This episode of Mini Tech Scroll is brought to you by Blackbird,
a venture capital firm investing in Aussie and Kiwi startups.
From the very beginning, Blackbird has supported all
kinds of technology and founders, including Friesha
Gall, who Lauren chats with at the end of today's episode.
So if you have a big idea but need to raise investment to turn
it into reality, learn more and connect with the Blackbird team
through the link in our show notes.
Hey everyone, and welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily instant
culture podcast bring you the biggest stories from social
media, the creator economy, and the digital space every Monday
through Thursday and sometimes Fridays.
My name is Annabelle and I'm your Wednesday Mini Tech Scroll
host and also the Deputy editor of the youth digital media brand
Centennial World. Welcome back to Mini Tech Scroll
for another week, and this episode is a little bit of a
special one because it is my last time filming in this
office. As Lauren has been telling you
guys for a couple of weeks now, we are moving offices in our
coworking space. So we are going to a bigger
office and it has natural lighting which is really
exciting. So I am looking forward to the
new office. Even though this set is iconic,
I will say a lot has happened in this room.
And also before we get into this week's content, I do just want
to say I am not matching the mini tech scroll mic on purpose
with this cardigan. I just apparently live and
breathe mini text crawl. But yes, I am sorry if me
matching the mic is a little bit distracting.
Other than that, Please remember to rate review and subscribe and
star rate US on Spotify. We also have a buy me a coffee
link in our description if you are so inclined.
The first thing I think we need to talk about is the launch of
Grokopedia. There is always a lot going on
with Elon Musk, Grok and X, and I do try to avoid covering it
every week because I literally could cover it every week
because I like to have, you know, different things to talk
about. But I did feel that we did need
to cover the launch of Grokopedia this week.
For context, Grok is a generative AI chatbot that's
being developed by Elon Musk company XAI.
As you have probably guessed, if you aren't familiar with this,
this is the AI tool slash chatbot that is attached to X,
which is obviously formally Twitter.
Croc has made the news a couple of times this year.
Not necessarily for positive things, it's mostly been for
generating very controversial responses in which it has
started spewing racist and anti-Semitic content along with
various conspiracy theories. So where Grok is a generative AI
tool, you can probably already gather what Grokopedia is.
It is Grok's version of an online encyclopedia.
Elon Musk announced that Grokopedia was in the works
earlier this year in September, but a beta version has just been
released. He took to X yesterday to share
that quote. Grokopedia.com version 0.1 is
now live. Version 1.0 will be 10 times
better, but even at 0.1 it's better than Wikipedia in my
opinion. When you go into the website, it
does look very similar to the way that a generative AI chat
bot would look where you can type in a text bar a certain
topic. Once you do that, different
results pop up and you can then click on one from there.
It has a similar format to Wikipedia, and it has actually
been reported from Engadget that quote.
Some articles are nearly identical to their entries on
Wikipedia. Though Wikipedia doesn't contain
inline links to sources in the same format, such entries do
have a small disclaimer that the content is adapted from
Wikipedia. So you may be asking, if
Gruckopedia is so similar to Wikipedia, why did Elon Musk
choose to launch this product? And part of that reason is that
Elon Musk and others in his circles have been claiming that
Wikipedia is quote UN quote bias and woke.
Elon Musk has even repeatedly called the online encyclopedia
Wikipedia, where he ultimately popularized that I guess,
nickname or term for the encyclopedia.
Here. I do think it is worth noting
how information is delivered on Wikipedia.
The ultimate goal is neutrality, and the editors and writers have
a straightforward and direct approach to information sharing.
There are thousands of volunteers who edit, who write,
and who Fact Check the site to try and sure that the website
always maintains A neutral point of view.
Of course, this doesn't always succeed.
Think about how many articles are on Wikipedia, how many
people are working on it. And so Wikipedia isn't immune to
that information or political warfare.
But at the very least it is very transparent, making it an
important tool online in this day and age.
Over the past year, there's been a lot of articles circulating
examining how Wikipedia is operating in the current
political zeitgeist, specifically in the United
States, and I wanted to read you a paragraph from one by The New
Yorker Quote. If Wikipedia is Trump isms
opposite, or as a lot of people like to say, only half
facetiously, the only good place left on the Internet is because
of its principles and procedures.
You may not find everything you want to know about a given
subject, but Wikipedia articles, especially those on big and
contentious subjects, are remarkably forthcoming about why
they include or omit what they do.
When it comes to Elon Musk's opinion on Wikipedia
specifically, many have claimed that there seems to be some kind
of personal vendetta against the encyclopedia.
