heavy graphics compute. So we would run dozens and dozens of services for that. But yeah, I guess it’s trade off of like what directly impacts the customer, what also what’s working like.

For us at our growth stage, yes. You know, there’s some, definitely some more stuff that could be automated or, or processes put in differently, but we are focused on building a product for the end customer. It’s like, okay, we can let this burn for the next 12 months. In this process, but we know it’s gonna be completely removed anyway.

You know, in a future era of the product, we’re gonna change something. It’s like, okay, well then we, we sort of deprioritise that and yeah, then just like, just a, a ton of sort of intensity around people, like focus on, on what needs to get done and generally that we wouldn’t work on like a novel use case, let’s say, for us where, where we sit in, in the asset management space.

Our solution, you know, is, is sort of incredibly unique, but I wouldn’t say we’re at absolutely the bleeding edge of AI. You know, innovation, which is, um, which is positive for us because we can sort of pick and choose. And rarely does AI solve one problem for us. So like in our series of 10 or 15 things in a process.

We might put some things in there with AI, might, you know, some other just general automation, some other computer, you know, just like general processing stuff. Um, and so yeah, it’s, it’s, um, I’m sure it’s something in time that we’ll have a ton of, uh, a ton of sort of legacy issues.

Georgie

Like, like every company ever.

I remember when I was working at Ford, they had like this mainframe of like 1980s, like black screen, green text stuff. Just because it was a legacy product that we couldn’t, we couldn’t, you know, upgrade because it had too many moving parts in the supply chain. You have reminded me of a chat we had once before.

You know, you guys are an AI company that leverages AI, but you said you know, your, your customers, like it’s not a brand thing that you guys use AI, like some startups out there that are like, we’re an AI company because your customers. You, you, you told me that some of them aren’t even on the internet.

Like they, like, it’s, it’s not a branding strategy to, to push that down people’s throats. How do you talk to your customers when you are a very technical company, uh, and they probably don’t really care whether you leverage AI or not.

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, I think it’s sort of, yeah, telling depends who you sell to, but for us, like telling a customer you use AI, it’s like, tell them our.

Yeah, websites build on a specific language. Like really? Like really? It’s like it’s JavaScript. Yeah. It’s like how do we help them get to their output quicker? So like in the terms of asset management, as soon as that insight, you know, is, is detected but not presented, it starts to decay its value. So if it takes you an hour, a day, a week, a month, whatever, to get it out, then all of a sudden the value of that insight is significantly reduced.

And so it’s like, how, how can you provide a real time, you know, sort of. Insight for the customer that’s really drive, um, or that drives a lot of our, our design. And then how can we help them complete a workflow? So AI, you know, is integral and all this sort of stuff, but it’s not, oh, AI enabled x, y, z because.

Sometimes I don’t even know what the x, y, z is anyway. You know, they know they’ve got, but they also only do that because, you know, that’s how someone who sent them an Excel spreadsheet has done it in the past. And so that’s for us is like, you know, how can we help them get to the insight quicker and how can we close the loop for them?

And if we can do those two things, you know, in, in parallel, then we make their life better. And faster for the, you know, make their job faster. Um, and that’s core to our success. You know, whether we roll out 10 or a hundred users of AI in our marketing over the next year, reality is no one’s probably going to care.

And if they do care, they’re probably not the decision maker realistically.

Georgie

I see. And. You know, whenever you say workflow for asset management, um, tumbleweed goes through my brain ’cause I have no idea what that looks like. What is a workflow for an asset manager and where is a like common bottleneck in the workflow that you guys are like, we could sort that out.

So

Aonghus Stevens

There’s a ton of like just process based stuff. So in what we do in Asseti, you know, defect register as an example, even previously we were just part of the problem. Then we just generate these defect registers and everyone’s like, great, what do I do with it? Like, this is amazing, but like. Now I just have a ton of defects.

