3414: Self-Healing Machines and Robotics with Grace Technologies
Tech Talks Daily
Enhancing the Industrial Startup Ecosystem
This chapter explores Maple Studios, an incubator dedicated to supporting industrial startups in eastern Iowa's Quad Cities. It highlights the challenges founders face, such as funding shortages and industry barriers, while emphasizing the need for rapid product iteration and customer feedback.
Drew Allen, CEO of Grace Technologies, shares real stories from the floor, the ideas shaping safer plants, and why culture matters more than slogans. Drew’s background stretches from a family line linked to Samuel Morse to teenage years in China to global business development at 3M. That range shows up in how he leads. He listens, he moves fast, and he expects teams to work on things that matter. In his world that means saving electricians from shocks and arc flash while helping manufacturers modernize without losing their soul.
Grace started with mechanical and analog products, then took the hard road into fully digital systems. The shift took time and patience. Today their platform brings sensors, AI, and cloud tooling into maintenance and safety. The example that stuck with me is a proximity band for electricians. It lights, beeps, and vibrates as a worker approaches live voltage. At TriCity, that band prevented three near misses in a three month pilot.
A fourth incident still ended in a hospital visit and a costly outage because the worker left the band in his car. Another apprentice nearly placed a hand on a live bus bar until the band told him something was wrong. These moments remind you that technology can change a day and a life.
Drew’s take on culture is refreshingly direct. Values are not a poster. They are a filter for who you hire. He looks for customer obsession, ownership, curiosity, and candid communication. Then he pairs that with high expectations and real care. Autonomy comes with accountability. Impact matters. If someone does not want to work on meaningful problems, this is not their place. It sounds firm. It also explains why the company keeps earning top workplace recognition while raising the bar on performance.
We also talked about Maple Studios, the startup incubator Drew launched in Davenport, Iowa. He sees gaps in the industrial ecosystem. Fewer big exits. Slow adoption cycles. Founders stuck inside large companies. Maple gives them tools, space, and hard feedback so they can iterate faster and build things factories will actually deploy. His advice is simple. Ship, learn, and repeat. Do customer reviews early. Expect a thousand small gotchas. Move through them rather than pretending they will not appear.
Looking ahead, Drew expects robotics to accelerate for a very practical reason. Companies cannot find enough people. Dangerous work will be automated. He imagines maintenance tasks shifting toward humanoid robots, with machines designed so robotic agents can service them. He also references GM’s self healing language to point at a coming blend of sensing, prediction, and automated repair.
On AI, he shares Satya Nadella’s challenge. Measure productivity and GDP impact rather than hype. The promise is there. The scoreboard will tell the story.
If you work in industrial tech, this conversation lands close to home. You will hear how to bring digital tools into legacy environments, how to design for safety from the start, and how to keep teams motivated without losing kindness. You will also catch an open invitation.
Drew wants to partner with builders who care about this space. If that is you, reach out to him on LinkedIn or visit graceport.com. And if you are curious about the band that vibrates before a bad day begins, this episode is a good place to start.
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