Episode 33: Restoring Confidence in Travel

Hey listeners, welcome to SphereCast. A podcast all about technology, technology advice, technology inspiration, and how real entrepreneurs have used technology to build their businesses from the ground up. If you're wondering how technology can support your business goals, rest assured, our guests have been there and done that.

As kids, we all dream of doing something world-changing, of building something new and revolutionary, of being a name that will forever be recorded in history books because of our brave actions. As we slowly adapt and emerge from this pandemic, there will no doubt be a list of people whose names will be remembered, and our podcast guest this week may truly be one of them.

Luke here with another week of SphereCast, and on this episode, I speak with Kris Rupay, Executive Vice President Engineering at aero hygenx. Through a combination of robotics and medical-grade ultraviolet light, Kris's company is making pandemic-era travel safer. aero hygenx's product, aptly named RAY, is a robot that moves throughout transportation cabins, sanitizing surrounding areas using UVC light, a technology that's proven to neutralize COVID-19 and its variants.

Typically, businesses are born by way of identifying a problem to solve. Kris and his team sought to tackle a huge problem—making travel safe once again, during a global pandemic. Per its website, aero hygenx is a company inspired by the need to bring consumer confidence back to travel. And through extremely innovative technology, it is accomplishing its goal. On the podcast, Kris lays out his company's short but impactful journey, recaps any lessons learned along the way, and discusses what constitutes a good team. So, without further delay, here's my conversation with Kris.

Hi everyone, Xenia is here, and today we're thrilled to host Kris Rupay from aero hygenx. Hi, Kris, how are you?

Very well, thank you, and yourself?

Doing well, thanks for asking. Let's begin with an icebreaker. Could you share with our audience something interesting about yourself that most people don't really know?

Sure. I mean, it's funny to think of just one thing that's a little bit different, so maybe I'll kind of describe myself in a few words. But obviously, I absolutely love technology. This is kind of the roots of aero hygenx and so forth. But apart from that, I absolutely love taking things apart and understanding how things work. I love the finer things in life from eating healthy and choosing some really good meals to eat.

I love really good beers, as funny as that sounds, specifically IPAs, and Canada certainly makes some very good ones. Through the pandemic, I've kind of grown to love some really, really good coffee as well. And then I guess finally to complete me, outside of tech, and often a way I find to unwind myself, I really, really love different sports, and played many, many different sports, specifically in the summer, anything around water. I can't wait to get away and do a little water skiing this weekend. And in the winter, in full Canadian form, I absolutely love snowboarding with my family and getting away with the guys on the snowmobile and try to play hockey once a week, well, pre-pandemic anyways.

Kris, you're a Superman, in other words. Bit of everything.

A little bit of everything, but yeah.

Bit of indulgence is good. What kind of coffee are you interested in? I mean, I have been a big fan of the third wave coffee culture for about three or four years, and I own a little espresso machine in my house, so what about you?

Yeah. No, that's funny enough. Early on in the pandemic, I had bought my wife a—it's a Rancilio coffee machine, or espresso maker I should say, and kind of tried to perfect the art of being a barista on the side and getting all the right temperatures and the right weights and everything with the coffee, and I'm sure you've been through all that. And now I'm really trying to perfect my latte art these days.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Okay, okay. We'll have to connect on that later on. Great.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That's really good to know. I'm sure there's many questions I could ask you about personal life, but this is a very focused episode, so we'll leave that for the next one. I'd like to start with the most recent venture of yours. So, in your own words, what is aero hygenx and why did you join this company?

Sure. So funny enough, I was actually working—I've worked in the aviation industry for my entire career, close to 20 years now. I was actually working in China and Hong Kong in November of 2019. So, really right before everyone was talking about coronavirus and what's a coronavirus and so forth. And then I was actually over in Singapore on January 22nd, and I don't know why that date sticks in my head, but that was the first day that they recognized that this new virus everyone's talking about was outside of China.

