Meet the Manufacturers (Gyre9 and Forge)

Welcome along to the latest episode of Meet the Manufacturers, the podcast. Now this episode, we have a double treat for you as we speak to Ed Gilchrist from Gyre 9 and Adam Rodriguez from Forge. Adam is the vice president at Forge, a non-profit that helps start-ups accelerate the path to market.

for physical innovations through product development, manufacturing, and supply chain focused education and connections. Now, Ed, you may remember many years ago, we actually interviewed him on this podcast. Well, here we are again in season two. Ed is of course at Gyre9. The team there are based in Southbury, Connecticut, and they are a product development company focused on the research, design, engineering, and manufacturing of complete market ready solutions. They are also

a premier manufacturer of electric charging stations. Ed, Adam, welcome to Meet the Manufacturers.

Thanks, Claire.

Thank you, Claire.

It's great to have you guys here. Now we're going to kick it off with a little bit of positioning, if you like. Kicking it off first with you, Ed, if I may. Tell me a little bit about you, how you got to where you are now, and tell me a little bit about Gyre.

you know, it was the big plan, Claire. so I got out of school with an electrical engineering degree from RPI and worked in aerospace for about a decade and got convinced to go help run another company. and left, went to go run this little company that was actually close to bankruptcy, which was actually a very good learning exercise because the owner's like, Well, you should go back and get your job because I don't have any more money and basically put my head down and

for three years just like did everything, like sale. I'm an engineer, I'm not a sales guy, but did sales and accounting and all that. And we turned it around and sold it for quite a bit of money, of which I got none because it wasn't my company. And then when that was sold, it's like, okay, what am I going to do? And so, well, a friend said, why don't you start your own company? So I did. And that was my first company back in the nineties, ninth wave. And that got kind of

Survival's not guaranteed in business, so being back is a wonderful thing.

Yeah, we've been through that little thing called COVID, haven't we? We've been through lots. We're going to touch on maybe some of that little bit later on. Adam, I'm going to throw it to you. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Hi, Claire. Thanks for having me. So I'm Adam Rodrigues. I am the vice president of Forge. and Forge is a non-profit that does three things with innovators. and it's why I'm here today because it's exciting work. But it's we educate innovators that have physical prototypes. So think anything that you can touch, feel, hold with your hand, those are the innovators that we're working with.

And it's really difficult to bring a product like that to market. In fact, I think maybe 3% of hard tech innovators will actually make it to market. With Forge, what we do is we intervene early. So we work with these innovators by providing them with education. We have people on the team who have dozens and dozens of years of supply chain experience bringing products to market, people that have run their own companies.

And once they have that education and they're ready, we connect them with wonderful people like Ed, who can actually make those products a reality and bring them to life. And the third way that we help is by providing non-dilutive product development grants to work with people like Ed. A lot of the funding for this is not always there. Me personally, you know, to paint a picture, I would say here's a good, here's a good way to do it.

My college essay, the first line in my college essay is I told myself I would never work in manufacturing ever. so my dad worked in manufacturing, my uncle, my grandfather, my cousins, and I saw what they did, you know, and it was hard, hard work. And as a as a young teenager, the last thing you want to do is hard, hard work. So, but here I am working in manufacturing. And so

it's just kind of funny to think that that's how it all started with that line. but I'm grateful for it. And it's a really exciting place to be in. And I've been with Forge now for about 10 years. and I get to see these cool innovative plants like what Ed has making these products that, you know, some of these are saving the world with climate tech and with med tech. And so it it's a it's an exciting, it's an exciting place to be in. And happy to be here today.

That's amazing. So you've got 10 years under your belt, Ed, 20 years, if my maths is correct. I'm just thinking about the last season of the podcast that we did, which was a lot around the stigma and the old fashioned thought of manufacturing. And Adam, you've kind of led me back there with it. You know, I don't want to work there. It's too much like hard work or it's this or it's that. It's got me thinking about the kind of evolution within the industry, within your

Twenty years for this company, yep.

careers, you'll have experienced that. Tell me a little bit about how manufacturing has changed during that time. Which changes have been the hardest to navigate? If I start maybe first with you, Ed.

well it's interesting because for all of my career, having come out of aerospace, which is generally a very clean and very neat and organized manufacturing environment along with, you know, engineering, and then moving into my own company where we were doing medical products. So we were generally very clean and organized and neat, to this company where we carried all that over. Old school manufacturing has never been in my

