Shawn Taylor grew up in the foster care system in the US. At 17, he joined the US Army, seeing it as his only route to an education, and there he saw three tours of active duty — one in Kosovo and two in Iraq.
In Iraq, he met Nahrain, who managed the base’s internet cafe; who sold Shawn a 7Up every day; and who quickly became a friend.
When Shawn’s tour was over, the pair made plans to reconnect after the war. But soon after, Nahrain was involved in a car bomb attack, and Shawn heard she had been killed, along with several members of her family.
In fact, while she suffered extensive injuries, Nahrain was the sole survivor of the attack. When she reached out months later, she and her family — her mother, grandmother, siblings, and some aunties and uncles — had escaped to Jordan.
Nahrain could have relocated to the US as a refugee, but refused to separate from her family. Instead, they all ended up in Australia, and they’ve been here ever since.
Six years after Shawn had last seen Nahrain, he landed in Melbourne for their first official date.
Today, they’re both Australian citizens; married, with two daughters.
Theirs is a remarkable human story of resilience, connection and love. But it’s also a story of the happenstance that brought this innovator to launch his business here.
Like many innovators, Shawn is driven my more than cash in the bank. But, perhaps, he’s just a little more open about it than most.
For him, business growth is merely a lever — a necessity, freeing up the time and money for him to focus on his passion projects.
“I want people to understand who I am and what my values are,” he tells me.
“It’s easy to be shifty in life and make a quick buck, but it’s hard to have values and actually build something that you can give your kids someday — and that you want to last a long time.”
Submarines, rovers and diving gear
Shawn leads UAMTEC along with co-founder and CEO Justin O’Donnell. As we chat, it becomes clear that Shawn is the dreamer and the engineer, while Justin is the commercial mind keeping everyone focused on how to fund those dreams.
Based in Melbourne, UAMTEC started out as a software development company, with a research and development arm working on new, innovative tech — initially an autonomous submarine, which captures 4k, 360-degree imagery of the underwater world.
Shawn has a vision for a Google Streetview for the ocean floor, allowing people to virtually stroll the Great Barrier Reef, or explore the deepest depths.
“We were building software for that scanning and imagery, but no hardware existed to capture the type of imagery the software needed,” Justin explains.
“So we started building the hardware to fill that gap.”
Interest quickly gathered around the tech and its capabilities, so the founders looked for a quick path to commercialisation, to help fund their R&D efforts for the submarine project.
They landed on water infrastructure, and entered a tech partnership with Melbourne Water to survey their underwater assets, using a combination of the hardware and AI analysis.
Since then, they’ve installed the same imaging software into a wheel-based rover and a vertical shaft system, creating high-tech equipment for exploring water and sewer systems — some of which are over 100 years old.
Elsewhere, the founders were fielding interest from the commercial diving industry, and so they created a dive camera system with the same superior video quality.
The use cases are just scratching the surface here, Justin says. There are other potential applications — underwater surveying for wind farms or checking rail tunnels, for example.
Until now, the tech to do this effectively just hasn’t existed, Justin says.
“We’ve been able to develop a pretty major niche in the accuracy of the data we can collect.”
Funding R&D
In a journey through hardware software and various industries and use cases, Justin and Shawn have also accessed funds from various sources.
This is a not a cheap space in which to play, and the biggest costs are the day-to-day overheads — mainly a team of experts in everything from mechatronics to software engineering to VR.
“We have a fairly small but very talented engineering team,” Justin says.
“They’re at the top end of what they do.”
Equity investment
In the past, UAMTEC has raised equity funding from strategically aligned investors — typically individuals who are already familiar with the team and the products, and who also have connections in the sectors they’re working in.
R&D Tax incentive
The Federal Government’s R&D Tax Incentive scheme offers a rebate on research activities, up to 43.5% of the total spent. It’s designed to encourage R&D, and to offset the risk of that investment.
“That’s a significant refund we get each year that gets ploughed back into our R&D,” Justin explains.
Revenue
Of course, the commercial contracts have fuelled growth through revenue.
Shawn may have had to deviate slightly from his submarine dreams, but the cash coming in through contracts can be redirected back to the R&D team.
Where does Tractor come into play?
So far, Justin and Shawn have directed debt funding from Tractor towards international growth, paying for trips to the US to exhibit at trade shows, and to set up connections.
UAMTEC now has wholesalers, distributors and repair centres for its diver camera systems in the US. The team are also in talks with “major players” in the underground asset inspection space.
“Our future growth is aimed at large population centres,” Justin explains.
“Our technologies aren’t at the lower end. Our rovers are designed for major pieces of infrastructure.”
The debt funding has allowed UAMTEC to get a foothold in the US market, allowing the team to start proving out the hypothesis; to show this business has the capacity for global scale.
Justin and Shawn are laying the groundwork for a future equity raise.
“We didn’t need a hugely significant amount to grow,” Justin says.
“If we could take some international market share, prove out our technologies, and prove we can expand internationally, then when we do our next capital raise, we’ll be giving up less equity.”
For UAMTEC, in particular, being part of the Tractor community has come with an added bonus.
Tractor-funded companies can access up to $100,000 in AWS credits. For a company that spends $10,000 a month on AWS, that’s significant.
The credits have allowed Shawn to upgrade his AI servers — something that’s allowed even more room to grow.
“We get to push more data and do more training, which accelerates us a little more than we would have otherwise been able to afford.”
What’s next for UAM TEC?
The commercial future for UAMTEC is in its software, Justin says, and the many potential applications of high-quality, AI-powered video analysis.
But Shawn’s vocation will always be in research.
As Justin says: “This is a vehicle to give Shawn the funding and the time to realise his dreams.”
Shawn wants to see UAMTEC become a massive player in the market, “so I can take my R&D team offline from that commercial aspect, and we can innovate more things that are needed”, he says.
“We can keep improving our quality of life, our infrastructure, and our assets, worldwide.”
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