#267 John Walsh — Endera

John Walsh [00:00:00]:
It's almost always like greatness is right around the corner. You have to have really good temperament because it's a lot of like highs are highs, man. And then the lows are lows, you know? But, but it's the people believing and like having a group of people that have each other's backs that, you know, are ready to go to war with you and are in the trenches with you when things aren't going well. That is what gets you through it. And, and then you guys get to enjoy the highs together.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:25]:
Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today's episode is a crossover episode republished from The Ohio Fund Report, a companion podcast where I explore some of the most ambitious companies and builders shaping Ohio's future. Stories that feel right at home here on Lay of the Land. So with that, please enjoy. Today's guest is John Walsh, founder and CEO of Endera, the Ottawa, Ohio-based specialty vehicle manufacturer building school and shuttle buses for transit agencies, airports, school districts, and private fleets across the country. John came to the bus industry as an outsider, leaving a career in private equity in California with experience investing in clean tech and automotive companies to launch Anderra, where he saw an opportunity to transform bus manufacturing in the United States by focusing on clean mobility solutions. Early on, San Diego International Airport wrote the company a 7-figure deposit before Anderra had a finished bus to deliver. Giving John both real validation and also an immediate lesson in what it would actually take to build a modern automotive manufacturing company.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:37]:
That lesson pushed Indira towards Ohio and vertical integration. If Indira wanted to control their own destiny, quality, service, cost, and the customer experience, they needed to own more of the stack themselves. That brought John to Ottawa, Ohio, where Indira acquired manufacturing capability inside a former Philips plant, scaled production from roughly 3 buses a month to 3 buses a day, and is where we recorded this conversation in person. In our conversation, we talk about what it takes to break into a deeply relationship-driven industry as a young outsider, the realities of financing and scaling a capital-intensive manufacturer, building and developing a workforce, how software autonomy and shared mobility fit into Anderra's longer-term vision. And we also get into the harder parts of the entrepreneurial journey. Including moments when the company came close to the edge and why John believes Ohio will play a leading role in the next generation of American manufacturing. Please enjoy this awesome conversation with John Walsh. Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Serity Partners.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:42]:
As a wealth management firm, Serity Partners shares Lay of the Land's same dedication to serving local business owners, and the Serity Partners Cleveland team understands the challenges that entrepreneurs and founders face here in Cleveland, Northeast Ohio, and beyond. Wealth comes with complexity and increased demands on time and resources. It is easy to become overwhelmed. Serenity Partners clients benefit from a unified team of local specialists who coordinate across both business and personal needs. With Serenity Partners' commitment to transparency and putting clients' needs first, complexity can become clarity. To learn more, please visit serenitypartners.com or call 216- 464-6266 today. Serity Partners, proud to be recognized as one of the top financial advisory firms in the country.

 

Disclaimer [00:03:36]:
Hello everyone, and welcome to The Ohio Fund Report, a show dedicated to raising the collective ambition of Ohio. Before we dive in, just a quick note. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Nothing you hear today should be taken as investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any securities. Please note that The Ohio Fund and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. Any forward-looking statements you hear today are based on current expectations and may change. Please do your own research and consult with your advisors before making any investment decisions. For more information on The Ohio Fund, please visit theohiofund.com.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:10]:
Well, John, it is an absolute pleasure to be here with you today.

 

John Walsh [00:04:14]:
Good to be here, Jeff. Thanks for having me.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:16]:
I wanted to start with literally the space we're in. I think this building tells a good part of the story of Anderra. We are literally here right now in your manufacturing facility in Ottawa, Ohio, formerly industrial Philips manufacturing site, emblematic of, I think, you know, an earlier era of American manufacturing and industry that you have breathed life into, building not only EVs and buses that that we see here, but really, I think, at the forefront of automotive manufacturing in America and building a new modern mobility platform. And I thought it would be fun to just ground the conversation and take us back in time to the first time you came here and kind of walked this place and experienced it and just what, what you saw here that gave you the conviction that this is where you wanted to build your company.

 

John Walsh [00:05:09]:
This is a special place. So as you said, this was formerly Philips Manufacturing. They made tube TVs here from the '70s to the early 2000s. Yeah. So a good amount of the TVs in America 40, 50 years ago were right here in this plant. And just like a lot of the stories of offshoring, flat screens came out and it became hard to compete. And so they closed the plant down. And this campus is 1 million square feet in total.