Elon Musk has attacked Wikipedia a number of times throughout his
career. He's also called for people to
stop donating to Wikipedia multiple times.
For example, in January this year, he quote tweeted a post
about political extremism on Wikipedia and wrote Defund
Wikipedia until balance is restored.
But I should add here that many sleuths and researchers have
also noted that he at one point had a very favorable view of
Wikipedia, but that clearly has changed based on his recent
comments and endeavors. And while there may be a
personal element here, I don't know if that's quite the full
story because it isn't just Elon Musk who was pushing this
narrative that Wikipedia is biased and woke and unreliable.
It has become increasingly popular among right wing
commentators, pundits, and influences in the United States.
Actually, I've seen so many articles noting that this is a
symptom of a media landscape that is increasingly dominated
by conservative voices and a conservative agenda where
Wikipedia is actually one of the hardest platforms to control and
push out a narrative in that way.
So I think all of this context definitely informs the launch of
Wikipedia, where many social media users and journalists see
this platform as a way for Elon Musk and others who share his
political views to push a Sun agenda.
A piece for the Washington Post outlined an example of some of
the differences that are already coming up in terms of the
entries between Wikipedia and Wikipedia, and how a Sun
political agenda might be pushed.
As the journalist Will Armas writes, quote Grokopedia's entry
on gender, for instance, begins with the sentence gender refers
to the binary classification of humans as male or female based
on biological sex. Wikipedia starts with gender is
the range of social, psychological, cultural, and
behavioral aspects of being a man or boy, woman or girl, or
third gender. So just from that example, I
guess you can see how certain topics might be phrased in
different ways, especially as Grokopedia develops and
potentially pulls less and less from Wikipedia.
I've actually even seen people on Reddit compare Grokapedia to
Conservapedia. I had no idea what that was, but
apparently it's an online encyclopedia written from a
self-described American conservative and fundamentalist
Christian point of view. I feel like I also should note
that there have been statistics that indicate that Wikipedia
does have a slight Democratic leaning or progressive leaning
in the way that it presents information.
I've seen a couple of stats floating around.
One of them I think was in an Atlantic article.
But like I said earlier, this bias or leaning isn't
necessarily a bad thing. I think the transparency is what
really differentiates Wikipedia here, because you can look into
why things are included and why things are excluded or why
things are framed in a certain way.
So I just think it is important to reiterate that point.
But back to Wikipedia. Obviously a bias without
transparency is definitely concerning, but there are also
worries about relying on an AI model to generate encyclopedia
entries, given that there are still issues with accuracy and
hallucinating information. All in all, I think I do have my
doubts about whether Wikipedia will ever be as culturally
influential as something like Wikipedia, even if Wikipedia is
facing its own problems with the rise of AI, which is something I
reported on last week. Wikipedia is really getting a
lot of airtime. But at the end of the day, I do
think this story and the launch of Gracopedia goes to show how
it's constantly getting increasingly difficult, I guess,
to find neutral or unbiased or transparent information online.
Granted, I do understand that neutrality is a complicated and
debatable subject, like CAN information ever be neutral or
can storytelling and information sharing even be neutral?
But I guess it just comes down to transparency in this regard.
But yes, definitely let me know your thoughts on Gruckopedia,
where you think the platform will be going, and if people
will even use it. Anyway, that brings us to our
next story, which is an update about threads, and that is that
Meta has introduced ghost posts, which is kind of hard for me to
say for some reason, but these posts essentially allow users to
share posts that will disappear after 24 hours.
I think it's kind of like stories for text posts or like
Snapchat for text posts, if that's how you want to imagine
it. Meta announced the new feature
on October 27th in a blog post and they are marketing this
update as a way for users to share their quote UN quote
unfiltered thoughts, which I think is interesting but also
more on that later. How it works is that these posts
will automatically archive after 24 hours, where replies to ghost
posts are sent to your inbox and only the poster can see who
liked and replied to the post. Sarah Perez, in a piece for
TechCrunch, noted that Mehta told the publication that the
feature was ultimately designed to quote encourage more low
stakes sharing within the feed. She also noted that this
actually isn't the first time that a text first platform has
introduced A disappearing feature like this, as she
continues quote before it was X Twitter experimented with this
form of sharing back in 2020 with Fleets, which appeared as
disappearing stories. However, the company pulled the
feature the following year, citing a lack of adoption.
