Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Digital Platforms Shaping the Future of Business with Aruna Ravichandran, Allison Ferenci, and Arjun Rai

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of The Radcast. I'm just really excited to be joined today by Arjun Ray, the founder and CEO of HelloWoofy.com. What's up, Arjun? Hey, man. Thanks so much for inviting me. It's such an honor to be able to talk to other agency folks in the business.

Starting point is 00:00:31 I've been in the marketing space for a very long time. I was working on an ad network in high school, came to New York, quote-unquote, to make it, and launched an agency just to pay the bills. By way of running the agency, I figured out that project management really doesn't do well for creative individuals. We raised capital from probably not the best investors in order to get it to market. We figured out how not to build an MVP, how not to raise capital. And by the end of college, we had raised a few hundred thousand dollars towards the project but again we were way too early but then figured out that social media marketing and marketing in general for small businesses wasn't at the level it should have been for for you know underdogs and we like to call it small businesses underdogs so i ended up launching the company that we're you know we're working on now

Starting point is 00:01:17 which is hello woofy and it's been interesting it's been definitely been a lot of ups and downs uh the last two years we had ten thousand000 left in the bank and we had to make a decision. Are we going to shut the company down or are we going to go all in and make it work? And with my insane personality, I said, I'm going to go all in. So I put in $170K in credit cards and savings, rebuilt the company from the ground up. And just one miracle after the other happened. We launched in December 2019. We grew 21,000% last year in 2020. We did over 200,000 in revenue. We'll probably do half a million this year in revenue. The point of the matter is, just as we were about to die, we figured out that you need to keep going. You need to keep going,

Starting point is 00:01:55 and miracles do happen. Hey, I love that. I will say it's painful. Some people say this because they've never done it. It's easy to be a motivational influencer when you haven't gone through anything. When you've gone through it, It's easy to be a motivational influencer when you haven't gone through anything. But when you've gone through it, and I've been on both sides of that at the ground, it's amazing what you learn failing sometimes. Like you said, you learn not how to raise money and not how to build an MVP. And it's probably helped, I'm sure, with what you've done with Hello Wolfie. Once you're pushed up against the wall, you really figure things out.

Starting point is 00:02:22 Either you figure things out or you just crumble. But we opt to figure things out and help other small businesses figure things out as well, especially the small ones. Yeah. And that's a big topic. We're a digital agency and we work with getting more into medium-sized brands just from a scale perspective for us and what works for us. But having worked with being a small business, having owned small businesses and working with them, it's a really underserved category because they typically do not have the budgets, the sophistication, or the ability to kind of leverage what has become a democratized internet, but they don't have all of the assets or quite all of it put together. So I love anything

Starting point is 00:03:07 that's getting and working towards that, which really seems like what Hello Wolfie is doing. It comes down to offering data driven solutions for the price of a cup of coffee, because to your point, you know, small businesses are, let's just face it, they're unsophisticated marketers. They think they know what they can say, but they, you know, just the whole idea of winging it when it comes to the perfect copy, the perfect emojis, the perfect hashtags, the images doesn't cut it when you're competing with the biggest unlimited marketing budgets in the world. In 2021, winging it is not a strategy for any business, for any startup, for any freelancer, right? And so we were like, okay, as soon as you start typing, it'll work, you know, start completing the sentences for you. It'll find the hashtags for you, find the emojis for you.

Starting point is 00:03:47 This goes back to the idea of a dog. I'm pointing to my dog right now, which is the mascot. Not only are you an underdog, but just like your dog, you know, man's best friend, he's always there teaching you when, how, and what to post. And so we started with social because that was the lowest hanging fruit. Then we went into blog scheduling. We were like, why aren't small businesses blogging, especially during the pandemic when they know that digital marketing is super important? And so you can autocomplete a blog post, you can optimize the beep out of it. I censored it for you. And then you're like, okay, we got to help small businesses with in-mails and emails and

Starting point is 00:04:17 notes. So we actually built a Chrome extension that does everything I just told you about in any text field on the internet. Small businesses are really not seeing their customers come through the door the way they used to. Where are they going? They're stuck at home. They're quarantined. But guess who's winning? The biggest companies in the world, especially in the media business, are winning. The Netflix, the Hulu's, the CNBC's, the CNN's are winning, which is great because they're producing a lot more content. The industry grew 80% during the pandemic. And I was like, who are small businesses scheduling content? Of course not.

