Adam Torres and Tom Stevens discuss Tombot
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Show Notes:
What is the role of robotic animals for treating mental health adversities? In this episode, Adam Torres and Tom Stevens, CEO of Tombot, Inc., explore the Tombot story and how it aims to help seniors with dementia.
About Tom Stevens
As the CEO of Tombot, Tom Stevens leads a team of passionate and talented professionals who are dedicated to creating robotic emotional support animals for seniors with dementia and others with serious mental health adversities. Their goal is to provide a realistic and affordable way for those who cannot safely or practically care for live animals, improving the quality of life and well-being of our users and their caregivers.
With over 35 years of experience in the healthcare robotics, mental health, pets, AI, and high tech industries, Tom has developed a strong expertise in strategy, executive team leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, business development, and organizational culture.
About Tombot
Creating robotic animals that transform the daily life of individuals, families, and communities facing health adversities.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have Tom Stevens on the line and he’s a CEO of TomBot. com. And he’s also going to be a speaker at the upcoming Newport Beach Investor Conference that we’ve been covering for Brad Turner and his crew over there.
That’s going to be taking place on Thursday, March 21st. So we’ll get into that as well. But first thing first, Hey, welcome to the show, Tom. Thank you, Adam. very nice to be here. All right, Tom. when I was doing kind of the research for this interview and looking things up, I saw that, like, I went to your LinkedIn, of course, which for everybody listening, I mean, pretty straightforward.
You type in Tom Stevens, TomBot, and it’ll pop right up. And I saw some renditions and everything else on there. And I just have to ask, like, where did this idea come from? In 2011, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Dementia, and I had to take away her dog for safety reasons. I looked around for substitutes for live animal companions.
She hated everything that I brought home. And so I realized at that time that there was a gap in the market. Would you call yourself and you know, I’m looking at your background here. Would you call yourself a serial entrepreneur or a natural born entrepreneur? Like, like, because sometimes you come up with an idea, but it doesn’t mean you follow through.
Like, how would you categorize yourself? Well, I’m fortunate that I’ve had the experience of building a previous startup with a couple of partners. I’m not, I’m not I’m not At my core, really that risk loving, but having the right people around me sort of encouraged me to take this chance. My two Tombok co founders and I built a prior startup in the one of the world’s largest litigation automation companies, and we had an exit in 2011, which gave me the freedom to think about other things.
And my mother, of course, gave me my new mission. Wow, an amazing story. And I, and I asked that question because I’m risk adverse as well. So when I looked at your background, I’m like, from this to then Tom bottom, like, you know, that’s a, that’s a leap. But I can see, like, when a mission hits you that personally, like, was that kind of the moment as you started doing your research?
And otherwise, you’re like, you know, I want to solve this problem, you know, for others as well. Like, like, how did you know it was the idea, so to speak? Well, grew on me over time. So, my mother and I had a very close relationship but the day I took away her dog, which was several very tough decisions downstream after her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Dementia, it really destroyed our relationship.
Every day was, where’s my dog? Why can’t I have my dog? When am I getting my dog back? And really, just purely out of selfish reasons to try to salvage our relationship, started looking into this much more closely. It ultimately led me to going back to school and getting a master’s degree from Stanford University, and it was really through that.
That process, where I came to appreciate this wasn’t just a unique situation for my mother, but for over a billion people that have some form of serious mental or physical health adversity that prevents them from safely or practically caring for a live animal. And so I realized if I could help my mom I could probably help a lot of other people too.
Amazing. And as you were going through let’s just say this journey of exploration and, and if I’m off on this, and please correct me on the term, but I would say on robotic animals, like for treating mental health and maybe other things. Is that how, is that how I would say that? Robotic animals or? Yes, exactly.
So there’s been a Well, so the, the, the orientation about this was really trying to figure out if an artificial animal, if some sort of substitute for a live animal, could have similar impacts on, on that person. And there’s a lot of research around this area, around emotional attachment.
Most of most of us that have kids are familiar with emotional attachment objects. Mm hmm. You know, a favorite stuffed animal or blanket or something else. I have a six year old now and my six year old is inseparable from a little, a little teddy bear doll, which is kind of annoying when he’s coming everywhere with his son, but, but is a lot of science, a lot of study that’s been done on the neurochemistry of what’s going on there.
