Speaker 1: How'd you like to listen to dot NetRocks with no ads?
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Speaker 1: up now at Patreon dot dot NetRocks dot com. Hey
Speaker 1: guess what. It's dot net rocks from build. I'm Carl
Speaker 1: Franklin Capel. We've been here for three days. This is
Speaker 1: our third day, and I think it's our third day.
Speaker 1: It's our third day, yeah, yeah, and we're here where
Speaker 1: the Imagined Cup finalists. Representatives from each of the three
Speaker 1: teams are going to interview them in a minute. But
Speaker 1: first let's talk about better know a framework.
Speaker 2: Roll the crazy music? All right? Man? What do you got?
Speaker 1: I went searching again for things repos on GitHub that
Speaker 1: are trending, and the number one repo right now is
Speaker 1: WSL because.
Speaker 3: Interesting just Windows Subsystem for Linux. Yeah, because they just
Speaker 3: open it, just open starts it.
Speaker 1: But before that, this one has been at the top
Speaker 1: AI hedge fund.
Speaker 2: Okay, what's that? Okay?
Speaker 1: Absolutely I haven't run it, but it's a proof of
Speaker 1: concept for an AI powered hedge fund. The goal of
Speaker 1: the project is to explore the use of AI to
Speaker 1: make trading decisions. This project is for educational purposes only
Speaker 1: and is not intended for real trading or investment.
Speaker 2: It seems like a great way to lose a lot
Speaker 2: of money fast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But here's the cool thing if you think about it. It
Speaker 1: employs several agents working together. So this is a great
Speaker 1: example of agentic programming. The Aswaff demo, Darin agent, the
Speaker 1: dean of valuation, focuses on story numbers and discipline value.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm not going to read them all, but
Speaker 1: one of them is Charlie Munger, right, Barren Buffert's partner
Speaker 1: only buys wonderful businesses at fair prices. Michael Burry agent
Speaker 1: the big short contrarian who hunts for deep value. Peter Lynch,
Speaker 1: Phil Fisher, Stanley Druckenmeiler. Now the question is what do
Speaker 1: they train this on their data? You know they're trading
Speaker 1: data apparently, and you know they have big disclaimers. But
Speaker 1: it's very popular, and that makes me wonder how good
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: You know what they say, past results do not indicate
Speaker 2: future results.
Speaker 1: No, you're right about that, but I think you know
Speaker 1: understanding what we do about AI. It's either that it's
Speaker 1: really good clickbait and got a lot of people to
Speaker 1: download it, or it's working for some people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know either one of those is true, but
Speaker 3: something's happening for sure. Okay, So that's it.
Speaker 1: That's weird AI things. And this one's pretty popular, So
Speaker 1: who's talking to us? Gravity comment to Show nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: the one we did with Rob MenShing. We were talking
Speaker 1: about the open source maintenance fee and just trying to
Speaker 1: make open source more sustainable. Got a lot of comments
Speaker 1: on that show. Actually, this one comes from Rob King,
Speaker 1: who says, in my experience of using open source in
Speaker 1: a commercial setting, the biggest barrier is the financial apparatus
Speaker 1: to get money to pay for maintenance. We talked about
Speaker 1: this on the show.
Speaker 3: There are often forms to fill out and people to
Speaker 3: convince to get that payment. I suspective companies just gave
Speaker 3: devs a small annual stipend to spend on open source
Speaker 3: project the money would flow more readily. After all, if
Speaker 3: I've taken a dependency on open source project, I've already
Speaker 3: done its cost benefit analysis that seems very optimistic. Actually, Rob,
Speaker 3: mostly I had a problem and I made that problem
Speaker 3: go away. The actual money change part should be as
Speaker 3: low frish as possible. I came at this a different
Speaker 3: way during the show, where it's because I, of course
Speaker 3: have worked with CFOs. It's like, Hey, if we had
Speaker 3: a mechanism so a CFO could put one chunk of
Speaker 3: money once a year and it would distribute into open
Speaker 3: source based on utilization, they'd probably do that. Just a
Speaker 3: question of how hard that mechanism is developed. But Rob,
Speaker 3: I appreciate your thoughts, and a copy of Music Cobey
Speaker 3: is on its way to you. And if you'd like
Speaker 3: a copy of Musico buy I write a comment on
Speaker 3: the website at dot NetRocks dot com or on the
Speaker 3: facebooks we publish every show there. And if you comment
Speaker 3: there and I read it on the show, was that
Speaker 3: your copy of music Kobe?
Speaker 1: And for those who don't know, music to code by
Speaker 1: is music that you put on in the background while
Speaker 1: you're trying to focus. It's not distracting, it's not boring,
Speaker 1: and it is scientifically based in what I should I say,
Speaker 1: it's based in science in a study about the aspects
Speaker 1: of music that help people focus.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's after they did that show with Mark Semen.
Speaker 3: We were talking about flow and focus and you then
Speaker 3: made a thing.
Speaker 2: I made a thing.
Speaker 1: So there's twenty two tracks now they're twenty five minutes
Speaker 1: each to correspond with a Pomodora technique and you get
Speaker 1: them at musicdocodebuy dot net, or as Richard said, by
Speaker 1: sending us a comment, Okay, let us talk about the
Speaker 1: imagined cup we have, right, you know what, You're right,
Speaker 1: we should do nineteen fifty six, but I did not
Speaker 1: prepare anything. So this is episode nineteen fifty six. And
Speaker 1: what we've been doing lately is talking about what happened
Speaker 1: that year in world events. M So, I don't know
Speaker 1: you've got something up there.
