Smart Bathrooms Are Solving America's Hidden Infrastructure Crisis
When Fletcher Wilson's Uber driver pulled over and reached into his glove compartment, Fletcher braced himself. What emerged wasn't what he expected—it was a rolled-up necktie. "All I have to do is throw this on when I drop someone off at a hotel," the driver explained, "and I can walk inside and use their bathroom." That moment of revelation helped spark the creation of Throne Labs, founded by Fletcher and Jessica Heinzelman to tackle America's hidden bathroom crisis.
Here's a shocking fact: the United States ranks 30th globally in public restroom availability—tied with Botswana at just 8 public restrooms per 100,000 people. Compare that to France's 26 per 100,000, and you start to understand why rideshare drivers resort to costume changes and families cut park visits short when nature calls.
Fletcher and Jessica’s solution: solar-powered smart bathrooms equipped with 21 sensors that can be deployed anywhere within an hour. No plumbing, no electrical hookups, no year-long construction delays or million-dollar price tags. Just clean, accessible bathrooms that text users for cleanliness ratings and can be relocated based on community needs.
The impact has been immediate and measurable. LA Metro saw a 50% reduction in public defecation at stations with Throne bathrooms. In Fairfax, Virginia, real-time data revealed that one unit was barely used near a service center, so they moved it to a little league field—usage jumped from 3 to 45 visits per day. Suddenly, families could stay at the park longer, and a DC biking group found their post-ride community building sessions no longer cut short by bathroom emergencies.
Topics Discussed:
America's surprising bathroom infrastructure crisis and its historical roots
The technology revolution bringing smart infrastructure to public spaces
How flexible deployment is transforming urban planning approaches
Community impact and the dignity of accessible public facilities
The climate connection between bathroom access and public transit adoption
Building resilient infrastructure for extreme weather and emergency response
Links:
Episode Transcript:
Jessica Heinzelman (00:00):
It's uncovering this kind of lack of equal access and equitable access. And one thing I think that brought our founders together but also has continued as we've built a team is this shared passion of the core goal of meaningfully expanding access to bathrooms.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (00:21):
Hello everyone, and welcome to We Are Not Doomed. We bring you interviews with industry leaders, authors, journalists, and real people who are making an impact on climate change. Every day We Are Not Doomed is produced by Puddle Creative. We're a full service podcast production agency. And I'm Jonah Geil-Neufeld, the executive producer today. Our guests are Fletcher Wilson and Jessica Heinzelman. Founders of Throne Labs. They've created smart solar powered portable bathrooms that are addressing a critical but often overlooked infrastructure need. The United States ranks surprisingly low in public restroom availability, just 30th, globally tied with Botswana at only eight public restrooms per 1000 people. This lack of access creates real challenges for many people, from rideshare drivers to families with young children to those with medical conditions. What started during the pandemic as a response to bathroom closures has grown into an innovative solution that's being adopted by cities across the country from Washington, DC to la. Without further ado, here's the interview. Welcome Fletcher and Jess to the show. Thanks for being here and talking with me today.
Jessica Heinzelman (01:37):
Thanks for having us.
Fletcher Wilson (01:39):
Excited. Excited to be here.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (01:40):
Yeah. So we're going to get into all about what Throne Labs is, how you guys founded it, and I talked a little bit in the intro about what your company does, but first I just want to take a step back and talk about your career stories that led you up to this point. So Fletcher, I don't know if you want to go first and talk about your kind of journey to where you are now.
Fletcher Wilson (02:02):
Sure. Certainly it deserves some explanation how you get into the smart bathroom world. So I started off more in the mechanical engineering product design space educationally and got the bug for just designing really cool products. Originally I was focused in the medical technology world and went to school both undergrad and in grad school, kind of focused on that and worked in a couple startups, a couple of big companies, but pretty quickly got to the point where I felt like I wanted more than just engineering and to kind of focus on the business side. And I was very lucky to get into this post-grad program at Stanford called Stanford Biodesign, which was this needs finding program where they let us live in a hospital for a year and basically attend any surgery or clinic visit and just look for problems to solve. And this framework was really based on the problem is more important than the solution.