And we end up well, just to get into those details. So human beings have evolved. A neurochemical system for taking care of babies. Human babies are born altricial, meaning that if we leave them alone, they’ll perish. Unlike, unlike a hoofed animal, like a, a horse or, or a cow or a deer who’s on its feet within 30 minutes or so, and able to flee predators not long after that.
If we leave the babies alone. Their likelihood of survival is not good. So we need to take care of it. And the reason for that is we birth babies prematurely. Our brains, if they were to grow to full maturity while they were still in the mother’s uterus would not be able to get out successfully. So we give humans give birth to premature babies that need a lot of care.
And we’ve developed humans have developed a reward system. For taking care of babies. it’s very powerful and I can get into the science behind that further. But what’s interesting and what I really didn’t understand despite having animals my entire life with my, through my mother is that human beings have been selectively breeding.
Dogs for thousands of years Imitate the traits in human babies that cause us to want to care for the babies so very powerful neural chemistry and so when we think of emotional attachment objects We’re thinking about things that we believe that need care and we’re convinced of that and through that Desire to care for the well being of that object, whether it’s organic or inorganic.
that’s what creates positive changes in our brain’s neurochemistry. So the question for us, could we actually create something that did that? And I had no idea where it would go. I tried to be as agnostic about it as possible, and I have these ideas in the back of my mind that maybe a robot could play a role, but I really had no idea, and so we ended up teaming up with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to do our artistic design, and they helped us produce five generations of high fidelity prototypes that ended up here.
At the version of the robotic puppy that you see online, is that I want to just make sure because I want other people to check this out to when I look at your LinkedIn profile and I see the kind of brown puppy there. Is that the 1 that I’m looking at? I’m guessing yes, I can go check my LinkedIn profile certainly in my or, or, or I should say at dot com.
Yeah, I was going to say, we’re at dot com. Of course. Yes., it’s exactly right. So that is that is what we’re showing. There is our 5th generation prototype and what we learned is adorable.
By the way, I’m already loving it. I’m telling you, I only saw the small picture, but now I’m seeing looking at me. I’m like, I want one of these. Go ahead. I can’t, but he’s adorable. Good. it’s way more impressive. A person that it is even even the videos online. But so we we conducted three rounds of customer studies of over 700 seniors with dementia, generating once again, five unique generations of prototypes.
And there were three hypotheses that we were really at the core of our studies, one major hypothesis per round. And the first one was. Would seniors with dementia prefer, or stated as a hypothesis, seniors with dementia would prefer objects that move over objects that don’t move. The first thing I wanted to do is say, well, could this be Done with a $12 stuffed animal or Mm-Hmm,
Or does this need to be something that’s that’s more organic? Like and it was clear a hundred percent of the seniors with dementia, preferred objects that moved over, objects that didn’t. Just as an aside, seniors with dementia don’t give reliable information all the time verbally. So we worked with Georgia Tech and the University of Illinois.
On coding methodologies for our studies, so we could code behaviors of theirs that we observed and then quantify those behaviors, based upon what the object was that they’re actually looking at. So, once again, objects that move over objects that don’t, which could help explain why my mom hated everything that I brought home.
Secondly Objects that look realistic as opposed to cartoon like or toy like, which was not really evident to us when we were going into it. But hindsight, it was my mother had never walked down the toy aisle at target shopping for herself. Yeah, so having something that a senior would not identify with or put differently would identify as belonging to somebody else, like a young child we realized was not going to be successful.
So realistic appearance. But they were still concerns. Even though it could move and had realistic appearance, the prototypes that we use that round did not move realistically. They were rather mechanically and that was disturbing to people. And so our third round, which features the robot that you see on our LinkedIn and our website, her name is Jenny.
Jenny doesn’t just look and feel realistic, she behaves realistically. Wow. So not only does she have the potential, To be animated in such a way that she looks realistic, she’s fully interactive and responds within the context of what’s happening in her environment. So her, her behaviors not only look good, but they make sense.