Speaker 3: We're beginning of the Suez crisis. Oh, that was the
Speaker 3: invasion of Britain and trying to control that the waterway there,
Speaker 3: which is very big deal. Yeah, and the first time
Speaker 3: Elvis Presley became famous, right, the first detection of a
Speaker 3: neutrinoy an undetectable particle.
Speaker 1: An undetectable particle that can go through walls and lead
Speaker 1: and everything else. How did they even detect it with really?
Speaker 1: Once in a while the Trino's decay. It's very rare
Speaker 1: and by far most importantly, General Electric releases the first
Speaker 1: snoozeable alarm clock. Wow, there you go, but then you
Speaker 1: couldn't snooze.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it sounded like modern techno music.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking that's the thing. The beat nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all right, well there's more stuff to talk
Speaker 1: about in nineteen fifty six, but we want to talk
Speaker 1: to the Imagined Cup finalists builds. So we have representatives
Speaker 1: of each team, just one representative from each team. So
Speaker 1: I'll start with Matt. Matt Steele is on the hair
Speaker 1: Match team. He's a Georgia Tech computer science grad with
Speaker 1: a concentration in AI and embedded systems. He has published
Speaker 1: more than five apps to the iOS app Store with
Speaker 1: over twenty thousand monthly active users. Matt's also a former
Speaker 1: US Olympic Trials qualifier in swimming and took fifth place
Speaker 1: at the US Open in swimming.
Speaker 2: Wow. How about that?
Speaker 1: And on top of that, you're in the Imagined Cup
Speaker 1: Finalists And so that's from the hair Match team. Guida
Speaker 1: Abdallah Omar is on the sign Verse team, and she
Speaker 1: is a passionate innovator and project associative Signverse that's sign
Speaker 1: v r S, where she leverages technology to address social challenges.
Speaker 1: Is the founder of Girls I Save, an initiative empowering
Speaker 1: girls in STEM and advocating against gender based violence. She
Speaker 1: brings a strong commitment to community driven tax solutions. A
Speaker 1: Guide is also a Generation Connect Youth envoy with the ITU,
Speaker 1: a judge for Young Scientists Kenya, and a recognized change
Speaker 1: maker in the Coastal region of Kenya. Her work combines
Speaker 1: information technology, advocacy and innovation to create inclusive, impactful change.
Speaker 1: Welcome and Daniel Kim is studying math in neuroscience at
Speaker 1: Stamford and seeing his grandmother struggle with her visual impairment,
Speaker 1: Daniel was inspired to pursue Argus, which is one of
Speaker 1: the teams in the finalists. In his free time, he
Speaker 1: loves spending time with animals in any capacity he can. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: welcome guys to dot ne Rocks and congratulations, thank you
Speaker 1: for having us. You bet, Matt, Let's start with you.
Speaker 2: So here.
Speaker 1: Match is the team that you are on and tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah sure.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 4: Hair Match is a mobile app which allows women with
Speaker 4: curly hair to take pictures of their hair, and then
Speaker 4: we use AI to be able to determine their hair type,
Speaker 4: and from there we've done the R and D to
Speaker 4: be able to curate products based on their specific hair
Speaker 4: type that work for them. And so there's a very
Speaker 4: big problem with curly hair care where people will spend
Speaker 4: a lot of money on products and then the products
Speaker 4: don't actually work for their hair because there's something really
Speaker 4: specific about that one product, you know, might be one
Speaker 4: chemical or one molecule that's often the formulation that doesn't
Speaker 4: work for that person's hair type. And then you end
Speaker 4: up with a bunch of products under yourself. And so
Speaker 4: my co founder, Relisha, has very very curly, very long hair,
Speaker 4: and this is a problem that she faced first.
Speaker 3: I imagine just I've seen shelves like that just yeah,
Speaker 3: bottles that were used once.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just you know, you use it once, but once
Speaker 4: you use it once, you can't return it. And so
Speaker 4: she just had this. She called it the shelf of shame.
Speaker 2: So it's like our phones.
Speaker 4: And so I've been friends with her since we interned
Speaker 4: together about two years ago. We were both college athletes.
Speaker 4: She cheered at University of North Carolina and I swam
Speaker 4: at Georgia Tech, and so we just became friends over that,
Speaker 4: and then eventually we both are really interested in building things,
Speaker 4: and so we decided to make hair match and that's
Speaker 4: kind of how it was born.
Speaker 1: Now she's technological also, or was she just interested in
Speaker 1: the problem.
Speaker 4: So she she is technical, she can code, but she
Speaker 4: primarily her strengths are in the media and the product
Speaker 4: side of things, and so primarily those two things were
Speaker 4: her focus on the team. And then she has a
Speaker 4: very very deep understanding of the problem because she is
Speaker 4: the customer.
Speaker 2: Of her Perfect Perfect Domain Expert.
Speaker 1: So people listening might be going, what you know, that
Speaker 1: seems kind of silly, But you know, I have two
Speaker 1: stepdaughters with curly hair, and they struggled all their growing
Speaker 1: up lives and into adulthood probably still do now with
Speaker 1: this problem. I'm you know, straightening hair was and just
Speaker 1: combing it could be a huge shoe, right, And some
Speaker 1: people want to straighten curly hair. Some people want to
Speaker 1: have smaller curls when they have big curls. Like there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of styling things and just maintenance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's a lot of societal pressure as well
Speaker 4: on people with curly hair and either straighten it or
Speaker 4: to keep it in very traditional hairstyles. They've been commonly
Speaker 4: accepted in the workplace for decades here especially, I guess
Speaker 4: primarily in the US because that's where we're based out of.
