I've got the new Samsung Galaxy S25 and a new business idea. You see, now brief of Galaxy AI learns my schedule to keep me ahead of my day. Activity stats, traffic news and new podcast episodes. Oh, beaten to it. Buy the new Samsung Galaxy S25 and O2 by 19th of March and save up to £480. Selected languages only, account login and network connection required. Offer available on 30GB plus tariffs. £10 per month discount over 48 months. Terms apply. This is your business.
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These are your customers having more ways to pay you with the help of Xero Accounting Software. This is your business supercharged with the help of Xero, helping you show your cash flow by giving your customers more ways to pay so now you can focus on making your business boom. Supercharge your business today with the help of Xero. Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast, a landmark episode. We've got the return of one of our favorite guests. We have quite a few of those, but this one...
Cooper's CEO, Fabio Bologna, has been on the show three times before, so this will be his fourth visit. But his first is the new man in charge of the company. So previously, he's held roles, being responsible for the product and customer success. Now he's at the helm. And so we're going to be asking him for an update on Cooper. It's been a while, actually, before the pandemic when he was last on. So there's a lot has happened. The product lines had a refresh.
And Cooper is a phenomenal company. They pioneered angle of arrival and they have some massive customers that are using this technology for very precise. very rapid real-time location of items. I've used their product as a consultant and that project was very successful. So it's always good to check in with Fabio. He's a great guy. He's going to be talking about some interesting customer stories and how the market landscape is changing. So I think that'll be interesting.
For me, this is also an important milestone because I am leaving Williot. It's a company I've been... privileged to work at for almost eight years. I joined in the first year, a few months into the founding and happened upon them partly as a result of my book and maybe even
this podcast. And I'd resolved never to work for another boss again and to do my own thing, my own companies, my own consulting. But what will you... was doing and is doing was so phenomenal that I had the privilege of joining as employee number 13, the first employee outside of Israel, the first one outside of the core R&D team. had an amazing time with the company. But I'm leaving to start another company focused on ambient intelligence, the intersection of the battery-free Bluetooth.
Technology that Williott has pioneered and a wave of AI technology that's impossible to resist digging into. So the new technology will be working. on top of Williott's platform, as well as others. And I'm hoping that Williott will be a stakeholder in the company and that the new company will be a customer of Williott's with a special relationship.
It's tough to leave, Williott, because 2025 is going to be an amazing year, probably the most amazing year other than when the first product came out for the company. There's some massive... customers that I think are going to go public in ways that will really turn heads. There's a new generation of technology coming, which is part of what's inspiring me to... start up this new company. I think it's going to be groundbreaking technology.
I have always been in love with Wiliot ever since I came across it, but I'm also mesmerized by the opportunity to combine agentic AI, AI agents. with the knowledge of the physical world, to bring AI and the physical world together in a way that's not being done at the moment. And I think there's huge opportunities to create.
some incredible user experiences, some business value, and also to empower people with more knowledge about the things around them, where they came from, their carbon footprint, food safety. And that's really downstream from where Williart is focusing, has to focus, should focus, which is working with some of the biggest companies in the world to bring visibility to their supply chains. What I want to focus on...
is more in the consumer's hands. And I want to create some fun experiences with a mobile app that can use AI and a knowledge of the places and things that people are at. So I'm in fundraising mode. and getting a lot of great interest from some wonderful companies. So please stay in touch. I think that Williott will continue to sponsor this show.
But if they don't, then I may be in the market for other sponsors to cover the production costs. But I'm still going to remain a student of this ecosystem. It's a fascinating area where we have to weave business, technology, human nature. into one thing. And there's so much to learn about that I want to continue to have these conversations to keep in touch with Williot and check in with them periodically on how they're doing as well as all of the other companies that...
have a role to play around them. So enough about me, let's get back to Cooper and Fabio and see all the amazing work that that company is doing. The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by Williot, bringing intelligence to every single thing. Fabio, welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. You're not a stranger. It's good to have you back. Thank you, Stephen. It's great to be back here and it feels like home. Yeah, I remember when I'm...
wrote the Beacon Technologies book, I discovered Cooper. So this was like a decade ago, I guess. And your technology fascinated me. So you've been on the show a few times, but why don't we kick off just for folks that have not heard about the company. Can you just do a recap on who Cooper are and what you do? Yes, absolutely. So Koopa is a company that was founded back in 2012, originally as a spin-off of Nokia.
And myself and the founders of Coupa, we were working in a team called Local Connectivity and Indoor Positioning. So our challenge was pretty straightforward. It was like... Take a phone, take away the GPS, use any radio, any sensor to try to position the device. So that was the mission in a way, and then from there we got very creative.