That’s, it’s an amazing story. And I’m telling you, everybody that’s listening to this, go to TomBot, that’s T O M B O T dot com. And you just have to see this for yourself. It’s amazing. And as you’re talking about this, I got, I got to throw something out there. And I know you didn’t know this time for the audience.
Tom does not know this, but what I was thinking about this as you’re describing it, I’m like, I thought I was, I’m so happy that you explain the the science behind this. And especially with dogs and robot dogs, because I’ve had experiences, nothing as advanced as this, but some of the earlier like versions of ones that I would argue yours is.
I mean, yeah, that’s the most advanced dog in this case that I’ve ever seen, for sure in my experience. But I’ve had some of the earlier ones and other things that were more toys, more gimmicky things like this, and, but I’m, I was always laughing at myself because I’m like, man, I kind of like this thing a little bit more than just, you’re talking about yourself.
Six year old and I’m like, Oh man, I don’t even want to tell Tom. I I’m pretty sure I’m going to the conference. I’m like, Tom’s going to say, yeah, that’s the guy that plays with. Hey, you’re in the business of it. I mean, you’re helping people with it. So at least, but I did, I had a little bit more of an attachment.
Like I’m not joking. I could never figure out why I’m like, why do I like care? What happens to this little toy? And I’m like, maybe I just was, you know, a little bit closer to that part of the feeling. So I wasn’t going crazy. So that’s good. Well, I’ll confess, Adam, but I’m very similar. we feel more.
Well, so we’re, very empathetic. So we, we try to, we try to read into what’s happening with someone or something else and care about its wellbeing. And then the other thing is just the whole reason why you know, based here in in LA, Hollywood the whole reason why. You know, the entertainment industry exists.
We as humans love to suspend disbelief. We imagine that we’re in the middle of a action movie or a love story. We give traits to mechanical toys, or in this case, a robotic animal that it doesn’t really have, and we like it. We like doing that. In fact, one of the things from an ethical standpoint that we were concerned about with, when we first started this mission, was Tricking or being perceived as tricking the seniors with dementia, you know, could they tell the difference between this and a real animal?
And it turns out they can, and they actually they like the fact that it is a robotic animal and not a live animal. And Pet ownership rates peak when we’re in our fifties and decline about 50 percent per decade after that, and you get to our nineties. Very, very few people in their nineties. Care for live animals.
And the reasons are first of all, number one burden of care. It’s a lot of work and so it’s not just a commitment. Personally, it’s also a lifestyle Secondly, it’s expensive. Americans on average spend about 2, 500 a year. On a dog because we love them and we want to take care of.
Yeah, exactly. thirdly, and this was a surprise. They don’t want to grieve for the loss of another animal because as you say, they’re part of the family. And tragically, our, these family members only live, you know, 8 to 15 years typically. So it’s Man, that’s a great point. it’s so, and it makes so much sense, especially depending on the age, because they’re going through that possibly with friends around them, depending on what age they are, when this sets in.
And otherwise, I mean, I could think of as a kid, now that you say that, after I lost my second dog, I really wasn’t up for a third one. I was like, no, I just kind of, and that was just natural cause. I mean, these were dogs I had for a long time, but I mean, I started pretty young when my parents would get me dogs.
And by the time I got to the third one, I’m like, yeah, I don’t want to really want to go through that again, actually. And I said, no. And they were surprised. It’s really rough. You know, I, had the privilege of having a mother that was a huge animal lover and had enough land to have horses and ducks and geese and chickens and dogs and cats and, and through my mother.
And then ultimately I’ve probably had 30 dogs even the most recent one that passed away was absolutely, absolutely tore me up. It’s terrible. And, and we do that because we want to, but at some point for, Many people they just don’t want to endure that anymore. So, what’s important for us to convey to the general public is that we’re not competing against live animals.
We’re not trying to displace a live animal from a home, but rather where people have either made a choice to no longer have that live animal or, for whatever reason, it’s just not safe for them to do that. We’re going to fill that void where a live animal can be successfully maintained. That’s probably it’s usually going to be a better solution than what we can do, but where they can’t, we’re way better than nothing.
