Episodios
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You're listening to Trade Show Live On the Road, featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors and trade show industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country in a wide variety of industries from healthcare to consumer products and everything in between. The podcast is a production of the Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. And now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live.
Janet (00:28):
We're at CES 2020 looking ahead to another exciting decade of innovation and consumer electronics development. However, you can't do it without money. So with me right now is the founder of Angel Launch, Zahava Stroud. Zahava welcome to Trade Show Live at CES 2020.
Zahava (00:50):
Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.
Janet (00:52):
Now we're on the first day of the show for us, which is Tuesday. However, Zahava you've been busy; you've already done a number of things at CES. So tell me a little bit about Angel Launch and what you were up to yesterday.
Zahava (01:06):
Sure. So our website is angellaunch - l a u n c h - .com and we are a leading producer of investment forums, summits and networking events in Silicon Valley. We produce events almost every week connecting startups to investors from around the world. They consist of networking receptions, hitch nights, demo showcases, venture forums, and one of our most popular ones is called backyard capital, where we do a monthly reception in a private home in a very elite area of Silicon Valley where we get 150 startups and investors for informal networking. The goal of these events has been to connect investors to promising startups through deal-making and many startups from around the world have received millions in funding. Yesterday we produced an annual conference at CES; we do every year for over 10 years, called Silicon Valley Funding Summit. And it's a one day conference where we bring in startups from around the world. We bring in investors ranging from millions to a hundred million in funds looking for promising startups. We do a full day of networking, pitching and a demo showcase was very successful. The startups met a lot of great investors and in fact serves told me that they now have been funded from our past events, which is very exciting.
Janet (02:26):
Oh, we love hearing about people getting money. Now she may sound like it's got a singular focus, consumer electronics, but really we've got everything here from the health tech to virtual reality to toys and games and all kinds of silly stuff to very, very serious things. I'm curious as a Angel Launch person putting together people who have ideas with people who can fund them, are you agnostic to, you don't really care what kind of business it is or are you in any particular area?
Zahava (03:01):
So the great thing is that what we do is we produce live events. We don't actually invest. We connect startups to accredited investors and we cover all markets. In the last two months we get a FinTech event. We did quite a few on health tech, life science and medical devices, automotive and connected cars, enterprise and consumer applications, AI, deep tech, machine learning. We cover all markets. And what we found is that there's such a huge community of people traveling to the Bay area who don't live there, that we can do events almost every week and we can get several hundred people, those startups and investors who attend, but at least 40% don't live in the Bay area. They're just traveling through for meetings or deals, so we're a great resource for them to meet other people.
Janet (03:49):
Tell me about the investing or the vetting of the investors. Do you require that ultimately they invest in something? How do you prove that they have the money they say they have to fund people?
Zahava (04:03):
so we don't do rigorous due diligence since we're an event producer. What we do is we ask investors and we rely on their self representation that they are accredited investors. If we don't know, then we ask them for some types of documentation such as websites, LinkedIn profile, angel list profile, or people that we know and then we rely on their representation. And so far we haven't had any issues with that because again, the events are free or low cost. And the whole point is to connect people to investors. Many of the investors also are syndicated, which is very common. Maybe they'll get 10 or 20 investors who invest a small amount in a deal. So we often find that angels come to our events, refer their friends to startups. In fact, I just met a startup that pitched at an event a year ago and then recently met an investor who was at a different event, but one of the investors he met knew of the startup and said they'd be great for you, connected them. And now he's a board of advisor and investor in this startup because they had all attended two different events in the Bay area. Networking is the number one place that startups make deals. So that's why it's important to go to as many events as you can.
Janet (05:10):
I'm curious about the startups themselves. Do they just come into it cold and learn by the school of hard knocks, how to pitch? They've come to you with that experience or is this a great place for them to learn those skills?
Zahava (05:22):
So we don't do any training or there are many resources that do and we have many partners that offer training. For instance, at our backyard capital, which is held on a Thursday, we offer a free training by someone who's a mentor on Wednesday nights for anyone who's pitching to come and learn. So if someone asks me for training, we have many other resources in the Bay area where you can go and learn about how to pitch. But one reason people come is to see other people pitch. Because of course when you live in the Bay area and you're pitching all the time or going to events, you have a much higher level of presentation and you know what investors inspect. So we find it's very helpful for people who never pitched to get an idea of what they should be doing. We use that as a learning process.
Janet (06:04):
You know, when I think about pitching, I think about it being elevator pitch, you know, tell me 30 seconds. But generally, how long do people have to pitch their ideas at your events?
Zahava (06:13):
So before my current life, I was a trial attorney and I was used to being in court with the judges who had a very limited attention span. I was used to pitching, you know, a lawsuit. That's where millions of dollars I had two minutes. So I tell all my startups, pretend that you are pitching for your life and you have two to four minutes to convince someone that they should invest in you because you're actually pitching for millions of dollars. So most of our pitches are three to five minutes because they're in front of a stage. We tell startups you need to learn to have, to have an elevator pitch so that when people want to meet with you, then you can do the extensive dialogue in the PowerPoint slides and the more extensive presentation. But you should have a very charming, with a short pitch to get their initial attention.
Janet (06:57):
You know, sometimes technology can be, uh, kind of boring or a little over people's heads. And yet those could be the billion dollar ideas. Do you find that folks that are successfully landing funding that they really do bring a presence to the stage?
Zahava (07:14):
Well, I would say it's not necessarily true. When you see the extremely successful startups that have raised millions and millions of dollars and you see their founders speak, they are usually very smart, very charismatic, great at getting along with the people and you can understand why they got to their position. But I don't deal with that level of a startup like an Airbnb, right? I deal with early stage startups who are on the path to growth. So they may have not developed their full persona yet. And oftentimes it's not necessarily the personality of the founder, but the value of their startup that people care about, such as their customers, how much money they've raised, how much money they've made, how unique are they to the industry, who's on their management team, who are their partners? That type of stage. So we find those are some of the qualities that investors look for for the initial investment opportunity.
Janet (08:06):
So some of these investments may be, you know, early in the low five figures, it might not be a huge amount of money. Chances are what they're going to get out of it. Aside from the money, is the advice and the input from these potential investors?
Zahava (08:20):
Well, you know, the dirty secret of Silicon Valley is most investors don't have a home run, right? You hear about a few who do, but most of the ones I talk to privately, maybe had one home run in 10 or 20 years of investing millions of dollars. And even then it's often not huge enough for them to retire. So most investors do it, number one, because they're intellectually curious. They want to be helpful. They often can be a board or an advisor to the company and they believe in the product. So most of them aren't doing it just for the money. But of course they like a rate of return. So it's not unusual for an investor to maybe have 10 or 20 startups hoping that one of them will be successful, but at the same time they're going to give you advice to help you grow your startup venture.
Janet (09:03):
Now you mentioned that you're doing events almost weekly and probably as soon, sometimes more than once a week or or larger scale events, takes a lot of names and email addresses to make that happen. How have you gone about building this network?
Zahava (09:18):
So I've been doing this for over 15 years. Number one, it's relationship driven. I attend many events in trade shows, so I constantly meet people. I get cards from exhibitors at trade shows, people call me up, we use social media, all the normal forms of marketing. Well, number one, I would say it's word of mouth, which is not unusual for people to contact us because someone else got their email and referred them to us. Unfortunately people have a great experience, right? So they tell their friends, Hey, we went to this event, we had a great experience, we think you would as well. So people just join our mailing list. And again, if you go to our website, angel, launch.com you can join our mailing lists, get our contact information. We're based in Silicon Valley and learn more how you could attend, participate, or even host your own events.
Janet (10:04):
Okay. Now I'm trying to sit down and think how are you making a living if it's very low cost free to very small amount of money for attendees. Gee, how are you making a living?
Zahava (10:16):
The event industry is a very transparent industry and there's three ways we all make money. We either charge attendees, we charge sponsors, or we charge startups to pitch, and I use a variance of that model depending on the event. For instance, I had several free events recently where sponsors underwrote the event. They were either foreign entities that wanted to reach an audience or they were a group of startups that were looking to reach investors. So that's one way. Another way is we charge a fee for startups to pitch, which covers our costs for the event. And the third way is for some events we charge a low cost attending ticket.
Janet (10:50):
I've been a part of startup weekend before. Now this is where somebody literally wrote down an idea on the back of a card probably while people in front of him were pitching an idea and I've had to sit through 60 or more people doing a 62nd pitch and I was exhausted. Just listening to that at the end. Do you really cut it off at a certain amount? What's the magic number of people pitching?
Zahava (11:14):
It really depends on the event. I've done all types of events. Yesterday we had a full day of, I'm not sure, maybe about 40 startups pitching than I do evening events with 10 startups pitching. I would say it really, it's not so much a magic number of pitching. It's the quality of the pitches. If you have a good quality, the investors will sit and listen because the Bay area is very competitive. Investors all want to be in early on the best deal and the best deals go to the highest profile venture capital firms, so all the other investors are competing to get the attention of the good deals. That's why people who produce events like myself can't get investors to attend, is they're always looking for deal flow.
Janet (11:51):
Now I'm curious, are people sending you emails saying, "hey, Zahava, come on. Just hand me a good one. You know what's coming."
Zahava (11:59):
You know they don't do that. It's just not the way they do in Silicon Valley, but they attend events and that's why most of my events get 40 to 80 accredited investors, which is a lot if I'm doing them almost every week, but they know yesterday at my event, one of my investors said he'd been coming to my event for maybe 10 years that I've been doing it. He's from Michigan. He said, I come because I meet high quality startups continuously. It's fun. He said, I get to meet investors from around the world and I get to be exposed to a huge amount of startups the day before CES begins, so it's a great opportunity to kind of get a heads up on what's hot in the industry.
Janet (12:32):
I'm curious about Michigan or in this case, the North Carolina startup pavilion, but you're talking about predominantly doing events in Silicon Valley. Do you find that people from around the country come to Silicon Valley for this or is there a real need for your services in other locales around the country?
Zahava (12:53):
I would say that the reason I do them in Silicon Valley is because that's where the investors are. You could only produce successful venture forums if you have investors and the really the major cities in the U S are LA, New York, Silicon Valley and Boston. So I produce most of my events either during trade shows like this trade show at CES because you have investors in town or I did one at South by Southwest in partnership with the EU enriching the EU program. I've done them in other cities only as part of another trade show, but I do them mostly in the Bay area and I think you'll find most venture forms are done either LA or New York because that's where we have the highest concentration of technical investors.
Janet (13:34):
Even though there's only really three places where you can hold the biggest of the big trade shows, which would be Las Vegas, Orlando and Chicago. So I haven't heard. You mentioned Orlando and Chicago. What's your feeling about those two markets?
Zahava (13:49):
It's not so much the city. It's where are the tech trade shows? And the problem is most startup tech trade shows are either San Francisco or New York. An example is tech crunch, which does it in most cities. There are not a lot of trade shows for tech startups. Right? CES has developed Eureka Park over the last few years to fill that need. So we go to tech trade shows that have either startups or investors. There just aren't very many of them.
Janet (14:12):
Okay. So I'm going to put you in the hot spot here and say, okay, we've just crossed over into a new decade. What do you think is going to be coming up for us? And I'm only gonna ask you for like a couple of years, I'm not going to check back with you in 10 years, but next couple of years for the startup industry, for investors in this space, is a more happening, less happening? Is it more exciting? Is it getting more focused? Is it harder to be a startup?
Zahava (14:43):
I can tell you first of all, what are the hot tech trends? Because I go to events all the time and being that the Bay area is cutting edge and early adapters, I have a sense of what's hot and what's not. And I also talked to a lot of investors behind the seat. So some of the hot topics right now are anything to do with internet of things or sensors, anything to do with big data analytics and how retail users are using that type of data. Cyber security and privacy issues are huge. And also anything to do with how the internet improves your daily life. Health and wellness, MedTech, health and wellness, things like that. So that's kind of some of the topics. And of course AI robotics and machine learning, which is now being utilized. So investors are looking for those kinds of markets and market opportunities.
Zahava (15:33):
Yes, there will always be huge innovation. I think there'll be more and more of it because we have more access resources on the internet, more tools that help startups develop. So I think the market will continue to grow. The challenge will be that investors want to see a higher level of success before they invest in you and that's what I hear from a lot of startups in the early days of investing you could get by with 100,000 now investors don't even like to consider less than a million because they know how expensive it is to hire developers to do a marketing plan to do advertising, all that type of thing. So a lot of startups are using a lot more friends and family funds initially to get to the point of creating a product or are they using campaigns like Kickstarter, Indiegogo where we call proof of concept and then once they have that or they have a market traction, then they go out and seek investors funding.
Janet (16:28):
so you think they're going to be more successful if they already have customers and they already have revenue streams?
Zahava (16:35):
it's huge. The number one thing I tell startups is when they're doing a pitch, don't bury the lead. If you have customers, if you have a revenue stream, if you already have a product, if you have a loyal following, start with that. When you're pitching, because that's the most impressive thing is they call it traction. The investors want to know you have traction and that you're scalable and even if you have a small marketplace, it shows you have the room to grow and that's what they're looking for.
Janet (17:01):
So now let's look ahead to what's going on with Angel Launch. What are you predicting for yourself in the next few years?
Zahava (17:07):
Well, I honestly cannot tell you that far ahead. I live in the Bay area pretty much month to month for events because I'm all about what's hot and that's why I've been successful. I constantly change my business model, the theme of my events, the format, depending on what's happening in the event marketplace. We have a lot of events in the Bay area for venture capital, and so you have to offer features that make people want to attend. You have to have good startups, the networking, valuable information and education. So I'll probably keep doing what I do now, which is evening events. Venture for summits is a way to enhance the local ecosystem.
Janet (17:45):
Well, I wish you a lot of luck and I hope that 2020 and beyond is very good for you.
New Speaker (17:52):
Thank you so much. I appreciate being here.
Introducer (17:56):
Thanks for listening to Trade Show Live On the Road, a production of the Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. If you need innovative programs to engage attendees, exhibitors and sponsors, custom research or new solutions for your trade show, hot tech, the Trade Show Manager on our website, thetradeshowmanager.com.
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Season 2, Episode 6 CES 20 Jennifer Capps, NCSU
Matt Kruea (00:00):
You're listening to Trade Show Live on the Road!, featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show, industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country in a wide variety of industries, from healthcare to consumer products. And everything in between. The podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. And now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live.
Janet Kennedy (00:28):
Janet Kennedy: (00:28)
Trade Show Live is on the road at CES 2020 we are in Eureka Park, which is where all the startups are and we happen to have a number of startups with us, with a very strong NC State tie. So we brought in one of our honor guests here today, Jennifer Capps, who's a leader in the entrepreneurship program at NC State to talk about her impressions of CES and where she feels NC State's ecosystem of entrepreneurship would fall. So Jennifer, welcome to the podcast.Jennifer Capps (00:59):
Thank you so much for having me here today.
Janet Kennedy (01:01):
Okay, I bet you're sort of like freaking out at your first experience at CES.
Jennifer Capps (01:05):
I am. This is like the world's biggest playground for entrepreneurship and innovation. Nerds like myself. This is amazing. How can you just walk down an aisle and not be super inspired? You absolutely can't. I keep getting distracted.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
If I'm going to meet someone, I had to make myself pull away from some of these booths because the ideas are just phenomenal. You know, this is the ultimate shiny object syndrome issue except in Eureka park or think where it's like 2000 different businesses ideas, just amazingly overwhelming. Oh absolutely. But outside come coming from NC State and working with our students, they overwhelm me in the exact same way. I get the absolute privilege to work with students from all across the university and one of our intro level classes and these students are very new to this world of innovation and entrepreneurship in many ways, therefore is to go out and study markets and identify pain points that could become entrepreneurial opportunities. And then very quickly they proposed solutions. Well when I come to a place like this and I see so many of the ideas that students have proposed in the last few years, showing up at CES in some way, that is such a powerful tool for me to take back into the classroom to inspire them and all of a sudden this becomes something that's aspirational for them.
Janet Kennedy (02:27):
Do you feel like students are coming in a little more hardwired to think about themselves as entrepreneurs or owners of businesses?
Jennifer Capps (02:35):
I do. In many ways students are coming in knowing the word entrepreneurship and knowing that it sounds really cool. They're open to exploring the idea of entrepreneurship. What many of them don't understand is one, the work that goes into it, you know, in many ways they have sort of the shark tank view or they think, I just have to have a great idea and get up in front of national TV and people will fund me. So we about the steps that it takes and we talk about the fact that it's okay to fail as long as you do so for the right reasons. We talk about pivots, you know, it's so interesting that entrepreneurial pivot is a generally accepted principle here. We've already talked to dozens of companies represented here who talk about the pivots that they've made because of information they received at CES, but as individuals we often don't give ourselves the same permission to pivot in our career choices.
Jennifer Capps (03:26):
And I think that's one of the things that I work with our entrepreneurship students on. I think that's one of the interesting things too about coming even when you're not 100% ready, but you're still flexible enough to rethink. An example is NC State grads who founded brilliant soul came last year thinking this is a gaming thing. Now what they, what brilliant soul is for those folks who haven't listened to Jeff guard's podcast is basically an insole that has haptic technology in it and sensors that they envisioned using for VR and gaming purposes. Well, they got a ton of feedback from the biggest names in footwear last year and they haven't pivoted. They have expanded how they've developed their product. So now they're thinking about how does it apply to healthcare? How does it apply to other types of non-gaming functions? They even had a podiatrist who's a Colonel in the U S army stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina helped them with very specifically redesigning from some of her perspectives in a military environment.