I dunno what to do with. And so that would usually go into a third party system, like an ERP or an enterprise asset management system that they would

Georgie

Yeah.

Aonghus Stevens

You know, create a work order and then they would assign it to a vendor and then they’d monitor that vendor to make sure the work got done. Then they’d close that out for us.

A workflows, that whole thing. So in terms of, it’s like how can. Whether we create the defect or somebody else does, how can we then feed it into a a an ERP or a system like that and how can we then take that data out, you know, assign the vendor, you know, assign any reworks on the, for the work order that are required, close that out, update the asset register that’s been replaced.

So in 12 months when you do an asset order or something like that, it’s like, oh, we’ve now got two air conditioning units that we dunno each one’s, right. It’s okay, well that one got replaced, this is the new one. And. Yeah, that workflow piece, like in asset management particularly, and, and facilities management people spend 30, 40% of their time just like manually doing things, manually writing work orders, talking to vendors, you know, pulling data out in CSV format to merge it.

You know, it’s, it’s just an absolute. Chaos of a, of a process,

Georgie

And I’m guessing not very, like, it would be all like work order numbers and equipment numbers and just like a sea of numbers that like, I guess it would be easy to have human error if you’re doing it in that way, right?

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah. And people just don’t, you know, in, in a lot of these legacy systems like ERPs and stuff, they’re really powerful systems.

But the information, the system then is typically woeful and therefore everything that is in the system is usually woeful. ‘Cause it’s just human entered data that’s just like. Someone’s like, oh, I know I’ve gotta put this field in, but I skip it every time because this is how I skip it. You know? It’s like, okay, well that’s like a required field for a specific reason, and then someone’s running probably

Georgie

Shouldn’t.

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah. And so with a lot of these legacy systems and processes, it’s rather than, you know, for us it’s not about trying to replace any of that. It’s how can we actually make those. Effectively modern day systems and this process of modern day workflow to actually make asset management operate in the way it should in in 2025.

Georgie

Yeah. Another thing that, uh, floats into my brain, the mining industry, is that a compelling customer for you. I know a lot of your customers are US based, um, but I’m thinking of, you know, if you are an oil and gas company and your equipment is a, a safety risk, if it isn’t maintained effectively. Long way around saying, are there certain customers that are more compelling for you and it’s an easy sell or not?

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, so we wouldn’t typically push into mining or oil and gas, or sorry, we wouldn’t typically say push into oil and gas. Mining would do a bit in, but for them, they’ve got so much money to make sure something doesn’t go wrong, that, you know, of course their budget constrained, but realistically there’s a significant pool of money there they will

Georgie

Allocate.

Uh, yeah.

Aonghus Stevens

Whereas for us, we’re very much about distributed, you know, networks for a customer to sort of feel the pain that Asseti solves for them. It’s best if they’ve got lots of locations, you know, or they’ve got either a massive site or they’ve got tons of locations. Um, and that’s why large format real estate typically, um, is benefit, um, or is a, is a sort of benefits from the system.

Industrial, retail, government, property, these sort of things. So I could tell you what most warehouses look like, but I, uh, yeah, where all your sort of goods get shipped from in the US and Australia. I’ve, I’ve seen pretty much all of those, but not, uh, I bet. Yeah. Not, uh. Not necessarily the houses or those sort of things, and it’s like, yeah, you gotta feel the impact at scale.

So if you’ve got a roof that you know might be nine or 12 football fields. Like that is, and you say, I’m gonna send someone on the roof to look at it. If you send someone out to look over just one football field, they’re not even gonna find everything that’s on there. You know? That is, is it’s just not gonna happen.

And in the US particularly bit in Australia, the US it’s is really hot and summer, you know, and in Arizona, like these roofs, I. As an example, just like crazy hot. And so you can’t even put people on them for parts of the year or they don’t really wanna spend extended amounts of time up there when they do go.

