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.

Jay Wright is the founder and CEO of Campfire 3D, a company that is focused on holographic collaboration for design and engineering workflows. Prior to Campfire, Jay spent 10 years building Vuforia from inception to becoming the leading augmented reality platform for developing handheld and headworn applications. Vuforia is currently part of enterprise software and services company, PTC, but Jay originally created Vuforia while at Qualcomm. There he was responsible for global commercialization of non-radio technologies, ranging from computer vision to neuromorphic hardware.Previously, Jay had created two software companies focused on the cutting edge of mobile computing, dating back to the mid 1990s. On the whole, he has been a technology entrepreneur building his vision for future computing platforms for more than 25 years.In this conversation, Jay shares stories from early days of mobile software, starting with his work on Apple’s Newton and his subsequent efforts to create the first App Store. We discuss the impetus for building Vuforia at Qualcomm, the lessons he learned about the AR market from that experience, and how that led to Campfire 3D.We get into the problem he’s trying to solve with Campfire, and the specific strategy he’s pursuing. We go on to discuss his perspective on the AR hardware efforts at Facebook and Apple, and the historical clues about how quickly we can expect general purpose consumer smartglasses to arrive.Jay shares a lot of wisdom about entrepreneurship and AR.It’s worth noting when we recorded this interview, Facebook was still named Facebook, and Meta referred to an early entrant building productivity-focused headworn AR. They shut down a few years back.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Guido Groet is the Chief Strategy Officer of Luxexcel, a company that’s able to 3D print optical-quality lenses for smart eyewear. Earlier in his career, Guido worked for many years in both Europe and the USA for technology giant ASML, which is a world leader in semiconductor equipment. He’s held VP positions in Finance, Business development, M&A, and Strategy development. He was also CFO and then CEO of a venture-back company in disruptive high tech manufacturing technologies. Now at Luxexcel Guido is in charge of all commercial and strategic aspects of 3D printing of smart eyewear lenses. Luxexcel has been in the news recently for their partnerships with Lumus and WaveOptics where together they’re able to encase the waveguides within 3D-printed prescription lenses.In this conversation, Guido’s talks about the challenges of finding product-market fit, particularly for technologies that don’t perfectly fit industry’s pre-conceived notion of how things have been done...or should be done.We get into the meat of the technology and where it goes from here. He also shares his perspective on how and where smartglasses will find early success. Here he believes smartglasses will find success when we’re able to make fashionable glasses with some functionality, rather than focusing on field of view or functionality to the detriment of fashion.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Paul Powers, the founder and CEO of Physna. You may have caught Physna in the news recently because they’ve raised $76M over the last year, including $56M earlier this summer from Tiger Global, Sequoia and others. Paul and his team have created a new way to search and compare 3D models in a way that is faster and more effective than what’s come before. This ability to recognize and understand physical objects, combined with Thangs, their online database of 3D models, creates the potential for them to become the Google Search of AR. Earlier, Paul attended Harvard at the age of 16, and went on to study in Germany, earning a law degree and passing the German bar exam. It was his work at a German patent law firm that inspired the foundation for what became Physna.In this conversation, Paul describes his unique educational experience and his path to becoming a tech entrepreneur. He goes on to describe the origins of Physna and how they are enabling computers to understand 3D in the same way they understand text. We talk through the technology and we discuss leadership, entrepreneurial mindset, a different way of thinking about goal setting, and aligning and motivating others. He also shares his perspective of the potential impact that glasses-based AR can have on the human experience.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.

