Piotr Slawinski
piotr.r.slawinski@gmail.com
Noah Medical— Senior Engineering Manager

Interactions 1

AbnitoMeeting with Piotr SlawinskiMar 25
Piotr SlawinskiNoah Medical

Summary

Summary

Flavius (founder of Artisa) and Piotr (Senior Engineering Manager at Noah Medical) had a candid check-in about the state of their informal working relationship. The conversation clarified expectations going forward: Piotr won't take on code/deliverable work for now, they'll maintain a conversational/advisory relationship, and Flavius will pay Piotr for hours already worked. The question of Piotr joining as a co-founder remains open but unresolved.

Key points

  • Flavius recently let go of a part-time salesperson (Joan) who wasn't working out, and reflected that the hire was premature — the company isn't at a stage ready for that kind of role.
  • Flavius articulated that what he needs right now is co-founder-level people "all in" together, not part-time contributors doing research or code deliverables on the side — those feel like distractions at this stage.
  • Flavius proposed shifting the engagement to purely informal: talking, sharing updates, networking introductions — no code or formal deliverables until circumstances change.
  • Piotr is actively trying to figure out his career direction — taking a Deep Reinforcement Learning course, applying for jobs, going through interview processes to learn.
  • Piotr expressed that his hesitation about joining Artisa full-time comes from fear of drifting away from robotics, which is his long-term field of interest. Artisa's current focus doesn't align with that.
  • Flavius clarified that if Piotr ever committed fully, he would immediately pursue investor funding, targeting at least $100K salary for both of them.
  • Piotr introduced Flavius to contacts (Walter, Joe) for conversations about robot sensing applications; Piotr is separately researching ultrasonic proximity sensors at his university lab under a brand called "Artisan."
  • Flavius has upcoming meetings with SNCF (French national rail, via Plug and Play) and recently spoke with Toyota Motors.
  • Flavius mentioned a connection at Intrinsic (recently acquired into Google from Alphabet) that may be relevant to Piotr.

Decisions

  • The working relationship shifts to informal only — no code deliverables or formal projects for now.
  • Flavius will pay Piotr for hours already delivered (at $50/hr).

Action items

  • Piotr — Send total hours worked (at least 6, likely more) to Flavius by end of day tomorrow.
  • Piotr — Send routing/account number for direct deposit payment.
  • Flavius — Send payment (hours × $50) to Piotr once info is received.
  • Flavius — Consider introducing Piotr to his contact at Intrinsic (mentioned as optional/offered).

Follow-ups / open questions

  • Will Piotr ever decide to go all-in as a co-founder? Left explicitly open — Flavius asked for a "hell yeah or no," Piotr hasn't landed there yet.
  • Piotr's career direction remains unresolved — still figuring out what he wants, balancing robotics expertise vs. other opportunities.
  • Flavius's meetings with SNCF and Toyota — outcomes unknown.
  • Piotr's Thursday conversation with Joe — outcome TBD.

Transcript

Hey, Peter.

How are you?

Hey, doing pretty well. How are you? Good, good. Yeah, I'm in the office. Where are you? I'm in... lobby downstairs in our apartment oh nice nice nice okay okay our desk and we have a guest right now Oh, okay, okay.

Is it an Airbnb guest or a friend? Now Airbnb. Got it. Okay. Doing business. Nice. Very good. Very good. Yeah, how have you been? Okay, yeah, it's been a struggle lately. I had to... I don't know if I told you last time we spoke last time a few weeks ago when we saw a Walter right Yeah, I don't know if I mentioned that I had a salesperson hired. like on a part-time based. And it was not working out at all.

Yeah, it was... She was not doing great. So yeah, I had to let her go yesterday. Yeah.

Sorry to hear that.

Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, it was my bad probably. I shouldn't have fired her that early. was probably Um... Like my first customer really insisted that she's really good. Okay. So, bye. I don't think she was motivated, so... And she was not good with technology either. So it was hard to communicate or do anything. Yeah, I had to do that. Yeah, so I had to rethink a bit, a few things. So, yeah.

Have you able to,Yeah. Were you able to get some questions answered from either Ehsan or Walter? Or did you get to learn anything, I guess?

