Collaborating with Giants: HAAS Alert's Successful Startup with Stellantis

[Transcript]

[00:00:00] Jan Griffiths: Welcome to the Automotive Leaders Podcast, where we help you prepare for the future by sharing stories, insights, and skills from leading voices in the automotive world with a mission to transform this industry together. I'm your host, Jan Griffiths. That passionate, rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales with over 35 years of experience in our beloved auto industry and a commitment to empowering fellow leaders to be their best authentic selves.

Stay true to yourself, be you and lead with gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership. Let's dive in.

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Well, the WRI results are in, and I recently attended the MEMA conference where Dave Andrea presented the results of the study. And that study goes deep into the relationship between the OEMs and the supply base. A common theme that came out from the MEMA conference was simply this. What are we going to do about our purchasing processes and practices? Yeah, we talked a lot about leadership and culture because, certainly, that has a major impact, but I'm not sure that the OEMs really understand the level of change and transformation that's required in the way that they do business in order to transform this industry, but also to make sure that we attract good companies, new companies, and tech companies, startups. We all know that you can't throw an OEM global terms and conditions document at a tech startup and expect them, number one, to understand it and, number two, to sign up for it. Nobody in their right mind would do that. So, today, I am thrilled to bring on the show somebody who can talk about, first of all, leadership and the DNA of a CEO of a tech startup working in the automotive industry. And secondly, what are the challenges that he sees for a tech company dealing with a traditional legacy OEM? And then the third thing I wanna talk about today is that we all know that startups have trouble scaling. So, what is he going to do to make sure that this tech startup scales and grows successfully, given the environment in which we're in our beloved auto industry? So, that's quite an intro, but let's welcome to the show, Cory Hohs. Cory is the CEO and co-founder of HAAS Alert. Cory, how are you?

[00:03:37] Cory Hohs: Hey, good. How are you? Thanks for having me.

[00:03:39] Jan Griffiths: Great to have you on the show. I want to know, Cory Hohs, who are you as a leader?

[00:03:46] Cory Hohs: Who am I as a leader? So, good question. As far as leadership principles, I really look to trust in our people. So, I think it all kind of stems from that. To be a leader within an organization, especially at a startup where you're asking people to do more, you're asking people to strive further, asking them to do things that have never been done before. I always remind everybody during all hands that everybody at a startup is an entrepreneur, not just the founders. We could all be at different jobs, cozier jobs, working less, getting paid more, but instead, we're all focused on a mission to get something done. It's really about keeping people rallied around that and us never forgetting, especially in our case, where it relates to safety, making sure that it's just constant reminding of folks, like why we do what we do every day, and reminding that we're not a tech company first, we're a safety company first. And that really needs to transcend throughout our organization and, quite frankly, to our customers and even to the automotive industry. At HAAS Alert, it is all about safety, not about what is the latest, greatest tech.

[00:04:57] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. How do you do that, though, Cory? How do you keep people rallied around the mission? What does that look like for you as a CEO and co-founder?

[00:05:07] Cory Hohs: I really like to bring things out from the clouds and the ether, and more like brass tacks to make sure everybody here understands the hands-on fundamentals about what we are doing at HAAS Alert. Unfortunately, the way to do that is to constantly remind people about all the deaths and injuries that are occurring every day on our roadways. And even when we start board meetings, we start with how many people were struck and killed, how many first responders were struck and killed. And we spotlight that. And it's a way that we're able to keep the focus of the company, not on the greatest, like I said, technology and all the great things we do on that side of the house, but that means nothing if it's not having an impact on the lives of people like you and I that are driving in our vehicles to keep us safe and if it's not having an impact on the first responders and the roadway workers that we serve on a day-to-day basis. So, you have to consistently keep people focused on that. Otherwise, it's too easy to then just become kind of stuck in a monotonous day-to-day and think I'm just working at a tech startup. I'm just doing sales. I'm just doing engineering. And you have to constantly be sort of chief repeater to make sure that people don't forget that side because that's why we're all here. It's just really making sure that it's constantly talked about and discussed, whether it's a board member, whether it's somebody who works at HAAS Alert, whether it's a customer, you have to keep that stuff in mind.