Georgie

Yeah. And the safety element and all of that. Um, are you gonna do all of Open AI and Microsoft and whatever the hells uh, data centres that they’re building, is that, is that on your. Your go to list of outreach?

Aonghus Stevens

Data centre is certainly an interesting, you know, space for us. Um, and a lot happening there. I think the funny, the funny part I guess seeing in these industries as they move and change, and we’re involved in a lot of, um, probably the early enablement work for, for sites too, just generally.

And so it’s big explosion of data centres that, that has occurred. This land was acquired. Years and years ago, you know, it’s been, it’s been the pipeline for ages. They’re investing in it now. But a lot of this, okay, a lot of this has been in play for quite a significant amount of time. Um, and so yeah, it’s interesting seeing customers and they, they’re expanding sort of networks.

Um, and, uh, particularly the US you know, a lot of investment in data centres.

Georgie

It’s funny you say that. I remember when there was the announcement earlier this year about, uh, the Open AI data centres and the, you know, the growth of that and how, how much money was being spent, but apparently it was like a Biden administration thing that was approved initially.

Like as you say, it’s not like Trump was signing it off very publicly, but it wasn’t actually about him or anything to do with recent political movement.

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, we’ve vans. Some of those sites that, you know, would sit in Asseti, had been in there for years, you know, really having Friday monitoring done on them when they were greenfield sites or something like that.

So yeah, we’re across a range of customers who have exposure to data centres and industrial and, and those sort of things.

Georgie

Are you a bit jealous of the founders that, um, when they go see customers it’s in like Paris and Rome and you’re like deep Arizona in summer?

Aonghus Stevens

No, I see some, uh, I see some, I think probably the most authentic parts of the world.

I, uh, yeah, we get, we get around. It was funny, uh, we were in Dallas for a pro. Go Dallas bit and we went to visit customer, you know, a bit out of, bit out of town and I didn’t think we’d be getting out to, uh, get an Uber that day. I was hide a car and, uh, wasn’t too sure what I hired and this blacked out Lexus turns off and when we turned up to the customer, we, it was like, it looked like we were repossessing the place honestly.

Like we, we hopped out. Were you wearing a

Georgie

Suit?

Aonghus Stevens

I think I wore a suit bad. That one

Georgie

Had a clipboard.

Aonghus Stevens

I honestly was like, who are these absolute tosses who just turned up?

Georgie

Oh, now you’ve got VC investment. You think you can get a limo?

Aonghus Stevens

Well, it was, it was cheaper than removal. Would’ve been. But it was funny, once it turned out I was like, oh, this is like,

Georgie

This is, oh, they already hate us.

Aonghus Stevens

Is funny. Like two or three hours into rural Texas from Dallas and uh, there we are just, yeah,

Georgie

You got a print out of your Forbes 30 under 30.

Aonghus Stevens

That was quite running. Yeah,

Georgie

That’s classic. Okay. I would love to have your expert opinion to help me unpack a few headlines. Um, it’s a, a section I’ve never done on the show before, but you’re, you’re a good sport Aonghus.

So I figured, let’s, let’s give it a go. It’s called lame or lucrative. I’m gonna share some drone related headlines and I want your hot take. Are you excited? Oh,

Aonghus Stevens

Absolutely. Nothing more excites me than this.

Georgie

Your eyes have lit up. Let’s go.

Aonghus Stevens

Let’s do, I’m annoyed in the industry. Let’s go

Georgie

Like they’re all lame.

Next. Okay. There’s an Irish drone supply chain startup called Manor. They managed to raise 30 million delivering things like coffees for residential homes. Is this lame or lucrative? Aonghus?

Aonghus Stevens

I would say that’s lame. I think the. You gotta deliver a lot of coffees to, to win there. And yeah, there’s a lot happening.

There’s been a lot of promise, but I don’t think the future in drone deliveries is as glorious, uh, as, uh, is potentially made out, at least in the near term.