(02:57):
And so I ended up founding a company and running it for 10 years in the medical technology space, specifically helping people with really bad leg vein disease or an inability to pump blood out of the legs leading to other morbidity. So I learned a lot through that 10 year process in a highly regulated field and in a field that required manufacturing because this was a real world Adams product, a catheter that winged the leg and tried to help people, which would end up impacting the path we took with Throne. But I would say after about 10 years, that company is actually still going. And I'm very lucky that one of my mentors, Jeff Elkins took that forward. But as COVID hit, my mind was focusing on a different problem, one that is very close to home. I always, Jess knows this line, but my GI system is my worst system, let's just leave it at that.
(03:48):
And so I'm always the friend in the group looking for a bathroom wherever we are or kind of the Larry David of the group frustrated with whatever bathroom situation is out there. So for many years I had been focused on this issue of bathroom infrastructure, which we'll get into more, but when COVID hit and you started seeing bathrooms shutting down more friction, I would say, at the interface of the local bodega and the public as bathroom supply dwindled more and more, I felt that it was time to really solve this problem. And that's when we set out to find a founding team and Jess and I were able to get connected, but I'll let her tell her career story and we can go from there.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (04:24):
Yeah. Jess, what about you?
Jessica Heinzelman (04:26):
Yeah, very different path. I've spent a life blessed by a strong and the confidence to walk into any coffee shop and pretend I'm supposed to be there. But I think I've had a very varied career. Everything from community organizing to international development work focused on basically making people's lives better. My early years I did tax elections to raise funds for school districts, hospitals, things like that. And then went back, got a master's that focused really on how to apply technology and mobile communications to empower international development projects. So working on everything from improving access to justice for women and girls in rural areas to helping farmers get more resilient in the face of climate change with communications. But yeah, as I mentioned, I had come across sanitation in that sense of the international development sense and hadn't really thought about it domestically. And when I met Fletcher and he came to me with this idea of Throne, I was very intrigued and started talking to a bunch of my friends and really learned how many people have a pretty significant challenge with the bathroom.
(05:40):
Friends of mine that had had kids had been pregnant, had older family members that struggled with either bladder issues or otherwise. And I think I saw that it opened my eyes to how big an issue this was and seemed like a meaty challenge to take on with Fletcher. And I think ever since then, I think COVID has really brought a light to this issue. A lot more research has been done. 44% of people experience anxiety when going outside of their home or office. And then also approximately 50% of parents with babies in arms or older people with mobility issues actually avoid eating or drinking to not have to use a restroom when they're away from home. So I think what started as a conversation and a curiosity is now become a passion. And I think that has been a stream through our company too, just this deep mission.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (06:38):
Yeah, I think one thing that I've seen through a bunch of guests on the podcast is this type of person who, it's almost like the entrepreneurial spirit, but also just somebody who looks at an issue and is immediately like, let's research this more. Let's see if we can come up with a solution. So both, is that something that's just sort of always been part of your personalities or how did you kind of foster that and decide like, oh, I might be the person who could try and help solve this?
Fletcher Wilson (07:08):
Yeah, I think both Jess and I shared this trait where we're willing to go ask someone a question that's maybe personal. And I think both of our research started with getting out there and just, I asked every Uber Lyft driver I had, what do you do for the bathroom while you work in the car? And Jess did this with countless different groups of people. And I think a big thread with Throne is we have this long tail of potential users pretty much any human, and there's all these interesting stories and use cases, but I think the common trait is sort of being willing to go out there and learn those stories so that we can design a product and service for all these different use cases. And I'll tell one quick story in my endless pursuit of asking Uber and Lyft drivers how they use bathrooms, I was driving in San Francisco and asked my normal question, do you mind if I ask how do you go to the bathroom while you work?