In my wheelhouse here. However, we have lots of vendors. And I've spent a lot of time in China and Taiwan. And you walk into some of those factories, especially 20 to 30 years ago, and that's old school manufacturing. You walk in and you go, I don't think these people probably live more than 10 years working in these environments. So we work really hard here not to be that. I think we still have a ways to go, but I think our place, we really strive to be attractive.

to the to the generation, not my generation, to the younger generations that come in and go, this is actually really nice and they get to learn a lot of stuff and they get to work in a clean environment and be treated really nicely. So we work hard at that. hopefully we're somewhat successful at making an environment like that.

for sure. What about yourself, Adam?

this is actually a really good question because what's interesting about my manufacturing experience is that until I began working at Forge, I worked for a saw blade manufacturer. And it is very much what kids probably think of when they think of manufacturing, right? I mean, those places do exist, you know, and it's interesting because it is it was an oily, dark, hot environment.

And that is what led me to the sentence on my college essay. However, I get the job at Forge and now I'm touring places like Ed's. And so I go from this one isolated experience of manufacturing. And now I have toured hundreds of manufacturing facilities. And I will say that it was incredibly eye-opening to see that okay, yes, there is there is that, you know, that dark, dirty, dangerous, right? But that is not the rule. There is so much more.

Out there. And I would say that of the hundreds that I have toured, probably 90% of them are more progressive, clean, fun, cutting edge. it's more like walking into a computer lab than anything. it's not dark, it's not dirty, it's not dangerous. And some of these places you could probably eat off the floor, you know, though they keep them so pristine, like Ed's place. so it would it's really eye-opening to be in this unique position to see hundreds of different manufacturers and have that comparison point.

Claire, I have some very good friends of mine who grew up in this area, we're in in in the Southbury area, and worked in the factory space that I'm in now. And when they worked, this is like high school, you know, summer job, it was a sweatshop. It was a machine shop, the place was dark, dirty, oily. And we walked in here when we first took this building over, it was like that. And I don't have a lot of good photos of that, and I wish I kept it.

Yeah.

because it was old school and we it was a lot of work, by the way, to to get it from that. And again, my friends are like amazed at trying to remember from what they when they were working here to now. So yeah it it's the world's changed for sure.

It really has in more ways than one. And earlier you kind of touched on sort of the next generation, I guess, of manufacturers that are coming through. know, we've got AI, we've got automation, we've got a lot of technology really being pushed into the industry. There's been a lot of conversation around workforce shortages. You've taken a slightly different angle. How can innovation itself become a tool?

to attract new talent into the sector.

Well, I think I mean the reality is you want to take a away the jobs that are super repetitive and boring and dangerous and so automation sort of fixes that that problem because you can automate a lot of that away, generally. two is in the US, you know, labor is more expensive, so you have to get a lot more efficiency out of the system. So again, some automation allows you to do to

be able to pay people well, but get productivity way higher so you can compete with the rest of the world because we still, despite, you know, tariffs and all of the issues in the world, we still need to compete with the with how things are done, whether it's India or China or Taiwan. and so again, try to put things in place that keep the quality really high and keep efficiency as high as possible. And we try to embrace that. We're a really small company, but I think we do a pretty good job with that.

Anything to add there, Adam?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I recently was reading that because of AI, I know Ed mentioned AI, and there definitely is a place for that in manufacturing, but because of AI, the younger workforce and generation is starting to consider, you know, moving away from those software type roles because they're they feel like they're at risk. And so what that leaves is actually hands-on work. and that is, you know, very much manufacturing, which is which is great. So

So you can see innovation playing a role there with workforce and manufacturing. But the other interesting thing that we find at Forge is that the sexier the product, the more innovative the product, the easier it is to attract workforce. So I know Ed has this really sexy Italian motorcycle that he's working on. Now, if you're a young kid walking into a plant and you see that motorcycle sitting there, you're going to think, that's cool. I want to work on that.

And one quick anecdote I have is that I remember this is probably about five years ago, and it really leads to this point. We were touring a manufacturer in Westfield, Massachusetts. And as the president of the company is giving this tour, and there was a group of high school kids with us, you know, you could tell some of them are zoning out and whatever, and you know, all that stuff, right? Why am I even here?

