Ep. 580 w/ Nikita & Iliya Co-Founders at Oilstainlab
Welcome to Building the Future with your host, Kevin Horrick. Get ready to explore the cutting edge of innovation and entrepreneurship. From startups to industry giants, we're bringing you the visionaries shaping tomorrow. With listeners in over 150 countries, we're one of the fastest growing shows worldwide. Join Kevin, a seasoned software designer and tech expert, as we dive into the ideas and inventions changing our world.
Speaker 1:Building the future starts now.
Speaker 2:Building the future is brought to you by iClerk.ai. Are you a small business owner, a professional, or company looking to automate? Do you have difficulty hiring staff to perform mundane knowledge work like reporting, form creation, or information analysis? Leverage the power of AI and the automation of agents even if you don't have the time or experience. Try us out with little risk and no upfront investment.
Speaker 2:It's time to work smarter, not harder. Visit iclerk.ai to learn more and get started today.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to the show. Today, we have Nikita and Ilya Bryden, cofounders at Oil Stain Lab. Guys, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having us. Yeah. Happy to be here.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I'm excited to have you guys on the show. I I think what you guys are doing is actually really innovative and cool, but maybe before we dive into that, let's get to know each one of you a little bit better. Nikita, do you wanna go first, and then I'll let your brother go?
Speaker 4:Sure. Yeah. I'll I'll, I'll start us off. We're twins, so there's gonna be some overlap.
Speaker 3:And Very cool. Very cool.
Speaker 4:So, yeah. Originally born in Ukraine and moved to Canada when we were about two or three. Grew up there, with a big passion, obviously, for for for hockey, skiing, and
Speaker 3:and Whereabouts in Canada?
Speaker 4:Halifax, Nova Scotia. Very far on the East East Coast.
Speaker 3:Okay. I'm I actually live in Edmonton. So
Speaker 4:Okay. Yeah. So A little bit colder.
Speaker 3:Nice area, though. It's a beautiful area. Okay. Keep going. Sorry to interrupt you.
Speaker 4:Yeah. No worries. And, so, yeah, I grew up in Halifax, and then at 14 years of age, decided, drop out of high school and move to Italy, study car design, and had, you know, some some very nice parents that supported that crazy dream, moved with us, let it happen. And then at 17, moved to California to study car design. So that's kind of our our back story before, sort of the professional career, where we've been working for, yeah, last ten ten or so years in California.
Speaker 3:Okay. So how did how does that work, though, to go to be so young and go study? Like, how did that work?
Speaker 4:So yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Right? Technically, yeah, high school dropout, so no no high school diploma. You know, going to our college is not, let's say, the most academically strenuous thing to do.
Speaker 4:Right? Like, there's not a huge amount of requirements other than being able to draw well. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's bizarre. It's strange. I think without our parents, we we definitely wouldn't have been able to do it, obviously, with their without their support or anything.
Speaker 4:But, yeah, we we actually got accepted into a different school in The UK, Coventry, and they they denied us as soon as they found out how old we were, which was Oh, interesting. It was heartbreaking. So we ended up in Italy instead.
Speaker 3:Okay. Ilya, do you wanna give us a bit of a background of yourself?
Speaker 5:Yeah. I mean, very, very similar, I guess. I'll I'll I'll parlay it, until yeah. After Italy, we basically ended up, coming to California, Pasadena, to to art center and college of design, and, yeah, finished up our our college degrees. After that, basically, yeah, we graduated and started working professionally.
Speaker 5:I worked at, Honda, or, actually, Toyota first. Spent, I think a year, year and a half there, and then, Honda for something like seven years. Worked on tons of production cars, concept cars, race cars. Yeah. Our Acura DPI won two world championships there, which is super cool.
Speaker 3:Mark, congrats. That's huge.
Speaker 5:Yeah. That that's kind of yeah. Like, I don't know. That's that's that's that's, like, peak. You know?
Speaker 5:Production cars are cool, but, like, yeah, world championship, like, one problem, and Toyota driving your car, it's it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 3:And then Yeah. No. %. That's really cool.
Speaker 5:And then after that, yeah, ended up going to a Chinese brand. Actually, I started a brand new studio in, Newport Beach and spent a few years there. Worked again on on some concept car stuff, some production programs, and then ended up going to, another start up, a company called Canoo. The these the Porsche electric vehicles, and it has since gone bankrupt. But, yeah, that was a very interesting time.
