Flex's Zhuhai manufacturing campus in China employed 80,000 people
“I flew to Juhai one of the largest facilities of Flex. In China, there's about 80,000 people on that campus, just to give you a sense.”
Susan: Bright Machines was carved out of Flex in 2017
“I left in beginning of 2015 to start Eclipse, and then in 2017 came back to Mike and the Flex boards and say, hey, I want to carve out that team to a new company that I will create it called Bright Machines, and that was the birth of Bright Machines.”
Susan: Large enterprises will not let two-person startups touch mass production
“If you are going to start with two guys in a presentation, none of the largest companies in the world is going to let you touch their mass production product. So actually, if you want to create the transformation, you almost need to have a certain scale out of…”
Susan: Bright Machines secured tens of millions in annual revenue from Flex
“We actually got, I think we did a really good job understanding that we needs Flex to provide us a couple of a low tens of millions of dollars in revenue every year for the next couple of years so we can just focus on them rather than go out and trying to sell…”
Bright Machines agreed to un-scoped revenue commitments across Flex factories
“We almost agreed that we will partner an X amount of dollars, and then during the year we will identify through an SOW, what will be the specific needs of each of their factories. They have 200 factories around the world.”
Bright Machines' Flex partnership struggled after CEO Mike McNamara departed
“And it works amazing in the first three years, and then Mike left. It got much harder with the new leadership, nothing about those people, but it's more like, I did not have the same trust I had with Mike, but yes, you a thousand percent right. It was pure tru…”
Flex's $30 billion scale made Bright Machines' startup equity financially immaterial
“And remember, it's a thirty billion dollar revenue company. They don't care what the equity is going to be worse. It's anyhow below the line for them.”