Jennifer Capps (04:34):
So I'm absolutely so proud of them for not thinking, Hey, people didn't want my product. They recognize that input that the product needed to evolve to grab the market. That was one of the most impressive things to me as well about that company, how open they are to making these adjustments and going where the market's need them. And I think that's such a powerful thing that we can show to our NC State students. It's something that I'd like to get our NC State alumni entrepreneurs involved with because I think they need those reminders as well. I could see NC State entrepreneurs having an entire wall representation at the next CES. That would be an amazing dream of mine.
Janet Kennedy (05:14):
So the program at NC State does involve mentorship, right?
Jennifer Capps (05:18):
Absolutely. In many different ways. NC State entrepreneurship offers a mentoring program where we bring people from the community in to interact very naturally with our students and we let the students and the mentors pair themselves off as they see fit.
Janet Kennedy (05:34):
One of the other things I found interesting at CES is the number of people who have come up who either are from North Carolina and they're so excited to see the state of North Carolina represented here or they recognize that we are a growing, expanding dynamic technology.
Jennifer Capps (05:52):
Absolutely. The NC State Alumni Association has done such a wonderful of creating an entrepreneurs affinity group within that association, so entrepreneurs can now get together, they can network, they can build relationships, find potential new clients, and let's not forget, NC State doesn't just produce entrepreneurs. We produce really great employees of startup companies so they can recruit for their first level employees as well.
Janet Kennedy (06:20):
You know, that's a really good point because if you have employees with an entrepreneurship mindset, they're going to be problem solvers. They're not going to expect you to hand over a fully written job description and it not change. They're probably going to push back a little bit and challenge the companies that they join to do better, to be better and to innovate.
Jennifer Capps (06:39):
That's absolutely true and that's a great point. That is one of the cornerstones of our educational process within NC State entrepreneurship. Instilling that entrepreneurial mindset and then helping students figure out where their best fit in that world is going to be. In some cases, that is going to be a startup. In other cases, it's going to be employee number five of a startup, and in other cases that's going to be joining a large corporation, but bringing that entrepreneurial mindset into everything that they do. Now, help me understand how the entrepreneurship program works within the ecosystem of NC State. So I come in as a student and I'm an English major. I'm a theater major. I'm a engineering major. Where does the entrepreneurship program, Paul, NC State entrepreneurship and the NC State entrepreneurship Alliance spans across the entire university.
Jennifer Capps (07:31):
NC State has so many absolutely amazing entrepreneurship programs. The Poole College of Management has many incredible entrepreneurship opportunities. You can get a major in business with a concentration in entrepreneurship. You can get a minor in business management with a concentration in entrepreneurship. They housed the entrepreneurship clinic, which is such an amazing program. But then in our other colleges, the college of engineering has an engineering entrepreneurs program that is absolutely spectacular open to any student on campus. We have a minor in arts entrepreneurship and a rapidly evolving arts entrepreneurship program that is just outstanding. We have a lot of work and social entrepreneurship. The design school has many entrepreneurial opportunities. Our College of Textiles has, I could go on for days and days and days. NC State entrepreneurship exists to support all of those communities in ways that help them grow without taking away the unique flavor that they were built on in the first place.
Jennifer Capps (08:39):
So we house like our entrepreneurs garage in partnership with HD rally where any student on campus can come, they can network, they can meet other entrepreneurs, they can actually build their businesses inside of the garage. You know, they can invite a client in a meeting or an investor in, which is a whole lot nicer than, Hey can you come and meet me at the Starbucks down the road and you know, I might be late cause I'm going to have to take a bus to get there. So we try to give them places that it's a professional work environment. We have our Albright living and learning village for students who want to live 24 hours a day in a community with other entrepreneurial thinkers. We have general education courses. I mean the list goes on and on and on. So I think one of the biggest things that we do as students are coming into the university, we want to help them find the lay of the land.
Jennifer Capps (09:30):
If they want to learn about entrepreneurship, there's numerous, all our cart services that they can take advantage of while they're there. And part of our job is to help them figure out what that looks like. I want to go back to school now. Oh my gosh, I'm, I'm ready to be an entrepreneur again. Well, you know, I've been a part of this since 2001 and I have been so [inaudible] about helping NC State build these things because they weren't there when I was there. And I think, wow, how much fun would this have been? But now I'm honored to get to work with these students and man they keep me on my toes. They are so smart and so creative and I absolutely adore getting up and working with them every single day.
Janet Kennedy (10:11):
All right, now I'm jealous too. So might have to bump you off at CES so I could move into your lower end.
Jennifer Capps (10:17):
Join us anytime you'd like. All right, awesome. So now you're going to get down to really go into C CS. So what's on your agenda for the rest of the event to see as much as we possibly can. You know, we've been really privileged to walk around this startup area and that's been cool and can't wait to go compare it to some of the larger, more established companies. I hear Google's here, I believe I heard Facebook might be here and there's Sony. So I'm curious to see where those companies are going and compare it to what our startups are doing. Cause you know in many cases I think our startups will have the edge. All right. I believe that totally. You have been visiting with Jennifer Capps who is member of the senior leadership over at the North Carolina state university entrepreneurship program and we're of course Trade Show Live on the Road at CES 2020. Thanks for joining me Jennifer.
Jennifer Capps (11:05):
Well thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast.
Matt Kruea (11:09):
Thanks for listening to Trade Show Live on the Road, a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. If you need innovative programs to engage attendees, exhibitors and sponsors, custom research or new solutions for your trade show, contact The Trade Show Manager on our website, The Trade Show Manager.com.
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We continue our interview with Tom Miller, Senior Vice Provost at NC State University about entrepreneurship culture to innovate and programs fostering business-building environment at North Carolina State University.
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Joining me on the Trade Show Live podcast is Colin Kaiser from the EDPNC, which stands for the economic development partnership of North Carolina. Colin works in the international business development group, focusing on foreign direct investments coming from Europe and India. His role is helping North Carolina develop business partnerships around the globe. The EDPNC will be at CES 2020.
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Jeff Guard is the Founder and CEO of Brilliant Sole. They are returning to CES 2020 as part of the North Carolina Startup Pavilion at booth #52318. Brilliant Sole is a smart footwear platform for VR with multiple applications from gaming to health care.
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Joining me on the podcast is Jeff Cameron. He's a partner in and also handles the business development for Logistimatics. Logistimatics sells GPS tracking devices and services for individuals and for businesses. They provide real-time GPS tracking for vehicles, fleets, assets and people.
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CES 2020 on the Trade Show Live podcast! An interview with Tom Miller, Senior Vice Provost at NC State University about entrepreneurship culture to innovate and programs fostering business-building environment at North Carolina State University.
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Dr. Graham Snyder is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SEAL Innovation. Graham co-founded SEAL Innovation to bring SEAL Swim Safe to market in direct response to the tragedies he witnessed while treating both adult and pediatric victims of drowning. Dr. Snyder joined Janet Kennedy on the Trade Show Live podcast to as part of our CES 2019 coverage.
This project received support from NC IDEA
Announcer: 00:00 You're listening to Trade Show, Live! On the Road, featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show, industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country in a wide variety of industries from healthcare consumer products and everything in between. The podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. And now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live!
Janet: 00:27 Welcome to Trade Show, Live! On the Road. In January 2019, we are headed to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show with an amazing group of startups and business leaders from North Carolina will be in Eureka Park and displaying some of the best cool new ideas coming from the startup community here in North Carolina. Joining me is a fascinating product that is very close to my heart because I grew up swimming from an early age. It's still scary that drowning is a public health epidemic. Joining me on the podcast is Graham Snyder. He is an ER Doc, a physician-entrepreneur and CEO at SEAL Innovation and he's got a solution. Graham, welcome to the podcast.
Graham: 01:17 Thank you Janet. Great to be here.
Janet: 01:19 I was very interested in hearing about your company because I actually worked with a scuba organization where you did some of the early prototype testing of your product called SEAL Swim Safe and I think it is so needed and so important. Do you mind telling me a little bit about the history of SEAL Swim Safe and the company SEAL Innovation and and how you came to be.
Graham: 01:46 I'd love to Janet. As you may know, my background is as an emergency physician and so I work in a large trauma center taking care of sick and injured adults and children. It is a hard job where there is a lot of tragedy and loss of life and one of the things which really became a passion of mine was preventing probably the single greatest tragedy that I see in the emergency room and that's the loss of a child. Unfortunately, every spring and summer we have far too many children brought to us either on the brink of death or already lost who have drowned and these children, they look just like my children and their parents look just like me and are oftentimes doing the right thing. They are doing their best, they are paying attention, they are good, responsible parents, but they just miss it. I saw this again and again broke my heart and unlike many problems in life, this is something which is solvable. So I set out with my friends, some physicians and some engineers to come with a solution.
Janet: 03:00 I think the idea that physicians as entrepreneurs is really critical for solving a lot of health and safety problem. So often we have developers on the one side inventing something they think is a cool idea and physicians on the other side looking at the problems and they don't often get together. So when you have a physician who can look at both sides of the issue, I think you're going to come up with something really effective and it sounds like that's what's happened with SEAL Innovation.
Graham: 03:30 Thank you. Janet and I, I really feel like one of the reasons that I chose drowning as something which needed to be stopped was because it's the low lying fruit. If you were going to look at the risk of losing a child, if you looked at gunshot wounds or poisonings or bicycle crashes or ski accidents, none of those things even hold a candle to drowning in terms of their frequency. We lose 10 times as many children from or we lose 10 times as many young children from grounding as we do from bicycle accidents and is against the law to put a child on a bicycle without us bicycle helmet. If you think about what we can do to help the public health, we should start with the big problems and go from there.
Janet: 04:24 Well, I understand there's a lot of misconceptions about drowning as well, so I'm going to toss a couple of you out. One is that, well, if you've had swim lessons, you're fine.
Graham: 04:32 Well, unfortunately that's not true. Now, the reality is swim lessons are very important. Eighty five percent of children that drowned never had a single swim lesson, but by that number tells you a 15 percent have had swim lessons and unfortunately children that know how to swim technically can drown as well. Children by their nature are not that strong and do not have incredible endurance and frankly don't have the best judgment, and so children hit their head. Children swim until they're exhausted. Children choke on water. They get water up their nose and panic. One of the hardest cases that I had, and I'll never forget, this was a six year old girl who was in her backyard pool at a family reunion with loving parents, uncles, aunts, nephews, and one of the parents looked down and saw her pull her up and she was dead and what no one can tell me and what the parents will wonder for the rest of their life is how long was she underwater?
Graham: 05:41 They don't know. They don't know what happened. She probably got water up or nose panics, spun around in circles, gagged a little and then passed out. And if anyone had noticed, if anyone had happened to see her, they could have saved her, but it just didn't. The biggest misconception I feel about drowning. Drowning doesn't look like drowning. If you watch, you watch jaws or you watch a movie or someone's drowning, normally they're waving their heads and screaming, Hey, help me. I'm drowning. That's not what happens. If a person was strong enough to scream and yell, put their hands in the air and tread water without using their hands. They're outstanding swimmer. But when a person is drowning, they're exhausted. They can't breathe. All they can do is quietly bob up and down and inhale. And then they slip under and it's quiet. No one notices.
Graham: 06:32 Um, that's the, that's the thing that I'm trying to prevent. So what does your technology do? What is it when a person drowns? Normally they get exhausted quietly, bob up and down, and then slipped to the bottom. What we as human beings notice is not things that are quiet out of you. And still, that's what drowning looks like. What our device is as our device tracks a child, whether they're above or below the water, and when they're below the water, it monitors how long they're below the water. If they're below the water, beyond the threshold of pain than the device itself fires off a strobe light and siren that's too quickly warn a person who is holding their breath for a long time. Hey, you're really pushing things, but if you go beyond that limit, then it sets off an unmistakable strobe and siren on a hub, alerting everyone in the area., Hey, you got a problem! And you need to do that rescue now.
Janet: 07:31 All right, let me ask you a question. Is it a bracelet? Is this a necklace? What, uh, what are they wearing?
Graham: 07:36 This is a necklace. The genesis of the idea was that the YMCA for the last couple of decades, children have been given little necklace that have a color code to them. That Color Code simply tells the lifeguard whether they're allowed in the deep end or not. And they determined that by a swim test. This is a fantastic program and all commercial pools should be doing it. I was at the pool with a with some of the leadership of the YMCA and we were looking at that bands and I thought to myself, well, they're already wearing a necklace. Can't we just put a little tick in there that would tell us something more than if they've passed their swim tests, but tell me if that child is potentially in danger.
Janet: 08:21 Is this only for little children or would you put this on say, an older child who didn't have strong swim skills?
Graham: 08:28 It's very interesting that you say that. The reality of drowning is that there's a try modal distribution of drowning by age groups. There's the little kids, the two, three, four who can't swim, who fall in the pool and go to the bottom. Then there's the teenagers, the 13, 14, 15 year olds who are doing crazy things. They're jumping off and hitting their head. They're wrestling underwater. They're holding their breath until they pass out, and then there's also older people who have medical conditions like seizures, strokes, heart attacks, or maybe just passing out, which if they were on land are perfectly survivable but can be fatal in the water, so what that means is SEAL Swim Safe is designed for anyone who could potentially get in trouble in the water and drowned and that means little children who don't know how to swim or people who are just learning, but also people that have medical conditions that could potentially cause them to get in a situation where that medical condition could result in a fatality.
Janet: 09:36 So in the band they're wearing around their neck or the necklace, because this isn't a choker, it is something that's loose and shouldn't cause them any discomfort. Correct?
Graham: 09:46 Absolutely. The necklace itself is worn loosely. It drapes on the upper chest, like an annual it and it's neutrally buoyant. What that means is that when you jump in the water wearing it, the child cannot see it or feel it because it's floating and free space in the water. It's a comfortable enough to be worn for the entire swim day and not even noticeable until the sirens fire.
Janet: 10:12 And when they're wearing it. What exactly activates the siren? Is it? Is it water? Is it change in level?
Graham: 10:20 This was quite a technology to to develop. There are technologies out there that alert you if something gets wet and that is useful for a kid who's not supposed to be in the water, who falls in, but that's not what we're focusing on. What we need is we need four or five, six, seven, eight year olds to be playing in the water, even holding their breath for fun going down, picking up GI Joe's and pennies. We don't want an alarm in that situation. We only want the alarm if the child's head is completely underwater for too long. So the way we have designed the system is it detects the radio frequencies that are transmitted from the hub system itself and the way water modulates that radio frequency tells you whether they're substantially under the water or not. You know, if they're just up to their neck and you know, and standing still fine, but if they're completely submerged and there's radio frequencies change and alert you to start the timer and when this timer it gets to a critical level, that's when the alarms fire.
Janet: 11:26 So you would set a timer based on the age and skill level of the individual?
Graham: 11:32 Yes, and in the current setting, basically there's a beginning in advance, so we have a three seconds for a little kid who really is going to get scared if they're underwater for more than a second or two to a bigger child who could hold their breath easily up to 20 seconds.
Janet: 11:50 Oh, fascinating. Well you've had a to try this out in a commercial setting. So how many units have you had going at any one time and who did you work with to prototype the system?
Graham: 12:02 The largest deployment that we ever did was 400 swim bands and we did that at something called a polar bear swim. This was a event sponsored by the YMCAs were hundreds of children and their dads go for a swim in a pool in February. Now it's not really a cold pool, but because it's in February and it's very exciting. They called the polar bear swim. Um, that was a great event and I can tell you going to that event as a physician or as an advocate for the public health, it's a little scary to have hundreds of children's in a pool it at once because it's hard to see the bottom because of all this flashing. But with the system, it was a real relief to know that if anyone went under too long, we would have had a siren and a rescue.
Janet: 12:49 Oh, fascinating. Now that sounds like a great match for a commercial setting, which would be any really public pool, but what other kinds of commercial settings do you think this would work in?
Graham: 13:00 As a person who manages a pool? One of the hardest situations to monitor is what we call brown water. So if you've got a summer camp and a lake, when a child goes under, if they're under more than about six inches, you can't see them at all and that is a great opportunity for the SEAL Swim Safe to add an extra layer of protection. That being said, there are municipal pools. Many of the hundreds of cities in the state and tens of thousands in the nation have pools were swimmers, could be five years old and excellent swimmers or 13 and not even know how to tread water. So that's another great situation. There's also a swim schools throughout the nation where people are just learning to swim as well as the traditional swim clubs where people both compete and go to play.
Janet: 13:52 I think that's fascinating. Especially when you think about the kids who've never had any swim lessons at all and are getting to that age where it's kind of cool to be rough housing and they want to be out there and they don't want to ask for help. This is kind of a device that that gives them some backup.
Graham: 14:10 I agree. Now, one thing that you could do with a person who doesn't know how to swim, it's just put them in a life jacket and that does keep them safe while that life jacket is on. Unfortunately, you know kids don't really like life jackets that much, but much more important than that is if you're wearing a life jacket, you will never learn to swam and it's the learning to swim, which is the critical component. The great thing about the SEAL as you can go in the water and go under water, get maybe get a little water up your nose, learn how to hold your breath, but in a safe environment so that you can become a strong and active swimmer and both protect yourself and one day protect your children as well.
Janet: 14:55 Well, I'm glad you've had a chance to really test it out in a lot of large group settings, but what about the pool at Grandma's house? What about the your own backyard pool? What about taking it with you personally? When you go to the beach, is this affordable and accessible to the individual consumer?
Graham: 15:13 This winter we're selling the commercial devices themselves and the residential device will be coming out in the spring and the pricing has not been set yet.
Janet: 15:23 All right, so, but it will be something that is available to individual parents and does it matter if you're going say to salt water versus a pool?