Starting point is 00:04:48 Until now, we've been working with Amazon to build the world's first smart speaker scheduler. So literally, you can go to our platform, schedule a video, and so long as your followers and your customers are following you on the smart speaker app that we'll develop for you for free, then they're able to see the video, audio, or text-to-audio content within seconds of you scheduling it. Talk to me about, I'm a small business and I'm signing up for HelloWoofy, what that process is and exactly what the application does. So the process is, you know, typically small businesses will go to HelloWoofy.com, they'll schedule a demo, or in some cases they'll buy the product and then schedule a demo. Because one of the things that I love doing is funnels. It is a funnel all the way through to signing up to buying the product. Once you buy the product, you redeem the code

Starting point is 00:05:32 and the offering. There's funnels inside to schedule demos as well. In case you haven't done that, sign up for the newsletter. So we believe in funnels. And I really, really wish if other small businesses could do the same when they're onboarding customers, whether in real life or online, you really need to keep, you know, having pop ups and reminding people that there is more than what they've already paid for. And it's to their advantage to be able to do that. As far as the product is concerned, you know, as soon as you start putting in content into a library, the idea is that it starts figuring out, you know, how similar is the content so you don't get in trouble with other platforms one of the issues that you know small businesses face is that they keep posting the same thing over and over again and that's not okay according to twitter we

Starting point is 00:06:11 actually built a compliance engine that prevents you from going above 95 in similarity now you may not realize that you might be at 96 or 95.5 we will tell you that hey this hashtag this word too similar this phrase too similar, this phrase, too similar. Why don't we help you double click on it and swap it out for something else? Again, for a coffee shop owner, they don't have a degree in marketing. But if we can help them be competitive and not get into trouble, that's a huge value add for the business owner themselves. The idea is to build a platform for creatives. We don't want to build, quote unquote, the Bloomberg terminal of the world that's super clunky and super over-informative. We want to build something that's super beautiful yet super data-driven.

Starting point is 00:06:52 I love it. So essentially, we're helping small businesses keep their content relevant, fresh, and compliant. Exactly. And do it over and over again and never miss a beat. And that's not just for social, like I was mentioning. we built a product called journal that does it for blogging we then build a smart speaker scheduler that does it for smart speakers and our whole mission is to build the biggest company to help the smallest every step of the way we literally map the entire english language word by word to figure out exactly which words which emo, which other emojis based on the emojis you've used already,

Starting point is 00:07:25 which other hashtags tend to be used with one another based on 200 million data points. We're giving you the ability to understand what's being used in real time. And then of course, we're all cavemen. We like our images, right? Automatically find royalty-free images, not go to Google Images

Starting point is 00:07:40 because you may or may not be able to use those images. The image-based platform is doing really well because the fact is people are visual instagram did really well because it was visual as well and then video was introduced and guess what my theory is the more we get frames per second the more frames per second you know it's easier to you know distribute content by frames per second like tiktok it being an example or youtube being an example of video formats the more engagement you'll get and the more competitive it will become to market. And I'm really bullish on that. The evolution from Facebook to Instagram, you know, obviously Facebook agreed with it

Starting point is 00:08:15 when they bought them for what now seems like a valued price of $3 billion, I think it was. But yeah, but it was the same thing because it was everything that's super text-based on Facebook, everything was getting wordy and lengthy. And then the simplicity of the image based on Instagram, you know, like took off. And then exactly what you're seeing with TikTok on the video side, video is king, I think, as we say. And then you've got the ubiquitous nature of 5G networks coming that makes all of this happen. So my other theory is that waves per second, right? It's all about getting more data in a unit of time and then being able to allow everyone