 

John Walsh [00:05:39]:
We're currently in a quarter-million wing of it, but it had over 3,000 people that were employed here. And so it is exciting because I toured this facility. I didn't really know what I was doing here in 2020 during lockdown.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:58]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:05:58]:
Kind of right after the April time period, it was like May, June. This was Winnebago's bus division, and they had merged with a defense contractor that had a school bus product line, and I had just started my company, and we at first had this 100% EV mission, and we were delivering products but through a subcontractor, and we were having challenges through that model, and so what I loved about the place is that It had huge scale potential. It had the ability to produce thousands of vehicles a year, and it was producing only a very small fraction of that. I mean, we're talking about like 3, 4 buses a month. But Ohio is also a great place to manufacture. I mean, the labor force and the workforce are really hardworking people with family values, and so it was a great opportunity to scale a company.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:55]:
So I think it's always helpful to start with what the thing is. So for someone new to Endera, what is it that you are manufacturing behind us here? Who are the customers that you're selling to? What is this industry that you are operating within?

 

John Walsh [00:07:10]:
So Endera is a specialty auto manufacturer. We manufacture school buses and shuttle buses predominantly for the government. So our customers are school districts and transit agencies and airports, across the country, as well as hotels and corporate campuses, anybody who really needs people moved. And we manufacture the vehicle here in Ohio, soup to nuts. We have both a gas and electric product line. Every year, EV becomes more and more of our sales. We do have the belief that EV is the right technology solution in a time that has a lot of transitionary roadblocks that are creating hurdles to adopting EV, but over time, we think 10 years from now, there's going to be way more EV buses on the road than there are today.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:05]:
Yeah, no, it's funny, when, when you and I were getting to know each other, it actually took me a while to realize that Anderra is literally end of an era. Yeah, what is, what is the era that, that you are ending?

 

John Walsh [00:08:19]:
Yeah, well, yeah, and Dare means end of an era, and the idea was, you know, end the era of dirty transportation. Yeah. Was the original intent, right? And, you know, end the era of fossil fuels as a way to move people. But our company's vision is to accelerate the transition to clean mobility, and I think it's important that the word transition means that it's not gonna happen overnight.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:46]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:08:46]:
Because there are a lot of roadblocks. But when you look at EVs, when you're moving children, when you're moving people in a bus with a fixed route and the ability to plan DC charging or AC charging mostly overnight when power's cheapest and the lower operating costs of an EV over It is definitely a fundamentally superior technology to move a lot of people around the planet, particularly in cities, but again, the supply chain needs to be built out, the charging infrastructure needs to be built out, and that results in driving the cost down, technology reliability to get there, but right now, 30% of our fleet is electric, our vehicle sales are EV, but we think that's gonna be over 50% probably within the next 12 to 24 months.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:44]:
So I think you alluded to this already, but how does a California boy become an industrialist entrepreneur in Ottawa, Ohio? If you had told the younger version of yourself that.

 

John Walsh [00:09:58]:
Yeah, I think that the concept of how hard could it be is really powerful, especially when the answer is really hard.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:05]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:10:05]:
But like, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I was working in private equity on automotive restructure teams where they would buy a business that was in automotive that was failing for some reason or another, and then they would have great infrastructure, great bones, great factory, and I was on the team to turn them around, like armored vehicle manufacturing and industrial, aviation, like aircraft refurbishment. I was on those types of teams, and what was interesting was just taking a diamond in the rough and then turning it around. And then I got assigned to this EV bus company that was part of their venture arm, and they were trying to bring an electric bus in from China, and I don't think the fund knew at that time that Chinese transportation equipment really has never stuck here for a lot of reasons in terms of just like the quality of the vehicle and the fact that you have to make it in America. which is most of the market, and hubris kills companies, right? The founders were a bunch of ego balls, and I left and I said, I think I wanna try to start my own company, and— Yeah. But it was a compelling market. I mean, it's the government, right? So you got stable business, it's inflation-proof, it's recession-proof, it's tariff-proof, It's not government shutdown-proof. We learned that recently, but it is a great market, and so I then started delivering these EV bus products. I had a pilot customer, San Diego Airport.

 

John Walsh [00:11:44]:
I went to them and I said, I'm not gonna tell you what you guys need. You tell me what you need. Let's build this together, and it was the best customer development I ever had, which is just— That's awesome. listening to the customer, writing on a spec sheet what they said they wanted. And then I went to Canada, China, the Midwest, and we vetted all these different vendors.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:03]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:12:04]:
And then they chose him. I didn't really choose it. They selected it with my guidance. But then they wrote me a $1 million deposit, and then they said, build it. And then that's when I really started sweating because I was like, oh, wow. Like, I don't even have a boss. This was the largest EV shuttle deployment by an airport in US history. And I didn't even have a bus.

 

John Walsh [00:12:28]:
And then all of a sudden COVID hit, supply chains got crunched. Yeah. And then I realized that as I was delivering these bus products that were built by other people, we designed 'em, that you couldn't rely on the servicing, you couldn't rely on people doing what they said they were gonna do. And then how do you control your brand reputation as a company that builds a quality product and takes care of their customers, which was from day one values that I really prescribed to, and how could you do that without manufacturing the bus yourself? And so I just said, all right, well, I'll just raise a bunch of money and I'll buy a factory. How hard could that be? It was really hard. And so I bought this company that was producing 3 buses a month and had great bones, but I didn't really know the journey I was about to be on. But once you dive off the deep end, there's really no going back. Right, Jeff?

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:35]:
That's right, that's right. And we'll talk about this journey that you've been on and explore, I think, parts of the growth that Anderra's had along the way. Some of the topics you just introduced, uh, there are a few recurring themes and conversations we've had that I thought would be kind of fun to explore as part of that. You know, one of which is that relationships are paramount in this industry, as they tend to be in a lot of industries. People, I think, are the most important part of any business. But we're talking about an industry here where these kinds of relationships, uh, develop and compound over decades. and you're coming to the industry young as a person, as a company, but as an outsider first and foremost. How do you go about breaking into an industry where those kinds of relationships have compounded for maybe even longer than you've been alive and begin to build credibility and trust in the market?

 

John Walsh [00:14:33]:
Yeah, that's a great question. So I don't come from an auto family where I got into auto because my parents were in it, which is most of the young people that you see in this market. No one leaves college saying, I wanna work in the bus industry.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:49]:
Right.

 

John Walsh [00:14:50]:
You know, they wanna work for some like sexy AI company. But I fell into it, and I think that this industry is, you said it, it's very much based on relationships. Every little market, Like speaking on the dealer side, for example, it's every little market has their own little king, right? And there's been some consolidation in certain markets of the dealer network, but you have this family that has been in it for 40 years, right? And a lot of times they're on the 3rd generation, and then the sons or daughters are taking it over, and— You know, this industry was— although it is regulated, right? Like, you— the cause of failure is a human life, right? So there's a lot of regulation. But, um, in a lot of ways, from a transactional perspective, it's still a handshake deal. You know, you're buying, like, 8-figure deals of transportation equipment. Um, there's a lot of trust that has to be born in order to, to make a partnership work.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:53]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:15:54]:
In the early years, it was tough, to be honest. Like, Just trying to get your proof point, trying to make sure people are like, are you going to stay around? And it is somewhat of a mafia, and you've got the incumbents that don't want the newcomers in because it's a high barrier to entry. They've kind of controlled the market, and it's really hard to get that penetration. But really, it's just the perseverance of not giving up. and focusing on the fundamentals, right? We have a quality product, we do it at a fair price, and we have the best warranty and service program in the industry. 3 fundamental tenets that are easy to say, but for some reason are not as easy in practice, and so that was how we were able to grow from doing 3 a month when I bought this place to 3 a day 4 years later, And then you start getting a snowball effect, right? Where people are like, oh, I hear about your product. I hear it's quality. I hear it's good.

 

John Walsh [00:16:56]:
You then— a lot of times it's like you do a partnership with the dealer, and you guys are going to have to hold hands and leap together and jump together, right? And if it's going to work, it's going to work. If it's not, it's not. But there's a lot of games that are played, right? You got to make sure you don't get shelled because the dealers could say something nice to you, but then you look at their franchise, and Why'd you give me 3 units for 12 months? And, oh, well, they're our competitor's main guy. So are they really just repping us so someone else can't have us so that they get to control their own market? What are their true intentions? So that's really where the relationship becomes even more important.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:34]:
Yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:35]:
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Jeffrey Stern [00:18:38]:
When you think about those 3 tenets, You mentioned really this strategy of vertical integration starting from a place where Inderra strategically maybe is more asset light, right? And you're working to find the suppliers to get the body, get the chassis, get the powertrain, get the HVAC, and like coordinate all these groups to piece together, you know, what we see here.

 

John Walsh [00:19:04]:
Yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:05]:
At what point in the journey do you realize that if Anderra is to be as successful as you want it to be, that you actually have to vertically integrate? What was your theory of the firm for what the company should own and what your core competency should actually be?

 

John Walsh [00:19:24]:
Yeah, well, so fumbling across the value proposition of people wanna buy a bus from one person was one of the earliest aha moments that we had, particularly around EV. So when I first started IndEra, if an airport wanted to get an electric bus—

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:45]:
Yep.

 

John Walsh [00:19:46]:
In this market, they would have to source a powertrain. They would have to get a bodybuilder who doesn't wanna change their processes, has been metal bending for 60 years. They don't wanna change anything. They don't even— they barely even know what a kilowatt hour means. Right? Um, and then you have to find a chassis supplier, and then you have to make them all work together. And, and, and so this problem that I fell upon was, is that our customers had to be like these technical program managers for getting electric bus delivered when they're just normally responsible for moving people, and they buy a bus from one person. Right. Right? So it's like, wow, okay, how valuable would it be if you just had one person to buy a bus from.

 

John Walsh [00:20:30]:
At first, that was our thesis, but we didn't want to manufacture it. It was just like, okay, get it from us. We'll beat the suppliers up. We'll handle all the logistics. Well, that was naive of me because that was so easy to say, but in practice, all the different variables of what can go wrong will go wrong, and the finger-pointing. One day that partner's your friend. One day they're not, and you're relying on them for service. There's too many moving parts, and basically what the conclusion was is you need to control all of those moving parts to be able to deliver a quality product at a fair price, and then be able to provide stellar customer service.

 

John Walsh [00:21:13]:
It was not possible without doing everything in-house.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:18]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:21:18]:
And so that was the natural progression was, okay, let's buy a factory. Let's develop a powertrain technology. Let's, let's bring all those parts in-house so that we could actually fill that, that value proposition that people wanted. It was simple. I just want to buy an electric bus. I want to buy a bus for one person. But you couldn't get that. You still can't get that unless you go to Anderra.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:42]:
When people think about vertical integration, I feel like the corollary is often capital intensiveness.

 

John Walsh [00:21:49]:
Yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:50]:
And you obviously, you've come to this world in business with a background and experience in, in as an investor.

 

John Walsh [00:21:57]:
Yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:58]:
In capitalization and what that takes. What have you learned as an operator about what it actually takes to capitalize a business like Endera where we're manufacturing, you know, physical goods, not just digital goods? And we'll talk about software, but—

 

John Walsh [00:22:12]:
Great question. So what I have learned about operating a capital-intensive business is that it always takes twice as much capital and twice as much time as you originally think, and the inherent optimism of like, oh yeah, I'll be able to do this in this time, right, it's like, I don't know, there's some Moore's Law of like, it's just gonna take twice as long and twice as much, right? It's like hiring a contractor to do a home remodel, twice as much time, twice as much cost, but manufacturing's really tough, right? And it's almost like that knowledge has been lost, But it takes a lot of ingredients, right? I mean, it takes a lot of processes that need to be built out, and a lot of people that need to be trained. It's just processes and people, processes and people, over and over and over and over again. And the importance of investing in your people is super valuable. It's like one of the most important things.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:06]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:23:07]:
Like, we, you know, in Ohio, you've got a lot of hardworking, great people, not a lot of people who know how to build buses. And like, we're— Elkhart, Indiana is typically the specialty bus place, right? But we've got a cost of living advantage, you've got, um, really good quality people, and, and, and you've got an amazing supplier base. So that means it's even more important to invest in your people, right? Because I want my— I, I want, you know, the people who work at Anderra to love working at Anderra. I want them to stay here, and I want them— because I want to keep investing in them, whether it's through training and through, you know, making them have an enriched set of skills that not only help serve the company but also give them upward mobility and increased economic opportunity. Um, so yeah, I mean, from a high capital intensity standpoint is whatever you think it's going to take, double it, and then have a laser focus on process and people.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:06]:
Yeah. And when you pull on that thread, like, as you're going from 3 a month to 3 a day, and we're talking about like an order of magnitude increase, how do you sort of balance the velocity of venture growth with the discipline of manufacturing process?

 

John Walsh [00:24:26]:
Yeah, I mean, so that's a great point, right? It's balancing growth, but still making sure that you maintain a sufficient level of quality, that your value set that are the fundamental tenets of, uh, of, of why people are bought into Indara's story are, are maintained, right? Because, I mean, we've had points of our scale where, you know, we, we hit this new production increase and this production threshold, but then we don't have all the processes built out. And a lot of it is when you go into a new production push, You can plan for all the things that you know are gonna happen, but there's gonna be things that you didn't expect that are gonna happen, and then the whole philosophy is then you know what to tackle because they pop up and then you get better. But quality, maintaining and growing your quality program while you scale is important, 'cause in an ideal world, you just punch out twice as many widgets, but you have a lot of processes and you have a lot of people. that need to be built out. So I think sustainable growth while maintaining quality is one of the biggest focus points for us.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:36]:
You've mentioned people and the team a few times now.

 

John Walsh [00:25:40]:
Yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:40]:
I'd love to hear from your perspective about what Anderra means to a place like Ottawa at this point and how you go about cultivating the talent

 

John Walsh [00:25:52]:
to

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:52]:
work.

 

John Walsh [00:25:53]:
Yeah,

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:53]:
on, on building these.

 

John Walsh [00:25:54]:
Yeah, as I said, we got a great, great group of people here. Um, we have multiple sets of families that work at Indira, right, where the parents and the kids work here, um, in a lot of instances. And it was tough for the town 25 years ago, uh, because there's a lot of layoffs, unemployment's really high. Um, you know, we've hired a couple hundred people since we took over the place. And it's actually even cool because we have people who worked at the Philips plant 25 years ago that now work here. Yeah. And they're working in a job that's able to provide for their family. People have come up to me and said they were able to buy a home because of their ability to work at Endera.

 

John Walsh [00:26:45]:
So I think we mean a lot. I like to think we do. And we want to keep investing in the community in every way that we can.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:54]:
And as far as cultivating, like training people how to do this kind of work?

 

John Walsh [00:26:59]:
Yeah. So there's definitely a lot of learning by doing, for sure. And we have different tiers of production levels that you can come in at.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:12]:
Yeah. And I ask, by the way, because I feel like everyone right now is talking about workforce training and what does it look like in practice?

 

John Walsh [00:27:20]:
Yeah. So we do have an onboarding process, right, that can get you trained up. We have curriculum in each individual workstation that can help you understand how to put a bus together. We have work instructions set, right, that you get trained on when you go into a station. especially if you're a PA-1, which is a Production Associate 1 with, you know, basically it's really like, you know, you've got a good work ethic and you've got a baseline competency of sufficient skill sets necessary to perform the work duties, and then you continue to be trained over time. And there is a tech cred program that we've done with Ohio, and, you know, we try to find like whether it's welding credentials, AC, electrical credentials, we try to provide those opportunities, and what we also do from an HR perspective is if there is, if anybody in the company wants to get into a certain area of the company, there's a form and means to communicate to HR what you want so that we can try to prioritize your development into that area, and/or give you an opportunity to to move into that position if it comes available. And we're super big on promoting from within. We would rather promote from within than bring in new people.

 

John Walsh [00:28:43]:
And that also, we just believe it's the right thing to do, and it brews company loyalty, and it's just good all around, right? It's good for the company, and it's good for,

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:59]:
So there's an invisible part to the business, I would say, if you're just looking at what is here, which is really the whole software layer to what you're doing.

 

John Walsh [00:29:08]:
Yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:09]:
And at what point do you think about widening the product aperture from, you know, buses to if we also kind of own the operating data layer and the software operating system behind not just the individual buses but also fleets and All the different parts of— it's like vertical integration from a supply chain perspective physically for the buses, but then layering in this whole software layer that expands it even further.

 

John Walsh [00:29:39]:
Yeah, so I had this crazy vision before I even fully started Indara of creating this Uber pool for transit where you could almost break the fixed route mold. And I'm gonna start with that. Like, if you think of Uber Pooray, where it's like demand, on-demand dispatching, but with buses, like small buses, right, in communities. Yeah. And if you can make it a cool experience and a cool thing to do, you could get people to ride on these buses, and it would be really cheap. Like, you could have a small little pass, and you could— hop on it, right? But they're learning about the transportation landscape and how old school it is and how government funded it is, and everybody's fighting and different cities are fighting for the same pie. It's so hard to unify that, right? At this exact moment. However, what we see is to have these vehicles be a Trojan horse for software.

 

John Walsh [00:30:46]:
And again, it goes to our goal of having a better customer experience, because if we can just offer these fleet management software products, right? And people think, oh yeah, we do telematics, telematics, right? That's like a buzzword in the auto space of like, oh, we have telematics systems. No, I'm talking about a rider app where you can see where the bus is gonna arrive, you can see the seat availability. I'm talking about a dispatch system where your customer can manage their fleet, right? These are third-party software products that they already buy in a cookie-cutter format because this bus industry as a standalone isn't something that software has customized for versus the broader transportation landscape, right? Like, you've got a dashcam company and you've got Geotab and you've got like an ETA tracking solution, But you don't have this holistic ecosystem for the transportation sector that effectively can consolidate their reporting and can tell you, hey, you might have too many buses online. You might have not enough buses online to keep your headway losses in line. You have all this rich data that you can gather, and us as the OEM, it's easy for us to offer software products because we provide the vehicle, right? So our goal is less to make money on the software more than it is to have a better customer experience. Like, when you get a Tesla, most Tesla people don't go back. Like, I bought a Tesla, I'm not going back. Why? Because the technology is just awesome.

 

John Walsh [00:32:28]:
Yeah. You have this amazing customer experience. Think of the bus industry compared to the retail car industry is in the basement from a technological advancement comparatively. So the white space opportunity to provide them with an ecosystem of software that makes their life easier and makes our customers' lives easier, and to offer it to them for free, right? Um, at least at first.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:58]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:32:58]:
Right? To just get the adoption, The thesis is that it makes our vehicle revenue stickier, which is the same thesis as Tesla, right? It's like, once you go in Darryl, you're not gonna go back. So there's just a huge opportunity there because I see the future as being so data-driven. Yeah. Where I look at what the future of buses are, and I see 10 years from now, there's not gonna be fixed routes, right? It's gonna be an on-demand, ecosystem of shared mobility. And I think that buses are fundamentally a super efficient way to bring people from one place to another. So like, that isn't gonna change, but the technology layer on top of it. So if we can get ahead of it by offering these software tools to these customers, it's one step further towards a more efficient future. what we think the future is, and it's more of a shared mobility future.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:58]:
Yeah, I think buses are underrated.

 

John Walsh [00:34:01]:
Totally, they're not sexy. Bringing sexy back to buses is really hard. We've tried.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:07]:
Yeah, what have you learned about selling to government?

 

John Walsh [00:34:10]:
It's very hard to, once you add a requirement, to take it out, right? So like you have these state contracts, and you have some, regulator who, for one reason or another, feels that they should have X, Y, or Z in this contract, and that was done 20, 30 years ago. That very rarely gets deleted if it becomes irrelevant, so you see some of these contracts and some of the language in there where it's like you almost have to educate them on, hey, this is not the way you wanna do it, right? So there's somewhat of a finesse to getting in the ears of the procurement officers in advance to try to influence it. The government can be a great customer, but the government can also be politicizing or polarizing and politicize things that you didn't think could be politicized.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:10]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:35:12]:
The government shutdown was annoying, I would say, more than anything, just because these agencies get their discretionary— or these states get discretionary money from the feds, right? And that then trickles down to the different cities and then transit. And we're a public good, right? I mean, we're something that is like a necessity, right? You wanna have grandma be able to have a means to go and get her medicine. You want to have the poorest among us have upward mobility to be able to get to their job. So you need it as a fundamental layer, but because of— I think it's unprecedented, the government shutdown, but some of the instability of it can make it finicky. It's a high barrier to entry industry, but once you break through that barrier— it's a great, it's a great market to be in.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:08]:
So I think we've covered here a bit of the, the evolution of the company, the, you know, kind of incorporation of different products, hardware, software, widening the product aperture, uh, kind of like working on the sustainability of the business as you work towards sustainability goals of the company. I think there's a version of success for Anderra where you guys are a successful specialty bus manufacturer. I think really there's a more ambitious version of success that you've laid the foundation for here that we've talked through a bit before. But just like, how do you think about what you're really working towards and what does success mean? You know, if you're looking back from a place of retrospect, what do you want Anderra to have accomplished within the industry writ large and the role that it's playing?

 

John Walsh [00:36:56]:
Our vision from day one was to accelerate the transition to clean mobility and We look at what we're doing as to how much we've aided towards that, and every year EV units increase, but we really want to transform the transportation, the way people transport themselves across the planet through ways beyond just the mode of power and through software, but you look at shared mobility plus electric, and that's really the future. You know, we are working to deliver an autonomous bus, and so we forged a partnership there. You know, I think that the regulatory environment really needs to catch up for that, but I mean, we really want to create a transportation platform that's in the 21st century for the 21st century, and, you know, we just see this industry being a bunch of legacy metal wrenchers, right? And like, you know, metal vendors, and really there's a huge opportunity through vertical integration and controlling all the pieces to actually enable us to deliver a quality product, but to do it at a lower price that accelerates that adoption of sustainable transportation, but then adding software to it to enhance that customer experience, and the whole goal is just to get more people inside electric buses.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:19]:
Yep.

 

John Walsh [00:38:20]:
Right? And so that's the barometer in which we're judged. And, you know, how many riders have been on our vehicle? How many miles have our vehicles driven? Right? And it's more and more every year.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:32]:
What are you most excited about today?

 

John Walsh [00:38:34]:
I'm excited about the future, right? I think the future is really exciting. And I think for a while there was some degree of pessimism about the future. But I think that the future is really, really exciting, right? Like a lot of the problems that we have in society, I think, are going to be solved, right? And whether it's through human ingenuity and determination, whether it's through artificial intelligence and certain advancements and breakthroughs, we are such a resilient group of people, right? And it's amazing when we put our minds towards solving something, what we can accomplish. And I think that at times the younger generation kind of would have this pessimistic lens, but I would say that the future's never more exciting. What I'm excited about within Dara is we keep growing every year. We keep employing more and more people with good-paying jobs. We're a classic story of American manufacturing. 70% of our supply chain is made in America.

 

John Walsh [00:39:45]:
And so I'm just excited for the opportunity to be part of the revitalization of American manufacturing. And my goal is that I'm— if I can make a difference and be a small piece to that bigger movement, there's a lot of fulfillment in that.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:07]:
In the spirit of of that American reindustrialization idea? Like, how do you get 10 more Enderas in Ohio? You know, like, what would you kind of put out there? One of the themes of this podcast is like, how do you raise the collective ambition of the state?

 

John Walsh [00:40:25]:
Yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:26]:
Like, what does it take to— I mean, you're one of a kind, you know, but like, to find 12 other John Walshes and get them to take this entrepreneurial step and go to where the manufacturing is and set up shop and participate?

 

John Walsh [00:40:41]:
Manufacturing is a lost knowledge in a lot of respects from a generational perspective, right? Like, you know, you had 20 years ago this offshoring, right? And people think that manufacturing isn't this sexy thing, right? And so, you know, if there's a way where we can get younger people more inspired to— manufacturing is a very interesting problem. If you like problem solving, manufacturing is a really— it flexes that part of your brain, for sure. And I kind of came into it more from the finance end of manufacturing, but really diving deep in the operations, such fascinating problems to solve. Yep. And things that I would say in its own unique way haven't been solved before. Um, like adds to the application that is Inderra, right? And so for, for young people to get more excited about manufacturing, I think exposure, right? Like, I mean, it starts with investing in our youth, right? And like, you know, having them have a different perspective of what they think of when they think of manufacturing, right? Because like AI and tech like almost sucks the oxygen out of the room. with young people, right? If there's a way where we can really inspire them of, like, manufacturing has its own sexiness to it.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:10]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:42:12]:
I think then you can start getting the youth thinking about new ways to do things from a manufacturing perspective, right? And then because of that, I think that they then are more inspired to start companies And Ohio's like one of the, if not the best place in the country to do that right now. You have to have capital, right? Like capital has to be available for those types of entrepreneurs, right? I would say capital availability for manufacturing startups is harder. It's a harder available capital than manufacturing, or than like AI, right? Of course. But I would say capital availability plus education of the opportunity that is manufacturing and, you know, the appeal that it brings, right? There's a lot of fulfillment that you get when you're just making stuff and making real stuff, right? Yeah. So I think those are 2 things that would really get more people into manufacturing in Ohio.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:20]:
Sort of the devil's advocate of that, but not necessarily, but you've sort of alluded to a few times if you had known what you know now when you started that—

 

John Walsh [00:43:30]:
Would I have done it?

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:32]:
Right, but like what you've learned along the way that—

 

John Walsh [00:43:36]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, if I knew what I knew now, would I have done this? Probably not, no. I actually, I don't think I would change a thing if I knew how hard it was gonna be. But I don't know, I think that what is amazing about America is the 2 things. I mean, I think what's amazing about America, one, is just the entrepreneurial spirit. Yep. That is making it in America, right? And that's what it's so important to not lose, right? It's just the ability for you to come in as a refugee and become a billionaire. I mean, what other country can you actually realistically do that in, right? But just even the opportunity to live the American dream and come with nothing and then actually make something and have a better life for your family, and that comes through entrepreneurship. When you take that and you apply it to manufacturing, there is the opportunity for you to do that.

 

John Walsh [00:44:37]:
Manufacturing's hard, but every business is hard.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:40]:
None of it is easy.

 

John Walsh [00:44:41]:
None of it, right? Like, you know, there's benefits to both, right? Or whether it's like a capital-light company or a capital-intensive company, right? Capital-intensive company, you just have to be able to raise sufficient capital. I would say that overall, just the entrepreneurial spirit is what we need to be continuing to instill in our youth. Right, is like, go and think about a new way to do something. Go think about a way to start a business. And it, and it can't just come from Silicon Valley, right? Like, it has to come from these industrial heartlands. If we want to win the race against China in manufacturing, in, in AI, if we want to actually have our own independence of manufacturing things, we have to inspire our youth to start manufacturing companies.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:28]:
And at the same time, AI, while it may suck the air out of the room, I mean, the rubber hits the road with manufacturing. Like, it will have the greatest impact in the building of physical real things, I think.

 

John Walsh [00:45:42]:
Yeah, I do too. I mean, I think it's gonna make things in manufacturing operations more efficient. I think there's a huge manufacturing industrial supply chain, supply base that's needed to serve just the compute engine behind AI. I mean, I think, what is there, $100 billion in data centers coming into Ohio with a crippled industrial supply chain not being able to keep up fast enough, um, all the way downstream. So yeah, I think AI is gonna— it's gonna solve— I think it's gonna be more optimistic than pessimistic. Yeah, with every, with every new technological disruption, there's always been those people that are like, oh, it's doomsday. Right? Y2K, and just the invention of the computer itself, the Industrial Revolution, and machines taking over jobs, right? So this one has a little bit of difference to it, right? Because you're actually replicating human thinking, but it's going to solve a lot of things, and manufacturing— it's going to solve a lot of things in manufacturing.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:53]:
So when you reflect on the chapters of Endera and the ones that we've covered so far, is there a chapter or part of the journey that feels particularly important that we haven't spoken to yet?

 

John Walsh [00:47:06]:
You know, I— multiple times I've had to stare death in the face, and they are still traumatizing to this day, I think, and like a level of paranoia still exists within me of the days where you're looking down the barrel and you're like, if I don't do this, I'm done, and it kind of makes you in a lot of ways. It changes you as to who you are, and it tests your ability to persevere, and I think you look at a lot of stories of successful companies, A lot of them almost ran out of money, or a lot of them almost had something that almost killed them along the way. But right when you feel like you're about to give up, it's almost always like greatness is right around the corner. You know, like right when you're just like, oh, this is so painful, like, oh, I just wanna throw in the towel, and greatness is just right around the corner. Like almost every time where you just punch through and then you're like, oh my gosh.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:16]:
Yeah.

 

John Walsh [00:48:16]:
'Cause the entrepreneurial journey is like, you have to have really good temperament because it's a lot of like—

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:21]:
Yes.

 

John Walsh [00:48:22]:
Highs are highs, man.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:23]:
Pretty high highs and—

 

John Walsh [00:48:24]:
Oh yeah, and the lows are lows, you know? But it's the people believing and like having a group of people that have each other's backs that are ready to go to war with you and are in the trenches with you when things aren't going well. That is what gets you through it, and then you guys get to enjoy the highs together.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:41]:
It's hard.

 

John Walsh [00:48:41]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and then it almost makes me just paranoid right now to like not ever be in that position again, you know, in so many different ways. Um, you know, it might not be good for my cortisol levels, but that's fine.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:57]:
Yeah, well, we'll bookend it with, with this idea, which is, I mean, you and I are both here on our own volition, and by that I mean, I mean, literally we are in Ohio from California, from New York, chosen to be here. And I always love to hear why that's the case. You know, I think the perception that people have of what Ohio is tends to be pretty far removed of the reality of actually being here. And it just takes like a little curiosity and a willingness to go places to kind of shatter those biases. Yeah. But it's like, why? What has it meant to be here for you?

 

John Walsh [00:49:37]:
I love this place. I love it. And I came from California, originally from Los Angeles, and went to college down in San Diego, and lived down there. And don't get me wrong, I love those places. I think the biggest thing that makes me like this place is the people. People are great. They're awesome. They're super authentic, and they have their priorities straight on what matters in life.

 

John Walsh [00:50:03]:
I think more than the metropolitan cities that me and you come from, right? All the BS that comes from being in the culture hot zones, right? The who's who, the material possessions, the flaunting, and all that nonsense. Here everybody's really real, right? Yeah. You know, I mean, this little town of Ottawa is great. I mean, it's 5,000 people and everybody leaves their keys in their car. That was crazy to me. Like, come in here and like everybody just leaves their keys in their car. And you know, you can't do that in Los Angeles, right? Right. So you can't do that in New York.

 

John Walsh [00:50:45]:
But there's a sense of community here too, right? There's a sense of family values. And you know, I'm not married, I don't have kids, but I appreciate it. I just appreciate it. And you look at the happiness index of these people, and it's way higher than from where you and I came from. And that means something.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:09]:
Is there a hidden gem of Ottawa that you would plug?

 

John Walsh [00:51:12]:
Yeah, it's becoming the Silicon Valley of electric vehicles. No, but this place is good, and we want to keep growing here.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:22]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, if folks had anything they wanted to follow up with, learn more about Endera, where would you point them?

 

John Walsh [00:51:30]:
Yeah, you can go to www.enderamotors.com and you can learn more. You can follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn @enderamotors. And yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:46]:
Amazing. Well, thank you, John. I really always enjoy talking to you, and this was a lot of fun.

 

John Walsh [00:51:51]:
Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it, man.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:54]:
Thank you for tuning in to The Ohio Fund Report. If you enjoyed this podcast, we'd love for you to leave a review on your favorite platform and subscribe to stay updated on all future episodes. You can subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or directly on our website at theohiofund.com. The information shared on this podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, An offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The views and opinions expressed by our guests are solely their own and do not necessarily represent those of The Ohio Fund. A guest's participation in this podcast does not imply an endorsement or an investment recommendation by The Ohio Fund. This podcast may include conversations with leadership of a company in which The OHIO Fund or its affiliated funds have an investment, and as such financial interest in the success of this company, and there may be a conflict of interest in presenting information about the company and its performance.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:58]:
Any forward-looking statements or projections discussed during this episode are based on current expectations, assumptions, and estimates. Actual outcomes may differ materially due to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors. Listeners should consult their own legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. For more information about The Ohio Fund, including our Form ADV, other regulatory filings, and additional conversations, please visit theohiofund.com.