We started to use Bluetooth, the very early Bluetooth. It was actually not even Bluetooth back then. It was called WeBree. And already at that time, we figured out that by using... certain characteristic of the signal, like the phase, we could actually compute the direction from where the signal could propagate. So now fast-forwarding many years, so at the core of the CUPA... solution offering there is a bluetooth angle of arrival technology
We can use standard or we have a proprietary implementation of that in a way like an extension of the standard like iBeacon could be or Addiston. And what we can do is to very reliable... and accurately measure the direction of propagation of the signal and therefore to position an object. And when I say real-time and reliable, I mean it because... For instance, we are currently deployed in about 90 stadiums, ice hockey stadiums, where we actually track since four years.
every professional ice hockey games in the Finnish League, Norwegian League, German League, and a few other teams across Europe. If you need something that goes 10 centimeters, 150 milliseconds latency, we can do it. We track puck, player, referee, everything that moves on ice. And that's when we do it really for timeness and real-time and accuracy. But we also have many deployments in industrial sites, manufacturing, logistics.
plenty of metal and radio disturbances that's in a way is our secret recipe is how do you make use of the radio information to compute reliably the location of the object so this is in the very core cupa is a very reliable and stable and scalable offering and then over the years I believe, Stephen, I was on your show maybe before COVID the last time. Yes, yes. So what has happened between that and now beside...
well, COVID and unfortunately a lot of pain, it was that we kind of expanded our offering. So instead of just giving the famous dot on the map, We actually have some software layer, more tags, and we consider ourselves as a solution provider, an end-to-end solution provider. where the lower end is within the core of the platform from tag, silicon radios, and firmware. But the upper layer is practically depending on the type of customer we work with.
And in some case, we can work directly with a customer to provide to them something valuable. In other case, we work with system integrator. In other case, we work with solution partner. The platform is very open, so it can be integrated at different levels, so to say. So how often...
Does it work standalone and how often is it integrated into other systems? Is using Cooper standalone ever a thing or are you always welded into some kind of enterprise app? And if so, what kind of apps do you integrate with? It's a really good mix. That's a good question. So when we do, I would say most of the time, there is always an up, a third party up on top, some layers.
that convert our data into actionable information that are relevant to the end customer. So like in the case of hockey that I mentioned before, We have a partner called Wisehockey that transforms the coordinate into metrics that are relevant for sport. When we go into industrial side, our technology can be either paired...
with, for instance, video tracking. In some cases, being paired with GPS tracking. And then... other cases so even with some ultra wide band or some other technology and then the data harmonization is done on the software layer We have our own layer where we can try to harmonize the data or otherwise we have partners with their own layers. And then there is a rule engine that comes on top.
So typically we try to stay as Coupa away from what we call the business rule engine. So there is always, even in industrial side, Something that would otherwise integrate into CRM, ERP, you know, oracles, SAP, whatever database, otherwise platform the end customer might be using. And interesting enough, sometimes that...
Adaptation layer between us and the CRM is actually done by the end customer directly because they have their own system integration arm. Other times we have partners that come in and they do the adaptation as a system integrator could. do. Our platform is pretty flexible, so I would say that we can be a standalone RTLS, and we have probably the majority of the project where we are.
But then if there is a need to complement, because of the use case the environment requires, that absolutely it is possible. And on the tax side... which is the lower layer, we have our own reference devices, but we also have a pretty rich ecosystem of tag providers. Because we definitely do not want to hardware lock any of the customers. So Bluetooth is actually great for that. Or tracking scanners. We can track scanner just if you install an app.
We are definitely not building the scanners or the mobile devices. So it's like a core that can be complemented or just use it standalone. But are there like warehouse management systems? Is that like a typical integration point? I can imagine companies that want to track pallets moving around in real time. where this would be a good function. Can you speak to some of those? What are the industries where this remarkable capability that you have really shines? Because...
I think all of us as technologists think this is really cool. But you as a business, you obviously have over the last decade figured out where is it that people really need real time and precise location? Because a lot of people... People will want...
You know, you ask someone, well, do you want the data slowly or quickly? And they, yeah, of course, I want it quickly. Do you want it accurate or non-accurate? Yeah, I want it accurate. But it comes down to where do they really need it? And what is it that you've found? that are the applications where they really need the level of accuracy that you provide, which is really beyond any other Bluetooth technique or approach. Yeah.
That's a good question. So it's, for instance, what we always say when we talk to a customer is like, okay, this is your need. It's technically feasible, but is it business reasonable? And that's how we separate the two things. And sometimes we are also constructively challenging some of the leads we get and say, if you want, we can do it. But is it really business-wise what you can enjoy?
So to your question, what we have found as very mature or more mature vertical markets, and mature in this case, I mean... markets where the value of asset tracking, RTLS, indoor positioning, seems to have found a way through the chasm, the famous chasm that everybody is trying to cross.
I would say that in logistics, definitely that's the place because you can directly correlate cost where there is... related to operation productivity or general parts and asset tracking so logistics is definitely a very important market and for us in particular When we talk about logistics, it's anything that moves fast in logistics. Think about the parcel terminal. Think about freight forwarding, cross-docking.
