Introducing Agile Precision, Your New Favorite Podcast

Agile Precision · Ep. 1 Ryan Morris, Executive Chairman, Software Motor Company

For nearly a decade, we’ve worked hand-in-hand with outstanding, purpose-driven entrepreneurs to help them build high-performance companies. It’s been rewarding work that takes us into the crevices of highly inventive industries—ones that will no doubt change the way our world operates in the near future. Now, we’re proud to introduce our new podcast: Agile Precision. With it, we pull back the curtain—or look under the hood, if you will—to reveal what these near futures will look like.

To produce Agile Precision, we sat down with some of the sharpest minds in hardware, software, and sustainability across the fields of manufacturing, transportation, and services. What we found during these conversations was an invigorating picture of both the present and future. As our world becomes more and more focused on long-term solutions, our initial episodes seek to highlight pragmatic sustainability. The entrepreneurs and experts we interview take us on unexpected journeys: from turning CO2 into energy to using AI to reduce trillions of dollars of waste, to supercharging electric motors.

The first of these journeys features Ryan Morris, CEO of Software Motor Company (SMC), which is tackling one of the unexpected, overlooked sources eating up nearly half of our world’s energy: electric motors. Ryan touches on how an influential industry is still stuck using century-old architecture developed by Nikola Tesla, and how SMC is taking a simple approach to a complex problem. We look at Ryan’s journey, from learning about nuclear fusion at the age of 11 to his work now at SMC where he is attempting to reduce a major source of waste economically. “Figure out what free markets will do, then do something else,” is Ryan’s motto. With this story and those that come after it, Agile Precision focuses on the elements of tomorrow that we need to be talking about today.

One secondary key element to Agile Precision is that it aims to tell stories by going straight to the source. Our podcast is produced by the people who know the landscape best: CEOs, investors, and founders. At the same time, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed bringing a bit of the investor-entrepreneur relationship to light to unearth unexpected interactions. This is an inside look not only at the solutions that will change how we move but at the exchanges between investors and their portfolio companies.

The name, Agile Precision, is a nod to our honed investment approach. At BMW i Ventures, duality has always been in our DNA: we have merged the precision of German manufacturing with the agility of Silicon Valley to help entrepreneurs execute quickly and at scale. Now, we bring Agile Precision to life with the real stories of the companies we serve. With these stories, we hope you find deep curiosity about the present hope for the future. We want to inspire agility in thought, and precision in action. Listen to episode one, featuring Ryan Morris of SMC below.

You can also listen to Agile Precision on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.