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the Imagined Cup finalists. Representatives from each of the three teams are going to interview them in a minute. But first let's talk about better know a framework.
Roll the crazy music? All right? Man? What do you got?
I went searching again for things repos on GitHub that are trending, and the number one repo right now is WSL because.
Interesting just Windows Subsystem for Linux. Yeah, because they just open it, just open starts it.
But before that, this one has been at the top AI hedge fund.
Okay, what's that? Okay?
Absolutely I haven't run it, but it's a proof of concept for an AI powered hedge fund. The goal of the project is to explore the use of AI to make trading decisions. This project is for educational purposes only and is not intended for real trading or investment.
It seems like a great way to lose a lot of money fast.
Yeah, But here's the cool thing if you think about it. It employs several agents working together. So this is a great example of agentic programming. The Aswaff demo, Darin agent, the dean of valuation, focuses on story numbers and discipline value. All right, I'm not going to read them all, but one of them is Charlie Munger, right, Barren Buffert's partner only buys wonderful businesses at fair prices. Michael Burry agent the big short contrarian who hunts for deep value. Peter Lynch,
Phil Fisher, Stanley Druckenmeiler. Now the question is what do they train this on their data? You know they're trading data apparently, and you know they have big disclaimers. But it's very popular, and that makes me wonder how good it is.
You know what they say, past results do not indicate future results.
No, you're right about that, but I think you know understanding what we do about AI. It's either that it's really good clickbait and got a lot of people to download it, or it's working for some people.
Yeah.
I don't know either one of those is true, but something's happening for sure. Okay, So that's it.
That's weird AI things. And this one's pretty popular, So who's talking to us? Gravity comment to Show nineteen forty eight, the one we did with Rob MenShing. We were talking about the open source maintenance fee and just trying to make open source more sustainable. Got a lot of comments on that show. Actually, this one comes from Rob King, who says, in my experience of using open source in a commercial setting, the biggest barrier is the financial apparatus
to get money to pay for maintenance. We talked about this on the show.
There are often forms to fill out and people to convince to get that payment. I suspective companies just gave devs a small annual stipend to spend on open source project the money would flow more readily. After all, if I've taken a dependency on open source project, I've already done its cost benefit analysis that seems very optimistic. Actually, Rob, mostly I had a problem and I made that problem go away. The actual money change part should be as
low frish as possible. I came at this a different way during the show, where it's because I, of course have worked with CFOs. It's like, Hey, if we had a mechanism so a CFO could put one chunk of money once a year and it would distribute into open source based on utilization, they'd probably do that. Just a question of how hard that mechanism is developed. But Rob, I appreciate your thoughts, and a copy of Music Cobey
is on its way to you. And if you'd like a copy of Musico buy I write a comment on the website at dot NetRocks dot com or on the facebooks we publish every show there. And if you comment there and I read it on the show, was that your copy of music Kobe?
And for those who don't know, music to code by is music that you put on in the background while you're trying to focus. It's not distracting, it's not boring, and it is scientifically based in what I should I say, it's based in science in a study about the aspects of music that help people focus.
So yeah, there's after they did that show with Mark Semen. We were talking about flow and focus and you then made a thing.
I made a thing.
So there's twenty two tracks now they're twenty five minutes each to correspond with a Pomodora technique and you get them at musicdocodebuy dot net, or as Richard said, by sending us a comment, Okay, let us talk about the imagined cup we have, right, you know what, You're right, we should do nineteen fifty six, but I did not prepare anything. So this is episode nineteen fifty six. And what we've been doing lately is talking about what happened
that year in world events. M So, I don't know you've got something up there.
We're beginning of the Suez crisis. Oh, that was the invasion of Britain and trying to control that the waterway there, which is very big deal. Yeah, and the first time Elvis Presley became famous, right, the first detection of a neutrinoy an undetectable particle.