Starting point is 00:08:50 to access that capabilities. Any trends, anything you're seeing beyond, you know, what you guys are bringing to life on HelloWiffy in the small business space for this year in 2021? Let's just face it, like from a relationship perspective, from a, you you know just development of i guess society in general everything that would have happened in five years happened in five

Starting point is 00:09:09 months um and speaking of trends in the business world you see the same thing it's so interesting people are becoming adaptable essentially to the uh to the circumstances and i like how video is becoming more common delivery is a lot more common now people you know this the last mind delivery is a trend is huge now. And then like I was talking about smart speakers, we're seeing a lot of content distribution channels really double-downing on that, even from the infrastructure standpoint, because not only more people on the internet and connecting, but they're working from home, they're pushing residential areas to have almost enterprise-grade technology to actually allow them to connect with

Starting point is 00:09:46 one another. How mapped out of a strategy do they need to have if they're coming on board with HelloWoofy? Or is it pretty much like plug and play with how they come into the platform? We wanted to make it so simple that even your kid could use this if they were an influencer, we know so many kids around the world who are YouTube stars and whatnot. And so we wanted to make sure that you were not only using something that was super simple, but data driven. And honestly, as soon as a small business jumps on board and starts using it, there's not a lot of learning curve. They literally just have to start typing, it'll do the work for you. And the more you do that, the more you notice how easy it should have been to do social media marketing. And then

Starting point is 00:10:25 of course, you can do other parts of blogging and scheduling other kinds of content as well. We have that whole Robin Hood effect, essentially, which is we want to build the biggest company helping the smallest, but how do we do that, right? And this is great for other startups and other small businesses who are listening in is you want to involve your customers from the very beginning. And I encourage each and every one of you who's listening in to build a community. We built ours in Facebook called Content Masters. But every single day, people are telling us what's working every single day. They're literally telling us what's not working. Did we make a mistake? They're happy to tell us that in the

Starting point is 00:10:58 Facebook group, and I'm happy to respond in video format. And I just encourage everyone to make sure that you're not just building a business for yourself. You really have to focus on the community and get your customers to get involved as well. We talk about this at the agency. We've been working on some Cisco. We've been helping our partner ScanSource. And I'm really excited to have Aruna Ravi Chandran on the show, the CMO of WebEx by Cisco. Aruna, welcome to the show. Oh, I am so excited to be here. And thank you for having me this morning. I think you're such an inspiration in your position, in what you've done,

Starting point is 00:11:34 and your kind of your history. And I'd really love to just kind of start there. So I was born and raised in India. And very earlier on, you know, my career path in India was actually chosen for me by my mom, who's a big inspiration. And I was told that I had to pick three career paths. I had a choice and I had to pick only one of them. It's an engineer, a doctor or a loser. And very early on, I loved, loved math. And I decided to basically pursue a career in engineering. And so fast forward, got my bachelor's in computer science, came into the United States,

Starting point is 00:12:11 had a very, very successful career as a group from an engineer to an architect into engineering director. Ten years into a very successful career, I decided that I'm going to make a pretty big and a risky move and decided to go into the darker side of the business, which is all about marketing, because I knew that I could make a bigger impact. Because even while I was in engineering, while I was a really good engineer, I always, always gravitated towards the voice of the customer. I also believe that the symbiotic marriage of technology and marketing together was an untapped supercharger, which pretty much will help in terms of innovation and growth, not just for my career, but also I could play a big role

Starting point is 00:12:59 in terms of being able to help technology companies. And now I see the world in a very different way through the lens of a CMO. And so given that, you know, I've now been on the marketing side for about 15 plus years, and it's been a continuous journey of learning. It was a pretty risk career path, because, you know, when you make a change like that, after a very successful engineering career, you don't know what you don't know. But I am blessed, grateful, and really happy from actually taking the chance and making a shift into the marketing side. You bring the technical side of the engineering, which is the science, if I can call it that. But you had this natural, we're kindred spirits, this natural humanity that, you know, comes with, you know, the art of storytelling. And it sounds like, you know, you've been able to kind of bring those two sides together because a lot of times, you know, marketers, a lot of them, that's not a standard career path. It's usually like one or the other.

