What is XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWelcome Mitch. How you guys doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nGood. Tired, but good, thank you. We are honoured that you\u2019d have us on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nHey Bex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nHi Mitch. You\u2019re over in Canada, is that right, Dan? Is that the usual split where one of you takes the sort of US and Canada and the other is over here in Blighty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo I am over here in Canada, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s necessarily the classic way that startups would get going with the two people at the opposite sides of the Atlantic from one another, but yes, that\u2019s the boat that we have found ourselves sailing in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I\u2019ll ask you more about that in a minute, but first can you tell us about this tech?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what have you created with XRAI Glass?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo XRAI Glass turns sound into subtitles in real time, which allows those who are deaf or hard of hearing to become part of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the story behind XRAI was actually a personal one, my grandad, who was 96, had lost his hearing, one of the other founders, Paul, whose dad had worked with people for many years had lost his hearing, and then five other founders who were all touched by the same personal story all came together to create what would become XRAI Glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it has been quite the journey that we\u2019ve been on over this past year, and we just keep finding new people that we can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the wonderful part of this business, we started with the deaf, but actually there are so many more now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd crucially this is an app, it\u2019s like a piece of software that runs on external hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you don\u2019t make the glasses, you are not making a product. This is IP, this is design, this is software rather than a factory out there somewhere pumping out gadgets, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, when we started this business, we purposefully made the decision we didn\u2019t want to get into the hardware business. The pace of innovation within that space is so hard to keep up with that actually leveraging all of the technology that\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of the innovation in these new glasses is what we fixated on and just investing our time and effort into the software, which was the important bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s come to play very nicely for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd it\u2019s also about providing an on-ramp to this technology. These augmented reality glasses are brand new. Most people have never even heard of them before, never mind experienced them before. And just dropping people into this AR world is confusing for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually starting with an app, starting with something that people are familiar with. And people\u2019s first experience with XRAI will just be using the app, understanding how it works, understanding how the transcription works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then when they\u2019re ready, attach a set of augmented reality glasses and have that same experience that they\u2019ve just got used to in an app but now in glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is a much easier on-ramp for people we think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nHow difficult is it to create an app?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd in terms of actually creating the app, how hard was that? Was it a matter of finding existing kind of clever technologies and almost binding them together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because people on their phones, they can dictate and see the words pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there is sort of similar tech out there, but were you designing something brand new or were you kind of bundling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo fundamentally we bundle, we are an integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we too thought when we first set out on this journey, it must be really simple. I mean I\u2019ve already got it on my phone, look. Surely we must just be able to take this and put it into augmented reality. It must be simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, in order to build augmented reality apps, you\u2019re basically building a video game. We use a piece of software called Unity. Unity is designed for building video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got things like render loop, so 25 frames per second. This thing\u2019s furiously going away, and then we\u2019ve got to try and get audio from the microphone in real time. We\u2019ve then got to try and send that up to the cloud in real time, get it back, get it up onto the screen all in less than a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So something which sounds trivially simple actually in this augmented reality world was quite a challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just one provider of course that we wanted access to, it was more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as well as being agnostic to the glasses, we wanted to be agnostic to the transcription providers as well. So you\u2019ve got all that complication times by the number of glasses times by the number of transcription providers and that then starts to give you a hint at some of the complexity behind something that looks so trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving your consumers options is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2021\/08\/YBCA_FY19_Intacct_V3_0338-1-1215x810.jpg\")
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\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Welcome Mitch. How you guys doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nGood. Tired, but good, thank you. We are honoured that you\u2019d have us on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nHey Bex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nHi Mitch. You\u2019re over in Canada, is that right, Dan? Is that the usual split where one of you takes the sort of US and Canada and the other is over here in Blighty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo I am over here in Canada, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s necessarily the classic way that startups would get going with the two people at the opposite sides of the Atlantic from one another, but yes, that\u2019s the boat that we have found ourselves sailing in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I\u2019ll ask you more about that in a minute, but first can you tell us about this tech?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what have you created with XRAI Glass?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo XRAI Glass turns sound into subtitles in real time, which allows those who are deaf or hard of hearing to become part of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the story behind XRAI was actually a personal one, my grandad, who was 96, had lost his hearing, one of the other founders, Paul, whose dad had worked with people for many years had lost his hearing, and then five other founders who were all touched by the same personal story all came together to create what would become XRAI Glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it has been quite the journey that we\u2019ve been on over this past year, and we just keep finding new people that we can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the wonderful part of this business, we started with the deaf, but actually there are so many more now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd crucially this is an app, it\u2019s like a piece of software that runs on external hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you don\u2019t make the glasses, you are not making a product. This is IP, this is design, this is software rather than a factory out there somewhere pumping out gadgets, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, when we started this business, we purposefully made the decision we didn\u2019t want to get into the hardware business. The pace of innovation within that space is so hard to keep up with that actually leveraging all of the technology that\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of the innovation in these new glasses is what we fixated on and just investing our time and effort into the software, which was the important bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s come to play very nicely for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd it\u2019s also about providing an on-ramp to this technology. These augmented reality glasses are brand new. Most people have never even heard of them before, never mind experienced them before. And just dropping people into this AR world is confusing for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually starting with an app, starting with something that people are familiar with. And people\u2019s first experience with XRAI will just be using the app, understanding how it works, understanding how the transcription works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then when they\u2019re ready, attach a set of augmented reality glasses and have that same experience that they\u2019ve just got used to in an app but now in glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is a much easier on-ramp for people we think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nHow difficult is it to create an app?