An undetectable particle that can go through walls and lead and everything else. How did they even detect it with really? Once in a while the Trino's decay. It's very rare and by far most importantly, General Electric releases the first snoozeable alarm clock. Wow, there you go, but then you couldn't snooze.
Wow.
I wonder if it sounded like modern techno music.
I'm thinking that's the thing. The beat nineteen fifty six.
Yeah, so all right, well there's more stuff to talk about in nineteen fifty six, but we want to talk to the Imagined Cup finalists builds. So we have representatives of each team, just one representative from each team. So I'll start with Matt. Matt Steele is on the hair Match team. He's a Georgia Tech computer science grad with a concentration in AI and embedded systems. He has published more than five apps to the iOS app Store with
over twenty thousand monthly active users. Matt's also a former US Olympic Trials qualifier in swimming and took fifth place at the US Open in swimming.
Wow. How about that?
And on top of that, you're in the Imagined Cup Finalists And so that's from the hair Match team. Guida Abdallah Omar is on the sign Verse team, and she is a passionate innovator and project associative Signverse that's sign v r S, where she leverages technology to address social challenges. Is the founder of Girls I Save, an initiative empowering girls in STEM and advocating against gender based violence. She
brings a strong commitment to community driven tax solutions. A Guide is also a Generation Connect Youth envoy with the ITU, a judge for Young Scientists Kenya, and a recognized change maker in the Coastal region of Kenya. Her work combines information technology, advocacy and innovation to create inclusive, impactful change.
Welcome and Daniel Kim is studying math in neuroscience at Stamford and seeing his grandmother struggle with her visual impairment, Daniel was inspired to pursue Argus, which is one of the teams in the finalists. In his free time, he loves spending time with animals in any capacity he can. Okay, well, welcome guys to dot ne Rocks and congratulations, thank you for having us. You bet, Matt, Let's start with you.
So here.
Match is the team that you are on and tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah sure.
So.
Hair Match is a mobile app which allows women with curly hair to take pictures of their hair, and then we use AI to be able to determine their hair type, and from there we've done the R and D to be able to curate products based on their specific hair
type that work for them. And so there's a very big problem with curly hair care where people will spend a lot of money on products and then the products don't actually work for their hair because there's something really specific about that one product, you know, might be one chemical or one molecule that's often the formulation that doesn't work for that person's hair type. And then you end
up with a bunch of products under yourself. And so my co founder, Relisha, has very very curly, very long hair, and this is a problem that she faced first.
I imagine just I've seen shelves like that just yeah, bottles that were used once.
Yeah, just you know, you use it once, but once you use it once, you can't return it. And so she just had this. She called it the shelf of shame.
So it's like our phones.
And so I've been friends with her since we interned together about two years ago. We were both college athletes. She cheered at University of North Carolina and I swam at Georgia Tech, and so we just became friends over that, and then eventually we both are really interested in building things, and so we decided to make hair match and that's kind of how it was born.
Now she's technological also, or was she just interested in the problem.
So she she is technical, she can code, but she primarily her strengths are in the media and the product side of things, and so primarily those two things were her focus on the team. And then she has a very very deep understanding of the problem because she is the customer.
Of her Perfect Perfect Domain Expert.
So people listening might be going, what you know, that seems kind of silly, But you know, I have two stepdaughters with curly hair, and they struggled all their growing up lives and into adulthood probably still do now with this problem. I'm you know, straightening hair was and just combing it could be a huge shoe, right, And some people want to straighten curly hair. Some people want to
have smaller curls when they have big curls. Like there's a whole bunch of styling things and just maintenance.
Yeah, and there's a lot of societal pressure as well on people with curly hair and either straighten it or to keep it in very traditional hairstyles. They've been commonly accepted in the workplace for decades here especially, I guess primarily in the US because that's where we're based out of.
But you know, one of the things that Alicia and I believe in is we want people to be able to have equal opportunity professionally and from a self confidence perspective as well, and so being able to build something that directly improves people's ability to style their hair and leave their confidence is great.