(07:58):
And he pulls over and says, you really want to know? And I said Yes. And so he reaches for his glove compartment and opens it up and I was very nervous about what he was going to pull out and it ended up being a rolled up neck tie. And he said, all I have to do is throw this on when I drop someone off at a hotel and I can walk inside and use their bathroom. And this was this big watershed moment for me realizing this person has to basically put on a costume to use a bathroom at work and felt that that was a great solution. There's a real deep problem here, and I think it's those types of insights that people will give you if you're willing to ask that can lead to the right product development or the right business model.
Jessica Heinzelman (08:41):
Yeah, the other thing that's really important about that story is it's uncovering this kind of lack of equal access and equitable access. And one thing I think that brought our founders together but also has continued as we've built a, is this shared passion of the core goal of meaningfully expanding access to bathrooms. We like to joke in our first interactions, I sent an email back to Fletcher saying I signed it off iHeart toilets, and that's actually become a core value of our company and a really great filter when we're looking at hiring because we have people working on our software team, mechanical engineers and electrical engineers, field technicians, all these people that could go out and get different jobs, but they've chosen to literally work with shit on a daily basis. And so I think that has been something where almost everyone on our team is so motivated by the stories and the lives that we touch on a daily basis that it makes it work.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (09:44):
Like you said, when you're talking to the Uber or Lyft driver, the first thing you say is, do you mind if I ask you this? Because this thing that everybody does, but it's a weirdly taboo subject. And so as you were talking, I was thinking of so many just issues and there's all these social norms and equity issues and all those things that are tied into this simple, not simple but thing that everybody does. You talked about the problem that you saw, but how did you get to a solution where you're providing something that's smart, solar powered and portable rather than a different kind of solution?
Fletcher Wilson (10:21):
Sure. I think at its heart we're looking to expand bathroom access significantly. And we felt this is an infrastructure problem. We need a modern infrastructure solution. And I think in talking to various important potential customers, we looked at consumer business models, we looked at more enterprise selling to let's say a company like Uber, Lyft or Amazon, and we looked at more municipal sort of public infrastructure customer bases. But in talking to all of them, the clear limitations with providing bathrooms for large portion of the population came down to cost and accountability issues. So it costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time to build a bathroom in a city, about $500,000 to a million dollars per bathroom that takes about a year or two often to get that bathroom stood up. And then once it's there, it's not flexible. Maybe the demographics or the neighborhood foot traffic changes and you're stuck with it for decades.
(11:16):
And so there's just a huge cost and lacks of flexibility with traditional bathrooms. And then the second piece we just kept hearing was we tried to put a bathroom in this location, but it just turned into sort of a magnet for nefarious activity or sort of a burden on our police or security personnel. And what was lacking was a layer of accountability that would allow us to create a really safe and clean experience for the 99% of people that are going to treat the unit well and be really targeted at helping to identify and potentially warn folks that are not treating the bathroom for the right reasons. And so we came to this solution which for the listener, just kind of picture this bathroom, that same bathroom that you would maybe see in a hotel lobby but could be placed in a city promenade or a city park within an hour and just be functional.
(12:07):
And so the sort of the goal was to the user, we're not trying to really reinvent anything. It should just be an indoor bathroom experience, running water flushing toilet. We have mirror sink, touchless fixtures, we even have music. And it's a really nice pleasant experience that you're used to. The difference is it's really convenient and easy for city providers or anyone that wants to provide a bathroom for a large amount of people to get it down really quickly and easily. And so in order to do that, it has to be sort of disconnected from infrastructure and that's where we use solar power to power this thing and all the waste and water sort of self-contained, so you don't have to get large construction crews out there to drill into the earth and tap into waste and water. It allows a more flexible dynamic and quick to deploy solution.
(12:52):
And so we are now basically deploying networks of these Thrones, these boxes, they're quite large actually fully a accessible, but they're single use. It's your room, it's a private experience, you get your time in there. And then we've also built a ton in the background in the software and operational framework to be able to effectively monitor what units are working well and appropriately prioritize things like cleaning and fixing these units. So we run the whole system from start to finish. At the end of the day, it's really just a network of really reliable and accessible bathrooms throughout the city, parks, downtowns, et cetera.