Speaker 4: But you know, one of the things that Alicia and
Speaker 4: I believe in is we want people to be able
Speaker 4: to have equal opportunity professionally and from a self confidence
Speaker 4: perspective as well, and so being able to build something
Speaker 4: that directly improves people's ability to style their hair and
Speaker 4: leave their confidence is great.
Speaker 1: We can go to the app store and download hair
Speaker 1: Match right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been live for six months now.
Speaker 1: Actually, wow, what's the response been.
Speaker 4: The response has been great. So in the app, we
Speaker 4: did for a while have my phone number in there.
Speaker 4: People could just text me if there was a problem,
Speaker 4: and I would just get these texts at random hours
Speaker 4: of the day like I love this, this is amazing, guys,
Speaker 4: you're doing great. We get emails like that as well,
Speaker 4: and so the response has been overwhelmingly positive, and that's
Speaker 4: something that we've really enjoyed.
Speaker 2: Talk to me about the workflow, like, how does people
Speaker 2: use the app.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So a user will download the app from the
Speaker 4: app Store and they go through onboarding. We ask them
Speaker 4: a few questions about their experience with hair and the
Speaker 4: sort of what they already know versus not, so we
Speaker 4: can tailor the experience a little bit to that. Then
Speaker 4: the primary magic is we have them take two pictures
Speaker 4: of their hair very up close in good lighting, so
Speaker 4: we're able to actually.
Speaker 2: See that in the more in detail.
Speaker 4: We process that using a visual transformer that we run
Speaker 4: in Azure ai foundry, and we're able to get the
Speaker 4: hair type. Once we get that hair type, we give
Speaker 4: them a nice little savable card that they can save
Speaker 4: to the chemeeral. It's like, oh, this is your hair analysis.
Speaker 4: It's really cool.
Speaker 1: We it's like five or six different categories that you
Speaker 1: check exactly.
Speaker 4: We have five different properties on that card that they
Speaker 4: can see. And then from there they're able to enter
Speaker 4: the app and they can go to the product recommendations list,
Speaker 4: which is curated directly for their specific match of those properties,
Speaker 4: and it goes, Okay, this is what this person needs,
Speaker 4: and it shows them only those products, and they're all
Speaker 4: sorted by the category as well, so whether it's gel,
Speaker 4: whether it's shampoo, whether it's conditioner, they can get easy
Speaker 4: access to those. And so instead of having to go
Speaker 4: to a store and you have, you know, a million
Speaker 4: products on the shelves, you don't know which ones actually
Speaker 4: work for you unless you, you know, look each one
Speaker 4: up one by one, and you have to go to
Speaker 4: some obscure web page to find that. We have that
Speaker 4: information all in front of the user, all at once,
Speaker 4: and it's very streamlined, very easy.
Speaker 3: And of course my instinct is now you'll go to
Speaker 3: the store with the list and look at that. Was like, no,
Speaker 3: you won't, You'll go on Amazon in order.
Speaker 4: And so the other thing we do is we have
Speaker 4: links to every single product inside the app, so we
Speaker 4: don't actually sell the products, but we connect the people
Speaker 4: to the source. And so what we've actually been able
Speaker 4: to do with that is we are able to offer
Speaker 4: discounts on those products because we reach out to the
Speaker 4: brand and manufacturers that we've found through our R and.
Speaker 2: D to be a monetizing strategy.
Speaker 4: Then, not necessarily for the modestation, we did it more
Speaker 4: for the customer. We do get the small affiliates, but
Speaker 4: it's been primarily good for us because we're able to
Speaker 4: not only you know, give the customer exactly what they want,
Speaker 4: but we can also save the money, which is really
Speaker 4: really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is cool and congratulations, that's a great thing.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Just curious and any of you can answer this. How
Speaker 1: many other teams did you guys beat out to get
Speaker 1: in the top three?
Speaker 2: A lot? But yeah, the match kept huge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it was. There were over fifteen thousand
Speaker 4: students that participated.
Speaker 5: This year, one and fifty countries.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So just being here and you guys were on stage
Speaker 1: right before the keynote, yes, on the first day of build.
Speaker 1: That must have been really exciting.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, it was. It was amazing, Just a
Speaker 4: great experience to be up there. You know, you look
Speaker 4: into the crowd and you know, the lights are a
Speaker 4: little bit blinding on stage, but you can see so
Speaker 4: many people and it really hits you in that moment
Speaker 4: that you know.
Speaker 2: You're there thousands of people in them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like you've made something impact.
Speaker 2: We have been hundreds of yers watching online.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not the freaky out that it was like thinking,
Speaker 4: you know, there are almost as many people in there
Speaker 4: as we had users on hair Match in the first
Speaker 4: couple of months. Sure, that's insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, also realization like that, how many people you
Speaker 2: attached to? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like a niche product, but clearly for
Speaker 3: a certain group of folks it's really important, really important.
Speaker 4: We estimate that there are probably about a billion people
Speaker 4: or more that could benefit from our product in this
Speaker 4: current state.
Speaker 1: Wow, should we switch to you gata? Should we talk
Speaker 1: about sign Verse?
Speaker 6: Of course?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So what is the product and tell us about?
Speaker 7: The sign Verse is an AI pod platform that chooses
Speaker 7: three D avatar to convert speech and text to real
Speaker 7: time sign language interpretation.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 7: So in basic what it's communication breaking the barriers between
Speaker 7: a person who's had of hearing and a person who
Speaker 7: can hear, because sometimes it becomes very challenging when people
Speaker 7: you know, communicate and someone cannot hear.
Speaker 5: So with the app, you can be able to type
Speaker 5: in list hello, good morning.
