The following interview is a conversation we had with Daniel Turner, CEO of TRAXyL, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Over $5M Raised to Make Connectivity Happen From Here to Anywhere
Daniel Turner
Thanks for having me, Brett.
Brett
No problem. So, to kick things off, could we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background?
Daniel Turner
Sure. So, as Brett said, my name is Daniel Turner, the CEO and Founder of Traxyl. Kind of started off my early years going to Virginia Tech with a computer science degree, and then from there I basically disappeared for a number of years and hid under a rock. I went to work for the intelligence community, and you don’t really get to hear much from me during that part of the story, but I really think that set the foundation for being able to start my own company, Traxyl, and be able to leave the intelligence community to go off and do something really interesting with fiber optics, which I’m so excited to share with you today.
Brett
When you were younger, did you dream of working intelligence? Was that like a goal in your ten year old mind that you aspired to achieve? Where did that come from? Or how did that come about?
Daniel Turner
I really thought intelligence was an interesting thing, and we lived near Washington, DC and grew up in Washington, DC, so that was definitely always something to think about. When I was going to school at Virginia Tech, I got to watch the World Trade Center’s fall in 2001, and I think that kind of changed my path a little bit. Originally, I thought I was going to be a video game developer, but seeing those events unfold kind of pointed me in another direction in terms of service and always thinking outside the box. A creative thinker and always interested in technology and then wanting to go after and get the bad guys, that kind of forced me and led me to look in working intelligence.
Brett
I’ve always wondered, when people work intelligence, is that hard when you move on to something else? Because you have this entire career, you have all these achievements, but you can’t really ever talk about them right? You can’t list them on LinkedIn, everything that you did. So is that hard to make that transition into the private life or private sector?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, it was, because there’s definitely been awards that I received that are classified, that I wasn’t even allowed to bring with me when I left. So it’s definitely hard to do that. You don’t really realize how hard it is until you actually do that. And then you’re kind of left with, well, I didn’t even have a Facebook. I didn’t even have a LinkedIn. I don’t even know where to begin to start a business. But the transition took some time, but I made it work, and I’m pretty happy with the results that I’ve achieved so far and the awards that I received while I worked at the intelligence community. I have those memories. They continue on.
Brett
That’s a good way to look at it. You have the memory still. They didn’t take that away.
Daniel Turner
Yes, they didn’t. Red flashy light me thing like the men in black, but that’s how I.
Brett
Was picturing the little pen in front of your face.
Daniel Turner
Exactly.
Brett
Nice. Well, let’s switch gears here, and these are just a couple of questions we’d like to ask. And really, the goal is to better understand what makes you tick. First one is, what Founder and CEO do you admire the most and what do you admire about them?
Daniel Turner
So I kind of have a twofer because they’re kind of. I really admire the wright brothers. It’s probably a little dated and cliche to a certain extent, but growing up, we used to go to the outer bank slot in North Carolina, and I got to go to the Wright Brothers museum there. And then I read a book by McAuliffe that talked about their life and their journey and being into bikes and then trying to go into mean. It’s just such a journey that gives me a lot of inspiration, actually.
Brett
Nice. And another question we like to ask, and this is about books. Is there a specific book that’s had a major impact on you as a Founder?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, I have a book that I read that I think it really impacted me, especially with my time in the intelligence community. I got to work with some really cool individuals, some former Navy SEALs. And when I left the intelligence community, I read a book called Extreme Ownership, and they really kind of talked about taking control and ownership of everything that goes right or wrong within your organization. And this book kind of mixed in and weaved in the tales of being a Navy SEaL, but also kind of weaving in some very strong business practices and mindset, and I really like that book, and it just had kind of an impact on how I was going to treat my company and my employees and myself as I went through this journey as an entrepreneur.
Brett
Nice. That’s Jocko Willick and what’s it? Wasn’t there a co author of that book?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, I think Jocko was the seal, and then he probably had a editor of some kind, but, yeah, I don’t remember if they were both seals, but, yeah, Jocko. That sounds familiar.
Brett
Nice. Yeah, I love that book. He just came out. I don’t know if he just came out with another one, but I just bought another one from him. And it’s like the field manual to self discipline or something like that. I’ll send it to you over after the call. But it’s a fun read. It’s really fascinating.
Daniel Turner
I appreciate that. I’d love to check that out for sure.
