To the moon, baby.
Many a soul has wrecked itself on the shoals of the professional surfing dream and Zach Rash’s was almost one of them. Perfectly named, Rash, who looks to be upper-20s now, could taste the ephemeral glory of traveling the world, getting barreled as a job, retiring to a life of traveling the world and getting barreled and/or launching a tequila brand whilst attending high school. By his own account, there was more surfing in high school than academics.
And yet, somehow he got in to UCLA and his trajectory changed. For there, on the hills of Westwood, Rash met one Brad Squicciarini, stopped going to the beach and started doing something meaningful. “We spent like our entire life in this like box at UCLA with no windows,” he shared with The Spoon, “and we’re just building robots from scratch, and it was the best job ever.”
Well, after graduating, the two decided to start their own robot company and launched Coco with the aim of delivering goods to people just like goods were delivered to people in Blade Runner and other depressingly dystopian visions of the future.
“We just had a lot of really strong opinions about what it would take to get these things into the world and make them useful. So… decided to do it ourselves,” Rash continued. “We started building them in our living room and we couldn’t get more wheels… so it was a bit of a sketchy robot.” Still, their first merchant deployment went smoothly. “The first day of the business, I mean, we gave it to a merchant and Brad and I just took turns driving it and fixing it.”
Well, as happens with these things, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman got wind and recently threw in $80 million dollars of investment.
“Coco Robotics will use the new funds to improve the technology and to scale up its fleet,” Rash declared. “The company expects to go from low‑thousands to 10,000 robots by the end of next year.”
Thus far, the li’l buddies have delivered over 500,000 items for the likes of Subway, Wingstop, Jack in the Box, Uber Eats and DoorDash.
The future very bright.
I wish Derek Rielly and I could build robots and/or that Sam Altman saw the value or almost real-time surf snark.
What do you wish you could do instead of… whatever it is that you are?
My pathway to the CT is still going strong. In the last week I really felt my mojo come back and I think at the next board riders comp I’ll break my streak of 4 zero-point heats.
Looking forward to shaming Filipe in a couple years at Cloudbreak.
They had slut bits for a while! Remember those!
Xox
Being a Dad is just fuken awesome!!!
Ozzy is going straight to heaven, thank you you, legend🙏 🖤 https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
I expect his 10,000 robots to be replaced by 1,000,000 Chinese knockoffs at a quarter of the price within 18months.
hmm does the USA yet have those pesky rare earth magnets…..???
Thank goodness I was able to dodge a pro surfing career…and I’m not even a genius.
Another invention no doubt soon to be delivering bombs and death to brown children in the middle east
Should have turned pro
“Pizza Delivery for Achmed. Here’s Your Pizza….and here’s your Pepperoni”. BOOM!
BREAKING NEWS
Anti-’26 yr old professional surfers dating 18yr old highschool lacrosse players’ BG commenting
liarlawyer Com Turren announces the death of singer John Osbourne.https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Full report from BeachGrit’s surf adjacent journalists soon…
not a heavy metal fan, I gather?
Goodness knows why you make that very odd comment.
Weird as fuck really.
Uuhhhh, considering I’m almost 60 with a brother 5 yrs older who introduced me to Sabbath in the mid 1970’s and have seen virtually every well-known and uncountable numbers of unknown heavy and hard-core band since the mid 1980’s.
But am a fan of light plastic (surfboards).
Presumably you’re as useless a lawyer and surfer as you are a commenter.
Best you go back and whinge about consenting adults etc.
Oh that’s right, you don’t even know the legal marrying age in your own state.
What a fuckin’ twit…
Haha. Mate tell us what you really think.
Xox
nice use of the word “twit”. You don’t see that enough these days
wait, you got to meet Sabbath in the 70s? How stoned was Ozzy? Your brother must have had quite the connections in the music industry to make that happen!
Most famous band I ever met was Unwrittten Law when the band I was in opened for them, but they just mostly sat in their tour bus smoking weed and temporarily kicked all the other opening bands out of the venue during their sound check for some reason (unnecessary and a bit rude given how hot it was that afternoon).
Anyway, thanks for sharing your opinion of me!
Tom DeLonge asked me for weed at a Blink show in 1999 and I didn’t have any
When I have Zac Rash I find a bit of aloe Vera helps
An investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The banker complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The fisherman replied, “only a little while”. The banker then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The banker then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take walks with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life.”
The banker scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise”.
The fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the banker replied, “15 – 20 years”.
“But what then?”
The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company’s stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions…then what?”
“Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take walks with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends”.
Love this LWSS. Gonna save that one.
If only being a povvo third world fisherman actually worked like that.
It’s basically the underlying tenet of Buddhism. All life is struggle.
For sure.
Most people wouldn’t last a day running a third world fisho program.
Looks great when they are chilling on the dock or under the trees between Speedies and Chickens.
Different story when you are sucking fumes late at night , motor breaks down and you’ve caught fukall.
fuckin love it !!!
very apt in end times that appear to be getting closer 🤣🤣
Damn. I never thought of it like that.
I live in a place with good surf so I can’t complain
Same, honesty believe i wouldn’t even surf anymore if I lived in a city with subpar surf.
Not a longboard fan ey?
Best thing that ever happened to me was snapping my longboard and being forced back onto the shortie.
RIP Ozzy. Had a way longer run than anyone thought he would and at least got to play one last show before taking his rightful place as the co-ruler of hell along with Satan.
What, exactly, does it mean to call yourself an “aspiring pro”? What does it say that “I surfed a lot in high school” doesn’t? It just feels very calculated to create an impression that he rips but insulates him from criticism if it turns out he sucks.
People who are very good at surfing are pretty aware of what separates them from actual professionals. They’d be embarrassed to hear someone describe them as an “aspiring pro” and would not be caught dead talking about their own surfing like that.
Living on Oahu shaping boards, growing weed and bottling Hawaiian Rum is pretty fun too. Just saying….
Send me a bottle! A family member is kicking goals down here in Oz!
Dead Reckoning.
Xox
Maybe we can get them to RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!!
Spotted one of these robots one day in LA. Poor thing was fumbling around, repeatedly bumping into a curb trying to get up onto the sidewalk. Fuck, wish I never set foot in LA and wish I surfed more…good waves.
Gauranteed Rash surfed just like that robot delivered….not very well.
Guaranteed, but now he can afford to drop $10k on a few Album’s and do a private chartered boat through the Ments
Imagine two weeks of watching him dodge barrels and on the boat listening to him whing about how he can’t figure out that asym. Not enough Bintangs for that.
It wasn’t Com Turren was it?
Xox
dammit, you got me. It’s true—I’ve been an AI chatbot this whole time.
I am just happy to not be fast tracking singularity and self aware tech to be honest.
Very happy to not have made in music also, I am very weak willed and would be dead.
Just ticking along doing Dogsnuts things.
Xox
Just tickin’ along is a good way. I do wish I was marginally better at doing capitalism, but whatevs, it’s fine, who needs money
I believe in a balanced life so long as you are living comfortably dear Jen. One lament is that I wish I could chase the women I want instead of being a wallflower and being taken along.
Xox
Kids, cause they cant make any
Just for fun, put some of your music up here, youve curried favor among the bg, stranger things have happened xox
I will try for you Rickoss mate.
Xox
There are 86,400 seconds in a day. We make asses of ourselves claiming when a couple of those are spent barreled. Priorities in order.
Claim it! Show your vulnerabilities!
Xox
Licking yourself as part of the ticking along?
Ha, we all would if we could.
Xox