Starting point is 00:13:59 Like I'm into the building blocks of engineering of how these things happen or these products are built versus the art of telling about them in some unique way. That's a pretty unique path. It definitely is a huge advantage because if you think about B2B companies, technology tends to be pretty complex. And so, like I said, I'm definitely grateful for my engineering background because it gives me the ability to, you know, build a narrative at a higher level background because it gives me the ability to you know build a narrative at a higher level but also gives me the ability and a seat at the table with my customers so that I can dig deep and into the product side it's definitely a balance and it's tough right like I always tell people you can probably be very good at two things. Two things. And that is a true statement, at least from my side. If you want to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, so be it.

Starting point is 00:14:51 But if you really want to be good at your discipline or really want to be good as a mother, you have to make a lot of hard choices. And I did a lot of hard choices during my career in order to raise my two girls. Let's talk about the book, DevOps for Digital Leaders. What was your inspiration for the book? And what was some of the key takeaways you want readers to get from it?

Starting point is 00:15:13 As I talked to a lot of the C-suite customers, and I learned about some of the best frameworks and practices they've actually adopted, I looked around and I saw that there were a lot of technical books on DevOps, but there was no book which was like a chronicles of DevOps, which talks about, you know, good frameworks and disciplines which customers have actually adopted and deployed. I will always be a technology-oriented CMO, and I will gravitate towards that. And one of the reasons I also wrote the book is because it basically helps build thought leadership. So because there are so many different opportunities out there

Starting point is 00:15:51 and like I said, I am really obsessed with the voice of the customer. Customer is the king. And I'll go above and beyond in order to make sure that we keep customers happy. Your key initiatives with WebEx and both maybe in the last year or so, but if certainly moving forward, sure that we keep customers happy. Your key initiatives with WebEx and, you know, both maybe in the last, you know, year or so, but if certainly moving forward,

Starting point is 00:16:09 what are some of the priorities for you with the brand? You know, things have changed radically. Video conferencing was known by a selected few, especially large enterprises were the ones who actually knew about video conferencing. Now, even a three-year-old knows what is video conferencing, right? Because with the pandemic, the whole market around video conferencing, being able to talk to people in a virtual way has been completely democratized. And so in fall of last year, the Cisco leadership team, Vijay Tu Patel, my manager, who's the EVP of the collaboration business, decided to basically make a big investment on the marketing side. At that particular time, we realized that we faced a tough situation because with the pandemic, even though we continue to be the leaders in the

Starting point is 00:16:57 enterprise space, but we did not have the hearts and minds of the end users, right? Like we did not have a perception that we are cool and fun. And so it was a big challenge, which the team and I had to basically undertake. That is where the team did a phenomenal job. First, we had to overcome perception issues. Second, we had to land big punches in the awareness fight that our new and louder competitors were already started to have a play in the market. And last but not the least, it's not just about media conferencing. It's about owning the conversation around hybrid work.

Starting point is 00:17:36 You know, I had to implement with my team three important strategies. One, had to rebrand WebEx. So in June 2021 of this year, for the very first time in WebEx's 25-year history, the team rolled out a brand new rebrand campaign with WebEx. For us here at WebEx, our purpose, and especially here at Cisco, is to create an inclusive future for all. And a big part of this rebrand is to also to send that strong message. Everything across the board, we want to make sure that we represent a diverse group across geographies, across age groups, across location. Because with WebEx, now we have the ability to basically bring everyone together, regardless of where you're actually located, regardless of the time zone. And so technology becomes a big enabler. We basically then launched a global campaign, which is called Driving Hybrid Work. And this campaign, we created with our favorite customer, McLaren, the Formula One team. It's