Brett
Yeah, no problem. So let’s switch gears and let’s talk a little bit about the company. We’ve had a lot of companies on in the optical fiber installation space, so you’ll have to really try to make yourself sound different. Kidding. Of course, we’ve never talked to the company even close to this. So at a high level, what does it all mean? Can you just explain to us what optical fiber installation is and what the company does?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, it’s not every day that a new technique for installing optical fiber or communication lines comes about. I mean, ever since the invention of the telegraph, people have been installing fiber cables either underground or stringing them on poles. And so what we did is we kind of flipped everything on its head and said, what can we do to minimally protect fiber cables and communication lines and deliver them to hard to reach or underserved areas really fast? And I just had this idea of, like, let’s just paint them directly onto paved surfaces and just use the road network to piggyback off of and bring high speed Internet via the paint lines of the road. So that’s a high level. That’s kind of what Traxyl is all about.
Brett
And what’s the origin story? How do you even begin to uncover that problem and come up with the idea in the first place?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, it wasn’t until my dad was trying to get high speed Internet out to his house, and he doesn’t really live that far away from the center of the universe of the Internet, if you know anything about how the Internet works, basically, Ashburn, Virginia is the center of the universe for the Internet. There’s all kinds of data centers there, and it’s where all the fiber optic cables usually end up. And he lives in a place called Warrington, Virginia, which is just kind of 30 miles southwest of that. And fiber cables and communications basically fall off a map. There’s really no connectivity. And so he wanted fiber to the home, and he called an ISP, a local ISP, and they drove out to his house and basically just laughed right in his face and just said, you’ll never get fiber to where you live.
Daniel Turner
There’s not enough homes to justify trenching. There’s no telephone poles in your neighborhood. It’s too expensive. We’re not going to be able to get to you. The permitting process is too long, and just gave a bunch of excuses. But this idea of that ISP driver driving out to his house, using the road network to basically turn around and laugh and say, you’ll never get fiber to your home, that was where the start of this idea became, why couldn’t he just drive out and paint a line behind him and bring the Internet with him? That simple idea is really what spawned the whole creation of Traxyl.
Brett
So you have the idea, and then what do you do next? Where do you begin? How do you come up with the technology and build the technology?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, so you have this idea, and you’re like, oh, my goodness, this is going to be great. And you start talking to people, and they’re literally laughing right in your face. They’re just like, fiber, like glass is just going to break on the road. This is just a terrible idea. But being, I think, a little steadfast and starting where all great startups begin. Right then, garage. I started tinkering around in the garage and buying fiber cables and resins and trying to glue fibers to the garage surface, starting off crawling around on my hands and knees, having the cars drive in and out of the garage without disrupting the signal, I kind of, at that point, knew I was onto something because it just didn’t break immediately. It was actually running for many months before I stopped doing that first initial test.
Daniel Turner
And so that’s kind of how it unfolded. It’s just kind of the tinkering mindset. Let’s just get to work and try to get to what a product might even look like. And, man, those early days, if you could see some of the stuff we tried to do with wagons and fibers blowing in the wind, trying to glue things down, the leaves blowing into the glues, and the things were trying to do, it was mayhem. But starting off crawling around on our hands and knees. My dad was involved in this. My Co-Founder, who I’ve known for a very long time, got involved and just started from scratch from nothing, really.
Brett
Wow, that’s super crazy. That’s one of the coolest starting stories I’ve ever heard. Now, who’s the customer?
Daniel Turner
Who’s paying for now? Was, that was a journey in of we came up with this concept. Let’s provide a better way to deliver fiber optic cables. And obviously my dad was trying to get Internet, and then it opened kind of pandora’s box for the complexities involved in that. And all the stakeholders know to get fiber to my dad’s house required an ISP to deliver the services. It required the municipalities to approve the use on the roadway. It required the homeowners association in the neighborhood to approve that method to get it. And so it was kind of like, okay, well, who is our customer? Is it the homeowner who needs fiber to the home? Well, that was starting to be really complicated. And then so we started trying to serve municipalities.
Daniel Turner
Can we bring fiber to municipalities that need fiber connectivity and try to extend their networks? And again, it was really hard to kind of figure out if were an ISP or were a dark fiber provider or were a fiber installer, or were going to lease fiber cables to businesses who would rent them from the municipality, who was renting them from the ISP. And it was just like all this crazy stuff kind of all mixed together. And we finally landed on the printer ink bottle where we said, wait a minute, let’s build the machines that automate this installation process. We call it the tractor. Let’s build these machines and provide them to companies that are already installing fiber cables through other means. They have trenching equipment. They have horizontal directional drills. They have bucket trucks to string it on poles.
