No Batteries Required: WePower’s Kinetic Revolution

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Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast, the only podcast focusing on architecting ambient IoT solutions. your survival guide in an emerging area that's got a lot more attention since Walmart announced their deployment of Ambient IoT in all of their stores. So if you found us because you... Read the interviews in the Financial Times and all the press coverage. Welcome. We've got about 10 years of episodes for you to...

catch up on. So there's a ton of stuff that is really the history, the foundations, the underpinning of this thing that's going to change the way we connect everyday things. to the internet and to artificial intelligence. So Ambient IoT isn't just about battery-free Bluetooth. It's essentially any low-cost way of connecting. the many things that surround us, to the many radios that surround us, such that we can connect the...

internet to the physical world. And one key technology which we haven't covered much so far until this week is harvesting energy from kinetic movement. And we have an expert in that field, Larry Richenstein, who is the founder and CEO of WePower. Now, Larry is... A fascinating guy. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's a storyteller. He made a lot of money from businesses that were in the consumer.

electronic space in fact he's got a number of important roles in the consumer technology association which is the organization behind ces which is one of the biggest trade shows in the world. He was an angel investor. We talked to him about that. That's interesting in its own right. But he's an example of an investor who found the technology and loved it so much. he bought the company and this company

has got some remarkable, interesting intellectual property. But rather than just becoming a patent troll, he built solutions around that and his approach to monetizing IP again. on its own is worth listening to. It's an important subject for any entrepreneur to understand how IP works in high tech. And I think you'll see another dimension of that. But really, the core of what we get to is how harvesting...

kinetic energy can work, the kind of applications it unlocks, what it's good for and what it's not good for. So enjoy this discussion with Larry. The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by Identive, whose IoT solutions create digital identities for physical objects, enhancing global connectivity for business people and the planet. By Bleakop, who enable physical products...

We communicate with cloud applications using Bluetooth Low Energy. And by ambientchat.ai, we connect people, places, products, and brands with a digital assistant using AI and ambient IoT.

Well, Larry, welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. It's a real pleasure to have you. Pleasure to be here, Steve. Thanks for having me. I am really looking forward to talking to you because I want to learn a bit more about the aspect of energy harvesting that you focused on. I've been living harvesting from radio waves for the best part of a decade.

But the whole sort of electromechanical kinetic energy thing is a mystery to me. And it has its place. So I think this will be a great opportunity for everyone to learn what... You do, but what it's useful for, what it's not useful for. what's the state of the market, where it's headed. But why don't you kick things off, just give an intro to WePower and get us up to speed on your kind of elevator summary of what you do. Sure.

We Power Technologies was founded in July 2019 after I acquired, through a bankruptcy, a portfolio of patents in energy harvesting. As an angel investor, I sold my last company in 2005 and stayed a couple of years. That was unwired technology.

I was looking for something to do and really didn't see anything. So I started investing in early stage companies. I became an active angel investor. And then around... early 2019 someone came to me and said there's a company in trouble that's doing energy harvesting uh what's energy harvesting you know

So he said, well, they don't need batteries and they can send transmissions. And I said, wow, that sounds really cool. I'd be interested in that. So I met with the inventor who was kind of a crazy guy, brilliant in some ways.

But the first thing he showed me, he took me into his garage. Before he showed me the product, he showed me a Ferrari and an Aston Martin. I'm a car guy. So, you know, I knew what those cars are worth. And I know he was renting his house. So just everything didn't make sense. And he was really out of money. I mean, they had burned $2 million in cash trying to build this stuff up and really hadn't gone very far. So I tried to invest in the company and he basically told me to go to hell.

He didn't like the fact that I didn't want to pay him as much as he wanted. And I said I would pay his rent because I didn't think he'd be in that house very long. And he laughed at me. And six months later, I got a call because I stopped communicating with him.

And someone said, are you still interested in the technology? I said, yeah, but, you know, this guy's hard to work with. He said, well, he doesn't have the technology anymore. It's in the bankruptcy courts. You know, I feel bad, but he was so bad to work with. So I said, okay. And I ultimately got a law firm to look at the patents. And because of the fact that, you know, if you want to...

have a really good review on a patent portfolio, you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I didn't want to do that. So what I did instead was I went to a major law firm and I said, why don't you look at this? I knew the managing director. I was fortunate for that.

And they looked at the patents and they said, this is pretty interesting. And I offered them 10% of the company if they didn't show me a bill for the next three years. And they did a little more digging and they agreed to do it. From that standpoint, that was my due diligence on the patents. If they were willing to work for nothing for three years and to own 10% of the company, I said, okay, I'm convinced now. So that's good. So we acquired the patents through the bankruptcy court.

uh in july 19 and i actually hired the inventor and he couldn't have a bank account so i have to drop off a box of cash to him every month you know and the last time i dropped off the cash actually you got an account and he said i could wire the money and i wired him this money and it was a lot of money you know and uh the next day he quit

And the reason was is because I told him that we need an engineer. And I realized that he was looking at this as a science project. I look at this as a business and there's a great technology that needs to get off the... you know, the workbench and into people's hands. So he agreed we needed engineering. And when I found an engineer, Mike Riddell, who has been with us for five and a half years and is our senior VP of engineering.

This guy started talking to him. We had lunch. And I knew he was really uptight because he saw this guy really knows what he's doing. And to develop product takes engineering, not just a good physicist, right? And you can invent something, but to really, you know, make it, we actually tested the first product that he had built. And after 200 activations, the unit failed and actually smashed apart. The plastic cracked everything.

So this was the original product that you inherited, right? Right. So what was a push button? It was an industrial push button that when you push it would generate energy. Now he didn't have... What was interesting, I always thought, you know, if you've talked to enough entrepreneurs, you know, we're a kind of optimistic group that put the risks kind of in the back and just think about all the rosy future that we could have.