Speaker 7: So the avatar will be able to do the sign language,
Speaker 7: and then the person who is next will be able
Speaker 7: to see that through the application. So you can either
Speaker 7: use text or speech and making communications simless for both
Speaker 7: the hearing and the head of here.
Speaker 2: So I could hold up my phone just talk and
Speaker 2: it's going to do the.
Speaker 7: Sign language, Yes, absolutely, And we drove the inspiration because
Speaker 7: Brandis and I used to participate in Young Scientist Kenya
Speaker 7: That's Pack Home, and we used to do robotics training
Speaker 7: for young children and one time we found ourselves in
Speaker 7: a situation where the students that we're supposed to train
Speaker 7: were not able to hear, like the head of hearing
Speaker 7: and some of them were completely deaf. And you know,
Speaker 7: the amount of signed interpreters in the room like what
Speaker 7: to go to different classes, so there was already a gap.
Speaker 7: We had to you know, find ways to be able
Speaker 7: to bring that message right in terms of coding and
Speaker 7: talking to the student. But ever since then we realize
Speaker 7: there is a gap actually, and then we met Daniel
Speaker 7: who is one of our team who literally had to
Speaker 7: switch from being a computer student to being in the
Speaker 7: business because the school did not have sign language interpreters
Speaker 7: for that cause. So you can imagine the change he
Speaker 7: literally had to switch. And you know, it also comes
Speaker 7: with a lot of emotions to these people, they feel neglated.
Speaker 7: The community, you know, pushes them away because of the
Speaker 7: stigma of them not being able to hear. And that's
Speaker 7: why we were driven to, you know, create a technology
Speaker 7: that's going to focus more on providing real time sign
Speaker 7: language interpretation at different levels.
Speaker 1: So you just mentioned sign language interpretations, so this app
Speaker 1: will also you can hold it up to somebody who's
Speaker 1: signing and it will say the words to you.
Speaker 5: So that is like a future vision that we want
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 7: For our first product, it's just converting speech to text
Speaker 7: and then to sign language. But in future we believe
Speaker 7: that we will be able to do the vice versa.
Speaker 7: And that's why we have signed verse so that we
Speaker 7: can go from sign to verse and back.
Speaker 2: Yesh wow.
Speaker 1: Because we used to have remember the Connect Microsoft Connect
Speaker 1: and it could track all of your joints in three
Speaker 1: D space. Yes, I think it was twenty twenty frames
Speaker 1: pertective like that, So there were applications that use that.
Speaker 1: But I think it wouldn't be more challenging on a
Speaker 1: phone to go from straight video to generative AI now right.
Speaker 7: Yes, we're actually trying to incorporate the use of AI
Speaker 7: to be able to make it more seamless and more
Speaker 7: interactive because.
Speaker 3: Even that Spelton tracking had problem with hands. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: sign of course it depends on the flavor signed too,
Speaker 3: doesn't it.
Speaker 7: Yes, we have different sign language and because of the
Speaker 7: motion capture suits that we acquired and we incorporate the
Speaker 7: different data sets from Kenyan sign language to Ruandan Sign
Speaker 7: language to even SL So in future we're hoping to
Speaker 7: incorporate or different sign language based on the context of
Speaker 7: the country and the community that it.
Speaker 2: Comes literally country to country, the sign language varias.
Speaker 7: Yeah, even in Kenyan Sign language itself, it's narrowed down
Speaker 7: to different community sign language stylists.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, regular language.
Speaker 5: It's just a language.
Speaker 7: It's just that it's now in form of you know,
Speaker 7: hand motion gestures and stuff.
Speaker 1: When you have your every area, every dialect has its
Speaker 1: own idioms and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yes, other people may not.
Speaker 3: Understand just collecting all that data it's going to be
Speaker 3: really powerful, exactly, But I don't know that there's a
Speaker 3: good repository for.
Speaker 2: All of the variations.
Speaker 7: We're actually finding very hard in Africa to get like
Speaker 7: a very concrete data set when it comes to sign
Speaker 7: language interpretation. So far, we've gotten over twenty three hundred
Speaker 7: glosses in terms of the sign language interpretation, but we're
Speaker 7: looking forward to expanding to around two hundred and fifty
Speaker 7: thousand in the first phase and then five hundred thousand closses,
Speaker 7: so it's actually a lot.
Speaker 2: A very definitive collection exactly.
Speaker 1: Yes, so in as signed verse in the app stores
Speaker 1: and downloadable now.
Speaker 7: So we've not been able to have it fully installed,
Speaker 7: but it's live. You can be able to access it,
Speaker 7: but it's not on the download for because we are
Speaker 7: still trying to ensure that it is accessible enough.
Speaker 2: And yes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: This is amazing and your cause, like I imagine after this,
Speaker 1: you've got another several things on your to do list.
Speaker 1: What's your plan for the future.
Speaker 7: So just like I mentioned, we are planning to really
Speaker 7: expand in terms of the data because that is one
Speaker 7: of the most critical aspects we need to input in
Speaker 7: our platform. So we are looking at expanding beyond just
Speaker 7: Kenyan sign language to Rwandan and different African sign language
Speaker 7: and then also incorporate different you know, business model in
Speaker 7: terms of industries where communication is critical, just like in
Speaker 7: the healthcare just imagine you're going to the doctor and
Speaker 7: the doctor is not able to understand you. So tailoring
Speaker 7: our platform to you know, contextual to healthcare system, you know,
Speaker 7: transport system, like we're having communications with Kenya Airways, so
Speaker 7: that we ensure like whatever communication is there, our platform
Speaker 7: is also there to help people with the hairing close.