[00:06:38] Jan Griffiths: It's about not only articulating the mission, because clearly, you are a mission-driven company, but getting some of those metrics that really are going to strike at the heart because otherwise, you get complacent, people get, companies get complacent, and Bezos said it: You've got to treat every day like it's day one. You got to keep that edge. You got to keep people sharp. And I think that a lot of traditional companies and in the auto industry, those companies have been around for over a hundred years. I feel like we've lost that, and that's something that leadership in traditional OEMs and traditional tier ones can learn from a tech startup CEO. It's about rallying people around the mission, but now I feel like this is a perfect opportunity to talk about HAAS Alert. What is this mission exactly? And what are you doing to drive this mission home?

[00:07:36] Cory Hohs: Yeah. At the end of the day, our mission is to get everyone home safely. It's an easy thing to rally around, but when we talk about how we do that, our company gets started. I used to work in the automotive industry at a company called NAVTEQ, now called Here Maps. It was very familiar, at the time, with how we had to work as a tier-one supplier and a technology company delivering mapping services to OEMs. But the way the company got founded, actually, I was on my way to work. I almost got struck and killed by an ambulance. And so, it was how do we figure out? It was very niche at the time; how do we get first responder vehicles to communicate to cars?? And that was really, and that's what HAAS Alert does. At the end of the day, we are providing a way for OEMs and a transportation network to communicate all around safety applications. So, whether that's an emergency vehicle communicating to a car, whether that's a vehicle communicating other safety messages to another vehicle, whether that's a traffic signal telling our personal cars that an emergency vehicle is about to go through the intersection, all sorts of different use cases. But the company was really founded on this incident that happened to me personally, and this disbelief of why this didn't exist yet. It kind of seems obvious, and actually, I had somebody, a 90-year-old inventor send us the patent he had submitted in like the sixties on this idea, and it was this huge box; it's pretty cool; we have it in the office framed. Actually, his daughter called to say, 'My father thought of this years ago, and he's so excited to see something with this.' I bring that up because it's not like we're the first ones to think of this. There's been a lot of companies and a lot of industry work that has been done into the credit, kind of paving the way to lead us, to help us get to where we are today that was able to bring this to fruition and live to the market. But when you think about those kinds of things and how tangible first responders are to communities. When you think about roadway safety and how we're all involved in that every day, it's really easy to get attached to the mission. And when you bring it back to get everyone home safely, you know, it's like, 'Oh, yeah, why can't my car communicate? Like, why don't we have this? Why can I watch Netflix and HD streaming on my cell phone while walking down the street? But my car can't yet communicate with those that are most at risk on the road.' It's just at odds with each other, and so, like, we bring this nice frictionless solution to the OEMs to enable them to be able to receive these kinds of safety notifications. And every day, at our company, this is a two-sided business, and it's tough; kudos to our investors in the early days who said, 'Wait a minute, your market is government, first responders, and automotive? Like that's not typically someone people start throwing checks at and want to fund, right? That sounds like long, hard trials and tribulations, and you're going to need resiliency, and you're starting from square one, and there's so many reasons why this will never work, but there's this like glimmer of attaching onto that mission. We're not here to create. We didn't come to market saying we're going to create the world's most advanced vehicle communication network and connected car experience that the world has ever seen. We said, 'We're going to prevent dust on our roads, and we're going to start with first responders.' And it's a totally backward way of going out to solve a problem traditionally. And it's been one of our superpowers as a company because we have this totally different lens when we're going into work in the automotive world, and you get people to rally around, not just internally, but you get the market to rally around. We're not doing this technology for technology's sake; we're doing this to bring us all back to the table around saving lives and being mission-driven to get our customers home safely.

[00:11:30] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, and that's something I've noticed in successful startup companies in the tech space is that: they are absolutely laser-focused on a pain point or a problem. So, like you say, it's not about technology for technology's sake; it's about we are laser-focused on bringing people home safely. This is what we're all about

[00:11:53] Cory Hohs: This is what we do.

[00:11:54] Jan Griffiths: That's it. It's a great way to rally the troops and get people to understand what's important and what isn't. And I see that as part of the success of these companies that really get it. I feel that sometimes, in automotive, we've lost our real mission. It is not about producing a world-class widget. Which is if you read a lot of the mission statements and vision statements, it'll be: We want to be the world-class supplier of XYZ widgets, and we want to provide the best return to our shareholders. Well, that's kind of bullshit. And that doesn't mean anything to anybody. You can't emotionally attach to that. We want to bring people home safely. Oh, I'm in. Yeah, I could attach to that.