Kris Kolo is the Global Executive Director of the VR/AR Association, an international organization designed to foster growth, knowledge, and connections between its members.Previously, Kris was an executive at Verizon and Toys R Us, applying AR technology to business needs. At Toys R Us, Kris was working on digital in-store initiatives and shopping solutions, piloting the AR solution from Metaio (acquired by Apple). At Verizon, Kris was responsible for Media, Entertainment, and Location-Based apps & platforms, where he collaborated with Wikitude to integrate AR into Verizon's GPS Navigation. He also launched the Verizon Developer Program. In addition, Kris was an Advisor to FlyBy Media, an AR tech startup, acquired by Apple.As an entrepreneur, Kris was the Co-Founder of Spime Inc, a Silicon Valley startup acquired by Trimble. He’s also published the ground-breaking book, Local Positioning Systems, on geo spatial and location-based services, and holds graduate degrees from MIT.In this conversation, we chat about mapping and positioning in the early days of mobile, as well as the challenges and benefits of remapping the world for AR. Based on his insights from the Association, Kris describes what's working for VR & AR in healthcare and enterprise. He describes what he sees as a big challenge hindering adoption and the impact of Facebook's commitment to VR & AR on the rest of the market.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Cory Grenier is the CEO of Geenee, a company on a mission to make the physical world around us easily recognizable to computers using mobile, browser-based technology. They combine image and video recognition, WebAR, and creative services to deliver unique value to brands.Cory started his career at Lenovo in Beijing, becoming a global product marketing manager. He returned to the US in 2013 to join Vergence Labs, an innovative startup building AR glasses. Vergence was acquired by Snap to form the basis of Snap Spectacles. Cory stayed for several years at Snap as the first director of sales and marketing before returning to more entrepreneurial roles.In this conversation, we chat about his efforts to build awareness of the Vergence Labs product, called Epiphany Eyewear. Cory shares how the Snap acquisition happened and some of the lessons he learned while he was there. Do you remember the marketing campaign for Spectacles with the pop-up vending machines, Cory led that.He goes on to describe how Geenee is now pushing the boundaries for brands by thinking deeply about how AR complements consumer behavior around commerce and awareness building.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Steve Sinclair is the SVP of product at Mojo Vision, a company enabling invisible computing with their AR contact lenses.Steve has an amazing background in the product development and product marketing of personal computing technologies throughout the smartphone revolution. He worked at Handspring, Palm, Apple’s iPhone team, which he joined in 2007, as well as at HP and the Motorola division at Google, which was then sold to Lenovo.He brings 20 plus years of insight to Mojo Vision, which imagines a world where information is there when you need it, and then technology fades away when you don’t so you can connect with others without distraction.In this conversation, we dig into the details of Mojo Vision’s technology-infused contact lenses, including the underlying technology and how it works.He talks about Mojo’s initial use case around helping the visually impaired, as well as other types of experiences that make sense in the early days of wearable displays. We go on to dip into Steve’s history to extract some of the lessons he’s learned at the dawn of the smartphone era and discuss how they might apply to spatial computing.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Jeri Ellsworth is the co-founder and CEO of Tilt Five, a company that has created AR glasses that bring tabletop games to life. The Tilt Five system enables you to see, hear, and interact with realistic 3D holograms that entertain and educate.By the time this episode airs, they will have recently completed a Kickstarter campaign where Tilt Five raised more than $1.75 million for their initial product.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 at Valve as the first member of the hardware R&D team with a mandate to research novel user interactions and bring the entire family together in the living room. Through this, she contributed to the early development for Valve VR (which became the HTC VIVE), the Steam Box, and the Steam Controller.In this conversation, Jeri shares stories from along her amazing path from being a high-school dropout to building race cars to engineering electronic game systems to being recruited at Valve. Jeri goes on to describe the painful end of her time at Valve and her tumultuous CastAR experience. From those ashes emerged Tilt Five. Jeri describes what’s different this time as well as some of the underlying technology and its tradeoffs, and the deep seated ethos and focus of the company.She doesn’t mince words as she describes her missteps, setbacks, and successes along the way.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Many of you know Matt Miesnieks as a serial entrepreneur and former investor focused on Augmented Reality. Matt was most recently the CEO and co-founder of 6D.ai, a company building tools to help mobile phones understand the real world and enable compelling AR experiences.Matt started his career in a number of engineering and business roles, before shifting his focus to Augmented Reality more than 10 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.Most recently, he was the founder and CEO af 6D.ai, which gained a lot of recognition among AR developers and enthusiasts for the demos they published showcasing their advanced software APIs enabling more useful and exciting AR experiences. Earlier in 2020, Niantic acquired the company.I caught up with Matt earlier this summer to talk about his entrepreneurial journey at 6D.ai. He shares an honest and insightful perspective across a number of topics, includingmapping the world for AR,what 6D got wrong about their target customer and how they addressed it,the worst mistake they made and what he learned from it,how companies are bought and valued,the responsibilities of a startup CEO in creating optionality,the emotional rollercoaster,the role of self care,and more.Matt shares a lot of hard earned wisdom. I think you’ll love this one.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.