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd in terms of actually creating the app, how hard was that? Was it a matter of finding existing kind of clever technologies and almost binding them together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because people on their phones, they can dictate and see the words pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there is sort of similar tech out there, but were you designing something brand new or were you kind of bundling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo fundamentally we bundle, we are an integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we too thought when we first set out on this journey, it must be really simple. I mean I\u2019ve already got it on my phone, look. Surely we must just be able to take this and put it into augmented reality. It must be simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, in order to build augmented reality apps, you\u2019re basically building a video game. We use a piece of software called Unity. Unity is designed for building video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got things like render loop, so 25 frames per second. This thing\u2019s furiously going away, and then we\u2019ve got to try and get audio from the microphone in real time. We\u2019ve then got to try and send that up to the cloud in real time, get it back, get it up onto the screen all in less than a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So something which sounds trivially simple actually in this augmented reality world was quite a challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just one provider of course that we wanted access to, it was more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as well as being agnostic to the glasses, we wanted to be agnostic to the transcription providers as well. So you\u2019ve got all that complication times by the number of glasses times by the number of transcription providers and that then starts to give you a hint at some of the complexity behind something that looks so trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving your consumers options is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Hey Bex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nHi Mitch. You\u2019re over in Canada, is that right, Dan? Is that the usual split where one of you takes the sort of US and Canada and the other is over here in Blighty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo I am over here in Canada, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s necessarily the classic way that startups would get going with the two people at the opposite sides of the Atlantic from one another, but yes, that\u2019s the boat that we have found ourselves sailing in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I\u2019ll ask you more about that in a minute, but first can you tell us about this tech?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what have you created with XRAI Glass?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo XRAI Glass turns sound into subtitles in real time, which allows those who are deaf or hard of hearing to become part of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the story behind XRAI was actually a personal one, my grandad, who was 96, had lost his hearing, one of the other founders, Paul, whose dad had worked with people for many years had lost his hearing, and then five other founders who were all touched by the same personal story all came together to create what would become XRAI Glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it has been quite the journey that we\u2019ve been on over this past year, and we just keep finding new people that we can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the wonderful part of this business, we started with the deaf, but actually there are so many more now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd crucially this is an app, it\u2019s like a piece of software that runs on external hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you don\u2019t make the glasses, you are not making a product. This is IP, this is design, this is software rather than a factory out there somewhere pumping out gadgets, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, when we started this business, we purposefully made the decision we didn\u2019t want to get into the hardware business. The pace of innovation within that space is so hard to keep up with that actually leveraging all of the technology that\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of the innovation in these new glasses is what we fixated on and just investing our time and effort into the software, which was the important bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s come to play very nicely for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd it\u2019s also about providing an on-ramp to this technology. These augmented reality glasses are brand new. Most people have never even heard of them before, never mind experienced them before. And just dropping people into this AR world is confusing for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually starting with an app, starting with something that people are familiar with. And people\u2019s first experience with XRAI will just be using the app, understanding how it works, understanding how the transcription works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then when they\u2019re ready, attach a set of augmented reality glasses and have that same experience that they\u2019ve just got used to in an app but now in glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is a much easier on-ramp for people we think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nHow difficult is it to create an app?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd in terms of actually creating the app, how hard was that? Was it a matter of finding existing kind of clever technologies and almost binding them together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because people on their phones, they can dictate and see the words pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there is sort of similar tech out there, but were you designing something brand new or were you kind of bundling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo fundamentally we bundle, we are an integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we too thought when we first set out on this journey, it must be really simple. I mean I\u2019ve already got it on my phone, look. Surely we must just be able to take this and put it into augmented reality. It must be simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, in order to build augmented reality apps, you\u2019re basically building a video game. We use a piece of software called Unity. Unity is designed for building video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got things like render loop, so 25 frames per second. This thing\u2019s furiously going away, and then we\u2019ve got to try and get audio from the microphone in real time. We\u2019ve then got to try and send that up to the cloud in real time, get it back, get it up onto the screen all in less than a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So something which sounds trivially simple actually in this augmented reality world was quite a challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just one provider of course that we wanted access to, it was more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as well as being agnostic to the glasses, we wanted to be agnostic to the transcription providers as well. So you\u2019ve got all that complication times by the number of glasses times by the number of transcription providers and that then starts to give you a hint at some of the complexity behind something that looks so trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving your consumers options is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