And that's what I did. I figured I'd take these little generators, connect them to a transmitter circuit, and I'm done. I mean, I'm in business. People are going to love us. Well, Mike obviously knew that that wasn't the case, and he said, no, Larry, you don't have an extraction circuit. So, yeah, you need to extract this energy from the energy harvesting generator, our EHGs, and you need to regulate it and put it into a bunch of capacitors ready to be used.

okay i knew capacitors that makes sense well i didn't know it was going to take two and a half years to design that circuit and really optimize it i mean it was And also, at the same time, update all the energy harvesting devices. They had two. We now have three. I bought originally, I think, five or six patents. We now have 16 with another 30.

uh outstanding at this point so we we've done an enormous amount of work and that device that broke after 200 activations we've now tested to 1.3 million activations and i can tell you there is zero zero degradation after 1.3 million activations. So we have a really a permanent long-term solution for energy harvesting that will be robust.

put out energy that's never been put out before. I'm talking not microjoules as one of our famous competitors has been putting out for many years, but millijoules. So, you know, 30, 40 times the amount of energy. But even more important... is the duration of our energy you know that other company has a click and that's it's over it's over in microseconds we deliver energy for a hundred times that amount so we're in the 200 millisecond

300, 400 millisecond period of time. So during that period, we can send not two messages with two pieces of data in it. We can send 30 messages. We just tested one of our new devices, which is going to be a water sensor built for the home assistant market. And right now, based on our energy harvesting, we've got this production piece.

you know, pilot run piece that we've been testing, we're getting 30 messages out in a single activation. That's unheard of. So that, you know, in practical terms, what that means.

What does that mean in practical terms? Maybe I only need one message. Why would I need 30 messages? You don't need 30, but... One is never going to be enough. You know, the odds are like, you know, if you say eight out of 10 or nine out of 10 that they're going to get the message. Then you have to start looking at, you need multiple messages. The other thing is the data, the amount of data in there is very important. And because if you don't have enough energy, you can't read sensors.

We have a device, that push button I told you about, where we've shown it at CES. And what we can do with a single activation push is we can wake up a microprocessor. We can read three different sensors. We have a non-volatile memory sensor that collects how many times during the lifetime of the product it's been activated.

We have an XYZ axis mercury sensor that's giving us the XYZ coordinates of how we're holding the device. And we're getting a temperature and barometric pressure sensor that's being activated. So we wake up the microprocessor, read. three different sensors. We transmit that with 128-bit encryption into a Nordic chip, standard Nordic Bluetooth chip, and transmit it 8 dBm.

30 messages or 25 messages without a battery at all. Right. That's the point. Nobody in the world can do that without a battery. And I'm not transmitting power to this. You know, it's just, you push it once and it's done. And just to support what you're saying, you know, the dream of these battery-free sensors is you can put them under the sink and they'll last for years.

And then that one time when the pipe bursts or the coupling comes on loose, it will work. And if you're just broadcasting once or twice... The receivers, like the receiver on your Amazon Echo, it's probably listening. Because very often the radio that transmits, the Bluetooth radio that transmits, is also the Bluetooth radio that listens. So some of the time it's transmitting, some of the time it's listening.

And so maybe that thing's only listening for a third of the time. And so if you broadcast... three times, maybe two of the three times it doesn't get through and the third one does. And so that's why that is important. It's reliability and... People aren't going to want to buy a bunch of moisture sensors that don't work when the time comes. And what you've also articulated is...

Part of it, with these things, it's not just send the message, it's wake the thing up so that it's ready to listen. It's a bit like a human being. It's like, wake up, wake up. You wait for them to wake up and then you talk to them. And so, you know, to me, all of this. Sounds like you've got success in this energy harvesting game is all about the margins. If you could sort of make products successful based on...

the ideal optimal situation, it would be great. But we all know that real life is messy. Physical environments are always like worse than you hope. And so you have to have like... three times the power and the time and everything for it actually to work. And what I'm hearing from you is that that's what you have achieved in this domain of... harvesting, just someone pushing a button and getting enough energy that you can turn a light on. So how do you get the

Tell us how the water moisture sensor works because I saw your demo and I thought it was like really cool because I think we can all understand or appreciate. Yeah, there's some energy going into pressing the light switch, but where's the energy?

in some moisture penetrating a moisture sensor? That's a good question. It's preloaded. So if you took two magnets and put them in your hand, what would happen? they would start it they would attract to each other right they may flip around inside but basically they'll be attached if you pull them apart and flip them over and held them in your hand the same way they would be repelling it from each other right if you ask

physicist, and you put those two little magnets that are repelling in a box, and they'd be pressing against each other, the magnetic flux would be pushing against each other, and you ask a physicist, how long will that last? The answer is basically forever.

So while that unit is pushing like that, and what we do is we wrap a piece of paper around the device that has a button that's pushing up with a spring. And when that spring is able to push through... which only happens when the paper is degraded in a way by getting wet and becomes weak, it allows that thing to push up and it releases those magnets.

And it's a little bit simplistic what I'm saying with the two repelling. There's seven magnets in there. But we created a flux where it has that pressure and it's preloaded. And the second that thing gets wet and the... paper breaks, it releases those magnets to open or to move in a copper coil and give sufficient energy. We're talking here millijoules.

You know, in that particular device, we're talking over four millijoules of energy net going into the transmitter to transmit the signal to tell, you know, that there's a leak. Very good. And how much does this all cost? because i want one okay well it's suggested retail on the uh thank you uh the suggested retail on the home assistant version which will be out uh early first quarter as soon as i can get it out

will be $79.99 retail. And we do think once volumes go up that the price can come down a bit. But, you know, we think for a device that's as reliable as that, again, you know. You can use that thing 100,000 times, so no one's ever going to use it up. But it's completely reusable. Just put a new piece of paper around it. And we have a magnet tray that allows you to take those magnets and put them in that repelling position and just lay it down and it's ready to go again. Okay.

