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We would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we record this podcast. The Gadigal people. This is their land, never ceded, always sacred and pay respects to the elders past, present, and emerging of this place. 

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Coming up on Remarkable Insights

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[00:00:18] Ryan Tilley

The biggest one we find incredible is like 80 % of assistive technology is imported into Australia. There’s so many skilled people here in Australia, I don't understand why we can't do it more ourselves. 

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[00:00:29] Kate Jenkins

Is 3D printing the future of assistive technology? Hi, I'm Kate Jenkins and in this episode, I'm joined by Ryan Tilly, co-founder, CEO and design engineer for Rove, as he joins us to talk about how he's literally reinventing the wheel in designing the world's first 3D printed titanium wheelchair.

Ryan, so good to see you. Can you share a bit about your early days as a startup founder and what initially sparked your passion for designing accessible products? 

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[00:00:58] Ryan:

Yeah, thanks for having me, Kate. Like, awesome, awesome to be here and share our story. So I guess, you know, growing up as a kid, I always loved making things, creating things. And so that sort of led me down the path of being a design engineer. I studied a double degree at RMIT doing industrial design and mechanical engineering. And I was always really keen on building furniture actually. So was a bit of a shift for me then to sort of move into the assistive technology but for me the catalyst for that was during a summer break at uni, I attended a study tour which was focused on looking into some of the issues faced by people with limited mobility, people with disability, you know, an ageing population, etc. 

And as part of that spent three days in a wheelchair getting around Singapore. And so for me, that really opened my eyes to those challenges. It kind of put myself in that persons place. And, you know, as a, you know, a budding designer and engineer, was like, I feel like we could make these wheelchairs so much better. So I started road wheelchairs in the start of 2020 with Bryce. Bryce has been in a wheelchair now for over 17 years, been selling wheelchairs for a long time, represented Australia through wheelchair rugby and that sort of thing. And so I said to him, you know, do you want to do a Australian made lightweight wheelchair and he was all in. So we started that, like I said, it started 2020 just as COVID was hitting, which is quite an interesting time. So we started to the R &D and the development of the product. 

And it's essentially I'll explain the product and maybe we'll get into that a bit more in the interview. It's a super lightweight wheelchair made using 3D printed titanium and carbon fiber. So yeah, where we are now, we sort of started back in 2020. We launched the product in 2021 and slowly growing the team. So we've got a core team now of seven. Manufacturing all the wheelchairs here in Melbourne, Australia. So quite exciting.

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[00:03:04] Kate:

I'd love to talk to you a bit more about Rove and how you made that shift into that space. mean, assistive technology and wheelchairs in particular haven't dramatically changed in decades. So why do you think innovation in the disability tech space has been so slow and what's Rove doing to change that? 

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[00:03:26] Ryan:

Yeah, I 100% agree with that.

The wheelchair as we know it really hasn't changed a lot, for the past few decades. But in contrast to that, bike technology and bicycles have come a long, long way. And I know that because I love riding bikes. I've sort of always ridden bikes as a kid and love mountain bike riding. And so sort of seeing the progression of features and components and geometries and all of that in the bike space, but kind of seeing juxtaposition with the wheelchair sort of staying a little bit stagnant has been quite interesting for me.

And a lot of what we're trying to do at Rove is like, how can we like bridge that gap and take some of that technology from the bike space and bring it into wheelchairs and, you know, make wheelchairs lighter, faster, more efficient, and just a better user experience. 

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[00:04:13] Kate:

You've got Dylan Allcott as an investor and brand ambassador for Rove. How has that partnership helped amplify your message and what's it like working with someone who's such a strong advocate for disability inclusion?

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[00:04:29] Ryan:

Yeah, look, it's amazing. We met Dylan a few years ago and pretty much  we like, we've built him a free wheelchair and was just like, here, test it. We'd love you to kind of have this. Give us your feedback, try and break it, you know, all of those, all those things. And yeah, he sort of, come back probably, I don't know, maybe nine, twelve months later and was like, guys, I love this product. You know, I can't be more involved. And so long story short, we've been working with Dylan for a little while now and he's an investor in Rove, the face of the brand and that's amazing working with someone like Dylan who's such a big advocate for people with disability, inclusion and just being out there on kind of the so prominent in the media using our chair is epic. 

So I think it positions us well for our future growth plans at the moment when we're trying to move into the US and European markets and not just be confined to Australia. 

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[00:05:36] Kate:

It's incredible the speed that you can work at for that. I think with the cutting edge designs in the 3D printed titanium wheelchairs, which are multi award winning now, which is very exciting, can you explain the impact of that advanced technology and materials, is having on both user experience and manufacturing?

