The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – SkyTed: A Mask for Silent, Secure, and Confidential Calls, CES Show 2024 Interview

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

SkyTed: A Mask for Silent, Secure, and Confidential Calls, CES Show 2024 Interview Skyted.io Show Notes About The Guest(s): Stéphane Hersen is the founder of SkyTed, a company that has developed a mask to allow people to make phone calls in high-density environments without disturbing those around them. With a background in aviation and cabin interiors, Stefan saw the need for a solution that would enable people to have private conversations in public spaces. SkyTed's mask uses advanced sound absorption technology to ensure that only the person wearing the mask can hear the conversation, making it ideal for travelers, gamers, and business professionals. Summary: Stéphane Hersen, founder of SkyTed, joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss his company's innovative mask that allows people to make phone calls in high-density environments without disturbing others. The mask uses advanced sound absorption technology to ensure privacy and is suitable for travelers, gamers, and business professionals. Stéphane Hersen explains how the mask works and the various applications it has, including in the military and education sectors. He also discusses the upcoming Kickstarter campaign and the future plans for SkyTed. Key Takeaways: SkyTed has developed a mask that allows people to make phone calls in high-density environments without disturbing others. The mask uses advanced sound absorption technology to ensure privacy and is suitable for travelers, gamers, and business professionals. SkyTed is launching a Kickstarter campaign to bring the mask to market and plans to expand into other sectors, such as the military and education. The mask has applications in various industries, including aviation, trains, and gaming. SkyTed is focused on creating a product that is not only functional but also stylish and customizable. Quotes: "We just allow people who are traveling to make phone calls in a train, in an aircraft, or anywhere where you are in high density and you cannot talk." - Stéphane Hersen "We developed this mask with Airbus and the European Space Agency to reintroduce calls on board of the aircraft." - Stéphane Hersen "The mask uses advanced sound absorption technology to ensure that only the person wearing the mask can hear the conversation." - Stéphane Hersen "We have applications for gamers, business professionals, and even in education for students who need to dictate their class notes." - Stéphane Hersen "Our goal is to be the world leader in sound calls and continue to develop innovative products for different industries." - Stéphane Hersen

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Right now, we're broadcasting the show. If you're watching this like 10 years from now, like people do on YouTube. It is January 1st, 2024. I i gotta get used to saying that 2024 and so if you're hearing the show in most recent times or maybe you're hearing it in the future you know whatever year you're in just fill in the blank eh but happy new year so there you go from the chris voss show we love you and i hope all of you didn't drink too much and you're getting off to the New Year's, right? The great thing about the New Year is we've got a lot of great plans for the show. We've got a lot of great ideas and new things that we're going to bring

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Going on 15 years, we've been bringing you the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the astronauts, the U.S. ambassadors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all the most brilliant minds, and people who start their companies and teach you how to do it as well or give you tips on how they do it and ideas. So there you go. We're covering CES 2024. This is a big consumer electronics show, 2024.

And all week long this week and probably in the next, we'll be interviewing the CEOs and different people who will be attending the show. Lots of folks down in Eureka Park, as we like to call it. Gary Shapiro, the president and CEO, my good friend who makes an annual appearance

on the show the last four or five years, will be on this week sometime. I believe on Wednesday or Thursday. So be sure to watch for that as well. It's always good to have him on to tell us what's going on. Stefan Hursin. So, Stefan, welcome to the show. How are you?

Perfect. Thank you for having me. Give us your.com. Where can people find you on the interwebs? People can find us on SkyTed.io. SkyTed.io. So give us a 30,000 overview of what Sky skyted.io is and what you guys do there yeah we we're we're creating a wonderful new product which is just here just show it very

quickly for the people we can see on the screen we just allow any people who are traveling for example to make a phone calls or conf call like Teams or Zoom in a train, in an aircraft or everywhere where you are in high density and you cannot talk because your neighbors either is going to be bothered, either is going to listen to whatever you say. So we developed this product with Airbus, a dev in Europe, with the European Space Agency because we want to introduce calls on board of the aircraft. Imagine you're flying from East Coast to West Coast during the day.