Daniel Turner
Let’s provide them the tractor to use wherever and however it makes sense for them. And then we can lease that equipment out and then charge on a per foot basis. So that’s kind of the evolution of figuring out where were. And then I’ll add, too, were looking at municipals and businesses and homes and trying to bring and corral the municipality, the ISP, and the business or homeowner all into one group to decide that this was good. That was really hard to do, too. So we actually found that focusing on campus like environments like bases or airports or shipping ports or schools where they own the surface, they want to extend the networks on, and they own the networks, they want to extend and they own where they want the network to go to. That’s really been our good go to market.
Daniel Turner
So it’s still a mishmash and we’re still figuring it out. But we’ve kind of landed on a hybrid approach where part of our company has to install fiber cable and be the installer and educate the market and do demos and provide that first install for companies before they can understand how it works. And then the other part of the company will be the manufacturer of the equipment and provide the equipment, the training and the materials to make it all work.
Brett
If we look at this market, maybe let’s just focus on the US. How many companies are there that are installing fiber in this way? Is this a market where it’s like one giant controlling the whole thing, or is it super fragmented and there’s like 1000 companies in the US doing it?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, it’s super fragmented. I think there’s something like 5000 decision makers that we want to get to and go to. It’s probably in the thousands of companies themselves that do this. Isps are doing their own installation work or they’re subbing it out. Big isps, tier ones are subbing out a lot of the work, but some of the work they do in house. So it’s a mix even amongst the isps and the customers that we’re trying to go after, which may be both isps or fiber installers trying to get new business.
Brett
Got it. Makes a lot of sense. This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast.
Daniel Turner
Now back today’s episode.
Brett
Are there any critics of this approach? I feel like whenever you see innovative new technology, there’s always those that come out and criticize it or knock it in a way. Have you had that happen at all yet?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, I mean you’re spot on. Anytime there’s something new, it’s going to have all kinds of criticisms. And the criticisms are actually what help drive us to get to good answers and solve really tough problems. Because when you had nothing at the very start of this, people would, again, like I mentioned, laugh in our faces. But as we evolved the tech, as we showcased the abilities. As were able to step through those obstacles, we got to some really good messaging and basically kind of overcoming the critics that would knock it. And so we know it’s not the silver bullet. It’s not going to replace trenching or stringing on poles. There’s going to be a place for everything. But where we came to, it was more of a collaborative approach that said, hey, use this as another technique whenever it makes sense for you.
Daniel Turner
Don’t use it if it doesn’t make sense. And trying to get down to a good price point, being able to install it on demand and really fast, these are what overcome the criticisms that might show up with it, where people might look at the durability as being like the major hang up and being resistive to it because they’re scared of how long it’s going to last.
Brett
And what’s the core of the pitch to them then? Is it that this is cheaper than the other ways of installing fiber? Is it faster so they can lay it out faster? What’s like that primary value prop?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, it really is a faster way to install fiber, in some cases on demand that can overcome the challenges of trying to go underground or bearing fiber cables. When, whenever you cut into the ground, you never know what you’re going to run into. There’s a lot of other obstacles in the way that you have to avoid. And this provides a solution that uses pavement instead of it being an obstacle, as actually the conduit, the path to bring the fiber connection. And so really fast install really low cost, and then we’re evolving it every day and improving it every day to make it last as long as it can possibly last. And we’re kind of at this point now where we believe it can last as long as the surface that it’s bonded to lasts.
Daniel Turner
So as roads go through their cycles of maintenance, where they move traffic to an alternative path, and they tear up the road and put the road back down, the fiber cable goes right back down along with it, and it just sort of lives as the road lives and provides that value and economic value while it’s living, just like the road provides that value while the road is up and working.
Brett
In what stage of commercialization are you in right now? Is this powering Internet in any homes or businesses? Or is it still more in the early days?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, we’ve actually done a lot of installations for a variety of customers. A lot of them are on military bases. So Air Force customers and army corps of engineers we’re working with. We have other federal customers, and we’re working with Inkutel. If you’re not familiar with Inkutel, I can definitely go into it a little bit, but incutel is providing funding for a work plan to go and support another federal customer. But on the commercial side, we’ve done installations across bridges. For example, we did a project with an Internet service provider that’s providing high speed Internet to like 36 apartment buildings. And they used our technique to cross the drive aisle in four locations. That installation has been up and running now four years. So that’s been providing high speed Internet to an apartment community for four years.
