Driving from the flats of Beverly Hills up into the hills themselves feels like I’m entering into a different world. Here the picturesque, tree-line streets filled with beautiful homes give way to narrow, winding roads that snake their way to the tops of hillsides. In these hills, each home looks like an architectural marvel, delicately perched at the very edge of a steep slope, with expansive views of Los Angeles.

It was in one of these homes where I met with key members of the Snap marketing team to preview Snap's latest efforts to build AR glasses, the 5th generation Spectacles.

In this episode, I share my impressions of the device and my perspective on its place in the larger narrative of AR Glasses.

To help set the stage, I had a chance to catch up with Sophia Dominguez, the Director of the AR Platform, at Snap. 

Prior to her four and a half years at Snap, Sophia started the widely followed “All Things VR” newsletter and joined Rothenberg Ventures as an Entrepreneur in Residence before co-founding her first company, SVRF. There she created the first API and SDKs for searching and rendering 3D face filters. They powered over 280M AR experiences, and she successfully sold the company to Poplar before joining Snap.

Sophia began her career by attending NYU with a focus on how technology impacts human interaction. She then organized one of the world’s first wearable technology conferences, before working in product and operations for a startup focused on visual messaging.

You may remember Sophia from my interview with her published in the summer of 2023. Check out that two-part episode for her wonderful backstory and broader perspective on the market.

Here we keep things very focused on the 5th generation Snap Spectacles.

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Callout: Developers in the U.S. can join the Spectacles Developer Program for $99 per month with a one year commitment by visiting www.spectacles.com/lens-studio.

I moderated a panel at the recent AWE conference that took place a couple of weeks ago in Long Beach, California. The panel featured Karl Guttag from KGOnTech, Adi Robertson from the Verve, Jeri Ellsworth from Tilt Five, and Ed Tang from Avegant.

The session was titled: Current State and Future Direction of AR Glasses and the session description reads:

A panel of experts will discuss the current and future state of AR spatial computing devices, given the influence of the new Vision Pro world. Has the Vision Pro influenced the XR industry to change the direction of the development of consumer-oriented devices? If so, what should those new directions be, and what limitations are there to implement them? The discussion will center upon examining the technical development of spatial computing with light weight glasses and the roles that they should now have.

You can find a video version of the session on the AWE Youtube channel, but presented here is an audio version I cleaned up a bit.

You can also find the show notes at thearshow.com.

Links From The Episode

- Panelist: Jeri Ellsworth of Tilt Five

- Panelist: Adi Robertson of The Verge

- Panelist: Karl Guttag of KGOnTech

- Panelist: Ed Tang of Avegant

- Breakdown: Karl outlined the panel discussion and added extra detail in a blog post.

- Video: AWE PANEL: Current State and Future Direction of AR Glasses

Kirin Sinha is the co-founder and CEO of Illumix, a company building the digital infrastructure for real world venues.

You may be familiar with Illumix if you’re a fan of the horror franchise, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the mobile game, Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery. While the game found a tremendous amount of success, the company has shifted its focus to enterprise customers and raised $18M in Series A financing in early 2023.

Prior to founding Illumix, Kirin was the founder and Executive Director of Shine for Girls, whose mission is to transform the lives of middle school girls by cultivating a passion for mathematics through a program that incorporates both math and dance.

Kirin has a BS in Theoretical Math and Computer Science from MIT as well as three Masters degrees spanning mathematics, machine learning, and business from Cambridge, The London School of Economics, and Stanford.

Kirin and her team have been on this journey for over six years now. Kirin originally joined the podcast back in early 2021. In our most recent conversation, she shares how the company’s focus has evolved to working with major venues and brands, such as theme parks or sports stadiums, to provide the digital infrastructure for guest experiences.

We go on to talk about:
- the evolution of the company as they went through the Disney Accelerator in 2021,
- how they are working with major venues and expanding consumer experiences,
- the underlying cultural and technology shifts that are helping to drive success,
- the fundraising journey,
- confidence - how to build it and how to lose it, and
- setting the right mindset to thrive during the fundraising process.

Links From The Episode

- Article: [Kirin Sinha’s Illumix AR Tech Could Be A Fashion Game Changer With New Round Of Investment](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccasuhrawardi/2023/03/20/kirin-sinhas-illumix-ar-tech-could-be-a-fashion-game-changer-with-new-round-of-investment/?sh=3a2f30fd1aea) by Rebecca Suhrawardi for Forbes

- Article: [Kirin Sinha Is Leading the AR Charge With Illumix](https://foundr.com/articles/building-a-business/kirin-sinha) by Luke Ferris for Foundr

- Article: [Mark Cuban just broke one of his own investment rules]() by Eleanor Pringle for Fortune

- Video: [Mixing the Digital and Real Worlds at Disney’s Parks](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-12-16/mixing-the-digital-and-real-worlds-at-disney-s-parks-video) by Bloomberg Technology

- Article: [Disney Accelerator Showcases Eight Companies at 2021 Demo Day](https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-accelerator-showcases-eight-companies-at-2021-demo-day/)

- Book: [Mythos – Book 1 of 3: Stephen Fry's Greek Myths](https://amzn.to/47rvxkX) by Stephen Fry. The hardcover is excellent. Also highly recommended as an audiobook.

- Book: [The Alchemist](https://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-Coelho/dp/0062315005/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Q2FE3UVMGHXA&keywords=the+alchemist+by+paulo+coelho&qid=1700519903&s=books&sprefix=the+alchemist+by+paulo+coelho%2Cstripbooks%2C163&sr=1-1) by Paulo Coelho

- Other handles: [Kirin](https://www.instagram.com/kirinsinha/) and [Illumix](https://www.instagram.com/illumixofficial/) on Instagram

- [Episode Transcript](https://otter.ai/u/n6nwMYUeDVj14fvVzARjz-acOnI)

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Evan Rose is the founder and president of Rose Digital, a company specializing in using augmented reality to help brands engage and delight their customers. Beyond that, Rose Digital serves as an innovation partner for its clients.

On the side, Evan is the founder of AR Post, one of the leading news sources for AR and VR. He’s also the co-founder and board president of The Steve Fund, which is the nation’s first organization focused on supporting the mental health and emotional well-being of college students of color.

Prior to Rose Digital, Evan worked in finance at hedge funds and investment banks before pursuing his desire to create, and learning how to code. Evan showed his entrepreneurial drive early in life and then went on to attend Harvard to study anthropology.

In this conversation, Evan describes his desire and early efforts to create and add value to the world. He goes on to describe:

- how Rose Digital got started,

- examples of how they are operating at the cutting edge of AR/VR and machine learning,

- being the "Woz" to the client's Jobs-like vision,

- whether clients/users know what they want,

- potential implications and impact of the Apple Vision Pro device,

- advice for startup founders borne from the experience of working with major brands, and

- the challenges of being one of the fastest growing companies (as recognized by INC for the last four years).

Links From The Episode

- Site: AR Post – source for the latest news, reviews and opinions on augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality technologies.

- Article: [ROSE Partners With Premier League for AR Experience Celebrating Summer Series](https://arpost.co/2023/07/12/rose-premier-league-ar-experience/) by Jon Jaehnig for AR Post

- Case Study: [Bloomingdale's celebrates 150 Years with AR Catalog](https://www.8thwall.com/customer-work/bloomingdales)

- Article: [Mastercard Launch Priceless Platform with Partners ROSE](https://www.xrtoday.com/augmented-reality/mastercard-launch-priceless-platform-with-partners-rose/) by XR Today

- Article: [ROSE and Mastercard Augment the Miami Design District in a New Immersive Experience](https://arpost.co/2023/01/11/rose-mastercard-miami-immersive-experience/) by Jon Jaehnig for AR Post

- Article: [FT ranking: The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2022](https://www.ft.com/content/6ee8f978-a2e0-4644-b7c7-0718a334adb7) and [INC profile](https://www.inc.com/profile/rose-digital)

- Book: [Daemon](https://amzn.to/3FHr7Ko) by Daniel Suarez

- Book: [Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears](https://amzn.to/3QIiHsQ) by William Hertling

- [Episode Transcript](https://otter.ai/u/sV_2KIrnG9Z8SASF4eTMMgA53zw)

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Ross Finman is the CEO of Augmodo, a company utilizing AI and AR to revolutionize grocery store experiences and economics starting with the personal shoppers who fulfill online grocery purchases.