Graham: 15:31 No. The system can be used in a fresh water, a saltwater pool, or even in the ocean.
Janet: 15:38 Oh, that's exciting. I think your product is amazing and it's going to make a huge difference and I think we need to get the word out about it. So I understand you're joining us at CES.
Graham: 15:48 Yes. I'm looking forward to it.
Janet: 15:50 We're going to have an opportunity to talk to you in person. I assume maybe you're bringing a few bands with you to for a little show and tell.
Graham: 15:58 Absolutely.
Speaker 2: 15:59 Oh, that'll be excellent. Well, Graham, I look forward to seeing you next week at CES and for those folks who are listening after CES will have a link in the show notes to all the information that you need to know about SEAL, Swim Safe and how you can become more involved as a consumer. What are you hoping to accomplish at CES?
Graham: 16:21 Well, Janet, one of the things which is just so fascinating to me about living in 2019 is the amazing work being done in technology. Obviously there's excitement and entertainment, but there's also safety and the expansion of our horizons. One of the things that I am most interested in is seeing how the latest technologies from all around the world are working to help do what we do, make the world a safer, more fun place to live in and I couldn't be more happy to be there.
Janet: 16:58 Well, I look forward to seeing you in person, Graham, and we'll also be broadcasting another interview live during the event, so I look forward to hearing your observations next week.
Graham: 17:08 Thank you Janet.
Announcer: 17:10 Thanks for listening to Trade Show, Live! On the Road, a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. If you need innovative programs to engage attendees and exhibitors and sponsors, custom research or new solutions for your trade show, contact The Trade Show Manager on our website, thetradeshowmanager.com.
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Myxx makes mom’s lives easier through creating a frictionless experience for shopping and eating healthier meals with families.
Joining Janet Kennedy on the podcast are COO Dede Houston and CEO Monica Wood, Co-Founders of Myxx.
Announcer: 00:02 You're listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show, industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country in a wide variety of industries, from healthcare to consumer products and everything in between. The podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm, and now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live!
Janet: 00:30 Welcome to Trade Show Live! On the Road. This podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager and features an in depth look at the people, companies, and organizations that bring trade shows to life. In January 2019, we are headed to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show with an amazing group of startups and business leaders will be in Eureka Park and displaying some of the best new ideas coming from the startup community in North Carolina. With me today is the team that has co-founded Myxx. Myxx is spelled m y, x, x, and it is a platform designed to help you shop so much more intelligently so that you are getting healthy foods into your basket, designed to match up with recipes so you actually know what you're cooking when you get home. I think that is a brilliant idea. I'd like to welcome Dede Houston, who is the Co-Founder and COO and Monica Wood is the Co-Founder and CEO to the podcast. Welcome ladies.
Dede: 01:29 Thanks Janet.
Monica: 01:31 Yes, thanks Janet. We're excited to be here today.
Janet: 01:34 I love your platform and for folks who aren't aware of what Myxx is, this is a new and exciting thing. We have another podcast episode where we get deep into the details of what makes is all about and how it works. However, I would really like you guys to give us the high level. How do you describe Myxx in your elevator pitch?
Monica: 01:55 What Myxx is, we like to say, when you come to our site, it seems like a recipe sites, but we're nacho average recipe site. I will definitely not a comedian as a trained data scientists, but what we really do is we help you understand what items match to the recipes at your local store. You don't need to wait a week and have something delivered in a box for a recipe. You can do that using recipes you cook with today and product you love at your local grocery store.
Janet: 02:29 Oh, that sounds so easy. There's gotta be a challenge here. Like for instance, I'm a terrible cook.
Dede: 02:38 If I can do it, anybody can do it.
Janet: 02:41 All right. Is that what? What made you start Myxx?
Monica: 02:46 So if I go back to bed and I worked together at another startup and we always wanted to work together again and we really got along well and that was an exciting startup that we grew really, really bad and we worked with CPG brand manufacturer, so the product sold in grocery stores and marketing efforts, so digital ads. That was kind of our background. It always. We always thought about what we would do together and I had moved on to another startup out of Washington DC and I was flying there four days a week and I have three kids at home and I would call home and I would say, hey guys, would you have for dinner? And they would say, oh mom, it's so great. It's like Bojangles or burgers or pizza, and every time I called him I just felt like I failed.
Janet: 03:31 I mentally have a picture of you just cringing because you want to be supportive of your partner, but on the other hand you're like, why are you feeding them that?
Monica: 03:39 Absolutely, and I was calling home and really just feeling like I was failing them and that's really because eating healthy was something core to me in court to my belief because 14 years ago I lost 100 pounds and I did that through learning how to cook and cook by recipe and understanding what I needed to put into my body in order to be healthy. Before that I ate a lot of fast food and I didn't really understand the ramifications of that. On my health and I didn't want my children to ever have to face that because losing 100 pounds is not easy. It's hard and that's when I started with my crazy travel schedule that I am unable to feed my kids healthy food anymore. And Grocery shopping just seems like such a chore.
Janet: 04:27 I do have friends that will on Sunday meal prep for the whole week. And while that sounds really cool, that actually sounds like three or four hours gone on a Sunday that I wish I were doing something else.
Monica: 04:40 Yes. And that was my life too. I was spending a lot of time with meal planning and then going to the store and then you know, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and I was already traveling so often that I really wanted to have more quality time on the weekends and being in technology as I have conversations we started having one talks about how could we make this better because you're both single moms. The grocery challenge and one of those things was we already spent enough time doing chores and doing everything else around the house. How can we make this easier using technology and that's when we realized that wow, grocery, just moving digital and this is our opportunity to make our lives easier by taking away those hours of meal planning and making it like just minutes and just a few clicks. You can have all of these great recipes planned at your local store and it's such a relief knowing that you have a plan of what's for dinner tonight. I love to hear Dede talking about how she hates to hear that
Dede: 05:43 Monica, when she first approached me and it was about, you know, she wanted her kids to really understand the health and, and really eat more nutritiously and I just needed to feed my kids. I was like, I got tired of home and then being like, mom, what's for dinner? I'm like, I have no clue. What did you fix? You know, it was, it was kind of a pain point of like, you, you've got to feed your kids. And it's. I just wasn't comfortable. It wasn't that comfortable in the kitchen and I'm not a trained chef and all I could do to feed them anything, so this has been really a fantastic solution of being able to find recipes that actually fit my cooking style, but always now having an answer when my kids are like, Hey, what's for dinner? I know what's for dinner because it's not about spending, you know, hours of meal prepping on Sunday, at least not for me, but it's about just being planned out of like I know on Tuesdays that we're going to have tacos or whatever it is and I have all of the stuff ready to roll and I'm good. I know I have 30 minutes on Tuesday. I know I have an hour on Thursday so that I can even plan which type of meals accordingly based on our schedule. So it's been a real life saver for us.
Janet: 07:00 One of the cool things about your platform is that not only will it give you all the ingredients that you need for however long you're planning your meals, it won't duplicate things, which I think is really cool, but it will also tell you where it is in the aisle and now I'm envisioning that the all the partners out there that are like, I don't know, I can't shop. You do it so much better than me. Oh, no excuses dude. Yeah, it's Isle B. Go get it.
Monica: 07:29 Actually, I actually texted my boyfriend the list that we have, the print version of our list and you can print it and then you can text the URL so it tells you the quantity. That brand shopping,
Janet: 07:45 I think you should call this the no excuses.
Monica: 07:51 I love that. That's awesome.
Janet: 07:53 So it's great that you met in a startup and decided that you wanted to work together, but what you think's going to happen, it doesn't always work out. So what have you found is each other's strengths and weaknesses in working together as a team?
Dede: 08:08 That's a great question and I think every day we're blown away. We worked so closely, we spend so much time together and we still love and care about each other, both personally and professionally, so we have a really amazing relationship. So we're very happy about that. But I think really what it was is that when we both knew that we wanted to do this and we had backgrounds in being startups, so we understood first off of what we wanted from a consumer perspective. Second of all, we understood what it meant to be in a startup. We knew that it was roll your sleeves up. It is getting down dirty and in the trenches and really making this work and I think we both have that passion, that curiosity drive and determination that it worked out really well for us. I mean, we're definitely understanding where our gangs and gangs are, where we fit together, but we fit together so perfectly and understand when each of us have, you know, that section that we're taking off with Monica is very much entrenched in our fundraising and our business development and, and really getting out there and being the face of our, of our company, but also coming from a data perspective on the product perspective, which is great because that's not my background.
Dede: 09:29 My background comes from, you know, being in startups and understanding the operations, the marketing side. And so it really. We really do make this, you know, powerful team together to learn thorns. But ...
Monica: 09:44 I agree. And every day I am so thankful that I had such a talented co-founder. I'm just extremely driven and motivated and positive and fun to be around hard. But it's also exciting and fun when you have a lot of other people to have joined us that we've worked with in the past. So we've been very fortunate in lots of different areas. But what I countered, we don't always agree in fact a lot of problems from different angles. And I feel like that has really given us a lot of strength because we can come up with the right solution instead of the fastest or the most superficial solution. We can come up with the solution moving forward and we respect one another and we don't really try to take any of what's happening personally, but we do support each other and not just each other, but I feel like our entire team feels that as well. We have a very small team. We're very proud of what we've been able to accomplish with just a few people and it really showcases the technical ability of the team. So we are just going over 10 people to over the next year we're going to double or triple that number. We've already started that hiring process for what we've been able to accomplish in a few years with just a few people. It's pretty amazing. I'm in awe of all of the people that work with us.
Janet: 11:25 I assume you're not doing the programming side yourselves?
Monica: 11:29 We are not. We actually have programs that we've worked with in the past that past that have joined us, which is great because we've worked together. You kind of know each other's ins and outs and you can move forward and make progress a lot better and you understand and trust one another. Trust is so big, especially in a small startup, being able to trust that someone's going to not only get work done, but understand the quality of work and where people's strengths and weaknesses are so you can come in and kind of help fill in the gaps where needed.
Janet: 12:01 Now you came to us through a partnership with NC IDEA, which is also a partner of North Carolina Startup Pavilion and in Las Vegas at CES. And I understand you've actually done some mentoring with them. What's your background and experience with NC IDEA?
Monica: 12:19 Oh Wow. We're so blessed and fortunate to be apart of the North Carolina startup community and it's really across the board. NC IDEA idea has been such a phenomenal organization and invited us to be a part of a program last year for building strong leaders in North Carolina. And I had the great fortune of being able to be a part of that program and collaborate with other leaders that are growing out of this area and the triangle and that was just such a wonderful experience where we got to understand new leadership and work collaboratively with one another. So that was our first experience with NC IDEA and since then we have done other programs through them and through others, mentoring upcoming startup people with ideas, how to formulate their business plans and write their pitches all the way down to being a part of a coaching and mentoring at classes out of UNC Chapel Hill and Duke. And it's just such a wonderfully collaborative community here that's really looking to support startups and growth in technology. Wasn't a genuine really appreciation for one another and I haven't seen that anywhere else and our travels and in my career to be a part of such a great team and community. Again, I hate to keep saying community, but it's the only word for it is it is a true community because we are supporting one another and we are all out for the greater good. Of what right and how can we do this together versus compete.
Janet: 13:51 Dede, what's your experience been like with NC IDEA?
Dede: 13:54 So we loved being engaged with them and doing stuff with them. They've been, as Monica mentioned, they've been such a great community, such a great support to us. It's nice being able to have people that you can reach out to get feedback, be able to share your ideas, be inspired by them and also hopefully inspire them as well. So it's just been a great group of people and it's something that, you know, I'm thankful that we have that ability to connect with these people that are kind of in here and all kind of rooting for each other to succeed and, and helping each other to succeed. So it's been all positive and we're very fortunate and excited about that.
Janet: 14:36 I had a great conversation with Thom Ruhe who is the executive director of NC IDEA and it is amazing how often he also brought up the word community that, that he is very, very engaged and very, very about this interpersonal relationships. And, and he mentioned something about alumni events where even if you've been in a program wants, it's not like it's over, that there is this community of alumni that have been through one of the NC IDEA of programs where they continue to pay it forward and give back.
Monica: 15:15 That's a great point. It is not just one program and we actually even have a Slack group where we can get on and exchange ideas and who's hiring for what, ask for contractor recommendations. It's really truly amazing what they have created.
Janet: 15:34 Now you're going to be attending CES and taking out to the public. Now you don't have a display there, but you are going to get to experience what it's like to be at CES through the NC startup pavilion. We're going to be in Eureka Park in the Sands. Eureka Park is 800 booths, all of brand new startups. And it is a high energy, fascinating place. And it, it really feels like the UN because the majority of the companies in Eureka Park are actually not from the United States. So just by being there, you're going to get a very interesting experience with a lot of different countries as a matter of fact, we're doing air quotes across the street from Singapore, so this is going to be a great event. But what do you hope to get out of CES for Myxx?
Dede: 16:22 I'm excited to one, just share that word of mouth and let everybody know what we're doing, what we've been up to you and, and just that were, that were around, but I'm so excited also to kind of look and see what else is going on and how can we again, I'm going to go back to that being inspired by, you know, all these other great ideas and these other great companies and great people. I'm just excited about seeing the future of technology and what's going on that consumer world and, and being able to be a part of that. I think that would, that's what makes me so excited. I'm such a curious person. So I like to see you know, what's going on and hopefully that helps spur and inspire some of our future opportunities are our features. And our roadmap for Myxx.
Monica: 17:13 Absolutely. And you know, taking that one step further again, just want to talk about how excited we are to release this to consumers this year. 2019 is going to be a big consumer focus for us. It hasn't really been a focus over the past couple of years while we are building our platform and our technology. So we're looking forward to really shouting it from the mountain tops or the showroom floor, I guess it's no longer a great idea. It's a possibility where you can actually shop and meal plan all in one spot for free for consumers. And it's. But what we also want to do is we want to be able to meet with our partners so we're meeting with a bunch of partners that were there that were going to be announcing these relationships over the next year as well as really engaging with what is new in our space, what is upcoming and how can we bridge new partnerships and new ideas to create in 2019 and 2020 and the future. So I really am excited for my first visit to CES and hopefully many more to come. Do you have any advice for us for us at CES that you think we should do since it's our first?
Janet: 18:28 Absolutely. Well first off know that it takes a lot longer to get from point a to point B, so plan a lot of travel time and then we tell the folks at our booth, so you probably would be wise to make sure you stash a few snacks and a water bottle in your bag because just whether it's food or suDedeenly you're starving and you seem to be about three miles from food. It's really helpful to have some of those things to rely on.
Monica: 18:56 Great advice! Have food and water water in my bag. Check.
Janet: 19:03 And the other upside to our booth is we're actually right near the food court and we're also near the elevators and the bathrooms. So we scored a great place in this booth, in this area. I would be remiss if I didn't actually allow you to tell people how they sign up for Myxx. Is it a free program and can they sign up right now?
Monica: 19:30 Go ahead, Dede.
Dede: 19:31 Yeah, you can go to Myxxed recipes.com. That's m y, x, x recipes.com. It is completely free. You just go on there, put in your eye, your email to create an account and you're off to the races. You're good. You can go in and select your retailers. You can connect your cart, so you're already set up as far as eCommerce retailers that you want to send your list over. Start searching. We welcome any feedback. We welcome if you have certain recipes you want to send us, but very free, easy, check it out today.
Janet: 20:11 I appreciate the fact that it's free and that's the way it is for consumers. You know, we don't want to pay for anything until we've tried it out and made sure it's important to us. But what is your monetization strategy?
Monica: 20:21 So we work with the brands that are on the site. So any of the food brands that sell into grocery stores, we work with them to help them activate their marketing spend. So we create landing pages that ensure that they have the product. So a lot of brands say, run digital advertisement for recipes and when you click on those recipes you can come to a landing page and that recipe is activated at a local grocery store for a consumer, so immediately that recipe as context and passed to the point of purchase with that product listed as the default item and then everything else that they need to make that as well. And then we capture the data and the analytics behind the decisions on that page and people purchase it. Did they purchase all of the items? Did they adjust the serving size? Did they change the retailer? Did they change out for dietary restriction? So there's a lot of rich analytics that happens behind the scenes, but no worries in the privacy area, we definitely protect consumer privacy and we do not share individual information with with brands. We do try to gather the trends so that we can better serve the brand and the consumers of the future.
Janet: 21:36 I am already signed up so I will test it. So by the time we get to CES and about two weeks, I will have some very good questions for you. So get ready.
Monica: 21:46 We are ready for your questions and we are excited for all of the people listening to sign up again with Myxxrecipes.com. And that's Myxx.
Janet: 21:58 All right everybody, we will see you at CES or if you're not going to CES, you can follow all the action in social media. Just pull up the Hashtag #CES19NC and all the folks who are going to be in the North Carolina Startup Pavilion will be using that Hashtag so you can kind of catch just our action along with the regular Hashtag.
Janet: 22:24 You've been listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road. This podcast is production of The Trade Show Manager and features an in depth look at the people, companies, and organizations that ring trade shows to life. In January 19. We're headed to CES and we have a lot more episodes for you to listen to. Featuring somebody great ideas coming from the startup community in North Carolina. Thanks for listening.
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The Consumer Electronics Show can be overwhelming for a startup but if you have an exciting product and a pro-active social media plan, you can make an impact. Wiser Systems attended CES in 2018 and had such a positive experience that they are returning in 2019.
Joining Janet Kennedy on the podcast is Stephen Taylor, Communications Director of Wiser Systems
Announcer: 00:00 You're listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road, featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show, industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country and a wide variety of industries from healthcare consumer products and everything in between. The podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm, and now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live.