Now I don't really use threads to be fair, but I did scroll
through my feed and found quite a few people using ghost posts
already. But I do think it's hard to know
whether this feature will actually catch on or not because
it is still early days. I do feel like when a new
feature on a social platform drops, a lot of us just like try
it once and then never again. Like I mentioned, I do think
it's particularly interesting that Meta would introduce a
feature that allows users to share quote UN quote unfiltered
thoughts in the same year that they have completely scaled back
their moderation policies. If you guys don't remember
actually in my first ever mini text scroll episode, please
don't go back and watch it. I feel like I was probably
awkward, but I reported on how Mark Zuckerberg took to social
media to share some of the updates on Metas moderation
policies. This included replacing fact
checkers with community notes, removing restrictions on various
topics like immigration and gender, and also moving the
trust and safety and content moderation teams out of
California to Texas. This was allegedly because there
was a growing concern that biased employees were overly
censoring content. This got a lot of backlash at
the time, mostly because people felt like it would allow for
more hate speech to circulate on metas platforms, but also
because it felt like Mehta was feeding into the political
zeitgeist and appeasing Trump and aligning with his political
agenda. But of course, freedom of speech
and expression is definitely important on social media, so a
lot of people also argued that the scaling back of moderation
could be a good thing. But that kind of brings us to
this ongoing battle between platforms and users about where
to draw the line when it comes to this freedom, like freedom of
expression and speech and protecting hate speech and
discriminatory rhetoric. With this context and the back
and forth, the introduction of ghost posts could be interpreted
as a kind of dog whistle, like an invitation for users to post
more controversial or even problematic opinions without the
fear of moderation or backlash or being held accountable
because the post does disappear. That said though, threads are
still far less political than somewhere like X, so it's
possible that the culture on the app just doesn't lend itself to
that kind of discourse. But I definitely think the
timing here is interesting, with Meta kind of reframing what free
expression could look like on the platforms, especially as
they continue stepping back from more active moderation online.
My last story for today is a little bit of a quick one and
maybe a little bit of a silly one, but I have another update
on the AI minister Diala from Albania.
I reported on this story previously, obviously, and
firstly, love to hear that we have Albanian listeners and
please, if there are any more of you, share your opinion on this
whole thing. But in case you missed it, the
Albanian Prime Minister, Eddie Rama became the first leader
making Albania the first country in the world to appoint a
cabinet minister powered by AI. Like I mentioned, the minister's
name is Diyela, which reportedly means sunshine or sun in
Albanian. And she does have an avatar
where she shows up as a woman. And her portfolio slash role is
essentially to tackle corruption and promote transparency in
government. And this is especially around
public procurement, which is the purchase of goods, wax or
services by the government. That is the rundown, in case you
missed it. But there are now reports
circulating that according to the Prime Minister, Diella is,
quote UN quote, pregnant with 83 children.
Eddie Rama made this statement during the Berlin Global
Dialogue. And essentially these 83
children are going to be AI buy assistance to each MP in
Parliament. Diana is pregnant and she's
expecting 83 kids, each kid for one member of our Parliament
that will serve the MPs as an assistant, that will participate
in the parliamentary sessions, that will keep record of
everything that is happening, that will inform and will
suggest to the MPs how to react. That will have all the
knowledge. These kids will have all the
knowledge of their mom. So the reason I wanted to talk
about this story today is not necessarily to give you an
update, but it's because I find the use of language here quite
interesting. Like why is the leader of a
country choosing to anthropomorphize AI in this way?
Like why frame it as Diella is quote UN quote pregnant and
giving birth to other AIS? I mean, I guess this
personification isn't necessarily new when it comes to
AI. We're seeing so many more people
turn to chat bots like ChatGPT for emotional support, even
mental health advice. In fact, another story that
broke this week was that recent data shows that around 0.07 of
ChatGPT uses in a given week show signs of mental health
emergency like mania, psychosis or suicidal thoughts.
And they do turn to the chat bot, all these conversations.
And of course, we're also seeing the rise of AI boyfriends,
girlfriends, and other companions or partners.
So people are already projecting humanity onto these chat bots
and AI models. But to see a government to it is
quite interesting. And I think it says a lot about
how we treat AI not just necessarily as a tool, but also
as a person or like a social actor, I guess, that we can talk
to and even trust. We're definitely pros and cons
to this. The risk, of course, is that we,
I guess, start to believe that these systems have some sort of
free will or that they can even make moral judgement when in
reality they are pulling from existing information, predicting
patterns based on data, not acting out of morality or
conscience. And ultimately, when we use
human language in this way, I guess we really start to see
that line blur. It's rhetoric that ultimately I
think reshapes or recalculates how we think about a the eye and
technology itself. I don't really have too much
more to say there about that story.
I'd definitely be intrigued to hear what you guys think about
it. But I just thought it was really
interesting and also kind of funny to be our last story of
this week before we get into a Lauren's interview.