Previously Ross spent 4 ½ years at Niantic. There he founded the AR mapping and Visual Positioning System (VPS) effort before becoming the AR Strategy Lead and then the general manager for the AR Headset group.

He joined Niantic through the acquisition of his first startup, Escher Reality, which became the foundation for Niantic’s AR Platform, now called Lightship.

He started Escher Reality as he was finishing his Ph.D. in Robotics from MIT, after previously completing his undergrad in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon.

In this conversation, the second of two parts, Ross digs into his current startup, Augmodo.

We discuss:

- the problem they are solving,
- the importance and approach to customer discovery,
- how AR and AI work together to form a solution,
- why now is the right timing and this the right opportunity, and
- some recent progress and announcements.

Ross goes on to share additional lessons learned and advice for deep tech startup founders.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Links From The Episode

- Article: [Innovating Category Management – Groceryshop 2023](https://retailwire.com/blog/innovating-category-management-groceryshop-2023/) by Georges Mirza for RetailWire

- Article: [Pokémon GO creator Niantic buys Escher Reality AR startup](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/01/niantic-buy-escher-reality-ar-startup/) by Lucas Matney for TechCrunch…and related [Niantic blog post](https://nianticlabs.com/news/escherreality).

- Article: [BMW introduces Smartglasses for Motorcycling](https://mixed-news.com/en/bmw-connectedride-smartglasses-announced/) Benjamin Danneberg for Mixed News

- Video: [Star Wars: Jedi Challenges Review - Lenovo Mirage AR Mobile Headset](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-hsJ0xeaT4) by TWiT Tech Podcast Network

- Patent: [Augmented Reality Hat](https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022219603A1/en) by Ross Finman, Michael Miller, and Maryam Sabour

- YouTube Channel: [Perun](https://www.youtube.com/@PerunAU)—an Australian covering the military industrial complex and national military investment strategy.

- [Episode Transcript - Part 1](https://otter.ai/u/5KVmmaOHVjMliriCJLzbsA1Tj8E)

- [Episode Transcript - Part 2](https://otter.ai/u/m50rbDodqw1gwz1NHJgMytTr9vw)

Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Ross Finman is the CEO of Augmodo, a company utilizing AI and AR to revolutionize grocery store experiences and economics starting with the personal shoppers who fulfill online grocery purchases.

Previously Ross spent 4 ½ years at Niantic. There he founded the AR mapping and Visual Positioning System (VPS) effort before becoming the AR Strategy Lead and then the general manager for the AR Headset group.

He joined Niantic through the acquisition of his first startup, Escher Reality, which became the foundation for Niantic’s AR Platform, now called Lightship.

He started Escher Reality as he was finishing his Ph.D. in Robotics from MIT, after previously completing his undergrad in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon.

In this conversation, the first of two parts, Ross describes his perspective on the AR market opportunity. Specifically, we get into his journey at Escher Reality: how it started, a couple of key moments during the company’s early days, the sale process to Niantic, and some lesson learned along the way.

He discusses some reflections on his time at Niantic, including the open mindset they had about developing new hardware. And he shares his current perspective on where AR has the most immediate potential.

We come back in part 2 with a discussion about his current startup, Augmodo.

Links From The Episode

- Article: [Innovating Category Management – Groceryshop 2023](https://retailwire.com/blog/innovating-category-management-groceryshop-2023/) by Georges Mirza for RetailWire

- Article: [Pokémon GO creator Niantic buys Escher Reality AR startup](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/01/niantic-buy-escher-reality-ar-startup/) by Lucas Matney for TechCrunch…and related [Niantic blog post](https://nianticlabs.com/news/escherreality).

- Article: [BMW introduces Smartglasses for Motorcycling](https://mixed-news.com/en/bmw-connectedride-smartglasses-announced/) Benjamin Danneberg for Mixed News

- Video: [Star Wars: Jedi Challenges Review - Lenovo Mirage AR Mobile Headset](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-hsJ0xeaT4) by TWiT Tech Podcast Network

- Patent: [Augmented Reality Hat](https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022219603A1/en) by Ross Finman, Michael Miller, and Maryam Sabour

- YouTube Channel: [Perun](https://www.youtube.com/@PerunAU)—an Australian covering the military industrial complex and national military investment strategy.

- [Episode Transcript](https://otter.ai/u/5KVmmaOHVjMliriCJLzbsA1Tj8E)

Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Replay of an interview originally published in April 2023:

Maryam Sabour is the General Manager and Head of Business for the AR Headsets group at Niantic, where the goal is to enable everyday adventures and real-life social interaction through location-based augmented reality.

Maryam studied law and business at university, going on to earn a Juris Doctorate at McGill University. Early in her career, she was drawn to entrepreneurship, having founded an e-commerce company and a legal clinic for startups.

Maryam was drawn into the world of VR, where she spent several years working as a founder or consultant across several projects, before taking on the role of the business development lead for Niantic’s then nascent Lightship AR platform about 5 years ago.

In this conversation, Maryam shares her path from law to entrepreneurship to Niantic, and explains why Niantic became a hardware innovator.

Maryam goes on to discuss: 

- the tradeoffs and challenges in making a device suitable for outdoor gaming, 

- some lessons learned from early explorations, 

- how the hardware fits into the broader Niantic strategy, 

- and how the company thinks about privacy.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Replay of an interview originally published in September 2022:

Today’s conversation is a continuation of my discussion with Matt Miesnieks about LivingCities. Joining us for part 2 are co-founders John Gaeta and Dennis Crowley.

John won an Oscar for his visual effects work on The Matrix movies, and after many additional creative and visual effects projects, including Speed Racer, he went on to co-found ILMxLAB as part of Lucusfilm. He then served as the SVP of Creative Strategy at Magic Leap before returning to work on the latest installment of The Matrix franchise.

Dennis Crowley was the co-founder and CEO of location intelligence apps, Dodgeball and Foursquare. Both companies focused on using mobile phones to connect people to each other in the real world. Dodgeball was sold to Google in 2005 and Foursquare is still thriving today as a location intelligence provider.

John and Dennis have joined Matt at LivingCities to explore new ways of blending the virtual and real worlds. But as Matt explains, they are not making a game; the bigger opportunity is in social engagement and communication.

They go on to discuss the hard problems they are excited to solve and provide some hints at new forms of social expression in a 3D spatial environment. They discuss the tradeoffs of different technology choices as well as their ambitions, and what they want to do differently or better compared to their previous entrepreneurial experiences.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com, and become a patron at patreon.com/theARshow.

Replay of an interview originally published in September 2022:

Matt Miesnieks is currently the CEO and co-founder of LivingCities, a company reimagining social engagement in the era of the Metaverse. Many of you know Matt as a serial entrepreneur and former investor focused on Augmented Reality. Matt was previously the CEO and co-founder of 6D.ai, a company that built tools to help mobile phones understand the real world and enable compelling AR experiences. Niantic acquired 6D in 2020.

Matt started his career in a number of engineering and business roles, before shifting his focus to Augmented Reality more than 12 years ago. Matt was head of customer development at Layar - an early consumer AR company. He founded Dekko, the first mobile mixed reality platform for iOS. Matt worked at Samsung as a director of product development in AR & VR. And he was a founding partner at Super Ventures—an early stage investor in AR & VR—before founding 6D.ai.