So I am over here in Canada, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s necessarily the classic way that startups would get going with the two people at the opposite sides of the Atlantic from one another, but yes, that\u2019s the boat that we have found ourselves sailing in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I\u2019ll ask you more about that in a minute, but first can you tell us about this tech?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what have you created with XRAI Glass?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo XRAI Glass turns sound into subtitles in real time, which allows those who are deaf or hard of hearing to become part of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the story behind XRAI was actually a personal one, my grandad, who was 96, had lost his hearing, one of the other founders, Paul, whose dad had worked with people for many years had lost his hearing, and then five other founders who were all touched by the same personal story all came together to create what would become XRAI Glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it has been quite the journey that we\u2019ve been on over this past year, and we just keep finding new people that we can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the wonderful part of this business, we started with the deaf, but actually there are so many more now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd crucially this is an app, it\u2019s like a piece of software that runs on external hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you don\u2019t make the glasses, you are not making a product. This is IP, this is design, this is software rather than a factory out there somewhere pumping out gadgets, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, when we started this business, we purposefully made the decision we didn\u2019t want to get into the hardware business. The pace of innovation within that space is so hard to keep up with that actually leveraging all of the technology that\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of the innovation in these new glasses is what we fixated on and just investing our time and effort into the software, which was the important bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s come to play very nicely for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd it\u2019s also about providing an on-ramp to this technology. These augmented reality glasses are brand new. Most people have never even heard of them before, never mind experienced them before. And just dropping people into this AR world is confusing for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually starting with an app, starting with something that people are familiar with. And people\u2019s first experience with XRAI will just be using the app, understanding how it works, understanding how the transcription works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then when they\u2019re ready, attach a set of augmented reality glasses and have that same experience that they\u2019ve just got used to in an app but now in glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is a much easier on-ramp for people we think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nHow difficult is it to create an app?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd in terms of actually creating the app, how hard was that? Was it a matter of finding existing kind of clever technologies and almost binding them together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because people on their phones, they can dictate and see the words pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there is sort of similar tech out there, but were you designing something brand new or were you kind of bundling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo fundamentally we bundle, we are an integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we too thought when we first set out on this journey, it must be really simple. I mean I\u2019ve already got it on my phone, look. Surely we must just be able to take this and put it into augmented reality. It must be simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, in order to build augmented reality apps, you\u2019re basically building a video game. We use a piece of software called Unity. Unity is designed for building video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got things like render loop, so 25 frames per second. This thing\u2019s furiously going away, and then we\u2019ve got to try and get audio from the microphone in real time. We\u2019ve then got to try and send that up to the cloud in real time, get it back, get it up onto the screen all in less than a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So something which sounds trivially simple actually in this augmented reality world was quite a challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just one provider of course that we wanted access to, it was more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as well as being agnostic to the glasses, we wanted to be agnostic to the transcription providers as well. So you\u2019ve got all that complication times by the number of glasses times by the number of transcription providers and that then starts to give you a hint at some of the complexity behind something that looks so trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving your consumers options is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
So XRAI Glass turns sound into subtitles in real time, which allows those who are deaf or hard of hearing to become part of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the story behind XRAI was actually a personal one, my grandad, who was 96, had lost his hearing, one of the other founders, Paul, whose dad had worked with people for many years had lost his hearing, and then five other founders who were all touched by the same personal story all came together to create what would become XRAI Glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it has been quite the journey that we\u2019ve been on over this past year, and we just keep finding new people that we can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the wonderful part of this business, we started with the deaf, but actually there are so many more now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd crucially this is an app, it\u2019s like a piece of software that runs on external hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you don\u2019t make the glasses, you are not making a product. This is IP, this is design, this is software rather than a factory out there somewhere pumping out gadgets, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, when we started this business, we purposefully made the decision we didn\u2019t want to get into the hardware business. The pace of innovation within that space is so hard to keep up with that actually leveraging all of the technology that\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of the innovation in these new glasses is what we fixated on and just investing our time and effort into the software, which was the important bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s come to play very nicely for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd it\u2019s also about providing an on-ramp to this technology. These augmented reality glasses are brand new. Most people have never even heard of them before, never mind experienced them before. And just dropping people into this AR world is confusing for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually starting with an app, starting with something that people are familiar with. And people\u2019s first experience with XRAI will just be using the app, understanding how it works, understanding how the transcription works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then when they\u2019re ready, attach a set of augmented reality glasses and have that same experience that they\u2019ve just got used to in an app but now in glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is a much easier on-ramp for people we think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nHow difficult is it to create an app?