Jessica Heinzelman (13:30):
Yeah, I think the other thing that really sets us apart that I think is a fairly big innovation in the bathroom or restroom space is just our use of data. So we have 21 sensors on these units that are telling us how it's doing the health of that unit at any given time if somebody has propped open the door or other if someone's smoking inside, things like that. But we also are asking for real-time cleanliness ratings. So when somebody enters, they are oftentimes using a phone. We also do have a way for those that don't have reliable access to phones to get in with a tap card, but in general, most people are entering with a phone that contributes to that accountability, but also gives them the opportunity to provide a cleanliness rating or some comments on the overall experience. We use that data to basically optimize upcoming cleaning and maintenance schedules, but also can respond in real time.
(14:27):
And I think everyone wants to tell you when there's something wrong. The reality though is that if somebody is using a restroom, they're not going to spend 20 minutes of their day trying to figure out who they need to tell if it's out of toilet paper. But if they get a text message that says, Hey, how was it? Give us a rating, they're more than willing and sometimes in excruciating detail will tell us what's going on in the unit, but that also allows us to kind of turn every user into eyes. I mean, we can't have a camera in a bathroom for obvious reasons, but allows us to really continually offer this positive, clean, delightful experience. And when that slips, we're able to know very quickly we can even take it offline remotely if it's really bad, if there's a biohazard or something like that. So I would say that. And then the other thing I think is just really special about is we've designed it with accessibility at the core. As Fletcher mentioned, a compliant actually exceeds federal standards, but also including things like a baby changing station. We have optional menstrual products that are free and have really kind of designed it around this idea that this should be the bathroom for everyone.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (15:41):
And so we talked a little bit about the background landscape of this issue, but it sounds like you're mostly doing this in the US right now, right? What's the picture of access to restrooms in the us maybe even compared to other places in the world? Are there also different regions that have better or worse access to restrooms in the us and what's the landscape there?
Jessica Heinzelman (16:05):
There's actually a great website that has all the data on restrooms per capita globally. The US is actually ranked 30th. We are tied with Botswana on a restroom per capita basis. We have eight at a national level, eight restrooms per a hundred thousand people. I don't have the number right in front of me, but what if France is, I think 26 restrooms per capita per a hundred thousand people? So a pretty big jump there. And France isn't even the top. I think Iceland wins with like 56 per hundred thousand people. So we're pretty far behind and we've gotten away with it to date really by relying on small businesses, coffee shops, things like that. And I think they've really been taken for granted and paid a price. It's not free or easy to provide restrooms to the public. And I think one of the things that we're seeing is the increasing relevance of throne, especially in the face. I don't know if you followed, but Starbucks just announced that they're closing all their restrooms to non-customers. So they had had a policy that made it so anyone could come in and use it, and now that is going away and using a restroom is going to cost a $4 bottle of water or a $7 latte.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (17:26):
Wow. And I'm assuming you guys have some information about this, but is there kind of historical and cultural reasons that the United States is so far down this list, or is it also just like we're a huge country and we're car dependent and we're not that dense or you know what I mean?
Fletcher Wilson (17:45):
Right. It's a very interesting history. Some of the development of the culture of who's supplying bathrooms in the US comes from the sixties and seventies, and a group called Sepia, the Coalition to End Pay for toilets in America, which was this movement against charging people to use the bathroom. And the movement had really strong intentions, had a lot to do with gender equality in bathroom provisions. But what it ended up doing is a lot of laws were written that sort of made it not possible to develop a paid business model around providing bathrooms, which a lot of European cities employ, but they never really had a backup plan for who should do that and who should be the provider. And so I don't think that was the entire cause. I think there's a really interesting kind of cultural difference we have found in the US versus maybe other countries having to do with sort of a bathroom should be provided for me and that's sort what I expect and I shouldn't have to pay for that.