Speaker 5:And and then, obviously, during this whole time, building and developing, our our design studio brand, Oil Stain Lab, kind of on the side and then eventually jumping full time as well. So yeah.
Speaker 3:Got it. Nikkita, do you wanna give us a bit of your kind of career history after getting out of school?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Totally. So me and my brother went to together to Toyota, like you said, and then we both moved on to Honda. So at Honda, I stayed there for three years. And after those three years, I moved on to Hyundai and was part of the team that was sort of helping launch Genesis as a brand.
Speaker 4:And Okay. Four four months, I quit. That was a very miserable experience for me. I did not did not like the work culture there at all. So I quit after four months and moved on to General Motors Advanced, where we worked on really crazy stuff, flying cars, all sorts of stuff, really advanced things.
Speaker 4:And after General Motors, I joined my brother at the Chinese company for about a year, at GAC. And then after that, moved on to kind of oil stain lab full time, working with a lot of startups. So doing everything from, you know, energy grid, battery charging, to electric vehicles, to hydrogen vehicles, to movie stuff, space stuff, just all over the place. And that was sort of the heyday, I guess, of Oil Stand Lab as a design studio, and now it's changed into a boutique manufacturer of of vehicles.
Speaker 3:Okay. So walk us through that journey, and and why did you you make that switch to, you know, manufacturing vehicles now?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, you know, I think we've we've always had this passion for, you know, building real things. And throughout our careers, I mean, luckily, we did build, you know, show cars. We're involved in real physical things, but 90% of the work you do gets, you know, thrown out or trashed or never seen. And, you know, I think anyone who anyone who likes real things, who lives in the real world wants to, you know, have an impact on that.
Speaker 4:And so we decide, okay. Like, we can sketch, and we can render, and we can do this. But, ultimately, we wanna build something without other people's compromises, like our vision. What we Right. Would be, you know, a a proper sort of vehicle without, you know, guys from finance or guys from engineering telling you you can't be done because we need to save, like, 2ยข on a door handle.
Speaker 4:Right?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:So it's a very, you know, it's we call it the no excuses project, and it's, you know, it's been three years in development. And, yeah, it's been it's been a lot of fun, but a lot of challenges, but it's it's gonna be real very soon.
Speaker 3:Okay. So walk us through kind of coming up with the idea and and kind of where it is today, and and when can people actually, like, drive it?
Speaker 5:Sure. I think it's, yeah, it's a it's a long story. I think I'll I'll try and take a a quick stab at this. But, essentially, when we started Oil Stain Lab as the design consultancy, one of the first things we wanted to do was to build a visual business card, so that people Okay. Kinda knew what we stood for.
Speaker 5:And so that's essentially when we started building our first prototype, which was the original half 11 vehicle. And that one basically had kind of a fake history. It was kind of inspired very much by the past and and Can Am Racing and Le Mans and sports prototypes from the late sixties. And that vehicle basically did did, yeah, I mean, it it did its job, right, as a visual business card. People approached us.
Speaker 5:We, you know, opened a lot of doors, for for our studio. But at the same time, something kinda strange happened, and the car started to develop, like, a cult following. And as that kind of following grew and the car got invited to go to places and events and stuff, there was also people reaching out and asking, like, well, can I buy one? Can I do this? Can I do that?
Speaker 5:And it was very much a hand built, one off vehicle. It was never intended to be manufactured or anything. And so, yeah, that that that was the genesis, I guess, to to create the production program. And so, yeah, three and a half years ago, four years ago, whatever it is now, we started the the production, kind of design for the vehicle. But, yeah, looking at it from, modern engineering, modern design, modern technology point of view, so almost kind of recreating that vintage feel for for today's world.
Speaker 5:And so, yeah, our first prototype, I think we're we're looking at, trying to get it up and running, I would say, like, late April, May.
Speaker 3:Okay. Interesting. So, like, I I don't know very much about the car business, but, obviously, building a one off is not without its challenges, and it's not challenging and time consuming. But making one vehicle is gonna be a lot easier than, you know, making dozens or hundreds or thousands of these things. So how did you kind of ramp up from basically building something yourself to now trying to get, like, an assembly line?
Speaker 3:Or or how does that kind of work? Like, walk us through that journey of actually turning it into a production car that people can buy.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You've pretty much hit it, you know, the nail on the head there. You know, anyone can build one thing. Right? That's relatively easy.
