Why deep tech selling is a de-risking exercise | Troy M. Morris

Troy M. Morris (0:00)

The whole way through of building a business or getting started in entrepreneurship or deep tech is constantly de-risking. You can build awesome sketches, you can have the coolest AI write a speech or make a visual. It is still about proving to another human being that this is less risky than they might first think.

Brad (0:22)

Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, the show is brought to you by frontlines.io, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with venture-backed founders and marketers where they talk all things go to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now, with all that said, let's jump into today's episode.

Troy, welcome to the show.

Troy M. Morris (0:57)

Brad, thank you for having me.

Brad (0:59)

Of course, man. Looking forward to the conversation here. Relocation as a Service. Tell us about what that actually means.

Troy M. Morris (1:05)

Yeah. Relocation as a Service is a good way to help catch together a few hundred different ideas. The one I start when you're at a dinner party or an elevator, and the question of what do you do, tow trucks for space. That's really what Relocation as a Service is, is applying that simple idea and the hard physics all into one concept that a customer can actually engage with.

People already use Relocation as a Service, they just haven't known it by that name. So for space, that's moving satellites around. But on the Earth, that could be UPS picking up your box to bring it to grandma or picking up grandma's car to bring it to you. We already do it, we're just bringing it to space.

Brad (1:39)

How long did it take you to have that clarity of message? I feel like now it's clear. When you told me that in pre-interview, very, very clear. Was that day one clarity or how long did that take?

Troy M. Morris (1:49)

We can absolutely lie and say that was day one. No, we actually keep a copy of the first pitch we did for one of our early, early mentors and it is so, so far from that point just all focused on the problem. It took years. It took a lot of customer engagements both with those that are deep in the industry, those that could be our potential customers and have never even thought about this. It was iterative and I was talking to my team this morning. If I wasn't the title of CEO, I would be Chief Storyteller and everyone on the call is like, oh, okay, yeah, that makes a complete sense. And I was like, no pushback? Did I just get fired as CEO? But no, the storytelling is a fun part and it lands. It works. It's easy.

Brad (2:24)

On the topic of storytelling, what's the story behind the company? What were you doing in your previous life to say, okay, man, Space really needs some tow trucks.

Troy M. Morris (2:31)

Yeah, it was something that I was working in a very adjacent field. Snap-on Tools is where I was working. My two co-founders I'll mention in a moment. And so I got to meet actual tow truck drivers, got to work with some of the most hard working men and women across this country. These are everything from your neighborhood mechanics with the muffler shop, all the way up to on the tarmac at O'Hare Airport, one of the biggest airports on Earth, to power plants, to prisons, to all these different places where you just have to get the job done. Because Snap-on sells tools, variety of tools, whole bunch of tools, which is great. But I had bigger visions. And so working at a 100-year-old company that had sold components and sold tools to the Space Station, I was like, well, damn it, how do I get on that contract? And then I talked to the astronauts and there's a long list of people waiting already in line. And so it's like, okay, if I can't get to working with aerospace and astronauts through my current company, why don't I just change careers to get to that? And at that similar time, my two now co-founders were doing well in their jobs. One was in New York, had just left NASA Goddard. One was in Philadelphia building rapid prototyping, advanced helicopters for the US Army as a civilian. And I was making $17 million for my company. I didn't get that. That's what I was earning for them in Chicago. And so I was like, we're all doing well enough, but we're also young enough. Let's take a jump. And so the original ideas we were talking, playing video games was, let's find some company we're going to go apply for.