So we need to get the summary of what the products are, but one of them is a light switch, right? Is that the cost? Yes. So how much do they cost? Again, we haven't determined that. My business model is a little different. In all my businesses, I've always had a kind of a twist on the business model. And this one is similar in that we are a licensing company.

And I have been talking to companies the last, you know, probably four years, three years since we've really been ready with everything working. And of course, more has been done since then. But I thought we were ready then. And so... we started talking to people about licensing. And I found that really smart people sometimes don't have an imagination to what we were trying to do. So we decided to create a reference product.

And the water sensor was something that really caught a lot of people's imagination. It's taken a while to get it through because we're also working on a Z-Wave version, which will be out. late first quarter or the second quarter of 26, but that's taken longer. And the light switch was something that everybody, and especially when Europe has outlawed batteries.

that aren't user changeable in August 27. So that opened up the market to us. And we're talking to a lot of lighting companies now about a custom controller. And our controller will be an on-off with a potentiometer. We can do scenes or dimming. We could actually, because we have so much energy, we could do two potentiometers. One for scenes, one for dimming, for example.

So what is, uh, I, I just have, I just have the on off up down dimming. What, what, what's the scenes thing that you're talking about? Well, I understand that there's some, you know, high on lighting things where they do scenes where they have all the lights separate, you know, set up. different and again there could be colors even and stuff you know so oh that's on some systems today like the hue and things like that so

Anyway, I understand that that's something that some people may want. We can do that. Right now, the unit we're going to show at CES in January, which will be our introduction of the new light controller, which is going to be iterated from the... very thick uh not so great unit we showed last cds show yeah so that we now we really have something ready for the lighting industry and uh we're talking to major lighting companies at this point

Okay. So you mentioned the twist on the business model because, and I'm assuming what you're referencing is standard IP licensing. You know, someone buys up some patents and they become... The nasty word is patent troll. They go around and they phone up people who have already got a business doing this thing saying, we're going to send you a cease and desist or send us a check for half your revenue. and you're not doing that, explain why you're not doing that.

Yeah, no, actually, I've been involved in CTA, the Consumer Technology Association, which owns CES. I've been involved there for many, many years in different roles. So patent trolls are like, you know. Get them away. We don't want them. We are not a patent troll. You know, I bought, like I said, five or six patents. We now have 16 and we're going to have another 30 coming.

We've developed this technology and we're not out to sue people. What we're out to do is license our technology. And we are not like a technology licensing firm which says here you can read the patent and figure it out. We're very much a hands-on turnkey licensor because we want those products to meet the specs. We cannot afford to have any of our products.

out there where they're not doing exactly what they're supposed to do. So we're going to work very carefully and our license agreements require that we approve the product before it goes out. Because we want to make sure that our brand name for our energy harvesting technology is GEMS, G-E-M-N-S, which is probably going to be the name of the company eventually.

That's really critical to us to build that image and reputation for our products that when there's a GEMS underneath or GEMS inside is Intel. that means it's going to work and there's no issue whatsoever. So, you know, I understand the position of patent trolls. And while we are a licensor, our business and a patent trolls business are completely different. Yeah, well, that's great to hear. And so are you looking to have some kind of ingredient branding or are you happy to sit behind the scenes?

i am happy to sit behind the scenes with gems um yeah and and you know i mean we will have gems will be on every product because we need our patents to be labeled you know you need patent information on a product to maintain your patent so You know, whether it's XYZ Corporation or this one, I mean, all the major brands that you might think of.

you know home automation smart smart buildings uh are all potential customers and would put their name on it but still on the bottom of the unit somewhere there'll be a gems.com with our patent location, you know, for the list of patents, you have to do that. And that'll be our branding, but we're not, we're not about to build a brand. Okay. Interesting. Except for in B2B, I guess, you know? Yeah.

of course that's standard so but you know the difference between having the intel inside on the sticker on the or the Qualcomm Snapdragon sticker on the box versus having pattern attribution etched into the underside of the product. I guess that's what we're talking about.

Well, I would still like, I mean, we'll see how we do when we start, when we sign up final agreements with some of these people that we're working with. But, you know, I would like to have gems shown somewhere on the packaging, you know, because I think it's important. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm good. But I mean, you know, it would be a minor thing. Like, you know, I mean, you know, when you, when you buy a.

a Dell computer, the Intel inside is a secondary brand to it, right? Yeah. So we are talking about ingredient brands because, you know, I worked at Qualcomm when they did the... They used to have Qualcomm Stadium here in San Diego, and now it's Snapdragon Stadium because they're not, because Snapdragon is the ingredient branding that they want. I know that can be super challenging. So I think it'll be interesting to see how that goes. And I have wanted to do that myself in past companies.

I've worked at, so I'm rooting for you, but I know that it's kind of hard. Yeah, no, the branding is hard, but... I think, again, the people we're dealing with, primarily engineering groups and innovation officers and major corporations, they're not going to be too concerned about this. They look at their brand as being what's most important.

People are buying the product because this one or that one, you know, major brands are producing. So let's just round out the story in terms of the products. that are in the portfolio today. So there's the moisture detector and there's the light switch. And I think you mentioned light controller. Yeah, we have actually the real line. I mean, again, because I look at this as kind of a component manufacturer or supplier, in a sense, in quotes, supplier.

We have three different energy harvesting devices. We have a G100, a G200, and a G300. The 100 is that push button I talked about where we've now achieved over 1.3 million activations with no degradation. The G200 is our most powerful device. which is in the water sensor, and is also an interesting device because it's dual polarity. So we actually know which way the unit is being activated. So we have shown this product in a door monitor.