Starting point is 00:18:39 awesome to see the multiple different faceted use cases, which Zach Brown, now I've built a fabulous relationship with Zach Brown, and he actually tells you the value he and team are actually getting with fan engagement, with their slipstream technology, with WebEx. society is the complete picture of the hybrid work environment. And it sounds like WebEx is at the forefront of kind of helping define different things because I hadn't thought about the equal seat at the table. When you think about the mindset of participating in these things and where you might be and thinking about it in a smart, concise way about how to make people feel truly included no matter where they are in the world be at home be at work be at office whatever that might i seem is really fascinating and uh really forward thinking about you know some of the psychology involved with the hybrid approach it is and you

Starting point is 00:19:39 know i'll add another thing right like there is this growing concern about, you know, video fatigue. People are, you know, if you look across the board in the market, it's all about, you know, mental well-being. And that is another area where I think technology can play a big role. One of some of the key things we have actually done in order to basically focus on employee well-being is to come up with partnerships. So we recently created a partnership with Ariana Huffington's company. She's got an app which is called a Reset app. So with that particular partnership, like if you are going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting, research has shown that if you take a five-minute break between your

Starting point is 00:20:20 virtual meetings, it has a tremendous role to play in your mental health. Any big things out there that you're seeing coming? Work is not about where you work. between your virtual meetings, it has a tremendous role to play in your mental health. Any big things out there that you're seeing coming? Work is not about where you work. Work is about actually what you do. And technology now becomes a huge enabler to ensure that work gets done, regardless of whether you're working from home, office, or anywhere in between. And I think I am extremely excited for what Cisco can actually bring to the table to our customers, our prospects, and everyone around the world

Starting point is 00:20:53 in terms of being able to help everyone to embrace hybrid work. We're getting meta today. We're getting AR, VR, MR, PR, all the R's here, all the realities with my friend Allison Ferenci, CEO and co-founder of Camera IQ. What's up, Allison? Hey, Ryan. Thanks so much for having me today. Hey, my pleasure. I do want to start with what got you into the AR world? So my background is as a creative technologist. I have been, for better or worse, in the AR, XR space for the last 10 years. I got started when I was in graduate school, doing a master's in interior architecture and digital interactive art, and was really fascinated about what it would mean for digital content to occupy our physical world and was a

Starting point is 00:21:46 believer that I could actually bring those two realities closer together. How's that entrepreneurial journey been for you? Look, I think, and you know this as an entrepreneur yourself, I think the key to being an entrepreneur is perseverance. There's kind of, what is your idea? Is the market right? And then are you willing to just stick it out? Because no matter what, shit's going to be hard. Prior to founding Camera IQ, I had an AR agency. So had the benefit of understanding where big tech was investing from the hardware, meaning into cameras, right? It's the most ubiquitous piece of hardware in the world. You look at Apple ads today and this is all they show, right? Is the camera.

Starting point is 00:22:29 Had the benefit of watching them double down on the computer vision software. So the software that enables the camera to actually see and understand the world around them. Watch consumer behavior change from everyone becoming a photographer with Instagram to the rise of stories and Snapchat to, you know, everyone being a creator because of TikTok. And then also knew firsthand as a creator

Starting point is 00:22:51 how hard it is to create this content across platform at scale. But still, I would say, you know, it's hard as shit. It's a lot of pressure, but I feel lucky I wake up every day and I love what I do. And I want to define the future of computing. And I'm a believer that the metaverse or spatial computing is that. So as of now, running Camera IQ is the best way I know how to do that. With all of these technologies, whether we're talking metaverse, Web3, NFTs, it's all a function of kind of not if, but when. And I think part of bringing these technologies to bear is about the practicality of how that technology is implemented. Perhaps as a