It was from that point on, myself and my partners, Arash and Pete, also in the aviation industry, we had front-row seats to the entire thing and watched things collapse around us, and that's when we knew we really wanted to do something. We'd heard about UVC technology at the time. We knew it was used a lot in hospitals and worked very, very well in hospitals, and we thought, "How can we bring a medical-grade technology to the aviation industry and potentially help this pandemic?"

I'm interested about the product. Could you tell us about RAY a little more and its journey so far? Have you been involved in the process of shaping the product and its roadmap? What was your involvement in selecting the technologies?

Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, I've been involved since the very beginning of aero hygenx. Just to describe RAY real quickly, RAY is an autonomous robot that moves down the aisle of transportation vehicles. We specifically focused on aircraft in the beginning, but really it goes down any transportation vehicle. It uses or emits a light frequency—we can get a little bit more into that—that ultimately that light has a disinfection property to knock out pathogens, so viruses and bacteria and all those bad things we don't want in the world these days.

So, combining between combining UVC and robotics together is ultimately where the technology came together. Yeah, so I've been involved since that from the very beginning.

Amazing. Could you talk us a little bit through the process of when you were starting the company, what kind of challenges did you guys come across and what role did you play in deciding some of the initial choices, like making those choices, what technologies to go with, how you would create your product or develop it as the time goes by?

Yeah, absolutely. UVC was, again, we had heard about UVC, we understood how it worked, and I mean UVC has been around for more than 100 years now. But we had to understand it to ultimately build our products. So, we did quite a bit of research ourselves just to better understand it, but then we realized it is quite complicated. So, we reached out to a number of experts in the industry. We actually brought on one of the leading researchers in the world, in the western part of our country actually, and brought him on early on.

It was really neat at that time with the pandemic going on, folks wanted to—they wanted to help, and many of them volunteered their time if it was to help the pandemic, so that was really, really helpful for us. We then used—they helped us learn UVC and get up to speed and ultimately come up with our models of what we had to do. So, the UVC side of things was, and all the modeling around that, is what we wanted to solve first. Getting our hands on that technology, we really need to figure out what was the best one and what we want to use and so forth. So, bringing on the right experts was key to that.

And then once we kind of got that nailed down and we really want to kind of—although we were working on robotics all the way through, we had to kind of up our ante on that and make a shift to the robotics. And I tell you, the number of algorithms that we've come up with along the way would probably blow your mind. We started out with an algorithm that would solve going down an aisle, but then it only worked on one aisle, and then it had to go on—we wanted it to work on a train, so how does that happen? And then you get into more complicated aircraft where you're going cabin to cabin and you need to make twists from different cabin classes. And anyway, where we've landed now, I'm really, really happy with the algorithm. It's kind of a one-size-fits-all algorithm. Yeah, but it was a really tough journey to find the right one to use.

It sounds like a very tough journey. I'm sure you learned some valuable lessons during that time. Could you share some of them?

Yeah. No, absolutely. I think number one, I kind of mentioned a little bit there in the last question, but one thing I should mention, my partners and I, Arash and Pete, we're pretty good at calling each other out if we see we're kind of going down the wrong path or we believe in a really open, honest relationship and so forth. Something I recognized myself, I was doing a lot on my own, trying to solve everything on my own from the engineering side. Pete and Arash were focused on—Pete on the sales side and Arash on the operations and finance side and so forth.

I remember one day Pete called me out and said, "Don't be shy about bringing other guys on to help out" and so forth, and kind of quickly changed my pace at that point. But with that said, I think it's really, really important to surround yourself with the right folks, building up the right team and so forth from all different angles, whether it's finance or engineering or sales and so forth. It's really about bringing the right people together.

Interesting. So, without being too intrusive here, so how would you normally approach somebody if they are wrong? This is like a learning for us. Basically, we all struggle with this. Like how do you, when you know your colleague's going down the wrong aisle, for example, how do you challenge them, or not challenge, but how do you course-correct them positively?

