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.

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.

Angelo Stracquatanio is the co-founder and CEO of Apprentence.io, a software platform to help life sciences teams bring critical drugs to market faster and with higher reliability. Leveraging AR glasses is a key component of the solution.Angelo was a competitive swimmer in college and studied finance, winning the New York Society of Security Analysts Annual Investment Research Challenge competition.After starting his career in finance, Angelo shifted to mobile software development at the beginning of the iPhone era, and earned his MS in computer science from NYU.With an eye towards making the world a better place with cutting edge technology, Angelo started Apprentice almost 6 years ago.In this conversation, Angelo starts by sharing the story of his finance competition win, and how the lessons from swimming competitively in college carries over to his role as a startup CEO.Angelo describes the unique challenges faced by teams focused on life sciences, and how AR plays a role in solving them. He shares how Apprentice has responded to the COVID-19 outbreak, and the change in mindset within the life sciences industry.Angelo goes on to explain how AR isn’t just enabling greater efficiency, but is also unlocking new capabilities for their customers. We also talk about Angelo’s evolution as a CEO, and what he’s been doing to foster his growth.This episode was originally recorded in June 2020.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Remi Del Mar is the senior product manager responsible for Epson’s visual displays and Moverio AR glasses.Remi has been at Epson for almost 5 years. Previously she worked at BitTorrent and spent nearly 8 years at Logitech working on a number of different products, including on an early exploration in AR.She brings a deep passion for the art of product management, of delivering a product that consumers truly love.In this conversation, Remi explores some of the key use cases she’s seeing for the Moverio AR glasses, including uses around flying drones, remote assistance, education, HR, entertainment, and even art.We talk through some industry projections, and discuss what’s necessary for AR glasses to breakthrough to ubiquity. In addition to wearability and interoperability, Remi goes on to describe the importance of capability and privacy.She also talks about the challenges and responsibilities of being a good hardware product manager, as well as a couple of breaks she took during her career.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Pat Antaki is the founder and CEO of seeBOOST, a company creating a prescription glasses solution for people with vision impairment. The device incorporates an optimized, video pass-through AR system over one eye of the glasses.Pat is a former MIT grad with a long history in microelectronics design and engineering, including spending several years working with industry expert, Karl Guttag.These days Pat is committed to improving the quality of life for millions of people with vision impairment due to Macular Degeneration and Diabetes. But a few years back, he took a detour from his career as an engineer and entrepreneur. As he was entering his 40s, Pat set his sights on becoming an Olympic athlete and participating in the 2006 Torino Winter Games.In this conversation, we talk through his mindset as he embarked on his Olympic adventure, including his work on microdisplays at the turn of the century.Pat goes on to describe his decision, his preparation, and some challenging experiences on his road to the Olympics to compete in the Skeleton. It’s a really great story where his technology innovation plays a key role.We also talk about the impetus and focus of his work at seeBOOST, including some of the design tradeoffs and lessons learned in bringing the product to market. It turns out, aesthetics matter, even when the device is so critical, users can’t see these words without it.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Christina Heller is the CEO of Metastage, an XR studio that brings live performances into digital worlds through volumetric capture and complementary tools.The resulting 3D content can be experienced in augmented reality using mobile phones or high-end AR headsets, or using 3D displays. Metastage uses the Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture system and is located in Los Angeles.Prior to leading Metastage, Christina was the CEO of VR Playhouse, an immersive content company based in Los Angeles. She is a recipient of the Advanced Imaging Society's Distinguished Leadership in Technology Award, and was named in the Huffington Post as one of 5 women changing the virtual reality scene. She has a long history in immersive media, having contributed to over 120 immersive projects. Christina comes from the world of journalism, radio, and television.In this conversation, we dig into volumetric capture in general, and Metastage in particular. We explore a couple of the projects she and her team have done, along with some of the challenges and highlights along the way.We discuss how people get to experience the end result, and the impact of the underlying capture technology. Christina also shares a new initiative to make it easier for creators to leverage volumetric content.Christina share’s some of the lessons she’s learned from being an entrepreneur, including a lesson she picked up when she was young. She discovered the importance of envisioning the end state, and using that vision as a key motivator, while also recognizing the end result may look very different.We go on to talk more broadly about trends in immersive content.It’s worth noting this conversation was recorded in mid April, 2020, a few weeks after California issued its first “shelter-in-place” order in response to COVID-19. Some of the conversation reflects the newness of the crisis at the time.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.