In this, the first of a two-part conversation, Matt shares the evolution of his perspective on AR and creating successful startups after 6d.ai’s sale to Niantic. He talks about the foundational observations and ingredients for creating something special with LivingCities. Part of that is finding a unique approach to tying the real world to the virtual.

Matt goes on to describe key technology trends, his thoughts on market timing for LivingCities, and gives some hints on what social engagement might look like in the future of blended reality.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com, and become a patron at patreon.com/theARshow.

acine Achiakh is the co-founder and CEO of Wisear, a company creating neural interface devices for AR glasses and other wearables.

They are packing their technology into normal-looking earphones and working to deliver the capabilities of the mouse and keyboard, hands free.

Earlier in his career, Yacine studied mathematics and business before joining Criteo, a fast-growing tech unicorn in France. There he led AI-driven products focused on advertising technology. It was also there he met his co-founder, Alain Sirois, who has a background in neurotechnology.

You will find Yacine on stage at AWE EU in Vienna in October 2023.

David Fattal is the founder and CTO of Leia, a company dedicated to revolutionizing visual experiences through light field display technologies. Lightfield displays are able to create 3D images without glasses. You might remember Leia for its work on the LumePad tablets and the Hydrogen One Smartphone from Red.

David is a quantum physicist who got his Ph.D. from Stanford with a focus on Quantum Computing and Quantum Communications. His research experience led him to HP Labs, which was at the forefront of Quantum Information Processing. He co-authored numerous scientific papers at both institutions.

A moment of serendipity while at HP Labs led to the creation of Leia. David spun the company out of HP in 2014 and has been the chief innovator since.

In this conversation, David makes the case for why every screen should be capable of 3D. He goes on to discuss:
- the basics of quantum computing,
- how his pursuits in quantum computing led to new type of display technology,
- what are light fields, why consumer should care and early use cases,
- the challenges of bringing light fields to mobile devices and lessons learned from working with Red cameras in building a mobile phone,
- and their go-to-market strategy.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Sophia Dominguez is the Director of AR Platform Partnerships and Ecosystem at Snap, where she’s been the last three years.

Previously, she started the widely followed “All Things VR” newsletter and joined Rothenberg Ventures as an Entrepreneur in Residence before co-founding her first company, SVRF. There she created the first API and SDKs for searching and rendering 3D face filters. They powered over 280M AR experiences, and Sophia successfully sold the company to Poplar before joining Snap.

Sophia began her career by attending NYU with a focus on how technology impacts human interaction. She then organized one of the world’s first wearable technology conferences, before working in product and operations for a startup focused on visual messaging.

In this, the second of our two-part conversation, Sophia talks more about utility and the role technology should overtly play in our lives.

We go on to talk about about:
- Snap’s wearables strategy as well as the hopes and recognized gaps,
- expected benefits of being laser focused on AR rather than also working on VR or MR,
- Snap’s perspective on privacy, and
- how recent advancements in AI fit into AR.

As an added bonus in this episode, we hear from two Snap partners:
- Yusuf Omar, co-founder of SEEN, and
- Michael Nicoll, founder and Creative Director at BLNK Digital

I had a chance to briefly chat with them both at the recent Snap Partner Summit, and we’ll start the episode there.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Paul Travers is the Founder and CEO of Vuzix, a pioneer in wearable computing, augmented reality, waveguide optics, and display engines. 

Prior to Vuzix, Paul was an engineer at Eastman Kodak, innovating the future of digital cameras. He went on to become a serial entrepreneur, having started multiple hardware technology companies, including in sound cards for PCs and USB connectivity products.

Vuzix was formed more than 25 years ago, and through it, Paul has seen spatial computing technology evolve from the early days of VR in the mid-1990s to the highly capable AR smartglasses of today. 

In this conversation, Paul highlights the potential of their new OEM platform technologies, as embodied in the recent Z100 developer edition glasses. As Paul describes, these glasses utilize Vuzix’s own light engine and waveguide optics, and they are designed for all-day wear.

We go on to discuss:

- Vuzix Z100 Smartglasses reference design,
- consumer and enterprise applications and use cases, including captioning and language translation,
- AI Integration,
- the new OEM strategy and some strategic partnerships,
- recent advances in optics, 
managing the stress and challenge of running a public company, and
- advice for entrepreneurs.

The conversation starts with the recent solar eclipse.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Links From The Episode

- Article: [Vuzix Ultralight Innovation Award at CES](https://www.ces.tech/innovation-awards/honorees/2024/honorees/v/vuzix-ultralite-s.aspx)

- Press Release: [Vuzix Z100 Introduction](https://ir.vuzix.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/2060/vuzix-introduces-z100-smart-glasses-to-seamlessly-connect)

- Article: [Vuzix Shield: Revolutionary Smart Glasses Promising Safety And Game-Changing Technology](https://www.ibtimes.com/vuzix-shield-revolutionary-smart-glasses-promising-safety-game-changing-technology-3417126) By Nica Osorio for International Business Times

- Press Release: [Vuzix Enters into a Partnership Agreement with Quanta Computer](https://www.vuzix.com/blogs/press-releases/vuzix-enters-into-a-partnership-agreement-with-quanta-computer)

- Press Release: [Vuzix Acquires SAP Software Solution Provider Moviynt](https://www.vuzix.com/blogs/press-releases/vuzix-acquires-sap-software-solution-provider-moviynt%E2%84%A2)

- Product Page: [Vuzix Ultralite](https://www.vuzix.com/pages/vuzix-ultralite)

- Product Page: [Vuzix Shield](https://www.vuzix.com/pages/vuzix-shield)

- Book: [13 Things that Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time](https://amzn.to/4dTh0Cn) by Michael Brooks

Sophia Dominguez is the Director of AR Platform Partnerships and Ecosystem at Snap, where she’s been the last three years.

Previously, she started the widely followed “All Things VR” newsletter and joined Rothenberg Ventures as an Entrepreneur in Residence before co-founding her first company, SVRF. There she created the first API and SDKs for searching and rendering 3D face filters. They powered over 280M AR experiences, and Sophia successfully sold the company to Poplar before joining Snap.

Sophia began her career by attending NYU with a focus on how technology impacts human interaction. She then organized one of the world’s first wearable technology conferences, before working in product and operations for a startup focused on visual messaging.

In this, the first of a two-part conversation, Sophia shares a number of insights, including:
- her unique and early perspective on head-worn AR,
- the pivot she took at her VR platform startup,
- how Snap sees the evolution of AR in wearables,
- some of the numbers around AR usage at Snap,
- the evolution of the partner program, and
- the core pillars of Snap's AR platform focus including the recent addition of shopping and commerce.

Sophia describes how Snap has set a path to become the comprehensive developer platform of choice in AR.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Jeri Ellsworth is the co-founder and CEO of Tilt Five, a company that has created AR glasses that bring tabletop, multiplayer games to life.

Prior to Tilt Five, Jeri was the founder of CastAR, which was also making an augmented reality hardware and software platform, and one that had raised $15 million in venture funding before shutting down in 2017.

Previously Jeri was a race car driver, computer shop owner, and toy industry veteran. She was also recruited to Valve to lead the hardware R&D team with a mandate to research novel user interactions and bring the entire family together in the living room. She contributed to the early development for Valve VR (which became the HTC VIVE), the Steam Box, and the Steam Controller. It’s also where the story of Tilt Five originates.

In this conversation, the second of two parts, Jeri shares her fundraising journey and offers some practical advice. She offers an honest look at early product feedback and discusses what users really care about. <quote>

Jeri goes on to share a deep reflection on mentorship, including important mentors in her life and how best to find and utilize your own. We also touch on AI for creators and game players, and given this was recorded before Apple’s announcement about the Vision Pro headset, she shares her expectations for the device and its impact on Tilt Five.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Jeri Ellsworth is the co-founder and CEO of Tilt Five, a company that has created AR glasses that bring tabletop, multiplayer games to life.