Whenever you have a facility where things are coming in and out within 24, 48 hours, that's where we found more and more customers with the understanding. of the value that an RTLS location system can bring into them. When we talk to warehousing... Of course, everyone wants to know where the assets are, or they are tracking the forklifts, or they have other use cases, which are also very valuable, don't get me wrong.
But that's where we see that can be tough in some cases to justify the return of investment. Because I remember going to visit some of these distribution facility with rocks. all the way to the ceiling and so. And beside the fact that the robotics, it's taking over those spaces because everything is like in a three-dimensional chess, very well placed.
But also, in some cases, the customers practically are using pen and paper, so to say, or manual input to a database. And those goods may stay there for months, weeks. So they are not a quick turnaround. So they don't always need to know, you know, to the minute. where things are which is different in cross docking when you have a truck at the dock and like in an airport the truck has a certain time to be on the dock
And either the goods are in the truck or the truck is leaving without the goods. And if you make the truck wait, then you have the avalanche chain effect that all the other shipments are laid. And if you think about the amount of goods that they need to go in a truck, if you can save even a few seconds per search, or if you can avoid... Then suddenly somebody needs to start running around the facility. That is value for them on a daily base. So logistics is one example. And then manufacturing.
And manufacturing, it's not necessarily what happens on the assembly line, because again, that is like a pipe. three-dimensional pipe where robots and everything is well orchestrated. But the problem is what is happening outside the assembly line. And most of the factory have square meter that are outside the assembly line.
And that's where, for instance, our technology has found a lot of value. MROs, so maintenance and repair, is also an important piece because things come in, they get disassembled. And you can't mix parts between similar objects that you are disassembling. So anything in this kind of industrial realm seems to be quite important for us.
Healthcare is also another one that is quite interesting and definitely a mature vertical market. And we see a good traction also in there. We work a lot with partners into healthcare. And then, well, the sport for us is a lot of fun and we do it. And then if you are interested, I can tell you some other funny case that we do.
Yeah, I'd like to hear about the weird ones as well as the ones that are really moving the needle. So what are the weirder ones? Well, weird, of course, maybe some of our partners. hear what I'm saying weird they might be offended let's say interesting yeah let's say unconventional unconventional because all of us that has been working
asset tracking and RTLF for many years. We tend to be also very serious sometimes when we talk about RTLF use cases, right? It's about valuable goods. It's about things that matter that you need to track. But for instance, we have a project at the minute where we are tracking trampoline parks. Sorry, kids in trampoline parks. Oh. So we...
We practically help one of our partners in Teleplay to practically track the location of the children and then to provide services to the family and the parents that are at the trampoline park.
And the location of the children is not just for safety and security, but is eventually also for... payment system like you you buy two hours you run out of time how do you find the kid that are in the trampoline park that need the renewal of the bandage oh my goodness yeah yeah you've got like a hundred kids and which one have got the blue band versus the purple band, but you can make that a science and a process. That's great. That's a great one. I haven't heard that one before.
yeah so in general it's like amusement or entertainment that and we have a few different that goes in deadline we also have another one very interesting And at the minute that we track dogs in dog hotels or dog daycare. So when you... You're working, you're a family, very busy, and you need somebody to take care of your dog.
Then there are these very special locations where you can leave your dog and then take it back in the evening. And of course, you want the well-being for the dog. So you want to know where does he spend time or does he move? routine and so that's a very interesting project we really like it we like when our customer challenges into new cases Maybe the most exotic, I remember a project, I'm not going to make names, we were tracking chimpanzee in a zoo.
And I remember that at one point I was still in the support role. We got a phone call from the end customer that said, the tag is getting broken. And we were like, oh my gosh, what happens? And then we started to do troubleshooting. But only afterwards, we kind of learned that they were weird as a wristband by the... the chimpanzee and of course they really love to smash the tags so that was uh it was a research so it was a time limited kind of and uh and but it was uh very interesting
So those are particularly interesting things. If you were to go to the other end of the spectrum, if those are the exceptions, what's the rule? Because these tags have a... price. How much does a Cooper tag cost these days? So it really depends on the provider of the tax. So if you're getting tax from Coupa, some of our reference tag, let's say we are around the $10, $15 per device. Of course, if you buy in volume, you get some discount, but I would say that that's typically the price.
If you are otherwise looking for something more specific, then we have partners that can make tags at even less sub $10 per device, even closer to $5. And we have other partners that, again, for specific cases, they can maybe go in the level of one, two dollars. And then when we go into something even more extreme, when... For instance, we can work with a company like Williott.
for instance, can provide the Bluetooth signal that we can read, then we are at the level of cents. And then if we go to the upper level, we have tagged that they cost 100. of euros or dollars because then you combine it with GPS and many other connectivity technology or if you go into ATEX or EX
certification than they are in the hundreds of dollars. So I would say that the fork is pretty wild, but that's the beauty in a way of having an ecosystem of type provider and leveraging on a technology that has already billions of radios out there that you can try to meet the need of the request of the customer.