Speaking of Lauren's interview, thanks to Blackbird, we are
chatting with Friesha Gaul in today's episode, who is the
founder of On Game. So let's just cut to that now.
Welcome, Friesha. Hello, thanks for the welcome.
I'm so excited to chat with you today.
I feel like what you're building is super unique and the space
that you're building in it is also unique and also super
relevant to our mini tech audience.
So with that being said, can you tell us about On Zero and what
you're building? Yeah.
So On Zero is essentially a way to touch virtual virtual reality
or any game that you're in, whether that's a simulation or
you're mapping it over to a robot so you have a hand or
something like that, and you want to feel it from halfway
across the globe. That's essentially what we're
working on. So I started it wanting to be a
keyboard glove and I realized that a really cheap tracking
solution was in a dorm room and decided hey, I can make a really
cheap and affordable haptic glove, whether that's for VR or
for simulations. OK, take it back.
Tell me, how did you get interested in this?
How are you building this? I need to know more.
OK, so essentially I got really into modding electronics as a
kid. So I lived in the middle of
nowhere and there weren't that many interesting things to do.
So it's always sort of breaking into backyards.
My dad had a huge warehouse, and so as we kill these tree houses
and then eventually realized electricity could do something.
And so my first ever venture was making this huge like Super
Mario Kart or Mario Kart. And essentially once I saw the
motor move, I was like, this is sick.
And so when I finally went to university for quantum
engineering, which is electrical engineering with extra
standards. I want to do theoretical
physics, but I wasn't around essentially I got really bored.
I wasn't allowed to accelerate. And I had been teaching with pH
DS since I was like 15 or 16 in the quantum physics space.
And so I asked to accelerate, but they're examined vigilators
on around. So I started working on my own
projects, one of which was born out of me being on this train.
And I wanted to make a personal website because everyone needs
to get into a big tech internship or something.
And so I was making this thing and it was going to be like an
interactive video game website, but my computer went flat.
But I had this hobby of jailbreaking iPhones, and I
figured it's a computer as well. So I tried to code on its
terminal, but there's no shift or control button easily
accessible. And I wished in that moment I
could just type in there. So I went home and with my
knowledge of electronics, I thought.
Surely this is kind of possible, right?
And this was back in January. So now we have like the the meta
ECG wristbands now just coming out.
But for me, I thought, you know, surely we can get the semicolons
and stuff in there and pre train something like that.
It's sort of worked, sort of didn't.
I think it's also chalking it up to me like being new to embedded
machine learning, but pretty impressive as a first project.
And I put it on YouTube and I went to sleep and I was applying
to like a 1K grant and I had to put it onto YouTube because I
couldn't upload an MP4. I woke up the next day and there
was like not like viral, but pretty good.
Like 1500 people were like, this is insane.
Yeah. Then there was a 0 subscriber
YouTube account. So like all these people were
like, make it, make it, make it. And eventually I made a discord
and started going further and further into it.
And I just asked them like, hey, do you what do you want this in
like if I'm going to make it a quote UN quote product.
And like I was born into a skiing company, so I knew a bit
about how businesses worked. Not tag.
What do you mean you were born into a ski company?
What does? That mean OK OK OK so my parents
hated their lives. My dad was working at Commbank
as an investor and my mom was a consulted at BCG.
So lots of money. Did not like it at all.
OK so my mom used to be in the Canadian army.
So the Navy called her up and said hey we need personnel on
board won't hop in the ship and go around the world and crash
out for a year. And she said yes.
So she went to Australia and stopped off in for the Olympics,
danced with my dad and my dad was like hey, you're Canadian
and I was on the ski team. We should ask the Co founder of
Rick Curl for one meal and run off to Canada.
Oh OK. I was born that year.
So my whole life I have these two absolutely insane parents
who are running halfway across the globe every single half year
because the winter is only around for six months.
And so I went to like 13 different schools.
They're running this company going to like Colorado to these
pitch nights and shows and conferences.
I'm sleeping underneath the table while these people are
like pitching them and giving them these QR codes.
I never really knew too much about startups, but I was I was
an oak semi related one. They they managed to like run it
and it was a skiing company. I helped out by making merch and
being a waitress because I want to sort of run at some stage.
Oh my God. But it all worked out pretty
well. Then they managed to exit before
COVID, which is great for ski tourism.
And yeah, essentially for me, when I was seeing this product,
I, I figured I'm, I'd prefer to work for myself.
So it's a fun way to sort of learn how to do something.
And I also realized when I was pulling it between like
healthcare and gaming and all these other things, I put my VR
headset down not of not loving it.