We can go to the app store and download hair Match right now.
Yeah, it's been live for six months now.
Actually, wow, what's the response been.
The response has been great. So in the app, we did for a while have my phone number in there. People could just text me if there was a problem, and I would just get these texts at random hours of the day like I love this, this is amazing, guys, you're doing great. We get emails like that as well, and so the response has been overwhelmingly positive, and that's something that we've really enjoyed.
Talk to me about the workflow, like, how does people use the app.
Yeah, So a user will download the app from the app Store and they go through onboarding. We ask them a few questions about their experience with hair and the sort of what they already know versus not, so we can tailor the experience a little bit to that. Then the primary magic is we have them take two pictures of their hair very up close in good lighting, so we're able to actually.
See that in the more in detail.
We process that using a visual transformer that we run in Azure ai foundry, and we're able to get the hair type. Once we get that hair type, we give them a nice little savable card that they can save to the chemeeral. It's like, oh, this is your hair analysis. It's really cool.
We it's like five or six different categories that you check exactly.
We have five different properties on that card that they can see. And then from there they're able to enter the app and they can go to the product recommendations list, which is curated directly for their specific match of those properties, and it goes, Okay, this is what this person needs, and it shows them only those products, and they're all sorted by the category as well, so whether it's gel, whether it's shampoo, whether it's conditioner, they can get easy
access to those. And so instead of having to go to a store and you have, you know, a million products on the shelves, you don't know which ones actually work for you unless you, you know, look each one up one by one, and you have to go to some obscure web page to find that. We have that information all in front of the user, all at once, and it's very streamlined, very easy.
And of course my instinct is now you'll go to the store with the list and look at that. Was like, no, you won't, You'll go on Amazon in order.
And so the other thing we do is we have links to every single product inside the app, so we don't actually sell the products, but we connect the people to the source. And so what we've actually been able to do with that is we are able to offer discounts on those products because we reach out to the brand and manufacturers that we've found through our R and.
D to be a monetizing strategy.
Then, not necessarily for the modestation, we did it more for the customer. We do get the small affiliates, but it's been primarily good for us because we're able to not only you know, give the customer exactly what they want, but we can also save the money, which is really really cool.
Yeah, that is cool and congratulations, that's a great thing.
Thank you.
Just curious and any of you can answer this. How many other teams did you guys beat out to get in the top three?
A lot? But yeah, the match kept huge.
Yeah, I think it was. There were over fifteen thousand students that participated.
This year, one and fifty countries.
Wow.
So just being here and you guys were on stage right before the keynote, yes, on the first day of build. That must have been really exciting.
Oh yeah, yeah, it was. It was amazing, Just a great experience to be up there. You know, you look into the crowd and you know, the lights are a little bit blinding on stage, but you can see so many people and it really hits you in that moment that you know.
You're there thousands of people in them.
Yeah, it's like you've made something impact.
We have been hundreds of yers watching online.
Yeah, not the freaky out that it was like thinking, you know, there are almost as many people in there as we had users on hair Match in the first couple of months. Sure, that's insane.
Yeah. Well, also realization like that, how many people you attached to? Yeah?
Yeah, it seems like a niche product, but clearly for a certain group of folks it's really important, really important.
We estimate that there are probably about a billion people or more that could benefit from our product in this current state.
Wow, should we switch to you gata? Should we talk about sign Verse?
Of course?
Yeah? So what is the product and tell us about?
The sign Verse is an AI pod platform that chooses three D avatar to convert speech and text to real time sign language interpretation.
Wow. Wow, that's really cool.
So in basic what it's communication breaking the barriers between a person who's had of hearing and a person who can hear, because sometimes it becomes very challenging when people you know, communicate and someone cannot hear.
So with the app, you can be able to type in list hello, good morning.
So the avatar will be able to do the sign language, and then the person who is next will be able to see that through the application. So you can either use text or speech and making communications simless for both the hearing and the head of here.
So I could hold up my phone just talk and it's going to do the.