Speaker 1: So I guess my question was, Okay, after this app
Speaker 1: is done, yes, then you'll probably move on the other
Speaker 1: thing because you're you know, the causes that you're talking
Speaker 1: about with girls and young girls.
Speaker 5: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: I imagine you know you've thought about what to do next,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like you're going to be working on
Speaker 1: this app for quite a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so much to do.
Speaker 7: Yes, So what I always do with the young guys
Speaker 7: is you have a lot of outreach programs that I
Speaker 7: do back in my community, and it's always tailed back
Speaker 7: to the innovation that I do. So I introduce them
Speaker 7: to the aspect of STEM that is science, technology, engineering
Speaker 7: and mathematics. Since I was a young scientist, Kenya Winna,
Speaker 7: I have been in the innovation space for over three
Speaker 7: years now, so just trying to tailor what I do
Speaker 7: as a as a rider to what the community also
Speaker 7: needs to know. So I do outreach programs. I do
Speaker 7: you know, online talks. I give video conferences for youngers
Speaker 7: to be able to understand how it is to be
Speaker 7: in that tech field, especially in building solutions.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is so wonderful. Wow, great, great, great stuff.
Speaker 1: Is the time take a break? Do you want to
Speaker 1: do that? Now? Let's do the break, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back after these very very important messages to
Speaker 1: come around. Do you have a complex dot net monolith
Speaker 1: you'd like to refactor to a micro services architecture. The
Speaker 1: micro Service Extractor for dot Net tool visualizes your app
Speaker 1: and helps progressively extract code into micro services. Learn more
Speaker 1: at aws dot Amazon dot com slash modernize. Now we're back.
Speaker 1: It's dot net Rocks. I'm Carl Franklin. That's my friend
Speaker 1: Richard Campbell. Hey, and we're here with the Imagined Cup finalists.
Speaker 1: And I guess that brings us to you, Daniel Daniel Kim.
Speaker 1: Of course it's probably no secret buy now, but your
Speaker 1: team Argus won the Imagine Cup. So pig around of
Speaker 1: applause for you.
Speaker 8: Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the thing, well, first of all, tell us what
Speaker 1: our argus is, and then I have so many questions.
Speaker 8: Okay, right, happy to answer any questions you may have.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 8: So Argus was primarily spawned out of our dorm room
Speaker 8: where Arjene and I both met at Stanford three years
Speaker 8: ago and we realized that we both really enjoyed building,
Speaker 8: but we also realized we had a personal connection to
Speaker 8: visual impairments because both our grandparents were aging into them
Speaker 8: and just like seeing them no longer being able to
Speaker 8: do things that they were able to do prior. It
Speaker 8: was like we realized how much was taken for granted,
Speaker 8: and we really wanted to find a way to give
Speaker 8: them back that independence in their day to day lives
Speaker 8: because I know my grandma, she's definitely like she's got
Speaker 8: that pride and she enjoys being able to do things
Speaker 8: on her own and she dislikes asking for help. So
Speaker 8: it was definitely wanting to give that independence back. Kind
Speaker 8: of spawned arguson and I guess I could talk more
Speaker 8: about what argus is. So what we realize was that
Speaker 8: there were a lot of accessibility gaps in what's already
Speaker 8: out in the market. So I'm sure this is a
Speaker 8: tech audience. You've seen something like the meta ray bands
Speaker 8: and you're wondering, oh, why can't you just use that. Well,
Speaker 8: for a couple of different reasons, we realized our grandparents
Speaker 8: didn't really like them.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 8: For one, they don't really directly address the accessibility needs
Speaker 8: where one you're gonna have to like connect to Wi Fi.
Speaker 8: So something that we decided to pursue is building this
Speaker 8: hybrid system out where you have both edge compute, so
Speaker 8: Argus's two piece device. There's a camera module that goes
Speaker 8: on your glasses, frames.
Speaker 1: On your own glasses. You don't have to buy new glasses.
Speaker 8: It's very important, yeah, for sure. So just being able
Speaker 8: to easily integrate that into someone's already existing I guess,
Speaker 8: like habits in life.
Speaker 1: Until it recognizes things in and tells you what it
Speaker 1: doesn't speak, does it put a thing.
Speaker 8: On the screen, It gives audio feedback regarding whatever your
Speaker 8: question was, so o cr or just like spatial awareness.
Speaker 1: Reading letters and bills and mail and yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 8: And just like figuring out where you are relative in
Speaker 8: a room. I think that's like incredibly helpful where it's
Speaker 8: like I need to find where the exit is, I
Speaker 8: don't really know how to get there. Yeah, So that's
Speaker 8: so we're able to do simple tasks like that all
Speaker 8: on the edge. So and we have a compute module
Speaker 8: that goes in your pocket. And these two systems are
Speaker 8: connected with the technology called hy Are, which is a
Speaker 8: wireless communication method that uses your skin as a conduit
Speaker 8: uses one hundred times less energy than something like that.
Speaker 1: So this these are this is what I started looking
Speaker 1: up because when you and it just kind of wasn't
Speaker 1: an in passing comment during the you know, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, wait, what what did you say? So, yeah, it
Speaker 2: used your skin.
Speaker 1: So I looked it up and it has a range
Speaker 1: of like what five meters or something like that. It's
Speaker 1: not bad and it uses your skin lower power consumption.
Speaker 1: The one thing that and it's fascinating to me. The
Speaker 1: one thing that I didn't read in the white paper
Speaker 1: was latency. Like, you know, bluetooth has latency, right, and
Speaker 1: so you can't use that for real time, but just
Speaker 1: getting onto the YR thing, it probably doesn't matter all
Speaker 1: that much for you guys, but do you have any
Speaker 1: idea of what the latency is?