But we can tell if the door is being opened or closed based on the way it's moving. And this has been, you know, there's some interest in the door and lock markets for this kind of a technology. And so we've developed that. And again, we're just showing use cases. I mean, there are hundreds of use cases for our technology. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there are so many applications for this kind of a technology with three different switches that, again, you know, one is a push button, one is a slide or a turn. The other one is a slide, but with less pressure, which we're going to be using in the lighting industry. So each of these generators has its own applications.

And they scale, which is interesting. I mean, so if I make a device that's one inch by a quarter inch in depth, one inch round, it's going to put out X amount of energy. If I make it triple the size... It may fit into someone else's product, and it's going to be harder to activate, but it's going to put out a lot more energy.

So these things really scale. And I've, you know, I've talked to application, the companies were at applications where they needed like a 20 foot range and they don't need a big signal. It's just an on off kind of a situation. I can shrink the device then and lower cost and make it easier to package it into their product. So these scale. The other part of our line, which is important, besides the three energy harvesting generators,

is a line of different harvesting circuits. So we have different cost circuits if we need different efficiencies. The efficiency and the more need for energy would require maybe a more expensive circuit. We have a very simple circuit that we use in a number of different applications that we've been demoing and talking to potential customers about. So that's really the line, three generators and a group of circuits to extract and hold the power from those generators.

And for all of these, you have a reference design and you have an engineering organization that can work with OEMs that are implementing it. So with IP, it's about novelty. Not being obvious. So what is it that you're doing that is novel and not obvious? kind of described some of the applications. And basically, you know, my summary is sort of more power in a compact profile, but because you're not the first people to use.

electromechanical kinetic energy as a source for lighting controllers. What's different here? Well, what's different here is the power output and the robustness of the signal. That's really critical, I think. But how do you achieve that result? What's the nature of the method?

Yeah, and that's what really got me excited when I first saw the first device, which was our G200, which is that one where they said it's got seven magnets. And it's really got six magnets around a generator magnet that does all the generating within a coil. And I guess what I know what you're looking for. And the answer is that our magnets oscillate within the coil. So when you look at other people's, there's like, it's a click and that's it.

there's nothing going else on what we're doing is if you drop one magnet another magnet another magnet another magnet keep dropping them through the coil you're going to keep getting energy and what we've done is we've taken one magnet that can operate as many magnets

and we get it to oscillate within the coil so that it extends the amount of energy and the duration of the energy output. Okay. And in my simple brain, what I'm... thinking is you have a limited amount of travel, a limited amount of movement, and you're trying to extract the most energy and you're sort of essentially extending what happens with... essentially with multiple magnets to get a bit more energy out of that movement. Is that...

vaguely along the lines of what you've done. Kind of, yeah, but it's really the movement of the magnet within the coil. It's not just a magnet in a coil. We get it to move in a certain way, and that's where our patents come in. And it's really rather novel. It really is. Okay. And everything I've seen, you know.

Listen, some of this stuff that's called energy harvesting, I call energy transmissions. You know, if you're sending a signal to a device that's going to read or is going to receive a RF signal that includes power. Yeah. That's a transmission, right? Yeah. I mean, true energy harvesting. And again, I mean, when you think of solar, you know, which is obviously the most popular of them. I mean, that's really where our extraction circuit becomes so important.

Because if you look at most applications today for energy coming in on these devices, it's solar and it's RF. And RF is less energy than solar. What happens is if the sun comes up or wind is another one, right? The sun comes up or it gets windy. You don't care if you miss the first second generation of energy because you've got eight, nine hours more sun, right?

When you have our device, we've got a couple hundred milliseconds of energy coming out of there. So if you don't get that very first hit of energy, you're missing our biggest output, right? Because it's a declining curve. So the circuit has to wake up before, like when we're thinking of activating it, you know, that's how you really want it. Right. And, and that's a, that's tricky. And, and it's something that we've developed.

And, you know, when we've talked to chip companies, we've talked about like, don't tell us you got a hundred millisecond wake up time, you know, because basically you're taking half our energy waking up. Yeah. You know, we talked to Silicon Labs a few years ago when they first saw our technology. And I don't know if they'd admit that, but I would say that we're kind of responsible for their new chip where they got to...

10 second right 10 i'm sorry 10 millisecond wake up time perfect right you know right so um that that's where and i think you're going to see more and more stuff like that coming 300 sensors. Over a million data points per second. How does F1 update their fans with every stat in real time? AWS is how. From fastest laps to strategy calls. AWS puts fans in the pit. It's not just racing. It's data-driven innovation at 200 miles per hour. AWS is how leading businesses power next-level innovation.

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agent tech AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value.

Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. So the good news is what you're doing is novel.

The bad news is, because it's novel, you have to convince people that it will work and show them how it works. So, you know, that... I think makes you one of the good guys, you know, as opposed to someone that's saying, yeah, what you've been doing for the last 10 years, I invented it 11 years ago. And it's like, okay.

That's just parasitical. But what you're doing is saying, we've got a better mousetrap, change the design, license it. It's a little bit like the Qualcomm model. It's like we can make... 5G work and you don't know how to, here's a reference design, a reference phone. And, you know, I would put them in the good guys of technology. I'm biased. I used to work there, but that's probably...

Yeah, the most successful technology licensing business that I've ever come across is phenomenal. And I think, you know, many reasons for that. basket of IP. You don't just license a patent, you license the basket and it's an evergreen basket. So that was brilliant. That was basically a lawyer that thought of that. But then you've got all these engineers.

And they're thinking about new modulations. Initially, it was tough for them getting people to use what was at the time called CDMA. Everyone was using GSM. And they're like, we've got a better mousetrap.

and the buyers are like, we don't care. We've already got GSM. It seems to be good enough. And it seems like you're sort of similar. You've got a better mousetrap. There's a little, there's some... challenges in selling that but hopefully for you you can convince them that the the extra time the extra energy the extra kinetic movement that you can generate and harvest is worth it

So what do you think? So we've talked about some of the immediate applications. And I know, you know, when we were doing our work on my current business, Ambient Chat, there's like, well, here's what we think we can do today. you know, in the future, we could do this. And the future is always harder, but it's also better. So what are your thoughts on where this could lead to? It's a good question. And yeah, I definitely think about that.