That's very helpful. And then, well, let's go to the other end of the link and the locators, because since we spoke, I think you've had a new generation of locators that you've introduced. What's the new generation? how much does it cost just so that people can do a general sanity test. Right. So we have changed and renewed the locator generation from what we are called L-D generation to what nowadays we call the Q generation.
And we have two products. One is Q17 and one is Q35. Since we are engineer at heart, so the number is the diameter. Okay. So it's pretty straightforward. Yeah. So the Q17 is mainly designed for indoor, and it has a more appealing design, smaller, more mimetic in a way if you're going to install it indoor. And then we have a Q35, which is actually IP rated within Finland, so we know what weather.
can be, and it's for outdoor use, long range and outdoor use. So, but also the outdoor, the Q35 is often used indoor in heavy industrial environment. Because it's very dusty, they can get very dirty. And the installation height, we have deployments of 30 meters indoor. When you roll a plane into a hangar. the ceiling tends to be very high in that case. So we definitely, or they are outdoor in light poles.
The cost of the device is roughly like an access point nowadays. So if you think about an indoor access point for industrial use. That's the ballpark. It's a few hundred of dollars and then again in volumes that the cost goes down and for outdoor is a little bit more because of the ruggedness.
the type of device similar to the access point for outdoor, but then also there, then the price scale down with the cost, with the volume. And then the big difference between the old and the June generation, despite general performance and mounting and easiness of mounting. And so is the fact that we actually have two radios inside the devices.
And with those two radios, we can actually get very creative on what to do. So, for instance, one of the products that we have launched recently is what we call the Q-Link. So in the case in which you cannot run a cable, but you might have power, so the locator will just start wirelessly to... to communicate with each other. So in that way, you can lower the deployment cost very significantly.
So there are different schemes that have been used also for networking. We have introduced a device called Q-Port. which is a data aggregator and power splitter so that we can get one POE. line out of the switch, and I'm talking about PoE, not PoE+, like 15 watts, and we can power up to seven locators just with one switchboard. So that is also reducing.
very much the cost of deployment and the cost of the switch in the cabinets as well. Because sometimes you pay per port that you use. The locator consumed very legally, it's like one pot per device. So that's how we can. complement that. Very interesting. Yeah, so clearly the product's maturing, you've had the experience, and so you're looking at optimizing and looking at how do you make this scale at the lowest cost.
Let's just go back to what is it that typically your tags are on. So we've talked about chimpanzees. We've talked about children. If you had to kind of... Do an analysis of what are the things that you track most often? What's at the top of that list? I would say general assets. So assets, it could be tools. Tools can be drills, it can be specific skew drivers or boxes that they are used to transport material.
roller cages or any other transport unit. It's definitely into that. And sometimes are the part itself. But the part itself then it really depends on the... on the type of business. Like if we are in the automotive, we track the car directly. So what they do, they just take one of our tag and they put it on the dashboard of the car, inside the car. And that is also one of our differentiating factors like we are.
able to accurate track the car even when the tag is inside the car. And that is very important because otherwise if you put it on the outside, then you have to attach it to the chassis of the car. But think about the freshly paint. brand new car you don't want to attach anything on the outside so it needs to be able to be track reliable even though inside the metal box so to say
So that's also where some of our expertise and robustness of our platform really comes into play. So the tide is not in line of sight all the time as you can. as you can imagine. So that is one. We also have been tracking, in a lot of cases, the device itself through a mobile app. So for instance, When we go into manufacturing or logistics, we can take any device that could be Android or, for instance, iOS.
You just install an app, you use the API from the device, and you turn the device into a tag. We call it tag emulation. And in that way, you can practically not have to attach a physical device, but you can track the device with the same accuracy. So that is also something that is gaining a lot of interest because once you track that device, you can start to combine scanning with real-time location.
And that gives you a completely different dimension into data analytics and process flow analytics. Or in some case, we can just track the device itself because surprisingly enough, this... that might cost $1,000 per device, they are forgotten on the pallet that then goes on the truck, and they never come back. So sometimes we just tell them, hey, your device is leaving. Yeah. And I love this architecture because this gives you a way of...
tracking things at an incredibly low cost. So if the phone or the Zebra scanner is scanning a QR code or NFC tag or RFID tag or even a Williot, tag you and you know where the scanner is then by inference you know where the asset is and you can gradually kind of update that i think that's a very interesting architecture
One of the other architectures that we've talked about in previous discussions, and in those discussions, we get into more of the details of the fact that you guys can do X, Y, and Z, and how many locators that are required to do that. So we won't. retread that ground unless there's anything major that's changed. But I do remember you talking about an interesting architecture where your locator...
goes on the forklift and the tags actually are going in the ceiling. So rather than the classic locators in the ceiling and tags on the... thing that's moving around you flip it and the thing that's moving around is that Cooper locator and then you have a few tags in the ceiling is that something that you've seen take off is anyone doing that or was it just a really cool idea it's one of our exotic architecture i would say that we haven't really
package it as a prime product offering okay it's one of those things that is like is it technically possible i would say yes you can do it Okay. And we had had a few projects where the customer is trying to do that even with a discrete success. Personally, I think that after a while that you do it, you actually figure out that is not as easy as it sounds to maintain and to necessarily operate.