Starting point is 00:23:36 creative technologist, I am at liberty to say this, but like for me, tech for tech's sake is art. Like for me, tech for tech's sake is art. It's all about how we implement that technology to make it work for, whether it's for businesses or for consumers, and hopefully in all of that, helping ourselves be more human. Universes kind of being built. I'd love for you to kind of define the metaverse the way you do and kind of where all these, how all these universes come together, maybe. Or are they? So what is the metaverse the way you do and kind of where all these, how all these universes come together, maybe, or are they? So what is the metaverse? Simply to me, it is the next evolution of the

Starting point is 00:24:12 internet. And there's kind of three defining factors that differentiate it from the experience we have on, of the internet today. The internet today is two-dimensional. The first is that it's going to be spatial. It is 3D. It is interactive and it's something we can move through, whether that is a virtual reality or virtual environment. So a platform or like Vans World on Roblox or Lightsaber on Oculus, right? Those are virtual environments or virtual realities. And then there's the mapping of digital content to our world. So augmented reality. The second is that it's persistent. I can map content into Times Square and it's going to persistently live there. It's not going

Starting point is 00:24:56 to disappear when I'm not engaging with it. And the same is true when we talk about a virtual reality. This is very common in open world games. Even when I'm not playing, the game continues. And then the third is that it's shared, that if you and I are in Times Square, not only is that object in Times Square persistent, but we are engaging with it together and seeing the same thing

Starting point is 00:25:21 and having it react to both of us. So in that way, it's shared just like you would in a virtual environment. What is it in terms of its medium, the how, we would kind of couch all of it in the big XR. So extended reality, primarily that's going to be augmented reality or virtual reality. And then the where is it? You know, I think some folks have this conception that it has to be a head-mounted display. The truth or the reality of it, pun intended there, is the ways that we engage with the metaverse today are through our mobile phones, our tablets, personal computers, gaming consoles. It will be head-mounted displays at some point, but I also would argue it's going to be holograms.

Starting point is 00:26:05 It's going to be really any piece of hardware that has cameras and screens. So it could be your Tesla, right? All become computing platforms that help us enter the metaverse. Some of the experiences, they were building AR and VR kind of into it a little bit, like where you would see through the lens of your thing and see different experiences within retail. And I always thought that that had all the potential in the world. And I think maybe we'll come back to that now that the usage is more viable, so to speak. You know, we talk about how the what you do with Camera IQ today is an investment towards the metaverse.

Starting point is 00:26:39 We're not trying to tell you you are 100 percent doing the metaverse and this is the promise of it, but rather, hey, how do I use the camera and create different AR experiences that address the consumer funnel? Meaning what are experiences that I can run on social that are going to drive top of funnel for me and have the outcome that I want? And we have the data that shows that, right? So for reference, an AR experience compared to a traditional post on social can reach up to 34x your audience versus a traditional post on social media, photo or video, passive in my mind, is only going to reach 0.5% of your audience. So again, if you want to widen your top of funnel, AR is the most effective medium. If we're talking about engagement and AR experience across kind of any platform has an average play rate, at least the ones coming from Camera IQ of 55%. When we look at folks at how

Starting point is 00:27:36 they engage with a photo or video, we're talking about, you know, I think it's like a less than a 10% engagement rate. And then when we look at conversion, meaning how do I use AR to visualize a product or try on a product before we buy, our customers are seeing at least a three and a half X increase in conversion rate. And in some cases up to 10 X increase in conversion rate on their e-commerce site. So for us, it's less about let's build fucking anything, right? And like do the never been done before, but instead, how do you get really practical and insert the camera or AR into the consumer journey where we know it's going to make a difference in your business? It's always this, the want versus the need. Like, is this entertainment or is this the universe to come?