(18:42):
And I think there has always been just this question of really who should provide it. And as Jess mentioned, I think it's really fallen to the small businesses or chains, and we're seeing that change a little bit now. And really I think that's why the timing of Throne makes a lot of sense. We feel that it's just a super necessary service that someone needs to provide and to some extent someone needs to pay for. And we think it's a great opportunity for cities to provide this as a service to sort of have their constituents happy and stay at parks longer, stay shopping longer, also take care of more disadvantaged populations that don't have regular access to a bathroom. I think that is a really obvious use case where cities, and luckily I think where our optimism comes from is we're just seeing more and more cities totally stepping up to this. And that's ultimately why we decided to more have a government facing initial customer base.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (19:32):
And so will you talk about your cities, if you can talk about maybe different cities that are using it and maybe some use cases or stories you have, and then what are the differences? I'm assuming there's also some unique things to certain locations, like just the weather, right? Some places are cold in the winter, some places are more temperate.
Jessica Heinzelman (19:52):
Yeah. One of our early customers was the city of Fairfax, Virginia. It's a bedroom community outside of Washington DC and that's one of my favorites. They had just elected their first female mayor who actually ran on a platform of providing more bathrooms. I think she may have been America's first mayor to be like, we're going to get more restrooms. But she had been a mom in Fairfax and was tired of going to the park and having to leave before everyone was worn out because somebody had to go to the bathroom. But she got into office and of course no one before her had budgeted for these crazy expensive restrooms that were going to take years. And it just so happened that we had just launched Throne and it was a great example of two groups coming together at the right time. They've had tremendous success.
(20:45):
And actually one of the cool things there, back to the earlier point of Throne's flexibility, they chose three spots initially, one in a very active park, one in their downtown square that has slash pad and lots of concerts. And then the third one was along a busy boulevard next to a service center for unhoused populations that had a bathroom, but that closed at three, so they put one there as well, thinking, oh, after three the population can use the Throne. Turned out everyone left the area. And so what we were seeing in our data was it was getting less than three uses on average per day. So we went back to them and said, Hey, this isn't really creating value for the community. What do you think about, we could move it, try it somewhere else. We moved it to a little league field where it immediately jumped to about 45 uses per day.
(21:35):
So huge win there, being able to kind of use that data again to serve the community. The other area that we're very active in is in transit actually. So one of our customers is LA Metro that runs the metro system throughout LA County, and they actually saw in their rider surveys that one of the reasons why people were opting not to take public transit was because of a fear of lack of having a restroom when it was needed. People in LA are on the transit system for an hour plus and they would rather be in their car where they could pull over to a McDonald's or something like that instead of risking it on the train. So we've been really successful there and helping them get their ridership numbers up, get more people on public transit, which obviously is great for climate change as well, and make their rider experience that much better.
Fletcher Wilson (22:30):
So to paint a picture in terms of our national footprint, we're in the DC area with many cities involved, including the district. And then we're in la, we're also in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is a great market, but climate does play well. We can get into that if you're interested. And then by the time this episode comes out, we will, I think be live in the San Francisco Bay area, launching that in a couple of weeks. And that's the exciting thing about Throne as we sort of find customers I, ie cities or agencies within cities that really have a need and we can set up a new local operation and build this footprint as we go. And so we're over the next couple of years really hoping to spread out across the states and eventually across the world.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (23:14):
In Portland, for instance, it doesn't get too cold in the winter compared to a place like Michigan, but we do have most parks. I feel like the bathrooms in the public parks starting in October, November, there'll be a sign that's closed for the season and then the bathroom there is not open until the spring. How do you work with that in Michigan?