Uh... Yes, a little bit, especially from From Walter. Yeah, because we had a longer conversation than with the sound. Yeah, it was something interesting because this is a bit of a different thing that I had in mind. I was more curious there about... the sensors that you would need in handling packages and like what robots are missing in terms of sensing. So It was a bit different than the application.

I'm doing here. So basically, That was more for my research at the university because at the university we are building sensors. And those could be used, for example, for proximity sensing, for detecting objects very close by. So if the robot has its arms, like just a clamp, right, like two arms, like two... Like a claw. How do you call them in robot? I don't know the specific term.

The gripper, yeah, you have.

two pieces, the fingers have five five, right? So whatever it's a humanoid or non-humanoid, you could put a proximity sensor at the tip. or whatever you're grouping with. but the current sensors they don't have Uh. very good short range capabilities. Like when it's very short, you don't know it's coming. All signal is lost there. So what we are developing on Artisan is something that can actually address that challenge.

So it's a high frequency inner sensing with ultrasonic waves. That's also my background that I did during my PhD. So I was curious to see if robots are missing that or if it could be useful, trying to understand some use cases there. So yeah, it was more for that side. Then of course, maybe this Abnito application can be used in warehouses, especially gigantic warehouses like Amazon, but not for...

Like... not connected to the robots necessarily.

Right, right.

So yeah, I wanted to learn more about robots in that other sense. Yeah.

Cool. or Sounds good. I hope your conversation with Joe goes well.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to him. We are scheduled to talk on Thursday. How do you know Joe?

So Joe and Walter, a lot of my other friends, all worked in this lab at the University of Nebraska. It was a surgical robotics lab. Oh, okay. And I worked kind of across the hall.

Oh, okay. It's like me and Lorenz, right? Like we were down the hall. Yeah, yeah. And.

So that's pretty much it. I didn't know Joe very well, but I think we kind of trust each other because it's all a part of the same circle. Then he went to Carnegie Mellon. I didn't talk to him for like five years. And then I actually ran into him at a conference. It was an optics conference that I randomly went to just because I was curious in San Francisco like three years ago.

Like, oh my God, Joe.

And he caught up and was very nice. And yeah, I just, I took long to introduce you to. I wanted to message him on LinkedIn and feel it out. Like, does this guy remember me?

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah.

And just like as a side note, so the professor who both of these guys worked for. He founded, it's a surgical robotics company called Virtual Incision. And they're like, they're currently, they're based in Nebraska. And then he founded a train robotics company where I actually worked for it for about eight months.

And it was on developing sensors that can measure the health of rails, like the stiffness of railroad rails. What sensor was that?

It was using laser and camera. And basically, you place a camera in one location, laser in another location, and based on where in the image you expect the laser to be, and given how much deflection you expect, you can make an estimate of the stiffness. Okay. And then... That's basically it. So just an image tracking the location of a laser.

That's pretty, girl. Oh, interesting. I'm wondering if there is space for vibration sensors there or acoustic. But I guess... Interesting. Because, yeah, you want the laser to fully measure a good deflection. Like with amount of deflection. I don't know. It's kind of macro level. I guess those accelerometers, they... tend to catch much smaller vibration. I don't know if they will be able to tell the deflection or anything like that.

Yeah. Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, I think for that specific application, probably not. But, I don't know if there's like a loud Like if something loud happens along the way, No? I was actually Yeah, I'll send you something shortly. But I was looking into-I was chatting with Anthropic about-applications for Okay. a mobile sensor. it's not necessarily something you have to talk to, but it's like a sensor you can put somewhere. And I was thinking about like-applications that Where it's pretty hard for people to be.

Like when you think about the top of, or in a power station, it's like very hard for people to walk around. Oil rig.

Um, I don't know.

I'm sorry. Like for vibration is not probably the thing to measure in some cases, but audio could be. Yeah.

Yeah, like long term, what I imagine. is that we can build specific boxes that can mount different sensors for different applications, but then reuse the same data accumulation, data aggregation, data analysis platform. So you can expand to different areas. Yeah. Yeah, actually, in a couple of weeks, I'm going to talk to... I don't know if you know. The train service, basically they're the Amtrak of France.

They're coming here at Plug and Play and somebody here got me a meeting with them to show them what we're doing. So it could be pretty interesting. Yeah. And last week I talked to with Toyota Motors. So let's see. The Japanese company, very slow. Probably we're not going to do anything for the next one year for sure. But at least it's good to have a conversation to understand. their needs. Yeah, it could be interesting.