Sign language, Yes, absolutely, And we drove the inspiration because Brandis and I used to participate in Young Scientist Kenya That's Pack Home, and we used to do robotics training for young children and one time we found ourselves in a situation where the students that we're supposed to train were not able to hear, like the head of hearing
and some of them were completely deaf. And you know, the amount of signed interpreters in the room like what to go to different classes, so there was already a gap. We had to you know, find ways to be able to bring that message right in terms of coding and
talking to the student. But ever since then we realize there is a gap actually, and then we met Daniel who is one of our team who literally had to switch from being a computer student to being in the business because the school did not have sign language interpreters for that cause. So you can imagine the change he literally had to switch. And you know, it also comes with a lot of emotions to these people, they feel neglated. The community, you know, pushes them away because of the
stigma of them not being able to hear. And that's why we were driven to, you know, create a technology that's going to focus more on providing real time sign language interpretation at different levels.
So you just mentioned sign language interpretations, so this app will also you can hold it up to somebody who's signing and it will say the words to you.
So that is like a future vision that we want to do.
For our first product, it's just converting speech to text and then to sign language. But in future we believe that we will be able to do the vice versa. And that's why we have signed verse so that we can go from sign to verse and back.
Yesh wow.
Because we used to have remember the Connect Microsoft Connect and it could track all of your joints in three D space. Yes, I think it was twenty twenty frames pertective like that, So there were applications that use that. But I think it wouldn't be more challenging on a phone to go from straight video to generative AI now right.
Yes, we're actually trying to incorporate the use of AI to be able to make it more seamless and more interactive because.
Even that Spelton tracking had problem with hands. Yeah, and sign of course it depends on the flavor signed too, doesn't it.
Yes, we have different sign language and because of the motion capture suits that we acquired and we incorporate the different data sets from Kenyan sign language to Ruandan Sign language to even SL So in future we're hoping to incorporate or different sign language based on the context of the country and the community that it.
Comes literally country to country, the sign language varias.
Yeah, even in Kenyan Sign language itself, it's narrowed down to different community sign language stylists.
Yes, yeah, regular language.
It's just a language.
It's just that it's now in form of you know, hand motion gestures and stuff.
When you have your every area, every dialect has its own idioms and things like that.
Yes, other people may not.
Understand just collecting all that data it's going to be really powerful, exactly, But I don't know that there's a good repository for.
All of the variations.
We're actually finding very hard in Africa to get like a very concrete data set when it comes to sign language interpretation. So far, we've gotten over twenty three hundred glosses in terms of the sign language interpretation, but we're looking forward to expanding to around two hundred and fifty thousand in the first phase and then five hundred thousand closses, so it's actually a lot.
A very definitive collection exactly.
Yes, so in as signed verse in the app stores and downloadable now.
So we've not been able to have it fully installed, but it's live. You can be able to access it, but it's not on the download for because we are still trying to ensure that it is accessible enough.
And yes, yeah, okay.
This is amazing and your cause, like I imagine after this, you've got another several things on your to do list. What's your plan for the future.
So just like I mentioned, we are planning to really expand in terms of the data because that is one of the most critical aspects we need to input in our platform. So we are looking at expanding beyond just Kenyan sign language to Rwandan and different African sign language and then also incorporate different you know, business model in terms of industries where communication is critical, just like in the healthcare just imagine you're going to the doctor and
the doctor is not able to understand you. So tailoring our platform to you know, contextual to healthcare system, you know, transport system, like we're having communications with Kenya Airways, so that we ensure like whatever communication is there, our platform is also there to help people with the hairing close.
So I guess my question was, Okay, after this app is done, yes, then you'll probably move on the other thing because you're you know, the causes that you're talking about with girls and young girls.
Uh huh.
I imagine you know you've thought about what to do next, but it sounds like you're going to be working on this app for quite a long time.
Yeah, so much to do.