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd in terms of actually creating the app, how hard was that? Was it a matter of finding existing kind of clever technologies and almost binding them together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because people on their phones, they can dictate and see the words pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there is sort of similar tech out there, but were you designing something brand new or were you kind of bundling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo fundamentally we bundle, we are an integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we too thought when we first set out on this journey, it must be really simple. I mean I\u2019ve already got it on my phone, look. Surely we must just be able to take this and put it into augmented reality. It must be simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, in order to build augmented reality apps, you\u2019re basically building a video game. We use a piece of software called Unity. Unity is designed for building video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got things like render loop, so 25 frames per second. This thing\u2019s furiously going away, and then we\u2019ve got to try and get audio from the microphone in real time. We\u2019ve then got to try and send that up to the cloud in real time, get it back, get it up onto the screen all in less than a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So something which sounds trivially simple actually in this augmented reality world was quite a challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just one provider of course that we wanted access to, it was more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as well as being agnostic to the glasses, we wanted to be agnostic to the transcription providers as well. So you\u2019ve got all that complication times by the number of glasses times by the number of transcription providers and that then starts to give you a hint at some of the complexity behind something that looks so trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving your consumers options is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Yeah, I was going to say indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, when we started this business, we purposefully made the decision we didn\u2019t want to get into the hardware business. The pace of innovation within that space is so hard to keep up with that actually leveraging all of the technology that\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of the innovation in these new glasses is what we fixated on and just investing our time and effort into the software, which was the important bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s come to play very nicely for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd it\u2019s also about providing an on-ramp to this technology. These augmented reality glasses are brand new. Most people have never even heard of them before, never mind experienced them before. And just dropping people into this AR world is confusing for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually starting with an app, starting with something that people are familiar with. And people\u2019s first experience with XRAI will just be using the app, understanding how it works, understanding how the transcription works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then when they\u2019re ready, attach a set of augmented reality glasses and have that same experience that they\u2019ve just got used to in an app but now in glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is a much easier on-ramp for people we think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nHow difficult is it to create an app?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd in terms of actually creating the app, how hard was that? Was it a matter of finding existing kind of clever technologies and almost binding them together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because people on their phones, they can dictate and see the words pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there is sort of similar tech out there, but were you designing something brand new or were you kind of bundling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo fundamentally we bundle, we are an integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we too thought when we first set out on this journey, it must be really simple. I mean I\u2019ve already got it on my phone, look. Surely we must just be able to take this and put it into augmented reality. It must be simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, in order to build augmented reality apps, you\u2019re basically building a video game. We use a piece of software called Unity. Unity is designed for building video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got things like render loop, so 25 frames per second. This thing\u2019s furiously going away, and then we\u2019ve got to try and get audio from the microphone in real time. We\u2019ve then got to try and send that up to the cloud in real time, get it back, get it up onto the screen all in less than a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So something which sounds trivially simple actually in this augmented reality world was quite a challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just one provider of course that we wanted access to, it was more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as well as being agnostic to the glasses, we wanted to be agnostic to the transcription providers as well. So you\u2019ve got all that complication times by the number of glasses times by the number of transcription providers and that then starts to give you a hint at some of the complexity behind something that looks so trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving your consumers options is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
How difficult is it to create an app?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd in terms of actually creating the app, how hard was that? Was it a matter of finding existing kind of clever technologies and almost binding them together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because people on their phones, they can dictate and see the words pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there is sort of similar tech out there, but were you designing something brand new or were you kind of bundling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo fundamentally we bundle, we are an integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we too thought when we first set out on this journey, it must be really simple. I mean I\u2019ve already got it on my phone, look. Surely we must just be able to take this and put it into augmented reality. It must be simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, in order to build augmented reality apps, you\u2019re basically building a video game. We use a piece of software called Unity. Unity is designed for building video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got things like render loop, so 25 frames per second. This thing\u2019s furiously going away, and then we\u2019ve got to try and get audio from the microphone in real time. We\u2019ve then got to try and send that up to the cloud in real time, get it back, get it up onto the screen all in less than a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So something which sounds trivially simple actually in this augmented reality world was quite a challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just one provider of course that we wanted access to, it was more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as well as being agnostic to the glasses, we wanted to be agnostic to the transcription providers as well. So you\u2019ve got all that complication times by the number of glasses times by the number of transcription providers and that then starts to give you a hint at some of the complexity behind something that looks so trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving your consumers options is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
And in terms of actually creating the app, how hard was that? Was it a matter of finding existing kind of clever technologies and almost binding them together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because people on their phones, they can dictate and see the words pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there is sort of similar tech out there, but were you designing something brand new or were you kind of bundling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo fundamentally we bundle, we are an integrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we too thought when we first set out on this journey, it must be really simple. I mean I\u2019ve already got it on my phone, look. Surely we must just be able to take this and put it into augmented reality. It must be simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, in order to build augmented reality apps, you\u2019re basically building a video game. We use a piece of software called Unity. Unity is designed for building video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got things like render loop, so 25 frames per second. This thing\u2019s furiously going away, and then we\u2019ve got to try and get audio from the microphone in real time. We\u2019ve then got to try and send that up to the cloud in real time, get it back, get it up onto the screen all in less than a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So something which sounds trivially simple actually in this augmented reality world was quite a challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just one provider of course that we wanted access to, it was more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So as well as being agnostic to the glasses, we wanted to be agnostic to the transcription providers as well. So you\u2019ve got all that complication times by the number of glasses times by the number of transcription providers and that then starts to give you a hint at some of the complexity behind something that looks so trivial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving your consumers options is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo did you want to make sure that your app could run on all different kinds of devices because you didn\u2019t want to bind yourself to any one manufacturer and maybe one price