Janet: 00:27 Welcome to Trade Show Live! On the Road. This podcast is a production of the trade show manager and features an in depth look at the people, companies, and organizations that bring trade shows to life. In January 2019, we are headed to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, with an amazing group of startups and business leaders will be in Eureka Park and displaying some of the best new ideas coming from the startup community in North Carolina and one of those happens to be why their systems. They joined us for our CES startup pavilion in 2018 and our back for more at CES with me, his director of communications, Stephen Taylor. Stephen, welcome to the podcast.
Stephen: 01:13 Thank you, Janet. I'm so happy to have Wiser back again. It validates that CES is viable even for a smaller startup and when I say smaller startup, we know that CES takes over the whole of Las Vegas and we're in a place called Eureka Park, which is where all the startup activity is and it's incredibly exciting, but there are 800 booths there, so the fact that you guys went last year and were able to make an impact in this arena is really impressive to me.
Janet: 01:45 Now. You weren't actually at the show last year, but we'll be this year, but as you were back managing the social media and a lot of the live communications, what was it like for you? What? What were you sensing about the energy and the activity at the booth?
Stephen: 02:00 Well, the first thing I noticed for sure was that just by virtue of being listed as an exhibitor at CES, we experienced a huge spike in web traffic, so I was monitoring that at home. We had more than 100 percent additional web traffic to what we expected for that month, which was amazing. And then seeing on social media, the amount of buzz we got there was also kind of very, really energizing and exciting. So even though I didn't get to talk face to face with new prospects, new potential customers, it was evident really quickly that we were getting some traction with something.
Janet: 02:40 Oh, that is exciting. Now you are of all the companies that we took last year, probably the one most vested in social media and communications and in really embracing the idea that you were going to CES. And thank you very much for that. as a social media person, I'm very pleased to see that and you are also doing it again this year. I appreciate that. But I'd love to talk a little bit more about last year. so you said your web traffic was up and you really feel it was because you were listed in the CES directory as an attendee. Did you see that before you even got to the show? Or was it a result during and after the show?
Stephen: 03:18 Well, we saw both. Well, are really all three before, during and after. We knew before that we already were getting some traffic specifically from the CES website and then during the show we saw a big boost after the show that continued for maybe maybe as much as a week or two while we did follow ups to people we'd met and things like that. So it really was from December when we first started tracking this through to the end of January, almost a few weeks after the show.
Janet: 03:51 And how does that compare to other shows that you've attended? Because you are one of the organizations in the Startup pavilion, the North Carolina's Startup Pavilion who did attend previous trade shows. You had been going to some trade shows. So kind of compare the two situations.
Stephen: 04:09 Trade shows are our main way of identifying leads and meeting potential customers and potential partners. So that's a big part of our marketing plan and I think it's fair to say we've never gone to a show where we didn't meet some potential customer or find some kind of benefit, in our sales process or our partnership process. But what was really unique about CES was, well, a, the size, it was five times as big as any show I had gone to, and then the breadth of different customers. A lot of the other shows are really specific, like manufacturing technology or Internet of things software. but from CES we had people coming to us from all kinds of verticals, a bunch of really different and disparate industries. and so that was, that was really cool because we're a kind of a technology kind of an industry agnostic system. And so we can, we can work in a lot of different verticals and it's hard to find a show where you can find people in so many different different industries.
Janet: 05:17 Oh, excellent point about CES. I do think that that's something that folks should realize is that while it's referred to as the consumer electronic show, what it really is, is the cool new idea show. And there are all kinds of people. They're looking for cool new ideas.
Stephen: 05:32 And we had consumers who saw something cool about our technology, but a lot of other businesses as well, a lot of professional groups that we crossed paths with their. So , it definitely is a gathering point for all kinds of technology organizations.
Janet: 05:49 I think people who are not familiar with Wiser might want to know a little bit more about what you do. So can you describe what the Wiser System is?
Stephen: 05:58 So Wiser Systems as a company, we deliver real time asset location and tracking in pretty much any environment. What we deliver to customers is a system of software and hardware components to create a wireless mesh. And then within that Mesh you can track our small asset tracking tags which you can affix to pretty much any physical asset. So a lot of companies, when they say asset tracking or management, they mean like digital inventories. We mean we're literally finding physical things and then showing you digitally where they are in a physical space. . So that's really what we do it how you use the data, how our end customers use the data varies quite a bit. Well, we really focus on is giving a system that can quantify the motion and the location and the movement histories of all these different physical assets.
Janet: 06:56 No, I can see a lot of applications for this, whether it is tracking high value items that you don't want to lose to internal issues as well as just being much more efficient about finding things in the warehouse.
Stephen: 07:12 We see also quite a variety of use cases. Some people that track kind of low value assets but that are really useful. For instance, something that could be that doesn't cost a lot of money but could be dangerous if it's left out or just could expire if it's left out. Then we have other people who who take the approach well we have really valuable things. Valuable pieces were manufacturing. A lot of our consumer kind of angles would be high value assets in the home, like laptops, safety boxes in jewelry, whatever it is that you want to know where it's located. All kinds of use cases that way.
Speaker 2: 07:51 Now with Consumer Electronics Show a lot of the things in Eureka Park, which is the startup part of cds, they're just about ready for consumers, so are you actually ready to go on the shelf in stores? Will it always be purchased directly from wise your systems?
Stephen: 08:10 That's a good question and that's one of the future will tell. We've talked about a few different ways how this might go forward. Our bread and butter has really been selling this to businesses B-to-B sales model. Putting this in the hands of companies that can use it, but one of our big advantages as a system is it's extremely easy to use. It's really easy to set up. You don't have to permanently install any infrastructure, you just deploy the devices and start running the software. It's really a matter of moments to get it going. So again, I don't know if this is going to be on shelves for consumers soon, but if it were, I think a lot of people could use it pretty quickly.
Janet: 08:54 I was at CES last year when you were demonstrating, and I have to say that the interactive live nature of your demo was really drawing a lot of attention, not the least of which, because you had a little mascot helping you out.
Stephen: 09:09 Yes. Wisely. The Hour, which I wish I could demonstrate through a podcast, but, this was one of Dr. Rideout our CEO's ideas was rather than just tracking our little tags that look pretty boring as they're intended to be unobtrusive and just be useful, she puts this tag on a stuffed owl. It's about a foot tall and we'll carry it around the show. And so people can see wisely the owl moving around. And then if they walk by our screen, they can see a colorful, kind of heat map of, where has the Owl, how long has it stayed there? And all of that. And we have found this kind of a approach of demonstrating the technology to work in virtually every show we've gone to. It does interest people to see, well, why are you walking around with an owl and what is that about? And so we move on Dr Rideout's part.
Janet: 10:03 Absolutely. Well, you know, and it's, it's interesting because there are definitely products that have a lot of buzz, you know, people who were doing things with robots and drones that got a lot of attention, but there's a ton of things at CES that are more, you have to visualize what is happening and you have to kind of picture in your own head what the value is because it is more technology behind the scenes. So by using wisely, you were able to immediately draw attention to yourselves and yet not be obtrusive to the booths right next to you, the partners with the North Carolina Startup pavilion or the booths that you are walking through and around. It was you were just passing through and yet all eyes were on you. It was a very, very cool way to demonstrate your product quickly and easily. Well done.
Stephen: 10:53 Well thank you. Thank you for that. We're excited to do that again in just a few weeks now.
Janet: 10:58 Well, now that you're heading to CES and you were doing live social media from back in Raleigh, North Carolina, do you have any different ideas of how you're going to approach your activity at CES because now you're on the floor talking to customers too?
Stephen: 11:15 Yes. This will be a different experience for me for sure. Since I haven't gone to this show before and also we're. We're going to be demonstrating some some things that we haven't shown at CES. We haven't shown it other shows before, so it's going to require a lot of preparation. We've been spending a lot of time internally scheduling out meetings with companies we want to see with people we want to see there at the show, planning out our social media content so that you know, we're not trying to come up with it on the fly while we're there. I imagine we'll have a couple long and busy days there with the moving pretty fast paced. Especially from what I hear from my colleagues who went last year when we're really busy just talking to people on the floor.
Janet: 12:01 I will say that your bowl of chocolate also drew a lot of people, many of them just wanted chocolate and, and I think your team might have lived on chocolate. I think they might've lived on it for three days.
Stephen: 12:16 Oh, that is the trade show way. Sometimes that's been the case that other shows that I've attended as well.
Janet: 12:22 So the Wiser system is one that I think is really unique because you actually do it in real time and it isn't about last positioning. Right. So, the interesting thing is you can actually watch the items moving around as opposed to other systems aren't that in the moment? Correct.
Stephen: 12:45 That's right. I think a lot of, a lot of us probably assume this is kind of a common thing, you know, if you, if you watch a spy movie and you see some operative goes into an enemy base and their boss can see exactly where they are in real time or, something like that, that's really hard to do no matter how much we see that in the media. This is a really rare technology that hasn't really come to fruition and a lot of markets yet, but that is what we do rather than like a bar coding system or passive RFID where you have to manually scan and see where the item was at this time. We are showing where it is right now and doing it in inch level coordinates instead of just the proximity to the last weekend or anything like that. So it is unique for sure.
Janet: 13:32 Well, I'm. One of the ways that we watched it being set up is you actually use your technology to an essence, create a tracking zone. So obviously working with a manufacturing plant that's pretty straight forward. You got a big giant square box and you're putting these capture devices. I'm here's the layman's explanation of your system, but you're basically putting these data collection points around to define the area. How large an area can you actually define for your system?
Stephen: 14:06 Well, theoretically there's not a limit on that. The biggest areas we've done have been multi-hanger aerospace complexes and so those have been few hundred thousand square feet, all told. A lot of our areas are smaller, but all you have to do to grow that area is add a few antennas, a few points in the mesh as it were, and you can continue expanding again theoretically to no limit.
Janet: 14:33 Oh, that's fascinating. So it's really pretty straightforward and it just means mounting one of your antennas on something just a little above hand reach so they can't be pulled down. Or does it matter how high they are?
Stephen: 14:46 Depending on what you're tracking, the height will make a difference and it's a lot of times it's easier, especially if you can set them up high, high on the wall or above head level. Then you know there'll be less interference with crowds walking by or obstacles moving around. Like in our industrial applications, we try to set them up fairly high just so that we don't have forklift's driving in front of the antenna and obscuring it or potentially knocking it down or you know, or whatnot. But there's a lot of ways you can do that. You can do them lower and still get some, some good tracking results as well. In our office building, we can't put them very high because we have a normal size ceiling and that works fine as well.
Janet: 15:27 Oh, that's interesting. At CES, of course you're in a giant trade show, so you could go pretty high up in, in the Sands. The exhibition hall is very tall, so if I recall correctly, your team was grabbing one of those tall bar stools in walking around to fix them before the show opened. And honestly nobody even noticed they were there. They just blended into the background.
Stephen: 15:51 They are pretty unobtrusive, like you mentioned before with the demo. The hardware itself is like that too because it's really small and it's lightweight and again, they're, they're not permanent. We don't have to tear up a wall to put these in which, which is one of the things that makes the system so useful that we can deploy it. And then if we want to move it takes a matter of moments to do that.
Janet: 16:13 So speaking of deploying it, if you were to sign a new customer that had a really big warehouse system, how long would it take for you to get the system set up and would you be doing it yourselves or would you have the client do it?
Stephen: 16:27 We've done some of some of both. I guess typically one of our engineers will go on site to start that process and at the very least we'll teach some of their tech people, either it or if they have integration engineers, one of our engineers will teach them kind of how this goes, how to optimize the system. But we've had people go and do that themselves after getting some training from us all. A lot of times how long it takes will just depend on if they roll out the whole space, the whole facility at once. A lot of our customers end up doing small zones first, you know, we'll just do this part of the hanger first or we'll just do this part of the warehouse initially and then we'll add points as we go so we can optimize in stages rather than trying to troubleshoot all at once and that seems to work pretty well in all the cases so far.
Janet: 17:17 So in the case of a warehouse where you're just dealing with say boxes, what is the little item like that you are attaching to I guess the box?
Stephen: 17:27 So the the items are tracker tags. You can think of this as kind of like a little key fob. It's an inch long, maybe an inch and a half in the shape that we usually deliver them to customers. And you can attach this with the key chain with a zip tie. We've had people put Velcro tabs on them so they can stick them off and on quickly. You can affect some other, you know, if you're. If you're in a hurry, you can just tape them and fix them that way or even Superglue them. But then it might be hard to get off when you do want to move it, and most of our customers do it in a way that like the antennas is going to be flexible where they can put it on, take it off again. So again, a key chain, Velcro, or something like that. Sometimes they'll put them in pouches, you know, a lot of boxes have packing pouches on the outside for paperwork. And our tags are small enough that a lot of times that's fine just to slip on into those pouches
Janet: 18:19 And from a constant point of somebody inadvertently shipped it with the tag, it's no big loss?
Stephen: 18:25 Well, the, it'll be a bigger loss depending on how many tags, how many tags they have. I guess the tags are more expensive than something like passive RFID, you know, or bar codes where you know, you're talking a matter of sense with the tags were talking more in order of dollars in scores of dollars. If you buy them in bulk, that will go down. But if you just bought one or two, that'll be a little more pricey.
Speaker 2: 18:51 All right, so keep track of your tags.
Speaker 3: 18:54 The good. The good thing is as long as they're within your Mesh, you know where the tags are and some of our customers are using our data to create alert systems where they know, oh, this tag is not allowed to. We put room, so let me know if this tag does go out of it specified area and then they have a bread crumb trail, you know, they're Hansel and Gretel to follow. Exactly to where it was.
Janet: 19:19 Oh, that's fascinating. Okay, well I know you said you were going to preview some new things at the show. I'm not going to make you tell me about them now. I'll let. I'll let Elaine tell that story in her podcast, but is it going to be similar in that it's very interactive?
Stephen: 19:35 Yes. What are our demos that we're going to be doing next month are going to be really similar to what we did last year, so we'll definitely have wisely. The owl will will still be tracking other objects. Other tags in real time will allow people to come up and move them themselves and see how they work. Interaction is definitely going to be part of that demonstration, but we hope what we're showing will be actually a little more accessible in some ways than what we've been able to show before.
Janet: 20:10 Oh, I like that idea. People definitely want to really get their hands on things if they can. So I think that'll be good.
Speaker 3: 20:17 But again, I haven't been to CES, but from what I hear, that's one of the coolest things for people who just go to the show. It's like you said, Janet, to try out the coolest new check to see how it works, to play with it a little bit, see if this is something for them. And so we're, we're hoping we can give everybody who comes to our booth, a real sample of that to experience the system, see what they could do with it. Think about how they could apply it. Because again, it's such a flexible technology and we've come up with dozens if not hundreds of use cases ourselves. But we almost always get new ideas when we go to these shows, so we're hoping that'll happen again, that people will come up and try it out, try the system, move the owl around, and then come up with some of their own ideas of where this might be useful.
Janet: 21:05 Oh, excellent. Alright. So those of you who are attending CES, you can find Wiser Systems in the North Carolina Startup pavilion there. Booth number is 51847. We're in Eureka Park, which is in the Sands Exhibition Hall. We are across the street from Singapore. So that might help you find us a little bit easier since you will be coming in with a Wiser System in order to do that. So we look forward to having you there. Again, Steven, I really appreciate all the social media support you have given the North Carolina Startup Pavilion in the past. Why don't you tell folks where to find Wiser systems in social media?
Stephen: 21:50 Wiser Systems is most active on LinkedIn and Twitter. You can find us on those. We're also on YouTube. If you use Crunchbase, which I know is not technically a social media, but a lot of people use it the same way they use Linkedin. Those are our main platforms. Again, Twitter, Linkedin, Crunchbase and YouTube. We're always, always happy to see new visitors on our website. Wiser systems.com.
Janet: 22:18 All right, well we will definitely see people in person and just a few weeks and Steve and I look forward to talking with you again during CES 2019.
Stephen: 22:28 Thank you Janet. I'm looking forward to it as well.
Announcer: 22:31 Thanks for listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road, a production of The trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. If you need innovative programs to engage attendees and exhibitors and sponsors, custom research or new solutions for your trade show, contact The Trade Show Manager on our website, thetradeshowmanager.com.
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Season 1, Episode 3 CES 19 Jeff Guard of Brilliant Sole
Founder and CEO of Brilliant Sole, Jeff Guard is attending CES 19 as part of the North Carolina Startup Pavilion. Brilliant Sole is the ultimate smart footwear platform for VR and creators and was developed to solve the locomotion problem in virtual reality.
Announcer: 00:00 You're listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show, industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country in a wide variety of industries from healthcare consumer products and everything in between. The podcast is a production of the trade show manager, a trade show, consulting firm, and now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live!
Janet: 00:28 Welcome to Trade Show Live! On the Road. This podcast is a production of the trade show manager and features an in depth look at the people, companies, and organizations that bring trade shows to life. In January 2019, we are headed to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show with an amazing group of startups and business leaders will be in Eureka Park and displaying some of the best new ideas coming from the startup community in North Carolina. One of our really exciting companies is Brilliant Sole, spelled s-o-l-e. You'll love this product company! Founder, Jeff Guard is with us to talk about his entrepreneurial journey and the launch of Brilliant Sole. Welcome to the podcast. Jeff,
Jeff: 01:11 Hi. Thank you. Thank you very much, Janet. Happy to be here speaking with you on this podcast. This is a phenomenal opportunity for us and we're very thankful for the North Carolina Startup pavilion to be working with us and be included in this group and have your health also to working with us.
