How a former NASA engineer built a cannabis robotics firm. Things are moving fast in the world of cannabis, and Nohtal Partansky is helping both manufacturers and vertically integrated brands automate previously manual tasks — like infusing joints with live resin. The bonus for the workforce? It provides the opportunity for upskilling, the Founder and CEO of Sorting Robotics told Vangst Founder and CEO Karson Humiston in this week's podcast. He's also hiring techs across the country as his AI-powered technology rolls out. Produced by PodConx Proud To Work In Cannabis - https://podconx.com/podcasts/proud-to-work-in-cannabis Karson Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/karson-humiston Vangst - https://vangst.com/ Sorting Robotics - https://www.sortingrobotics.com/contact-us
How a former NASA engineer built a cannabis robotics firm.
Things are moving fast in the world of cannabis, and Nohtal Partansky is helping both manufacturers and vertically integrated brands automate previously manual tasks — like infusing joints with live resin. The bonus for the workforce? It provides the opportunity for upskilling, the Founder and CEO of Sorting Robotics told Vangst Founder and CEO Karson Humiston in this week's podcast. He's also hiring techs across the country as his AI-powered technology rolls out.
Proud To Work In Cannabis - https://podconx.com/podcasts/proud-to-work-in-cannabis
Karson Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/karson-humiston
Vangst - https://vangst.com/
Sorting Robotics - https://www.sortingrobotics.com/contact-us
Nohtal Partansky: [00:00:00] Hi, my name is Ms. Hall Baranski, founder and CEO of Sorting Robotics, and I'm proud to work in cannabis cuz we're building the foundation for the future of this industry.
Karson Humiston: Hey everybody and welcome to the Proud to Work in Cannabis podcast. I'm your host, Carson Hoon, and today we have a very special guest today. I'm excited to welcome Natal Parsky. He is the founder and CEO of Sorting Robotics and it's gonna be really interesting conversation. So thanks so much for joining us today.
Welcome.
Nohtal Partansky: Thank you. Thank , letting me on the podcast.
Karson Humiston: Oh, and of course, how are you today?
Nohtal Partansky: I'm doing okay. A little bit jet lagged, I think I, I should be recovered in the next day or so.
Karson Humiston: Good. Well , we're happy to jump into the conversation. What'll be helpful for our listeners is we would love to learn a little bit about your background and what you were doing before you decided to start sorting robotic.
Nohtal Partansky: okay, so my background before starting Sorting [00:01:00] Robotics I was actually an aerospace engineer and I worked at, uh, NASA jpl, which is the research center in la building instrumentation for the Mars Rover. So one of my projects was called Moxi, and it's currently on the surface of Mars producing oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars.
So that's what I did before starting this.
Karson Humiston: Wow. for everybody listening, na all has something he built on Mars right now. So it's safe to say he uh, a lot smarter than me and, uh, probably a lot of people.
Nohtal Partansky: I wouldn't say that, but, I'd like to hope. I think I'm smarter than the average bear,
Karson Humiston: right now. Now talk to us about what came over you to decide you wanted to stop very interesting work that you were doing start a cannabis company.
Nohtal Partansky: So it wasn't really a direct path from NASA into cannabis. really it was when I was working with my friends, um, over at jpl. We kind of wanted to [00:02:00] start our own thing. Uh, something that was a little bit less bureaucracy than the normal NASA day to day, uh, sort of process with projects. And so we started this company, but we initially started doing robotics for devices in the eCommerce industry, doing computer vision inventory management for people that sold online.
we did that for about 18 months. Noticed that it was gonna be a pretty small company and we had hopes to build a much larger robotics company. we got into a startup accelerator called Y Combinator, and once we got into that accelerator program, we noticed we had a much bigger network to kind of tap on to see where we'd want to build our next product, Spend a lot of time doing customer development, and eventually we found that cannabis really didn't have any.
Automation suppliers that were reliable or that people trusted. And we figured that would be a great [00:03:00] place for us to start. Cuz we like building things that don't exist and. Cannabis, a lot of the SOPs and processes on how to build things just don't exist. we all had a very positive disposition towards cannabis and honestly we were trying to figure out ways as engineers to get into the cannabis industry.
cuz when I was a jpl, I had some friends that were in the medical industry and was like, Yo, what can I build? And they're like, I don't know, man. Everything seems like is kind of already there, which couldn't be farther from the truth, but they were, like buds and stuff. So I guess they didn't really have a perspective on the manufacturing side of things.
so we found cannabis and that's when, uh, we spun out the first company and sold that off to, a different group. Eventually that group got acquired by eBay and we kind of focused on cannabis, and that's where we are today after a few months of r and d and, you know, building product for customers all across north.