And also it becomes very specific because, yes, you can track your forklift in the warehouse, but then if your appetite for RTLS grows... You can't put a locator attached to a box. So then you... tend to think about the reverse architecture, and then you're back to square one. That is like maybe you put a tag on the forklift and you leave the infrastructure up there. Okay. Better to bite the bulletin.
It can go both ways, but it's interesting that you bring this example because we actually have a few different cases where... so the forklift that you just described is one of our exotic architecture we have done another one for rescue search and rescue where we actually attach a locator to a to like a handheld device like a scanner for the locator here and then there was an app where the app was showing like a radar what the locator is seeing
So you can actually use that device if you need to search for something. So we have done similarly doing Nokia time where we miniaturized the locator inside the phone. That was CES. 2009 2010 so you in in a way was very early air tag yeah open the phone, find the tag. But this one is different because with the locator, you get more accuracy and precision and range. So you could use it for really search and rescue.
So that we have done. And then another architecture that is exotic, it's when we do, for instance, AUD, so angle of departure. Yes. It means that the locator becomes the transmitter and then you have a receiving device that then computes its own position. This is something that still... what we are thinking to try to push into the standardization further, but it will take a little bit of time. But we have prototype running and we could do it.
And I think we have a demonstration of that in a previous episode. It's coming back to me. I remember us recording that. That was cool. So if anyone wants to know more about angle of departure, go through the Mr. Beacon archives. You can find. I've got the new Samsung Galaxy S25 and so many brownie points. You see, Now Brief with Galaxy AI learns my schedule to keep me ahead of my day. Weather, activity stats and diary updates like Janie's birthday.
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I do want to get an update from you on, you know, competitive positioning because things have evolved. You mentioned the Apple AirTag, which, of course, has ultra wideband. Yeah, it's a combination between Bluetooth and UltraWipe. Bluetooth and UWB. So, yeah, what are your latest thoughts? Where do you see the pros and cons of UWB? I was so disappointed when Apple did that.
like really looking forward to angle of arrival coming into the phone. Maybe they'll get religion and keep things simpler and do it that way. But how do you guide people when they're looking at these two technologies? Because it's... come down in price quite a bit now uh obviously the volume's gone up partly i guess thanks to apple yeah i mean in general i i can hear two questions there so let me answer uh separately so i
I like ultra-wideband technology as I like Wi-Fi in all this conjugation of positioning, whether it's RTT or whether it's just based on RSSI. Bluetooth has its own conjugation with RSSI, AUA, AUD. Now they're ranging with the channel sounding. And Ultra Wideband has its own conjugation with... time of arrival, time difference of arrival, or also their AOA. So to me, if I put my researcher hat on, so I go back into the Nokia time.
I still believe that the holistic solution to the general problem of indoor positioning is hybrid technology and hybrid positioning. And that's probably what will happen one day on the phone. especially when you have to run all the technology on the phone. When it comes to industrial, over there is a little bit different because the problem is if you like a little bit less complex.
in the sense that you have a facility. You don't have a phone with a person that takes a plane and go indoor, outdoor concert, swimming and all these other environments. Typically you have a more... a defined problem that you're trying to solve and even though can be a large project at the moment we are deploying a single project of two million square meter multiple building indoor and outdoor
It's a big problem, but it's still a well-defined problem. So in that case, you can practically maybe use or pick more a technology subset. that would be more appropriate for the kind of use case you want to run, like tracking scanners or tracking a variety of tags at different price points. So that could be the way. Generally, I think that every technology has a merit. And absolutely, I believe that ultrawide is particularly good, especially when...
You might need to do a point-to-point kind of measure, and you want to do that in a certain fashion. I think that definitely he has the merit. Position is also very good in particular environments that are challenging. When it comes to industrial side with a lot of metal, we have been competing with ultra-wideband a lot. Sometimes they win, sometimes we win. But then the winning or losing is not about the centimeter or the accuracy or the latency because that's comparable.
It's more into the flavor of the type of solution that you are giving to the customer or the type of assets that, again, you want to track. It can change a lot. So that's about the technology, Steven. And then if I go more into the air tag or effectively general asset tracking.
I believe that the market is exploding in that respect. I think that from the consumer market to the industrial market there is definitely... a strong growing interest in getting to know where my assets are yeah and i believe that there is a number of reasons when that is happening and the macroeconomy situation is also playing a role into that
Because I think that a lot of industries, even in what we might call the first world, where there's a lot of money and a lot of investment, I think they have recognized that they can't just keep on buying. whenever they need something. And especially large organizations that they might have their own storage, inventory, warehouses, they actually have accumulated a lot of stocks.
which even goes into their balance sheet at the end of the day, but a lot of stocks of assets and goods that are not used in the way which we should. And all of that sit in capital. It's something that they should otherwise make a better use for. And everything starts by counting the chicken. So knowing where is my assets, how many are there, where they are.