But then she said, Do you I want to call everyone's attention to this? Do you see this component that I'm making? And it's a tiny little component. And she's like, This component was in the equipment, the night vision equipment that caught the Boston bomber. And you could just tell that everybody all of a sudden it just clicked. Like, this is cool. I'm going to pay attention for the rest of this because this is a cool thing. and so I think the cooler the innovation as we start to develop these things, I think the

easier it's going to be with exposure to attract workforce into manufacturing.

Mm-hmm. Who goes first? I guess I'll jump in. yeah. well, to me, I think it's I'll give you the good. On the compelling side, look, we have a access to a tremendous educated workforce, right? When you think about from Boston to New York and you draw a circle, it's a pretty amazing place to be. Connecticut excel itself is an expensive place to live and

I

Ed, go on!

you know, have property and all of that. But that can be overcome again. We talk about technology and doing things to make stuff make you more efficient. I think that some of the challenges that we have here are the same challenges in in the businesses we're in are the same as everywhere else. It it's going to be and I know you'll probably get into it, but you know, the cost of healthcare, which can be actually and we'll have we'll talk about it later, but it can be as expensive as the cost of people.

and I think that

I think sometimes it's the negative is the opinion of like making stuff here in Connecticut. That's a crazy that's a crazy thought. And people walk into our building like, my God, like you make these things here. yep. and we we're happy to be here. So I don't I I'm generally positive on Connecticut.

Yeah, and I want to jump in and just say we have a lot of talk, we've had a lot of talk today about innovation and how that attracts the workforce. With Connecticut specifically, the Manufacturing Innovation Fund has had the foresight to fund a program like Forge because they do see the value in innovation and how it creates this ripple effect for.

the manufacturers that they're trying to support. and so I think just looking at even just that one example that they have a chief manufacturing officer, that they have a manufacturing innovation fund to support these programs, really sets Connecticut ahead of the curve because I do believe it's the only state with a program like this that's set up, but the only state with a chief manufacturing officer. And for them to have that progressive mindset to think,

If we fund innovation, that is going to ultimately pay dividends at the end for our manufacturers, which we are seeing now. We've been in Connecticut for almost four years now and we're really seeing it pay off. so I think that that in and of itself is a is a compelling case for Connecticut that they're ahead of the curve with all of that.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that's been echoed in previous episodes is that we do have this investment, we have this history. It can just be challenging sometimes with the rates of pay when you're competing with other businesses, not in Connecticut, and having to obviously fund health care and obviously the wages.

Yeah, and one of on one of our one of the product lines we make, sorry Claire, one of our product lines that we make, our customer also has it made in Georgia. And so what happens is we tend to get the more technical work and Georgia is just cheaper and they get the simpler stuff to make and we're fine with that. We have you know, we're happy to share.

Yeah, I think that's actually quite a nice way of kind of splitting the load, so to speak, isn't it? And still maintaining that good solid footprint in Connecticut, which is great. Talking about Forge, Adam, Forge sits at the intersection of innovation and manufacturers. It's a great soundbite. What does it really mean? What happens when young innovators get exposed to opportunities and manufacturing environments?

sort of really early on in their career. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Yeah, well that's a really good question because it creates a flywheel actually. What happens is we have these young innovators that are bringing products to market and then we're connecting them with people like Ed, who are making the products. And so you get these young innovators, and I know Ed, you're working with, say, for example, somebody like a flow.

which is a which is a innovative company out of Yale that is creating a solution that helps with ice dams that build up on houses and corporations. And so what happens is now they're in Ed's facility, right? And they're learning.

about manufacturing hands on. They're seeing people around them in manufacturing. There's they're learning. They're almost kind of like employees in Ed's facility, right? In some sort of way. And you can argue that if you they spend a lot of time there. So they're getting this real world exposure. And like I said, a lot of a lot of these hard tech innovators, you know, oftentimes won't make it to market, but they are now getting embedded into the manufacturing ecosystem.

Yeah, they spend a lot of time here, yes. They

with real world experience. And what we're finding is that a lot of these founders and a lot of these start-up teams are actually now taking jobs in manufacturing because it's what they know. They're used to it. They see what it's like and they're getting excited about what's going on around them. So that's one facet of it. But I did say flywheel and what happens also is that let's just say we'll go back to the flow example. Let's just say

One of one of the members of that team moves on to a manufacturer, they start working there, but they are now working on this new innovative product for that manufacturer. And they realize, that's right. We worked with Ed at Gyre 9. They can do this part of that other, or they can do that part, this part. And now you're becoming a client, right? so it's really exciting to think about the possibilities and actually see them first-hand in Connecticut with these innovative companies embedding themselves in.