Janet: 01:30 Well, we did mention earlier that it is the North Carolina Startup pavilion and you represent one of the companies, not necessarily from the Raleigh area. You hail from Wilmington, I understand.
Jeff: 01:41 Yes. That is correct.
Janet: 01:43 And is that where the idea for Brilliant Sole was born and your team was formed?
Jeff: 01:48 It is, it is. Everyone on the team is from Wilmington. How one individual Andrew Keener, the CTO is, is temporarily in, in the Charlotte area for family reasons, but ultimately, once we achieve our goals, which is right now raising a seed round, we will be, be working out of Wilmington for the foreseeable future.
Janet: 02:10 So we mentioned that we're going to be in Eureka Park, which is where brand new companies with exciting ideas in consumer electronics are looking for potential customers and potential partners, and investors. The name of your company is Brilliant Sole spelled S-o-l-e. It must have something to do with feet. So what is Brilliant Sole?
Jeff: 02:34 So Brilliant Sole is the ultimate smart footwear platform for VR and creators and Brilliant Sole was created ultimately to solve the locomotion problem in virtual reality. And that's how do we control movement in virtual spaces and it's grown a little bit. There's a reason we have the end creators on the end of that. And to solve that problem, we had to create this really flexible system. So it's a sensor embedded footwear system and it connects to mobile devices and PC devices and it streams data a really, really quickly to those devices. And we're able to kind of calculate what we want them to do once that data gets there. It's created kind of a big picture for us. We kind of don't want to go too far down that road yet. We're really focused on that one problem and we think it's a big enough problem where this is a really great entry point for us.
Janet: 03:31 Ultimately it is a great, great product for creators, but, but we're focused on VR, virtual reality for the time being. All right, so let's talk about function might not be fully experienced in virtual reality. Maybe their whole experience is with a Wii or something like that. Why is your product going to be helpful to folks? I understand that it's about small spaces,but it's not like I've got a VR headset on and I'm going to go jog around the block.
Jeff: 04:00 So, so in, in virtual reality, we're limited to a small space like you just just mentioned there, but we need to travel vast distances in VR. So when I said you can literally go visit the Grand Canyon, in VR, the space in virtual reality is unlimited. So how do you go about traveling 50 feet in a straight line now?
Jeff: 04:20 Well, you're using a joystick a or there's a method called teleportation, which you point to a direction 50 feet ahead of you and it teleports your body to that place. Again, in this virtual space. So let's say I wanted to go down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, instantly you would point down to that space and it would teleport your body. Well, that's a great feature to have, but it does a couple of things. So it breaks the user's sense of immersion, which is the point of virtual reality is to make you, to trick your body into believing that you're there. So it, it disrupts that. And then also for a traditional game play and then for, for simulation training experiences, it's just not realistic. It again, it, it, it breaks the continuity of those experiences. So we needed a better way to travel 50 feet or 100 feet or a thousand feet in a straight line or any direction that you want to travel.
Jeff: 05:19 And we thought the simplest way to do that would be controlling movement with your feet. Like we're used to. It also lets you free up your hands to engage with that virtual worlds. And of course, when you think simulation training, we are in some discussions with US military as well. So you can think of different reasons why they would be interested in controlling movement with your feet like we do in the real world for the most part. So, that is what we're trying to solve and we're trying to solve that in the simplest possible way. So with a system that can be embedded in as small of a form factor as a shoe insole packed into that insole, we have multiple sensors that measure force underneath your feet. They measure pitch, acceleration and they also incorporate those vibration motors and they also charge wirelessly. So it's this really simple system that, that does a whole lot.
Janet: 06:15 Okay? So a, you're making virtual reality much more like reality. So that's cool.
Jeff: 06:22 That is the ultimate goal. Yes. Of course there are, there are constraints. again, we are limited to that small space, but ultimately we're trying to make it as real as possible in the most possible, the best cost effective way in simplest possible way. And we found that that's with a footwear system that works really, really easily, but that allows you to use it while you're sitting or use it while you're standing or to be able to control motion from a number of different input methods, whether that be a walking in place or whether that be, I'm just leaning in the direction your intended direction that you want to go. So that's one of the things that's been found that in virtual reality, different people have different preferences for how they like to use it. So unlike traditional video games now, whether someone's right handed or left handed, that actually comes into play again because we're in this virtual space and it's mimicking reality. So how we interact with that virtual world should mimic reality in the best way possible.
Janet: 07:32 Now I see lots of applications and I know as a new company you need to focus on probably the group that's going to most easily adapt. And that is the gaming group. They're the ones most interested in new and innovative products. They're the ones who are going to give us the hardest test and you already mentioned a military applications, I can see that, but since my background is in healthcare, I automatically see some things that would be awesome for senior citizens of ways to do, you know, low impact exercise, low impact gaming. Also from the standpoint of just sensors that might have fall alert in them. There are just a million things you can do with this. This is awesome.
Jeff: 08:14 Oh, absolutely. This comes up, depending on who you're talking to, they say, wow, you can do this with it. While you can do that with it. I mean, you could do, you could have just a simple of an application as telling you, hey buddy, you've been sitting too long today. Maybe you should get up because it's unhealthy. There are a lot of practical applications and ultimately we want to solve this tough problem of VR locomotion. But again, we want creative people to take these things and run with them. We want to support that. So again, due to solve that problem for VR and then to work within the video gaming space, you to create a system that people can work with and customize to that experience that they're working with. In order to do that, you have to have a system that they can, again, that other developers can work with really easily.
Jeff: 09:09 Those other developers might not be virtual reality or video game developers. So we realize that, and this is one of the reasons why we want to introduce the product and the right way, but we also do recognize the. We see the big picture here to thank that. We focus on very VR. We solve that problem really, really well. We give people a good enough reason to purchase them from the get go. And we think within that space, VR enthusiasts, people who really care about this problem, we think that there are a lot of highly capable of creatives. People that are good at, they're gonna have those same opinions that you have, Janet and they're going to really run with it and they and they may want to go after a solving additional problems and we want to encourage that too. That's the great thing about what we're making.
Jeff: 09:58 We think that there are real world problems that people could solve with these. We think that we're, we're targeting the best entry point to and, and, and this is what interests us to, and this is how we got it. This is why we got into it. And this is what excites us, but there are other things that excite other people too and, and we're providing them with this really cool system that they might be able to work on other things with. So let's talk about the Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest consumer electronic show in the world, taking place in Las Vegas, all of Las Vegas. It seems like in the second week of January you will be there with a demonstration of your product, which is really exciting. Now will you actually have like demos, shoes for people to put on or are you going to demonstrate the product for individuals there?
Jeff: 10:45 We are planning, we're planning right now on having something that that other people can demo a, so I'm actually going to be making some some custom pairs of some flip flop versions of our footwear because ultimately it's a system that can be embedded in than any type of footwear really, and we want something that people can take on and off really easily and actually try themselves now. That's what we're shooting for, but we're gauging a day by day and we want to present them in the best possible way. We're gauging that day by day. We do have some, some pretty significant people that are planning to visit the booth where we want to make sure that we show it to them in the best possible way to and some of these people. It's a little bit terrifying because again, we are up until just a couple of weeks ago, we were a bootstrapped startup.
Jeff: 11:34 This has been a fun journey, but of course you can move a lot more with money and we ultimately are competent that we've, we've created something pretty powerful with, with pretty scant resources and we want to be able to show people, hey look, look, if we were able to do this with really a lot of just a lot of time and effort and expertise, we have a pretty strong team to give us a little bit of money and in and look what we're going to deal with it. We're going to run with this thing.
Janet: 12:07 Well, I understand you've had a little taste of CES in the recent past. You were actually at one of the CES unveiled events. You are one of the 10 startups that were invited to present there. What happened? How'd it go?
Jeff: 12:19 Oh, that was exciting. So we met a lot of a really, really cool people, a handful of investors. So we've had some, some followup conversations with a and then a bunch of press people to. And that, that was really the first kind of out in the open public showing of, of our actual physical product. So we let people pick it up and hold it and they were able to see through, built on one of our SDKS, which is a software development kit for unity, which is the largest VR development platform in the world. So we have a system again, can, we could hand these to a developer now and they could start working with them to be able to show that data streaming through on a mobile device. So we did have a little area and as we weren't able to bring a full VR setup and to show the demo, but we were able to show our physical product and how it works streaming that data through and, and we got a lot of positive feedback. They were excited by the product and of course we got the, the people saying, Oh, you could, how many medical applications you can try.
Jeff: 13:28 But, but ultimately that's a space that it would require significant knowledge of to navigate. So, we're hoping that some potential third party partners want to come in and help us navigate that space and in due time too. We're just focused on producing something exciting to show and we're focused on the problem and that is for virtual reality.
Janet: 13:51 So speaking of producing where and how are these going to get produced? Are you going to have to build them locally? Are you going to have to go international to get them developed?
Jeff: 14:03 Well, so, so we're in the process of figuring that out. and there are going to be possibly can some constraints based on, on who the end users of the product are, at least initially, but we're in the process of working with a professional footwear designer because I can tell you that I designed what we have myself so far and I think I did a pretty decent job with that, but it's not my trade. We have something. I think it looks pretty cool. It's impressive to show. I don't mind showing these to anyone. whereas if you saw the first versions that I made myself a little bit embarrassed,
Jeff: 14:39 But of course I was proud of it. It was a lot of work, but now we really have something that you can see that wow, this is actually pretty close to an end product. We have our own custom circuit boards stuffed in, in there, can tell you the circuit boards right now are in the process of being redesigned a. So they actually fit perfectly. We weren't initially going to have that, every everything embedded in the insole. So we're in the process of redesigning that. But, but everything works. All of the circuits, the chips we're working with are running on custom, a custom firmware. The software works, we're refining that. There is still a long way to go. There's, there's, there is a very big picture to this. We did a lot of things wrong too.
Jeff: 15:22 I mean we've been working on this for, for a couple of years. We figured out a lot of what not to do and that that's helpful though. I mean, I think anyone, when you create something that doesn't exist, that that's just part of the process. The good thing is is we know where we need to go right now. Yeah. It's just trying to stay focused really because. Because there are so many things and I'm the. I'm the one that my business partners, the Co-founders telling me say focus Jeff's. They Focus Jeff and I say, you guys, you're right. You're right. First first thing at hand. Let's get something that works really, really well so that we can show it at CES and then let's go from there. Yeah, it is. It is exciting. Have a lot of ideas myself, but I have to temper that.
Jeff: 16:05 No, I do have a design question because obviously we are talking about human beings where we could have feet from the size of a fifth grader have to have professional athletes who are going to want to wear these things and obviously if the sensors are like trying to tie into the ball of the foot, that's going to be in a lot of different places depending on the size of the foot. So is this something that once you've got the prototype up and running, you're actually going to have to create in sizes?
Jeff: 16:32 We do, and that's only because the system works so much better, where the sensors do have to be placed in specific regions underneath the foot and there are a lot of good reasons why you have to have to have it that way and it's just, it, it just makes for so much of a better, a more flexible system and in to solve the problem for, for virtual reality requires that, at least at least right now, there are some other ways to go about it. We are looking at those things too. But the best way to do it now is the way we're doing it.
Janet: 17:06 How long is this journey taken you personally?
Jeff: 17:09 It's when I made that observation, that controlling movement in VR right now is terrible. That was my observation. I said, wow, there has to be a better way to do this. That was, about three years ago. And at the time I was just, I refer to myself on the website is a hyper curious tinker. I mean that's a little bit quirky, Corny, but trying to be a little bit humorous. I am a very curious person and I like to tinker with things and, and I was looking for an excuse to play around with some Arduino microprocessors. I thought, hey, I could possibly solve this problem. And it really was it casual. I didn't really think about it like that. Like, okay, this could be a business the time. It started out as a simple experiment and it just worked really, really well. What I was able to do was put sensors that measure force underneath an insole and attached them to one of those Arduino microprocessors. Of course, there is a, some circuits that had to be built in so they can, can work properly.
Jeff: 18:09 The first experiment was just seeing that data coming across and, the harder you push down on your feet, that data would change. in real time. I said, okay, here we go, and we may have something here. And then with actually the help of a friend, a really very talented friend, he helped me write a simple program that emulated the keyboard keys, that control movement in pc video games. It was one of those things that took a little bit of tweaking, but once we got it, it works surprisingly well. Really, really well, like better than how it's, how it was being done. And we said, Whoa, wow, if something, this simple could be better than how this is being done now, we may have something and it's just been a journey of steady progression. Then, that's Kinda let us here. Ultimately I would have liked to have moved faster, but we also again figured out a lot of what not to do too.
Jeff: 19:05 So maybe it was better that we didn't expand too much time and resources going down the wrong path. You kind of all happened at a certain time for a reason. And in VR, of course, you know how it was in a big hype cycle a couple of years ago and that's cooled down significantly. Gartner who does market research, they took virtual reality off of the emerging technologies list because it's here, it's here. Now. The consumer side might not really see that tremendous growth, but the commercial side has. So where you see th innovation continuing in these really expensive headsets is on the commercial side. For instance, Audi just announced that they're going to put VR headsets in 1000 of their dealerships. you have Walmart who is using virtual reality to train employees. And number of other big box stores are doing the same thing. You have professional sports teams, professional college teams, of course, they've been doing this for years to, of course the US military is doing this.
Jeff: 20:02 So it's kind of creeping up. and I think it's going to creep up on people. Of course there are, there are a lot of complex problems, so it needs to be solved and it needs to become better. But those are being addressed in. There are profitable companies within the VR space. So I think that the timing might be right for us because again, we're not, we're not quite there yet. We have work to do, we are in the startup pavilion for her reason, but we are pretty close to and we do have something that we think we can introduce to a community solving that, that simple problem for them and they're going to make it better for us because they're going to build the custom applications for their games and for their VR experiences for those training simulations and it's gonna make the system. That's just how, how this works,
Janet: 20:49 The more you talk, the more I get more ideas of how you could apply this. Forget the gaming sensors in shoes to analyze workflow process in hospitals, how far people are walking and is there a way that we could eliminate these steps if you redesigned these hallways or you redesigned these buildings where, this was here and that was there. And guess what, you've just saved somebody, a quarter of a mile of walking a day or whatever or this is cool.
Jeff: 21:19 There are systems that can do that kind of, we think we could actually interact with those. so we all know that for some reason I don't have a smartwatch. I'm a tech Geek, but I don't have a smartwatch yet. All my first thousand Brilliant Sole pairs I can celebrate by buying myself a smartwatch. There's a goal, but everyone counts her steps. I think everyone knows that the step count isn't that accurate? I mean, I think it's accurate enough people, people will feel happy, I think no matter what, when they get to their 10,000 steps, but ultimately sure, integrating a sensor, a better footwear system with that, what would actually make it a lot more accurate. And then we'll also open up again a range of other possibilities too.
Janet: 22:01 Let's see. I liked to do Zumba for exercise and according to my watch, my smartwatch, I'm getting 7,000 steps in an hour of Zumba. If you blow that bubble, I'm going to be really upset at you. But on the other hand, I work my butt off at Zoomba and I think I deserve more than 7,000 steps. I'd be very interested to hear what my feet were telling my hands.
Jeff: 22:23 Maybe it's not for everyone. This is too honest for me.
Janet: 22:32 Well, you are going to love your time at CES and I hope your Brilliant Soles are also comfortable and have a little Dr Shoal influence because it's going to be a long day on your feet, especially with you using your fetus as much as you are. And I wish you a ton of luck. This is going to be, I think, a very exciting product. And I'm excited to say that I knew Jeff Guard when...
Jeff: 22:58 That's slightly ahead of, ahead of where we are. But I, I'm, I'm certainly trying for that. I think we're a ways off though.
Janet: 23:06 Well, good luck to you and I look forward to working with you in the CES booth as we celebrate ideas coming from the startup community in North Carolina. Again, we're going to be at the Eureka Park at CES 2019 if you want to follow the action. Our hashtag is Hashtag #CES19NC for North Carolina, so everybody. Be sure to follow that Hashtag and you'll see some of the exciting things going on in just our area where we are five of 800 booth locations and that is just one part of CES going to be an amazing week. So, we'll see you all there. And in the second week of January, Jeff, I think you're going to have a great show.
Jeff: 23:54 We're really excited. Thank you very much, Janet.
Announcer: 23:57 We're looking forward to seeing you there. Thanks for listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road production of the trade show manager portrayed show consulting firms. If you need innovative programs to engage attendees, exhibitors and sponsors, custom research or new solutions for your trade show, Contact the trade show manager on our website, thetradeshowmanager.com.
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Announcer: 00:01 You're listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country in a wide variety of industries from healthcare to consumer products and everything in between. The podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show, consulting firm, and now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live!.
Janet: 00:29 Welcome to Trade Show Live! On the Road. This podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager and features an in depth look at the people, companies, and organizations that bring trade shows to life. In January 2019, we're going to CES the Consumer Electronics Show with an amazing group of startups and business leaders will be in Eureka Park and displaying some of the best new ideas coming from the startup community in North Carolina. One of our featured guests is sponsoring a couple of scholarships for members of our North Carolina Startup pavilion is the team from NC IDEA. NC IDEA empowers entrepreneurs to reach their full potential by offering support when they need it most. With me on the podcast is the president and CEO of NC IDEA. Thom, welcome Thom.
Thom: 01:18 Thank you, Janet. It's a real pleasure to be here with you.
Janet: 01:21 You have had an entrepreneurial mindset for many, many years.
Thom: 01:27 Yes, I have. I like to say tongue in cheek. I spent the first 20 years of my career starting and growing companies and then I've spent the last 15 years helping others acquire that gene mutation. So that has really given me quite a career of advantage and great pleasure, because it really is a privilege to do the work that we do.