Prior to Tilt Five, Jeri was the founder of CastAR, which was also making an augmented reality hardware and software platform, and one that had raised $15 million in venture funding before shutting down in 2017.

Previously Jeri was a race car driver, computer shop owner, and toy industry veteran. She was also recruited to Valve to lead the hardware R&D team with a mandate to research novel user interactions and bring the entire family together in the living room. She contributed to the early development for Valve VR (which became the HTC VIVE), the Steam Box, and the Steam Controller. It’s also where the story of Tilt Five originates.

I last chatted with Jeri as she was wrapping up a Kickstarter campaign for Tilt Five, just prior to COVID.

In this conversation, the first of two parts, we rewind the story back to its origins at Valve and the early decisions about what to do with their technical innovations. We continue the story through the trials and tribulations of an underfunded hardware company fighting to survive, and Jeri brings us to the present day, sharing many insights along the way.

Jeri describes how she and her team have found a solution to a difficult set of problems for AR glasses, and now Tilt Five is generally available and establishing a niche that combines the best of board games and video games.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Karl Guttag, is an industry analyst, speaker and the author of KGOnTech, a technology blog at kguttag.com.

Karl has 40 years of experience in Graphics and Image Processors, Digital Signal Processing, and memory architecture, as well as micro displays, for use in Heads Up Displays and AR glasses. 

He’s received 150 patents related to these technologies and many billions of dollars of revenue attributed to those inventions. Karl spent nearly 20 years at Texas Instruments, and was named a TI Fellow—the youngest in the company’s history. In the 25 years since, he’s been a CTO at three micro display system startups, in two of which he was also a co-founder.

He was also recently the Chief Science Officer at Ravn, a company developing a hardware and software platform to deliver mission-critical intelligence to military and first responders.

In the second part of my conversation with Karl, we talk about:

- the current state of µLED tech, 

- challenges with AR displays and optics, 

- diffractive vs reflective waveguides, 

- the unique opportunity for Lumus, 

- history/comparable of DLP and LCOS to today's pursuit of µLED and AR glasses, 

- importance of "hands free" and implications on device input, 

- if or when AR glasses will replace a smartphone, 

- which technologies will win in the mid and long term.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Karl Guttag, is an industry analyst, speaker and the author of KGOnTech, a technology blog at kguttag.com.

Karl has 40 years of experience in Graphics and Image Processors, Digital Signal Processing, and memory architecture, as well as micro displays, for use in Heads Up Displays and AR glasses. 

He’s received 150 patents related to these technologies and many billions of dollars of revenue attributed to those inventions. Karl spent nearly 20 years at Texas Instruments, and was named a TI Fellow—the youngest in the company’s history. In the 25 years since, he’s been a CTO at three micro display system startups, in two of which he was also a co-founder.

He was also recently the Chief Science Officer at Ravn, a company developing a hardware and software platform to deliver mission-critical intelligence to military and first responders.

Like my previous interviews with Karl, this was a long and wide ranging conversation that I split into multiple parts. In this first part, we touch on:

- rise and fall of high-end digital photography, 

- silicon-based camera sensors, 

- challenges of unique manufacturing processes have with volume and price, 

- the downsides of the smartphone supply chain, 

- rumors about Apple's efforts in VR and AR, 

- the size of the VR market, 

- the military and enterprise opportunity for AR, 

- "four-corner markets" and how they apply to VR & AR, and

- the benefits and risks of video-passthrough VR.

Part 2 will continue with a deeper dive into µLED display and popular optics technologies.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Maryam Sabour is the General Manager and Head of Business for the AR Headsets group at Niantic, where the goal is to enable everyday adventures and real-life social interaction through location-based augmented reality.

Maryam studied law and business at university, going on to earn a Juris Doctorate at McGill University. Early in her career, she was drawn to entrepreneurship, having founded an e-commerce company and a legal clinic for startups.

Maryam was drawn into the world of VR, where she spent several years working as a founder or consultant across several projects, before taking on the role of the business development lead for Niantic’s then nascent Lightship AR platform about 5 years ago.

In this conversation, Maryam shares her path from law to entrepreneurship to Niantic, and explains why Niantic became a hardware innovator.

Maryam goes on to discuss: 

- the tradeoffs and challenges in making a device suitable for outdoor gaming, 

- some lessons learned from early explorations, 

- how the hardware fits into the broader Niantic strategy, 

- and how the company thinks about privacy.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Ohto Pentikäinen and Jamin Hu are the co-founders of Doublepoint, a company creating human-computer interaction technologies which are initially focused on detecting the moment of touching an object.

Ohto is a serial entrepreneur having been a co-founder and CEO twice by the age of 20 before co-founding Doublepoint. His earliest venture was reimagining the high school learning experience by creating a platform for multidisciplinary, self-directed learning.

Jamin has a passion for music and earned a degree in Classical Piano Performance before expanding his focus to pursue a masters degree in biomedical engineering.

In this conversation, Ohto and Jamin share how they crafted a unique high school curriculum to train entrepreneurs, what's missing in AR and other gesture sensing tech, and how mixing piano with bio engineering results in a new type of touch sensing technology.

They go on to share their vision for the company and their approach to getting there.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Stan Larroque is the CEO and co-founder of Lynx, a company creating the first all-in-one mixed reality headset. The Lynx R1 offers a unique VR device with good video-passthrough of the real world to create mixed reality experiences.

Stan was inspired by the early Oculus device, the DK2, but wanted a better connection to the real world. As he finished his university education, he embarked on the journey to establish the leading European mixed reality hardware technology company. Along the way, he’s received support from industry founders and insiders including Oculus founder, Palmer Luckey, and optics expert, Bernard Kress, of Microsoft and Google.

In this conversation, Stan shares how his passion, a great team, and a few mentors have helped shape the company into Europe’s leading mixed reality hardware company.

Stan starts by laying the foundation for why he believes the Lynx approach to video passthrough is the right path for the market.

Stan goes on to touch on:

- the retention issue for VR devices,

- why the fully-featured AR headsets such as Hololens will cease to exist,

- his approach to establishing a contender to compete against Meta,

- Lynx’s approach to privacy, and

- the opportunity and imperative of being based in Europe.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

David Jiang is the CEO and founder of VITURE, a company creating a smartglasses solution for video gaming and streaming content.

After studying human computer interaction and industrial design at university in China, David continued his studies into human computer interaction at Harvard, where he fell in love with the Boston Celtics basketball team.

David joined Google in the early years of their work on Google Glass and went on to become the Chief Designer and Head of AR for AI company, Rokid. David then became CEO of Meteorolite, where he pushed the boundaries of AR positioning technology and designed a number of AR experiences for retail and theme parks, before setting out on his own with VITURE.

In this conversation, David shares some of the challenges of human computer interaction design, and he describes the early rationale for Google to make Google Glass. He goes on to explain where they missed the mark and the lessons he learned from that experience. He describes how he continued to refine his understanding through his enterprise-focused work at Rokid and the B2B2C-focused work at Meteorolite.

He summarizes four factors affecting consumer adoption and applies them to AR glasses and his work at VITURE. There we get into the core use case, some product details, his successful customer engagement Kickstarter, and how he recruited NBA player Gordon Hayward to endorse the product.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Cayden Pierce describes himself as a transhumanist hacker working to enhance our intelligence using AI, smartglasses, and eventually, neurotech.

Cayden posts regularly about the current state of smartglasses and is actively developing open source smartglasses hardware and middleware solutions. To support those efforts and to facilitate insights between end users and smartglass makers, he recently started the H2O Smartglasses community.

Cayden is also working on a contextual search engine at Emex Labs to help deliver meaningful utility to the smartglasses of the future.

In this conversation, we dive deep into potential use cases, current smartglasses hardware, and the potential of contextual search engines. Cayden goes on to describe his open source hardware solution as well as the thinking and work behind a middleware solution he calls the wearable intelligence system.