So because I went to all of these 13 different schools
growing up, how do you keep friends for more than six
months, right? I always had this stand alone
really cheap VR headset and I used it and I created my own
virtual world that was my living room in Canada.
And I played Dungeons and Dragons with my friends from it
was absolutely sick. But progressively VR was
completely bought out by Meta, at least the cheap space and for
me it was my entire social life. So to see like a headset get
defunct after like 3 years and then you have to get a Facebook
account to continue using things and they double the price like
consistently. It absolutely sucked.
And now only recently are they trying to go cheap because they
have finally competitors after the AR market coming in.
And so I was really against this, right?
Like the whole VR industry started with people like Palmer
Luckey walking and like 19 year olds like me just sort of
messing around in their rooms or garages making stuff.
Yeah. And that's where all the
innovation came in. So it was no surprise when
there's a steep decline of people buying headsets and stuff
because the developers now had to pay a ridiculous, well, like
lose a ridiculous amount of money whenever they were
publishing things. So when I had this this cheap
tracking solution, I figured, I've been following haptic
gloves forever and people are still selling tracking gloves
for over $1000. I reckon I could make it better.
Like I could probably just slap on the same motors you have in
your phone when you're typing or in your PlayStation controller
when a dragon like runs through when it rambles onto your
fingertips and onto your palms. And like, it would only be like
70 or 60 bucks in pure materials.
Of course, you have to charge a bit because you have to pay
people human wages. And so, like, what we're going
for is probably like 250. So like, for us, we have a very
open source mentality in terms of like, we want to share what
we're working on, but we want to be the locus of the community.
So I'm also very against, like, hiding things and like, try to
patent it, but don't, like, crush small guys, encourage
innovation, creating things for the sake of it.
Yeah. I was just working on this cheap
tracking solution. I was running out of money.
So it's like 60 bucks. And it was like my food
allowance every week that my mom would send it was like 100
bucks. And I was spending it mostly on
rice, and I mean, partially on rice and mostly Aliexpress
sensors. Yeah, yeah.
And so like people are following along as I'm doing this, but I'm
kind of dying physically. So my sister was doom scrolling
on LinkedIn and saw this one K Grant from a place called
Blackbird. Now, I had no clue that startup
space, but essentially like I got involved with Blackbird far,
but before I knew that they were like OG can't vote investors or
whatever. I was probably like two or three
months in and then it finally like clicked.
Wow, that's. Like holy cow, I just thought
they wanted money. So like I'd already done the
YouTube thing and everything else and it was like sort of
startupy, but like I didn't know who they were.
Like I didn't really care as long as I had some.
Yeah, fair enough. And.
So I was developing it out and I got more and more in love with
the idea because like, most of my life has been really, really
fueled by one, like creative ambition and doing things, but
also spite. Like I love operating in spaces
that are just. I love how you said that so
casually. Like but also spite.
OK. OK, OK.
Look, the people who say that they're just doing something for
the betterment of the world are just dying.
Like, like it's nice that they're doing that, but there's,
there's always like a secondary shadow about every person.
Yeah, yeah. Like, I love helping people, but
I also love proving people wrong.
There's. Also self-interest there always,
of course. Feels good to prove.
Someone. Yes.
Yes.
But yeah, the whole glove idea was really just this passion
project to make some sort of free and open source thing,
maybe show it off to, I don't know, employers, if they even
cared. But then I realized, like, I
only existed because of the VR space.
And it's been really depressingly not dead for a
while. But like, like, there's always a
cult that follows it, like the social VR people in VR chat who
are just anime girls because it can be.
But like, for the most part, after the big buyout, Medica
keep it going for a while. But like, things like the
metaverse didn't always land. Like, there were two PG.
Yeah, yeah. And so people just didn't want
to be on it. And also publishing is a studio
or even just an individual became harder and harder.
And so it was sort of like, why not just make something for the
PC where there's more people? And I fully agreed with that.
But like more and more, I'm so excited about the future of VR.
And I think only now some people are thinking about it like I was
interested in this like January and February.
But like with AR and everything else, and especially the
evolution of like AI generated stuff.
And I want to say I'm an AI person.
Not really, but it's mostly their ability to render things
in 3D is so magical. Like for me, I really want to
make a play in the space, not just like that area, but in
terms of just making VR feel more real.
And one of the biggest bottlenecks for VR has been it's
so hard to create. And for me as a kid, I was
making all these things. And there's a reason I could end
up doing quantum engineering right after because making video
games, it's kind of hard. Like you have to know a lot.
But with the ability to like generate all of these 3D things
that are interactable and stuff like that, the space looks
really, really cool. And now Samsung and Apple are
starting to make a bit of a play for it, which is awesome.