We’re actually causing these people to be happy and have that companionship that they long for. Tom, what was it like working with, Jim Henson’s team? I mean, does your six year old know who that is yet? Like Muppet Babes yet? That must have been a kick. Come on. I have to say my six year old doesn’t quite get how special it is he’s been on the team.
I mean, I’m, I’m a fan over here. I’m like, Oh, Muppet Babies. What? That’s who created that. That’s cool. Go ahead. There’s, there’s a video on our website. If you, if anyone’s interested, go to our website and go to the page about Jenny, and you’ll see a video, behind the scenes video, where we interview a couple of the leaders from them.
These aren’t just amazingly talented, creative people. These are wonderful human beings that are doing what they’re doing just out of love. And Just out of extraordinary coincidence, the two senior most leaders, the creative director and their animatronic supervisor both had dads in late stage dementia when we first Oh, come on. That’s God. That’s bringing mission. That’s bringing everybody together. That’s amazing. Wow. but it doesn’t surprise me when you say that. It’s like, wow. Well, the numbers, are more tragic than any other story. This is the prevalence of diseases like Alzheimer’s that lead to dementia, you know, in society, are just far greater than I ever appreciated before getting into this.
But, what it did, though, is it sort of connected us as brothers and sisters in this mission together. It wasn’t just, hey, let’s make a good looking dog. You know, let’s let’s go help people. so wonderful relationship with them. But you’ll see, you’ll see on this video. I’m a kid in the candy store. just, it’s the most extraordinary experience.
Being with these people, you bring your 6-year-old just so you can fake it. Like, oh, it’s for the kids. Oh yeah. Sometimes people do movie. You sit in the court like, yeah, we’re bringing kids like two years old. No, the kid’s gonna love it. This is you. But I’ve been, I’ve, you’re right, I’ve been a fan of the Jim Henson company.
Mine. My entire cognizant life and so I’ve been beginning with Sesame Street and Muppets, of course, but I didn’t realize just how many commercial tv film Props they made and you walk around their shop and you go. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh Everywhere you turn is something Another puppet.
That’s amazing Wonderful wonderful experience. So where are we at with this? the like this, the overall like development of it, like, what’s the roadmap look like for, for like rolling this out and distribution otherwise, what, you can share today that is sure for our first product to market, which is designed to reduce the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia.
And reduce their need for certain medications including psychotropics that first product that we’re bringing to market Which is the one that you see on our on our website and linkedin we are in final alpha pre production We’ll finish this phase in april may Time frame and then we’ll roll into Our beta and what’s called design for manufacturing or DFM phase.
That’s the phase where even though the product looks like the production version works, like the production version still needs a little bit of refinement so that it can be manufactured more easily and more consistently and then that will also produce our beta robots. And once we have a beta version, that’s working the way we and our customers want it to.
We’ll wrap up production and start delivering product to our backlog of orders. Yeah, that’s exciting. And I see the website right now, there’s a big old button there for reserve your puppy. So I’m guessing that’s the, like how you’re collecting the reserve. And I see, I mean, you go to the website once and especially if you have a, you know, a parent in this situation that you’re like, yeah, I can see how these things are going to be very like helpful to individuals.
And I know that’s. I’m not gonna, you know, put a term on it, whether it’s stage one or I’m not, I wouldn’t even use that. I just mean in general, like, where do you see this going? Like to treat like over other mental health or, you know, let’s dream for a moment, not holding it anything. I understand you’re very clear on what it’s doing now, but like, let’s dream for a moment.
Where do you see this going? if I may give you a very short answer about how we think about this philosophically, and then I’ll answer your question directly from my background in product development, product innovation. It’s very, very important. For the success of the product success of the business to define your customer very narrowly and then understand their problems, at an expert level and then Develop to solve those problems.
I do not believe that general products for general customers succeed So this first product was developed specifically for seniors with dementia But it’s a dog. It’s a puppy And so about half of our 6, 000 plus pre order and waitlist customers are for children with autism, adolescents with serious anxiety, depression, suicide risk, adults with PTSD, bipolar, schizophrenia.
And adults and seniors who are cognitively healthy but live alone and are at risk of social isolation, severe loneliness. We have not tested our product with these other use cases, and we don’t want to say that the product will have the same benefits for these people until we do. But we do expect that the product, particularly for more cognitively healthy.