Cayden has developed a broad and deep understanding of the coming age of smartglasses, and I think you’ll really enjoy the conversation.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

L.Michelle Salvant has been wearing smart glasses daily for years, harnessing their potential to enhance personal therapy, healing, and self-discovery. Her engagement with wearable technology began as a Google Glass Explorer, which sparked her interest in documenting and reflecting on life’s moments through what she developed as “Immersive Journaling”. This approach has not only transformed her personal experiences but also encouraged others to explore their own stories in profound new ways.

Following her passion for technology and storytelling, L.Michelle founded LMichelleMedia. The company focuses on utilizing emerging technologies like AR and VR to support educational and nonprofit projects, integrating innovative media to foster personal development and community engagement. With her company, she continues to push the boundaries of how technology can be used to enhance understanding and growth within communities, always prioritizing ethical use and privacy in development and application.

In this episode, L.Michelle shares her personal journey from experimenting with Google Glass for content creation to developing a new use case for smart glasses: “Immersive Journaling”. She recounts the pivotal moment when using video from point-of-view smartglasses for therapy and healing. While reviewing footage of her son, she abruptly came to a deeper understanding of herself and her interactions, marking the beginning of her immersive journaling journey.

L.Michelle discusses the evolution of her practice into a therapeutic tool, not just for personal reflection, but also as a means to foster self-awareness and growth in others. She highlights the impact of immersive journaling on students participating in her cohorts, revealing how this unique form of journaling has led to significant personal revelations and changes in their lives.

L.Michelle shares her aspirations for immersive journaling to become a widely recognized and utilized tool for personal development, emphasizing the importance of transparency, ethical use, and the transformative potential of viewing life through one's own eyes.

Links from the Episode:

- Google Glass - Early smart glasses by Google - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass
- Flip Video “FlipCam” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Video
- Snapchat Spectacles - Smart glasses by Snap - https://www.spectacles.com/
- Florida A&M University - LMichelle's alma mater and a client for virtual tours - https://www.famu.edu/
- Meta Horizon Worlds - A virtual reality space by Meta - https://horizon.meta.com/
- Vuzix Blade Smart Glasses - AR glasses - https://www.vuzix.com/products/vuzix-blade-smart-glasses-upgraded
- Humane Ai Pin – AI wearable - https://humane.com/aipin

Ari Grobman is the CEO of Lumus, a company developing a novel optics solution for AR glasses. 

Before going any further, let me provide a little perspective up front: When I consider the biggest hurdles to delivering consumer-grade AR, optics and displays are at the top of the list. The display and the combiner optics are two separate, but intimately connected, engineering challenges. Lumus sells an “optical engine” that includes a microdisplay from a third party, but their real magic is in the combiner optics, the part that directs the light from the display system into our eyes and combines it with light from the real world.

Lumus has taken a different technical approach than most waveguide combiner optic companies. Rather than use the principles of diffraction to bend the light into and out of the lens, Lumus uses the principles of reflection—effectively partial mirrors—to get the light into and then out of the lens. Proponents of the diffractive approach cite that the manufacturing process is relatively easier and cheaper, and the performance of the lens is good enough with a very thin formfactor. Lumus argues its solution provides better performance with a manufacturing process that is good enough to be reasonably priced for consumer-grade glasses as the market scales.

Back to Ari…. Ari spent most of the early part of his career in sales, including 10 years as the VP of Sales and Business Development at Lumus before being promoted to CEO about 6 years ago. Ari has led his team through multiple successful customer engagements, advancements in R&D, and continued success in military and enterprise sales. In fact, Lumus technology is used by spinal surgeons across the US as well as fighter pilots flying A10 and F16 aircraft.

In this conversation, Ari discusses what he’s seeing generally across their various customer engagements, including some of the product strategy, potential early use cases, and the timing of new market entries. As a way to help frame some of the discussion, Ari describes some of the similarities and differences between components for smartphones and smartglasses. 

Ari goes on to discuss recent advancements the company has made in both the waveguide technology—namely delivering a bigger virtual image from a smaller display by expanding the image in two dimensions within the lens—as well as progress in improving the manufacturability of the lenses. Ari also describes how Lumus sets themselves apart from the competition in enabling both enterprise and consumer-grade smartglasses.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Damir First is the co-founder and CCO of Matterless, a company creating genre-defining experiences in shared augmented reality—emphasis on “shared.”

Early in his career, Damir earned a Master of Arts in both Sociology and Art History before pursuing his Ph.D. in Anthropology. He has been a lecturer for a number of courses spanning design, history, architecture, and art, and he has since worked in blockchain technologies as well as a narrative designer for popular video games.

While a tech entrepreneur and academic, Damir is a D&D dungeon master at heart who thinks deeply about the role of technology within our human experience.

In this conversation, Damir shares his perspective on how AR fits within the spectrum of key enabling technologies, namely, as the next step in human communication.

Damir goes on to share what makes their technology unique, how the approach addresses privacy, the types of experiences they are creating and why, and the power of transformative narratives.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Today I am kicking off 2023 with another annual monologue. I hope you and your family were able to have a safe and relaxing holiday, even in the face of another arctic blast and spate of viral diseases.

This is the sixth such annual kickoff episode, and when looking back at my notes from last year, the big surprise from 2022 was the resounding commitment shown by Meta and others to continued investment in VR & AR technologies, despite heavy financial losses and Wall Street pressure. That commitment is necessary to see our industry through its slow progress for AR technology, and its still nascent growing pains.

I’m going to share my take on some of the highlights of 2022 and what we might see in 2023 as it relates to augmented reality.

Please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/thearshow.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Chen Zhang and Matt Udvari are co-founders of Aquifer, a company that has developed a SaaS platform to enable creators and teams create studio-level animated video without studios.

Matt is a polymath who has persistently pursued education and work experiences across computer science, music, and storytelling. His career has spanned video game design, executive creative director, CTO at a mobile SaaS startup, and filmmaker. Most recently, Matt started Part Time Evil as a story-based technology studio with leading expertise in VR, AR, video games, and mobile.

Chen spent the early part of her career in project management, marketing, and user experience design at major brands, including three years at Frog Design. She then joined Matt at Part Time Evil as COO before co-founding Aquifer as the CEO. Aquifer originated from Matt’s efforts as a filmmaker and Chen’s insight into customer needs.

In this conversation, Chen and Matt describe how they are helping big and small brands leverage the characters they’ve created through high-quality 3D animation, giving them new ways to tell stories across a variety of platforms.

We get into some of the nuances of product management, namely balancing near- and long-term goals, as well as the differences in leading a consultancy vs product-oriented company. We also explore how to ask customers questions about what they really want and need.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

David King Lassman is the founder of GigXR, a global provider of immersive 3D training solutions that transform collaborative learning, with an initial focus on healthcare.

David is a serial entrepreneur who grew up with a passion for music, and has since started 6 companies. His companies have spanned education technology, advertising technology, online content, and social media. He’s also raised an investment fund and operated as a VC.

Now with GigXR, David is reimagining training for healthcare workers using mixed reality devices.

In this conversation, we dig into GigXR, the impact of XR training on healthcare education and how it differs from VR. Dave also shares their strategy for growth and how he views the current investment appetite for XR companies.

David starts with some stories of his musical and entrepreneurial journey and has some sage advice to pass along.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Eric Marcellin-Dibon is the Co-founder and CEO of MicroOLED, and Mark Prince is the General Manager for ENGO product line. MicroOLED is a company that develops high-performance OLED microdisplays for near-to-eye applications. Power efficiency and brightness are two areas where they excel, and the company is bringing that display technology to life through the ENGO Eyewear product line.

Eric studied physics, optics, and electronics in grad school before working on visual systems for defense contractor Thales. He then went on to work at, what is today named Technicolor, but back then was Thomson, on imager technologies and strategic sourcing. The company MicroOLED grew out of the work at Thomson Technicolor.