Fletcher Wilson (23:38):
Yeah. Thrones are four season bathrooms, which is a great selling point. And so Thrones can be solar powered all year round in most climates in certain areas where it gets really cold and we need to heat it enough just to keep it from freezing, we'll sometimes plug in either temporarily or sometimes longer. But so in some of those in Ann Arbor for example, we do have to plug in the Thrones at least through the winter. But another thing we can do is sometimes swap batteries as needed to keep it going, but for most of the time in a DC climate to 11 and a half months a year, we can sort of run off solar power and just be really efficient with how we use the energy on board to make it work.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (24:18):
What do you see as the future of your business? As more and more cities are kind of coming on board with this, but also as the climate changes,
Jessica Heinzelman (24:29):
Our goal is to be the household name when you are outside of your home or office and you need to go just as we kind of say, Hey, I'm going to grab an Uber and we might mean some other rideshare, I'm going to go find a Throne. And really just being the bathroom that people look for and they trust. I think climate change, a lot of what it's intersecting with is basic human needs and infrastructure and really in an outsized way affecting vulnerable populations. And so I think one is our contribution to climate, which is getting more ridership on transit and things like that, but also contributing to more resilient communities in general. So making sure that those vulnerable populations, whether it's people that are working out of their car or living out of their car, have a place that they can go. And as Fletcher mentioned, we can do some climate control, both AC and heat in these units.
(25:28):
And so making it a place where people have an oasis of relief in the midst of this extreme heat or cold that we're seeing more and more of, and that's part of the value of having it be solar powered and rapidly deployable and adaptable to different changing conditions. I think Ann Arbor in particular, we have seen the value of being able to move it because where people need it in the summer, namely parks, playgrounds, ball fields kind of go dead during the winter, but we've been able to see that when we move it to more downtown locations or areas where there are overrun kind of service centers or heating areas that don't have the bathrooms that they need in those kind of peak usage times, we're actually able to serve almost as many uses as we do in those summer months.
Fletcher Wilson (26:24):
I think it's flexibility of infrastructure, I think as there's sort of preventing the effects of climate change and then there's reacting to the unfortunate effects of climate change. And I think when we saw with the fires in la, I think a lot of us started talking about the future of Throne and how we might even develop more flexible reactive bathroom solutions because I think sometimes fixed infrastructure can be really inefficient, which actually has a negative delete terrace effect, but if you can also help in the reaction to these incidents, I think that's something I totally see us a couple years down the road being able to have a pretty big impact with because no matter what's happening, people need to go to the bathroom and often that infrastructure can get wiped out pretty quickly.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (27:08):
Yeah. You touched on this a little bit, but what are some of the downstream effects you've seen of cities implementing these bathrooms?
Jessica Heinzelman (27:16):
One very clear one is a reduction in public defecation. So at Metro Stations we've seen a 50% reduction in public defecation since at the stations that have Thrones, and that's one of the reasons they just passed a board approval to go to 64 Thrones, which will mean one in three metro stations will have a Throne bathroom at it. And then I think we also just hear individual stories about how it's allowing people to engage in community more. There's actually a group in DC called Hill Family Biking that organizes monthly biking clubs that is geared towards getting families on bikes and connecting with their community. And they were finding that the real community building was actually after the ride, but that many people with young children were having to leave after 10 or 15 minutes because they had already ridden for an hour. And so they've been able to actually drastically extend the amount of time that people are able to spend together and create friendships and community around biking around the Capitol Hill area.
Fletcher Wilson (28:22):
Some of my favorite stories have to do with communities accepting the Throne in ways they never would've imagined. I think one thing that often happens is Throne will get put in places where we've heard we've tried other portable bathrooms in this type of location and it just didn't work out, it got destroyed or something like that. And we'll put Bathroom Thrones in those locations and hear all these stories of the people that are just in that area, maybe they're working nearby or living nearby, being the first ones to run up to someone with a Throne shirt and say, Hey, this needs to be fixed, or I noticed this bad thing happened. And really almost becoming ambassadors for the Throne and being really proud of and grateful, I would say, for this new amenity that's being placed there. Whereas we definitely heard a lot of noise before we go to certain locations, it's never going to work there. People are going to destroy it. And I've had just such an increase in optimism around how if you provide a service that provides dignity, people will accept it and protect it and be grateful for it. And I think that's the part at the end of the day that Jess and I take the most pride in.