Population will require more technical sophistication greater realism and something that I haven’t mentioned is that we will also monitor for safety and health version 1. 0 will monitor seniors with dementia for sundowning syndrome sundowning is where late in the day. Senior gets especially.
Confused and disoriented. It’s most likely time for wandering risk or agitation or other challenging behaviors. And what’s happening is the senior simply disengages. They become very inwardly directed and inwardly motivated. And whatever it is that that’s driving them, that’s what they want to pursue.
And they disengage from our puppy and so what we’ll do is we’ll monitor that and and then help organize that information in such a way that doctors can at a glance see what’s been happening since the last patient visit rather, and, and help tailor treatment plans to try to get more even cognitive levels and mood levels throughout the late afternoon and evening.
we will continue to expand on the safety and health monitoring as we expand into these other. Consumer segments or customer segments rather. So think apple smartwatch. So it tells time. It’s a dog. It tells time. But but what are the other things that we can do with our sensors now that we have them in place?
Yeah. It’s a great story. And yeah, and that’s why I said, let’s end. I know you’re very direct on the current, you know, product, development, but it’s just like the dreamer in me is like, Oh, I see this and this, and this, you already know I’m talking to entrepreneurs about this, you’re right.
It is a puppy and it’s an amazing one. And Jim Henson’s crew did a great job. So excited to continue to watch this develop and watch this story develop. And so final question this is the hardest question of the day, Tom. This is my, my like, you know, are you excited for the conference, man?
Newport beach investor conference. Are you excited? Oh, absolutely. I love bringing Jenny out. Jenny is the name of our robot. I love bringing her out in public and getting the feedback. people have things to say. I was just at a conference earlier this weekend. And people do double takes.
They’re trying to figure out if this is a real puppy or not. And, and, then they want to know about it. And then they share their own stories about how a loved one has or someone they know, or a loved one has gone through some sort of challenge and health challenge and how this might be appropriate for them.
And so I I learn every time I go out and meet people, but I also, I also love the feedback. And even small comments help us in helping navigate not just how to bring it to market, but how to make it a better product. Amazing. It’s a great story. And I’m not going to lie, like, this is making me want to go to the conference more because I get to see Jenny in person.
I’m like, come on, I want to, I want to do a paw print or something like that. We need to get her a little booty, like a little stamp. I’m a fan. I want a paw print. Come on. That’s a great idea, actually. You’re welcome. That’s a good one. I know it and I want the and definitely get the You know how like comic con and things like that.
They have the little posters so get the little smaller one, whatever like jenny was here However, you want to do it like very fun. I want something to take away because I know I can’t take a puppy away yet So i’m in Soon very soon. They get the amazing. Yeah, we yeah, we want to jenny has her own facebook page So we want to we want to develop You Maybe not fandom like like a superhero thing, but we do want, we do want a way for our community to engage with each other.
You know, just the last thing one of the most important discoveries I made was when someone recommended early in my journey with my mother. Is to come to a a caregiver community meeting where meet with other family members who are caregivers on behalf of a level of dementia.
And that was super powerful and, we want to be able to extend to the extent we can that connectivity to our entire customer community so that they can benefit from stories, best practices, or, or just, you know, sort of emotional support. Amazing. And Tom, first off, great having you on the show for everybody’s listening.
Real simple, TomBot. com, T O M B O T. com. Definitely go check this out. If you’re at the Newport Beach Investor Conference, definitely come, come meet Jenny in person. And if you’re, if you’re listening to the Mission Matters for the first time, and this is the first time you’re with us and you haven’t hit that subscribe button yet, this is your personal invitation to do so.
Hit that subscribe button. We have a lot more interviews. Coming up some great guests, some great entrepreneurs and great content coming up. I don’t want you to miss a thing. And if you’re a long term listener and you haven’t, if you haven’t left us a review yet, come on, get that review in there.
We really appreciate it. And it helps the show grow. So, so give us that review, Tom, really, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show and I look forward to meeting in person at the conference. So thanks again. Thank you so much, Alan. Thank you for having me.