Yeah, I think something I learned early on in my career, I really believe in personal relationships. I remember just kind of a side story on that, I remember years and years ago, I was on a team of 100-plus engineers and we had all worked really, really hard for about six weeks in a row to meet a certain deadline. And I remember at the end of that, there were some awards given out and five or ten people were promoted, and it was a big deal.

But it also became a big problem because those five or ten folks at that time, wow, they were made to feel really, really good, but you've also made 90 other folks kind of feel down, and it was a really weird situation. So, from that point on, I really learned, I think it's all about a lot of one-on-ones, and when you need to call someone out, even if it's a closed-door meeting behind a door, or I guess easier to close the door these days with a Zoom meeting and such, really having those personal conversations.

I have, I talked with beer and coffee and so forth. I think having a beer, having a coffee sometimes takes the edge off when you're having tough conversations and so forth. So, I guess to summarize, it's really about the one-on-one conversations.

Yeah, that's—yeah, thanks for the wise words. I think, yeah, I agree with that. I think calling people out in front of everyone is the wrong choice, and it used to happen a lot, I think, in the past. But I've seen the attitudes changing nowadays, especially we are in a—we are in the times where people wouldn't accept such humiliation at work, let's say, being micromanaging and all those things. So, things are changing, and yeah, this is one of the way forwards.

I think this is one of the lessons many people have learned through through the COVID times as they need to rely on people while they're away, trust them, and believe in them. And you know, when the time is right, there's some feedback, then do it constructively and see how that impacts the organization. So, yeah, thanks for sharing those wise words.

I would love to ask you about making tough decisions in the company. What do you feel are the most difficult ones to make as a VP of Engineering? Do you have a story to share with us?

Yeah. Again, I kind of loop back again to the right people and so forth and surrounding yourself with the right people. I don't think enough emphasis is put on hiring. It's a process I've always felt it's really, really important to be involved with and to bring the right people on at the very beginning and find the right fit. And vice versa, some of the tougher decisions is if for some reason you make that mistake, you need to recognize that and have those conversations and potentially part ways and so forth. There's different folks for everybody.

I have a follow-up on this. So, how do you—do you have a specific formula when you do interviews? Because me and Xenia do a lot of interviews together when we are hiring our vice presidents and leaders, directors. So, is there anything you can share with the audience, like something that works for you, maybe?

Yeah. I find more than anything, it's personality that makes such a difference. It's finding that person that you're going to connect with, you're going to relate with, that you feel is going to relate with your team and can work well with others. For us, it's finding that person who, even though they—I would probably choose the person who might have a little bit less knowledge, but is really excited to learn and brings a really good attitude.

I think that's kind of the most important thing. I mean, obviously, best-case scenario, we've got someone with a lot of experience and has the right experience and so forth, but number one is really personality and attitude and their interest.

Yeah, I agree with that. I look at it in a funny way. So, I always think like there's a floor where the person is at right now, and then there's a ceiling. And the focus should not be where they are right now, and as long as they can learn and they have a high ceiling, I think those are the folks you want to go with, somebody with maybe a chip on their shoulder. We look for that kind of thing as well, especially if you're hiring sales people, I guess.

Okay, this is a funny one, because your business is built around fighting the pathogens and the bacterias and the viruses that are not visible to the eye. So, how has COVID-19 impacted your business? I guess you guys started in the middle of the pandemic, so yeah, let's learn from it. I mean, it came out of the pandemic, I guess, but what was—how has the market been, or let's turn the question around a little bit. Let's say, where would your business be after the pandemic as well, if we can ask you that?

Yeah. No, absolutely. It's a very, very unique situation. We are one of those folks that started our business in the pandemic, very early on in the pandemic. I guess that it kind of worked to our favor a little bit. We were able to build the business around a pandemic, instead of having to quickly enable everyone to work remotely from home, we created a business where you start from home. And the normal is Microsoft Teams and Zoom and all the other video chat programs that are out there these days. So, I think that was kind of the neat part of it.