Because I look at this as a long-term business, which actually my whole goal here is to give the money away to charity. Half of everything I earn here is going to charity. Very nice. I'm a little older. I've had some scratches, and that's what I want to do with this. But I think what you're saying is important from the standpoint.

of where we're going with this and and there's a couple of things first of all i told you we have a number of different circuits my goal is to take those circuits and put them into an asic an application specific integrated circuit where We could take a $12, $10 bomb on our most expensive extraction circuit and harvesting circuit and reduce it to, you know, $2 ASIC.

which would really promote the technology and allow us to really promote the technology in a bigger way. So that's one of the more immediate goals. But going forward, I see that... There's not going to be one energy harvesting solution. There are going to be many. And when I look at RF and solar, I see them as complementing what we're doing. And in the future, I would expect that certain products will have a solar, you know, ambient light collector and using that.

to power maybe a battery in there or something where they have a very low amount of draw. But I've learned more. Listen, I'm not an engineer, but I've learned a lot about batteries. in the last few years. And interestingly, these coin cells particularly, but all batteries, they don't like to be drawn on too hard. So, you know, if you give a coin cell a very small draw and you take that draw every day forever.

it's going to last a lot longer than if in between you ask this intermittent spike of energy that needs to now read a bunch of microprocessors or open up a microprocessor, read sensors, and then transmit a strong signal. That just kills the batteries. So when you talk about five-year lives and everyone's saying, well, why do I only get a year? That's why you only get a year, because they're not really meant to use that way. So in the future, I see...

you know where we would have a solar application that would come in and provide like if you like picture a remote control for example you pick it up Wakes up, you use the power from the rechargeable battery that's been recharged continuously through the ambient solar unit. But then when you need to send a strong signal to say, turn on the TV or change channels or something, then our device would come in and would be completely an independent power source. Again, no battery.

that would work perfectly in concert with the solar RF collection. So I think that's where we see things going. And, you know, we had a roadmap and we're going to stick with it.

You know, I see scaling as part of this. I mean, you know, we've had some people in from the U.S. government to our booth at CES and, you know, they see these transmissions in millijoules transmitting, you know, up to half a mile or whatever. You know, what about a soldier who's out in the desert and got lost and now he needs to tell someone where he is? Well, we could take one of those. We could take our unit and make them step on it. Now, again, it's going to be a lot more force.

you know, 30 pounds, 40 pounds of force. But now I can send a signal to a satellite up there and tell exactly where John is, you know. So that's where I see things happening. And there's applications where... Chips are becoming more efficient. So 5G, you talked about, you know, I look at like smart cities, smart roads. You're out in the... You're out in your car and you're in a windy road up in the hills somewhere where there's hardly anything going on. You hit a barrier.

Wouldn't it be nice if the barrier was a smart barrier and had one of our sensors in there so that now when that barrier was hit, we took that energy, we used it to transmit a 5G signal up and say, hey, there's been an accident. you know, protection number of so-and-so and everyone know what that is. And they, you go over there and see what happened. You know, do they have to replace the barriers? There's somebody that fell over a cliff, you know, what's going on.

I love that idea because if you think about the harsh conditions that a barrier goes under, I mean, the temperature fluctuations would just kill a battery and you certainly don't want to have wired.

barriers so it's a perfect application i love it yeah so i mean there's all kinds of smart city kind of applications like that you know yeah you know and any any kind of controller in the future i mean you know We've talked to people where the electric doors for the hospitals, they use those remote controls.

Well, you know, a lot of them today are being requested to put them for wheelchair compatibility where they stand up from the, they move them off the wall and they put a little metal stand up where they've got the push button. Now what do you got to do? You got to drill a hole in the ground, run a wire, and put that up there, or use a battery.

and i can tell you that battery operated push buttons for doors in hospitals are not the best thing when someone needs to get into a room quickly and they can't get through the door so uh and well it's just the cost it's not just the main there's kind of compliance to maintenance regimes so that you get reliable service. But it's also just...

That's been the thing that's held Bluetooth beacons back. It's, okay, I need to replace the batteries every... four years but that is such a massive cost and uh so problematic and uh and they really don't last that long either you know yeah the other thing is i mean for example another example is um hotels you know We look at blinds and drapes that are electric drapes and shutters in a lot of nicer hotels. And, you know, if you have a hundred room hotel.

You've got 100 remote controls lying around that are in different states of needing batteries. And in a lot of these hotels today, there's one person who's responsible for changing smart doors and remote control batteries. in a hotel. Now we could do this where, you know, it would be there for the next 50 years and never need a battery change. Yeah. That's a great market if you can get into it because these hotels are all, it's a template, isn't it?

You know, everything is the same. You go to a Hilton Anywhere around the world, you're going to get the same shampoo. You're going to get the same bath. So you can crack it. And they're looking at costs in a very scientific way. So it sounds like also this would be great for anyone that's listening. an entrepreneur that feels like they want to build a solution, you're kind of giving them some...

new capabilities, opportunity space. You're going to need people like that to jump on this and build the stack of what you are talking about. I want to move on and talk a little bit about your past. I think we're running pretty low on time, but I just wanted to ask you about your angel investing in the past. But before we do that, is there anything else that we haven't covered on gems?

we power that your core business that you want to get out no i i think uh you know we're we're we're ready now that now's the time we're talking to real licensees about real programs that are going to start in 26 and uh yeah So it's taken longer than we thought. It's been more challenging than I had expected. Yeah. But, you know, most things that really worthwhile turn out to be like that. So it's okay.

