Top of Mind with Brad Porter
He built Amazon’s robot army. Then walked away. Why? To build something bigger. Top of Mind is a weekly 2–5 minute audio drop from Brad Porter—former Amazon VP of Robotics, Scale AI CTO, and now founder of Cobot. Each short episode delivers raw, unfiltered insights on leadership, automation, and the chaos of building at the edge of physical AI. From warehouse floors to the frontier of machine intelligence, this is what it sounds like when a Silicon Valley leader thinks out loud.
Episodes
24 episodes
Bonus: Lesson on Metrics
Last in my series from upstate New York. Here I share a lesson I learned at age 5 about how metrics can motivate us.
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3:10
Ambitious Culture
We don’t always talk about the importance of having an ambitious culture. Ambitious cultures can be tricky to manage. Ambitious people have ambitious expectations. They push you, they challenge you. But ambitious people in ambitious cultures ca...
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4:15
Money, Risks, and Startups
This week I follow up from last week’s post to go deeper into my philosophy on personal finances.
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7:48
Talent
In this Top of Mind, I'm talking about talent and why it’s critical to our companies, but also our country.(Recorded in June, 2025)
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4:13
Lessons From My Father
I share lessons from my father that shaped how I think about leadership and physical AI.(Recorded on Father’s Day - 6/15/2025)
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5:42
Gliding Into Product Market Fit
I talk about finding thermal bubbles that can help you glide into product market fit. (Recorded in June, 2025)
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3:05
China Robotics and Managing Blind Spots
This week, I talk about China robotics and mechanisms for managing blind spots
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Episode 16
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7:39
The Value of Compounding
Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, MIT Athena, Netscape, Tellme, Amazon Robotics, Cobot… I cover it all in under 4 minutes. (Recorded in May, 2025)
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Episode 15
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4:06
Scaling Robotics Foundational Model
I share some insights into how we think about solving the headwinds to building a foundation model for physical AI, share a bit about the value of getting into the field and building great partnerships, and just the value of connecting in pe...
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Episode 14
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3:15
Humanoids, Cobots, and My Grandfather's Lesson on Success
In this Top of Mind, I talk about humanoids vs cobots, and share a powerful insight on success that I learned from my grandfather. (Recorded in May, 2025)
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Episode 13
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6:36
A Robotically-Enabled Abundant Future
Today's "Top of Mind" discusses our abundant future. This is a topic Vinod Khosla spoke about that I've also been thinking about a lot. In ...
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Episode 12
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6:40
Tyranny of the 50/50 Decision
I think a lot about decision velocity, particularly how do we make high quality decisions quickly? One of the traps I see I call "the 50/50 decision". The 50/50 decision is a decision between two nearly identical options. The challenge when ...
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Episode 11
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1:58
How to Land a Robotics Internship (or Career)
I share some tips on "How to Land a Great Robotics Internship!" and building your resume to differentiate. Simulation experience is in demand. Highlight the tools you've used. NVIDIA Omniverse IsaacSim skills are part...
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Episode 10
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6:04
U.S. Robotics Imperative
This week I talk about the imperative that the US be great at building drones and the criticality of robotics to that mission.
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Episode 9
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5:14
Self-Play in Foundational Models
In this Top of Mind, I talk about the value of self-play in approaching novel problems and robotics foundational models.
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Episode 8
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6:08
Leadership Lesson From Jensen Huang
I share a leadership story that I learned from Jensen Huang during a private forum.
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Episode 7
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3:08
Lesson From A Nobel Laureate
I share a bit of a Cobot update and a leadership insight I learned as a freshman at MIT from the late Dr Henry Kendall, Nobel Prize Winner for discovery of the Quark.
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Episode 6
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6:30
Is China ahead in AI and robotics?
In this Top of Mind, I talk about China's AI and robotics capability and what it means for the U.S..
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Episode 5
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5:44
Upgrading My Feet
I share thoughts on upgrading … your shoes, your feet, technology, etc.
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Episode 4
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4:48
Humanoids
In this week's top-of-mind, I talk about humanoid robots. Everything from the type of work they might or might not do, what our robotically-rich future might look like, and why I think we're seeing a surge of activity here now.
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Episode 3
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8:17