Speaker 8: Yeah, so the latency for us personally has been like
Speaker 8: just a couple of seconds. So it's so what we've
Speaker 8: been able to do is like a couple of time
Speaker 8: saving strategies where it's like as soon as the user
Speaker 8: starts talking, we start communicating with the compute.
Speaker 2: Module stream it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so it's just like immediately what's going on. It
Speaker 8: starts like figuring it out, and then by the time
Speaker 8: of the end of the query, there's just like watching
Speaker 8: out it. It's just like, yeah, catching up. I think
Speaker 8: that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then just trimming a little that little extra
Speaker 3: timeout so you can respond, you have more time to respond.
Speaker 8: To make it much more I guess, like I've seen
Speaker 8: experience where you're not like, oh, now there's a big
Speaker 8: like pause, but you are traveling to the cloud and back,
Speaker 8: I imagine. So for simple tests, that's just all going
Speaker 8: to be on the device on the device, and then
Speaker 8: for more complex tests that's like, oh I want to
Speaker 8: help me like reason something out, it's going to be
Speaker 8: sending query to Azure ai foundry. So it's a hybrid model, right,
Speaker 8: and it's a Raspberry Pie based thing, is it. Yeah,
Speaker 8: so right, our prototype is using a Google Coral dev.
Speaker 3: Board at the moment, right, So I've got a couple
Speaker 3: of those USB it's a it's a little NPU essentially, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: relatively expensive. Inexpensive at the time, but yeah for compute
Speaker 3: to render some a small model.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 8: So like three years ago, Archie and I were like,
Speaker 8: we don't have that much money, we got to like
Speaker 8: figure out how to So we're just using a lot
Speaker 8: of hobbyist grade we'rement built out our own camera module,
Speaker 8: and it was just like from there we started building
Speaker 8: out our prototypes.
Speaker 1: And the prototype for the camera module is what how
Speaker 1: how big would you say?
Speaker 2: It is? Like a inch and a half diameter or
Speaker 2: something like that?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I would say like an inch and a half
Speaker 8: and we're definitely gonna be able to shrink that down. Yeah,
Speaker 8: So that's gonna be a next step as well, just
Speaker 8: like miniaturization of the device.
Speaker 3: If you start thinking in terms of building purpose built
Speaker 3: hardware with current generation tech, like A, you're gonna get
Speaker 3: a lot more compute. B Yeah, you're gonna be able
Speaker 3: to make it really compact.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You care about form factor a lot? Oh yeah
Speaker 2: for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you had anybody ask you about the health ramifications
Speaker 1: of the y R stuff? Is there is there any
Speaker 1: concern about that? I mean, does it use uh what kind.
Speaker 8: Of I mean, there's no real concerns about health ramification.
Speaker 8: So we're not too concerned about that being a factor
Speaker 8: be considering Like it's like maybe if you're concerned about
Speaker 8: five G you could be considered because so it's.
Speaker 1: Like five it's a five G transmitter.
Speaker 8: Oh, I guess like the analogy I'm trying to make
Speaker 8: is like, Okay, if you're worried about five G, then
Speaker 8: I see, yeah.
Speaker 2: Anybodys will be worried about turning on lights then yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's the other thing about these close area networks is
Speaker 3: they're really low power. I mean, the whole goal here
Speaker 3: is to save energy. You need a lot of power
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 1: Oh it's like a hundred times less power than Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: is it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, compare that to putting a cell phone up your head. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a lot more energy.
Speaker 2: But either way, no measurable effect. It's not a thing.
Speaker 1: So the thing, you know, the YR stuff is the
Speaker 1: most exciting thing for me. I mean, obviously it's a
Speaker 1: great product and it solves a problem. But this opens
Speaker 1: up like a world of possibilities. And you were the
Speaker 1: first one I've ever heard using this technology.
Speaker 3: Handshaking and so forth for devices like that is a
Speaker 3: real nuisance for people who aren't technical or like I said,
Speaker 3: have side impairments so they can't see QR codes or
Speaker 3: enter long passwords and things like that. The idea that
Speaker 3: the close area network, the fact that you're close enough
Speaker 3: to it is the handshake and so they just connect.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think the idea is like you wanted it to
Speaker 8: be something that just works right out of box. You
Speaker 8: put it in your pocket, put it slided on your glasses,
Speaker 8: and my grandma doesn't want to have to worry, Oh
Speaker 8: do I have to download X y Z features or
Speaker 8: do I have to set up Wi Fi? Yeah, these
Speaker 8: are all things we just wanted to be able to,
Speaker 8: you know, hand off to the elderly. Who are you know,
Speaker 8: our biggest demographic for this issue. So I think making
Speaker 8: it so that it just works out of the box
Speaker 8: is something that was really important to us.
Speaker 2: Very important. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the security part is the perimeter. It's it's small. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it has to be close enough to you. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: have to be like able to touch the person. And
Speaker 3: then the second requirement is that you also have a
Speaker 3: YR device as well, where it's like you're able to
Speaker 3: receive some of that transmission, right, and yeah, that would
Speaker 3: be like a really random thing to have to Yeah,
Speaker 3: So we think that the security aspect of it is
Speaker 3: also a big sell factor for us.
Speaker 2: Sure do you have a patent on this?
Speaker 8: We are patent pending for the system. So yeah, we're
Speaker 8: looking forward to continue building on and iterating on our
Speaker 8: prototype scene.