It's always the way, isn't it? I mean, with Willy, I was convinced five years we'd all be on a beach. And yeah, they just had the Walmart announcement. But that was like eight hard years. to get to that. And this is really just the start of the journey of scaling that technology. It's going to be another couple of years before it really starts to become...

hopefully ubiquitous. And so these things do take time, but hopefully this ecosystem can help each other. You know, the idea of getting rid of batteries. I'm hoping is a viral design pattern that takes off. So when you were, it's really interesting that you've become you know, poacher turned gamekeeper, or maybe it's the other gamekeeper turned poacher in that you're, you know, you were a VC and then you went back to being a or an angel investor.

And then you went to back to being, you know, running the business that typically someone might invest in, but you've invested in it. When you were an angel investor, how much would you be investing typically? What does that market look like in terms of and where did you fit into that? Well, I joined a group. When I sold Unwired the first time, the headphone company, I had started this headphone company and it was very successful. We were the only tier...

I would say we were the only tier one supplier in the world with 11 employees. We were tier one to General Motors and Ford and tier two. We had 82% of the world market in headphones and cars. When I sold that, it was a fortunate situation, and I didn't know what to do, and I started looking at opportunities. They had made me sign a four-year agreement, but two months after I sold the company, Katrina hit. And Hurricane Katrina put a big crimp in gas prices. The prices went to $5 a gallon.

You couldn't give away SUVs and minivans, and that was where all my headphones were. So it was a tough time, and I had just sold a majority interest to a private equity company. They weren't too happy with me. So I left after a year and a half. And what am I going to do? And I started looking at this idea of being an angel investor. And I joined a group in New York called the New York Angels.

I was fortunate that I did that because I think for a lot of angel investors, going out and investing by yourself and doing your own due diligence, unless you have the money to really pay for a group of people to do the due diligence. It's very difficult. So by joining a really good group, and I mean, being in New York or in LA, it makes it easier to find these groups. You're in a much better position because...

You know, we had at the time I joined, I think there were 45 members of New York Angels. Today, it's like 145. But there's always somebody that knows the industry that somebody's pitching you on. you know, or know somebody where they can get more information. So the due diligence becomes much better. And it worked out very nicely. But answering your question, the typical bet, I call it a $25 chip.

was $25,000. So I invested in over 85 companies through that, mostly through New York Angels, although there were other avenues to finding deals. But then what happens is some of the deals, you know, they need more money. You don't want to put so much in because you might need to up again. So there are deals where, you know, I started with 25 and I'm up to 150 now because they keep having, you know, rounds.

They seem to be doing successful business, so you keep supporting them. So it really depends on the company, I guess, in a sense as well. Yeah, so you're putting 25 in. But are you doing that with three other people? So it's actually 100K rather than 25K? Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no. I do it with 20 other people or 10 other people. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I mean.

You know, the typical check that, you know, a founder could get out of New York Angel starts at a quarter of a million. I mean, you know, and goes up to, you know, we finance companies the tune of a couple million dollars. on a on a single round uh because you know there are some people in the group that'll say hey i really want this and they forget the 25 000 they put down 300 000 or something you know because it's it's in their space and they really love the

Interesting. And what stage are these angel groups typically investing in? Is it seed? It's presumably not late stage. No, no. You know, it really is the seed stage that I think the angel groups have been pursuing mostly. I think today there's real opportunities in later stage, and I'm looking at some of that.

Right now, I'm financing this one all myself, and I have for the last six years. So I've pulled back a little bit on my early stage investing and putting it all in a company that I'm controlling. So... And what are the hazards of that early stage? I mean, the math says it's just going to be higher risk. You've got a funnel and more and more people drop out.

Aren't you so presumably higher risk, higher reward? But is it higher reward? Because you're getting diluted potentially by all of the people in the A round, the B round, the C round. Why do it?

Well, I think you're right about that. And that's one of the reasons why I find sometimes angel investing very frustrating. I've told a lot of people about angel investing that the one thing you'll... guaranteed of that you'll find they have a new way to screw you every time and and that's typically from the bcs because you know the later stage guys will come in there'll be a bunch of angels come in oh we love this new york angels and now they need you know

10 million and they're going for the vc round and the vc first thing i want to do is get rid of us you know like can't we dilute them more you know can we again it's you know they're they're looking out for themselves not for us So I found that the best deal I ever invested in was a deal where the guy promised us that if he does this round, he will never need another penny. And those are the ones you really want. Now, even if they don't meet that.

You know, but there are some, it's still, if they go for a second round, it still could be okay. But I see many companies coming in and those are usually the medical companies or, you know, where they need approvals and where like.

you know, we're going to do a seed round now, but you know, there's going to be a D round someday too. And you're getting in on this thing and you know, you're going to be diluted unless you keep putting in. And I hate those personally. I don't like investing in those deals. I really like people who say they're going to try and do it all on one round. Because if they do it, that's where the real opportunity is. That totally makes sense from the angel's perspective.

To me, it totally makes sense from the CEO's perspective because, you know, how many CEOs do you know that... had an e-round and now basically their ordinary shares are worth nothing and uh they've uh you know uh right i i know so many people and that you know like you see their company being bought and you're like congratulations and they're like yeah And you know that they didn't get anything out of it. And these are the people that worked so hard for so long.

So to me, finding a business, I mean, it's easy to say, but finding a business model where you can generate enough cash that you're not, I don't think closing a big round is... That's not something certainly that I aspire to. Maybe it's because I'm old and crusty. I want autonomy and I don't want to have a boss. And I certainly don't want to have 15 bosses.