Speaker 4:It just takes, you know, a lot of elbow grease, some ingenuity. I think, yeah, with cars, there's this interesting sort of dilemma as it also requires an insane amount of capital. Right? Yeah. You know, this isn't something you can sort of, you know like, software is relatively less capital intensive, for example.
Speaker 4:But hard goods, they require tooling and manufacturing and, you know, sophisticated sort of engineering. So I mean, part of part of it was figuring out, okay, how do you go about raising the capital, to do this? So that was the first sort of initial hurdle to clear. And then once that sort of sorted itself out, it was assembling, you know, a world class team of of engineers that understood also, again, that they're not working for a huge company and that budgets are tight. And how do we go about creating a world class product without, you know, spending a billion dollars?
Speaker 4:So it's it's a very daunting task. I think many, many days and many nights, we would sit and just be like, what the how how are we gonna do this?
Speaker 3:Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. So so I'm curious, though. Are you using, like, parts from other, like, manufacturers?
Speaker 3:Are you building everything yourself, a bit of both? How does that kinda work?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. So the approach has been from the very start to, again, be very intelligent with budgets and engineering, you know, time frames and everything. And and because of that, we are not able to completely engineer everything ourselves. Ourselves.
Speaker 4:So there are items sense. That, for example, like, it it's gonna be the items that really no one thinks about, an air conditioning vent, for example. You know, you turn the knob, it closes, it moves the air around. To reengineer, to do that from scratch, to do 25 units makes absolutely zero financial sense. Right?
Speaker 4:And it's already a good product that's been engineered, and a company like Ford or Hyundai or Rolls Royce or whoever have spent, you know, $2.03, $45,000,000 on this one vent. So it'd be Sure. Sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Interesting. Right? Okay.
Speaker 4:And yeah. So it's it's these really small but complicated items that we use strategically that don't really affect the user experience. But Right. They they they add to it in a way that it's very professional and that it works. Right?
Speaker 3:No. Makes a lot of sense. And then I'm assuming it's not hard to get some of those parts, whether you need, say, 25 or, you know, 200,000 kinda thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, you know, there's there's obviously parts availability. Again, if you're intelligent about it, you know, if if a part breaks on your car, you can go buy it on eBay or wherever. Right?
Speaker 3:Right. I see. Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 4:If you're smart enough, you can you can sort of design it so you don't really need to sign a contract with that company.
Speaker 3:Interesting. Yeah. Okay. No. That makes sense.
Speaker 3:So maybe walk us through some of the specs of the car. I know it's kinda hard to talk about like, visualize the car when it's audio only, but can you maybe try? Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think as we've kinda mentioned, it's it's nineteen sixties inspired. So it's it's, sort of romantic surfaces, not a lot of lines or breaks, very smooth.
Speaker 4:And underneath, and and, you know, is where all the aerodynamic performance is. Right? So if you're familiar with sort of high performance cars, there's always big spoilers and things sticking off the car. So we've eliminated all that. We use kind of a what's called ground effect, so a big diffuser underneath the car that kinda sucks it down at high speed.
Speaker 4:And then on terms of the chassis side underneath, it's a carbon fiber monocoque. So that's relatively cutting edge these days, with, front and rear subframe. And for powertrain, we use, we have two options. So you can use either a combustion gas engine, which is a flat six that revs to 12,000 RPM, makes a lot of noise. It's a very nostalgic extreme sort of race motor experience.
Speaker 4:And we've also got the option of a cutting edge electric power train that is projected right now to be lighter than combustion. So it's it's really revolutionary stuff. It's paired with a six speed manual. It makes noise. It's unlike any other EV, basically, in the world.
Speaker 4:And so we've got these two very extreme cutting edge powertrain options. So, yeah, that's that's kind of the brief disturb of the the project, I guess.
Speaker 3:Okay. Very cool. So how like, is there kind of price ranges for these things yet? Is this still kind of too early? Like, are you taking preorders?
Speaker 3:Like, where are you kind of in that in the sales process?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So we launched publicly in October. But prior to that, we've been in really close communication with a lot of collectors and enthusiasts and, obviously, gathering feedback. So we've got a pretty large network of of individuals that have been interested, have known about it. So, yeah, pricing on the cars is, 1.8, with a single powertrain and then 2.35 with both powertrains, and then client can basically choose between the two.
Speaker 4:So yeah. And
Speaker 3:Interesting. I mean Okay. No. Go ahead. Sorry.