Janet: 01:50 You know, you make me wonder about the age old question. Is it nature or nurture? Can you make an entrepreneur or are you born with that mindset?
Thom: 02:01 yeah. I, I appreciate this question. I love debunking it every chance I get because I think it's an insidious inference. That you have to be born with entrepreneurial DNA, so to speak. it's my firm belief that we're all hardwired to be entrepreneurial, but what isn't equally distributed are the resources, the encouragement, the environment, the assets to realize or accentuate or pronounce that innate ability that we all have now, and for some people it's just they just never get a chance to express it, but if you give them that opportunity, that encouragement, that support, everybody's got the potential to be quite entrepreneurial.
Janet: 02:46 I think of it a very essentially is the ability to be creative and to problem solve. And sometimes that's to make money for yourself. Sometimes that's to make money for your business and sometimes it's to figure out what to do when you burn the cake.
Thom: 03:02 It's a way of thinking. We refer to the vernacular that's very common now is calling it the mindset, right? We define that as the underlying beliefs and assumptions that drive successful behavior. So what is it intrinsically that motivates you, that drives your locus of control to say, I'm dissatisfied with my current state of existence. I want something better. I want to be something better. And I can express that I can achieve that goal by providing value to others and that value is manifest in either a product or a service or a performance that I do for, you know, an existing employer. But somehow I bring value to others and for that, you know, I have economic stability in my life. And then all the rest is a question of scale. So you can do that for more people in, at a higher scale than your economic reward for that is greater. But that's the essence of really what drives what we do.
Janet: 04:04 Thom, I'm dying to ask you this question. It's about the hustle mentality and there's a lot of really strong debate on both sides going on online between those Internet entrepreneurs that have gone out there and said, hustle, hustle, hustle, work seven days a week, put it all in. And then ultimately you're going to get rich. And let's face it, the get rich part is going to be probably a single digit percentage of folks out there. The "make a good life, make a good living" part is much greater. But the hustle mentality that you, you are not a good entrepreneur if you're not working, you know, 16 hours a day, seven days a week.
Thom: 04:47 Yeah. I think that's again, one of those wonderful myths or cliches. Probably a better way to state it, of entrepreneurship, right? That you have to deplete yourself and sacrifice sleep and relationships and everything else in furtherance of your entrepreneurial pursuit. To me that's just silly, right? A ton of effort without direction is meaningless. There are certainly times when you're going to have to burn the candle on both ends, right? Product launch, you know, large, large event. You got to prep for the CES show for example. But yeah, you're going to have to have a couple of weekends who are going to go sleep deprived and you got to burn the midnight oil. But if you are doing that as a sustaining a status quo without understanding why, then you should really be questioning what you're doing. And I think the smarter play or, or let's just say that more balanced play is if you get to some sort of self defined equilibrium, you know, I need to financially achieve x, Y, or Z, or I need to have a company that allows me to control or the flexibility to work when I choose to work, whatever that is, that's different for different people, right?
Thom: 06:05 But if you can "know thyself," so to speak and work a plan that achieves that, then I think you've accomplished something. And if that means you can do that 20 hours a week, you know, God bless you, that's great. If you have to do 60 hours a week to attain that, well, and that's what you have to do. And then at some point you need to decide does that work for you? But, but understand why it is you're doing what you're doing. I didn't give you the red meat answer to that.
Thom: 06:34 Really what it says. I think it's just a stupid argument and people really delude themselves on, and I've seen this where people are unsuccessful and then they throw their hands up in the air and go, how can I be unsuccessful? "I've been working 16 hours a day." If you've been doing 16 hours a day of the wrong stuff, it doesn't matter that you're doing 16 hours a day. If you were doing six hours a day of the right things to do, you might be wildly successful. Right? So this notion that I have to suffer for my craft, that's part of the process. That's just, again, that's movies, this the stuff of lore and legend, not reality,
Janet: 07:14 Right. Well, and we all get sold a bill of goods because what we're looking at is the online influencers, public persona. We have no idea what happens when he gets home to talk to the wife or the kids and a lot of the other things. We're only seeing the story that is the way they choose to portray.
Thom: 07:36 It's crafted. Everybody has a perfect life on Instagram and Facebook,
Speaker 2: 07:40 Entrepreneurial mindset. I think I've had it my whole life. I just never quite saw how to put it into action and I understand that part of what NC IDEA is doing is actually creating facilitators to help people think through that process.
Thom: 07:59 We are absolutely helping facilitators and others help other people get that orientation towards action. You know, we find, and I have found doing the work I do literally all over the world in services, some great organizations like the World Economic Forum, not to mention Kaufman and others that people can get to that exciting excitement stage. Like I've got the idea or I've got a notion of an opportunity, you know, I get this antsiness like I really want to do something about it and that's where it stops, right? Because they get home and the kids are driving them crazy and there's a good movie starting tonight or I jump on facebook and three hours later, you know, I'm not getting anything done. So we really want to help people understand that it's a bit of a self awareness. When am I failing to do anything beyond just getting excited? Because there again, right? Excitement and energy without action is a very little value.
Thom: 09:08 The law of diminishing returns, a accelerates very quickly there. So what we try to do is say, you know, recognize that in yourself when you're at that stage and say, okay, for those that can then you know, and maybe it could be the epiphany of, oh, this is going to be harder than I thought and I'm not going to do it. Then great. At least you can stop deluding yourself that, you know, "I coulda been somebody". Obviously I'm being tongue in cheek with that, but, but more to the, our hope is that people will go, oh, okay, now I understand. I, I have to now do small tests, right? I have to see, okay, how viable is this idea and how do I start getting some feedback and how do I just for me and the team here is probably tired of hearing me say it.
Thom: 09:53 I call it. It's a game of forward momentum entrepreneurship. Unfortunately in public it looks like these giant strides, right? It went huge. I sold it and made a ton of money. In reality, it's really more about just moving forward. Some days you're going to move forward by an inch. Some days it's going to be by a mile, right? But as long as you're moving forward, you have forward momentum. You're, you're doing all right and you should be happy with yourself that you're doing all right because that will, as long as you're moving forward, you'll have something to react to that you didn't have to react to yesterday because the market will tell you something, potential customers, we're telling you something. Suppliers will tell you something. Employer employees will tell you something. You'll be learning and then making decisions that are informed by the goal at the end,
Janet: 10:43 You're doing such a great job with myth busting. I want to throw another one at you and that is one of the things that I have heard is your business, your entrepreneurial ideas never going anywhere unless you are 100 percent all in in essence, basically saying, if you haven't saved up enough money to quit your job, you know too bad, you're not going to be a success. If you're not all-in, what do you think about that?
Thom: 11:11 I think that this notion that you have to be all-in in order to be successful is nuanced and again, I think it distracts from more relevant questions, but I'll. I'll bite and give you a reaction to it. It's this notion, right? When an explorer hits the foreign shore, they burn their boats because they know now going back is not an option and the theory is that that somehow puts you in this mindset that you'll work harder, you'll work longer. It feeds this narrative of the suffering entrepreneur and that's why I'm not very keen on this notion. That being said, there is plenty of data that says, Hey, if you're still keeping your day job right, which is presumably 45 hours a week and you're trying this other thing, you probably don't have enough hours in the day to apply to your entrepreneurial startup. That's where this starts, this are you all in or not.
Thom: 12:13 That's when the narrative starts becoming way more nuanced. That means maybe your company is going to grow slower than it might otherwise if you were full time, 50 hours a week on it, you know, like you are at your job and those, those aren't wrong or right answers. Those are just certain realities of time utilization and applying it towards things that need to get done. And so when people try to cast this notion like, well, we can't like that because you haven't quit your job to do this yet. Would just say statistically I have a bias against potential the potential for that from a pay standpoint. But if you can show me how, what time you can apply to it is adequate for the progression, the forward momentum, as I alluded to earlier for the business, then I'm fine with that.
Janet: 13:05 All right, that makes sense. I'd love for you to compare and contrast the US entrepreneurial mindset or ecosystem with your experience in the World Economic Forum as you've worked with, I assume, countries around the world. What's different and what's the same?
Thom: 13:25 Thank you. That's an interesting question. I have worked with and for NGOs, universities, foreign governments, and quite literally, I like it because of the alliteration, but literally from Brazil to Bangladesh and have seen every slice of entrepreneurial humanity that the world has to offer. And there's a couple of observations I have from this first and foremost, and this goes into public perception and myth busting right? I think in the US there's this notion that we are the world leader in entrepreneurship. And again, spoiler alert, we're not. What has been the kind of the, American secret of entrepreneurship that is been unleashed around the world and the rest of the world is awakening to what had been historically a US competitive advantage. So thank Israel, for example. Israel on multiple ways that you might measure is probably the world leader right now in entrepreneurship and early stage activities.
Thom: 14:31 They've put billions of dollars into funding startup early stage type of things. They've invested heavily in technology transfer and commercialization from universities. They had great corporate partnerships. They reach internationally, they go anywhere in the world where if there's a piece of technology that advances something. So there's that reality of our observation. The other observation I've had is I'm the kind of learning and teaching front of entrepreneurship. In the US, what dominates a lot of curricular or training programs or on entrepreneurship or what I refer to loosely as the silicon valley narrative, which is a plan and pitch type of entrepreneurship curriculum, namely I have to come up with a big idea. I write a plan around it. I shopped that plan to some folks to fund it. I grow something very quickly and I exit and you've heard that a thousand times over, right?
Thom: 15:29 That dominates, especially in academia, in higher ed. That dominates many of the programs. And that's really, I think it's problematic in a couple of ways. First of all, and most importantly it presupposes or it begins with an individual that has already identified as being entrepreneurial. So like if I'm a student now I'm opting in to major in entrepreneurship. As silly as that is of a notion I've already self selected. Right? So I've been activated. So what higher ed and academia is missing is that broader, much larger swath of the population that has entrepreneurial potential. They just haven't been activated yet. They haven't been exposed to something that flips that switch, so to speak, and that's the difference internationally. So there. Then I use the example of the Ice House curriculum that I we talked about earlier when we were deploying that curriculum at my time in Kauffman. We were deploying it in the US and we're deploying it internationally and I'm happy to say that that program is actually being taught on five continents right now and it's been translated into other languages like Spanish and Portuguese. And what the rest of the world has understood is that if you go earlier stage and you focus on the mindset, we can mobilize more people working towards something entrepreneurial and whereas nobody can predict, you know, the winners and losers. It's still is a numbers game and if you can fill the top of the funnel, you know much faster with more numbers, you're going to have better outcomes on the bottom and adoption of that program. And, and deployment of that program. Is actually growing faster outside the US than it is inside the US.
Janet: 17:19 Now Your Ice House entrepreneurship program, you are talking to community colleges, four year universities, small business centers. I contend you're in the wrong place. You need to be in elementary school.
Thom: 17:31 Well, we're certainly already in a middle schools and high schools. So you're absolutely right. You know, and this is the work of Ted Dinter Smith and Tony Wagner and others that are working on kind of a innovation narrative much earlier and there's been studies on this too, right? We beat creativity out of kids going through the, you know, the public school and public education process. So I couldn't agree with you more, you know, and, and even in a very unsophisticated way, I just look at my own kids. I have three children and they're adults now, but they were all entrepreneurs growing up because they've lived in a house with a crazy dad who started and sold a company every three to five years. And you know, for them that was kind of the water that they swam in. So, you know, all three of them graduating college. No student debt, you know, my son just bought his first starter home, didn't need me to co-sign. That's because they had been starting and growing companies and my, my youngest daughter was I think started the earliest at nine, but they all were running businesses and they just saw entrepreneurship as a way to get what you want from life, right. That we have to make a more common experience for as many people as possible.
Janet: 18:48 Right. Well, I remember seeing a story in social media about the young man who had the hot dog stand and somebody called to complain about him and for once government did the right thing. They worked with this kid to get a health license. They got him the things that he needed to make sure he was testing the heat of the water, and they made him a more successful entrepreneur than shutting him down. And when I hear about people calling the cops on lemonade stands, I'm like 'Really?' that's not in the right mindset.
Thom: 19:22 Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were more of those types of examples? There was one of the stories I'm most enamored with I had the good fortune several years ago to meet the founders of a company called Missouri Star Quilt Company in the Missouri Star Quilt Company is in Hamilton, Missouri, a population I think like 2,400. So this is small town USA, you know, anywhere in the country, the abandoned main street. From what I understand it is the birthplace of JC Penney, long since gone. And there was this family, it was a family with seven children that really out of a notion to give their mother or something to do or their mother, Jenny Doan was very much into quilting. Quilting was her passion, her hobby. So they bought. I'm giving you the very abbreviated story. There's tons of videos on this and I encourage you highly to google it, but they basically bought her a piece of equipment so that she could start doing some quilting activity.
Thom: 20:29 And they thought, well, you know, maybe we could put a little small business around this, what we would call a side hustle today. Right? And then they use tools that are out there, they taught themselves things like youtube as a broadcast channel. And what can we do? Jenny has very, the camera just loves her. She's got this just genial style to her teaching. Quilting comes natural to her and pretty soon, you know, they had 500 followers. They had 5,000, they had 50,000. They now have followers on their channels that are seven figures in the. Fast forward to the present. Missouri Star Quilt Company is a very large company. It's the largest employer within a 50 mile radius. They processed 2,000 orders a day, right? And this is supplying the quilting industry. This isn't an APP that whatever cracks your DNA for you. this isn't a biotech life science, you know, bionic, you know, artificial limbs, better solar powered.
Thom: 21:32 This is quilting fabric and patterns and colors. And, and, and to say nothing of how they've revitalized the whole downtown. So the company is pretty much bought up all of main street and it's a destination. It's a Disneyland for quilters and they have B&B's. Now there they have multiple themed storefronts, so there's seven or eight, so they have one Missouri Star Quilt Company and it's all things fourth of July, they have one that's all things Halloween. One thing that's all things Christmas and it's a destination and it's revitalized this town and it's not high tech and any of that stuff. Right? That just demonstrates that the potential to transform especially large parts of our rural communities that it becomes so economically disenfranchised. Entrepreneurship has the power to turn that around.
Thom: 22:26 I love this story so much because it is the power of a few people building something amazing. And recently Raleigh has been in a situation where we've been competing to bring a very, very large presence, both apple and Amazon to our town. And I see that as kind of the exact opposite, but I'm not sure that the upside of something that large is very good.
Thom: 22:56 So, you know, I'd like to say tongue in cheek that we won both hq two and the apple by not winning. And I think that's true for a lot of the communities. We're, we have the good fortune in the triangle here that we are flush with resources, so we probably could have afforded or accommodated whatever exorbitant financial incentives package was given to them, but certainly many of the communities, that pitched for these opportunities could ill afford it and if they had won, it would have been financially catastrophic. Beyond that, what's more perverse to that process than trying to bribe large established companies that have the kind of cash reservoirs at both of those companies have, beyond that, what's perverse about that is the missed opportunity to think if we have the collective political will and are willing to allocate the resources we going to throw at these companies, why don't we invest in ourselves?
Speaker 3: 24:02 Why can't we see a way forward to, to draft policy and programs that put money into economic gardening so that we plant the seeds and build the next Amazon, the next 10. Amazon's as opposed to trying to buy them or bribe them. Right? This is a challenge. This, this smokestack chasing as an economic development practice, needs to die a swift and ugly death because it is flawed in its thinking. If you want to see an example of how that might look, you only have to look to my home state or at least used to be home state because now I'm proudly as citizen of North Carolina, but Ohio passed several years ago. This initiative called the third frontier initiative and it passed by voters. It was a referendum that went to the ballot and it passed twice. So there was the initial $900MM allocation and then another I think $400MM or $500MM bond issuance. So Ohio through popular vote that sustained and survived transitioning from an R to a D and back to an R. So it wasn't a partisan football, right? They both parties had enough sense not to kill the golden goose and that what it did was it it pumped, it injected, you know, close to one and a half billion dollars into early stage entrepreneurial support activities and it has paid multiples multiples on returns.
Thom: 25:40 This is the kind of thinking I would love to see come to North Carolina. I don't know in the current political environment if there's the political will because it, it seems nowadays that an idea is measured by who had it versus the merit of it and I'm hopeful that there's going to be some political winds of change coming so that we can start once again arguing about the potential of ideas and not based upon who had them
Janet: 26:10 Exactly. As you referenced, the Gardening Motif. We need to be planting seeds and seeing what grows and creating a fertile environment to make that happen. If you just try to bring in a fully grown pumpkin and plop it down, ultimately it's going to kill what's under it and ultimately it's going to decay and I don't see a big, big move like that. If they were talking 3000 jobs, maybe that would have been much healthier, but 10,000 has got to canibalize what's going on in our current community.
Thom: 26:46 I couldn't agree more and I think if you need evidence of that, read very closely. A lot of the public narrative around that and see if you can pick out what's absent from a lot of that public narrative and what I am now. I'll lead the witness here. What's absent is very a heartfelt, genuine support from the large corporate community and who would blame them, right? Every large corporation that's been a great tenant and steward in North Carolina has been growing without handouts, right? Without incentives. Just quietly going about doing their thing and being loyal to the state. They are all. Everybody's competing for talent right now and there's a great shortage and now you're going to say, oh, here's this great big thing that's going to be the sexy new that's going to be competing for the people. You can't find it as it is, and we're going to pop that right in your backyard right now. It's hard to get excited about that. Yeah, yeah. They're going to be good citizens. They'll give some perfunctory statement, but I know people that work at these organizations and they have many of them told me privately, yeah, we're not going to shed a tear if they go elsewhere.