And maybe also the air tag has been actually a way, taking it from the consumer market to help people understand that, you know, by putting a very... inexpensive sometimes device into a box, you suddenly make that device become observable, become alive. And that's, I believe, what Viliot is doing a lot with the ambient IOP. And, you know, going from zero to something is an infinite improvement. So it's quite impressive. Yeah, I think Apple AirTag is a great thing because it kind of...
brings to everyone this concept that things can be tracked and why should we accept losing things? And you can see it in the luggage tracking market. The airlines are all scrambling to respond to... track bags in better ways, because now consumers can put an Apple AirTag in their case. And suddenly they're saying, well, I can, you know, they know that that works. And they're asking, well, why don't you have something that's better?
more scalable. So I think it's definitely good for us. One last competitive thing, and then I want to just finish off on maybe just one or two other use cases. I want to come back and ask you a bit more about that massive deployment that you touched on. But what's your view on the channel sounding technology that the SIG announced recently? What's the relevance there as compared to angle of arrival?
Well, it's a very interesting technology and is actually, technically speaking, a great achievement because... If you think about the past where there was the belief that the only way to reliably compute range was... By using ultra-wide band, which inherently has a lot of bandwidth, and by doing a conversion, you have a lot of time resolution. And that's how you can measure range.
In the case of Bluetooth, you have a very narrow signal, which practically means you can't do the same game in order to compute the range. But the engineering... All around the world, everybody contributing to the Bluetooth thing has done a fantastic job to kind of crack the nut and be able to find a way to reliably compute the distance.
So the distance is definitely something that can complement greatly the angular estimation. And that's, by the way, one of the reasons why we also have a secondary radio in the locators. Eventually, we could make use of the range estimation as well when doing certain kind of calculation. The difference in general between a ranging estimation or AOA is that the ranging estimation often requires two ways communication, which means that relatively speaking consumes more power.
And also more limited in terms of capacity because it takes more airspace. And by doing that, you have less capacity within a certain cell of the system. While if you do angle, it's a one-way communication only. So that means more power effectiveness and capacity.
And I feel that the channel sounding in general now coming into Bluetooth, it practically brings really... a completeness into Bluetooth because now you can really do positioning with the Bluetooth radio using all the RSSI, using angles in both conjugation AUA and AUD. Or if you want, do ranging. And then it's up to the provider of the solution or the configuration of the system to leverage what is the best combination. In a way, it's like three technology into one.
so to say. Yeah. No, I think that you've hit the nail on the head. And Williot, for instance, is probably the lowest cost Bluetooth tag, will not support channel sounding, but could support angle of... So if you're looking at, you know, truly high volumes, then that's something to bear in mind as far as going for scale. So any last things that you want to point to in terms of customer?
trends, places where people are seeing a good return on this technology? Should we bring it back to business? Yeah, I mean, what the We have been in, so myself, I've been doing position in technology since the early 2000s. So now is more than 20 years. And I remember when I started, I had people asking me, Why do you do indoor positioning with the dedicated technology? Why don't you just use GPS? Or when we were trying to offer an infrastructure, the answer was like,
Well, GPS is for free. Why do you need a dedicated technology? So clearly the market was very immature back then into understanding why... a technology is actually in need to complement the GPS for non-GPS covered area like indoor or urban canyon or urban environment. But then also what we notice is that there are more and more end customers that over the past two decades, they actually have tried different technologies.
Sometimes they were driven a lot by pricing because they didn't know what use case to really leverage and benefit for. Long story short, I think that in average, the whole market, whether it's industrial health care, whether it's security and safety, entertainment, sport. is recognizing the value of location data to complement everything that they already have. And understanding the location data in all these conjugations, so it could also be a simple presence detection.
It doesn't need to be, you know, centimeter level accuracy. Already the presence detection can massively improve. the way in which they operate and the asset management and the cost and so on. And when they come, for instance, to us, oftentimes, they actually come with a very clear idea in mind. We don't even have to discuss. about what is a position in technology. It's mainly what can we give to them for them to maximize.
the return of investment. So internally, we have this joke saying that the best customer for us are the ones that are once beaten and twice shy, meaning that they have already tested something, they have already... educated themselves. And then when they come to us, we can have a much more constructive discussion. And we tend to be very transparent, maybe it's in the nature of being a Nordic company.
And sometimes when they describe their use case, if we don't think the CUPA is the solution for them, we have no problem to refer them to... to other technologies and sometimes even competitors so i believe that in general we are all in the same boat when it comes to rtls and everybody of us, RTLS provider, if we can increase the awareness into location value and everyone is going to benefit for it.