Mark spent the majority of his career in sales and marketing—initially in the ski industry, and then in technology and connected devices. Recent experiences include Head of Retail for Nokia Health, VP of Consumer Business for Withinings, and CEO of Qardio, a health monitoring technology company. Now he’s the General Manager of the ENGO product line and the Chief Business Officer of MicroOLED.

In this conversation, we discuss how MicroOLED competes against Sony as well as their initial focus for the ENGO product line. More generally, Eric talks about his perspective on what will enable AR glasses to achieve mass adoption.

We go on to discuss the concept of “light AR”, the thinking behind the full-stack platform offered by MicroOLED called ActiveLook, and their go-to-market strategy. We also discuss the types of early use cases that will motivate users to buy.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com, and become a patron at patreon.com/theARshow.

Kyle Jackson is the co-founder and CEO of Talespin, a company making immersive learning a reality for the future of work.

Kyle is a serial entrepreneur who has worked at the intersection of technology and storytelling for over 20 years. After studying interactive multimedia design and then earning an BFA from the School of Cinema-Television at USC, Kyle has persistently been solving the hard problems around creating and distributing digital media at scale.

About 10 years ago, Kyle was digging into the cutting edge of artificial intelligence and the coming age of AR & VR, and thought something was missing.

Kyle believes mixed reality, in combination with AI, can enable us to have higher emotional intelligence and enhanced capabilities to communicate, learn and lead.

In this conversation, we get into Kyle’s entrepreneurial journey and some of the lessons he’s learned along the way. We dig into the origins of Talespin and how he transformed the company from being focused on servicing one-off projects into a product company that raised a $20M Series C round earlier this year. We also discuss the concept of “proof of skill” and the future of skill development for work.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Glenn Snyder is the co-founder and CTO of Red 6, a company that has developed an Augmented Reality solution to allow real pilots flying real aircraft to see simulated threats and other training scenarios. The AR solution works outdoors, in the bright sun and within high speed, dynamic environments.

Glenn has long held a passion for aircraft, technology, and visual effects. After gaining acceptance to the Air Force Academy, he shifted course and attended Savannah College of Art and Design to earn a BFA in Visual Effects. He worked on visual effects as an artist, technical director, and director of pipeline for Hollywood blockbusters before starting his entrepreneurial journey. After working for several years on innovative VR and immersive experiences, he met Daniel Robinson, a fighter pilot who would become the co-founder and CEO of Red 6.

In this conversation, Glenn shares his background in visual effects and some of the inspiring and difficult moments in his career. He also discusses some of the challenges he and his team have overcome in creating their solution at Red 6, and some of the progress and experiences they’ve made so far.

Glenn also shares his hunger for hard problems and belief in the possible, and we start with a story about a fun and slightly crazy early tech demo using VR and remote control of a real car.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com and become a patron at patreon.com/theARshow.

Today’s conversation is a continuation of my discussion with Matt Miesnieks about LivingCities. Joining us for part 2 are co-founders John Gaeta and Dennis Crowley.

John won an Oscar for his visual effects work on The Matrix movies, and after many additional creative and visual effects projects, including Speed Racer, he went on to co-found ILMxLAB as part of Lucusfilm. He then served as the SVP of Creative Strategy at Magic Leap before returning to work on the latest installment of The Matrix franchise.

Dennis Crowley was the co-founder and CEO of location intelligence apps, Dodgeball and Foursquare. Both companies focused on using mobile phones to connect people to each other in the real world. Dodgeball was sold to Google in 2005 and Foursquare is still thriving today as a location intelligence provider.

John and Dennis have joined Matt at LivingCities to explore new ways of blending the virtual and real worlds. But as Matt explains, they are not making a game; the bigger opportunity is in social engagement and communication.

They go on to discuss the hard problems they are excited to solve and provide some hints at new forms of social expression in a 3D spatial environment. They discuss the tradeoffs of different technology choices as well as their ambitions, and what they want to do differently or better compared to their previous entrepreneurial experiences.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com, and become a patron at patreon.com/theARshow.

Matt Miesnieks is currently the CEO and co-founder of LivingCities, a company reimagining social engagement in the era of the Metaverse. Many of you know Matt as a serial entrepreneur and former investor focused on Augmented Reality. Matt was previously the CEO and co-founder of 6D.ai, a company that built tools to help mobile phones understand the real world and enable compelling AR experiences. Niantic acquired 6D in 2020.

Matt started his career in a number of engineering and business roles, before shifting his focus to Augmented Reality more than 12 years ago. Matt was head of customer development at Layar - an early consumer AR company. He founded Dekko, the first mobile mixed reality platform for iOS. Matt worked at Samsung as a director of product development in AR & VR. And he was a founding partner at Super Ventures—an early stage investor in AR & VR—before founding 6D.ai.

In this, the first of a two-part conversation, Matt shares the evolution of his perspective on AR and creating successful startups after 6d.ai’s sale to Niantic. He talks about the foundational observations and ingredients for creating something special with LivingCities. Part of that is finding a unique approach to tying the real world to the virtual.

Matt goes on to describe key technology trends, his thoughts on market timing for LivingCities, and gives some hints on what social engagement might look like in the future of blended reality.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com, and become a patron at patreon.com/theARshow.

Alex Westner is the CEO and co-founder of Xander, a company at the forefront of using augmented reality (AR) technology to create innovative solutions for individuals with hearing loss. Xander's product, live captioning AR smart glasses, allows users to engage in conversations with real-time transcriptions displayed directly in their field of vision. This approach positions Xander to directly address the challenges faced by those with hearing impairments in everyday communication.

Before embarking on his journey with Xander, Alex's career was deeply rooted in the audio industry, where he developed a keen interest in the intersection of sound and technology. His background includes a rich tapestry of experiences, from working on audio plugins and contributing to the development of cutting-edge audio technology to running a band, which he describes as a blend of music and business.

These diverse experiences have equipped Alex with a unique perspective on the power of sound and the potential of technology to transform lives. At Xander, he leverages this expertise to drive innovation and deliver solutions that enhance communication accessibility for people affected by hearing loss.

In this episode, Alex shares his journey from a background in audio to developing the captioning solution that Xander builds today. We explore the challenges of deploying AR glasses to real users, the balance of designing a new type of UI, and the profound impact these glasses are having on their users' lives.

Alex also discusses the future of transcription and translation in AR, sharing insights into how this technology could evolve from speech-to-text transcription to speech-to-text translation. Join us as we uncover the potential of AR to change lives and the passion driving Xander to push the boundaries of what's possible in augmented reality communication.

Links From The Episode

- Company: Vuzix - https://www.vuzix.com/
- App: Otter.ai - https://otter.ai/
- Company: Sierra Entertainment - Space Quest, King's Quest , Leisure Suit Larry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Entertainment
- Company: Orcam - https://www.orcam.com/
- Product: Transcribe Glass - https://www.transcribeglass.com/
- Company: XRAI Glass - https://xrai.glass/
- Company: heARsight - https://hearsight.net/
- Book: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin - https://amzn.to/3Puy9aJ
- Product: Ray-Ban Meta Stories (smart glasses) - https://www.meta.com/smart-glasses/wayfarer-shiny- black-plano-g15-green/
- Product: EssilorLuxottica Nuance (hearing smart glasses) - https://www.essilorluxottica.com/en/2023highlights/nuance-audio/
- Book: Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday - https://amzn.to/4cpITRy
- Podcast: Joel Osteen Podcast - https://www.joelosteen.com/how-to-watch/podcasts

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Mike Wiemer is the CTO and co-founder of Mojo Vision, a company enabling invisible computing with their AR contact lenses. Mike is a brilliant and accomplished technologist who is unafraid of tackling hard problems…and he and his team have solved many on their way to successfully demonstrating their wearable contact lens—working inside somebody’s eye—earlier this summer.