Speaker 1: Because I can see applications for this that go way
Speaker 1: beyond sort of vision.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I think YR is going to be a
Speaker 8: really interesting paradigm shift in the wearable space as a whole.
Speaker 8: So definitely like really changes up the game in terms
Speaker 8: of like what's possible.
Speaker 1: I think, right, have you had any interest from Apple
Speaker 1: or Android, Samsung or any of those guys.
Speaker 8: Not yet, but if they'd like to reach out, definitely listening.
Speaker 2: So I bet fantastic.
Speaker 3: All right, you're all finalists. Congratulations on winning. But I
Speaker 3: guess you guys have all been on the ride, right,
Speaker 3: like you did you only meet when you got here?
Speaker 3: Did you already know each other?
Speaker 4: We only met when we got here, right, So we
Speaker 4: had seen each other on video calls before.
Speaker 3: Okay, So yeah, but you've been in contact just digitally
Speaker 3: because you're in different parts of the world too, and
Speaker 3: then now you've all been in.
Speaker 2: Person for the first time coming here and to build
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 3: He made it on I mean my experience running contests,
Speaker 3: not like exactly like this one. We've done a variety contest, Like,
Speaker 3: every finalist gets a lot of visibility. So yeah, winning
Speaker 3: is awesome, but it's not the only thing. You made
Speaker 3: it through a lot of players, a lot of different
Speaker 3: projects and got got got on the front page. Like
Speaker 3: to be interesting to see what happens you show an
Speaker 3: your projects. They're pretty powerful projects.
Speaker 1: Very very So your first time in Seattle, any of you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? In Seattle, all of us?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Did you get to spend any time at Microsoft?
Speaker 2: Did you? Guys? Did you take the campus?
Speaker 4: So we went on Sunday, but then we are also
Speaker 4: going to go tomorrow for longer, so we'll be able
Speaker 4: to see more stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great. Make them take you to the treehouses.
Speaker 3: The tree houses are cool. Campus is huge, It's a
Speaker 3: lot to see, but definitely do the tree Do.
Speaker 1: You have any appointments with you know, any of the
Speaker 1: higher ups that.
Speaker 2: Get a little sat your time.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I'm going to be getting a mentoring session
Speaker 8: with Saudia, So that would be really cool. Getting ready
Speaker 8: to figure out what kind of questions you want to
Speaker 8: ask and make sure the best use.
Speaker 2: Of the time. Absolutely.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so it's really exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, very challenging.
Speaker 3: So what is it like to run a troll your
Speaker 3: dollar company, because who knows the answer to that question.
Speaker 2: Except that guy I'd be Chris Farley. You know, hey,
Speaker 2: you remember Windows? That was awesome. I don't know what
Speaker 2: to ask such a I guess I have questions.
Speaker 1: So where do you guys see your careers?
Speaker 7: So we will also be meeting the Microsoft chief executive
Speaker 7: on accessibility. Awesome, Yes, together with tim agers because our
Speaker 7: projects are tailor don't ensuring accessibility for people with disability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: So after these projects are done, what are your aspirations
Speaker 1: for the future? I mean, do you want to continue
Speaker 1: to be innovating in your vertical space? Do you want
Speaker 1: to branch out? Do you want to do more general things?
Speaker 1: What are your aspirations?
Speaker 2: O data?
Speaker 7: Okay, So I think for me it would be with
Speaker 7: the team is still to pass you sign Verse because
Speaker 7: it has connected us in a way that we are
Speaker 7: also connected to the community because you're solving the problem
Speaker 7: that is directly to the community we serve.
Speaker 5: So we're gonna passue sign Verse.
Speaker 7: At the same time with the different I'm still studying,
Speaker 7: My teammates are also still studying, So it's gonna be
Speaker 7: in a juggling school at the same time passuing.
Speaker 2: Sign verse but you think sign versus your career, Yes, yes.
Speaker 5: It's gonna be part and passel off me.
Speaker 3: It's so cool, lucky to work on the thing that
Speaker 3: matters most to you, of course, and then also end
Speaker 3: up in a magic cup with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 4: How about you, Matt Oh Yeah, So I guess the
Speaker 4: big thing that has really emerged for me is that
Speaker 4: I realized that the only constant really has changed, and
Speaker 4: so I can't predict exactly what I'm going to be
Speaker 4: doing in the future. We're going to try and continue
Speaker 4: to scale hair Match. I've also made a bunch of
Speaker 4: other apps as well. Right the core theam that I
Speaker 4: try and hold myself too is I I really just
Speaker 4: love building products for people. And if I'm movable to
Speaker 4: build products for people that other people are not willing
Speaker 4: to make, I think that's an impact that I really
Speaker 4: believe in. And so, you know, I guess the next
Speaker 4: step for me is really I just want a million
Speaker 4: people to use something sure that I've made, and then
Speaker 4: you know, maybe someday a billion.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: So you're staying in the app development sphere, what you
Speaker 1: don't know exactly.
Speaker 2: Where that's going to lead you, but that's where you're
Speaker 2: going to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, currently, app development could could move into something else.
Speaker 4: It really depends on whatever people are using as their
Speaker 4: primary device. I will either hopefully be that device, or
Speaker 4: I will be an application on it.
Speaker 2: It might be an argist device for you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly the moment. But you know, phone has been
Speaker 3: around for a while now. I think we're ready for
Speaker 3: a disruption there. Okay, Daniel, what's what's uh? What do
Speaker 3: you see in the future.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean there's definitely a couple of different pathways
Speaker 8: forward from here.
Speaker 2: M H.