As far as post-pandemic goes, the feedback we've got from employees and so forth is really around finding that balance. I think folks really appreciate working from home, but there's a social aspect to being face-to-face and being together. So, post-pandemic, when things open up again, I think we're going to be in a position where we find that nice balance. We won't need as much office space. A lot of shared spaces will come about, and I don't know what the exact ratio is, but I do believe it's going to be somewhere around 50/50, kind of half work from home, half work from the office.

The other thing, I guess pandemic-wise that has made it hard for us, and I guess we kind of knew this going through, but with our product, it's really cool to see the product out there and to see videos and to see to hear about it and see pictures and so forth, but seeing is believing. And getting RAY in front of people, I tell you, the look on their face when they see RAY come down the aisle of the aircraft or see RAY in person, we're often in hangars, and everybody who walks by, "What is that? Whoa, cool! Tell me about that," and is so interested in it. But it's so hard to get to places because we're so limited on our travel right now, so that's certainly been a challenge for us all the way through.

I see. I see. So, it's not so much that you have created a market, but more like scaling and expanding is a bit of an issue still since you guys can't travel and demo your product across the globe. I guess, yeah, good times are waiting, I guess, with the vaccination going ahead. UK, the UK is almost vaccinated now, so I think a lot of the restrictions will go will be lifted by 18th or the 19th of July, so we're looking forward to it, like a bit of traveling, maybe a holiday this summer, hopefully.

No, that's wonderful to hear. And Canada is kind of catching up on that. I know UK certainly been leading the way all the way through, but yeah, we're finally catching up with our vaccines. I remember back in April, they opened it up to to my age group, and boy, I tell you, that that week it was I was on the phone trying to call every single pharmacy across the province trying to just just get one, just knowing that, it'll ultimately make traveling for us for our business safer and so forth.

And fortunately, I was able—I had to drive a little bit, but I was able to get one by the end of that week, and then I was lucky to get my second vaccine on a trip actually down to the US, where they had more than enough vaccines, so I was able to get my second in short order, so we got lucky there.

Excellent. Good to hear that. Good to hear that.

All right. We're moving on to the personal section of our podcast. Kris, could you share or describe your typical day for us?

Sure. I know most folks start their day off with the iPhones on and you check your emails first thing in the morning. Don't get me wrong, I guess I probably do that a little bit, too, but I'm very cautious to replying to too much first thing in the morning. I kind of like to let my day start with my kids. I get them off to school in the morning and I try to get a run in before I really do any work. I mean, don't get me wrong, if there's an email that's very, very urgent, I'll get back to that, but I try to put that on hold.

And actually, just on that note on emails, something I've kind of learned throughout my career, boy, emails are so distracting. And trying to separate that, I actually turn my inbox off most of the days, and kind of set aside a couple of times a day when I actually do check check emails. I had a colleague years ago and said to me, "You know, if someone really needs you and someone really needs to get a hold of you, they're going to pick up the phone and call you the old-fashioned way," and that that does work really, really well. I do believe in that. If they need something within a, let's call it a couple of hours, you're probably going to get a text or a WhatsApp and so forth. And emails, you know what? You probably can get away with responding in 24 hours. It's not the it's not life or death usually with an email.

So, I try to keep that model throughout the day and not look at my emails. I set goals for I set goals first thing in the morning, things I want to accomplish by the end of the day. My typical office, I'm in the office probably more than I work from home these days just because that's where RAY is, or RAYs, I should say. I'm probably in the office for 10, 11 hours a day. I try to get home in time for for dinner with the family. I miss it a few times from time to time, but that's kind of one way I try to unwind a little bit. And then often with Arash and Pete, we often have strategy sessions where we chat later in the evening and kind of when the kids go down, and that kind of concludes the day. I'd say that's a fairly typical.