Yeah, if you're looking into Rails, if you're like, Um, If you're interested, I can see if that professor that we worked for, I know he has contacts in the rail system in the US and in Canada. I actually worked on the Canadian rail for two weeks. It was an adventure of a lifetime.

You'll have to tell me about that. Yeah.

But all right, cool. Good luck.

How's your class going?

It's great. It's actually ramping down. I am currently working on the last of the homeworks, and I'm trying to finish before we leave for Nebraska next. We're traveling home for Easter.

Oh, nice, nice.

Yeah, and then. So anyway, I just wanted it to be done. But it's been good. So I don't know. remember if I told you what it's about, but it's called Deep Reinforcement Learning.

You mentioned something, but honestly I forgot.

And it's... A common example of reinforcement learning is an agent or robot that tries something and sees whether it did well or not well, learns from it, and then tries to do better next time. And Yeah, so it's been interesting. So the course, like I generally wanted to get more exposure into some of the algorithms that are used by like LLMs for fine tuning of models. That's done with reinforcement learning.

Reinforcement learning is used a lot in self-driving. So just wanted to get more exposure there. And then there's a lot of activity in the humanoid space. And I just don't have a very good intuition of what type of learning can be applied where. And it's been interesting. The course started with some overview of behavioral cloning. which basically like if you have expert data that you really like and you want to train a policy to do just that.

So, for example, if you have a bunch of data on video from driving, like Tesla video, and then you have the encoder for the steering wheel and the accelerator and the brake, you can use that data to just... Based on an image, what do you think, what action should the autonomous system take? Interesting. And there are problems with that. You can never do better than that data if you only train on that data, at least using those algorithms.

So the course also-The homework I did this past weekend was about Training agents on static sets of data. So it's like a data set you've already collected. So there's no exploration. But then you train a policy that is supposed to outperform whatever collected the data. So in the example of that driving, it would be like somebody learns how to drive better than anybody who collected that data. And then also some, one of the homeworks was about like a robot in a simulated environment, like a physics engine that's learning to walk and applying different algorithms to see how it walks and then plotting data on its performance.

So it's good. I'm just trying to get some exposure to those algorithms. And if you're interested in that area, I have some slide decks from the course if you'd like to see it. I can share with you. But yeah, it's been fun. And And ramping down.

Okay, cool, that's very nice. Do you have to take an exam at the end to get credit?

No, it's like for professionals. So it's extremely low bar.

So just send the homeworks in.

Yeah, send the homeworks in and get some minimum grade, which is very easy to achieve.

Got it. But still, you have to go get the homeworks in. That takes time.

Yeah, definitely a lot. I typically was watching YouTube videos about the topics, and it's just not the same. If you have to solve a problem and scratch your head and be stressed about it, you internalize a lot more.

So it's been good. Yeah. Okay, good, good, good. So listen, I want to talk to you today a little bit about our engagement here. And it's also a bit in the light of what happened with Joan that I wasn't able to really be useful for her and she to be useful for me and It's been a kind of a distraction because I wasn't ready for her, mainly. I don't think I was at the stage where I was ready. So I was trying to understand.

trying to see how we can engage better the two of us. You obviously have the full-time job and you're very busy. I cannot expect from you, "Oh, I need this. I need it by tomorrow," things like that. And that's how I operate with myself. Now I think of a thing, I need something, and I need to go all in for a day. I need to show it to the customer. something like that. And it makes sense, right? When I go home, after I finish doing stuff, I want to go spend time with Teresa.

I want to go for a run. And you want to do the same, right? I would imagine. And The best conversation we had so far for us was like just... talking about topics, engaging into talking about different types of topics, you know, and not necessarily like have a deliverable like a code, right? So... I don't know if this resonates with you, but maybe it will make more sense for us to just continue discussing like that and not have you do any code or anything like that until maybe in a few months from now when maybe things change for you.

What do you think? That sounds good. But, That being said. I want to finally do an accounting of all the hours where you did put time and did send some deliverables. And I want to send a check, a direct deposit to do that, to make sure that that is, you know, I don't want you to have like bad feeling that, okay, I did something and nothing happened. Okay. But then I also want to understand from you, you know, we had the conversation maybe end of, what was it?