[00:12:40] Cory Hohs: Yeah. And, you know, the automotive industry, obviously, is going through a transformation, but the people that we work with within the OEMs are the people we get to work with, the folks on the safety teams. We get to work with the folks on digital services and connected services teams. We get to work with the product planning folks. We get to work with these folks that are so in like brass tacks and like want to and see that this can be a way to work on a project and a product that comes to market quickly, that comes to market that has a real end-user safety application that you will experience every day. I don't know how many folks get to work on products like that. The one thing I used to love about my old job at NAVTEQ when I was there was that I got to use our map and our products and services every day in my own products and in my own car. And it was so cool to work on something and then get in my own car and go, 'I worked on that.' That's awesome. And so, with this, it's the same thing, like the amount of people that send us screenshots as much as we never advocate this while you're driving, but we'll say, 'Hey, just got one of your alerts in my vehicle. This is awesome. I can't believe this.' There's a lot of like, 'Wow. Great work. Kudos to the team.' Because it's something you're going to experience every day. Every community has first responders, has construction, has drivers, has traffic signals, has utility workers, has people out serving the community like everybody; how big your city is, a population of five or a population of 5 million, it doesn't matter. So, as much as the OEMs, I think there's a lot of shots that can be taken. And look, I can name a bunch of things, hey, speed, but how do we get to market quickly? How do we get to market fast? There's all these things we can say they're not doing right, but unfortunately, the responsibility to solve that comes falls back onto the startup companies. It is our job. Well, we view it as our job to make sure that we are giving them a solution that has no reason why this can't be launched quickly and to help remove those walls that typically an automotive OEM has in front of its door. And one of the things we launched with our first global automaker, Stellantis, launched with our service. And one of the quotes I loved that they said on stage in auto tech last year was that they loved working with HAAS Alert because they had to write zero lines of code. They made it frictionless for us. They did a post on LinkedIn and that to us like we have written on a wall. That is how you have to think about bringing a solution. You don't show up to an OEM talking about data and technology and vehicle communication, how we're transforming the transportation network and autonomous vehicles, and all this buzzy, flashy thing. They don't care. And guess what? The next person who's got a meeting with them in the next 20 minutes as you're wrapping up is about to pitch something very similar. And so, they see this revolving gate of just the same story over and over and over and over again. That's why it's up to us as startups to go in, and when we're talking to OEMs, it's a safety conversation. And if people are rallied and bought into that. Then, it's a different conversation with the OEM where we don't have to get caught up in this. How they operate internally are the usual impediments where you get quickly to cost, technical, and feasibility. It's like we've handled that for you. Let us talk about how. As much as we think of our products and services as what we sell, what we license, and how we work with OEMs, we treat them as a product internally. It is how we work with OEM1, OEM2, and OEM3 because it's not all the same. And, like, kudos to Stellantis for really, really buying into the safety feature, really understanding that this is about life-saving and saying, 'How fast can we bring this to market? And we'll work with you along the way.' And it was like a pretty incredible rollout for Stellantis to be able to do something like this and say, we're not going to wait for the rest of the industry. There are a million reasons to say we won't do this, but instead, they said, 'You know what? This is important enough. This is important to first responders. This is important to people who drive our vehicles. It's important to our employees.' And one thing that people really forget about is it's important to the dealers. And it's important to the folks selling the cars. I really feel like, as a startup company, you have to be talking about that with the OEM. If we say, okay, at the end of the day, they just want to sell cars. Okay, if that's the case, and that's how you want to look at it, then you need to talk to them about that. You don't go in with a big technology conversation. You go with a conversation of like, 'Here's something how you're going to make your customer safe. Here's how you're going to make your customer safe that already have your vehicles, because this is something that can be updated. But here's the other things we're going to do to help your dealers and your sales folks talk about this stuff to differentiate you when they're selling cars on the lot.' And the salesperson selling a car isn't meant to be a technology expert, and they shouldn't have to be. But it should be something on that Monroney sticker that gives them something to say, 'If you go over to that lot and you go to my competitor across the street, they don't have any of this. But here's what we have. Let me talk to you about it.' It gives them something else to talk about. Sorry for the long-winded answer, but I really feel strongly about you have to take this different approach for automotive manufacturers and go in sticking to your mission, sticking to why you exist, and showing them how they're going to be successful with it and how this isn't going to be a five-year project that's going to require giant teams. And also with software, it's just incredible, obviously, how fast and how immediate you can provide this new kind of connected services around safety, and how you can make sure you don't forget that they do have to sell cars. And so, you have to walk them through that, you got to show them how to do it. And that's where this partnership with an OEM can really be. They're almost like part of your organization, and now they're on your side of the table, and you're talking to teams on how to work together. But it is hard to do; this isn't easy. And that's why Stellantis still today is the only car manufacturer. No, it's like living in all brands, which is really exciting, but it's still one of the only car manufacturers in full-blown production today across North America. So, we're continuing to work on our own.