Speaker 5:Yep. One thing to add that, I think he has mentioned is between the two powertrains is there's actually the swappability aspect of it. So if a client was to buy the two engine options, we're basically designing the car so that one engine can get swapped in, and, for the other one in around an hour, two hours, something like that just by themselves. So, that's kind of
Speaker 3:That's cool.
Speaker 5:Very revolutionary kind of, yeah, aspect.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That that's actually really quite fascinating because and this is probably, like, a terrible comparison, and maybe you have a better one. But it's it's almost like the right to repair because, like, people have been complaining about that with, like, their iPhones for decades now. Right? But the fact it sounds like your car, if I know what I'm doing, I could do a lot of this stuff myself.
Speaker 3:That fair to say?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think that's a that's a perfect that's a perfect example. And, you know, I think there's a lot of concern even amongst, like, sports car enthusiasts with EVs that they're not really able to modify them or get into the code or anything. So it's it's all becoming very sealed and very proprietary, and, you know, that's not really what sports car guys want.
Speaker 4:They wanna tune their cars. They wanna modify them. They wanna, you know, be a part of that maintenance repair improvement experience. So no. You you're you're absolutely a % correct.
Speaker 3:Okay. So I wanna talk a little bit about the interior. And I know maybe it's different kind of in the the people you're targeting, but are they are, like, your customers wanting, you know, the touch screen kind of experience? Are they looking for more the traditional analog kind of buttons and knobs, a little bit of both? Maybe walk us through that.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. So from a user sort of experience or expectation, we're very much trying to be I guess, an analogy would be like a time machine, you know, like, to go back into it without necessarily losing a lot of the functions. But the way that you access them or the way that you use them, we want them to be not modern. We want them to be very analog.
Speaker 4:We want them to be very, you know, button heavy, and sort of physically intuitive rather than screens, which isn't to say that we don't have modern amenities. It's just the way you interact with them is is not not a touch screen, not a and I think part of it is, you know, at that price point, screens become I mean, every car has a screen. Right? And the user Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Isn't special enough. Right? And so, you know, it it becomes the analogy of, like, the Apple Watch versus a Rolex. Right? Which one will retain value?
Speaker 4:Which one is collectible? Which one? And so it's a bit maybe old fashioned, but that's where kind of the market expectations at.
Speaker 3:No. That makes sense. Well, I I think there's been such a big resurgence of kind of some of the analog stuff. I think the most basic example that people would probably relate to is just, like, the record like, records coming back and, like, vinyl. And and then I think even a lot of people hate the touch screens in their car because they have to go three or four screens deep just to, like, you know, turn of their heat or something, where some of the if you just had a button on there that you you would just handle it, you know, like, kind of the old school cars had.
Speaker 3:Right?
Speaker 5:Yeah. Exactly. I think, Honda famously got in trouble with their volume button. Right? They removed that and then, like, three three menus deep.
Speaker 5:So,
Speaker 4:yeah,
Speaker 5:I I think the the challenge really is, you know, how many buttons do you really need in a car. Right?
Speaker 4:And Yeah.
Speaker 5:Certain features don't necessarily require a button. They can be three, four d, but it's just how do you decide the kind of the organization of all that? And, I think every brand obviously does it their own way. We for our vehicle, we're trying to simplify everything as much as possible. So we we do have physical buttons, but the amount of controls and and and stuff that you actually need, for driving pleasure and and and even going to a track day is is kept to a minimum, you know.
Speaker 5:So, it's it's bare necessities, and that's that's it kinda thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, to add, like, we're very, very motorsport derived, and there's no touchscreen motorsports because when you're driving 200 miles an hour at a track, like, you can't look down at the screen. Be like, oh, I gotta go over here. It's all gotta be intuitive, physical, and, you know, easy easy to adjust on the fly.
Speaker 3:Fair enough. And I'm assuming you're kind of targeting people that this this isn't their, like, everyday driver to and from the office. Like, they might take it on certain days, but, like, it's made for to have fun, basically. Is that fair?
Speaker 4:I mean, it's, we we, you know, jokingly refer to all our clients and internally our team as well. Like, we're all maniacs. You know? We're all these
Speaker 3:crazy gearheads.
Speaker 4:And, you know, ideally, they would use this every day. I mean, it it is relatively comfortable, but we don't expect everyone, obviously, to use it every day. Only a true maniac would.
Speaker 3:Fair enough. No. Okay. Cool. So I I'm curious, though, is it connected to the Internet?