Like, I love competition so much.
Like, please, I don't OK, like, I sort of do care who's on the
top because like, it will really decide the creative, you know,
future of this. And I think it should be open.
But like, the fact that people are competing in the 1st place
is so, so good. But yeah, I'm, I'm basically
making VR touchable, but my, my aim is really to make VR kind of
more cheap and human again, because it's been a lot more
hard to develop as an indie dev. And for me, I've been waiting
for touch for forever, like 10 years or something like that.
So now that I have like a bit of an electronics background, screw
it. Yeah, you're just going for it.
Basically. Oh, I love that.
OK, so it sounds like obviously your company started from, you
know, a need a gap that you saw yourself, but then it was really
the foundation was built through community and now you also have
a community side to your business that you're doing as
well. Yeah.
Can you tell me about that? Yeah, so this started before on
0. So there's this thing called
ACES, Australian Creative Electronics Society, and what it
is is me and this guy named Joseph.
We're having a bit of a problem with the Australian one, Startup
space, but mostly just like builder space, full stop.
Because it felt like there was a lot of like advisors and a lot
of coaches and a lot of whatever stuff, but there weren't really
people who were just like openly and publicly being stupid.
And that's really nice. Like for me, I was in university
and I moved to the city after always living in small towns.
Like I lived in a small town in Canada where my parents were
running a ski company. But it got really big in the
winter, of course, because it's a skiing place.
But it was always like, you know, 1000 people towns.
So I went to the city. I was expecting like, what the
pitch conferences had these really, really passionate people
who will not shut up about skiing.
And I was thinking maybe engineers are like that too,
right? Because I was all, I had been in
San Francisco, in Colorado and, you know, the Las Vegas of the
world, right. And so when I finally got here,
I was so underwhelmed. I was like, you know, where's
your passion? I was like, I know you want to
be a software engineer at Atlassian, but like, Atlassian
started somewhere. Yeah.
You know, all these places started somewhere and the fact
that you don't think that you can do it is crazy.
Like every single founder isn't a genius to just someone who is
so so stubborn but they're just going to will it into.
Yeah, yeah. And like, there's a lot of
people around me who just think thought that they just could not
do things. And eventually that sort of
pushes you to be quiet and start to hide things as well.
And so essentially aces was my attempt at like, I couldn't
accelerate my grades. I couldn't find people who are
interested in things. I didn't even care if you're
doing a degree. Like don't be scared of me
because I go to unis WI want to go to MIT.
Yeah, yeah. Like it for me, it's like if you
are a dropout, you're equal to me.
Like it does not matter. But like what really matters is
your passion. And so we started this monthly
meet up where essentially anyone can come in and just show off
what they're working on. So we've had the head of
engineering at Rd. show off the little transceivers and the
mics. And we've also had like year
five students using like Raspberry Pi's to ping up to
airplanes overhead and figure out how fast they're going and
like what make and model they are.
And it's like, what the hell, This guy's a genius.
Yeah. And so we started in February
with no one and now we're over 1000 people and we're start,
we're looking at starting to give up grants.
OK. So tell me then about how your
business is structured. So you said you have a Co
founder, Yeah, yeah. So do you guys work on this full
time? Yeah, so essentially we were at
UNSW and we met each other through a group project that was
absolute hell. I ended up not sleeping for five
days at the end because No 1 ended up doing anything.
And that's how I realized I could rely on him because he's
the only person in my group who was like, I'm not going to play
League of Legends, I'm going to help you.
And so that was really, really brilliant.
But essentially, as we're doing this, I actually said, you know,
screw it. I'm going to Kickstarter this or
nothing. I'm going to figure out a way to
bootstrap this if I don't get investment.
And I thought I wouldn't get investment because it's VR,
which is, you know, everyone hears about it.
It's like, it's kind of like a dead industry, right?
For me, I really, really do believe in it and think that
there's just so much that's going to come out and like, mark
my words, if you're listening to this, like if I had money other
than in my company, I would be betting a lot of money.
But essentially, we actually pitched it.
And within this time, some crazy stuff happened that I wouldn't
even think I can say. But basically I was flying
around and I just got the best mom, Laura ever.
But over that weekend, I then came back, I'm walking around
you in Southwest and I get called back.
I can't say like, who's this from and stuff like that.
Like I'm involved in start man and stuff like that.
And they're like, yeah, yeah. And I was like, yeah, it's like,
yeah, we'll progress this here's the paperwork, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm just standing there like I'm 19 and you're saying you're
gonna give me like 600K? Holy shit.
Like The thing is, like, I was so hyped, right?