Yeah, makes me think I'm I'm missing out on some fun, I guess. I've been thinking about this. I need to go go to the office a few days a week now. My wife has been saying that you're becoming like an animal now, just stay in the house, you eat a lot. So, I need to change some of my, you know, the day structure needs to be a bit different, I think a bit funky now. So, I'll definitely I'm I'm hoping that I'll be going to the office very soon. At least couple of days a week. Yeah, that's my pact. But thanks for sharing the personal, your routine every day. It's interesting.

I'd like to switch gears a little bit. So, could you talk us through maybe, you know, I wouldn't say there's one thing, but maybe you can share one thing with us out of many that you have that you wish you had known when you began your career?

Sure. I mean, the the first thing that comes to mind for me is really never stop learning. And I remember the day I finished school, it was that that feeling of, "I made it. I did it. I got my first job. I can kind of put things in drive," and I don't want to say coast, but you know, the the the majority of the learning's done. Boy, was I so wrong. You know, you learn a lot at school and so forth, and that ultimately sets you up for your career and to move forward, but it never stops.

And I just encourage people to continue learning every day, try to read, try to try to grow. And if you're in your career and you find a point where you've stopped, you've stopped learning, it's probably time to move on. It happened to me at one point in my career, and fortunately I had the opportunity to to move on at that point, and it was one of the best moves I ever made, and put my career back on fast-forward again, and I continued to learn.

And on that note, I'd also recommend, folks, there's so many different types of companies, especially in the engineering and tech world. There's very, very large government organizations, there's large companies that are fairly similar, medium-sized companies, small companies, startup companies. Figure out what works for you. I worked for a very, very large company when I first started my career, and great experience. I still have many, many friends I keep in touch with from there, but it wasn't really for me. I then went to work for a smaller company, and it was it was a 180. It was so nice to feel the energy and feel that you got a chance to wear many, many different hats and so forth. That was more more for myself, and so I would recommend to find the right fit for you.

I will make a point here. So, thanks for sharing that. But when you are working in a big company, you don't really realize what you're missing out until you have tried out somewhere else, and then you're like, "Okay, in hindsight, I think that wasn't for me. Maybe that's why I was unhappy." But when you leave and when you come to some place which you love, it's it's easy to say. So, did you realize this while you were working in this big organization or was it afterwards? Was it retrospectively you thought, "Okay, I'm enjoying it more. It's more fun," etc.?

Yeah, so it was I guess a bit of both. I remember at the time, you know, my wife was going to say I was complaining a lot about work those days, and I could tell I wasn't really enjoying work as much. And so I knew something had to change. But yeah, ultimately it wasn't until I had that experience at the smaller company where I realized, "Wow, that you know, it was a great company to work for, a great company to start my career, but it just wasn't for me." And so I guess it wasn't really until I got into that position when I truly recognized that.

Kris, how do you stay on top of the latest technology innovations? What online magazines, blogs, or maybe podcasts are you subscribed to?

Yeah. You know, I I'm a really big believer in in balancing your time, and part of that is time to yourself. And when I do have time to myself and so forth, it's you know, I do like reading and and I don't—it's tough to say, do I follow one specific podcast or tech? Probably the podcast I follow the most is is actually, funny enough, is aviation-related. It's not really tech-related, but I love The Airline Pilot Guy. Just a just kind of a good group of people that talk about aviation-related stuff and keep up to the technology in aviation, so I really like that.

And then apart from that, I mean, just just reading different articles typically stem from, you know, it starts from maybe a couple Twitter articles and one thing leads to the next and kind of bounce from one site to the next. I love reading tech books and different business books. I just finished the No Rules Rules book, the recent Netflix book by Reed Hastings. I thought that was kind of a really neat perspective. I don't necessarily agree with everything in the book, but a lot of really, really good points to to bring forward.

And now, funny enough, I don't usually read politics, but my wife actually just bought me the the latest, A Promised Land by Barack Obama. I'm just reading that right now, and very, very well written as well.