Well, I think that's a very mature way of looking at it. And it speaks to you and the company and the fact that your technology is seasoned and has a well-defined place in the ecosystem.
But apparently the last time you were on this show was 2019. I can't believe it was so long ago. It's like ancient history, but it makes sense. It was just before COVID. And so it's good to... have you back on and of course now your role has changed so tell so what what happened i i can't think of a better person to uh
take the mantle you're a co-founder you've been with the company since the the beginning but why did you step up to the ceo role yeah that's actually it's a it's a good question that as you can imagine i've been asked a few times in the past weeks. Yes. And one of the best comments, by the way, I heard from one of our customers was like, it's so nice to get into a meeting when the CEO actually knows his product. Yeah.
That was quite nice. But anyway, I mean, jokes aside, as you know, I have a technical background in statistical signal processing. And I am definitely our core when it comes to technology. But over the years and since the foundation of Coupa, I've been more and more interested into the customer-facing part of the business.
And the simple reason for that is because on Nokia, I noticed that, you know, you want to do more, you crack more math, more equation, more algorithm. And it's very exciting. I still love that part. But to me, it's always been more and more intriguing to understand how do you build a business relationship with somebody? How do you build business and trust among...
people. And I'm a strong believer that business is always done between people, never between companies. Those are the technicalities, the contracts and all the rest. So when I started at Coupa, Kimmo did a fantastic job of being our CEO and leading the company for effectively eight years until 2020. And then when the company grew beyond a certain level, he felt that he wanted to...
kind of focus more into the technology itself, which is sweet spot, so to say. And also we decided to take an external CEO. Sami joined the company back then. And it brought a lot of know-how and understanding into how business is done outside the core engineer perspective, but taking other parts of the relationship into account. And I've learned a lot working with him for three years. I've been always part of the leadership team and he's been a good mentor to me.
And back then, he put me in charge of the product management team, which was also a lot of learnings because in the past, when... When Kimo was the CEO, I was leading the support team for eight years. So you kind of get the complaint from the partners and the customer.
You get that side of the story. Typically, the product is already in their hand and now you need to sort out how to support and maintain. But the product management team is, interestingly enough, a very different role because there you get the wishes. It's like, I know the product does this, but I would like it to do something else. So it actually gives you a very different perspective into what you could do. And of course, it forces you to be critical at time.
Even with the customer itself, in support, you always have to be polite and say, of course, we will do it. Because anyway, they have the product. They bought it and they are right to demand certain things. But when you go in product management... They sometimes come with wishes that are not always something that might be in the core of what they actually need. So you have to sometimes do that translation for them.
So then Sami unfortunately had to leave CUPA because of health reason. It was definitely a shock for everybody. Still doing good. We still meet. But he had to take that fork in his life and leave the company. Therefore, already back then, I've been asked whether I wanted to kind of lead Coupa.
To be honest, I wasn't ready. I didn't feel I was ready. And I felt that there was still some area I couldn't fully understand on how to lead a company. And also I was... good in my role i actually enjoyed my role so but and and also we found a very capable ceo back then soyle She joined the company. Sami's already steered the company into a little bit of a different strategic direction. And Soyle came in with yet a different background than Kinmo and Sami more into services.
She was accelerating the company and leading it there. Everything went well, and I worked with her for one year very closely. Really, really enjoyed working with her. But then at the end of last year, unfortunately, she has to leave Kupa. That also was... A bit of a surprise, but, you know, sometimes that happens in business. And, yeah, and then they came back to me again, the board, and was asking, Fabius, is this the time? And then I was like, well, actually... this might be the time.
So we are. Sorry, that was a long answer. It's fascinating. I think people are really interested in who's at the top and people's evolution. We all think about our own evolution. So seeing you and what you've done. It's great that you've covered the key parts of the company, getting the customers and looking after the customers and the direction of the product. And that's where a lot of the tough decisions get made.
So I think you come incredibly well qualified. You understand the technology, you understand the customers, the partners and the product. So I'm very... Very happy for you. And I've always been a super fan of the company and the product. You have a great culture. And I just love, I've seen your product in action and it does what it says on the tin. The performance is amazing.
And it has an important place to fill in the Beco system, as we used to call it. But anyway, you guys are key, and it's great to see you at the helm, Fabio. Well, we're kind of winding up the end of the show. We have the kind of the frothiest, silliest bit where I ask guests about music. I must have asked you this question before, but I'm going to ask it to you again. Are there three songs that you would like to bring to mind that have some meaning to you that we could talk about?
Am I still traveling to Mars? I remember in the past I would be there. No, actually, that's a very good question. You're not going to Mars anymore.
Because everyone was like space oddity and there was a lot of just space things. And what I'm really interested in is the person, not the spaceship. I find songs that kind of mark... a time in someone's life or a relationship or something that they went through are the most interesting so i have three i have you have three yes okay so i would start with pin floyd And it could practically be pretty much any song from the album The Wall. You can pretty much close your eyes and pick one. Okay.
