Going Direct Conversations

Jordan Wolfe

5.0 (1)
Technology
Updated Weekly

Going Direct explores the decentralization of the real economy and how new technologies can bring us closer to the products we buy and the people who make them. goingdirect.substack.com

2d ago

#72 Rajat Bhageria: The Only Thing Keeping American Food Onshore Is Robot Labor

I sit down with Rajat Bhageria, founder and CEO of Chef Robotics, to discuss why he believes robot labor is the only way to keep American food supply chains onshore. There are 1.1 million food prep jobs unfilled in the US — the #1 labor shortage in the country. When companies can’t staff those lines, they offshore. We get into why traditional automation has never solved food prep, how Chef’s AI learns from 100+ robots deployed in real production environments, and why Rajat thinks the future of robotics looks like the LLM stack — shared intelligence on the bottom, vertical-specific embodiment on top. Enjoy. Recording date: June 18, 2026 Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:40 Millions Of Unfilled Jobs In Food 06:46 Robotics Is Required To Keep Supply Chains Onshore 09:58 Automation Challenges In Food Manufacturing 14:50 Generalized vs Specialized Robotics Systems 27:41 Training And Real-World Data In Robotics 32:13 Rajat’s Journey Into Physical Robotics 37:22 Vision For Chef Robotics 38:38 Robots As A Service 41:10 Chef’s Approach To System Integration 44:44 The Future Of The Food System 49:41 Vertical Integration vs Contract Manufacturing 52:06 HPP Technology 53:13 Rapid Fire Follow Jordan on X: * https://x.com/jrwolfe Connect with Rajat Bhageria: * Chef Robotics: https://www.chefrobotics.ai/ * Email: rajat@chefrobotics.com * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajatbhageria/ Remember to go direct! Jordan P.S. Be an owner P.P.S Build with love This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com
Jul 21

#71 Maria Intscher-Owrang: Pour It, Mold It, Wear It - A New Way To Make Clothing In America

I sit down with Maria Intscher-Owrang, co-founder and CEO of Simplifyber, to discuss their completely new way to produce soft goods with natural fibers. Her invention collapses textile production down to a single 100-second molding step. No spinning, weaving, cutting, or sewing required. After 24 years designing for Vera Wang, Calvin Klein, and Alexander McQueen, Maria experienced how outdated soft goods manufacturing really is. We get into why cheap labor is the main blocker to reshoring textile production and why her real end game is selling the machine, not the product. Enjoy. Recording date: June 18, 2026 Chapters 00:00 Introduction 07:16 Maria’s Background 11:46 Simplifyber’s Production Process 16:39 Creating New Design Spaces 18:20 Reducing Labor Costs To Make Reshoring Possible 22:11 Manufacturing As A Service 25:15 Cost Efficient, Sustainable Production 28:06 Simplifyber’s Business Model 32:40 Transitioning To Commercial Production 37:59 What About the Rest Of the Supply Chain? 40:53 Using Market Constraints As A Force For Innovation 43:42 D2C and Direct Distribution 50:39 Will AI Centralize Or Decentralize The Real Economy? 55:46 Rapid Fire Follow Jordan on X: * https://x.com/jrwolfe Connect with Maria Intscher-Owrang: * Simplifyber: www.simplifyber.com * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplifyber_inc/ * LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maria-intscher-owrang-3278a07 * Crush ‘n sniff: https://www.crushnsniff.com/ Remember to go direct! Jordan P.S. Be an owner P.P.S Build with love This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com
Jul 7

#70 Avalo: Using AI To Build A New Deal For American Farmers

I sit down with Mariano Alvarez and Brendan Collins, co-founders of Avalo, to talk about how they are using their plant breeding technology to rebuild the US cotton supply chain from the seed up. We get into how they’re able to sell seeds to farmers at half the market price, why they contract with them to buy the cotton back before a single seed goes into the ground, and the long-term goal of bringing smaller farms back to America. Enjoy. Recording date: June 11, 2026 Chapters 00:00 Introduction 05:09 What Plant Breeding Actually Is 06:50 Current Cotton Supply Chain 10:31 Avalo’s Rapid Evolution Process 13:41 Texas Cotton Farm Pilot 18:07 How Avalo Is Using AI 23:06 Model & Open Source Used To Build Avalo 24:27 Avalo's Founding Story 28:29 Creating A New Cotton Supply Chain 31:23 Agricultural Industry Challenges 38:06 Why Start With Cotton 41:38 Avalo’s Initial Results 43:21 America's Biggest Little Cotton Patch 46:49 Farmers’ Economics With Avalo 50:46 Going Direct WIth Clothing Brands 58:00 How To Make Avalo's Vision Become Reality 01:01:25 Rapid Fire Follow Jordan on X * https://x.com/jrwolfe Connect with Avalo * Website: https://www.avalo.ai/ * Mariano Alvarez: m.alvarez@avalo.ai * Brendan Collins: b.collins@avalo.ai Remember to go direct! Jordan P.S. Be an owner P.P.S Build with love This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com
Jun 30