You cannot talk today on the phone by the FCC simply because they don't want you to bother the whole cabin with your conversation. So they have to kill the mic of people who can make calls. But calls are here. I mean, satellite connectivity with Starlink and OneWeb is here for many years. So we're just creating this mask, which is going to absorb the sound of your voice, and you're going to be able to talk

without sharing the whole conversation with the next door, the guy sitting next door, or eventually some competitors, which might be just on the backseat, and listening to everything you're going to say. I love the idea and concept because, yeah, I mean, sometimes you need to make a call on a plane. Sometimes as soon as the plane lands, you know,

I'm turning on the phone and starting to get the hits. And, you know, sometimes I'm, you know, you're like, oh, crap, something's on fire. I got to put it on fire. Let me call him real quick. But, yeah, you don't want to have that whole conversation. You know, you're standing in line or, or you know there's lots of different places where you're on a shuttle from for example earth and there is a guy crying next to you we're going to work on the future of the product but i'm an ex-vp cabin of arabus i was in singapore for five years

and one airline told me there's no calls on board unless you find a way that 300 people can can make a call without punching each other on the face. That's pretty much what the airline said. We are creating havoc. So we're kind of, I would say, a safe line here to make sure everybody is going to be, you make the call and nobody is going to be bothered with you. There you go.

And how long have you been developing this? Well, I've been, you know, knocking at every door on how you can make a cool silence how you can really stop 110 db which is pretty much is the the vent going out of the mouse which is very very loud wow just to stop it so i've been talking to the guy who know how to stop big noises the engines jet engines suppliers they are when you look at the engines on the inlet coil you have a very tiny holes which gonna absorb the sun when the sun is gonna be is gonna be draft from from the when the air for is gonna go through the jet engines and you have the weight to really stop to to redump on the sound of the new generation of jet engines.

So we incorporate that into the mask. So you can see there is tiny holes inside. And these tiny holes will stop the sound when you speak. So that's the way it works. It's a very passive treatment. And that's going to go on the whole frequency of the voice for 100 hertz to 6,000 or 7,000 hertz. So that was very high-tech. So we work with the Onera, which is equivalent of the NASA in France,

working with Airbus too, and we incorporate that into a mask. So it's pretty much a very high-tech product. That is awesome. So if I'm sitting next to someone on the plane and I'm making a call and I'm like, the person next to me smells and they're an idiot, are they going to be able to hear me?

Well, you won't be. Let's make it very clear. We stop minus 20 to minus 40 dB. So if you yell at it, yes, he's going to hear it. I'll just say it really quietly. But if you say it very quietly, you just want to make a call. You don't want to sing like Pavarotti, you know, to the opera tenors. That's not going to happen. But the idea that in the patent we just filed a few months ago

is going to stop pretty much the sun. The sun is going to stop at your shoulder. So if you are in a Yankee class, pretty much it won't go over a couple of inches from your mouth. That's pretty much the brilliance of this product. You won't be able to stop saying anything, but your neighbor is not going to be able to hear if you're speaking or not. So in terms of perceptibility, it's very, very, very quiet.

Hey, you know, I have an idea because I've, you know, like you, I've flown a lot and crying babies. Maybe we could put these on the crying babies. That's a request for parents. But for gaming, we know that gamers have a big problem. So our first market was gamers. They came to me and kids are yelling and mothers come one time, two times, three times.

And we know from the aerospace study, from pilots, because we are, like I said, backed by Airbus and we work with aerospace ecosystem that when you have an alarm when somebody come to you and you are playing for example call of duty and your eyes is going to catch pretty much what's saying and and you will not hear anything you're pretty much deaf to your mother saying you have to speak to speak on the low voice so that's why we have you have to get something very vivid on that. And the mother will come with the app saying she will be able to come into your game and stop the sound to ask you

to stop for two minutes and calm down and release that. We call that voice awareness. And that's something we are going to launch for parents. So we've been talking to big franchise, they came to us and we came to think this is not good to leave kids yelling and crazy because we find something on the cockpit for pilots. If you start to really raise up your voice, the problem is that you're going to start to be very vocal and you start to be very aggressive. Aggressive come with the level of your voice. That's why pilots are used to speak very lightly and very politely when they have an emergency to make sure stress is not going to pass over to your next colleagues.