Exactly. So, you know, I think that's something where, you know, I call it breaking the egg. And, you know, I've talked to entrepreneurs about that and said, you know, wait as long as you can. Because, you know, if you have a company and you find it. found it and it's coming along the longer you last and the more traction you can demonstrate the higher the valuation and the less less dilution you're going to experience

And, you know, where you get to a situation where you're a founder and you're going to be in a position where you're working for the company and you're no longer in control. I mean, you're done. You're at the whim of the board and the BCs are controlling. So I would recommend that people wait as long as they can to raise money. And I'm certainly one that has pursued that. I have not raised any money and been using my personal funds for the last six years.

But I'm thinking about it now. Well, the thing I was going to say was the great thing is that AI is, I think, a wonderful thing for... for entrepreneurs doing that. And I have just been, I've talked about it before on this podcast, but I, you know, I haven't done any development or coding for Over 30 years. But I've been playing with these AI software development tools, these IDEs, and it is phenomenal.

This week has been incredible. I've been using this tool called Cursor. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's one of the big AI development tools. And I was just blown away with what you could do with that. But, you know, as someone that's managed people, I actually think that your ability to use these tools directly correlates to your management skills, because these AIs, they behave very much in terms of their management.

Seems remarkably like managing a person. And I feel like with Cursor, I've been managing this graduate who's... unconsciously incompetent. They're like full of hubris. I can do this. And when it goes wrong, they never want to tell you. And they're like, it's fine. And it isn't fine. And you're like, you know, if you just told me we could have, it's like. manager graduate and you're like no i i actually get it steve um i i feel that my chat gp is like my um kiss up employee

Like, don't tell me how smart I am. Tell me how stupid I am and why I'm doing it wrong. Don't tell me I'm doing everything right. You know? So I'm with you on that. But I want to pass on this thing that anyone else that is using AI for development, I just switched to OpenAI Codex. And basically... I listened to another podcast where Andre Kapathi, I'm probably massacring his name, but one of the early founders of OpenAI was saying, he was basically, I like this, he was bad mouthing.

AI and saying why it's really not as good as everyone thinks it is. And it's going to be years before we get to AGI. And he was saying how he still likes to do the coding. But he said, you know, but the best thing that he's found is OpenAI's codecs with... You can pay, you know, you can either get these things for free or $20, but there's a $200 a month subscription. And he's like, if you use GBT5 Pro, that is the best. And I'm like...

Okay, I'm going to give this a try. I gave it a try. And it's amazing. My graduate programmer, I've now got someone that's got 15 years experience. And it's just... a transformation and there's less of the euphoric stuff and it's just the facts. And they're like standing back and saying, you know, we need to refactor this code.

I mean, to me, I am getting so much joy just looking. You hire someone. I'm sure you've had this. If you hire someone who's not good, it's a nightmare. It's like stressful for you and stressful for them. and and and and But there's probably people you've hired in the past who you thought, this is just a great employee. And it's a joy. You know, you see them. And that's what I feel about GBD5 Pro working in codex. So if anyone else is doing development.

go for that. That's my tip of the week. Well, I know you're into music. I see you got a nice pair of speakers back there. Thank you. Yeah. And I know there's going to be a question about music. You're talking to a guy who has loved music. I'm 72, and 69 years ago, I sent my father out for my first rock and roll record, which was Hound Dog by Elvis Presley.

And when I looked many years later at my 45 collection, I realized that at 3, 4, 5, 6, I was buying all the coolest music. You know, I mean, you know. Haley and the Comets, Richie Valens, I mean, all that old stuff. And so for the last 69 years, since I bought that record at three years old, I have never stopped buying music from...

rock and roll. So, you know, when it, when the nineties came, I love Nirvana, you know, Pearl Jam, uh, Alice in Chains, all those, you know, and today, I mean, actually. I think Cage the Elephant is probably one of the greatest groups that's been around in a while. And so I'm completely current, you know, and talk all the way back. Amazing.

three songs that are important to me it's like so do you have a lot of vinyl then uh or have you switched to the i did i did um you know it was something where when i i had my really last great audio system And, you know, as you get older, you can't even hear some of the highs and everything. But I knew Mo from Monitor Audio. I was introduced to him many years ago. And he sent me a pair of speakers that he made for me, like the Big Monitor Studio ones.

But, you know, with the metal drivers and everything, but he had fixed it up for me and I had monoblock amps and everything. I mean, I really had a system. But, you know, today I still have monitor audio systems, but I don't... pursue uh you know the uh super high-end stuff because i don't think i need it anymore

So how do you consume your music? Do you use Spotify or what's your... I have Spotify. I also have like... three four thousand songs on my uh on my hard drive here in my computer right so uh you know so i carry a long list i have like a my top hits or my my top songs is like a nine hour playlist where i just check four and five stars for all the apple songs in the apple list you know so all right i mean i i've

I can talk music on any level for any time of the period in the last, like I said, almost 70 years. Well, this is dangerous. We could end up losing ourselves. I will try and focus my question about. Three songs, presumably from that very long list, that have specific meaning for you. You know, the songs that we like, and then the songs that we have meaning.

because of their time or whatever. So what was your first song? In My Room by the Beach Boys, because as a sad boy growing up, when I heard that song, it was like, oh my God, that's me. You know, close the door to my room and I'm in my room and I can do whatever I want. And the world is, you know, not bothering me. So that was, that was like my first escapist song, you know.

That was such a great song. And just you mentioning it literally sent shivers down my spine. It's like, oh my god, that's such a great song. It was, right? I mean, God Only Knows is another great one, but In My Room really had meaning personally, you know. And when I first listened to Led Zeppelin's first album, I was 15. I was laying on the floor in my friend's room.

And Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You came on. And wow. Like, I had never heard anything like that. And I didn't really know much about the blues, but I knew that this was rock infused with blues that... Even Cream or some of the other earlier groups that did a little of that couldn't do the way they did. And I just...