point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want to give people the option to access what you\u2019ve made, whether they\u2019re getting something that\u2019s like top of the range or something that\u2019s a little bit more affordable that they can still have a play and get the benefit basically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Yeah, I mean it\u2019s important that we give people the choice because there are so many factors to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What phone are they using, what operating system are they using, what geography are they in? What budgets do they have? What other ancillary devices are they using? Are they using cochlear implants? Are they using hearing aids? Do they have no hearing at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was really important that we put that choice into the hands of the consumer to allow them to use the device that\u2019s at the right price point and suits their lifestyle and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, we want to be the Spotify of these kinds of services. It doesn\u2019t matter what phone you\u2019re on, what set of glasses you\u2019re using, what device you\u2019re on, it\u2019s always XRAI behind there, providing that intelligence layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was super important for us to be agnostic. And paid dividends yesterday of course, when Apple released their new glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And guess what? Our software will run perfectly on them because of the way that we\u2019ve designed it also, we were very excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big competitors like Apple aren\u2019t always your enemy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nCan you tell me about that? Were there any kind of conversations happening with Apple in the background over the last few months? Because I know previously this was Android only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did you have communications with Apple? How did you get that connection?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
I don\u2019t think Apple unfortunately would have the time to talk to such lowly folk as us, but maybe one day we might get the phone ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no, we just ported our app to the iOS ecosystem. So we use a piece of software called Unity, and Unity is compatible with iOS. We had to do a bunch of engineering work in the background to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the fact that we have now done that and the fact that Apple announced yesterday or the day before yesterday, Unity support means that our app will now run perfectly we hope on the new Vision Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for those that can afford it and want the holographic see through face and the Lamborghini of augmented reality glasses, they can now go buy it and still use XRAI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s really interesting is just from a startup perspective, how brave we\u2019ve been and continue to be, going up against these hyper-scalers, going up against Apple and Microsoft or Google or other, or even Meta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, you would think that they were an enemy. And actually as we\u2019ve developed over the last year, we\u2019ve realised that they\u2019re actually friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple bringing out their new cellular glasses is great for us because it\u2019s an endorsement. The bell that we\u2019ve been ringing for the last year, that the world is going to augmented reality or some version of that, we\u2019ve almost been sounding a bit like a sycophant about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then someone like Apple coming out and saying, \u201cThis is the way that we are going,\u201d is great for us. And it\u2019s been encouraging to say the least, certainly in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to collect feedback from a particular community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned that initially this product was aimed at the deaf community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did that mean that you had to canvas a lot of feedback and opinions and advice from that community? And if so, how did you do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
So we took a very staged approach, I guess, to the development of this software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We knew we had something, but we weren\u2019t quite sure what it was that we had. And so in classic startup fashion, we wanted to get something into the hands of users as quickly as humanly possible. Making sure of course that it didn\u2019t quite work, because if it worked, it was too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we spent between last May and the end of July creating an MVP, whatever you want to describe it, a barely working version. There\u2019s a better analogy, perhaps. And we launched a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we said to the world, \u201cWe\u2019ve got this thing, and it just about works and would you like to be a pilot user and give us some feedback on what we can improve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the pitch was, \u201cCan you please go and spend \u00a3400 of your own hard-earned money to buy a set of glasses to use a piece of software which barely works and give us some feedback to help create this incredible piece of software for other people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And despite that, we had 1000 people sign up and dozens and dozens and dozens actually went out and bought glasses and worked with us. And that was some of the most incredible feedback we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it was a big ask of the people, but for those that had actually done it, they\u2019re now really committed, and they want to go on this journey with us. And we paid them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time they asked for something, a week later or two weeks later, ta-da, it popped up in the product. So it was a great relationship we had with our pilot users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I was going to say I think probably one of the greatest luxuries was the accelerant in the development cycle of the product. Having that 360 feedback, continuous feedback using a platform, we use Discord for that continuous feedback, really helped us understand and shape and size the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when it was ready for commercial release, we actually had a really good understanding of what the market wanted, so that classic market product fit was sized and shaped by the users that were helping us trial it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was a luxurious position, which I think a lot of startups miss out on, is they actually try and find that out when it\u2019s already in market. We had the luxury of life of being able to get that information before we launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback can improve your product and tailor it to more markets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd can you give me an example of something that came up as a piece of feedback that ultimately changed the way you developed the product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there any one standout thing that someone said, and you were like, bingo, we\u2019re going to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
The most obvious one we got almost straight away was, \u201cWell, that\u2019s wonderful that you do this for English, but I mean there are other languages around the world, and I might be travelling between different places with different languages. Is there any chance you might be able to get this to do automatic translation as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we said, \u201cIt\u2019s funny you should mention that because yes, actually we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was one of the first examples of, that\u2019s now one of our three core pillars of functionality, and that was just one of our users making an off-cuff joke about could we do translation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThere was one for me actually was we were fixated on the deaf and the hard of hearing, and actually one particular user who joined the program, and he had a condition called auditory processing disorder or APD, which meant he could hear properly, and he could see clearly, but he wasn\u2019t able to process that information. Cognitively, he couldn\u2019t digest and process that audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually if he read the audio, he was able to process it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of a sudden, we were doing this program and then finding out all of a sudden that we can help anyone that\u2019s got APD instantly, something we hadn\u2019t even thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as we\u2019ve developed the product, we\u2019ve realised that it\u2019s not just around deaf and hard of hearing, but a whole neurodivergent community who would get great benefit from this. And we continue to learn every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Dan said, it\u2019s quite the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOne of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nFinding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