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[00:06:01) Ryan:

I've got a little sample here actually of sort of something about cross section. I'm not sure if it's going to come out well on the camera, but you can see here how we print it. So from the outside, it looks like a solid piece of titanium. So this is one of the titanium printed pieces. And then on the inside, you've got a ladder structure with a thin wall. So the ability of that, that being the 3D printed parts, we can create like super lightweight parts. We can take out all the mass where it's not necessary. We can create thicker walls through the areas that are higher stresses. And ultimately what that means for the user is you get a stiffer, more efficient wheelchair. So you can go further with each push, but it's also lighter. You can get it in and out of the car easier. You're preserving the shoulders, you know, which is a common issue for people that use wheelchairs. The shoulders kind of get pretty tired as people age. 

So doing that and then from being able to customise each single part, we can then create custom geometry and features for every single wheelchair. 

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[00:07:03) Kate:

You pitched Rove on Shark Tank, but didn't secure investment. Hope it's not a sore point. Can you talk us through that experience and what you think the sharks missed out on in terms like, what do they miss in terms of like understanding the disability tech market? 

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[00:07:19] Ryan:

Yeah, no, this is a great point and no, certainly not a sore point. I mean hey, would have been great to get investment at what we asked for. But for us, it was again about positioning the brand as more of a mainstream product and not just a disability product. So if we can get on national TV and show Rove to kind of Australia-wide, mean, that's epic. 

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[00:07:42] Kate:

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you're in your second startup in disability tech. What advice would you give other entrepreneurs in this space, particularly when it comes to navigating the challenges of scaling and investment? 

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[00:07:56] Ryan: 

I think the first one, which we kind of already touched on, like, especially from the start, is making sure you've got the lived experience within the team, or at least super close, because that's going to allow you to provide and show your product market fit as soon as possible, or fastest way. Obviously, speed as a startup is critical not to run out of cash. 

You know, at least having empathy, definitely like that, that lived experience, you know, which I can, I can speak as, not someone that really has lived with disability, but having Bryce on the team, you know, as core part of the team as a co-founder, you know, just allows us to A, be more connected to the community and, you know, B, just kind of be able to even test the product, you know, immediately and have kind of a quicker feature iteration cycle so yeah, that would be the first one. 

And then probably the second one, which I'm learning now, as we're scaling up is you can't do everything yourself and to build a significant company and brand and actually make a significant impact, like getting the right people in the right seats within the company and relinquishing a bit of that control of everything is what needs to be happening.

One of my mentors has sort of told me that recently, you know, you need to be a bit more focused on building, you know, that team as, as opposed to kind of the product now. You know, it moves into a different stage of, of, of building. And so, yeah, I think that's something I'm going through now and the company's going through now is we, you know, we've got seven core people in the team, you know, a few kind of people as well. And that's sort of still growing as we're trying to scale up production and, and move into those international markets. So yeah, it's, it's quite exciting.

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[00:09:47] Kate:

And how important is it to have more people in the team with lived experience as you scale? 

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[00:09:54] Ryan:

100%. I mean, Sam, he was one of our employees here at Rove. He was our first kind of proper employee, I guess. And he's been using a wheelchair since he was a kid. And he's building wheelchairs here at Rove, which is super cool. So we're trying to keep, I guess, 40 to 50% of people at Rove with a lived experience.

And it is a challenge, I mean, you know, not sometimes accessibility is an issue, but we've tried to set up a workshop here where, you know, people in wheelchairs are able to do the majority of tasks and that sort of thing. So you know, that's kind of being built into our culture, I guess, as we grow, that, you know, it's, all about that lived experience, you know, people in wheelchairs, building wheelchairs for people in wheelchairs. Awesome.

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[00:10:43) Kate:

And finally, we ask all of our guests, if you could please leave our listeners with a remarkable insight about disability technology and innovation.

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[00:10:54) Ryan:

Awesome. I think, I mean, being an Australian manufacturer, I think the biggest one we find incredible is like 80% of assistive technology is imported into Australia. We've got so many skilled engineers, so many skilled machinists, like so many skilled people here in Australia, I don't understand why we can't do it more ourselves. And I think I guess that's what, know, everything we do here is sort of built in Australia. And for me, that's one of the stats that kind of boggles my mind. You know, we can do better as Australians and we can even then, why can't we produce here and start exporting as well? So yeah, that's a big one.

I think the other one, I don't know the stats on, but just like, but just even like the amount of people with disability in the workforce, and especially in say like a manual labor kind of role, is just so low. Maybe you could put the stats up after this, but yeah, like how we can build more accessible workshops, more accessible workplaces, I think, yeah, we're in a position to do that as well. So why don't we lead the way?

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[00:12:52] Voice Over

The full interview with our guests can be found in the link below where you press play on this podcast, Our Show Notes. Make sure you subscribe or hit follow to not miss another Remarkable Insights episode.