Jessica Heinzelman (29:27):
To add onto that, I think we are in some pretty tough locations in downtown la. One of our locations, the city actually drops off and picks up porta-potties every morning and night because if they don't, it gets lit on fire, tipped over just horrific seeds. And there were a lot of naysayers at the beginning, and what we've really seen is we definitely have vandalism, but we don't have destruction, which I think is a really important difference because people value it and they want to keep it, so they'll steal the soap dispenser or they'll try to tag it with graffiti or something like that, but it's all stuff that we can solve pretty quickly and easily and keep it up and running as a resource.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (30:11):
Yeah, I was just thinking how it's cool that this was, as you said, Fletcher born out of the pandemic in a time when we were all more staying indoors being on our computers, and that's something that this can create really community where people are literally meeting their neighbors because they feel that they can go outside, take public transit, go to their local park, go to the town square.
Fletcher Wilson (30:39):
Exactly. Get people out. Keep them out, I think is sort of a big part of what we're trying to do.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (30:44):
So just to wrap up here, maybe if you have any kind of personal anecdotes about how this job and business has changed your you as people or stories of just how thrown existing out in the world has kind of shaped you.
Jessica Heinzelman (31:01):
I never would've thought that one of my favorite pastimes would've been sitting outside a restroom watching people go in and out and seeing the delight on their face. But yeah, and I think, I don't know if it's changed me all that much. I think I've always been really motivated to get up in the morning and make something tangible happen that improves lives, but I do think it's been an amazing ride and continues to be doing it with a team that is also so mission driven and so smart and really building something that we're seeing go from an idea to full scale.
Fletcher Wilson (31:43):
For me, I think the most exciting aspect of this is just starting with something on a whiteboard and seeing it in the real world. And I think there's so many projects out there in AI and fully digital, and those are great projects. I think for anyone thinking of innovating in the real world, it's just so much more rewarding. There's something so cool about walking down the street and looking up and seeing your product or the product your team is working on, or having your dad get to call you and say, I just tried to, there's something about real world services that is so much more rewarding. I'd say the pastime I have is a glass of wine, looking at the computer and watching the number of uses tick up on a screen in certain Thrones. Just it's really fun watching this long tail type of product where you're not saving lives necessarily, but you're affecting so many lives in a small meaningful way. And the integral of that, or the summation of that is actually really powerful as you scale. And so I think for me, it's a life passion now. And I think for Jess as well, and for anyone thinking of developing in the world of atoms instead of bits, I think it's a little harder to get off the ground, and there's certainly some fundraising friction off at the start, but once you get over that hump, it's so much more rewarding, so much more durable as a business and so much more impactful in my biased opinion.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (33:04):
Oh, that's great. Well, I can't wait. I think I was just thinking I'll have to, if I go to LA sometime soon, I'll have to go and try one of your bathrooms.
Fletcher Wilson (33:12):
Yeah, please leave us a comment, please.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (33:15):
Yeah. Is there anything else before we go that you want to talk about that we didn't touch on?
Fletcher Wilson (33:21):
The only thing I would say is if you're listening and you feel like you're in a community that really needs Thrones or you work in a government agency that could use Thrones, definitely reach out to us. You can go to the thronelabs.co. We're definitely looking to expand and help more and more people.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (33:38):
Awesome. Well, Fletcher, Jess, thanks so much for being on We Are Not Doomed.
Fletcher Wilson (33:42):
Thank you for having us.
Jessica Heinzelman (33:43):
Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (33:49):
Thanks to Fletcher and Jessica for taking the time to speak with me. And thank you for listening to We Are Not Doomed. If you're interested in learning more about Throne Labs and their work, visit thronelabs.co. To find more episodes of the podcast, go to We Are Not doomed.com. You can click the follow button on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. Until next time, I'm Jonah Geil-Neufeld. Have a great week.