Yes, So what I always do with the young guys is you have a lot of outreach programs that I do back in my community, and it's always tailed back to the innovation that I do. So I introduce them to the aspect of STEM that is science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Since I was a young scientist, Kenya Winna, I have been in the innovation space for over three years now, so just trying to tailor what I do as a as a rider to what the community also
needs to know. So I do outreach programs. I do you know, online talks. I give video conferences for youngers to be able to understand how it is to be in that tech field, especially in building solutions.
Yes, that is so wonderful. Wow, great, great, great stuff. Is the time take a break? Do you want to do that? Now? Let's do the break, all right, we'll be right back after these very very important messages to come around. Do you have a complex dot net monolith you'd like to refactor to a micro services architecture. The micro Service Extractor for dot Net tool visualizes your app and helps progressively extract code into micro services. Learn more
at aws dot Amazon dot com slash modernize. Now we're back. It's dot net Rocks. I'm Carl Franklin. That's my friend Richard Campbell. Hey, and we're here with the Imagined Cup finalists. And I guess that brings us to you, Daniel Daniel Kim. Of course it's probably no secret buy now, but your team Argus won the Imagine Cup. So pig around of applause for you.
Thank you, thank you so much.
Yeah.
And the thing, well, first of all, tell us what our argus is, and then I have so many questions.
Okay, right, happy to answer any questions you may have.
Okay.
So Argus was primarily spawned out of our dorm room where Arjene and I both met at Stanford three years ago and we realized that we both really enjoyed building, but we also realized we had a personal connection to visual impairments because both our grandparents were aging into them and just like seeing them no longer being able to
do things that they were able to do prior. It was like we realized how much was taken for granted, and we really wanted to find a way to give them back that independence in their day to day lives because I know my grandma, she's definitely like she's got that pride and she enjoys being able to do things on her own and she dislikes asking for help. So it was definitely wanting to give that independence back. Kind of spawned arguson and I guess I could talk more
about what argus is. So what we realize was that there were a lot of accessibility gaps in what's already out in the market. So I'm sure this is a tech audience. You've seen something like the meta ray bands and you're wondering, oh, why can't you just use that. Well, for a couple of different reasons, we realized our grandparents didn't really like them.
Sure.
For one, they don't really directly address the accessibility needs where one you're gonna have to like connect to Wi Fi. So something that we decided to pursue is building this hybrid system out where you have both edge compute, so Argus's two piece device. There's a camera module that goes on your glasses, frames.
On your own glasses. You don't have to buy new glasses.
It's very important, yeah, for sure. So just being able to easily integrate that into someone's already existing I guess, like habits in life.
Until it recognizes things in and tells you what it doesn't speak, does it put a thing.
On the screen, It gives audio feedback regarding whatever your question was, so o cr or just like spatial awareness.
Reading letters and bills and mail and yeah, I can imagine.
And just like figuring out where you are relative in a room. I think that's like incredibly helpful where it's like I need to find where the exit is, I don't really know how to get there. Yeah, So that's so we're able to do simple tasks like that all on the edge. So and we have a compute module
that goes in your pocket. And these two systems are connected with the technology called hy Are, which is a wireless communication method that uses your skin as a conduit uses one hundred times less energy than something like that.
So this these are this is what I started looking up because when you and it just kind of wasn't an in passing comment during the you know, and I'm.
Like, wait, what what did you say? So, yeah, it used your skin.
So I looked it up and it has a range of like what five meters or something like that. It's not bad and it uses your skin lower power consumption. The one thing that and it's fascinating to me. The one thing that I didn't read in the white paper was latency. Like, you know, bluetooth has latency, right, and so you can't use that for real time, but just getting onto the YR thing, it probably doesn't matter all that much for you guys, but do you have any idea of what the latency is?
Yeah, so the latency for us personally has been like just a couple of seconds. So it's so what we've been able to do is like a couple of time saving strategies where it's like as soon as the user starts talking, we start communicating with the compute.
Module stream it.
