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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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(Bright, uplifting music with electronic beats and cheerful synth melodies.)

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[00:00:17] Voice Over

Coming up on Remarkable Insights

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[00:00:19] Pete Horsley 

It's somewhere over half a million people that we've been able to see supported through new technologies that our startups have been able to create. 

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[00:00:26] Viv:

As Remarkable celebrates its 10 year anniversary, we're thrilled to have founder Pete Horsley in the podcast, to reflect on the milestones, challenges and successes that have shaped Remarkable's journey. Hi, I'm Viv Mullin and in this episode, I'm excited to welcome my boss to the studio. Pete, congrats on Remarkable's 10 year anniversary.

To start, can you share the origin story of Remarkable and where the idea came from? 

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[00:00:51] Pete Horsley

Sure. So it's great to be here. And I feel really privileged to be on the Remarkable Insights podcast. Right back when we started Remarkable, it started a little bit by accident, actually. So I was working with a colleague of mine at Cerebral Palsy Alliance, our parent organisation. And we were coming up with the way to celebrate World Cerebral Palsy Day. We didn't want it to just be a day for a day's sake. We wanted it to have some meaning for people with Cerebral Palsy all over the world. And so we turned it into a co-creation exercise of having a look at what the future could look like, co-creating the future together by asking people with Cerebral Palsy, what's one thing that would change your world?

And it was then that actually through my colleague, I met a person who has changed the direction of my life, the trajectory of my life. His name's Alper Şirvan and I've never met Alper. He speaks a different language to me and he lives on a different part of the world. But he said the thing that would change his world is a solar powered wheelchair. We found out then that where he could afford to live was quite a way out of town. And he had a barrier between himself and a job. And that was that he couldn't actually get there. And so we decided to ask the Worldwide Maker Community if they could make a solar powered wheelchair to help Alper. He'd also told us that there was a temple on the other side of town that he wanted to worship in and couldn't get there. And we had a university in Virginia that said, yes, we can make that and so we gave them some prize money and then shipped the prototype over to Alper. It still is to this day, one of the uglier prototypes I think I've ever seen. It kind of had a few kind of wires hanging down and a pretty rudimentary frame, but you know what? It worked. It took the power of the sun, it put it into a battery and it powered him. And the day that we sent that wheelchair to Alpa, he sent us photos outside a temple on the other side of town that he wanted to worship in. And about six weeks later, he said, I've got a part-time job. so we knew that this was the power of technology to overcome some of the barriers of inaccessibility and some of the challenges that people with disability face every day. 

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[00:03:06] Viv:

And when you started Remarkable and you really had the idea for it, I'd love to know, did you have any idea what you were doing? And when you started to envision what it would be, has that shifted in the last few years, the direction that it's actually gone in? 

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[00:03:24] Pete Horsley

I think what we saw was we saw people coming up with great ideas, but they didn't necessarily know how to take what is a great product and to turn it into a business. And that is the part that I think separates kind of incredible innovation from being something that you and I see, each and every day. And so we just took that as the challenge to go, how do we surround ourselves with the right kind of people who do know what they're doing and who do know how to kind of do that and to bring that to this particular sector itself. And so we've been incredibly fortunate to have such an incredible community of advocates and champions and allies, people that come with many, many, many more years of experience than us or our startup founders have had, and have been able to lend that to this sector, to be able to see change, to be able to see disruption, to be able to see kind of new innovation come true. 

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[00:04:22] Viv:

So Pete, when we look at the disability tech space, how do you think we should define success?

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[00:04:28] Pete Horsley

I think success has to come back to impact and impact really has to come down to people. And so when I think about the impact that Remarkable has been able to have over the last nine and a bit years, I definitely have to start with customers. How many people are we serving? How many people are our startups supporting? And we get data in from our startup founders, not all of them. So it's somewhere over half a million people that we've been able to see, supported through new technologies that our startups have been able to create.

And when I think about the impact of each one of those more than half a million people, that is significant. When I think about the network of people that are around that as well, that is significant. I think the second area is around the global ecosystem. There wasn't really a thing called disability tech before Remarkable existed.

A lot of people were saying, we just leave this to charities and not-for-profits. That's their job. And yet what we're actually seeing now is we've helped establish something called the Inclusive Innovation Network, or PLUSN as people lovingly call it. And we have representatives in places like Africa and India and China, New Zealand, Canada and U.S. And we now have this kind of global ecosystem of champions, allies and supporters that really what we're trying to do is to grow the the level of understanding around disability tech, the importance of it, but also to get new investment into this sector and also to see ways that we can kind of improve each other's work as we try and grow startups. 

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[00:06:09] Viv:

What do you see is the biggest barrier to actually being able to accelerate disability tech? 