I love that song. And every time it comes on, I'm just like, I can't, you know, it doesn't come on the radio too much if you can imagine being a long song. But yeah, it's funny. I never liked Led Zeppelin when I was. younger. But now, I just love it. I love it.

but you when you were younger they were in their later stuff also you know and i didn't think the later stuff was as good as the first few yeah maybe although i just it was just a little heavy for me i was like elton john and uh well elton john's first album came out and that was to me one of the greatest albums ever i mean if i was going to have to be on an island with you know five albums elton john's first album and maybe even tumbleweed connection the second one would be

which were really written together but broken up, as you may recall. Great stuff, yes. You want an incredible, I mean, and his rate of production, you know, they were producing two or three albums a year. And it was like, not just anything. It was Captain Fantastic and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. And I mean, that is just like some incredible.

thing was going on in his brain and and and talpins i mean tim and talpins were like and the band i mean the band they would come in and he would have written something and uh yeah actually stage fright Stage Fright was one of my greatest songs also. See the man with the stage fright. There were so many great songs. The band was great, yes. So, okay, so that's two. And also, what's going on at this time? So you're growing up in New York, I assume. You sound like a New Yorker.

I was actually growing up in Southern California. That's where my beach boyfriend came in. So I'm in New York now, but I was born in Dallas, lived there, I was five, then moved to California.

and spent time in Westwood and then Encino. And then we had to move to New York, which I did kicking and screaming. Yeah. How old were you when you landed in New York? Twelve. 12 and i got there and i was depressed and upset but i was missing my friends in california and what song became the biggest hit ever or i mean at the time it was just huge and it was being played like 10 times an hour

was california dreaming and i'm standing in new york and all the leaves are dry and yeah yeah you know all the leaves and then i'm looking at it and it's like hey this is me like why am i here i want to be yeah i'm dreaming about california so third song is positive vibration by bob morley uh the whalers uh just i remember when i got that first album that album of theirs it just

completely did something to me it was again like you know just a jump from to a different sound and i really loved that reggae and positive vibration just had a thing to me it just really resonated with me always so

I've always liked reggae, and actually there's one for you, because I know you're British, and David Bowie must have been someone you liked. I love Bowie. Of course. Ziggy Stardust came out. That was like the most unbelievable album, you know, but he did one reggae song. And it's actually one of my favorite songs. Okay. You got me an album.

don't look down later on check it out don't look down i'm gonna do it that billy the blue jean album and i gotta tell you it's one of the greatest and and to hear him do a reggae song it's it's very cool I mean, he was nothing, if not eclectic, he would shift and he was a chameleon, wasn't he? But also, it wasn't just kind of... handing over his writing to some producer I mean it was him but he was absorbing you know soul or whatever the thing was that was the amazing thing about him

He was amazing. And you know, like certain artists that like when they become popular and like, okay, this is working. So now I'm going to break it and do something else. He did that, like with his tin machine. I remember going to a music land. This is an old record chain in the United States, if you remember, and they had events. And I was a vendor. I was selling a musical keyboard.

They invited me and Tin Machine was there. And I want to tell you, I would never have walked out of a David Bowie concert, but this was, I mean, everyone just laughed. It was just, it was, you couldn't listen to it, you know, and talk about heavy. I mean, he really wanted to turn you off. I wonder what that was about. I actually have not another direction.

Yeah, I've watched a lot of documentaries. I've never heard much about Tin Machine. You know, it happened and I'm like, oh, I don't really like this. But no, not at all. Well, it's so funny you bring it up because I was driving off to the coast. I'm in San Diego and I had half an hour in the car. And what did I play? I asked, I asked, actually. That's not true. I was trying out the integration between...

ChatGPT and Spotify. And there's now a plugin. You can do that. So you can talk to ChatGPT about music and then it will work with Spotify and create a playlist. So I asked, my test was... David Bowie deep cuts, which there probably is a playlist that almost certainly is. But I just wanted to see what it what it did. And it was pretty good. Pretty good. i'm surprised don't look down wasn't on that one uh maybe it might have been anyway trust me yeah yeah yeah very good well i have i could

There's several threads I want to pursue, but you've got limited time. I want to make sure that I've really enjoyed this. This is great, Larry. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Steve. It's really been an enjoyable conversation. Look forward to talking to you again sometime. Thank you. So Larry Richenstein, I love that conversation. It's a real gift getting to talk to entrepreneurs with so much experience on this show.

The other gift has been listening to my album of the week which is from Depeche Mode which literally means fast fashion in French. So this is a group that... hit the top of the charts, certainly in the UK back in 1981, and they are still going. And Memento Mori is a great album. It was made in the wake of the death. of Andy Fletcher who was the third member of this group and this movie is a concert movie but with poetry and amazing visual art woven into it and it's called M.

And it was shot over three days in Mexico City in front of 200,000 fans. And, you know, to give you a sense of how accessible and interesting this is, I took my 23 year old son. Sam to this and we both loved it. People were dancing. People were dancing in the cinema. It was just so good. Depeche Mode is such a great group. The frontman, Dave Garn, is this consummate performer in the lineage of Mick Jagger, only kind of wearing a lot more black leather.

He's legendary because he died for two minutes and was brought back to life after a... It's some overindulgence, let's put it that way. But Memento Mori is... Sounds morbid. It means remember that you must die in Latin, which of course is true. It's not morbid, even though this is Halloween time. It's really a call to not waste your time, to live deliberately. And so I can't think of a better philosophy or better music.

Okay, that's it for this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you have been, and if you haven't been, then you won't be hearing me say this. Thank you to Aaron Hammock for patiently. listening to me and my guests longer than probably anyone else in the world and creating such a fine product. Do enjoy the journey.

Do join us next time and do tell your friends about the Mr. Beacon podcast because we need your help to grow the show. It's fun doing it and it's even more fun knowing that you're listening or watching. See you next time. How does F1 update their fans with every stat in real time? AWS is how. From fastest laps to strategy calls, AWS puts fans in the pit.

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