Yeah, so it's just like immediately what's going on. It starts like figuring it out, and then by the time of the end of the query, there's just like watching out it. It's just like, yeah, catching up. I think that's a good way to put it.
Yeah, and then just trimming a little that little extra timeout so you can respond, you have more time to respond.
To make it much more I guess, like I've seen experience where you're not like, oh, now there's a big like pause, but you are traveling to the cloud and back, I imagine. So for simple tests, that's just all going to be on the device on the device, and then for more complex tests that's like, oh I want to help me like reason something out, it's going to be sending query to Azure ai foundry. So it's a hybrid model, right,
and it's a Raspberry Pie based thing, is it. Yeah, so right, our prototype is using a Google Coral dev.
Board at the moment, right, So I've got a couple of those USB it's a it's a little NPU essentially, yeah, yeah, relatively expensive. Inexpensive at the time, but yeah for compute to render some a small model.
Yeah for sure.
So like three years ago, Archie and I were like, we don't have that much money, we got to like figure out how to So we're just using a lot of hobbyist grade we'rement built out our own camera module, and it was just like from there we started building out our prototypes.
And the prototype for the camera module is what how how big would you say?
It is? Like a inch and a half diameter or something like that?
Yeah, I would say like an inch and a half and we're definitely gonna be able to shrink that down. Yeah, So that's gonna be a next step as well, just like miniaturization of the device.
If you start thinking in terms of building purpose built hardware with current generation tech, like A, you're gonna get a lot more compute. B Yeah, you're gonna be able to make it really compact.
Yeah. You care about form factor a lot? Oh yeah for sure. Yeah.
Have you had anybody ask you about the health ramifications of the y R stuff? Is there is there any concern about that? I mean, does it use uh what kind.
Of I mean, there's no real concerns about health ramification. So we're not too concerned about that being a factor be considering Like it's like maybe if you're concerned about five G you could be considered because so it's.
Like five it's a five G transmitter.
Oh, I guess like the analogy I'm trying to make is like, Okay, if you're worried about five G, then I see, yeah.
Anybodys will be worried about turning on lights then yeah. Yeah.
That's the other thing about these close area networks is they're really low power. I mean, the whole goal here is to save energy. You need a lot of power to do that.
Oh it's like a hundred times less power than Wi Fi, is it.
Yeah, compare that to putting a cell phone up your head. Yeah, that's a lot more energy.
But either way, no measurable effect. It's not a thing.
So the thing, you know, the YR stuff is the most exciting thing for me. I mean, obviously it's a great product and it solves a problem. But this opens up like a world of possibilities. And you were the first one I've ever heard using this technology.
Handshaking and so forth for devices like that is a real nuisance for people who aren't technical or like I said, have side impairments so they can't see QR codes or enter long passwords and things like that. The idea that the close area network, the fact that you're close enough to it is the handshake and so they just connect.
Yeah.
I think the idea is like you wanted it to be something that just works right out of box. You put it in your pocket, put it slided on your glasses, and my grandma doesn't want to have to worry, Oh do I have to download X y Z features or do I have to set up Wi Fi? Yeah, these are all things we just wanted to be able to, you know, hand off to the elderly. Who are you know,
our biggest demographic for this issue. So I think making it so that it just works out of the box is something that was really important to us.
Very important. Yeah.
And the security part is the perimeter. It's it's small. Yeah, it has to be close enough to you. Yeah, you have to be like able to touch the person. And then the second requirement is that you also have a YR device as well, where it's like you're able to receive some of that transmission, right, and yeah, that would be like a really random thing to have to Yeah, So we think that the security aspect of it is also a big sell factor for us.
Sure do you have a patent on this?
We are patent pending for the system. So yeah, we're looking forward to continue building on and iterating on our prototype scene.
Because I can see applications for this that go way beyond sort of vision.
Oh yeah, I think YR is going to be a really interesting paradigm shift in the wearable space as a whole. So definitely like really changes up the game in terms of like what's possible.