Starting point is 00:28:27 Like, you know, is our world so fucked that we need to get into the metaverse? So I have, I'm of two minds. The first is kind of putting want and need aside. I think if we look at Gen Z, which is going to represent the largest consumer base in the next, I think it's like in the next five years, they're going to have the most spending power of any generation of all time. The reality of Gen Z is they don't consume the way that previous generations have. They're not interested in photo or video. They're a generation that expects to have a voice and platform. They all consider themselves creators. They are a generation that expects to have a voice and platform. They all consider themselves creators. They are a generation that expects to see themselves reflected in your brand. They're a generation that wants to

Starting point is 00:29:13 play with you before and participate in your brand before they ever purchase from you. And a lot of that behavior is drawn from gaming, right? That interactivity, it's also drawn from platforms like TikTok. If you want to engage with them, you can't just depend on making your marketing campaigns photo and video. You have to be thinking about interactivity, which is a key principle in the metaverse in this kind of next iteration of the internet. I think you're right there. I mean, because we have brands all the time. They're like, do we need to be worried about this? Do we need to be thinking about this? And I'm like, some of them, it's the answer is yes. And I wouldn't say they have to worry about it, but they need to be brainstorming. And then some it's like your budget doesn't necessarily

Starting point is 00:29:57 allow for it. And the opportunity isn't necessarily here for it. And I think it really depends. It's, I think it really depends. I think it's brand and vertical specific, but I would say there's kind of two things depending again on vertical that your brand is in. The first is if you're a product company, meaning you're selling a digital good, the most important thing for you to be doing as a business is starting to digitize your brand.

Starting point is 00:30:22 You have to start, we talk about as digital twins. Even if you can't go back in time and digitize your brand. You have to start, we talk about as digital twins. Even if you can't go back in time and digitize all of your products, moving forward, how do you make that part of your pipeline? That's easier said than done. So which is why I'm like, that has to be a day one. It should be part of your investment just based on the fact that visualizing products in 3D and AR can increase your conversion over three and a half X. How do we change our workflow at the top of production and design to make sure we're capturing those 3D models?

Starting point is 00:30:50 But if you're able to do that, that asset can be used not only along your entire kind of e-commerce funnel, but can be used in your entire customer journey to help them make a smarter, better purchase that not only increases your sales, but will help reduce your returns. So again, if we want the metaverse to be as rich and interactive as the experience we have on the World Wide Web today, we have to start investing in 3D content.

Starting point is 00:31:18 Don't get me wrong. You can use 2D assets, but if we're trying to sell your product, you have to digitize your content in 3D. Primarily, Camera IQ is actually enabling you to build these experiences and then have them work across platforms. So across all of the major social platforms, as well as on your e-commerce site. When it comes to digitizing your products, that's a whole other workflow that we have a number of partners that we can introduce our customers to to help them do that. Okay. So it's more of the AR experience once you have the digital assets. You can essentially build on our platform and we're going to guarantee that it works on every major AR platform. We started with social because that's where consumers were in the camera every day. We're now in web so we can support your e-commerce site. We can do

Starting point is 00:32:05 SMS marketing. We can do email marketing pretty much anywhere that you want to invoke a webpage. We can run. For us, the future really starts to look at both next generation hardware as well as virtual environments. So while we're extremely passionate on a personal level coming from a camera first world, so AR world. For us, VR is just AR with the lights out. And so what you'll see from us over the next 12 to 18 months is starting to think about, again, next generation hardware, as well as the ability to distribute into virtual environments and really focused on how do we become the best tool for creating, scaling and managing these experiences? Where do you get inspiration? Is it just naturally like intrinsically in you? Like I'm just driven, I'm inspired as a person. The thing now that I get

Starting point is 00:32:59 most inspiration from is like, I love building tools. There is nothing more exciting for me than seeing one of our customers. And, you know, it's whether it's a social media marketer at a brand or a graphic designer, who's, you know, using proficient in the Adobe creative cloud, having that aha moment of like, holy shit, I can create an AR experience. and it was joyful and fun. And I didn't spend hours trying to watch YouTube videos. You know, our customers say we're like the Canva of AR, if you're familiar with Canva. That for me, that democratization of technology

Starting point is 00:33:36 is what I get out of bed every day for is wanting to invite more people to participate. To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford.

Starting point is 00:33:56 Stay radical.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Digital Platforms Shaping the Future of Business with Aruna Ravichandran, Allison Ferenci, and Arjun Rai

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