One of the other things of course that struck whilst we were on this journey was the small matter of ChatGPT. I mean, you may have heard some passing reference to this theme that\u2019s apparently going to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We actually started working with GPT, as it was back then, last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So right after we\u2019d done our pilot, we first started playing with this thing, and that\u2019s the other one which has just grown and grown and grown and grown. And again, our company name is X-R-A-I, XRAI, Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So again, that was a real gift that technology came out at that time and all of a sudden, we\u2019re able to not pivot, but add a huge amount of new functionality to the app, a whole new product line around this assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a great lesson in whatever you are focused on to begin, don\u2019t ignore these other things that pop up. Figure out how you can rotate into them and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finding like-minded founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
And you mentioned earlier on Dan that a couple of the founders, they\u2019re coming at this with a very personal angle. They wanted to solve problems and challenges they saw in their own lives and their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how did all of you guys meet? How did you connect in order to work together on this project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt was a whole series of personal relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mitch, I\u2019ve known for many years, we used to compete with each other actually funnily enough in our previous businesses. And we were both in the Microsoft space doing the great work of moving everyone to the cloud. So we\u2019ve known each other for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of our two main technical founders, one is my brother, so I\u2019ve obviously known him a while. And then he runs a machine learning street talk channel on YouTube, one of the top 10 AI podcasts in the world. There we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you are ever wondering about some very detailed machine learning problem, then there\u2019s probably a talk on their channel about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, one of the ones that I mentioned at the beginning, we met ironically through a mutual connection, so the power of LinkedIn, and we\u2019d both pitched the same idea to the same person and this person was like, \u201cWell, maybe you two should talk to each other because you just pitched me the exact same idea in the space of a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s how Paul got involved. He was working at Meta at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was then my previous finance director that joined us as an FD. And then finally Jackie Press, our chief brand ambassador who is a friend of Mitchell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like most of these startups, it\u2019s kind of personal relationships, friends, family connections, and you just pull together an amazing team. And seven\u2019s our lucky number, seven founders, so that was sort of what we thought was a way to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
That\u2019s really interesting because often you hear that you need to sort yourself a founder and then get going, but actually it\u2019s probably better to get going and then the people you meet on the journey that want to hop on the bus, they\u2019ll end up being the best founders?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I mean they were all there at the beginning. It wasn\u2019t necessarily we picked people up along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sort of all got together over the space of, I don\u2019t know, probably a month or two and kind of like, right, we want to do this, come on, we\u2019re going to do it, we\u2019re going to do it, we can do it. And then right bang, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s kind of how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Yeah, I think one thing that\u2019s important is that everyone that we spoke to about this within that those seven founders or original founders, was they all had a connection with the cause, with the vision, the problem statement that we were trying to solve. And they all felt emotionally connected to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was what the defining thing that said, you know what, I\u2019m going to give up my big job because this is really cool, this is something that I can really get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was an emotional thing as well as a commercial thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd that was again, what\u2019s driven all of us is the fact that we\u2019re actually using tech for good. And I mean some of us were in the luxurious position where we got to choose what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the many reasons that we chose to do this particular business, and there were others, it was a metaverse idea at some point and there was this idea or that idea of course you, and you\u2019re like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, this one\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the reasons why this one was quite interesting was the human angle of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting feedback from 3.2 billion people with a barely working product<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI totally get that. And getting people to leave a cushy job and a monthly salary to then take a punt on a risky startup, you want there to be a mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on that point, how did you fund this startup? Especially as you said that it was not as straightforward to develop as you initially thought. So that must have burned a bit more cash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nSo again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
So again, we were in the luxurious position where we both sold previous businesses. So we had a slight unfair advantage I guess on most founders starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we basically funded it to barely working product or whatever we called it earlier. We sort of at least took away a bunch of the technical risk from the investors. Because I don\u2019t want to go to investors and go, \u201cI\u2019ve got this amazing idea, and it might work. Perhaps. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to go to the investors and go, \u201cLook what we\u2019ve created, and actually we\u2019ve solved 50-60% of the technical risk at this point. Look at all of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even that July, feedback reached 3.2 billion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to get a barely working product in front of 3.2 billion people, that was quite impressive. Again, that\u2019s not quite product market fit, but at least a strong indication of the potential for product market fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So off the back of all that craziness, we then did a SAFE, now a SAFE is a US phenomenon because this is actually a US firm, even though more than half of the founders are British, we decided to base it in Delaware because our potential acquirer will probably be a US tech firm. So we thought we\u2019d make it easy for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in the US you have these things called SAFE, it\u2019s a simple agreement for future equity, it\u2019s a bit like a convertible note. So we then raised $1.5 million as part of this SAFE, and then that\u2019s what\u2019s funded the business since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So from day dot, you knew that this was going to be the business, that you kind of proved the concept, you found the market, you perfected the tech, but then you would sell presumably to a much bigger tech company and then kind of move on to the next project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does that change your approach, your outlook when at the beginning that there\u2019s an exit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Well, I think that I can answer this with confidence that it\u2019s about coming out big, early. We knew that this was a digital arms race in terms of solving this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we made a decision that once we had got to a position where we had a device that didn\u2019t require masking tape and Sellotape to hold it together, is actually to really make a big statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Dan\u2019s point before, we made sure that we got the marketing in place to create a wave of activity. And so much so that it reached, as Dan said, about 3.2 billion people because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So at that point we had made a statement, it was then around fulfilling that and continuing to deliver value and turn it into revenue ultimately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a small startup means cleaning up your own messes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