Karson Humiston: Yeah. So talk to us about what, what are the products and so if someone was, you know, [00:04:00] owned a manufacturing facility, what, what are your products and how do they help cannabis
Nohtal Partansky: so our products are very much focused on solving, today problems for cannabis manufacturers. Uh, one of those is the process of making infused oles, so no one really knows the best way to infuse a pre-roll. there's a few ways where. Spray the flour with concentrate, or they might mix in THCA powder, but it doesn't mix very well.
so we built a device that allows you to inject a live rosin or live resin down the center of a joint and create like a column of concentrate down the center of that joint. that allows a cannabis processor to decrease their labor of infusing joints, fivefold. And they're able to make them at a much faster rate than they could normally do.
So that, that's kind of one of our first products, and that's the one that we launched last year, kind of our flagship one, one.
Karson Humiston: so rather [00:05:00] than going and hiring people to put in their extraction facility, they could use product and not have to or as many employee.
Nohtal Partansky: They wouldn't have to have as many as employees, but what they normally end up doing is they end up upskilling the current workforce. So that way the employees that were there before maybe just rolling joints, they're now getting paid a higher wage because they're doing something a bit more complicated.
And then, If they're able to reallocate those employees, they end up either going to like the packaging department because now they have more stuff to package than they did before. So it's lot by upskilling and reconfiguring their workforce so that they're a much more efficient company and that the employees are just happier.
Karson Humiston: That's great. And that's exciting for employees because it's a chance for employees to be upskilled earn, uh, more income.
Nohtal Partansky: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Karson Humiston: so, so what have been the biggest differences in transitioning from working at Nassau to, starting a cannabis startup?
Nohtal Partansky: [00:06:00] I would say the end user is a very different person. is, uh, is what I like to probably first put out. Yeah, that's probably the biggest difference. in nasa you're dealing with like a lot of mathy type people. And in this industry you're not dealing with a lot of mathy type people. They're more practical type people.
that's been a big adjustment, but, it's a nice change of pace.
Karson Humiston: I, I'm just like laughing thinking about the people that you were probably working with. At Nassau versus the people that, you're working with in cannabis? Very, very, very different profiles. what, what, what was the biggest surprise to you in starting your business? What's something that you didn't expect that others, that maybe are that are transitioning in, whether they're gonna start their own business or go work for a business?
What was, what was something that was unexpected?
Nohtal Partansky: Hmm. I would say maybe not in the beginning parts of my business, but after we had raised money and we were kind of like looking to like do r and d and continue to develop [00:07:00] inside the space, There's a lot of people that just act as distractions along the way. And, as an engineer when I was working, like the people you interface with are always the required people that you need to get the job done most of the time because your audience is curated by your supervisors.
like you're never business developing as an. If that makes sense. And when you do business development, 80% of that time is effectively wasted. cuz you're just basically going through deals and opportunities and seeing what makes sense for you. And so as an engineer, when I was trying to figure out, you know, what was the next path forward for the company, there was like a lot of distractions with people and I just didn't expect to see that many distractions.
So I guess I didn't really know that there were distractions, cuz in my mind I never really had people that were distractions to me that I interfaced with. They were always somehow vital to get my job done, but then now I have to actively. Ignore people because [00:08:00] they're not act, they're not important to get my job done.
They're just maybe important to somebody else, but they're just not effective for me.
Karson Humiston: Right. And so how big is your team at this point, and what kind of positions are you all hiring for at, At sorting robotic.
Nohtal Partansky: Yeah. So the team is about 12 people now the main thing we're hiring for now is technicians, that are. Across the nation and maybe some in Canada as well. we have a few machines that are deployed all over the country, and so having remote technicians that can service them. So usually people that are good for that are, uh, people that worked in extraction labs before, maybe guys that have experience, building extraction equipment, installing extraction equipment.
those guys are usually. Candidates, , like our two installation technicians we have now. They used to be extractors.