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[00:06:14] Pete:

Definitely, you know, having innovators that are working on this. So where does that come from? That often comes from people with lived experience themselves or their family members. Seeing that there's a pathway that they can actually take to create something new, to change something, I think that also requires a support network. So people around them that can bring some knowledge, some experience to help navigate the really difficult thing of starting a startup. Lots of startups fail, we know that. And so we're trying to help them navigate that path. 

We need to see governments starting to kind of take this seriously as well. Disability is not about someone else, it's about all of us and so government should exist for the people and disability is very much a part of what communities are about and is very much a part of what humanity is about. And so I do think that there is an element in there of government as well. So there's some of the things that I think we need to see come to the fore in order to see change happen.

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[00:07:18] Viv:

And as you reflect on the last decade, what do you see as the biggest opportunities for innovation in the disability tech space moving forward? 

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[00:07:46] Pete Horsley
If you speak to anyone with disability about some of the challenges that they deal with, it is not hard to begin to imagine that we could overcome some of those problems. I do think that in the age that we are of AI as being mentioned everywhere, I cannot help but imagine what AI can do when technology is able to respond to an individual and an individual's needs and is able to then create the kind of conditions that every human would thrive in. 

And I think also we know the very big challenges as well around accessing technologies, assistive technologies and other technologies in other parts of the world, particularly kind of in low and middle income countries. And I think there is a big opportunity there, around lower cost access to some of those solutions. Now, it's not a simple thing as dumping a whole bunch of kind of low cost technologies in a country. We know that. But there is a massive opportunity to lift in some countries. It's as low as 3 % of people who require access to that technology, getting access to it. Now we can do much better than that as a human species, that we can ensure that people have access to the kinds of technologies that they need. So there are a number of different opportunities in the disability tech space, but there's just a couple. 

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[00:08:56] Viv:
And what do you hope to see from the next generation of disability tech entrepreneurs and what can Remarkable do to help foster that? 

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[00:09:03] Pete:
I think from the next generation of entrepreneurs, I would love for them to be approaching from a standpoint of seeing disability as an advantage, seeing disability as something that is going to better create great products. better teams and be able to bring the future faster. 

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[00:09:28] Viv:

And what's next for Remarkable? If you can give a little bit of a magic ball view of what we can see in the next 10 years, what do you have in store? 

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[00:09:38] Pete Horsely

Now going into our 10th year of Remarkable next year, we're going to be reimagining kind of what the next kind of period of time looks like for Remarkable. And we're excited because we feel like in some ways, you know, we've been building the plane as we've been trying to

push it down the runway and we've kind of started to get lift off now. And now we want to say, okay, well, how do we envision a world that even brings that future faster so that we don't have to exist? Like ultimately, it would be great that Remarkable didn't have to exist because all products are actually developed inclusively and taking into consideration the needs, wants, desires of people with disabilities. So maybe we can hope that Remarkable doesn't have to exist. We can go out and retire and drink Aperol spritzes or kind of go and do something next. That would be a hope. 

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[00:10:27] Viv:

Lovely, I mean, I'll take an Aperol spritz any day. And I guess before we close up the conversation, I'd love to ask a personal question of just how is, in your time, how have you seen sort of the definition and understanding of what you initially thought of disability tech evolve over this time?

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[00:10:46] Pete Horsley

I certainly think it's been an expansion of my understanding and I've learned that through the disability community. I perhaps started this journey thinking it was all about the solutions. It was all about the technologies and making sure that we had, you know, taking advantage of the cool technology that was kind of coming to the fore around sensor technology and AI and robotics and wearables and all those sorts of things. But the more and more I've actually seen and worked in this space, I think there is more nuance to it. It is not just about the solutions, it's about healthy businesses that sit around that. So that comes with business expertise. But for me, it's been personally really, really fulfilling to be able to work with really, really smart people, passionate people like yourself, Viv, and to gather this kind of community of really, really incredible advocates, allies and champions around us, that want to see this change happen as well. 

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[00:11:45] Viv:

And I'm excited to ask the founder of Remarkable to leave your first, and maybe not official, well, your first official remarkable insight for people enjoying this episode. And that can be about disability, tech, innovation, anything about the future of where Remarkable's headed. 

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[00:12:43] Pete:

I think my, hopefully it's an insight, but my insight that I really want to harp on about is that

disability is an advantage. Disability is very much part of the human condition. When we include, when we are advocating with the disability community, that is when we actually see better innovation, when we see better solutions, when we actually have more inclusive communities. So whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever area of influence you have, bring the disability community with you, if you're not in it already. 

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[00:12:14] Viv:

Pete Horsley, thank you so much for joining me for your first, but I'm sure not last Remarkable Insights podcast. 

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[00:12:50] Pete Horsley
Thanks Viv

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[00:12:52] Viv:
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.