Yeah, of course. Like I, I had like ran into
Shawn's room and fucking full tackled that guy was like, let's
go. Because I would have done it
anyways. But like, it's so much easier
when you can feed yourself. Yeah, of course.
But yeah, essentially, like that's what happened.
I was just in total awe and so excited about it.
I realized like some crazy things about startups within
that time. And I'm like how fast you can
burn through money and how little you originally like I
really started wanting a really little amount of money.
And thank God other founders were like, yeah, yeah.
Like for me like 600 K is still like I could raise more and
especially with start my demo day and things before then.
I have been offered by angels by BC funds a lot of people, I
can't say but like people who are more globally known and
really like for me, I'm in this weird situation because I see
like the AI bubble and the raises and stuff like that and
look 19 year old quantum engineering teaching with PhDs.
I could do the crazy route. But for me like the VR space is
very personality driven and also like I'm thinking about the
company that I would actually want to support even if I wasn't
buying from them. Like who would I actually love?
Because for me, I gave up on VR for a reason.
And one of the big ones was because it became too
corporatized and there wasn't really a large vision for it in
the future. And I found that it was really
like, you know, all these companies are sort of like run.
And I hate to say it like as companies, but when you get to a
certain stage, like the board of directors is going to say to say
this, the consultants are going to say this.
And you don't really have one person saying, like, this is the
ultimate vision, let's go. And like, if you have one person
who's pushing that, they can push for it.
And maybe they're wrong, but at least they have something there.
And so for me, equity was such a huge thing, like if I was going
to lose a certain amount of my company and I sent this to them,
if I lose a certain amount of my company, I'm not doing this
anymore. Like I don't want to lose 50% to
Series A. And so essentially for me it was
like, OK, how am I going to do this?
And I realized like I'm deferred from university.
I can only defer for so long. And so I took the 600K, which is
pretty awesome because it's for a lower equity amount and
everything else. But essentially I'm dual raising
it with a Kickstarter. So I'm going to CES, which is
the world's largest Electronics Show and stuff like that.
We're also getting involved with B to B.
So like the military and robotics companies think it's
pretty sick because it's way cheaper than what they currently
have. I can't really talk about that
area, but like can say the industries.
Yeah. And so that's a great way to get
like a lot of money early in batch units.
And gamers are probably, I love them so much because I comfort
them, but I also they are like the most nitpicky evil people
you'll ever be. Like I love them.
But they will talk about latency like it is Satan's work and in
most other areas. And I mean like even in like
defense, they might care less. But like in that area, user
experience, blah, blah, blah. Everything else should be
perfect. There's a reason why GPU's were
selling and gaming before like AI.
Oh my gosh, Like it's such, you have such complex technology for
this like luxury, the industry. Like I probably wouldn't want to
operate in any other industry unless it was like robotics.
But like, yeah, it's you're making for a really hard
customer. And so like, I love it because,
you know, if you're not playing at a hard mode, it's not fun.
Yeah, yeah. But like, it means that you sort
of have to strategize how you're going to do things, which is
kind of interesting. But yeah, it's sort of what's
happening here at on 0. That's really cool.
I love that. OK, So what is your future
vision then? Like where do you see the future
of the company? Obviously, you guys are still
quite green and in that startup phase.
What are your future plans? I want to, you know, ask to be
an astronaut on the moon. And I want to reach down.
I want to feel the sand fall beneath my hands.
I want to hear the beach there as real as possible as I can.
Funny enough, I'd never watched Ready Player 1 before any of
this. My Co founder was like, you have
to watch this thing. But really it's like I've always
loved like animes like Sword Art Online and stuff like that.
And I was always waiting for it to get more and more immersive.
And so for me, I really want to play in the immersive tech area
and the hardware area, but also just like enable more people to
make things because what VR was really about was like anyone
could make anything and it was super cheap.
You could get on your computer and you could do it.
Like 10 year old me was told about Unity and like tinker Cat
and stuff like that terrible cat thing.
It's just surprising, but it teaches you stuff.
And I've been learning about this and like, it was really
tough, but it was one of the most liberating things ever.
And I think like I don't care necessarily about doing
engineering. What I've always loved was the
ability to just bring anything into existence and I find that a
lot of people are very financially restricted.
Like I was like I like the day before I got the 600 Ki went
into the mirror, I cut my hair dyed in ombre red and I was like
fuck it, I'll kick started this I.
Like it too much? Because really it's, it's more
like representing, like anyone should have the ability to
create. And for me, like if you can
incentivize people and pay people proper wages for doing
what they love, that's so huge. Cuz like for me, if I wasn't
doing theoretical physics or engineering or stuff like that,
I always wanted to do film and painting and stuff like that,
but it just wouldn't pay. Yeah, yeah.