[00:19:10] Jan Griffiths: I agree to that, and I do; I give Stellantis credit for being able to pull this off because the study that I cited earlier, the WRI, they are at the bottom in terms of their relationships with their supply base. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why. They're starting to climb up again. It's going to take them a while to get there, but I am impressed with the way that they were able to nurture you as a company and get you into production. But tell me, Cory, what were some of the frustrations with the process because this process is similar across all OEMs? I want the audience to understand some of those pain points because those are the things that we need to change in our process.

[00:19:53] Cory Hohs: I'll tell you what, I can't tell you what the agreement is, but I'm sitting here, like you mentioned at the beginning, looking at a 160-170 page PDF document. And like the OEM, I think a lot of them understand how to work with startups or learning, but like that, we can't do a $200,000 legal bill; startups can't. So, we understand, like, okay, this is what comes out of the gate, and then we have to run it. And so, one thing is those agreements, right? Which is really tough. And I think as a startup, speaking to the startup world, you kind of got to be prepared for that, but that's where this relationship must have been nurtured along the way. So you're able to have the conversation. You're not redlining because you want to cut things out. Because you don't care. It's just it doesn't pertain to a company of this size. And when you're talking about speed to get products to market, OEMs move at a different pace. As much as we fall to OEMs, I also think if you're a startup and you want to move quickly with an OEM, you're going to need to do a lot of work because they are not capable of moving that fast. If you're just going to say, here's a bunch of work that you'll need to do to get this product into the vehicle, that is not a success for anybody. And for the startups, we don't want to be another R&D project. We don't want to be a test case somewhere in the valley that does a dog and pony show; headquarters never hears about it at the OEM, and then you're just kind of tossed aside. Like you really got to fight your way through it, and you got to make sure that this isn't looked at as something that's just sort of a nice-to-have product. And sometimes, with OEMs, it's really easy to get excited, especially about a company like ours with our mission and our vision. We have the best customers in the world, such as first responders, construction workers, and towers. They're really amazing to work with. So, it's really easy for people to jump in and then it went quickly to a project and demonstrate. And a lot of times, an OEM can get stuck in this circle of death of R&D, R&D, R&D with a startup, and a startup doesn't know that they're in this black hole. All OEMs, not everybody, but some aren't very good, not because they're doing it on purpose. They almost don't realize they're in it. And then when you're trying to say, you feel bad for the startup companies where they're like, wait a minute, I thought? So, nobody at headquarters has heard of this? Nobody back in Japan has heard of this. Nobody back in Germany has heard. This was just a putt. And then, all of a sudden, it's this thing, and the startups panic. The nice thing about Stellantis was that they basically had a process internally to say, 'We need to lead in safety. We need to take a different approach, and we are going to create a path for us to be able to move quick for small businesses. And we are going to find a way to make this work.' From the executive level, at top executive levels, and down, that path was created. That's the true innovation there. I would say it's not like our tech. It wasn't the safety mess, of course; it was the innovation; they were able to create a path for a company of our size to bring something so transformational. The first true V2X Connected Car Solution of any size across an entire continent and be able to do it in like a year's time. I mean, that is the true innovation that, in my mind, when you think about how that happened. That kind of innovation has to be able to happen at other OEMs, or yeah, it's going to continue to be really difficult for startups to enter the automotive world and bring the innovation that we all can bring now that the world's being powered by software and data within these vehicle systems. And we want to do more than just, not that there's anything wrong with advertising and all these other kinds of stuff, but when you're thinking about what a vehicle is, and we think about the safety applications. They get a new safety feature in a car like those paths have to be there. Startups don't have six years to go through the traditional path, right? And it's just all time. There's a bunch of other things I could say, it's really this biggest impediment. And the biggest place of innovation that needs to happen is this path clearing internally to get this stuff launched and get this stuff onto the vehicles. And I'm speaking from a safety market perspective here. Otherwise, we'll still see the 40,000 deaths on our roads every year. We'll still see the biggest death and injury rate for first responders being getting struck by cars.