Prior to Mojo Vision, Mike was the co-founder and President of SolarJunction, a company that developed innovative, multi-junction solar cells that set the record for conversion efficiency, twice. Previously, Mike spent 8 years at Stanford, working his way through a Bachelors, Masters, and a Ph.D. with an emphasis on semiconductor physics and optics.

In this conversation, Mike shares some insights from his experience at Solar Junction, and how he came to discover the opportunity for smart contact lenses. He breaks down the set of very hard problems to solve in making these AR contact lenses, and the success Mojo Vision has had in clearing those hurdles, as well as the recent milestone of creating a prototype that people can now wear. 

He talks about the challenges of Mojo Vision specifically and AR more generally. Foremost among those challenges is the solution isn’t about a single technological innovation, but the integration of several integrations into a cohesive system. He goes on to share a broader perspective of the opportunity he sees for smart contact lenses and AR glasses.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com, and become a patron at patreon.com/theARshow.

Dave Haynes is a founding partner at FOV Ventures, an investment firm backing the founders who are building the Metaverse. FOV Ventures is a new fund with a focus on European-based startups at the pre-seed and seed stage.

Dave previously led HTC’s $100 million Vive X fund in EMEA and was part of the investment team at Seedcamp (Fund III). Prior to investing, Dave founded two startups in the music industry and was part of the founding team of SoundCloud.

In this conversation, Dave talks about his front-row seat to the evolution of the digital music industry and the parallels to the current AR/VR ecosystem. He describes his new fund, areas of investment focus, and how they think about current investment market conditions. He also talks about the risk of market timing as it relates to AR: [quote]

Dave goes on to share some advice for pre-seed startups as well as his perspective on the evolution of the market and the risks ahead.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Jonathan Rodriguez Cefalu is the co-founder and CEO of Preamble, a company on a mission to provide ethical guardrails for AI systems by creating an AI-as-a-Service with a focus on ethics and safety. 

Jon earned a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he discovered a passion for the coming age of VR and AR technologies. He went on to co-found Vergence Labs, which had ambitious plans to create the AR glasses of the future. 

Evan Spiegel shared that vision and brought Vergence Labs into Snap as its first acquisition. Jon’s work became the foundation for Spectacles, and he went on to be the Project Lead for the first version of Spectacles and the most recent version with a display.

In this conversation, Jon shares his perspective on the history, hurdles, and future of AR glasses. He also discusses his perspective on the risks and challenges of creating and engaging with AI systems, which among other risks, increases the likelihood of misinformation and manipulation.

He goes on to describe the path he and his team are taking at Preamble to create ethical guardrails for these systems.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Neil Sarkar is the CEO and co-founder of AdHawk Microsystems, a company creating the first camera-free eye tracking solution that offers unprecedented speed, data quality and power efficiency.

Prior to AdHawk, Neil was a co-founder at ICSPI, which develops scanning probe instruments on a CMOS-MEMS technology platform. They are commercializing the world's first Single-Chip Atomic Force Microscope.

Previously Neil attended the University of Waterloo, where he earned a Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

In this conversation, we discuss Micro Electrical Mechanical (or MEMs) technology and its applications. Neil shares his path to founding AdHawk and his experience bringing AdHawk’s innovations to market.

We go on to discuss how AdHawk is trying to positively impact people’s lives, what’s special about their approach, and how you can get your hands on their tech in the near future.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Alon Grinshpoon is the Co-founder and CEO of echo3D, a 3D-ready cloud platform that helps manage & deliver 3D, AR, and VR content to apps & devices everywhere. echo3D recently closed a $4M round of funding to feed continued growth after seeing a tremendous amount of momentum over the past year.

Alon started his career in the Isrealli Intelligence Service, working on encryption and cloud technologies. After earning a B.S. in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University, he spent several years as a software engineer working on improving the performance of cloud-based and client-server computer systems.

Alon went on to receive his M.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University with a focus on computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality, and human-computer interaction.

In this conversation, we discuss how Alon’s background made him a good fit for solving the unique set of challenges for developing an AWS or Akamai for 3D. Alon is a passionate entrepreneur with great advice for early-stage startups, and we talk about his perspective on the concept of founder-market fit. [quote]

Alon goes on to discuss founder-investor fit, and the importance of pragmatically de-risking a startup as you go along. He also shares his funding and growth journey through the RLab and Techstars accelerators, and subsequent rounds of VC funding.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Susan Cummings is the Managing Director of Tiny Rebel Games and a founder of Fictioneers. Susan and her team were awarded a major UK grant for Augmented Reality storytelling, which led to "Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up." This effort was followed by the release this summer of "Wallace & Gromit: Fix Up the City", an ambitious city-scale AR game that takes place in San Francisco, Bristol, and Cardiff.

Including her work at Tiny Rebel, Susan has spent more than 20 years in game development and publishing. She was a key player at the origins of Rockstar games and held vital roles as the VP of Publishing and VP of Business Development at 2K games and parent, Take Two Interactive.

In this conversation, Susan shares insight into the origins of Grand Theft Auto and some other big deals and projects in the early days of console and PC games. She goes on to talk about the challenges in telling compelling stories with AR.

We also talk about some of the lessons learned in making compelling and accessible city-scale AR-based games for mobile and the challenges of “immersion” in see-through AR glasses.

(A quick note of disclosure: I’m an investor in Fantsmo, one of the partners Susan mentions when describing her efforts at Fictioneers.)

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Paul Travers is the Founder and CEO of Vuzix, a leading supplier of Smart Glasses and Augmented Reality technologies and products for the consumer and enterprise markets.

Prior to Vuzix, Paul was an engineer at Eastman Kodak, innovating the future of digital cameras. He went on to become a serial entrepreneur, having started multiple hardware technology companies, including in sound cards for PCs and USB connectivity products.

Vuzix was formed more than 20 years ago, and through it, Paul has seen spatial computing technology evolve from the early days of VR in the mid-1990s to the highly capable AR smart glasses of today.

In this conversation, Paul describes the Vuzix hardware lineup, including the Blade and the M-series. We discuss how they’re being used, where they shine, and what’s special about the upcoming Shield device. The Shield will be one of the first devices with a µLED display, and emphasizes “wearability” over field of view or functionality. [quote]

We go on to discuss why wearability is so important and how much field of view is big enough to satisfy a large number of use cases. We also discuss the importance of µLED technology and how to solve for prescription at scale. Paul also describes how he wants to support OEMs in the consumer market and provides an overview of how Vuzix will invest the 100+ million dollars they have recently raised.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Nils Pihl is the CEO and co-founder of Auki Labs, a company solving the limitations of GPS to accurately position virtual content, particularly for shared experiences. Nils and the team at Auki are building advanced, peer-to-peer positioning protocols and AR cloud infrastructure to enable a new era of spatial computing.

Nils is also the CEO of Matterless Studios, a venture-backed startup creating AI companions and pets made for the augmented reality metaverse.

Prior to founding Auki Labs, Nils was a behavioral engineer who studied Meme Theory and was a practitioner of Memetic Engineering. He’s also a serial entrepreneur bringing forward some key lessons learned into his current endeavors.

In this conversation, Nils shares his perspective on AR as a natural and inevitable extension of human language, arguing that all language is meant to augment and enhance our shared experience of reality.

We go on to discuss Meme Theory, how it applies to AR, and explore Auki Labs’ unique positioning technology. Nils also shares some of the lessons learned from earlier startup experiences.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Tomas Sluka is the CEO and co-founder of CREAL, a Swiss technology startup that developed and commercializes a radically new type of display that brings natural focal depth to a truly 3D visual experience within Augmented Reality.

The inspiration for CREAL originated with the first commercial VR and AR headsets back in 2014. Like many others, Tomas suffered from very strong eye-strain and lack of immersion. He realized that the problem came from nonexistent focal depth in the 3D imagery. Since then, he and his growing team have been working to solve these problems and dramatically improve the visual experience.