Daniel Turner
There are some other projects we worked on. For example, we installed at a camp in New York, a camp for special needs people. We helped provide connectivity to like five of their buildings on this camp that they just had no other way to get high speed Internet or access up to these buildings. There was too many rocks. It was a little bit steep. All the other vendors wouldn’t even provide them quotes. And we came in and installed connectivity in a couple of days to five different buildings.
Brett
Wow. And just to click on that offer there a little bit, can you tell us about incutel? So if I understand incutel, that’s essentially the intelligence industry’s venture capital arm. Is that a fair way to summarize it?
Daniel Turner
That’s basically it. The intelligence community’s way to invest in companies that have a dual use technology and to get that technology a little bit more involved so that they can potentially use it.
Brett
And is the long term focus to have the government be that primary customer, different forms of the government to be that primary customer? Or do you think it’s going to be like majority private industry in the future?
Daniel Turner
I think the government right now is doing well to help derisk the technology and really find good use cases for it and help evolve the machines that are installing the technology. But certainly the commercial market is where the engine is going to kick in, and we’ll see a lot of scale at that point. Getting the technology evolved to a point where an ISP or a municipality that’s doing some big project throughout the town can utilize it. That’s definitely where we want to get to, and that’s where more of the recurring revenue would likely come in, whereas the government is more one off type projects and things like that.
Brett
Now, I mentioned there in the intro that you’ve raised 5 million in funding, but I know that there was a bit more context that we wanted to add there. So first off, let’s add that context then. Second is what have you learned about fundraising so far in your journey?
Daniel Turner
Yeah, so early on, we’ve been working on this for a number of years, and my Co-Founder and I had questioned whether we should raise or maybe we should raise some amount, 500,000, or maybe we raise a million and try to get to some milestone. And every time we looked at that, we just said, let’s just keep trying to do this on our own. Let’s bootstrap it. Let’s utilize the SBIR program through the federal government. So there’s a lot of good grants and contracts that we leveraged to the point where were doing probably close to 5 million in revenue before we ever raised our seed round.
Daniel Turner
And so then it got to a point where we had incutel come to us and said, hey, we’d like to invest in you, but the way we work is you have to have previously had a price round. That’s just the way we work and close a seed round and have some other venture investors involved in your company. And so then that’s what actually forced us to go out and raise a seed round so that we wouldn’t lose that deal. So were able to successfully raise the 5 million, have another amount come in through the work plan, and then through Akito, and then continue to leverage the nondilutive funding that comes from the SBIR program and other government contracts that customers we’ve been working with over the years.
Brett
Now, let’s just imagine you were starting the company again today from scratch. What would be the number one piece of advice you’d give to yourself?
Daniel Turner
Oh, man, yeah, that’s a tough one. Because everything we did felt frustrating and running into walls. But that’s really what helped us evolve and evolve our thinking and get over the hurdles. If I had to start over, it would probably come to the realization sooner that I needed to build the machine that automate. So it’s kind of like two inventions, right? Like fiber tracks. That’s what we call the product. Out on the road was the original thinking, the invention. And that’s what we started trying to go out and get customers with in our local municipality. And were literally crawling around on our hands and knees with, like, knee pads on and getting pulled in wagons and kind of stuff to just kind of prove that fiber tracks piece of it worked.
Daniel Turner
But maybe coming to a realization sooner that I also had to invent the machine that automated the installation of fiber tracks, the tractor, getting that built a little sooner, working on that a little earlier than trying to go and just kind of, I don’t know, flounder, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but just kind of just tread water. Barely enough to keep our airways open from drowning. But it was really just like, let’s focus on the real product, which is the tractor. That’s what delivers the installation capability that people want. And just kind of trying to work on all of that at the same time is just tough.
Daniel Turner
I mean, I was moonlighting it while I worked for the federal government, and then when I finally went to go full time on it, just not spending as much time trying to get investors when we really didn’t have a product yet, we had to really kind of prove that we had an MVP. And maybe focusing more time on that would have been the smarter thing to do.
Brett
Well, it sounds like this is a big problem. It’s a complex problem. Do you ever have days where you’re just like, God damn it, why didn’t I just go and launch an ecommerce company or a simple business? Do you ever have days like that?