And on that point about making a splash, as I speak to you, you guys are just exploding. The brand is everywhere. I\u2019ve seen you on the BBC, I\u2019ve seen you on Wired Magazine, in the States, in the UK all different major media outlets, people who watch Love Island, Tasha G is a brand ambassador. I mean, this is massive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m interested to know how are you guys doing? Is life incredibly intense? How are you coping with this level of scrutiny and all the media and all the interviews? I think a lot of founders who\u2019d like to be where you are now, could benefit from maybe a bit of advice on how to cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, I guess, yeah, first of all, be careful what you wish for. It sounds like great fun, but try going live across the whole world about something you barely really know anything about and try and pretend like you\u2019re an expert on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s so hard. I mean it was 20 years since I did my last startup and I forgot all of the hard work involved in doing it and the fact that you don\u2019t just have this army of people underneath you clearing up the mess behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019m now my own mess clearer upper, which is a lot more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s exciting. There\u2019s so much innovation. We\u2019re a small team, there\u2019s only a dozen of us, but the amount that we crank out is as much as software companies 10 times our size. Actually a small number of brilliant people can actually deliver the work of a much larger number of average people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the rate of innovation is insane. We just launched the second edition of XRAI Glass, as we mentioned, last week. So that was the culmination of three to four months\u2019 worth of hard work and giving us iOS support for the first time, which was massive because 80% of our target users are iPhone. So that was a big one for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the innovation train is not slowing down. We\u2019ve got new glasses coming out all the time. So these are my favourites. So these just got released, in fact, these arrived yesterday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the new Rokid Max, which you can see are absolutely beautiful, feather-light. And I absolutely love these glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But again, always more work to be done on new glasses coming out, new frameworks to support, new people to go talk to and in new glasses like the Apple ones. So it\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
I love the show and tell, I love a bit of show and tell. Those glasses are so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They look kind of like snowboarder meets the Terminator. Do you know what I mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell these are the other ones. So these are the XREALs. So these were the original ones. So these are the ones that you\u2019ve probably seen in all the videos, but again, it\u2019s all about choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s like what\u2019s your style? What do you like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
I like the classics. They\u2019re the ones I would wear, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOkay. All right. These are the XREALs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nStick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Stick to your mission statement when creating new innovative products<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
And you mentioned all these innovations, the innovation train. How do you make sure that you are not getting massively distracted by trying to do 10,000 things at once and going down some blind alleys in the meanwhile when perhaps you need to focus on a few hero ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s interesting because one thing that we\u2019ve known is that we\u2019ve sort of opened Pandora\u2019s Box by creating this technology because we\u2019re fixated on our core audience, which is the deaf, the hard of hearing, and slowly but surely moving into that neurodivergent community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason why we could not, with some engineering feats, start helping those who are visually impaired or creating other variants of our software like Dan\u2019s had an idea about XRAI TV and giving subtitles to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s around staying focused, understanding what our mission statement was, and every time those ideas come up and say they\u2019re great, and they have merit, but do they marry our mission statement? Are they going to get us to where we had that vision of when we first started this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve built this nuclear power, it\u2019s just about staying focused. And that\u2019s a really important learning for all of the people on this podcast, is stay focused, stick to your knitting and just do that really, really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dealing with competitors and handling criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAre there many competitors out there either that were working on the same thing at the same time, or that are springing up now that you guys are hitting the headlines? And what can you do about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
I mean, there are maybe one or two other companies in the world specifically doing smart glasses with subtitles. I mean, as you said right at the beginning, there\u2019s a dozen apps that can do this on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although ironically, we\u2019ve kind of started competing with them as well. I mean, we never set out to, we wanted the very best subtitling experience on glasses, but we accidentally created the very best subtitling experience on app as well. And many users of other apps have switched to our app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So sometimes you accidentally discover these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But more will come of course. I mean, one of the dangers of being the first to put your flag in the sand and declare the start of the race is that everybody else is going to look at it and start to mimic you and copy you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially on the GPT thing. There are various internet memes that have been going round the previous week, Reality GPT was one of them, although they must have been fairly upset that Apple chose Vision Pro rather than Reality Pro. So that was one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lot of these are a hype. We know the engineering challenges that go behind these meme videos, and we know the difficulty in pulling off what they\u2019re suggesting they might be able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, some of it is trying to keep up with the Joneses, but some of it is staying focused on what you know is actually technically possible right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd how do you deal with detractors? Because you mentioned bringing out like an MVP, a minimum viable product, but obviously when you first bring out something that\u2019s a bit clunky and even through development, nothing is going to be perfect when the company is one year old, there\u2019s going to be a lot of iteration, a lot of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do you do if you get a slightly negative review or if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I don\u2019t like this idea,\u201d how do you handle that kind of criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Yeah, so one of the first things we learned is our first introduction, our first foray into users was meeting trolls. And we met our trolls when we first started, and we learned very early on don\u2019t feed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But actually it\u2019s really important to engage with our community. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve been most surprised about is how little, I mean almost zero bad feedback we\u2019ve received. You can scour the whole internet and there isn\u2019t anything which was comforting and worrying all in the same breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But yeah, so we\u2019re just learning that if someone does have an issue actually to talk to them about it, to understand it because it\u2019s an opportunity for us to learn and to develop the product to make it even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat was the exact example I was going to use was our troll that hit on us, and it was on a barely working version release date. And we put this thing out basically saying, \u201cWe\u2019re launching a pilot, we want some feedback from people. No one\u2019s used this thing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our troll came after us like, \u201cHow dare you release something that no one\u2019s used. You can only release it once. Lots of people have used it and validated it.\u201d And we\u2019re going like, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you can\u2019t fathom, there\u2019s no logic to them, so you just ignore them, as Mitch said, and just save yourself the brain wake of trying to figure some of this stuff out. It just makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big multinationals could discover you through their children\u2019s TikTok<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd I suppose, you mentioned, Dan, that you founded your last business 20 years ago and how much the world has changed in the meanwhile, there was no TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now you have to be on all the socials, you have to be content creators as well as entrepreneurs and as well as innovators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how different is it creating a business today compared to previously? What\u2019s better, what\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
I mean, it\u2019s all about brands and as we talk to investors about what\u2019s the value of the company, we talk about market opportunity, where we are. Talk about the tech, the product. And we talk about the brand. It is a third of our company\u2019s value, we would say, is the brand that we have created and the stir that we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is quite amusing because we get cold called quite often from large multinational firms that in my previous business would\u2019ve taken five years of knocking on that door before finally someone might open it. And in this new business they cold call us, it\u2019s quite the phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, you go on to these meetings with these people, and it\u2019s normally the start of the meeting is the exec at this big company explaining how they saw you on their daughters or sons TikTok and that was where they first came across XRAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you\u2019re going like, oh my, this is madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently that is how you get into big multinationals is through their kids and TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, and that\u2019s true. And I think one thing well is just again, that well articulating, well understood messaging. We\u2019re not trying to spray and pray and go after everyone. We\u2019ve got a very discreet audience with a very unique issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being able to articulate that in your marketing will help you get to those customers much quicker. And that was, again, a strength for us, is we\u2019ve in previous lives, anyone who had a computer with a plug on it that needs to move it to the cloud, we can move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now it\u2019s a very specific use set that we can talk to, and we can craft of all our messaging around that. So it makes it much, much easier rather than the days of when I first started my business and mail shotting the nicest road in my local area and putting A4 printed pamphlets through their door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThose were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Those were the days, Mitch. Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIndeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tDownload your free small business toolkit: a guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template so you can manage your business effectively<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\nKnow your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Know your market and how sellable your product is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAnd just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
And just finally guys, so to any sort of would-be tech entrepreneurs out there, what would you advise them to do in terms of focus if they want to develop the next hit technology? Should they focus on accessibility?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because you mentioned that is really, really powerful right now. Is a sort of mission human a really vital element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your advice to anyone who\u2019s like, right, I want to do something tech oriented, but I\u2019m not sure what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nOh, that\u2019s a tough question. Of course selfishly, I would say whatever you do, don\u2019t do anything around XR or AI. There\u2019s no future there at all, no money to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course the reality is that they are the two hottest areas right now. And so anyone that can figure out this new world of extended reality and artificial intelligence and how they come together in some way, I think that\u2019s fertile, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the advice that everyone is giving right now, and that doesn\u2019t help come up with what a use case might be in that new world, but there\u2019ll be billions and billions of dollars of value created in companies in those two spaces over the coming five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Feldman:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Yeah, I would add to that and just to say that it\u2019s great understanding that you\u2019ve got a product that has an addressable market, but understanding the competitive landscape and also one of the most important things is how easy is this to sell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the things that we found, particularly when we\u2019re talking to large enterprises, of which we speak to many who want to bring this into their portfolio to enable their teams, is those doors are easier to lean into. They\u2019re almost open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas if you were to have a product that was talking to an IT tech team, it\u2019s going to be a much harder journey to get involved and sell into those people. So diversity, equity and inclusion is hot on everybody\u2019s lips at the moment and people want to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for us, that\u2019s a great play. But again, just thinking about not only how you sell it, but how easy it is to sell is a really important factor to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can journalists use the XRAI Glass app for transcriptions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nBex Burn-Callander:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
That\u2019s great advice. And guys, just finally, you mentioned several use cases for XRAI Glass, but the app specifically, as a journalist, can I ditch all the other transcription apps and just use yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Scarfe:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nI wish you would. Absolutely you can. And in fact, this one has ChatGPT built into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So actually you could have taken this entire interview gone, \u201cHey XRAI, can you write me a 50-word long intro?\u201d And it would just do it for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, \u201cHey XRAI, can you summarise this hour-long interview into 10 bullet points? What were the three most interesting things the guys spoke about?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bop, maybe just do it for you straight away. So there we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoin our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\nWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSmall business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload your free toolkit<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJoin 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBrowse more topics from this article<\/h3>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
Wherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Join our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can find out more about Dan on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can find out more on Mitchell on his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For more on XRAI Glass, check out their website<\/a> or drop them a follow-on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n Get your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Join 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWant to know more about Dan Scarfe, Mitchell Feldman or XRAI Glass?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Small business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\nSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t