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 c...
Jan 31, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 182
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 entrep...
Jan 17, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 181
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 com...
Jan 03, 2023•26 min•Ep. 180
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 stu...
Dec 13, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 179
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 healthca...
Nov 29, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 178
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 contr...
Nov 08, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 178
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 in...
Oct 25, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 177
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...
Oct 11, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 176
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 f...
Sep 27, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 175
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, ...
Sep 13, 2022•43 min•Ep. 174
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-junct...
Aug 30, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 173
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...
Aug 16, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 172
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 i...
Aug 02, 2022•58 min•Ep. 171
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 Docto...
Jul 19, 2022•58 min•Ep. 171
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 Univer...
Jul 05, 2022•52 min•Ep. 170
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 developmen...
Jun 21, 2022•57 min•Ep. 169
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 see...
Jun 07, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 168
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 w...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 167
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 t...
May 10, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 166
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 tr...
Apr 26, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 165
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 p...
Apr 12, 2022•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 164
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 to...
Mar 29, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 163
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 Strea...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 162
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...
Mar 01, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 161
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-foun...
Feb 15, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 160
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 Exc...
Feb 01, 2022•52 min•Ep. 159
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 3...
Jan 19, 2022•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 158
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 Zucker...
Jan 04, 2022•31 min•Ep. 157
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 pa...
Dec 21, 2021•57 min•Ep. 156
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 Infrastructu...
Dec 07, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 155
