The interviewee, Mark Milstein, who I have in this episode is a very experienced serial-entrepreneur whose obsession is immersive media content. This includes VR, AR, 360 degree videos.

We talk about a topic that is often not talked about, that is what about the searchability of the immense amount of data you produce when recording immersive media?

Mark is an impressive person in digital photography, digital asset management (DAM), curation. He’s the founder of Microstocksolutions and DigitalContentSolutions, two of his latest companies which do DAM, curation, asset mgmt services for the visual media industry as well as Fortune 500 companies. Mark is also the founder of two of Central and Eastern Europe's most respected photo agencies, Northfoto and Red Dot. Red Dot was a significant company in that it was the region's first internet based photo agency.

In this episode Mark talks about what most companies, innovators concentrate on in immersive media field, what challenges he sees and how he wants to solve some of the problems of content creators. You can learn about his past as well, how his career naturally led up to this point and how his curiosity and lack of some knowledge actually helped him take risks others would not take. Enjoy this episode.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Virtual Reality - a field that is not a reality yet – [2:43]
• Main problems of the VR industry - [4:15]
• Trying to put a tyre on a horse, or what kind of barriers big stock media companies have to overcome - [6:40]
• Mark’s previous professional activities that led him to found his current companies - [8:07]
• The result of a decade long experience in metadata - [12:41]
• What is one question that Mark would like to be asked in relation to VR? - [15:22]
• Who can have the VRmeta tool even before its release? - [17:26]
• “Document everything” – importance of mistakes while developing a company - [18:36]
• The story of risk tolerance and the VRmeta tool – [20:52]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [23:26]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [24:22]
• Mark’s incredible information-ingesting morning routine – [25:19]
• Some striking cultural differences that Mark had to overcome throughout his career – [27:06]
• What is the best way to reach Mark? – [28:41]

My guest in this episode is Christian Smith, co-founder and President of TrackR. Their company is a startup based in California, outside Silicon Valley, at a remarkable place called Santa Barbara, and it is a quite successful hardware startup so lots of things to learn in this interview.

TrackR works in the intelligent personal item tracking space, so their products help you find your lost items. Since its start in 2009, it has grown tremendously from being a startup operating out of a garage to a global operation, with over five million devices shipped worldwide. TrackR is built into many products, as Christian explains it in this episode, from leading brands like Amazon, DoCoMo, HP, Cross Pens and more.

In this episode you get to hear the story of how they got their idea on the beach, what it entails to be passionate or obsessed about something. There are many many more topics we discussed as you can see below in the highlights.

Enjoy this episode.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• A success story of 5 million+ devices – [2:30]
• What’s common between surfing and the idea behind TrackR? - [4:20]
• Being obsessed [not passionate] about giving humanity back 100 hours every single year - [8:08]
• The Lean startup method as a way to engineer great sales - [11:09]
• How did they validate the idea? - [13:22]
• Early failures the founders had while growing the company - [15:05]
• The law of equivalent exchange - [16:27]
• “Great marketing is built into the product” and how the company went viral - [19:38]
• The core value proposition of TrackR - [23:57]
• How will a tracking device look like in the future, according to Christian - [27:02]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [28:52]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [29:24]
• Christian’s super powerful morning routine – [30:14]
• Observations Christian made throughout his career in regard to cultural differences – [32:00]
• What is the best way to reach Christian? – [33:46]

My guest this time is from Silicon Valley, USA, Vibhu Norby of b8ta.

This is an episode that you should simply not miss - many many things to learn from and a guest to inspire you. Vibhu was before with Nest, the smart thermostat maker. This is where he had the realization that retail is far from optimal and that one might have to rethink retail to bring it up to date, to capitalize on today’s tech capabilities. b8ta is essentially a software-powered retailer.

In this episode Vibhu talks about b8ta’s contrarian belief on why brick and mortar stores are dying, how they want to bring back customers to the stores, and what the best brands do. Nowadays e-commerce topics is stealing the headlines, but contrary to this, people actually buy products in stores. You can also learn about conflict of interest between brands and retailers and how Vibhu wants to solve this conflict with his company. You can also find out how he validated his idea, what mistake he made during this time. He also walks us through the process what details make your brand sell or not sell inside a store. And many more topics will be covered, too. Enjoy!

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• How is the store model of b8ta reversing the trend of brick-and-mortar stores closing down? - [3:45]
• Previous professional experience that lead Vibhu to creating a platform for solving the retail conflict - [6:44]
• Important observations that evolved into replacing a whole system – [12:55]
• How did he validate the idea? - [14:28]
• Key ingredients that differentiate b8ta from their competitors - [17:23]
• How does the platform pay the makers? - [20:55]
• Importance of timing and speed of bringing products to market - [22:05]
• A walk through b8ta’s four-step customer journey that they analyse - [24:58]
• Plan for success – mistakes the founders made while growing the company [28:05]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [31:57]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [32:28]
• Vibhu’s everyday routine – [33:11]
• Some cultural differences that Vibhu observed throughout his career – [34:58]
• What is the best way to reach Vibhu? – [36:46]