We'll still see the deaths with pedestrians and bicyclists. It'll just continue. And it doesn't need to happen. If only we could just clear this one path and like move that quickly. This could be in the hands of every OEM within the next six months. Like that's the part that drives startups crazy because we're like, it's so close.

[00:24:35] Jan Griffiths: How did they do it, Cory? How did they create that path? Because they had to violate or bypass a bunch of different processes and systems.

[00:24:43] Cory Hohs: Well, the one thing they didn't violate or bypass, I can say, was obviously on security user experience. It was all; everything was just done at a rapid pace. I don't think anything; there wasn't like cutting off major pieces of the process. It was just when you have folks dedicated to saying, we are going to focus on getting this launched, and you put a line in the sand, and you have executive sponsorship from the top level down saying we need to get this done by this date, and we are going to launch this. Amazing things can happen. All of a sudden, those OEMs and those teams inside the OEMs start operating like a startup. Everyone's on board. Everybody starts understanding. Why are we doing this? If you ask anybody at Stellantis why you integrated with HAAS Alert, no one is going to say that you created the largest North American V2X Vehicle Communication Network that the world has ever seen. That's not what they're going to say. They're going to say, 'We wanted to launch with a safety application. They actually had an internal employee program that asked for ideas. And one of them was emergency vehicles to communicate with their cars. There was just so much, 'We want to solve this problem.' And, of course, it gives them safer cars. It makes them look better for automotive awards. There's some other things in there, but when you talk to anybody that's worked on this project, they will go to this helps protect first responders. This helps protect our families when they're on the road. That's what they say. So, you can see how everyone has to drink to Kool-Aid. And when you have that executive sponsorship, and you have those folks talking about it, it's amazing how quickly the sea can part, and everybody's just focused and relentlessly focused on getting the safety solution into the market. So, it can happen.

And the crazy thing about this is when you look at our website, you hear about vehicle communication, and you see this: 'Oh God, this is heavy tech. That's going to take a while to implement.' It is exactly the opposite. The other thing to mention, too, is that with new tech, people always think of the newest trim lines. They're like, 'Oh, this will be great tech. Well, I look forward to seeing you in my top-of-the-line vehicle trim line in 2028.' This is stuff that gets done over the year and is launched within a week, so, for instance, if you drive a, say, 2018 Jeep that you bought from your local dealership, you all of a sudden start getting the safety messages from HAAS Alert you didn't have to go to the dealer. You didn't have to do anything. All of a sudden, this car you had from 2018 just got a new safety feature. You didn't have to do anything like that, which is incredibly powerful. Like for the OEMs to be able to be in a place to be like, I can still deliver value and safety to my customers, even though they bought this car seven years ago. That's pretty powerful. And just the recognition of that, to sit with that for a moment and think about it, is new to automotive. That wasn't a thing, not that many years ago. And so, now, to be able to do that. And just have that done. I mean, it's crazy. And to be able to do it across the border, I said North America. It was launching first and rolling it out North America, activating in Canada. And I can't comment on other places this will be activated, but this isn't a five-year technology rollout. This is stuff that can happen within a week, which is incredibly powerful.

[00:27:55] Jan Griffiths: Cory, having gone through this process successfully, successfully took a startup to launch in less than a year. What advice would you have for OEM purchasing people, tier one purchasing leadership in the auto industry? Many of them are listening to this podcast. If there was one thing that one piece of advice that you could give them from the eyes of a successful CEO, co-founder of technology that is in production right now, what would you say to them?

[00:28:31] Cory Hohs: Let's go would be number one. A more practical note is it is being able to, I don't want to say the word being comfortable, being vulnerable, but having it be okay to have a conversation with a smaller company and be able to just like bring it down and say, hey, we know there's a lot of interest. There's a lot of folks across the OEM. I mean, you've got to work with ten different teams at an OEM, right? At the same time.