In real world manufacturing experiences.

That's really interesting. So employees, interns, first jobbers, if you like, who are coming into the industry, that exposure to manufacturing, it really does bolster the long-term workforce value, I guess, within Connecticut. That's incredible. So thinking about those relationships, they don't just build the talent, they kind of start long-term business connections. How...

Yeah.

How can today's start-up talent become tomorrow's manufacturers or tomorrow's customers? Talk to me a little bit about the progression, if you like, through your program.

Why is it like what is it about Forge that has you, you know, being a partner us on a sponsorship level year after year after year? Is it are you are you getting so many contracts from us? And he said, Yeah, you know, we do get a lot of contracts from you guys. so the ROI is there. He's like, but what I really like is that as like I was saying, as these innovators start taking jobs at some of these corporations, you know, we become a client. They think of us.

every time. And so I'm getting calls constantly from a prior forge network innovator that is now embedded in a in a large global manufacturer as an employee and needs the services of this manufacturer. and so that's you know that's real world that's a real world case right there. That's not just anecdotal it's so that does happen. And I think that that's I think that that's a part of the reason that

manufacturers working with innovators beyond contracts can be very exciting.

Claire I'll just jump in and say when I started my first company and people have asked me, like, Well, how I want to start my own company, how do I do it? And there's a lot of answers, but I was going to take one little piece of that and it's when I when we sold that company I was running, that wasn't mine, the reality was I had a lot of connections at that point. I had tons of vendors, I had tons of

You know, various consultants I could go to. I had clients who were no longer going to go do business with the company I left. And so I was able to start it up and not there's many things that want to get in your way to being a successful company and we can list them all, but one of the things that lightens the load is to have a lot of hands helping you out. And so, you know, the one thing that that probably more than anything with Gyre 9 and even working

with Forge is they're another place that gives us more connections to innovators or even other manufacturers that these players might be working with. So building a network is like ridiculously important. Doing no Yeah. Going alone is very hard. Yeah.

It really is, it really is. Yeah, I can see, for sure, for sure. And you've got this kind of ready-made incubator there, ready to tap into, which is marvelous. Thinking about technology, you're going to switch gears here. Which emerging technologies, in your opinion, Adam, and in your experience, maybe Ed, I don't know, have had the biggest real-world impact on operations for either the businesses that you've been working with, or within your own business?

Good, Adam.

I mean, the ones that come to mind are the more obvious ones. so Forge got its roots by working exclusively with climate tech. And we are a non-profit cyst organization of Greentown Labs, which is the largest climate tech incubator in North America.

And now we've expanded into Connecticut and we work closely and our offices are at Climate Haven in New Haven. And a lot of a big reason for that is because a lot of climate tech has a hardware

Component to it. You think, you know, your wind turbines, your battery storage, you know, things like that, solar panels. but we now we are industry agnostic. So we've expanded from there. Now we work with all industries. So the two that come to mind, of course, are climatech, because you know, who doesn't want to live in a in a cleaner world, right? yeah. And then the other one obviously would be med tech.

Absolutely, yes.

you know, we work with a lot of med tech companies and both, I would argue both are saving lives. So I think that those are the two exciting ones that come to mind. And you had mentioned COVID before, so I'll give you a real world example. we worked with a company called Biobot and what they had developed was a robot that goes into the sewage system to detect for opiate usage in a community, to see if that community has a real

problem with opiate use. But what happened was COVID hit and they were able to take that technology and pivot to detect for COVID rates, which was really cool to see, you know, and Forge is it we helped them find manufacturers and design engineers to make that a reality. So that's just one example of the type of innovators that are out there that are having a real impact and are really exciting to think about. So yeah.

It's really fascinating. Some of the climate tech work, that's really kind of an interesting one. fact, one of the questions I tend to ask manufacturers is about their sustainability and the future and how important are environmental and sustainability targets within their decision-making? And for some manufacturers, it's a real bit part of the moment. For others, they're pushing forward with, you

utilizing technology that is available to be as sustainable as they possibly can. So it's kind of an interesting one. It's one that I should really post to Ed, I suppose, know, talk to me about your sustainability credentials.

I'm just going to say we do the best we can and we try to, you know, we don't we don't totally control our destiny because we're somewhat drive driven by what our clients want to do. So we'll usually push towards very sustainable packaging. And if the clients don't care and the clients are you know, or do care, we'll push them that direction. Occasionally we can't get our way, but usually that's important. I think I think overall, I'm going to say from the start of this company.

My sustainability goal was don't make and I'm going to use the word tchotchkes, don't make stuff that doesn't last, that's going to get thrown away, that's going to end up in a dumpster somewhere. So try to make iconic things that are going to live a long time. So when we design, we try to design towards the towards the solution that will last an awful long time till a new technology comes along or till there's, you know, we don't tend to be designing the same thing every year.

making this year's fashion statement. So that's sort of the overall goal of the company. And I think we've done a relatively good job. Occasionally a product comes in that we have to work on that we kind of shake our heads and most of the time we walk away from them. We don't really want to do those junky toys.

And I'd and I'd argue Ed that, you know, your work with flow is very meaningful in that way as well, because the solution that they're coming up with to prevent ice dams is an environmentally friendlier solution than what's out there on the market now. So just having somebody like Ed that's open to working with some of these climate tech companies is I would say also doing his part in that in that way as well.

But when you talk about technologies that have changed sort of what we're doing, I mean, I'm going to go backwards a little bit and you go, well, the internet's amazing because the ability to do research, and now you add AI on top of that, for designers and engineers and manufacturing people to get answers on things as they have questions, it's changed our world completely. used to open up the textbook and figure out how to solve a problem, right? Now it's a few clicks.

I think that's amazing. I think, you know, the 3D printing world has found its way into manufacturing in a way that, you know, again, 20, 30 years ago you would have never imagined. and it continues to move along. I mean, I don't want to overuse AI, but it does become useful and more useful as it gets smarter. So, yes, it helps you write proposals and write reports and all of that. On the design and engineering side, the tools are getting there. They're not quite

You know, people is still better than the I tools, but we play with them a bit. but I do think that the transformation of especially manufacturing and product development since we're in that, it over the next ten years I'm sort of excited to see how it all rolls out.

I'm really curious as well. know, I hear a great deal about, you know, jobs being lost to AI and off topic slightly, I recently worked on a project where we were trying to really lean into AI to deliver a particular project and the results were less than favorable and it left me laughing so much. I was like, okay.

Here's a really good benchmark where, okay, yeah, I can use AI in my home and for my own personal learning or for, you know, report writing or whatever it may be. But when I actually needed to use it and to have some kind of thought behind it and for it to be of a professional grade, it fell very short. And it wasn't just the case of poor prompt, but we're getting there. But I feel like we're safe as humans for quite a while yet. It's got a lot to learn.

Yeah. Not yet.

Yeah. For a while. I think that, you know, the tools that for instance doctor doctors use have become amazing because they've always had expert systems for a long time that were, you know, hand created that doctors could go to find you know, issue you know, what what's wrong with my patient. Now the tools that exist and we'll call them AI tools, but it really doesn't matter. It's a research tool. If they have a condition, they can get literally all the data. So

Yeah. Yep.

you

That's a place that I think is probably transforming as fast as anything because it's literally it's a data thing. It's not it's not trying to come up with design, it's not trying to write Shakespeare, it's literally grabbing data and g giving it all to the doctors in a way that is much more useful than it ever was.

Yeah, it's exciting times. really are in quite revolutionary and exciting times. I'd like to talk a little bit. I've got two or three more questions for you guys. Policy and regulation. Fun, fun, fun. What government policies or regulatory changes would help most of these innovators or manufacturers get up and running or indeed if they're established really thrive? know what? You're the boss for the day.

what rules and regs and things would you do to introduce to help these businesses thrive in Connecticut?

I mean the yeah, the first thing I that comes to mind is funding, funding, funding. It's you know, we started off in Connecticut for the first two years in more of an exploratory discovery mindset and trying to figure out what's here and what's not here to support start-ups and innovators. and what we found is that there was a lot of money to help with a basic

Got out.

idea becoming a prototype, right? So we're talking five, ten thousand dollars. There's small grants out there, there's different prizes and awards. There's some, you know, foundational money, which is great. It gets you to that first step. And then we saw that there's this huge gap, which we kind of labelled the valley of death, right? Where there is not that money to connect somebody with egg to have that prototype brought to its next iteration to make it manufacturable, to design it for scalability.

and then there's places like CT Innovations who and you know angel funders who are there to help fund at the customer level. You have a product in market, and now there's funding for that. so that with that gap, what's great is that you know, the manufacturing innovation fund, we told them we said, listen, if we want your manufacturers to start getting some of these contracts, we need some of this gap funding. We're talking in that $30,000 to $100,000 range.

Which helps them get to places like Gyre Nine. and I would say that, you know, that would be the most critical part is they need that economic, that funding support from the state. They need it from the from the federal government. you know, I don't know if you've ever seen what it looks like to complete application for

SBIR, but it is insane. You know, it's like writing a small novel. so an easier pathway to getting the funding might be might be something I'd advocate for. but without this innovation, you know, you have these really great ideas that are that are changing the world. They're solving problems, like we said before, saving lives. and without that, without making that having access to that capital, I think that we're going to see a lot of things.

fall off. So very thankful to the MIF for doing that and providing that that next step valley of death funding. but I still think that there can be more done from a federal, from a federal standpoint to help some of these innovators make it to market.

What about yourself Ed, obviously in business in Connecticut? What would make your world a better place?

I don't I'm going to I'm going to go Yeah. I'm going to I'm going to go somewhere that's really super controversial, but has always been an issue on my mind and certainly for start-ups, underfunded enterprises, I'm going to say healthcare for a second. And I and I what I'm going to say is somehow in this world it became business's responsibility to pay for employees' health basically to pay for employees' health care.

And as you go downward, it's one thing to say, you know, you're a multi-billion dollar company and you're taking care of healthcare, which is a big expense, but it's a different thing if you've got two, three, four, five, twenty people, and you know, you're not making money yet, and you have to afford health care. And I use an example. I had an employee here a number of years ago who older employee, but

Her healthcare costs to us were more expensive than her hourly wage we paid her by the hour. And so you go, Well, that's kind of crazy. And it makes and it can make you sometimes, you know, as a company have to decide, you know, even though you're not supposed to, it can impact people's decisions of who they bring in and who they don't. And I think that if a start-up had a way of funding its, you know, either they go without healthcare, right? They go, Okay, well, hopefully I'm really healthy and I'm not going to

Or I'm living off my parents' healthcare, which is fine, but eventually that, you know, it's not going to ha going to be there. I think it it's kind of crazy when people take jobs in many cases just to get health care. And I think we could change that. I'm going to get you know, whacked by some of my business friends, but at the end of the day, I think it would help us run much faster if you didn't have to worry about that. even for our company. I mean, we're relatively small.

It's a big expense for us. So

Shall I put a disclaimer in now? The thoughts of Ed Gilchrist are solely his own and do not reflect manufacture CT. I have got to say though, when I first moved to Connecticut, obviously I was shocked overall at how healthcare works in the US. We could go on about that for an hour and a half. But I was also really saddened that I met people who were solely in their jobs for healthcare because they were stuck.

Exactly. Ex

know, whether it was for themselves or for their families. like, but you're miserable. Why would you stay 30 years doing a job you can't bear? You're miserable. So I can kind of see what you're saying, how it's fixed. I do not have the answers without getting banned from Apple podcasts. I'll be honest.

I don't know. I yeah, no, I think it's a it's a real problem. I mean, I will say that my wife and I, you know, my wife works here, she runs operations, and myself, we both cheered when we got over sixty five because we went on to Medicare and saved five grand a month off our health off our healthcare costs here. So Yep.

I've heard this before. Yep. This is something that's actually come up in a podcast before, know, again, manufacturing company owners being delighted when they hit that milestone. Thinking about risk and resilience aside from obviously medical benefits and medical insurance. What keeps you awake at night?

Yeah, we could spend a whole episode on that. Yeah.