I think, right, have you had any interest from Apple or Android, Samsung or any of those guys.
Not yet, but if they'd like to reach out, definitely listening.
So I bet fantastic.
All right, you're all finalists. Congratulations on winning. But I guess you guys have all been on the ride, right, like you did you only meet when you got here? Did you already know each other?
We only met when we got here, right, So we had seen each other on video calls before.
Okay, So yeah, but you've been in contact just digitally because you're in different parts of the world too, and then now you've all been in.
Person for the first time coming here and to build all right.
He made it on I mean my experience running contests, not like exactly like this one. We've done a variety contest, Like, every finalist gets a lot of visibility. So yeah, winning is awesome, but it's not the only thing. You made it through a lot of players, a lot of different projects and got got got on the front page. Like to be interesting to see what happens you show an your projects. They're pretty powerful projects.
Very very So your first time in Seattle, any of you?
Yeah? In Seattle, all of us?
Yeah?
Wow.
Did you get to spend any time at Microsoft?
Did you? Guys? Did you take the campus?
So we went on Sunday, but then we are also going to go tomorrow for longer, so we'll be able to see more stuff.
Yeah, that's great. Make them take you to the treehouses. The tree houses are cool. Campus is huge, It's a lot to see, but definitely do the tree Do.
You have any appointments with you know, any of the higher ups that.
Get a little sat your time.
Oh yeah, I'm going to be getting a mentoring session with Saudia, So that would be really cool. Getting ready to figure out what kind of questions you want to ask and make sure the best use.
Of the time. Absolutely.
Yeah, so it's really exciting.
Yeah, no, very challenging.
So what is it like to run a troll your dollar company, because who knows the answer to that question.
Except that guy I'd be Chris Farley. You know, hey, you remember Windows? That was awesome. I don't know what to ask such a I guess I have questions.
So where do you guys see your careers?
So we will also be meeting the Microsoft chief executive on accessibility. Awesome, Yes, together with tim agers because our projects are tailor don't ensuring accessibility for people with disability.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
So after these projects are done, what are your aspirations for the future? I mean, do you want to continue to be innovating in your vertical space? Do you want to branch out? Do you want to do more general things? What are your aspirations?
O data?
Okay, So I think for me it would be with the team is still to pass you sign Verse because it has connected us in a way that we are also connected to the community because you're solving the problem that is directly to the community we serve.
So we're gonna passue sign Verse.
At the same time with the different I'm still studying, My teammates are also still studying, So it's gonna be in a juggling school at the same time passuing.
Sign verse but you think sign versus your career, Yes, yes.
It's gonna be part and passel off me.
It's so cool, lucky to work on the thing that matters most to you, of course, and then also end up in a magic cup with it.
Yeah, that's really cool.
How about you, Matt Oh Yeah, So I guess the big thing that has really emerged for me is that I realized that the only constant really has changed, and so I can't predict exactly what I'm going to be doing in the future. We're going to try and continue to scale hair Match. I've also made a bunch of other apps as well. Right the core theam that I try and hold myself too is I I really just
love building products for people. And if I'm movable to build products for people that other people are not willing to make, I think that's an impact that I really believe in. And so, you know, I guess the next step for me is really I just want a million people to use something sure that I've made, and then you know, maybe someday a billion.
That's great.
So you're staying in the app development sphere, what you don't know exactly.
Where that's going to lead you, but that's where you're going to be.
Yeah, currently, app development could could move into something else. It really depends on whatever people are using as their primary device. I will either hopefully be that device, or I will be an application on it.
It might be an argist device for you know.
Yeah, exactly the moment. But you know, phone has been around for a while now. I think we're ready for a disruption there. Okay, Daniel, what's what's uh? What do you see in the future.
Yeah, I mean there's definitely a couple of different pathways forward from here.
M H.