Speaker 8: I mean, in particular, a lot of doors have opened
Speaker 8: up for us and our team, and we want to
Speaker 8: continue building in the same vertical. So as we continue
Speaker 8: you to build out our iterations of prototypes and figure
Speaker 8: out what the final prototype is going to look like,
Speaker 8: we'd like to obviously expand that out to BEATA users.
Speaker 8: So that's going to be the next big step for us,
Speaker 8: and I think primarily as we continue figuring out I
Speaker 8: think I got some great advice from Han Yang from
Speaker 8: Microsoft or startups. He said that, you know, it's important
Speaker 8: to also be able to understand like you need to
Speaker 8: be able to understand like when you need to pivot
Speaker 8: and figure out if if this is like something the
Speaker 8: consumers actually need yea, rather than this just being like, oh,
Speaker 8: now you're being stubborn about it. So, while we're going
Speaker 8: to continue trying to solve the problem of accessibility, I
Speaker 8: think like the ways in the form factors in that
Speaker 8: comes may be shifting, but I think that's like, yeah,
Speaker 8: building it with empathy at its core is something that
Speaker 8: we're deeply passionate about and deeply connected to. So and
Speaker 8: we also just want to remind the world that, you know,
Speaker 8: accessibility shouldn't be treated as a feature, it should be
Speaker 8: treated as a human right. Yeah, So I think that's
Speaker 8: what we also would be want to continue reminding people
Speaker 8: as we continue building. So yeah, I think that's what
Speaker 8: Argus's future looks like.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, guys, but I've had this
Speaker 1: experience many times and I continue to have it where
Speaker 1: a friend that I haven't met or talked to in
Speaker 1: years says, hey, let's go out for a beer. I
Speaker 1: want to pick your brain about an app idea that
Speaker 1: I have, right, And it always ends up here's the
Speaker 1: idea and here's what we'll do. I'll design it, you
Speaker 1: build it, and we'll split.
Speaker 2: The profits, right, right, So I know that.
Speaker 1: The first question I ask is does this app already exist?
Speaker 2: Like have you done your homework?
Speaker 1: And you know most of the time they haven't, but
Speaker 1: they say, yeah, I don't think so. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, well before we first of all, here's my rate. Right,
Speaker 1: it's going to cost you fifty grand to get a prototype,
Speaker 1: and you know, so are you still interested?
Speaker 2: Right, I'm not splitting the profits with you on a spec.
Speaker 1: So do you have people come up to you all
Speaker 1: the time and are any has any has that ever happened?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: I do get this quite a lot. Yeah, just generally.
Speaker 4: So for me, we really built hair Match in public,
Speaker 4: so we would post on Instagram reels you know, oh
Speaker 4: this is what we did today building it, this is
Speaker 4: what we did that day. I posted videos like that
Speaker 4: for one hundred and eighty one day straight.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And through that I had a couple million impressions. I
Speaker 4: would get multiple dms per week of people saying, oh,
Speaker 4: I want to work with you, I want to work
Speaker 4: with you, or you'd get stuff like oh I want
Speaker 4: to work with you for free? Yeah, but really it's
Speaker 4: always that they want something more out of you, so
Speaker 4: like you will ever like get out of them. And
Speaker 4: so there are rare instances where you know, you might
Speaker 4: you might connect with somebody online who really will make
Speaker 4: an impact long term with you, but it's very rare,
Speaker 4: and so there's a lot of noise with that where
Speaker 4: you just have to figure out, Okay, does this person
Speaker 4: actually want to make a difference or are they just
Speaker 4: doing this because they they want to have a like
Speaker 4: a by not really putting into work.
Speaker 3: We get the same thing with that. Most of the
Speaker 3: time people just don't understand what the work involves.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: That's also like you've got the app out the door,
Speaker 3: it's in the store, you know, a bunch of things.
Speaker 3: A lot of people don't know because it's way harder
Speaker 3: than you think it is. It seems simple, but when
Speaker 3: you actually go through every one of those steps and
Speaker 3: finally see your app appear in the store, you've been
Speaker 3: through some stuff. And then it's hard to talk to
Speaker 3: someone who's just never done that and they think they
Speaker 3: trivialize all those efforts.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and we.
Speaker 1: Get the same thing with the podcast. You know, people
Speaker 1: want to be guests on our show, and usually they're
Speaker 1: just selling something or you know, the stuff that our
Speaker 1: listeners don't care.
Speaker 2: About, so we just let a lot of it go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, yeah, so we know what's next for you.
Speaker 1: But that's usually a question I asked, but you've kind
Speaker 1: of already answered it. But you're you're going to continue
Speaker 1: working on this stuff. You're going to take it to
Speaker 1: the next job.
Speaker 2: But none of you finished school yet either, like you
Speaker 2: still have school.
Speaker 3: I did just gratch congratulation, Thank you, going back for more.
Speaker 2: Are you going to go to work?
Speaker 4: I'm going I'm just.
Speaker 2: But that's you know, the crazy part for me is
Speaker 2: thinking you still got classes?
Speaker 8: Yes, yeah, all these other things Tomorrow my team.
Speaker 7: Joint classes at four in the morning before coming.
Speaker 2: To on the other side of the world of course difference.
Speaker 5: Yea, so it's a bit crazy, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations to you all again and amazing job. Congratulations
Speaker 1: Daniel on August. It's it's you guys are amazing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, of course, it's been incredible honor meeting everyone here.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks for being awesome and thank you
Speaker 1: for listening, and we'll talk to you next time on
Speaker 1: dot net rocks. Dot net Rocks is brought to you
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Speaker 6: Visit our website at d O T N E t
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Speaker 6: back to show number one, recorded in September two thousand
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Speaker 8: You got javans at