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.