#69 Kat Scott: First They Laugh, Then They Fight, Then You Win, Open-Source Robotics

I sat down with Kat Scott, Developer Relations Engineer at Intrinsic AI (a Google company), who’s spent her entire 20+ year career in robotics. Kat is the developer advocate for the Robot Operating System (ROS), the open-source, “Linux for robots” that’s quietly been downloaded nearly a billion times. We get into why she believes open source has already won in robotics, the game theory behind why that happened, and why we can’t bring production back home until we bring back the boring stuff at the base of the pyramid. Enjoy. Recording date: June 10, 2026 Chapters 00:00 Introduction 03:18 Rats And Plants 07:30 ROS: The Robotics Operating System 14:32 Intrinsic’s Role In Robotics 16:17 Running The ROS Developer Community 18:13 Open vs Closed-Source In Robotics 21:13 Breakdown Of Robotics Stack 24:39 Open Source And Incentive Structures 28:13 State Of The Robotics Industry In 2026 32:26 Reindustrialization In The U.S. 44:00 Distribution And System Integrators 49:06 Robotics-As-A-Service 54:07 Building Useful Robots 59:11 Rapid Fire 01:02:17 Open Source Calls Checkmate Connect with Kat Scott: * ROS: https://www.ros.org/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineascott/ * GitHub: https://github.com/kscottz * X: https://x.com/kscottz?lang=es Remember to go direct! Jordan P.S. Build with love P.P.S Be an owner Thanks for reading Going Direct! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com
Jun 24

#68 Fabien Cros: Decentralized AI Is Winning Inside the Enterprise

I sit down with Fabien Cros, who runs the AI practice at Ducker Carlisle, to talk about how he is seeing decentralized AI models inside organizations work much better than a top-down, centralized approach. He has found the key is giving employees a platform to build their own agents, letting the best use cases bubble up, and using a central engineering team for creating resiliency and managing risk. We get into why companies keep confusing researchers with engineers, why cheap deterministic code often beats an expensive frontier-model call, and why 200 people experimenting daily will always out-build 5 experts. Enjoy. Recording date: June 9, 2026 Chapters 00:00 Introduction 04:44 Who Is Ducker Carlisle? 06:13 What Is Decentralized AI? 09:58 Example Of Centralized vs Decentralized AI 14:46 How The Model Works Across Multiple Clients 17:18 The AI Talent Gap 24:07 Infuse With AI or Start From Scratch? 28:30 How Ducker Carlisle Works With Clients 32:31 Hiring Interns to Build AI Systems Doesn’t Work 38:58 Training Employees To Build With AI 43:50 Fabien's Background 45:54 Future Of Consulting 49:31 Choosing The Best LLMs 54:19 US vs European Market 57:57 Decentralization Is Up To Us 01:01:31 How Do You Incentivize Internal Builders? 01:03:21 Rapid Fire Connect with Jordan: * Follow Jordan on X: https://x.com/jrwolfe Connect with Fabien Cros: * Ducker Carlisle: https://www.duckercarlisle.com/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabien-cros/ Remember to go direct! Jordan P.S. Build with love P.P.S Be an owner This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com
Jun 17

#67 Roya Amini-Naieni: Building the Self-Driving Biology Lab

I sit down with Roya Amini-Naieni, co-founder and CEO of Trilo Bio, to talk about why 77% of biologists fail to reproduce their own experiments — and why affordable lab automation is the unlock for everything we can build with biology. The Trilo team is fixing this by building modular robots, software, and tooling from the ground up. We get into the rise of self-driving biology labs and why automation has to be decentralized if we want to build anything with biology. Enjoy. Recording date: June 6, 2026 Chapters 00:00 Introduction 03:38 What Biologists Actually Do 05:04 What is Synthetic Biology? 06:06 Understanding Bio-manufacturing 09:53 Challenges In Biology Research 16:56 Pharma And Automation In Biology 24:11 Future Of Software in Biology 30:50 AI And, "Self-Driving" Biology Labs 36:27 Current Bottlenecks In Bio-manufacturing 39:27 Trilo Bio’s Customers 42:58 Public vs Private Biology Labs In The U.S. 45:16 Decentralized Lab Automation 52:30 Going Beyond R&D With Trilo 56:48 Rapid Fire Follow Jordan on X: * https://x.com/jrwolfe Connect with Roya Amini-Naieni: * Trilobio: https://www.trilo.bio/ * Email: roya@trilo.bio * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roya-amini-naieni/ Remember to go direct! Jordan P.S. be an owner P.P.S build with love This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com
Jun 9