And so it's really like, how can you enable more people to
create? And so start with cheap
hardware, but go more and more into the accessibility space.
So, you know, making development a lot easier and stuff like
that. But it's really just like I'm
making the kind of Christmas presents I would have killed for
as a kid. That's so sweet.
I love that. OK.
So the last thing I would love to know is do you have a
timeline of when your products will be available?
Yeah. So CES, which is the world's
largest Electronics Show is essentially like this big thing
where a lot of people present, you can get into the media and
stuff like that. For right now, we're starting to
ramp up a bit more. So we're going to get our like
growth interns and whatever else in because we are overworked as
Hex. So there's a comparable brand to
us who successfully kick started and they don't even have haptics
and their team is 40 people. We've learned how to sew on our
own. We have an in house picking
place machine for PCBS like for like a 20 and 19 year old.
We are carrying above our weight so much.
So now we're finally like just like OK, we're going to be
finally hiring some people on because the products got into
the stage where it's like OK, we just need to figure out
regulations and stuff. But like in terms of pre-orders
from companies, we've been doing that in terms of from people.
We're going to be opening up the Kickstarter in February, so
we're sort of ramping up more and more social stuff now
finally, because it's not so much wires and stuff.
So we've just opened all of that stuff up.
We have the no Discord now running with the Minecraft
server. I think one of the most fun
things is I've just started Twitch streaming and I can
actually map over the gloves to my hands and so I can be like an
anime character and move around, which is so fun because I can
play video games with my community.
We'll also make it making a video game peripheral startup,
which is founder market Fit. But yeah, so we're just starting
more and more on that and going through and we're going to get
all the like Youtubers to look at our stuff and everything
else. But it'll be around mid February
where that starts launching. And then we'll be pushing that
Kickstarter through and through and through.
We have another product that we'd want to be releasing around
like August next year, which would be.
Insanely game changing, but I can't say that one yet.
Fair enough. So what we're doing is
essentially we're releasing our first product is like validation
that we can make stuff. Because when you're some like
teenagers or young 20 year olds messing around, you don't even
have an engineering degree. Like you're just some tinkerer
at there. So you need to have some sort of
like proof that you can deliver. And so like we know that we can,
but we have to prove that and do all of our regulations and
stuff. So like we're doing the soft
launch of the first product and it's really nice because it
doesn't just operating in VR. So like, while we can do it for
that, we can also do it in like, you know, just simulations for
training companies where there's a lot more money.
But also robotics. If you've seen the boxing
matches in San Francisco and stuff like that with the robots,
you can pilot them with VR. And for me, I was like, if you
can properly curl your hands and feel the punch, holy crap, would
be that. That'd be awesome in a broader
zone because it means that you can get the initial capital and
you can get the reputations and everything that you need when
you're playing around with like less money.
And it's it's weird because I know I could get more, but it's
like it's just not worth it otherwise.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's like you have to play this weird social
game. If you look back at like again,
like the examples of a lot of these VR kick started things,
they have to do so many endorsements and stuff like that
before because it's such mops psychology.
Like at the end of the day, you're just giving someone a
product that they can enjoy, but you have to like prove that.
So like for me, we've gotten into Forbes, we've got the self
way, SW tech and innovation, People's Choice and we've done
all these things. Essentially it's and you have to
play the strategic game before you even launch something
because Kickstarter's and crowdfunding are decided before
you even launch a link. So you need to have all the
pre-orders and all of the things already in and then you need to
give them special deals so that the momentum keeps on going
because then the algorithm pushes you up.
So really like you say that you're launching A Kickstarter,
but you've been doing the Kickstarter for the last year,
right? Interesting.
So you know, what if it's? Going to succeed before you.
Launch it, you're looking at the numbers and you're like, all
right, cool. But like it's stuff like that
where it's like, you know, the world is really open to you.
Of course, don't be stupid, strategize, but like if you try
and you reach out to enough people and really go for it,
like it's open. Obviously I'm saying that with a
bit of money to live off of. So if anyone is watching this,
like if you are bootstrapping, make sure that you have a bit in
the bank. Yeah, like everything is
possible as long as you can feed yourself.
Well, it sounds like you have so much amazing.
Stuff on the horizon. I'm so excited to follow along.
Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much.
That is everything. From many tech scrolls today, I
hope you guys enjoyed the stories and I also hope you guys
enjoyed the interview. Lauren will speak to you guys
tomorrow and I guess I'll see you next week from our new
office. Thank you so much for listening.
Bye.