Speaker 3:Because, obviously, like, if it's the EV version, just knowing where a charging station is, or do I have to get it home? Or or how does that kinda work?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I we're working on effectively having it connect to your phone. So it's not we're trying to, yeah, disconnect the car from the grid or disconnect it from anything that could slow it down or cause issues. I mean, obviously, we can do updates over the air, but that would be done in, for example, in a garage, not at, like, a Starbucks parking lot or something. So
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:It it's it's going to depend on the infrastructure that already exists, like phones, etcetera, for data transfer instead of having those things built into the car.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. That's smart. That makes sense. So I'm curious, like, maybe we we kinda skipped over it a little bit.
Speaker 3:So you launched it to the public last October, and when are you hoping to have it in your first kind of early adopter's hands?
Speaker 5:Sure. Basically, start of production is going to be like, the first customer vehicles will be '26. So
Speaker 3:So not that long.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Twenty five is essentially a year of development for us of of the physical first prototype, which should be complete, late April, early May.
Speaker 4:Right. Right. Okay.
Speaker 5:And then, basically, we go and we we test it. You know? We take it to to tracks. We take it to proving grounds. We do all the, typical stuff.
Speaker 5:We do vibration tests. We do high speed testing. We do hot weather testing, and just make sure everything is good, from all our kind of virtual, planning, so to speak. And yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Okay. That's cool. So I'm curious. Are you building your own manufacturing facility to build the cars?
Speaker 3:Are you outsourcing that to somebody else? Like, walk us through that.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's, yeah, like I said, you know, it's been a long three years of a lot of planning. You know? Think people think of all the legal requirements and the physical and the supply chain and everything. So, yeah, we've been slowly building that out over the last three years.
Speaker 4:The vehicles will be, finally sort of assembled in in Canada.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:Before we're home, we certainly wanna go back there. And, do we so we use a number of partners for a lot of the components. So, for example, the carbon fiber monocoque chassis, that's going to be built by a, you know, a group or a manufacturing group, as contract. And it's such a specialized thing that there's really only, like, 10 shops in the world or 10 manufacturers that can do that. And it doesn't make sense to sort of develop your own team, educate everybody.
Speaker 4:Nobody does that internally except some of the biggest automotive manufacturers in the world. So usually, it's all sort of contract manufactured by these carbon fiber, you know, factories, let's say. And so for a number of components like that, obviously, we're not making our own brakes or brake calipers. We use, you know, Brembo as a supplier, you know. And so Right.
Speaker 4:A lot of parts are gonna be brought in. And then, you know, we do manufacture a lot of sort of on the subframe stuff, like, a lot of the stuff on the interior. That's all manufactured in house, through, you know, robotic machinery, CNC, or, you know, carbon fiber molds, but less sophisticated than what's required for a a carbon tub.
Speaker 3:I see. Interesting. Okay. So where like okay. So you're you've been building this for a number of years.
Speaker 3:You're gonna, you know, start kind of test this. How do you kind of iterate on this as you're going forward? Because if you're I guess, if you're building it in a way that it's relatively easy to swap things out and people can kinda modify it as needed, then you almost have, like, the community iterating with you and making it better. Is is that fair to say, or does that make sense?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, I understand the sentiment. Certainly, the cars, one of our key goals was a a modularity, simplicity to sort of repair, modify, etcetera.
Speaker 4:We probably wouldn't wanna encourage a lot of modification from the clients just from a legal point of view.
Speaker 3:Okay. Fair enough.
Speaker 4:But certainly, yes, we can evolve the cars over time, and depending on client wishes. So, like, in in this market segment, you know, a client could say, hey. Listen. I really wanna focus on track days. I wanna have more performance.
Speaker 4:Can we improve the cooling? Can we improve the downforce? Can we improve the mechanical grip? Can we lose some weight here and there? And so we would work with them to improve those components and those, you know
Speaker 3:I see.
Speaker 4:Areas. And so it it's a little bit different where it's, yeah, not someone necessarily doing it in their backyard, but they're doing it with our team of, you know, global experts and so we can make sure everything is still safe. Because the the performance envelope is so high, someone can get into, you know, a lot a lot of hurt really quickly.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. That makes sense. It's cool that you can basically like, somebody could get something so custom though. Right?
Speaker 3:Like, I don't know very many other manufacturers that do that much custom or am I am I missing that?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, it's certainly very, very, you know, sort of rarefied air, let's say. Yeah. Okay. Ferrari will build you a one off, but it's, you know, 20,000,000.
Speaker 4:So.
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. So you guys have obviously both been doing this a long time, and and building and designing things in the physical space is actually really challenging.
Speaker 3:What advice would you give to people that are whether they're building a car or not, just things to think about and do that you maybe wish you knew earlier on before you were kind of in the middle of this?
Speaker 5:Oh, great question. Yeah. I think I think building cars is one of the most complicated things in the world. I think, you know, probably airplanes and and spaceships are a little more difficult. Granted, I think they have a little less stylistic involvement,
Speaker 3:or emotional
Speaker 5:conflict to them. But, I I think no matter what, we were very lucky, and privileged to work for OEMs. Right? And there, you're exposed to all the facets of the business. And I think if you one day want to do whatever it is, architecture, airplanes, cars, products, whatever, the best thing you can do is essentially go to the most successful places, the biggest corporations, and and like a sponge, eat up all the information you can from every different department.
Speaker 5:Just pick the brain of all the geniuses and smart people, and basically absorb it. Right? I I think at the end of the day, you're just a reflection of everything you've been exposed to, essentially, and what you've been able to absorb. So, yeah, my biggest advice is just just be, like, a sponge for information. In terms of, like, on our particular project, what I wish gosh.
Speaker 5:That's that's a great question. You have anything to add while I think?
Speaker 4:Yeah. No. I mean, I I would say, you know, the advantage of, or sort of not being afraid to make mistakes, I think that's, you know Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's really good advice.
Speaker 4:Whenever things get physical, I think people realize, like, if you make a mistake as it has a, you know, a monetary cost, a a a time cost. Right? Because it's a physical product. You know? For example, if you're if you're just doing some code or you're drawing in Photoshop or you're doing something digital, like, you can start over.
Speaker 4:Like, yeah, there's some sunk time, but there isn't a physical cost. So it's like once you start prototyping, you know, and and I think that leads to a lot of paralysis. It leads to a lot of people sort of freaking out and but nothing is ever perfect, you know. And and the cars from and, you know, other products, they're never perfect. And, you know, if you go talk to those teams, they're like, oh, I wish we could've done this.
Speaker 4:Wish we could've fixed that. And so, yeah, being being we I think we are both of us are are perfectionists, but also we have a a really good ability to just pivot when something's messed up and just be like, alright. We gotta embrace that. Like, let's keep moving. You know?
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. I I think that's that's actually really good advice. You guys mentioned something maybe earlier on in the interview. Obviously, you've had some probably challenging days, weeks, maybe even months.
Speaker 3:How did you guys persevere and decide not to quit? Because I think a lot of times people are just about to the, you know, the top of the mountain, and they give up before they really give it a good shot. So advice for kind of keeping with it?
Speaker 4:Gosh. There's been so many times I thought I was at the top of the mountain. I mean, the mountain is 10 times taller.
Speaker 3:Fair enough.
Speaker 4:We're very I I think we're very lucky that there's two of us. You know, so it's very rare for both people, as cofounders and basically the lead motivators. And it's very rare for both of us to be down at the exact same time. Right? So Right.
Speaker 4:I I think that's a huge advantage. You know? I think having just the team that can support you.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I I think exactly that. I I think we call each other, each other's enabler, basically, and it's, you know, when when
Speaker 3:That's good.
Speaker 4:Gets down
Speaker 5:or someone doesn't someone thinks it's like, oh, that's a that's a bad idea. The other guy is just like, oh, like, what's the worst that happens? Like, let's just try it. You know? And so, yeah, it is it is definitely an advantage, having kind of that that that twin, kind of, yeah, I don't know, mentality, I guess, or whatever.
Speaker 5:So yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm curious advice for working together with, you know, siblings or family because, obviously, you guys have done that for so long. It seems to be working really well for you you two.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I don't I don't know how relevant our our, our situation is for for family or siblings. I I feel like twins are a little bit unique. They're they're very, I mean, you grow up with someone, for, you know, gosh, for us, it's like thirty plus years, whatever. You've basically done everything together.
Speaker 5:And so there's, like, yeah, very much in in unspoken, like, understanding that is just borderline unnatural. So, I mean, obviously, conflicts. Obviously, there's conflicts, and and I think think we we do have different, mindsets, approaches. And, you know, for the most part, I I think, you know, good dialogue and and talking through things and and being open minded, has helped us, yeah, get over any hurdles and and, yeah, kinda get across, yeah, the difficult touch points, I guess.
