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.

Brad Scoggin is the co-founder and CEO of ArborXR, an XR device management solution for enterprises that is currently being used by more than 400 companies and educational institutions around the world. Brad and his team found companies are using consumer hardware, such as the Oculus Quest, but don’t have the right enterprise software to help them scale as they go from pilot projects to larger deployments. The problems addressed by ArborXR are an extension of the problems Brad saw as the co-founder and CEO of Springboard VR. Springboard was a venue management solution for VR arcades, which Brad successfully sold during the height of the pandemic. In this conversation, we discuss Brad’s insights on how to thrive as a non-tech founder pushing the boundaries of VR and AR, and his perspective on utilizing these devices as tools to enhance our experience with the real world, and not exclusively a means of escape.Brad goes on to share some excellent insights into scaling up (and down) a startup in VR/AR as well as the importance of managing pace, creating transparency, riding the creative tension between focus and experimentation, and successfully building out a remote team.And of course we get into the details of ArborXR, where Brad shares that they have multiple deployments of over 10,000 headsets!You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Faisal Galaria is the CEO at Blippar, a company creating the tools to enable everyone to create compelling AR experiences. During the course of his career, Faisal has gained over 25 years of experience leading and growing teams in some of the world's most disruptive consumer technology companies including Spotify, Kayak, Skype and now Blippar.Just prior to Blippar, he was the Chief Strategy and Investments Officer at Gocompare, which he helped digitally transform and IPO on the London Stock Exchange in 2016. Previously, Faisal was one of the youngest ever Senior Partners of Alvarez & Marsal, the world’s largest turnaround and restructuring company where he founded and led the European Digital Media practice. Faisal was previously a Senior Vice President at Spotify, where he launched Spotify in seven countries, including its biggest market the USA. He was also an early member of the Skype team, initially as Head of Global Business Development and became the European Director after Skype’s acquisition by eBay in 2005.Faisal took over at Blippar about 2 and half years ago, after the company went from being an early AR pioneer and tech darling in the UK, to a company fighting its way through insolvency. Under Faisal’s leadership, the company is releasing new products and has regained its stature as a key enabler of a broad range of AR experiences.In this conversation, we talk through the challenges of managing the downs and ups of tech startups and the recent product releases by the company. We discuss some of the challenges in working through a turnaround and how they’re similar to a fresh new startup. We also talk about the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are common to the successful companies of which he’s been a part.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com

Nicole Lazzaro. Nicole is the founder and president of XEODesign. Previously she was the designer of “Tilt,” the first true iPhone-only game, but it’s her research into player emotions that has attracted big firms like EA, Sony, and Ubisoft to seek out her expertise. By tapping into “emotion profiles,” Nicole helps designers create more engaging gaming experiences that resonate with all types of players, from casual to hard-core.Nicole has been a leading expert in Player Experience Design for 30 years. She laid the foundation for her research and insights by earning a degree in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford.In this conversation, we dig into her distillation of how we as humans engage with games. She calls this framework the Four Keys to Fun. Nicole shares how her work on Myst and the Sims franchises broaden the industry’s perspective and helped motivate her to pursue her research.Nicole also shares how she’s turned her focus and insights to AR and VR, and sees a vast blue ocean of opportunity. We go on to talk about her work on the Bose AR glasses, and her current XR project, as well as her take on the biggest risk and hope for the new types of AR and VR experiences we’re creating.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Today I am kicking off 2022 with another annual monologue. I hope you and your family were able to have a safe and relaxing holiday despite the isolation and other challenges imposed by this latest spike in COVID.This is the fifth such annual kickoff episode, and when looking back at my notes from last year, 2021 played out pretty much as expected, with the exception of Facebook’s parent company name change to Meta Platforms…and NFTs, but that’s for a different conversation for now.Mark Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm for all things VR and AR drove a lot of investment and broader awareness of the coming age of these technologies, even if everybody has a different idea of what “metaverse” means.2021 saw very little meaningful progress at the cutting edge of hardware, but there were a few notable developments.In this episode, I share my take on some of the highlights of 2021 and what we might see in 2022 as it relates to augmented reality. I also touch on a few concepts and mental models for how the consumer and enterprise market may come together.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Kirin Sinha is the co-founder and CEO of Illumix, a company building an AR-first mobile gaming platform. You may be familiar with Illumix if you’re a fan of the horror franchise, Five Nights at Freddy’s. The Illumix team has already found a lot of success with their first title, Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery.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.In this conversation, Kirin shares how she thinks about creating compelling stories and gameplay for mobile devices where AR is a central component.We go to talk about how the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise is a great fit for AR, and also why the Illumix team needed to go beyond AR Kit, AR Core, and Unity in order to deliver their vision for a compelling AR-first mobile experience.Kirin talks about her broader ambitions and also has some amazing advice for building and maintaining self-confidence.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Brian Vogelsang is the Senior Director of Product at Qualcomm focused on Snapdragon Spaces, an XR developer platform for headworn augmented reality. This AR development kit is built on open standards and meant to complement the efforts by Niantic’s Lightship and others.Brain started his career as the CTO and co-founder of a very early internet service provider startup. He then joined Qualcomm in the mid-1990s, back when it was still a young company. There he focused initially on IT Infrastructure and Security before shifting his focus to the very early days of mobile app development within Qualcomm.For the last four years, Brain has been working with Hugo Swart and other members of the Qualcomm team on developing Qualcomm’s strategy, products, and ecosystem around Augmented and Virtual Reality.In this conversation, Brian shares how his long history at Qualcomm gave him a front row seat to the development of the mobile app ecosystem in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as the smartphone ecosystem a decade later. He pulls some lessons forward to the AR ecosystem that Qualcomm is helping build today, and looks ahead to 2022.We go on to discuss the differences in stand alone vs companion devices (or “viewers" as Qualcomm calls them). And of course we talk about the recently announced Snapdragon Spaces, which is built on the Open XR standards and incorporates innovation around user and environmental understanding.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.