#66 Tom Chi: The Capitalist Case for Cleaning Up Industry

I sit down with Tom Chi, founder and general partner of At One Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage, deep tech companies focused on cleaning up industry. Tom is an engineer by training and was a founding member of Google X team, where he helped lead early work on self-driving cars and augmented reality. In this episode, we dig into why centralized production is so fragile, why climate solutions only scale when they deliver superior economics, how AI and robotics may decentralize production, and why the future depends on reconnecting wealth creation with real value creation. Enjoy. Recording date: May 27, 2026 Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:55 Concept Of Distributed Sophistication 07:02 Fragility Of Centralized Production Systems 13:19 Venture Capital’s Role In Deep Tech 18:37 Deep Tech Unit Economics 25:06 Deep Tech Investment Timelines 31:03 Outdated Production Systems 34:36 Investors Piling Into Industrial Tech 41:38 Creating More Independent Business Ownership 48:57 AI And Warfare 52:55 Wealth Creation vs. Value Creation 56:14 Story Behind AtOne Ventures 01:00:31 Vertical Integration 01:03:25 Middlemen’s Role In The Real Economy 01:08:51 Tom’s Book: Climate Capital 01:09:49 Rapid Fire Follow Jordan on X: * https://x.com/jrwolfe Connect with Tom Chi: * At One Ventures: https://www.atoneventures.com/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegoodtomchi/ * Book - Climate Capital: https://www.atoneventures.com/insights/our-climate-playbook-is-broken--and-entrepreneurs-are-the-only-ones-who-can-fix-it * Buy The Book Here: https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Capital-Investing-Regenerative-Future/dp/1394351240 Remember to go direct! Jordan P.S. Build with love This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com
May 26

#65 Jay Acunzo: Storytelling & Becoming Irreplaceable in the Age of AI

I sat down with Jay Acunzo, author, speaker, and storytelling consultant, to discuss how to matter more and make people care in a world drowning in mediocre content. Jay shares his core philosophy of, “resonance over reach,” storytelling in the age of AI, how to escape the commodity trap, and how to become irreplaceable by developing a real point of view. This was one of my favorite episodes to date. There is a ton of invaluable information here. Enjoy. Recording date: May 7, 2026 Chapters 0:00 Introduction 03:46 Jay’s Background 08:03 The Broken Script Of Tech And Business 11:20 Understanding Storytelling 17:11 4-Step Framework To Make People Care 20:36 Why Humans Are Drawn To Stories 24:01 Balancing Data And Humanity 28:05 Impact Of AI On Content Creation: Resonance Over Reach 41:30 Why LinkedIn is Underrated (Despite Being Hated) 45:08 "Sprezzatura": Making The Difficult Look Effortless 48:16 Outside-In VS. Inside-Out Communication 51:26 Becoming Irreplaceable: The Emotional Connection 58:00 Escaping The Extractive Attention Economy 01:02:07 Rapid Fire Follow Jordan on X * https://x.com/jrwolfe Connect with Jay Acunzo * Website: https://jayacunzo.com/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayacunzo/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacunzo/ * Podcast Why They Resonate: https://open.spotify.com/show/2xMty2O4GBcG8F7ySudeXl Remember to go direct! Jordan P.S. Build with love This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com

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Going Direct explores the decentralization of the real economy and how new technologies can bring us closer to the products we buy and the people who make them. goingdirect.substack.com

Creator

Jordan Wolfe
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

68
Rating

Explicit
Show Website

Going Direct Conversations

Going Direct Conversations

Episodes

#72 Rajat Bhageria: The Only Thing Keeping American Food Onshore Is Robot Labor

#71 Maria Intscher-Owrang: Pour It, Mold It, Wear It - A New Way To Make Clothing In America

#70 Avalo: Using AI To Build A New Deal For American Farmers

#69 Kat Scott: First They Laugh, Then They Fight, Then You Win, Open-Source Robotics

#68 Fabien Cros: Decentralized AI Is Winning Inside the Enterprise

#67 Roya Amini-Naieni: Building the Self-Driving Biology Lab

#66 Tom Chi: The Capitalist Case for Cleaning Up Industry

#65 Jay Acunzo: Storytelling & Becoming Irreplaceable in the Age of AI

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