David Gull is the Founder and CEO of Outer Realm, a company within the Real Estate industry leading the shift from 2D screens to immersive Virtual and Augmented Reality for better decision making. The tool helps people visualize properties undergoing transformation.David has both an architectural design and technology background, and he believes that creating experiences that engage both gut-level intuition as well as concrete factual presentation are key to gaining trust, and ultimately stakeholder buy-in, for real estate developments.Prior to Outer Realm, David was a VP at Floored, a virtual technology startup acquired by real estate giant, CBRE. He also has 6 years of experience practicing architecture at the renowned firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. David graduated first in his class from Cornell University’s #1 Ranked Bachelor of Architecture Program.In this conversation, we get into his perspective as an architect and what he sees as an opportunity, an imperative really, for the industry to incorporate better visualizations to help customers make better decisions, and ultimately for architects and real estate developers to create better homes.He likens the traditional real estate shopping experience to buying a car after seeing only the frame. Just as it is very hard to imagine the feel of the seats and the rush of acceleration without being able to experience a car, it is hard to commit to a new home without seeing it as you would live in it.We go on to explore his path as an entrepreneur, including his decision, and the consequences, of foregoing venture capital and bootstrapping the business.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Dominic Collins is the co-founder and CEO of Darabase, a platform to manage and monetize AR permissions on the physical world.Prior to Darabase, Dominic was the general manager of international for Jaunt, which was a content capture technology company and studio focused on VR and later AR. He has also been the CEO or Director of Digital across a number of telecom companies, including Sky, Orange Digital, and T-Mobile, as well as the Chief Marketing Officer of financial services company, Legal & General.In this conversation, we talk about the perspective that led Dominic to work with major property owners to help them control how digital content appears on their physical buildings.He shares the strategy at Darabase for taking the best of traditional Out-of-Home advertising, and applying it to the complex arena of property rights within augmented reality.He goes on to describe his entrepreneurial perspective on creating an augmented reality technology company, including some insight into his approach to building a business that is viable both today and for years to come.Dominic also shares some lessons learned from his time at Jaunt, an early immersive content company for VR & AR.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Today’s conversation is a recreation of a South-by-Southwest Panel that didn’t happen this year because the conference was canceled. My guests are so passionate about their topic, we got the panel together to share with you here. This conversation was recorded the same week that SXSW was scheduled to happen in March. Here’s a bit from the show guide:From Childish Gambino’s augmented reality dancing to Marshmello’s Fortnite concert in virtual reality to the mixed reality experience of Tonandi, immersive and spatial computing is closing the gap between the real and the virtual when it comes to music and art. Listeners can experience music in new and more profound ways. Musicians can take advantage of this shift to reach and connect more deeply with broader audiences. Artists can create a lasting emotional connection by letting their fans be in the center of the experience.In the conversation, we explore new methods for listeners and artists to span realities with music. We talk about which experiences are getting traction, as well as where the technology shines, and where it still falls short.We expanded the topics a bit to incorporate a discussion about survival advice for startups.The four panelists include:Amy LaMeyer is the managing partner of WXR Fund, where she invests in early stage spatial computing and artificial intelligence companies with female leadership. She’s a lover of music, and the author of the “Sound and AR” chapter in the book Convergence: How the World Will Be Painted With Data. She’s also an advisor for immersive music-focused startups: TribeXR, Stage, and Melodrive.Eric Wagliardo is an internationally recognized artist and creative who resides in Brooklyn, NY and Dallas, TX. Eric has been working in XR for 4 years and recently collaborated with Childish Gambino to create an augmented reality musical experience. Eric is the founder and creative director of &Pull.Rebecca Barkin is the VP of Immersive Experiences at Magic Leap, where she served as Executive Producer of Tónandi—a visceral, interactive audio-visual experience made in partnership with the band Sigur Rós. More recently, she teamed up with HBO and Framestore for Game of Thrones "Dead Must Die," a mixed reality experience brought to AT&T retail and Tribeca Film Festival. In 2020, opportunity informed a new focus on delivering services and solutions that bridge the physical and digital divide, ultimately expanding the reach of premium XR installations beyond any singular venue. She began her career at EMI Music.Tony Parisi is a pioneer of virtual reality, a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. He is the co-creator of 3D graphics standards, including VRML, X3D and gl-TF. He’s also the author of several books from O’Reilly Media covering Virtual Reality, Programming 3D Apps, and WebGL. Tony has become one of the leading spokespeople for the immersive industry, and he was recently named to Next Reality’s 30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality. Tony is currently Head of AR/VR Ad Innovation at Unity Technologies.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.