Prior to founding CREAL, Tomas worked as a research engineer at CERN’s particle detectors and as a researcher at EPFL on the development of electronic nano-devices. He earned a PhD in Mechatronics, is a co-/author of over 50 scientific publications—multiple in top-ranking journals—as well as 10 patent applications, and is a regular speaker at prestigious conferences.

In this conversation, we talk about the visual discomfort many of us feel, called vergence accommodation conflict, in today’s AR and VR devices. Tomas describes how our eyes work and the difference between natural 3D and the stereo 3D we get in today’s devices.

We discuss light fields, how CREAL is able to achieve them, and the implication on the display technology. We go on to discuss early applications of the technology, the path to lightfield AR glasses, and Tomas’s journey as a founder.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Kai Ströder is the co-founder and CEO of tooz, a company on a mission to develop cost-effective smartglasses for consumers.

Early in his career, Kai was a research fellow at the University of Stuttgart, where he also earned a Ph.D. in Strategic Management. Over the next decade, he worked across various groups at Carl Zeiss, the world’s leading, high-end optics company.

Among other projects, Kai has been responsible for activities in the field of augmented reality and data glasses. In 2018, he transferred the "Carl Zeiss Smart Optics" group, founded in 2015, to the joint venture "tooz technologies" initiated together with Deutsche Telekom. The tooz team, based in Germany, develops technologies and production processes for complete smart glass solutions geared toward the end consumer market.

In this conversation, Kai shares the origin story for tooz within Carl Zeiss, and one key attribute of their approach that sets them apart from many competitors: namely, an uncompromising focus on manufacturability at scale.

We go on to discuss some of the tradeoffs between diffractive waveguides, birdbath optics, and tooz’s curved waveguides. Kai describes some innovative aspects of the design, their target use cases, and their very thoughtful go-to-market plan that focuses on the size of the glasses, affordability, and the ease of purchasing from your optometrist.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Zac Duff is the co-founder and CEO of JigSpace, a company focused on making it simple to create and share 3D instructions for anything, or, as their tag line suggests, making the hard to explain hard to forget.

If you’ve watched the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro, or seen the demos or device itself, then you’ve had a glimpse of JigSpace when you saw the beautifully rendered Formula F1 car with the animation of the airflow around the wings and body.

Zac’s story starts in Tasmania, where he developed an early passion for 3D and game design. He studied game design in Australia before working in the games industry and beginning to teach digital art and game design. It was in early efforts to use 3D to teach a concept that Zac found the first seeds of inspiration for what became JigSpace.

In this conversation, we go onto discuss:

- Zac’s path from game design to 3D to the discovery and pursuit of "embodied cognition",

- the origin story for the company,

- raising early funding,

- highlights and lessons learned at Boost VC's accelerator,

- explanation of a "jig" and the axioms for building a product and company around them,

- example early customers and use cases,

- the relationship with Apple and being part of the Apple Vision Pro launch,

- the cultural shift in expectations around 3D and communication, and more.

Links From The Episode

- App: [Vermillion](https://vermillion-vr.com/) - VR painting app

- Book: [Dune](https://amzn.to/4bL3ijT) by Frank Herbert. There are 6 books in this series.

- Game: [Gorilla Tag](https://www.gorillatagvr.com/) - VR game

- Game: [Frog Fractions](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1194840/Frog_Fractions_Game_of_the_Decade_Edition/) - Classic Flash game, now available on Steam.

- Blog Post: [JigSpace is in the driver’s seat](https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=mjvi0bc2) from the Apple Developer Blog.

- Product Page: [JigSpace on the Apple Vision Pro](https://www.jig.space/apple-vision-pro)

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Andrew Hart is the co-founder and CEO of Dent Reality, a company building the digital layer for the physical world. Andrew and his team have solved key technology problems across indoor mapping and accurate indoor location at scale. And they’ve created a user interface centered around people, not AR gimmicks.

Andrew is a CEO by day and pioneering developer by night. Prior to Dent Reality, Andrew pioneered the location-based AR space, building the most popular open-source project for Apple's AR platform, and demonstrated AR navigation and POI landmark experiences for the first time, which have since been implemented by Google and Apple.

Today, Dent Reality is working with two of the UK’s largest retailers to develop solutions for shoppers and store employees. Andrew views Dent Reality’s place to be similar to Stripe’s payment solution: a thin layer of technology that’s easy to integrate and solves all of the complexities of location, navigation, and mapping.

In this conversation, we go on to talk about the benefits of building a holistic solution rather than a series of loosely integrated point solutions as well as understanding where to draw the line between what you build and others build. We also discuss Andrew’s approach to building things customers value, a North Star, core values, and the transition from developer to CEO.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Dana Chermesh is the founder and CEO of inCitu, an Augmented-Reality-powered civic engagement app that democratizes city planning.

Dana is an architect from Tel-Aviv, Israel, and an alumna of NYU Masters program in Urban Data Science (2018). During her career as an architect, she specialized in urban renewal and developed a passion for leveraging technology, data and innovation to form smarter, more resilient, and more just cities and city processes.

In 2019 Dana co-founded *inCitu*, to bring together data and discourse with the aid of augmented reality helping citizens see the future of their cities. inCitu was incubated inside Eric Schmidt's social impact venture fund.

In this conversation, we discuss Dana’s deep love and appreciation for cities and urban development. We talk about her goal of developing viable, dynamic, data-driven tools to empower residents and leaders to better deal with 21-century urban challenges. She feels driven by a mission that feels bigger than herself or the company.

We go on to discuss Dana’s experience at Schmidt Futures, her perspective on the concept of the “metaverse”, and founding a company while being the mother of young children.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Jon Gray is the co-founder and CEO, and So-Hee Woo is the Head of XR at Encore, a company building a live-streaming, interactive, AR-infused music performance app.

Jon is an entrepreneur and software engineer, who prior to Encore, was the founder and CEO of Cask, a big data analytics platform, which was acquired by Google in 2018. Before that, he was a software engineer at Facebook where he worked on Messages and several other large-scale data platforms. Prior to Facebook, Jonathan founded Streamy.com, a content-oriented social network of the web 2.0 era.

So-Hee has experience across many areas of transmedia industrial design, focused on experimenting with the future of products & experiences. Her special interests include, AR & VR of course, as well as the implications of AI and Tech Fashion.

Jon and So-Hee are both graduates of Carnegie Mellon University. Jon with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and So-Hee with a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Industrial and Product Design. She went on to receive a Masters Degree in Industrial Product and Design from the ArtCenter College of Design.

In this conversation, Jon and So-Hee talk about how they empower musicians to create engaging AR art to complement their live musical performances. They go on to discuss how they are establishing a middle class of performance artists through the Encore fan experience app and the Encore Studio app for artists. We get into the business, the strategy, and even some philosophy about art and experience.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

David Bonelli is the founder and CEO of Pulsar, a company of mechanical and optical experts dedicated to solving the hard problems of AR hardware.

David is a U.S. Army veteran who went on to spend several years at the once-venerable Osterhout Design Group (ODG). After creating cutting-edge AR glasses at ODG, he also spent time at Rokid and KFS Industries. Across these companies he designed, managed, and brought to manufacture a range of products spanning optical engineering and augmented reality hardware. It was this set of experiences that really motivated the creation of Pulsar with the goal of lowering the hardware barriers to entry and speeding the design to market timeline.

At Pulsar he’s worked with companies such as Red6, Qwake, Microsoft, and others on AR hardware solutions to meet the needs of everyone from fighter pilots to firefighters to space explorers.

In this conversation, we chat about those projects as well as his experience at ODG building devices such as the R-8. He still uses an ODG R-8 to educate customers on what’s been done and what’s possible, including how much FOV is really necessary to deliver a quality experience.

We go on to talk about the current state of AR hardware and his highlights from the recent SPIE AR/VR conference at Photonics West. David also shares his opinions about which display and optics technologies have the best chance of winning over the long term.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.