Janet: 28:05 So that's the biggest of the big. Now let's talk about the smallest of the smallest briefly. One of the things that I love about NC IDEA is what you call your family and that people who've been through one of the NC IDEA programs, processes, grant awards, they're very vested in that aren't they?
Thom: 28:28 Yeah, I mean we really think and know through our own experience. We have the privilege to work with our folks at a discrete moment in time, a discrete point in their adventure, their journey of entrepreneurship. You know, we want them to know that for the time we were officially together, which might be defined by the term of the grant period, we're vested in their success and, and forward momentum, but well beyond. We want them to know that we're here for them and a resource to go forward because, you know, this is this critical mass feeds the ecosystem and where we can have more and more people getting involved and having these peer to peer relationships. This virtuous cycle starts from it. So for example, we host, with, with relative frequency, a, what we call kind of tongue and cheek, alumni events.
Thom: 29:24 We bring folks, we invite people. We have a newsletter that we publish lucidly just to alumni. We have a slack channel just for them. And so every other month or so we say, okay, you know, I'll, I'll pick up the beer tab and we'll have some hors d'oeuvres thrown out there, but you know, if you want to come by and catch up and talk to others, you know, feel free to do. And we are always humbled by the number of people that want to come in. And they just, they say, listen, thank you. We appreciate this because it's kind of, you know, that designated time to stop and take a breath and get our batteries recharged. They just tell us the most flattering things that warms your heart and you realize, oh yeah, that's right. That's why we do what we do, right? Because we're helping these people and when they're wildly successful, then we've been very specific and deliberate about this particular.
Thom: 30:18 Next point I'm about to make is we say, hey, listen, remember to pay it forward. At some point you're going to get, you're going to be successful and you're going to be in a capacity of not begging for resources and help and other things, but you actually going to be in a position to offer resources and help. And so please consider and remember us when, when that happens, we had it was, this was several of our labs cycles ago. one of the folks going through the labs program was just so enamored [with the program]. He came into my office, he snagged a piece of stationary. We have these cards that have our logo on the top and he grabbed it, grabbed a pen and a scribbled out I o n c idea $1,000,000. And he signed it. He said, I have no idea what I'm going to make good on this, but I will someday and I hope you'll be here and you'll have this when I can come in with that check. And obviously I don't expect that, but, metaphorically, the sentiment of what he is saying is what we're striving for, where everybody feels that they're part of something bigger because at some point a critical mass that again, that virtuous cycle kicks in.
Janet: 31:29 That is awesome. And I very, very much look forward to having some of the scholarship recipients that you guys are going to be awarding attending CES with us this year. I think that is such a cool idea.
Thom: 31:44 It'd be my pleasure and I'm expecting great things from them. Janet, thank you so much for helping make that happen. It's going to be very cool to see North Carolina has such a coordinated effort and, and frankly something that's going to make North Carolina look even better than it already does.
Janet: 32:00 Absolutely. Well, thanks for being here, Thom.
Thom: 32:03 It's my absolute pleasure.
Janet: 32:05 You've been listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road, a podcast that's production of The Trade Show Manager and features an in depth look at the people, companies, organizations that bring trade shows to life.
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Announcer: 00:00 You're listening to Trade Show Live - On the Road, featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show, industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country in a wide variety of industries from healthcare consumer products and everything in between. The podcast is a production of the trade show manager, a trade show consulting firms, and now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live.
Janet: 00:28 Welcome to a Trade Show Live - On the Road. This podcast is a production of the trade show manager and features an in depth look at the people, companies, and organizations that bring trade shows to life. In January 2019, we are headed to CES, the consumer electronic show, which is an amazing event that takes over all of Las Vegas every year. This year we're going with amazing group of startups and business leaders will be in Eureka Park and displaying some of the best new ideas coming from the startup community of North Carolina. One of the organizations in the North Carolina Startup pavilion is the EDPNC, which stands for the economic development partnership of North Carolina. With me today, is the chief executive officer Christopher Chung, or do you prefer Chris?
Chris: 01:20 Chris is just fine. Thanks, Janet.
Janet: 01:22 Welcome to Trade Show Live - On the Road.
Chris: 01:25 Great to be here. Thank you.
Janet: 01:27 Well, I know that the economic development of North Carolina is hot, hot, hot right now and we are making a lot of news while we didn't lay into Amazon. That's okay. There are a lot of other things come into the pipeline and a lot of exciting news. So Chris, start me off with a little bit and explain what exactly is that EDPNC.
Chris: 01:47 Sure. Thanks Janet. So the economic development partnership in North Carolina or the EDPNC, we're a nonprofit organization that works to advance economic development here in the state of North Carolina. The way we approach it is really through a five fold mission, if you will. Probably what we're best known for is our work in trying to recruit companies here from outside the state. So a lot of our work involves manufacturing companies, corporate headquarters, companies in biotechnology, life sciences, information technology, food processing. Those are the kinds of industries and the types of companies that were regularly in conversations with trying to convince them to either look at North Carolina or of course ultimately locate their future growth and operations in our state. Obviously there are many, many players and partners who are involved in that process, but as a state organization, we're typically that first point of contact that gets to to hear from those companies and start laying out that sales pitch, if you will, for why we think North Carolina is the right place for their future growth.
Chris: 02:47 But like I said, that's just one part of our mission overall. We're also responsible among other things for promoting North Carolina for tourism. We happen to live in a beautiful state. Everything from the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge mountains in the all the way out to the outer banks and the crystal coast on the east at 300 miles of shoreline and a lot of wonderful things in between. So we're very fortunate to draw tens of millions of visitors to North Carolina spending billions of dollars on our local economies all throughout the state. So we want to make sure that we continue to put out a message that's going to be treating people and get them to come visit North Carolina. We also help a lot of our manufacturers to find new markets for their products overseas regions of the world. Still export assistance is what we call it, but nothing more complex than helping our companies figure out whether it makes sense for them to sell into overseas markets and if so, how do they go about getting as many customers as possible.
Chris: 03:41 And then of course we try never to forget that a in spite of our efforts to recruit new companies in North Carolina, there are quite literally tens of thousands of companies already here in our state that we want to make sure we're serving their needs and helping figure out how they can grow and expand right here in the state. So it's a pretty broad mission, but all of it is important to you. In North Carolina, if we're talking about increasing job creation, we're talking about increasing tax space and of course just increasing economic opportunity for the people who call North Carolina home.
Chris: 04:14 Okay. That really does sound like a very long laundry list of responsibilities, but the thing is you're not very old. This, this organization hasn't been around for a really long time.
Chris: 04:26 No, we haven't. So we're celebrating our four year. Actually, we just celebrated our four year anniversary back in October. Now it's not as if North Carolina wasn't doing any of these things before. Our organization was created to essentially take over these responsibilities which used to be housed within state government in the public sector, so North Carolina followed the lead of a number of other states which in recent years have moved their state economic development functions into this kind of nonprofit or public private partnership model. Really to give a couple of things. One is just more operating flexibility than what sometimes possible within the public sector, but more importantly as a nonprofit, we're able to go out there and receive support from private industry, construction companies, utilities, banks, real estate development firms. Those are just some of the types of companies that help our operation by investing their dollars into our work, and so what that ultimately does is it gives us more resources to go out there and do all those different things that were trusted and I think that's why North Carolina made that move and a number of states have as well. So again, all of that's important work. It's just in the past four years we've changed that model and evolved it to the competitive industry that we're in right now and change different economic development goals.
Janet: 05:41 Now. Do you still liaise with a governmental office?
Chris: 05:45 Absolutely, yes. So the North Carolina Department of Commerce is probably the partner that we interact with by far the most often they're the ones who used to have those responsibilities that we now perform on their behalf under contract, the North Carolina Department of Commerce though still does a lot of really important things that are critical to economic development success in our state, for example, they focus a lot on workforce development. All of those things designed to make sure that when companies expand or locate here, they have access to the best talent and best training resources to help them groom their talent as possible. The Commerce Department also administers all of the state's financial incentive programs. We know that that's a pretty critical factor for a lot of the companies that are looking to locate here, whether they're small, whether they're large, whether they're everything in between. We know that they are often times looking to maximize their return on investment and reduce their costs of doing business and incentives have been one way for companies to do that, so the Commerce Department still controls all those programs. It's pretty straightforward when we've got a company that we know is interested in North Carolina, when those incentives come up in conversation, we absolutely bring our partners from the Commerce Department to the table so that we can all jointly work on getting that company to eventually decide on a location here in our state.
Janet: 07:03 No, I know we've been making all kinds of top 10 lists for places to live, for talent in the marketplace for experience in certain areas, but I understand that we also have interests internationally.
Chris: 07:20 Yes, absolutely. So of course, as you can imagine when we're talking to all these call them, hundreds of companies every year that we have a chance to recruit and attract here from outside the state, probably one out of three and these days is a company that's headquartered somewhere outside the United States. The United States remains a really attractive market for companies to sell into and in recent years, more and more companies have decided it makes sense for them not only to sell into the US, but to actually have a footprint or presence operating and doing business here in the United States. And so when more companies are looking at being in the US, then of course by definition that means we get more chances here in North Carolina to get those companies to call our state home for their US operations. So historically we've seen a lot of interest from western Europe and East Asia, but these days you're seeing much more activity from markets like India, Turkey, Brazil, and Israel. These are also increasingly important sources of inbound investment companies coming from those markets looking to establish operations somewhere in the US. And of course we want that somewhere in the US to be right here in North Carolina.
Janet: 08:30 Okay. So that means you are marketing globally. That sounds kind of expensive.
Chris: 08:36 It is. So there's never enough money. I don't think any organization ever complains about having too much money. I think our efforts to promote North Carolina, of course are, as you said, both domestically and overseas. We don't have a lot of money to go out there and take out advertisements on tv or even online or on and all these different markets, at least not on the business side. We have a little bit more to play around with when it comes to tourism promotion because we're trying to reach individual consumers as opposed to businesses, but what we do have on the business front is a network of international offices that compliment our team sitting right here in North Carolina, so we have offices in Germany covering in Europe. We have offices in China, Japan and Korea and we just opened up here in November an office in India.
Chris: 09:24 Those five offices are responsible for getting in front of companies in their parts of the world, trying to convince them of the business case for why North Carolina makes sense for future expansion and so that's probably one of our best tools to get in front of the audience that we want to reach, which are growth minded companies overseas. Thinking about where they want to be. And then of course here in the United States it's a lot easier because we're sitting in the US and so it's a lot easier for us to get out to industry conferences, industry gatherings, association meetings, events like CES. These are all prime, fertile territory for us to get out there with the message of North Carolina and why we're an excellent location for companies to do their future expansion.
Janet: 10:07 Well, I certainly love wearing my North Carolina hat and I represent probably the typical North Carolinian ... I'm not from around here, so I was born and raised in New England and Gosh Dolly, they have a snow up there in the wintertime and went to college in Baltimore and they still had snow so I finally had to make it to North Carolina and wow, did I find home! I'm just think the Carolinas or are the perfect climate and you could get to the from the mountains to the ocean in a single day drive and it's just a beautiful, beautiful place to live. And I think a lot of folks, US Yankee, so moved down here sort of adopt some of the hospitality focused that the south is so famous for and this is really just a wonderful place to live.
Chris: 10:54 It really is. I mean, there's a reason why North Carolina has been one of the fastest growing states when it comes to population. We've grown at roughly double the national average over the past two decades or so. Of course, some of that population growth happens organically when you have more people that die, but for states like North Carolina, we've also seen so much of that population growth result from migration, so people moving here from other parts of the US. We certainly get people moving here from outside the US, but a lot of it has been those transplants that are moving here from either the northeast or the Midwest, even places like California who are deciding that either for quality of life reasons or economic opportunity reasons. North Carolina is where they want to be. That's really good for our businesses as well. Because what that means is the talent pool is not only being filled with university and college graduates, but it's also being filled by people who move here after college. People who move here in the middle of their careers who have plenty of years of productivity ahead of them. That deepens the talent pool in a way that's really attractive for the companies that we're speaking to. Again, I think all of this goes back to some of those quality of life issues that make North Carolina is such a great place to be.
Janet: 12:11 What are the things that I found fascinating is the number of industries that you all represent or anyone who wants to have a business in North Carolina. How do you keep a talent pool at the EDPNC that knows how to talk to different verticals like health care or consumer electronics or manufacturing or furniture or whatever. That sounds like you have to have a pretty big staff.
Chris: 12:36 Well, it obviously helps to have some background and knowledge of a particular industry, especially what that industry is often looking for when it comes to selecting a new place to do business. But all that said, I would say that economic developers, including our team of recruiters here by definition, have to be more generalists than specialists. That's because on any given day today, you could be working with a fortune 500 corporate headquarters that's looking to relocate because they don't feel like they've got enough talent where they are right now and they need to move to a market that does. Or the next day you could be working with an automotive assembly plants that's looking at where it's going to locate the next day. After that. It could be a consumer package goods manufacturer that's looking at where it's going to set up a new production facility. The next day after that. It could be a biotech research and development center.
Chris: 13:29 Bottom line is every single day really does bring a different set of conversations, so rather than focus on becoming experts in all of these industries or a jack of all trades, master of none. What's more important for us as the salespeople or the frontline salespeople for North Carolina is really be able to plug those companies in and that we're trying to recruit. Get them in front of some of those subject matter experts and other resources that are here in North Carolina. That can articulate the case for why those companies can be successful here. It's ultimately about building the right team around the table that can collectively make that pitch and convince that company why this is the best location for them. So I think for us it's about understanding what that company's looking for and then matching them up with the information and the resources that will help them get to that understanding that North Carolina is really the only place they need to look.
Janet: 14:24 I am curious about the word partnership in your title. So who are you partnering with and why would a current company be interested in partnering with you to bring more companies here?
Chris: 14:37 Sure. So great question. I mean it's very deliberate why we have that word in our name. As I said, even though we are fortunate to often be that first point of contact that companies and their consultants reach out to when they're thinking about where to expand, nothing we do is accomplished without a very broad team efforts. Again, we're working at a state level. We have partners like the North Carolina Department of Commerce around the table. Sometimes you'll even get agencies like the environmental quality department which handles all the permitting, very important issue for manufacturers. Sometimes you may have the state transportation department, which of course could help with somebody infrastructure needs that a company is thinking about that's just at the state level alone. You get down to a regional level and down to a local level and there are a lot of partners at each of those stages that are also wanting to be able to add value and help further that argument to accompany as to why they need to be here and then of course we've got a lot of private sector partners.
Chris: 15:36 Again, utility companies play a big role in that business recruitment effort. Construction companies can often be very valuable in that effort. We are, as I said earlier, we are trying to put the best team around the table that can articulate the most impactful case to companies as to why North Carolina's their best choice for their future growth. That symphony of partners is going to look different probably every single project that we're working on because the needs of every single company are different. When it comes to their future growth, so I think that's a big part of why that term partnership is part of Our Name and it doesn't just come into play when we're trying to recruit companies that you look at what we do on the tourism front or helping companies export and in all of those areas we also team up with a lot of other organizations that can help us accomplish the mission that we're entrusted with.
Chris: 16:30 So like I said, partnership is a key part of economic development. Everyone who's in this business will tell you it very much is a team sport. We of course hope that as more companies come to North Carolina, we can convert some of those companies into being surrogate spokespeople and ambassadors for North Carolina. The best success story tellers that we can recruit are the ones who have come here and done business and been successful because if they can go out there and tell their peers in the industry by North Carolina is a great place to be, that's going to be far more than those words coming from the mouths of folks like us paid to say good things about North Carolina. That business to business, peer to peer testimony. That's another way that we hope to partner with companies as we get that story out there about North Carolina.
Janet: 17:15 One of the unique things about the consumer electronic show where we're going to be in Eureka Park is it's all about the startup community and what I love about North Carolina is it does have everything from the a five decade companies with experience to brand new startups and I know that's one of the things that North Carolina has focused on and what we're looking at is what we're growing in our own backyard. So tell me a little bit about the economic development partnerships role in helping startups in North Carolina.
Chris: 17:48 Sure, absolutely. I think we would assist startups in pretty much the same way we would assist any company that approaches us for assistance. Those startup companies, whether their needs are around capital, whether their needs a hiring a certain kind of talent, whether those needs are the ability to partner with universities. We have a number of world class universities here in North Carolina. Sometimes those early stage startup companies may even be looking for access to particular types of customers or an entree into a particular customer relationship that would benefit them down the road. Any and all of these ways are ways that we believe we can add value by helping those startup companies get to where they want to be. Of course, it's on those startup companies to prove that a venture capital firm should invest in them. It's up to them to prove that a potential customer should buy their product or service. Of course, that's always going to be the case, but if we can help facilitate some of those introductions to those resources here in North Carolina, that ultimately is something we want to do because that can lead to those startup companies starting right here in our state or putting all of their future growth here.
Janet: 18:58 Well, of course we're on a podcast talking about trade shows and trade shows must be an important part of how you're getting the message out of the EDPNC
Chris: 19:08 they are, as I said, it'd be great if we had infinite resources for marketing and could plaster every available surface, Pro North Carolina message, but unfortunately that's not the not the world we live in or wherever the world, but I will live in so we have to be very strategic and very focused about how we get out there and tell that story of North Carolina as a business location, industry conferences, industry, trade shows, events like CES. These are great platforms for us because they congregate so many companies in that targeted industry sector that we want to go after. When you think about CES and the kinds of innovative technology companies that CS attracts large, small in between, it really ought to be fertile grounds for us to make connections, develop relationships, and most importantly, get that message out about North Carolina being an excellent place for business to start, grow or locate.