End of December, probably, to understand if you ever want to like... Get more skin in the game. And I want to understand if you have... thought about that and or if you want to talk maybe later down the road about that or where you act with that because I think if that's the case you know if there's something where okay you can dedicate a lot more time then okay all good we can go down to business but I think for me the way I work it's It's very hard for me.

I don't know with you or I think anybody else. I'm just figuring this out, you know, myself. To just, okay, maybe assign a project, maybe it's a research project that maybe we see down the road in a month or so. It's just not very useful for me now because... research, I cannot apply it immediately. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So although I'm interested in all those topics, they're interesting to me and I've seen how well you can do them.

I learned from you a lot. It's just for the company at this stage right now. It's just... It's just more stressful for me to be honest. So I'm just trying to be super honest, yeah. Yeah.

Cool, man. Yeah, thanks for being transparent. It totally makes sense. Yeah, right. You're trying to get the company to survive. And if it's not helping for tomorrow, It's like distracting from tomorrow.

Yeah. I didn't realize that, to be honest, when we started talking and working, you know, so... So yeah, it's been very stressful, especially I noticed that a lot with Joan because she was here and she was, paid like for 20 hours a week and she didn't do anything useful you know so So I have now realized that company now at this stage needs something different, something you are hands on, iterate something quickly, go to the customer and continue that cycle until you can escape that cycle, basically.

And now, to be honest, maybe this is something on the inside, maybe I can share that I'm realizing. People kept telling me, you know, books and other people that you need a co-founder in the beginning. Or like you need to be a strong team in the beginning, two, three people. And now I think I realize why. It's because it's hard. to either hire somebody in the beginning because you don't have enough money, So If you are two co-founders or three co-founders, you could just put it all in.

So basically, what I need now is more copies of myself. It's like I need two, three clones of myself. or better than myself, you know, to all be in that together. And everything else, it's a distraction, not because you don't look at interesting things, it's because it's not serving the current purpose. Yeah. Totally. So, yeah. But that being said, you introduced me to a lot of nice people and I enjoyed talking with them.

I think you and I should keep talking about this stuff. I am happy to keep you updated on what's going on, you know, either in meetings like this or like on, you know, when we meet up for a hike or some other cool stuff. Um Cool.

Yeah, that sounds good. All makes sense. And again, thanks for being transparent, explaining. All good. Thank you.

And regarding the skin in the game, have you thought more about it in these past months or do you have?

Yeah, I have. And well, I've been thinking a lot about actually what I wanna do in general with my career. 'Cause I felt like, I mean, I told you I'm not enjoying too much what I do and I'm not learning very much. And I've been trying to do a lot to figure out what I want. So I've been chatting with you and learning about things like the LLM. I never touched that area until we started speaking. Taking this class to understand that area and then just trying to do some other things.

like Yeah, I've applied for some jobs and gone through interview processes that also have caused me to learn quite a bit because it takes time to study at times.

By the way, I haven't told you, sorry, this is maybe relevant to you, I'm talking with Intrinsic. I met a guy from Intrinsic at one of the machine shops trades here in the bay. And they have this project with Trinity. that they have the Trinity robot arm and they put the software from Intrinsic on top of it. And actually my customer, she has a demo with that at her site. So I know one of the guys, the French guy from Intrinsic.

Today I was supposed to meet him, but I'll meet him tomorrow actually. I don't know if you want me to put you in touch with those guys. They just got acquired by Google. Reacquired by Google. It's weird. They were already Alphabet. Well, anyway, they got acquired by Google. Yeah.

Okay, that's weird. I thought they were required like two years ago.

No, they were required two weeks ago.

I have a post-prem that works there. Interesting.

Yeah, because they were a moonshot company. And then they became their own subsidiary from Alphabet and now they got acquired into Google itself. Anyway. Okay, gotcha. But yeah, thank you. So you've been applying for jobs, trying to figure out what's next for you or...

Yeah, and I think where I've landed is... I really want to be in a position that's quite technical. Okay. Like, I just love problems, solving technical problems. And in my job currently, I spend probably 30% of the time on, like, people problems and, like... I don't know.