Georgie

Yeah. And, um, just, just because I’m curious is the, like, it feels like the drone is so expensive that the coffee is so cheap and like is human labour just cheaper than a drone to operate in service and do stuff like that?

Or,

Aonghus Stevens

You know, drone delivery? There’s a big thing at the moment, which is like, how do you integrate drones in manned airspace? And that’s actually where I think the game is won, is if you can control who flies. Not who, if you can control who gets the coffee from A to B, but you are not the person who gets it from A to B, you win in the industry.

And that’s the bit that with drone deliveries is still fairly open. Right now. There’s a single global provider for, you know, manned aircraft, informa like flight aircraft information, essentially like air traffic control. And in drones it’s a similar thing, which, you know, Google their investment in in wing, which I think, uh.

We’d spoken about before they um, I think that’s where Google wins. Google’s not interested ‘cause they can make two bucks on a coffee. Yeah. Google’s interested ‘cause there’s a billion dollar data sort of play there and the data plays around drones, you know, and, and the management of that drone, drone fleet to Alberta Commerce.

Georgie

You did tell me about Wing because that was gonna be my next lame, more lucrative. So, so thanks Aonghus. Uh, ruin that one. Um, no, let, let’s tell the listeners, um, it is an Alphabet or Google subsidiary that delivers groceries, food, and more, but it’s the big tech incumbent and you think this is lucrative because they own.

They own the airspace, like they own the ability to provide that service? Is that what you’re saying?

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, so I think Wing’s drone delivery service is lame. I think Google’s play at drone delivery is lucrative. So, you know, wing, um, has a bunch of data products that they, uh, and platforms that they’re building, much like the Google, you know, solution generally is.

Uh, and they’ve done hundreds of thousands of slots and. Their IP that they’re building is the ability to get a drone from A to B in congested manned airspace, not the ability to get your coffee from A to B. And that is really what the big learning is there. You know, they’re not, um, Julie, my view, but I don’t believe they’re interested in it because they reckon they can monetise the,

Georgie

They can upsell that oat, oat versus, uh, skim milk Aonghus.

And you

Aonghus Stevens

See how they’ve changed. So like it started off down in Canberra. Then it went up to, to Queensland to Logan from memory and sort of gradually been increasing the, the density of where they’re allowed to operate. Like when it first started in Australia, it was in, I think it was in like Bangor or something down outside Canberra, which is like no one was getting anything delivered there, but it was good use case.

They were able to show their regulator. Then they’ve gradually become more, yeah, sort of built up through, through more congested airspace and the way manned airspace or the way airspace is assessed at the moment, general and regulatory senses are like manned airspace is the priority I. But Boeing and Airbus have sort of, in their view, generated their last sort of edition or last version of manned air, of sort of piloted aircraft, you know, primarily piloted aircraft.

And so in the next 5, 10, 15 years, we will see a switch to airspace being primarily unmanned priority, including, you know, aircraft that move people around the world. Um, and at a point that that happens, whoever controls that, that is an enormous opportunity.

Georgie

Wow. Genuinely very fascinating.

Aonghus Stevens

That’s a really fog answer to lay or with it.

Georgie

No, I loved it. I loved it. Uh, my last one though is a bit left of field, maybe a little bit outside of your sphere of interest, but flying cars, it’s still manned space Aonghus. Um, there’s this. There’s this company, Klein’s Vision Air Car prepares to take flight commercially in 2026. This revolutionary vehicle promises to transform our daily commutes, so we’re rising above traffic congestion.

Aonghus, no longer do we have to get on the highways to go from Sydney to the Southern Highlands, and we’re gonna be in flying cars. Lame or lucrative?

Tell us what.

Aonghus Stevens

I think

Georgie

Beep beep.

Aonghus Stevens

I don’t think much just gonna happen there, to be honest. We thought, you know, flying cars are gonna be a fly, you know, drones, man, drones are gonna be a thing that, uh, that existed 10 years ago. But, uh, I’d rather buy a man helicopter or something. It’s just something really satisfying around, like the sound of an engine.