Karson Humiston: Right,
the sales and go to market side. How, how do you find How, how [00:09:00] do you Right. Find people to use your product? How do you get in with customers? I know there's a lot of potentially entrepreneurs out there, or people that are working in business development at companies, and a big thing that everyone talks about is, I've created this great product, now how do I get it in the hands of customers?
How has Sorting Robotics been able to acquire your first customers and, and really bang down the doors to get your product? In with these companies.
Nohtal Partansky: Yeah, a lot of it is strategic channels. So we partnered up with, custom cones guys, during our first year and even now, they've been a great channel. They know. , the people that are building pre-rolls and the people that are manufacturing infused pre-rolls. And so for them it's a conversation of, Hey, what are you guys doing?
And usually, obviously if they're there, they're making pre-rolls. And if they tell them they're making infused pre-rolls and they want a better solution than what they have now. They can direct them straight to us. So that's been a very good partnership. it's been beneficial for both sides, giving them a value add to all of their customers cause they provide [00:10:00] more solutions for them and allowing us to break into the market.
And then after that we have a pretty strong customer referral program and, We have really good customer service, so it's not that difficult to have our customers suggest this to other ones. Usually not in the same state, cuz they don't want competitors with the same technology. But, cross state, it works out pretty well.
Karson Humiston: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. It feels like our best customers have come from word of mouth and referrals, right? If someone uses you and they have a great experience and they make a referral and partnerships, I think that,
Nohtal Partansky: Okay.
Karson Humiston: in the cannabis would much rather get a warm introduction than have a salesperson cold call them.
I know just at banks, when we've taken the sales approach of, you know, a hundred cold calls into dispensaries per day, it hasn't yield. nearly as many results as a law firm that we work with, introducing us to their broader client base or an introducing us to their portfolio. So that's cool to hear that you're seeing success there as well. For people transitioning into the cannabis and, and maybe stick, stick with a [00:11:00] focus around engineers, since that's your background, what advice would you have for them if they just landed a job and it was their first day, what kind of advice would you give them to be successful in this industry?
Nohtal Partansky: for an engineer in this industry.
Karson Humiston: Yeah.
Nohtal Partansky: Hmm. I guess it would be an interesting question cuz I don't know many engineers in this industry, uh, and the ones that I do know, they're either in like the automation side, so they're helping out like an MSO automate their production lines across different states or they're like chemists and they work in an extraction lab.
Karson Humiston: Well, okay. I guess for, I guess for anyone entering the industry, what advice would you.
Nohtal Partansky: Oh, anyone entering the industry? Gosh, I guess I've worked, So I've also worked in a, a plant touching entity as well. Um, and I think we, we might have talked with you guys, in Oakland, we set up this plant touching entity for like r and d and stuff. and so I, I know what it's like to be on the manufacturing side.
so it would very much be different, depending on who I'm talking [00:12:00] to. So, I dunno, gimme more like a specific
Karson Humiston: someone joining Leaf Link, which is a B2B marketplace as a software
Nohtal Partansky: Cool. I would say Assuming that you're gonna be getting customer feedback and you'll be in that like customer product development cycle. yeah. Assume that your customers are gonna be, needing a little bit more education on how the backend product works and assume they're not gonna be the same.
Level of understanding of how the backend is working compared to like a enterprise. Maybe they came from like Twitter or something like that. It's not gonna be the same. same.
Karson Humiston: , I think that's good advice more broadly is just feedback and staying close with customers, right? This industry is constantly changing and there's a huge need. Well, listen, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It's great , to learn a little bit more you and to learn a little bit more about your product.
If people that are listening, want to follow you or get in touch with you so that they can install your product. Where can [00:13:00] people find.
Nohtal Partansky: I think the best place to contact me is, just on the website, so sorting robotics.com and we have, uh, get in touch with us for him, like right at the bottom, and I see all the ones that come in through that. So, let us know if you reached out via the podcast. That'll be great. And then, um, yeah, we can continue the conversation from there.
Karson Humiston: And if you're an employee listening and you want to get skilled up, this could be a great opportunity to present this in front of. Employer to bring in this product. You could learn how to use the product and ultimately you could get, skilled up and earn more money. So whether you're a business owner or you're an employee, I really think it sounds like you need to get in touch.
Nohtal Partansky: Yeah, no. We have a lot of people that get really interested when we drop off the machines and they're super stoked, like, Man, I can't wait to work on this, so
Karson Humiston: That's awesome to hear. Well, thank you again for tuning in uh, everybody and have a great day.