I mean, in particular, a lot of doors have opened up for us and our team, and we want to continue building in the same vertical. So as we continue you to build out our iterations of prototypes and figure out what the final prototype is going to look like, we'd like to obviously expand that out to BEATA users. So that's going to be the next big step for us, and I think primarily as we continue figuring out I think I got some great advice from Han Yang from
Microsoft or startups. He said that, you know, it's important to also be able to understand like you need to be able to understand like when you need to pivot and figure out if if this is like something the consumers actually need yea, rather than this just being like, oh,
now you're being stubborn about it. So, while we're going to continue trying to solve the problem of accessibility, I think like the ways in the form factors in that comes may be shifting, but I think that's like, yeah, building it with empathy at its core is something that we're deeply passionate about and deeply connected to. So and we also just want to remind the world that, you know, accessibility shouldn't be treated as a feature, it should be
treated as a human right. Yeah, So I think that's what we also would be want to continue reminding people as we continue building. So yeah, I think that's what Argus's future looks like.
I don't know about you, guys, but I've had this experience many times and I continue to have it where a friend that I haven't met or talked to in years says, hey, let's go out for a beer. I want to pick your brain about an app idea that I have, right, And it always ends up here's the idea and here's what we'll do. I'll design it, you build it, and we'll split.
The profits, right, right, So I know that.
The first question I ask is does this app already exist?
Like have you done your homework?
And you know most of the time they haven't, but they say, yeah, I don't think so. So I'm like, all right, well before we first of all, here's my rate. Right, it's going to cost you fifty grand to get a prototype, and you know, so are you still interested?
Right, I'm not splitting the profits with you on a spec.
So do you have people come up to you all the time and are any has any has that ever happened?
Yes?
I do get this quite a lot. Yeah, just generally. So for me, we really built hair Match in public, so we would post on Instagram reels you know, oh this is what we did today building it, this is what we did that day. I posted videos like that for one hundred and eighty one day straight.
Wow.
And through that I had a couple million impressions. I would get multiple dms per week of people saying, oh, I want to work with you, I want to work with you, or you'd get stuff like oh I want to work with you for free? Yeah, but really it's always that they want something more out of you, so
like you will ever like get out of them. And so there are rare instances where you know, you might you might connect with somebody online who really will make an impact long term with you, but it's very rare, and so there's a lot of noise with that where you just have to figure out, Okay, does this person actually want to make a difference or are they just doing this because they they want to have a like a by not really putting into work.
We get the same thing with that. Most of the time people just don't understand what the work involves.
Right.
That's also like you've got the app out the door, it's in the store, you know, a bunch of things. A lot of people don't know because it's way harder than you think it is. It seems simple, but when you actually go through every one of those steps and finally see your app appear in the store, you've been through some stuff. And then it's hard to talk to someone who's just never done that and they think they trivialize all those efforts.
Oh yeah, and we.
Get the same thing with the podcast. You know, people want to be guests on our show, and usually they're just selling something or you know, the stuff that our listeners don't care.
About, so we just let a lot of it go.
Yeah, all right, yeah, so we know what's next for you. But that's usually a question I asked, but you've kind of already answered it. But you're you're going to continue working on this stuff. You're going to take it to the next job.
But none of you finished school yet either, like you still have school.
I did just gratch congratulation, Thank you, going back for more.
Are you going to go to work?
I'm going I'm just.
But that's you know, the crazy part for me is thinking you still got classes?
Yes, yeah, all these other things Tomorrow my team.
Joint classes at four in the morning before coming.
To on the other side of the world of course difference.
Yea, so it's a bit crazy, but.
Yeah, that's great. That's amazing.
Well, congratulations to you all again and amazing job. Congratulations Daniel on August. It's it's you guys are amazing.
Yeah, of course, it's been incredible honor meeting everyone here.
All right, Well, thanks for being awesome and thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time on dot net rocks. Dot net Rocks is brought to you by Franklin's Net and produced by Pop Studios, a full service audio, video and post production facility located physically in New London, Connecticut, and of course in the cloud online at pwop dot com.
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