Whereas, you know, I think in a drone, a flying drone, like. If those engines were to stop, that would be a very quiet experience.

Georgie

Creepy, right? Um, you don’t see a, a world where we’re living like the Jetsons, then?

Aonghus Stevens

I think we’re a long way off that, but I’m really happy to be proven wrong and that it’s an extraordinarily amazing, you know, implementation and sort of industry expansion over the next few years, if that’s what I get wrong.

So be it. I’m more than happy to.

Georgie

Let’s stick to the Waymo’s for the short term. Hey, you have been such a great sport. We are gonna finish the episode with our rapid fire round, so kind of spicier questions. You can handle it though.

Aonghus Stevens

How good

Georgie

We’ve warmed up, right? What makes an incredible VC a true partner while you’re building a company or someone that gives you money and then leaves you alone?

Aonghus,

Aonghus Stevens

For our stage partner, you know, we, um, got amazing VC and Title. Don’t tell them that, but, um, we know love working with them and we have very, sort of strong execution skills, but some, you know, areas where we need sort of positive, significant contribution from our VC. Um, and so I’d say, yeah, partner for us at this stage.

Georgie

That’s awesome. Uh, anything in particular that you think you should shop around for VCs for, for any of the founders listening?

Aonghus Stevens

Still a character reference. You know, get them checked, but also don’t raise, like don’t go to market when you need the money. For example, Title, when, when they joined our cap table, I think we spoke for them for, you know, nine or 10 months.

And by the time we sort of, you know, got through, got through it all term shaded things, then. We demonstrated some stuff. They demonstrated they could work with us and, and add value there as well. And yeah, it’s been an amazing experience so far with them. Doesn’t mean everyone agrees all the time and in fact, you know, that’d be bad if they did.

Um, but we are, yeah, incredibly well supported and sort of on our way, which is a positive thing.

Georgie

Yeah, so supportive. In fact that Kieran from Title I think, has a big cardboard cut out of you in his house. So, um, yeah, that, that’s what you wanna see on my desk now,

Aonghus Stevens

Which I was on a meeting when, so when he first brought it over, it is just buying a cupboard actually.

But it, um, I had it behind me and I didn’t realise about halfway through, I just saw me there. I was like, oh, I was with some people in the US. I was like, oh my God, I look like an the biggest

Georgie

Wanker.

Aonghus Stevens

Let’s put blur on.

Georgie

Oh my gosh. They would’ve thought you got that printed out for the listeners. That happened because Aonghus was part of the AI accelerator at Google and it was printed out on demo day. But now it looks like you did that

Aonghus Stevens

Particularly by the third or fourth meeting where I kept it there, but no, it was, it was probably put beside the cupboard, then behind my desk.

Georgie

Oh, that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard. I remember seeing Kieran walk out of the building with it. It was like, I got so many photos. Nothing’s being funnier.

Aonghus Stevens

I think he bought, so their office is a couple of Ks and no K from ours here. I think he just walked through the Sydney CBD with that, um, and that out there.

But he’s never had so many compliments in his life. So, no, he clicked, you know, clearly he, he peaked that day.

Georgie

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are a beautiful, beautiful partnership. Um, snog, marry or avoid No Snog, marry, avoid. You’ve gotta pick one of each four. Google, Microsoft, AWS

Aonghus Stevens

Ooh. I will pass this question because we are multicloud and, uh, all three support us

Georgie

In various ways.

Aonghus Stevens

Don’t bite their, that feed you.

Georgie

Look. Fair enough. We don’t wanna get you cancelled. How about I switch this one out? Uh, snog, marry, avoid Jeff Bezos. Uh, s picture. No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

Aonghus Stevens

Snog them all.

Georgie

Snog them all. Uh, get cardboard cutouts of them all. Did you watch Google I/O this year? Yeah. Can recommend. It’s kind of cool.