Daniel Turner
Oh, my gosh, me and my Co-Founder all the time. We’re like, why didn’t we just start a software company? We have an update we can just push out to people, and we don’t even have to leave our desks. We not only jumped into hardware, but we’re not just building like some wearable device or something that you can have in your home. I mean, we’re in a really big sandbox here with these mega companies and the telecom space. We’re trying to bring telecom and road construction and sort of mashing them together, and it’s just the perfect storm. But that’s where I think a lot of opportunities exist. When you can find a little foothold that merges two mega industries together that really have no business working together and finding that overlap. I think that’s where some really cool opportunities exist.
Brett
I have to imagine, too, that it’s just more fun, right? Working on big, hard problems is probably like a key for a more fulfilling life. And then the second part there is because it’s hard. There’s not, I would guess, nearly as much competition, or at least there’s not as many founders who are sitting there. There’s not 1000 companies that have been funded to try to tackle this problem. There’s a lot of founders who probably would look at it and say, I don’t want to go there. So that’s probably very good for you, right?
Daniel Turner
Yeah. I mean, in a sadistic kind of way, yes, maybe. No, I kind of joke, but it’s been painful.
Brett
But you’re right.
Daniel Turner
There has been some of the most rewarding experiences that I’ve ever had come out of this. And you’re also right when we’d go to meet new investors or new groups for the first time, and people are just like, I’ve never heard of anything like this before. And who’s your competition? And our competition, it’s kind of like, well, I guess it’s like the other ways people install fiber cable over the last 100 years. And that’s something that we’re just changing. We’re flipping on its head. And so we have had a lot of almost gasps in some cases when we tell people what we’re doing. And people that have been in the industry for 20, 30, 40 years, they’re kind of resistant to the idea at first.
Daniel Turner
And then the more they talk to us about and the more we talk to them about it’s just like this. Oh, my gosh, this has some legs. There’s something here that this could solve a really big problem that has just been so hard to solve for so many years. I mean, the problem has its own name, the last mile problem. The last mile of getting connectivity to the home or the business. The federal government recognizes this problem with rural broadband, and they’re putting like $65 billion to try to inject into solving this problem. So it’s just such a huge problem that we just kind of approach in a really unique way. And, yeah, it’s been great in a lot of cases. It’s also really hard, too.
Brett
Yeah, I can imagine. And I can feel the pain from your words there. Now, final question for you. Let’s zoom out into the future. So let’s say 510 years from today, what’s that big picture vision?
Daniel Turner
For me, it’s having fiber tracks almost like a new standard way of delivering fiber where all the installers know about it. Designers can plan for it in their network designs, and it just sort of just becomes another way to do something that is so simple and so well understood by the world that it just sort of evolves into just another thing that nobody ever knows about and nobody knows how the Internet works in general. And so it just sort of just disappears into that. But just having that global impact, because when you start looking at surfaces being the way to bring a connection or communication line, everything is a surface. I mean, there’s just so many new ways of bringing connectivity. And when people talk about 5g, for example, they’re talking about wireless.
Daniel Turner
We like to say wire more, because every 5g antenna needs a fiber cable to connect to it. And so even for all the new technologies coming down the pipe, whether it’s automated cars or smart cities, having backhaul for wireless antennas that you can place anywhere, now with this capability, that flexibility is there. If it’s just globally well known and well understood in ten years, that’d be my ultimate dream.
Brett
Amazing. Well, I love the mission, I love the vision, and I just really admire founders who tackle big problems like this. So we are up on time, so we’ll need to wrap before we do. If people want to follow along with your journey as you build and execute on this vision, where should they go?
Daniel Turner
www.traxyl.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Daniel TurNEr, CEO of Traxyl I’d love to connect to anybody that’s interested and wants to learn more. And we’re going to be going and presenting at the Fiber Connect Expo coming up here in Kissimmee, Florida in late August. So we’ll be presenting the new generation, the next generation Traxyl. We’ll be revealing publicly for the first time there next month.
Brett
And we’ll link to the company website in the show notes. But just for anyone listening in, it’s eraxyl.com. That’s right. Or is that right?
Daniel Turner
traxyl.com?
Brett
All right, perfect. Dan, thanks so much for taking the time to chat. I’ve really enjoyed this and I know the audience is going to as well, so really appreciate it.
Daniel Turner
Thanks so much, Brett. I really enjoyed talking to you.
Brett
All right, keep in touch. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening thing, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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