I'm just like, no. To be honest, I kind of I'm looking up to you actually because you are a manager, right? We are the same age, but you are a manager and you're managing people and you're learning those skills that I'm not. So like I manage a few people at Apple, but we're like mostly junior or like talk with or assign projects to my colleagues. colleagues that were peers, but I was not their manager.

I was kind of like the direct responsible individual, they called it. And I never had this like so strong managerial, uh, forced thing to learn, you know. So I'll ask you more questions about that.

Yeah, yeah, please do. Yeah, definitely good experience. Um,So yeah, so I wanna just be technical I love being hands-on. And, um,You know, like when I thought about, Hey, what if I just call Flavius and say, man, I'm in. Let's do it. I don't need to be paid very much. Let's just start. My internal feeling is, I think I have a... I don't know, like a worry that I'm going away from robotics.

That's fair with this company for sure. Yeah. At least now. Yeah.

at least now in the short term. And it's like every time I'm in an interview, it's like, you know, a lot of people pay a lot of attention to like, okay, where were you last? What is your experience that you're getting there? And I'm like, okay, if I step away from the field, Like, is that a big deal? Is that like... If I want to work at, I don't know, Google Robotics 10 years from now, and work on foundation models for motion control, is that like gonna set me back and I won't be able to do it?

Um. So honestly, that's been on my mind. OK, fair, fair, yeah.

No, thank you for telling me that because that's important for me to know. And it's important for you to say it, I think.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think I realized it because it wasn't obvious to me. But... Yeah, so that's been on my mind. And, um... And that's honestly where I'm at. So I'm like-Hi. Yeah, I probably don't have anything else to say. That's where my mind's been at and I don't know, just like for calibration, I mean, We haven't worked together much because I think what we've done is not the same as when there is a fire and you're firefighting together and you're in the ditch, which I love doing, and I've done at our company, but we just haven't.

Yeah, I think like, hey, if I reached out to you tomorrow,I'm all in. I don't have to be, or the compensation near term is not so important, like let's make it happen. Do you feel like that's something you'd entertain? How are you feeling?

Yeah, so if you were to tell me that, at some point in the future, like maybe a couple months from now or like, I don't know, a week from now or like six months from now. Things will be different because, okay, the pay is one thing. Yes, I'll pay you a little bit what I have short term. Like I'm not paying myself right now because I have the sales from Artisa. But the goal there, if you are all in, then we are, you and I are going all in to the investors to find money.

Like I can call the invested and say, I got a team now. You know, I got like... We are stronger now, which is not the story I can say now or the story I needed to say now. You know, it would be different. I wouldn't want us to go starve, you know. I'll go find money and we'll get both paid. I don't know how much that will be, but at least 100k each, you know, minimum. That's the bare minimum that we should get, both of us.

So that's the situation that will change. So short term, maybe once you join like that, maybe I won't have that 100K for both of us, but then... within a very short frame will go find the money. Because now... I could, you know, I'm stronger in a stronger position. So that's the first thing. But that being said, like if... If you feel like you drift away from where you want to be and you're not 100% sure, Like, I think it should be either a hell yeah, or like if it's not hell yeah.

You're not doing me a favor or yourself a favor, I think.

Yeah, man. I promise you, if we ever work together, I'm not doing it half-assed.

Yeah. Like, either I figured out I'm all in, or sorry, Flavius. Yeah, that's totally fine. I mean, we are friends. We're going to hang out. We can always have technical conversations and... And we can probably help each other in any other way in the future. Maybe you started about this company because that's what you want. And that's totally fine. And I can tell you all the mistakes I'm making. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so now I'll let you go, but send me the total numbers. So you told me at least six hours in one email, but probably were more. Give me a number. I'll send you that multiplied by 50 and send me a routing and account number. So I'll do that. Make sure that that's something that I kept promising it. I haven't done it yet, but I want that to be... I know it's not going to be a lot, but it's just, you know, that's more symbolic and I want to make sure.

Yeah, I got you.

All right.

I'll send it to you by end of day tomorrow. Okay, perfect.

Okay, I think this was a conversation. I feel better. I hope you feel better too.

Yeah, I think it's, I'm glad to share with you like where I'm at. I love hearing where your mindset. Again, really appreciate that we can have transparent conversation and like It's a good conversation. So this is good. Thanks, man.

Awesome. And say hi to Ella. Okay. Awesome. And say hi to Ella. Okay. All the best, Therese. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.