Love Pink Floyd. I learned about them in their early age. And my father had an LP at home, so I was listening to that. The Wall was the album, so that's why I like it a lot. And I'm actually very happy because they're coming to Helsinki in some capacity in April. And I just bought the ticket last week. So I'm going to hear them live. or at least a subset of them. So, definitely something from Pim Floyd.
That influence of your parents. So when I've had to answer this question, I've often gone back to records that I remember from my parents' record collection that I still listen to. So I'm with you on that. That approach. That's a good one. Yep. So that's been Floyd. The second one, I'm going to make a leap. You might be surprised. This is American country music. Oh, I am surprised. Pixieland music. So I'm a...
I'm a big fan of a band called Alabama. Okay. I don't know if you know the band. Not terribly well, no. So I would definitely advise anybody to listen to them. They had a few great albums, and the one that I particularly like is called Alabama Light. And it's a great album. They are fantastic musicians. I used to play, I still play for myself. I don't like to perform too much, but keyboards and piano. So, and I like the piano player there and the organ player. So it's a keyboard player.
And, of course, you lived in the United States for a while. I remember when Fabio came to Washington. Where was it? Were you in Washington, D.C.? I was right next to Washington, D.C. I lived for almost two years in Arlington. Virginia, so just across the Potomac and got my family there. We had a blast. I mean, the U.S. is a fantastic country.
Oh my gosh, we visited so many national parks and we really loved to just jump in a car and go somewhere and living next to the Appalachia was a great opportunity to explore that area. So it was good. And we listened to all the country music while we were living there. Always heard you about the local radio transmitting country. And even my kids, they actually enjoyed it a lot. Very cool. Okay, and what's your last choice?
Oh, gosh. So the last one, the last one, I would say it's another leap. So it would be Italian techno from the 90s. Love that. Kind of classical Gigi D'Agostino and that kind of techno music. So something that I remember from my youth when I... I was going to dance in the disco clubs and definitely that was the hit. I would say something along that area. There are many bands, so it would be groups. It would be hard to choose one. So quite diverse choices, depending on the mood. Okay. Love that.
Because you live near Helsinki now, right? Correct. I lived... Actually, almost 22 years in Finland now, 23. So pretty much half of my life in Finland, in Helsinki. And originally I'm from the north of Italy, north of Milan. North of Milan. So is that like Lake Como? Is that north of Milan? It's actually very close. So I'm pretty much in between...
Lago Maggiore and Milan, Lake Como is right next to it. So it's that area. It's like going to Como would be, you know, kind of Sunday trip. Just half an hour you're there. Okay. That's fascinating. I love Milan. I remember staying there and there's the original Fiat.
factory there. I don't know if you know it. They turned it into a shopping mall, but it's the most amazing building with a car racetrack on the... the roof and a helipad and the parts used to come in the bottom and it would make their way up and they have this spiral ramp and then eventually the car pops up and it gets raced around the got raced around the track and so
If anyone's in Milan, it's probably like a tourist trap. But for me, it was just an incredible piece of architecture and a great tribute to Italian design, which is something that really appeals to me. Yeah. And of course Lake Koma, one of the most beautiful places in the world, in my opinion. Okay, Fabio. Well, it is always wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you for visiting and getting the top spot in terms of most frequent guests. It's always a pleasure.
Thank you, Stephen. And thank you for having me here. It's always a pleasure. And if someone wants to reach out and know more, just contact me. We'll surely make some time and discuss more. Very good. Thanks, Fabio. Thank you. All right. That's the end of the show. Thank you very much for... Watching or listening, depending on whether you're doing this on Spotify or Apple podcast device or any of the other many channels that we're on or YouTube.
I thought it would be kind of fun, given that we always talk about our guests' music taste, to tell you what I've been listening to. And so my album for the week is Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures. That's what's been on my turntable. You may notice there's actually a Williot tag on this. I've been experimenting with AI knowing. what albums i've been pulling out of the rack and i think there's something uh there maybe not the center of the new company but could be interesting
So I do want to thank you all for staying to the end. You're unusual. Most people just dip into this. And of course, to thank Aaron Hammock, who's our tireless editor and produces each episode. And Sierra Walden, who is one of the mainstays of Williott's marketing team. I'm going to miss her and the rest of the marketing team a lot. And she's published this episode. So quite a milestone, but I'm super excited about the future both for Williard and for this new company that I'm starting.
If you want to stay in touch, then you know how to find me on LinkedIn. But there's also the Mr. Beacon website where you can register interest if you haven't done already. So stay safe. Be happy, enjoy the journey and I'll see you next time. I've got the new Samsung Galaxy S25 and so many brownie points. You see, Now Brief with Galaxy AI learns my schedule to keep me ahead of my day. Weather, activity stats and diary updates like Janie's birthday. Oh, you remembered. Thanks, Now Brief.
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