Janet: 20:03 I think one of the interesting things, you will find it CES, where we are in Eureka Park is interestingly, it is predominantly foreign countries who are represented there and we found our experience last year was that most of the states were not represented, so we're very excited that North Carolina is going to be banned or leading with prison said the Eureka Park as part of CES.
Chris: 20:29 We're absolutely thrilled as well. It'll be our first time at CES. I suspect it won't be our last time though. Like I said, when you think about the kinds of companies that will be gathered at CES, you think about the value proposition. North Carolina has everything from talent pool to university research to quality of life, cost of doing business. We have all of the elements that any of these companies, again, large, small and in between would be craving as they think about where they're going to expand in the future and we're just really excited to be able to get out there and start telling that story in this setting.
Speaker 2: 21:02 And for those who are listening who planned to come to CES, you can find the North Carolina Startup pavilion in Eureka Park, which is the startup park. We saw Mark Cuban there last year, so who knows who's going to come by this year and to find us more easily. Look for Singapore. We're across the street from them.
Chris: 21:21 It is a small world, right?
Janet: 21:23 Absolutely, and I'm really. It's like being in an international environment. Absolutely. In, in Eureka Park. Well, Chris, I am so excited that the economic development partnership of North Carolina is going to be with us at CES and I very much look forward to telling more stories about the exciting things that are going on in North Carolina. I'm a big fan girl and hopefully I'll be wearing a North Carolina shirt while I'm there.
Chris: 21:48 We'll count on seeing you in it.
Janet: 21:50 You've been listening to trade show, live on the road. This podcast is a production of the trade show manager and features in depth interviews with people, the companies, and the organizations that really bring trade shows to life. We'll see you in January at CES, the consumer electronic show. Thanks for listening.
Announcer: 22:11 Thanks for listening to Trade Show Live - On the Road for production of the trade show manager, a trade show consulting firm. If you need innovative programs to engage attendees and exhibitors and sponsors, custom research or new solutions for your trade show, contact The Trade Show Manager on our website, thetradeshowmanager.com.
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After a successful experience at CES in 2018, The Trade Show Manager, aka, Dorothy Bedor, decided to up the ante for CES 2019 and launch a podcast featuring the exhibitors and special guests of the North Carolina Startup Pavilion.
Transcript:
Announcer: 00:00 You're listening to Trade Show Live!! On the Road, featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show, industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country and a wide variety of industries from healthcare consumer products and everything in between. The podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firms, and now let's go On the Road with Trade Show Live!.
Janet: 00:27 Welcome to Trade Show Live! On the Road. This podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager and features an in-depth look at the people, companies, and organizations that bring trade shows to life. In January 2019, we are headed to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show with an amazing group of startups and business leaders will be in Eureka Park and displaying some of the best new ideas coming from the startup community in North Carolina. With me today is the President of The Trade Show Manager, Dorothy Bedor, and she's going to talk with us about why we created the idea for the North Carolina Startup pavilion to go to CES. Dorothy, welcome to the podcast.
Dorothy: 01:12 Thank you, Janet.
Janet: 01:14 I'm so glad to have you here. I've had the pleasure of working with you for a couple of years now and I love the way you kind of look at things a little bit from the outside of the traditional box and I really feel like as I've been new to the trade show industry, what I look at as a lot of folks who are doing things the way they've always done it before and it just isn't working anymore.
Janet: 01:38 Is that what you're seeing as a trade show professional?
Dorothy: 01:41 Yes. It's a new world, Janet.
Janet: 01:44 So what would you see as some of the things that are holding shows back from being innovative or in, in being successful as a trade show?
Dorothy: 01:54 Well, a lot of trade shows are locked into different times in the year and have to go back to the same city because of the size of the trade show and so they're locked in to going the same place every year and they've been doing it every year at the same place, at the same building. And after a while it just gets really routine, so you really have to almost stand on your head professionally and do something different to bring in the innovation or excitement to the show.
Janet: 02:30 Well, I can understand where if you're managing a big show that there's a lot of moving parts and if you finally get to a point where, hey, I got all the forms right, I got all the systems right, I know when I need to tell people to do things when we're selling blah blah, blah. Seems to me that that's a good thing, right?
Dorothy: 02:50 It is a good thing, but it's not a good thing for your attendees because your attendees don't want to keep coming back year after year and go to the same old event. So that's why you really have to think about your attendee. You have to walk in their shoes and most of the leading trade shows do. They do do that. But it is very easy to do the same thing over and over again. So you really have to fight to do something new and to be fresh.
Janet: 03:21 No, I know you've been involved in the trade show industry for most of your career and I learned a term from you that I hadn't heard before and it has to do with the size of shows that if, what, what do they call the really, really big shows?
Dorothy: 03:37 Well the big shows are called MATSO shows and those are a Major American Trade Shows and that those are just each shows that are over 200,000 square feet.
Janet: 03:49 So that limits where they can go, right?
Dorothy: 03:52 Yes. And I've had the fortunate opportunity to work on some of the very largest shows in the United States and the world. I started my career in Consumer Electronics Shows that it can only go to Las Vegas and Chicago when I started. And then, and then IMTS that can only go to Chicago.
Janet: 04:11 What does IMTS mean?
Dorothy: 04:14 IMTS - the International Manufacturing Technology Show. It's the largest machine tool building manufacturing show in the world and it can only go to Chicago really. It really needs a really big building. It's over a million square feet. And so is CES.
Janet: 04:33 Well, I'm kinda tired just thinking about how big those shows are.
Dorothy: 04:38 Yes. It's like putting together a, a city. I mean that's what so fun about working in trade shows because you've got the blank canvas. You've got these empty buildings that are completely empty, you know, football fields of, of buildings and you have to move all this equipment in and for IMTS, I mean some of those machines weigh tons and tons so you have to have big trucks and move them in and say it takes an army of people and then you have to do the electricity and the plumbing and the water and the security and the carpet and I mean it's, it's fantastic. It's just a fantastic career and that's why I've stayed in it so long because you know, it's a blank canvas and you can play in the colors and everything. It's just very exciting
Janet: 05:30 Getting to see a little bit of the inside of a trade show. It was fascinating to me, number one, how far in advance these sites are planned, how long in advance contracts are signed and that while there are some shows haven't even happened yet. They're already looking at the next year for the layout and all the logistics. It's amazing. So I think that makes a challenge though. If if you to do your logistics, if you to get your map out, you got to plan your areas and that you've got current people committing to space for the following year, if you want to be innovative and creative, that presents some challenges.
Dorothy: 06:12 Well it does. It's just the important versus the urgent. Of course you have to get the booth to sign. Of course you have to order all the utilities. Of course you have to market the event that you really need to think about how to get some life and some innovation to the show because over 95 percent of the reason attendees come to trade shows to see what's new and that's from the CER research. CER is center for exhibition research and that's why you have to always remember that the reason people are paying the registration, getting on a plane to come to your event is to see what's new. That's what's really fascinating about trade shows is people are actually paying to come see what's new at your event.
Janet: 07:04 This sounds like this is a really important opportunity for exhibitors to really make sure that they are showing at their highest potential.
Dorothy: 07:14 Yes it is, and unfortunately some of them get bogged into make sure that they shipped everything, make sure that the sign looks good, make sure that the colors are right, make sure that the carpets down and they forget to bring what's new. So we really have to try to keep the main thing, the main thing.
Janet: 07:38 Oh, that is such a good point. Well, let's talk a little bit about CES. You mentioned that you actually started your career at CES.
Dorothy: 07:46 Yes.
Janet: 07:47 How big was it when you first started?
Dorothy: 07:49 Well, it was still very big. I mean it was a million square feet instead of 4,000 exhibitors. I think it was 2000 exhibitors that. The interesting thing, Janet was, it was in January in Las Vegas and then it was in June in Chicago, so been doing a cs size show every six months, which was incredible. I'm exhausted just thinking that. Yes. I started there with Karen [inaudible] who's now the Lead of Vice President. Yes. And Gary Shapiro, who's now the president of the association, so we all started together and they're still there. And so, we were, it was a lot. So now I think now they have their show in China in the summer now.
Janet: 08:38 Oh, that's an interesting thing. I actually didn't realize that with the CS. Let's go back to 2018 way back to 2018. Tell me a little bit about how did the idea of putting together a booth for 2018 come about and, and who did you decide to approach for it?
Dorothy: 08:57 That's a great story. Well, you know, it happened at a face to face event and I'm passionate about meeting people. I mean, you can talk to people over the phone, you get an email, but when you meet people at an event, it comes alive and you network. And so I met an exhibitor who was a panelist and the event here in the Raleigh area and he was talking about just coming back from mobile world congress and I thought, wow, this guy's really got a global perspective. So I started talking to him and I said, well, what other shows do you want to go to? And he said, I want to go to CES, but I'm really not sure how to do it, you know, such a big show. And I said, well, I think I can help you with it. So, I started talking to him further and then I got in contact with CES.
Dorothy: 09:49 I have been doing innovation programs for a lot of larger shows and decided that it would be the best bet to spring this exhibitor in some of his companies that he knew here in the Raleigh area, the research triangle to participate in the Eureka Park area of consumer electronics. CES really does it right? They have a whole convention center and the lower level of the Sands of called Eureka Park. That features start up, new exhibitors, you know, that it's all about new and so we put together a pavilion, just send like two weeks, and we'd be put together the pavilion with companies from, from the research triangle net last year. It was a huge success.
Janet: 10:41 I loved being there myself. It was actually my first visit to see us and I will say just staying primarily in the Sands and Eureka Park. That was overwhelming. I can't even imagine what it would be like trying to do the whole show all the way up and down the strip. It's like every location, every hotel room was booked.
Dorothy: 11:03 Yes. It's incredible. There's nothing like it. It's up to over 180,000 attendees now.
Janet: 11:09 So the cool thing about CES and what we did, and I'll do the corporate, we here since I'm part of the social media team, one of the things that we were able to do was kinda elevate what was happening. So while we did have a group of companies that came together under one pavilion title, we kind of elevated that by doing some work with live social media and being a social media ambassador either because they weren't heavily invested in social media themselves or their social media people weren't there and we were able to lift the story for them. And I think that turned out very well, don't you?
Dorothy: 11:46 Yes, it was incredible because everybody is on a level playing field. Even in know these small companies in Eureka Park and smaller booths versus the big companies in the convention center, you know, they're all exhibitors at CES, but the people at Eureka Park have a little bit of an advantage because everybody that attends CES goes there. A lot of times people go there first to see what's new. And so they did with our social media. You did an incredible job and to see what's new and the attendees that are exhibitors are trying to have come visit. The booth came in, they came and they met with our exhibitors. One of our exhibitors even went to Korea to meet with the home company there, you know, the Home Office and so it was wonderful to see this potential in law at CES.
Janet: 12:46 Well, and that was one of the coolest stories is that as small as these were and in Eureka Park, I think you told me there were like 800 booths in Eureka Park and we were four of them, so I can't even do the math that shows you how small that is, but we were so yet all of our participants last year ended up with some key interviews, he contacts and made some key business connections there. So they were all very happy and we have a couple of them coming back this year. One of the things I wanted you to share with folks is about the limitations of Eureka Park, that you can call yourself a startup forever, right?
Dorothy: 13:26 No, you can't. It's an interesting point. Janet, you have to be a very new. You can't have sold a product and you have to not even really launched until the year that you're going to exhibit at CES. So it's very, I mean the criteria is pretty tight and that, and that's good that you know, when you're seeing the companies in Eureka Park, you know, that they're brand new.
Janet: 13:52 Well and that brought a lot of interesting people to the table. So while it's called the Consumer Electronics Show, we actually saw all kinds of venture capital folks, investors, large company, small company, the US military was there, universities were there, so there were a lot of people there looking for business opportunities, not necessarily what's the neatest new retail consumer item coming out.
Dorothy: 14:20 Yes, it attracted all different kinds of attendees that had all different kinds of needs. And, and also like you mentioned investors that really wanted to invest in these companies.
Janet: 14:32 So for 2019, what's new?
Dorothy: 14:35 What's new is that we are going to have five booths this year and we are bringing two of the companies that we had in 2018. We have a new company that is a cool technology company that's going to be joining us and then we have the state of North Carolina that's going to be coming with us, the Economic Partnership for North Carolina. We are so grateful that they're going to join us because we have so many of attendees and want to know about what's going on in North Carolina, what's going on in the technology space, what, what's it like to be a company in North Carolina? It know why the people, why isn't North Carolina so hot for business and so they're going to be there. They're going to be there and be able to ask all the questions.
Janet: 15:28 Yeah. We're very, very excited about the kind of the wide variety of folks that are going to be in our booth and as you mentioned, we do have some returning folks coming to us. One of them being Lumova and you're going to be hearing a podcast interview about him shortly. The other returning company is Wiser Systems and they were a big hit last year because they brought an kind of an interactive demo. That was very fun and really brought a lot of people to their booth, so they really did a good job with what they brought to the trade show experience.
Janet: 16:05 Can I mention they have a really cool mascot and that's why they call it the Wiser Systems.
Janet: 16:13 Yeah, please do. For those who are listening, we actually will be doing an interview with each of the folks who are going to be both a having a booth at the North Carolina Startup pavilion as well as who are going to be part of our live podcast series. So I guess let's talk about that.
Dorothy: 16:34 Yes. That's, that's something that you get. and congratulations for presenting to the team. Janet. We've decided that podcasting would be so fantastic before and during and after CES and we're excited about having live podcasts right there on the floor.
Janet: 16:54 It's going to be a very interesting experience for us. For those of you who are not going to be able to attend CES, we will be able to give you some insight into what's happening at Eureka Park and with the folks who are both demonstrating and with the folks who are going to have booths at our North Carolina Startup pavilion as well as some special guests we're going to be inviting in. So we'll be posting on our social media at The Trade Show Manager and at Trade Show Live!, the links to when we'll be live and we'll be live. I'm in Facebook and possibly even YouTube, so you'll get a chance to watch that, but also you can catch up with it later. One of the things I wanted to talk about are our featured guests who are going to be stopping by the booth during the show.
Janet: 17:46 So we're not at liberty to tell you who all of them, but we are going to have some special guests come to our booth and be with us for awhile during CES. So it'll be really important for you to catch up with the live stream, which we will then also turn into podcasts after the event. So one of the things that we really decided is that people need to know a lot more about our booth participants because their stories are fascinating and we're going to tell them via podcasting and via live social media. But I wonder as you look at this kind of concept, do you think that a live podcasting and pulling people in to hear stories at a trade show booth has legs?
Dorothy: 18:31 Oh yes. It's a, it's fascinating and I think it's always wonderful to have engagement at the booth and also to have the opportunity to have evergreen material in case you missed the podcast. Absolutely.
Janet: 18:48 Well, we saw that recently. We were in Chicago, a touring the Print Show and saw I really well done work with podcasting and live streaming. Do you remember that?
Dorothy: 18:59 Yes. It was fantastic and it was fun and it was thought leadership.
Janet: 19:04 Absolutely. And I think that's a very unique thing that we can do for smaller companies and smaller presence. And one of our folks from last year, and you'll hear in his podcast interview, I spoke with Stephen Taylor, who is the communications director for wiser systems, but he absolutely saw that once they committed to being at CES and we're listed in the CS directory, their web traffic popped way up, pre-event, during the event, and after the event and definitely that the, the social media made them competitive as this one single booth in a sea of booths throughout CES. They actually scored significantly on awareness for social media and for their presence. I thought that was pretty impressive stuff.
Dorothy: 19:56 CES, like going to the Olympics. It really is. I mean, it can unlock your potential. I mean, if you can exhibit at CES, you can exhibit anything.
Janet: 20:07 Oh, I think that's very true. The trial by fire process of going to a show this large. so actually as you're an expert in trade shows, Dorothy, and we're going to have other conversations on other topics coming up, but about CES. For folks who are planning to attend, even as attendees, not necessarily as vendors, what advice would you give them in preparing for and managing their day at CES?
Dorothy: 20:35 CES is exhausting because it's a marathon and it's many, many booths in many, many miles said, be sure to have comfortable shoes, have water with you, have snacks with you because with the crush of people it's hard to get food anywhere and it's also important to take breaks. You need to take a break because your legs, your knees, your ankles, feet. It's so hard because it's, it's, it's like climbing a mountain. You have to be very careful because you're in Las Vegas and unfortunately the cigarette smoke is really in the buildings and all over the conventions, you know, the casinos and everything. So just take some fresh air brakes and just to enjoy it. The thing that makes CES so wonderful and so valuable and such a good investment is, is that there's never a law and the traffic. When we were there last year, I went out and took a picture at 2:00 in the afternoon on the Friday. The show was going to close at four and the attendees are just pouring in the building. There was a shuttle buses lined up full of attendees. I mean, where do you have that? It was this such a crush of people. So, it's fantastic and I'm so excited. But tell me again.
Janet: 22:02 Yeah, when you have a show that large and people are attending, they're not popping between venues. They're saying, okay, today is the venue here. Then I'm going to go here, then I'm going to go here. So you're just as likely to have strong traffic on the last day as the first day. Well, Dorothy, I am so excited about what we're going to be doing at CES 19 and also looking forward to some other exciting things during 2019 at other shows, which I know we'll be talking about in future podcasts, but for now you have been listening to Trade Show Live! On the Road, a podcast that's a production of The Trade Show Manager and features an in depth look at the companies and organizations that bring trade shows to life. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you in the next podcast episode.
Announcer: 22:51 Thanks for listening to Trade Show Live! - On the Road, a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. If you need innovative programs to engage attendees and exhibitors and sponsors, custom research or new solutions for your trade show, contact The Trade Show Manager on our website, TheTradeShowManager.com.