I’ll,

Aonghus Stevens

Uh, I’ll be sure to jump on and have a look.

Georgie

Yeah, yeah. I’ll send you a link. Don’t you worry if you got Jeff Bezos level of wealth, would you quit tomorrow and chill out on an island somewhere, or would you keep grinding away?

Aonghus Stevens

I love working. I don’t work for money and I think that’s risky when people do, but I love working.

I love, you know, solving the problems we do. I’ll, yeah, I’d probably buy. More farmland or something, buy a bigger farm or, I don’t know. That’s, that’d be like, that’d be my, my sort of my thing I imagine. But no, I wouldn’t stop working. I, I really like.

Georgie

Yeah, I do get that sense that you genuinely love what you do.

Any aspect of your life where you actually prefer form over function, because you have told me in the past that you’re very into function over form as a business standpoint.

Aonghus Stevens

I, um, I’m big on utility, so if it doesn’t provide utility, then.

Georgie

Your poor wife, she must really struggle.

Aonghus Stevens

I do love a nice car, so, okay.

That’s, um, looking at them, I don’t, I don’t know. You won’t buy one. Um, cars are lovely. No, I think, like I’m all about utility. I, uh, if it doesn’t provide, you know, sort of functional or utility for us in, in a business or, or sort of otherwise, then, uh. Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe with, maybe with kids or something, but they’re sort of isolated.

They’re separate, but

Georgie

Yeah.

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah.

Georgie

Um, okay. And the last question, who do you admire most in the Australian tech slash startup ecosystem? Who would you shout out to?

Aonghus Stevens

That is an interesting one. I don’t know that there’d be a specific person per se, but I really appreciate. The journey that companies in an enterprise or sort of like B2B sense have gone through in, in similarly unsexy spaces as us.

So, you know, the, the sort of journey that a SafetyCulture or Employment Hero or a company like that, um, has, uh, has been on where there’s just a lot of grinding. Also very sort of specific domain understanding around what the solution is. You know, I, I, for us, we’re not trying to build a solution that we don’t know the industry.

Like we have an intimate, intimate understanding of the industry, what we’re trying to deliver. It doesn’t make it easy. Um, and so, yeah, I appreciate any of those. Like, I mean, grinding and like a hustle sense, but I mean, just like year after year of building this solution with a ways of focus on where, um, where that sort of business needs to be.

Georgie

Absolutely amazing. Aonghus, this was so fun. I learned so much genuinely about drones, which kind of VCs to like partner with, um, what’s lame and lucrative in the airspace category. You’ve been such a great guest. Thank you so much. Before we close out. Is there anything you’d like to shout out to listeners?

How do they find out more about Asseti, more about you? Where do they subscribe? What do they do?

Aonghus Stevens

If you wanna find out more about, uh, what we’re doing in Asseti, it’s just asseti.com, A-S-S-E-T-I .com

Georgie

Ah, those YouTube viewers,

Aonghus Stevens

Yeah, we’re sort of, uh, transforming the way people manage assets. And if you know anyone who has a distributed asset network or has challenges with their assets, hit us up.

But, uh, yeah, sort of we sit in the part of the world that you probably don’t even think about usually, which, uh, is sometimes the most important part of the world. There you go.

Georgie

And, uh, if anyone wants to see Baby Aonghus on Forbes, go to Forbes 30 under 30, Aonghus Stevens. It’s an adorable photo. Thanks so much Aonghus.

Bye.

Aonghus Stevens

Thanks Georgie. Bye.

Georgie

Thank you for listening to In The Blink of AI. You can check out the show notes for anything discussed in this week’s episode, and we will be back next week. This podcast was produced by Day One with music by Dan Hansen and visual artwork by Sophie Tyrell. If you loved the episode, please tell your mates and I love AI news.

Please share your thoughts and suggestions to Georgina Rose Healy at gmail.com.