So, if you're talking about purchasing, they've already heard the demand for the solution or the product, whatever it is. It's like realizing the size of the company you're dealing with and having a conversation on that level versus having this, trying to have the same conversation that you would have with your global tier one, a hundred-billion-dollar market cap company. It's just different. You can move so much faster, and you can make yourself more competitive by bringing these products and solutions out faster and being the first to market or catching up, whatever the case is. But if the product and purchasing is going to come at it with the strength and ferocity that they do, I think I just combined tenacity and ferociousness there. I come at it with the ferociousness they do with other tier ones by whether it just slows everything down. And what I mentioned earlier on, when you get this excitement internally at an OEM, especially for safety, and the sea gets parted, and everybody's running, when you hit the tar pit because one of the teams is slowing everything down. It's dangerous because now you start to lose that. People are like, oh, they're caught up in the details. They're caught up in legal. They're caught up in procurement. They're caught up in this or caught up in that. And guess what? Now, before you know it, a quarter has passed. And you're 20 emails back and forth. It's never good when lawyers are getting involved in debating the red light. Like that is a recipe for disaster. So it's coming down and making sure to just have the conversation of, like, Hey, we want to help. There's a lot of motivation to get this done. We're here to help get this done fast. We're not here to be a wall that stands between you and the salesperson at our dealership selling this car, to be able to talk about this feature, to get it into the hands of our customers who drive our cars every day, like coming at it from that lens is just so different. And it's really just a mindset of how to think about it when you're talking to startups. And then, of course, at the next meeting, go back to the tier ones and do what you do best. And get the best price, you know.

[00:31:05] Jan Griffiths: So, what I'm hearing is get out of that silo mentality, get out of the role and the way of being and thinking and the mindset that you have when you with your traditional tier one and just be a person.

[00:31:18] Cory Hohs: Sit on our side of the table, and let's just talk it through. I mean, that's the best thing. Whenever I see someone on our team, no matter if it's on a state DOT, no matter if it's a first responder, a large tow operator, or whatever the case is when I see the first email, like after a good meeting coming from attorneys and the attorneys are already taught, it's like, hold on a minute. Like, let's have a call. Let's all get on the same page. Let's talk through what we're doing here. Let's level set on their size, our size. Let's have the hard conversations immediately. And it's just a so much better way to do business together to be successful. So, at the end of it, the startup doesn't come out feeling like they just went, you know, ten rounds with Mike Tyson. I know I keep talking about Stellantis, but it was like even the launch at CES and the excitement of executive leadership, and like how it was presented in the press like everybody wants all that excitement to happen. That's all part of the deal. That's all part of the launch. It's all part of the agreement. I mean, those are the exciting things, and so we don't, it doesn't have to be this tumultuous grind. Just to get these services launched. There's a way to do it. And we are doing it well with some other OEMs. Some others, not so well, but we're getting there and just got to stay adaptable.

[00:32:38] Jan Griffiths: Right. How important, Cory, do you think authentic leadership is versus the traditional command-and-control that we operate on in the automotive industry?

[00:32:48] Cory Hohs: I do think with a startup, if there isn't enough command and control and you have too many cooks in the kitchen and look, we get advice from advisors, from investors, internal employees, external employees, been there, done that. Startup ecosystem: I can't say how much, but there's so much help to startups out there. It's too much. At some point, decisions need to be made, and there need to be clear lines of direction. And that's what OEMs do really well, right? I mean, now, when you talk about software and how fast, these things clash. Because you're less worried about, we must go down this path that we are going to go down for the next 12 to 24 months. With software, obviously, these things can change. You can be more adaptable. You'd be more resilient. You can move, move, move, move. And that's where the startups are really good. We solve the problems for the OEMs so they can still have their command and control. But at the level you're working with, at the startup level, someone's got to be making decisions, of course. There's gotta be this good mix. So, there's a lot of leadership lessons to be learned. Not only from OEMs, but when I think about our other side of our customers, we learn a ton from first responders, like that's command and control, right? There's a line of command, and you're in a lifesaving business, and non-decision-making leads to a life lost in their community. So, like we're sort of in that world. And so, we always have that in our minds, but then you also have to keep it adaptable because you can't be so command and control, which is necessary in some industries, that you don't have the flexibility to have it be okay to make a failure or make something not work. But then, also be able to proceed and move quickly and adapt, and then move on to how to get something launched. So, I think with leadership, the tricky part is, especially with something new, you kind of got to have this blue sky open mind of like, okay, here's the problem we're trying to solve. Well, whose problem is it? Well, it's the first responder's problem. It's our driver's problem who buy our cars. And then you sort of work backward, and then you say, okay, now it's time to make decisions. Who are we going to work with? How is it going to work? What teams are going to be involved? What people are going to be involved? And most importantly, what is the timeline we are trying to get this done? If there's one thing that needs to be command and control still with the startup it's those deadlines. Here's the deadline. We need you to meet it. We're going to work together with the OEM to hit that deadline. And they're going to look phenomenal when they launch. And we're all on board to make that happen. And that's who we work with on OEM. So, you need to be like a chameleon and adapt to that room and adapt to those processes. And then if, but again, if I go all the way back to the beginning of the conversation, if you put people on your side of the table and you're working at this as a partnership, it's amazing how much those two different leadership styles and everything in between those extremes can actually gel and work well together.