All right. We're almost done torturing you here. Just a few more questions. Kris, what continues to be your biggest challenge from a tech perspective, and how do you wish technology would evolve to make your business and perhaps RAY more efficient?

Yeah, the hardest thing for us, I mean, since transitioning to the to to kind of a smaller company where I got involved with a lot of innovation, it's really, really hard to get innovation out there and to get adoption. So, for for us, I mean, we know we've got a product that works really well. We know we've got a product that is going to save businesses money and and time and, but it's getting that adoption. It's educating on a new way of doing things. It's so hard to get that out there.

And once we break through that, and again we've started to break through as as more and more RAY units start to go operational and more and more trials are happening, folks realize that. And again, kind of looping back to my story of seeing is believing, and once you see it in front of you, you kind of get it. That's, I'd say, our biggest challenge is is getting innovation out there and getting that adoption to happen and getting folks to think in a different way. Once that happens, it's just a huge breakthrough and opens everything up.

So, Kris, I do have a final question for you. So, you have you have got a fair bit of experience in the in leading companies, let's say. So, what do you think are the top three attributes of a great leader in the current times?

Yeah. I guess, I mean, it's tough to nail down three specific attributes, but I'll try to give a few examples of how I like to lead and what I really believe strongly in, and and my partners Arash and Pete also believe strongly in, too.

Number one, I really believe in leading by example. I think if you can set that set that example and set how you want things done, and how you want to go about things, and how you want to solve things, and how you want the team to work together, lead by that, demonstrate that. Don't just tell folks, "You should do it this way." Do it. Show it. Be a part of it. I think that's that's really, really big.

For us, creating a culture where folks aren't afraid to speak up has been really, really important to us as well. I often find, you know, it's really, really important to respect everybody's opinion, and you never know where the best idea is going to come from. And I know it sounds funny and many folks have said that in different books I've read and so forth, too, but it's so true. Some of the best ideas might, who knows, might come from that co-op student or the the new hire that you just brought on. So, I try to, even though we may not use everyone's idea, at least listen, at least hear everybody out and hear what they have to say and and ultimately make the decision of what the the the best decision is for it.

I also believe in I guess kind of linked into that is really being personable and approachable, and kind of that open-door policy. Let's chat about anything, whether it's tech or just life in general. Be a be be open to talk at any time.

And finally, I think communication amongst an organization, and and this was may have been some of the frustrating things I found when working for a big company, but it's really understanding what's happening at the company and why are the leaders making decisions the way they are. I think it's so important to be open about that.

And there's certain things you can't share, primarily probably on some of the financial stuff. There's a lot of confidentiality there that has to remain that way. But different strategies and why we decided to do this and why we decided to do that, I think it's so important to share that with with everyone all the way through. So, we try to do that at minimum every Monday morning, and it probably happens a lot more in the week as we just chitchat about this and that. But I think communication is so important these days.

Thank you for sharing that. That's—I mean, we normally ask for attributes, but you were very kind to share the examples and you gave some backstory to that, so that's really helpful. Thank you for sharing.

And with that, we have come to the end of our episode. I think this marketing team will be very happy with this recording because it's like exactly, the 30-minute mark, no rambling, nothing, straight to business. And Kris, I think it's been it's been an amazing episode. We really enjoyed talking—I really enjoyed speaking with you. Open, transparent, and shared some really useful tips and advice with us.

Yeah, Kris, thank you for your time today. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. We wish you best of luck, and Luke and I are going to be rooting for your product and your business, so we'll keep following your success and stay in touch.

Excellent. Well, an absolute pleasure speaking with you both as well.

A special thanks to our podcast guest this week, and once again to our sponsor, Sphere Partners, for bringing this episode to life. If you enjoyed this episode, drop SphereCast a five-star review on iTunes, and share this content with your network. For any relevant links or notes from this episode, check out our podcast website at www.sphereinc.com/spherecast. And always remember, when you think you can't, technology can. See you next time.