Most robotics companies die trying to build their first product. Alex Wyatt spent seven years building the platform so the second product took seven weeks.

When August Robotics launched their exhibition robot in November 2019, it blew up - standing ovation, early revenue, real momentum. Then COVID hit. Exhibitions banned globally for 23 months. Zero revenue. Total cliff.

But under that first robot was something almost no robotics company ever builds: a platform: autonomous navigation accurate to 3mm, custom localisation, fleet coordination, modular architecture. The long, painful, expensive work that many startups can't survive.

Then it paid off.

→ Seven weeks from concept to prototype for their drilling robot

→ Google as their first demo and customer

→ 50,000 holes drilled across US data centres

→ DeWalt partnership unlocking entire tool ecosystems

→ More robots spinning out in months, not years

Alex is also opening an AI and data centre in Melbourne, choosing to build the next layer of August's platform from Australia, not just Silicon Valley or Shenzhen.

This episode breaks down the real hardware platform playbook: robot collaboration that collapses workflows, de-risking with hyperscaler customers, and why the "third way" of robotics creates network effects in physical space. Alex also talks about surviving 23 months of zero revenue, going from Blackbird LP to portfolio founder, and why he waited a decade for the timing to actually be right.

If you're building hardware from Australia, fundraising deep tech, or wondering when long-horizon bets actually flip into growth - this is the one.

Nikki Brown is a Cambridge graduate who quit a dream job at Google after mere months. "I wasn't happy being a cog in a machine," she says. So she built her own.

Today, Nikki is co-founder and CEO of Cartesian, an AI-native platform backed by Blackbird that turns SaaS ecosystems into retention and growth engines. Cartesian's AI agents analyse user needs in real-time, detect buying intent, and connect users with the right ecosystem partners at exactly the moment they need them. No cold emails. No spray and pray. The result: users get personalised solutions, platforms deliver value, partners grow.

Nikki is building AI that works like she does: accumulating context and using it to connect meaningfully at the right moment. Finance gave her systems thinking. Tragedy gave her clarity. 120 conversations gave her deep customer insight.

In this episode, Nikki joins Mason to share why team beats idea every time, why relationships, not data, are the real moat, and why the foundations of sales never change: "People buy from people."

This one's for anyone questioning whether their "non-traditional" background disqualifies them - or wondering if their lived experience might just be the context that matters most.

Joe Harris has been dabbling since he was 12 - YouTube channels, NFT agencies, creatine gummies, a yoga studio. At Eucalyptus, he scaled the company from $3M to $170M but never fully committed to just one thing. The question haunted him: What could he do if he actually locked in?

Earlier this year, he got his answer: Alloy, backed by Blackbird and engineers from the world's leading robotics companies who've lived the problem he's solving. Because when every robot has a story, they need someone to listen.

That's where Alloy comes in.

Robots produce a gigabyte of data per minute. When something breaks, engineers spend days manually searching through footage, sensor readings, and text logs to find the issue. With Alloy, they just search "battery overheating" or "arm failed to grip" in plain English. Problem found in seconds, not days.

In this episode, Joe joins Mason to share why robotics is the next infrastructure wave, why even the bulls are underestimating how big it gets, and why we're not going to have 100 years of progress this century - we're going to have 20,000.

This is for operators considering the leap, anyone who's been dabbling without committing, and people who want to understand robotics without a PhD.

Because this is what happens when you finally lock in.