Well, for me, I mean, it's always we're in that funny zone of as a company where we're not we're not so big that that we're well known and we're everywhere. but we still have a fairly, you know, payroll to pay and all that. And I think it's coming up with ways to stay relevant and continue to bring clients in and it's always difficult. First of all, I'm an engineer, I'm not a sales guy. we don't have a big sales staff because we're small. So I think that just

in general that's always on my mind of figuring out who we're going to be when we grow up and making sure that that we fill we bring in the clients and we fill the work here with relevant work that the team likes to work on and we can be competitive on. I think that's number one. Number two is always access to capital. And access to capital is always a problem and for us

having we went through a few very difficult years with one of our biggest clients going away and having to shrink, which means nobody wants to loan you money because you went the wrong direction. So it's like turn that around and we are turning that around, but I think at the same time, you know, you can never have enough. And getting access to capital without giving the whole company away to some, you know, venture capital firm and stay staying in control is a tightrope you're trying to walk all the time. So

Honestly, that's it for me.

we'd still be here, which is great, right? from a non-profit world, we have to think about that. but I do think that, you know, Connecticut just has so much to offer when you talk about, like you said, Claire, the intersection between manufacturing and innovation. We have wonderful universities here like UConn, Yale, you know, they are that is the universities and colleges is where these ideas start. and so I think that in

2030, if we are able to continue doing this work and bring in helping the manufacturers of Connecticut stay ahead of these innovations, exposing them to some of these new markets by leveraging the innovations that are coming out of the universities and colleges. I think we're going to be in a really, really good spot. the other thing that I'd really love to see is that.

in my work in Connecticut, not just Connecticut, but a lot of different states, is that there's so many good programs being funded, yet not everybody knows about them. It can be kind of fragmented, right? so if you have, you know, one organization that's helping innovators with business planning, and then you have another organization that's helping them with marketing. And then you have Forge that's helping them with manufacturing, how do we

connect all the dots in it. I can imagine it's the same in in the manufacturing, you know, when you talk about workforce and you talk about cybersecurity, right? And I know that the consortium was formed to solve for that, which is great. I would love that if in in twenty thirty that was all figured out to where there is just one central location where you go and you see all your resources and everybody is helping, you know, the rising tides lift all boats thing. I think that would be fantastic.

joined up.

Twenty thirty. look, I just like a nice steady growth and maybe, you know, the AI tools get better. maybe we get more automation. I'd like to I'd like to have a little more vertical integration in house. So that's our goal here is have a little more control, have the ability to pivot for our clients sometimes faster than we can when we have a you know, we have a huge number of suppliers and vendors, which I don't want to get rid of, but I think we need a little bit more

ability in house. So we look for those opportunities. and yes, still being here in twenty thirty. And yes, the alphabet soup of Connecticut organizations and opportunities, I can't keep track of Adam, it's we talk about it a lot and you go, we're r small. The small companies have the hardest time with that. You know, if you're Sikorsky, they could know they could have a whole team of people working on that. For us it's yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It's can be sometimes confusing.

Well you can't you guys are so busy, you know, like there's there is no time for you to get out there and find these places. and that's the other thing too you know that brought brings to mind right now is that like with Forge, and I hate to keep bringing it back to Forge, but that's why I'm here, right? So with Forge, because these smaller manufacturers, and that's most of the manufacturers in Connecticut.

You guys, they're so busy. They can't go to Uconn. They can't go to Yale. They can't go to these innovation summits. So who's going to do that work? And that's what we're doing. You know, we're out there. We're meeting these innovators. We're meeting these next generation of manufacturers, giving them the support they need. And then, you know, giving them that introduction to the manufacturers in Connecticut, because if we could take one more thing off of their plate, then then that's what we want to do.

I'm going to jump in and say one more thing, Claire's one of the things we talk about a lot is getting Connecticut companies to use Connecticut companies. And although everybody would say, Yeah, that's great and we all should do that, I don't think it's done enough. I don't think there's enough visibility. So things like this are great doing these podcasts. But I think people get on the internet, they click a few clicks and they say, there's a company in

wherever, you know, Michigan that can do this stuff for me. And you go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That those all those Connecticut organizations need to help saying, like, first let's look in Connecticut. Who's who can do this work for you? And if they don't already know you, it's pretty hard to get their attention. So I think that's something that I'd like to see get better in the in the state. it doesn't mean everybody in Connecticut should use everybody in Connecticut, but at the same time, all things being equal, pivot

Give the jobs to the Connecticut companies.

Yeah, take a look at local first. Yeah, for sure.

It's what we try to do a lot. I mean, we generally give it local if we can.

Yeah. I'll have less hair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who knows? Exciting times.

Claire, thank you so much for having us on. It's a pleasure.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's been great.

It's an absolute privilege. Thank you so much for your time.

Thanks, Claire.

Thanks, Claire.