Speaker 4:It's it's that, but also, you know, coming from sort of the creative industry where everything's subjective. Right? Yeah. And I have to have a thick skin, number one. Number two, it's you need to have or develop.
Speaker 4:Certainly, I've developed it over time. The understanding that any critique or feedback is someone trying to help you. Right? A lot of people
Speaker 3:take it. Advice.
Speaker 4:You know? And everyone's like, oh, like, I hate this. But it's like, they're saying that to try and help you. Like, they're not saying that to just, like, you know, piss you off or something. So having the ability like, this is just a relationship point of view.
Speaker 4:It's like having the ability to reflect and be like, okay. Well, he's saying that because he wants it to be better. Like, now I gotta read in between the lines and figure out what he's reacting to and how I can sort of improve the product. Yeah. So, I mean, that helps in in our relationship because our critiques are are brutal with each other.
Speaker 4:Like, they're brutal. They're unfilled Sure. Because, you know, we don't have time to be nice.
Speaker 3:No. That no. That's good advice. That's that's actually really good advice. So you you mentioned earlier about you obviously had to fundraise for this.
Speaker 3:Do you have advice for people looking to fundraise? Because you're you're kind of in a, like, a such a specialty niche kind of market that fundraising for you must have been maybe a bit challenging, I'm assuming.
Speaker 4:Yeah. No. It's you know, fundraising is an interesting thing. Right? It's like what works for one person doesn't work for another.
Speaker 4:Someone just gets lucky. Someone, you know, just doesn't have any luck, doesn't talk to the right people. You know, for us, it was probably about two years of prep before any fundraising, just research
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:Into business models, into competitors, into structures, into, you know, putting a team together that can sort of help with future fundraising. I think it's something that's obviously very intimidating for a lot of people.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 4:And, you know, the the the most awkward thing is, like, you're gonna get so many no's. Right? Always. Yeah. Like, you're gonna get hundred no's to every yes.
Speaker 4:And so, again, you just have to, you know, be prepared for kind of the long haul. But, also, you know, we see this a lot where, you know, people come to us now. They're like, oh, well, you did a fundraise. Like, hey. Can you look at my deck or can you look at this?
Speaker 4:And, you know, it's the the fundamental thing is, like, you need to be solving a problem of some sort. You know? Yeah. And it needs to create, like, an impact or somehow help society. Otherwise, what's the point?
Speaker 4:You know? And so, oftentimes, we see a lot of very, you know, their decks without any perspective of, you know, how someone else would look at it. It's always from, like, the point of view of the the one entrepreneur and, like, his point of view. And so I think taking kind of a really big picture and, you know, presenting it as if no one knows who you are, no one knows who you've done, what you've done, and no one knows what your product is, and, you know, how is it gonna be perceived in, you know, three sentences, right, which is what a deck is, basically.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 5:Sorry. Go ahead. No. Go ahead. Yeah.
Speaker 5:I I think, what's interesting about, you know, any any startup or anything is you do have to wear many hats. Right? And I think Yeah. With fundraising, you have to be very comfortable putting on the hat to go and fundraise because you have to speak in a very different language, you know. A a deck for fundraising is different than, you know, a product pitch that you would do to your friend or or someone else.
Speaker 5:Right? And so I think, yeah, I mean, designers, engineers, other inventors, or whatever. Sometimes they they aren't speaking the same language. And so I think, yeah, what what my brother said was the two years of of research was part of that was actually just learning the language of fundraising and and the whole systems of that as well.
Speaker 3:Makes sense. I'm curious how much your network from the past kind of helped with with that. And I'm also curious, I guess it's related, that a lot of the people that you're probably targeting to buy the car could also potentially invest in the company that is building their car. Have is that true? Or or, what are your thoughts on both those?
Speaker 4:I'll start with the second topic because that's a very easy one to answer. Yes. Absolutely. %. Right?
Speaker 4:A lot of these guys wanna have the coolest car, and a lot of these guys wanna be part of building a car. So, yes, that's that's easy to answer. Okay. The first part of that question, I think, is a little bit more, complicated. And the honest answer to that is, I would say, almost zero in terms of, that helping us except for some of the like, our our contacts from the OEM space, kind of the the big manufacturers where we worked as designers before we did sort of Oil Stain Lab.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Those guys are arguably the people that doubt you the most are the people that are the closest to you in, like, social economic status, let's say. Interesting. You know? And so they're like, oh, it's impossible.
Speaker 4:You can't start your own company because they're just like you. They're in the same position as you. And, yes, that's kind of true. So so those that was very sort of difficult to deal with, and I would say very lonely as an entrepreneur. It gets very, very lonely because people are just, like, totally doubting you.
Speaker 4:But the people that we know from Oil Stain Lab where we were building cars outside of the OEM space, but just like stuff for fun, incredible fabricators, engineers, and other manufacturers, they were super supportive and super, super useful in this endeavor and sort of putting, you know, teams together, etcetera. So, yeah, kind of a two sided answer to that question.
Speaker 3:Interesting. Yeah. I I guess that yeah. That that makes sense. And it like and in part of their response to you in some ways is is truthful.
Speaker 3:It's like, it is really hard. Like, that's why not everybody's doing it. Right? And that's why you guys chose to do it because you obviously like that challenge. Right?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, it it's, you know, it's the ultimate challenge in a way. Maybe we were a little bit bored in the OEM space. But at the same time, you know, when when people sort of doubt it, I'm like, how many other guys are doing their own car company? Like, maybe there's ten, twenty around the world.
Speaker 4:I like the odds of one in 20 as opposed to, like, trying to make the one in a thousand. Right?
Speaker 3:That that's actually a really interesting way to put it because you're right. Like, it would be it's it would be really hard to be I'm not an Elon Musk fan, but everybody knows Tesla. Right? Like, it it's really hard to be the next Tesla, but it's a hell of a lot easier to be, like, a like, the niche kind of car that you guys are building. Right?
Speaker 3:That's that's really good advice.
Speaker 4:Yep. Agreed.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So I'm curious. Is there any other stuff that we that you would wanna maybe tell the listener about Oil Stain Lab and and the cars that we haven't covered today?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, you know, I think what's what's interesting about the cars, I think the most most interesting thing is is just the approach of sort of you know, we're we constantly live in a society that's, you know, trying to make things better and move on, and the future's always better, this and that. And, you know, we are very much, like, anchored in the past. And, you know, we truly think that a a number of things were better in the the past. But that doesn't mean we just, like, replicate them.
Speaker 4:You know? So our approach has been, you know, very different than the rest of the industry where, you know, with electric cars, they're they're putting speakers in them to make them sound like a V eight engine. You know? To to us, that's not
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That that's always kinda funny to me. But yes. It's like the baseball card and the bike spokes kinda thing as a kid.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Exactly. And so, you know, we're we're very much sort of and that that's kinda why we left the big OEM companies in that space is just we really genuinely believe that there's a better way to sort of build these cars. And, obviously, we do it at a small scale for now, but, hopefully, it'll it'll grow over time. And, you know, the the industry will sort of, yeah, wake up at some point.
Speaker 4:Because it's just sad how, yeah, the the car industry's really sort of forgotten what it is and what it used to stand for, especially in the sports car market.
Speaker 3:That's fair.
Speaker 4:And
Speaker 3:well and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it also seems like most cars these days, at least new cars, are basically just you pay a big price and then a subscription every month to have arguably basic features.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So Yeah. Yeah. No. It's it's interesting.
Speaker 4:I when I was at General Motors, we worked, it was a program that I proposed and started. It was, how do we make a car that's free? Right? Okay. And so how much data do we have to to sell?
Speaker 4:Like, how, you know, how much privacy do we have to infringe on for you to get a free car? You know? And so that's very soul damaging even though it was a project I proposed.
Speaker 3:Interesting. Yeah. Okay. No. That's that's really cool.
Speaker 3:But we're kinda coming to the end of the show. So how about we close with mentioning where people can get more information about Oil Stain Lab, the cars, and any other links you wanna mention?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So the website, OilStainLab.com, that's the sort of most up to date, sort of public facing, avenue that they can check out. There's gonna be a lot of cool images, some sound, video, etcetera, all about the car, a little bit about us. And then, on Instagram, they can check out oil stain lab, where we, you know, kind of do more of a daily day in the life updates, and, they'll see all the new stuff that's coming there first, probably.
Speaker 3:Very cool. One final question that I just that just came to me. Is it can people basically will you ship them basically globally?
Speaker 4:Yes. Yeah. The car is designed to be global. Yeah. Left and right hand drive, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 3:Okay. Very cool. Well, guys, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be on the show, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you and have a good rest of your day.
Speaker 4:Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3:Thanks, guys. Okay. Bye.
Speaker 1:For more episodes, you can find us on all major podcasting platforms or visit Iambuildingthefuture.com. Join us next time and keep building the future.