[00:35:39] Jan Griffiths: I like that. I like the visual of people sitting on the same side of the table because just the visual presence in itself changes the dynamic in the room. Cory, of the 21 traits of Authentic leadership, which one resonates with you and why?

[00:35:57] Cory Hohs: Well, I think I kind of gave it away earlier, but I'm going to pick two: vulnerability, you have to be comfortable being vulnerable, or you will never get out of your silo. Whether that's a startup, whether that's an OEM, no matter anywhere you work or what you're doing in life, like having it be okay to be vulnerable, even in just personal relationships like you have to be okay to be vulnerable to kind of breakthrough things, talk things out, and then move forward like strong, bigger, better and stronger. I'm afraid of being vulnerable, especially in the world of OEMs, and as the CEO of a technology startup, I'm supposed to know everything, right? A lot of times, a lot of the things that I'll say for CEOs out there, myself included, it's scary to get to that vulnerable because you're supposed to know everything. Your investors want you to know everything. Your customers want you to know everything. Your employees want you to know. You're supposed to know everything, and to go out there and ask questions, God forbid someone recognize you don't know something like that can be scary and daunting, especially when you're first starting out. Because as a startup, you're coming out so confident, you're gonna change the world. And you learn that, and that's tough to learn. And especially, you said it many times with the OEMs that are a hundred-year-old companies and are deep-rooted in their ways to say, well, you need to be vulnerable and get comfortable with the software and OTA updates and vehicle communication, all that. It's like, well, hold on a minute, I've never had to enter that world. And, like, so you gotta go through it together. And that vulnerability is like, if you can't get there, it's just a grind like through the process. And it's just like these rusty wheels turning because you can't. But if you can get vulnerable and say: look, we've never done something like this before. For an OEM to ask us like, 'Hey, how do we do this?' That's a big thing to do. That's an OEM that wants to change, that's an OEM that wants to make a difference. That's an OEM that recognizes we need to move faster, and for us to be a leader, especially in the world of safety, we need to go there with HAAS, and we need to move forward. The other thing I think of them is trust or transparency. I think transparency. I would say, too, as a leader, I'm always transparent with our employees, good, bad, and the ugly. You have to be able to share that stuff. And I don't care if it is your board or your advisors or your investors or your customers. I mean, we've had issues when we first launched with HAAS Alert with first responders; there was a lot of prototyping and this stuff. But if you're transparent and you don't show up and go, this is perfect out of the gate. Install this, and then we'll never talk to you again. You have to be able to be transparent with the customers, whether it's a global OEM, a tier one supplier, or a rural fire department in the middle of Wyoming, that's just looking for added safety for their people and community. Like transparency has got to be there because people see through bullshit right away, as sneaky as some people think they are like people see right through it. And if you come across transparent and you share, that's where the trust starts building, and that's where you really start to separate you from others in the market.

[00:39:01] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, absolutely. Well, there it is. Cory, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and experiences with our audience today and letting us get a peek inside the mind of a CEO and co-founder of a tech company, but now I don't even want to say tech company because I feel like you're going to be like, no, we're not a tech company, but a mission-driven, you're a safety company. You are a safety company with a very strong mission. So, thanks again, and good luck with the business.

[00:39:32] Cory Hohs: Thank you so much, I appreciate the opportunity. It was good talking to you.

[00:39:39] Jan Griffiths: Thank you for listening to the Automotive Leaders Podcast. Click the listen link in the show notes to subscribe for free on your platform of choice, and don't forget to download the 21 Traits of Authentic Leadership PDF by clicking on the link below. And remember, stay true to yourself, be you, and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership.