Top of Mind with Brad Porter

Today I’m talking about money and success and drive. Newsletter

I share lessons from my father that shaped how I think about leadership and physical AI. (Recorded on Father’s Day - 6/15/2025) Newsletter

I talk about finding thermal bubbles that can help you glide into product market fit.  (Recorded in June, 2025) Newsletter

This week, I talk about China robotics and mechanisms for managing blind spots Newsletter

Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, MIT Athena, Netscape, Tellme, Amazon Robotics, Cobot… I cover it all in under 4 minutes.  (Recorded in May, 2025) Newsletter

I share some insights into how we think about solving the headwinds to building a foundation model for physical AI, share a bit about the value of getting into the field and building great partnerships, and just the value of connecting in person in what has become a digital-first world. (Recorded in April, 2025) Newsletter

In this Top of Mind, I talk about humanoids vs cobots, and share a powerful insight on success that I learned from my grandfather.  (Recorded in May, 2025) Newsletter

Today's  "Top of Mind" discusses our abundant future. This is a topic Vinod Khosla spoke about that I've also been thinking about a lot. In today's world in developed countries, most of us do not need to worry about raising our own food. Yet in the late 1700's over 76% of society worked in agriculture. AI and robotics are going to eliminate much of the work we do ever...

I share some tips on "How to Land a Great Robotics Internship!" and building your resume to differentiate.  Simulation experience is in demand. Highlight the tools you've used. NVIDIA Omniverse IsaacSim skills are particularly in demand. Low-level debugging skills are extremely valuable. Learn to use the oscilloscope and trace back to the firmware. Highlight any experience you have...

I think a lot about decision velocity, particularly how do we make high quality decisions quickly? One of the traps I see I call "the 50/50 decision". The 50/50 decision is a decision between two nearly identical options. The challenge when two options are nearly identical is that deciding which is better becomes very hard! You can spend a lot of time trying to find a reason why A or B i...

This week I talk about the imperative that the US be great at building drones and the criticality of robotics to that mission. Newsletter

In this Top of Mind, I talk about the value of self-play in approaching novel problems and robotics foundational models. Newsletter

I share a leadership story that I learned from Jensen Huang during a private forum. Newsletter

I share a bit of a Cobot update and a leadership insight I learned as a freshman at MIT from the late Dr Henry Kendall, Nobel Prize Winner for discovery of the Quark.  Newsletter

In this Top of Mind, I talk about China's AI and robotics capability and what it means for the U.S.. Newsletter

I share thoughts on upgrading … your shoes, your feet, technology, etc. Newsletter

In this week's top-of-mind, I talk about humanoid robots. Everything from the type of work they might or might not do, what our robotically-rich future might look like, and why I think we're seeing a surge of activity here now. Newsletter

Top of mind for me this week is personal energy management. At Cobot, one of our credos is sustainable energy . The idea is that we need to be a high-output, high-energy, high-intensity work environment. You can’t really do a startup and just coast. That doesn’t work. On the other hand, burning out is a recipe for making a lot of bad decisions. It’s a recipe for being really inefficient with your...

In this very first episode of Top of Mind, I talk about Embrace the Odyssey, one of the culture credos we have at Cobot. Newsletter