So, tempting, we're going to have a way that we're going to monitor your voice and not making sure you're not going to be able to yell. You'll be able to speak to your friends, not waking up your babies or whoever is next to you in the room. And at the end, we're going to give you a ping if you speak too loud. So we give you something, a kind of measure. Yeah, the apps is doing a wonderful thing. We are going to work with AI to monitor how your voice is still going to go out of the mask

because we do minus 20 to minus 40 dB. But if you start to yell at 110, something is going to go in the room. And in this case, you will be able to monitor the sound bubble you're creating and making sure it's not going to impact some people around you. And you can calculate that

and do that with your finger. So that's not the product. It's not only the mask. It's pretty much the app to make sure that nobody will be able to... Sitting around you will be, I will say, impacted by your voice. There you go.

So if you ignore the pings after a while, is there a voice that comes on like Alexa and says, shut the fuck up? Yeah, you will have a ping like in a cockpit pings. You know, we're pilots, so you're going to hear something like saying it's way too loud. It's better than your wife saying you wake up the kids. I'm very, very nice. Or the next seat neighbor said, I'm sorry, you have to stop the call now. And that's why you can do that on Amtrak. We have been studying the bright light from Orlando to Miami.

We've been to all the Amtrak network. I mean, you have 4Gs. I mean, today the call is already here. You can make wonderful teams or Zoom sitting on the train from New York to Boston or Washington. You know, it's a no-brainer. The only problem is what's going to be the reaction of

your next seat neighbor. And that's today something we have been able to solve. You know, this would be big in gaming. You know, I do a lot of gaming, not as much as I used to anymore, but I do a lot of gaming. And, you know, we'll have somebody come on comms and like,

hey, guys, how's it going? And we're like, yeah, the wife's sitting here asleep and the kids are asleep and I can't talk. Yeah, you can talk. You can be two in the room. There is no double click or double voice. You can play confidentiality in the same room with people against you and talk to your teams.

You know, it's the idea come from, if you look at Call of Duty, this is pretty much what the army has come. Because the army came straight to us after CS 2023. Oh, really? And we developed something I just want to show you one time. This is a major mask. So that's a mask for the army. That's something which can be helpful here, and we're something I just want to show you one time. This is a major mask. So that's a mask for the army.

That's something which can be helpful here and we're working on it. So look at the special force storming into a building and the door is not where it's supposed to be. Then they are going to be able to talk and said, well, team Bravo goes left, whatever. I mean, they're going to be able to reshuffle the whole situation without being able to talk. And it's're going to be able to reshuffle the whole situation without being able to talk. And it's still

going to be very silent in the room. That's why we work on upgrading the mask with new AI tasks to be able to be completely silent. We call that the zero dB emission. That means you have no emission of sound. And you're still going to be able to communicate. That could probably be really good

for operational awareness because then the enemy that might be hiding out in the house, room, wherever, can't hear your commands, can't hear what you're up to, and you have more of an element of surprise, in essence. In fact, in some cases, I guess you would have a really great element of surprise. I could see SWAT teams using that too. Yeah, that really came as a natural need for them to storm into a building completely silently. Completely silently, yeah.

So we have transport, we have gamers, we have also business people. We are handling some very important information like bankers, brokers, and so on. And we are developing a product which is just for them. And that's going to be on our Kickstarter offer next week. We're going to show that at CES. It's going to be fully encrypted. That means we take your voice from here, the microphone, transform,

and we'll encrypt it. So it's going to be fully encrypted directly from your mouse. And after we erase, the sound's going out. So that means nobody will be able to pry into your conversation now i noticed there's an office desk on your on your board back there your background i know in like silicon valley they have these places where it's all open spaces and it's insane the amount of noise that it's in there with all those people that

have no walls and usually no soundproofing either to the point that they actually have these things pots people bring in that are like they look like phone booths have you seen those probably yeah yeah it costs five five five grand that's completely insane and every employee wants one so you're finished you're going to wind up by having five thousand employees five thousand booths this is not work back to offices at that point. We just talked about we're the same generation. We know about phone booths. There is one guy picking a call and 10 guys

waiting. So that's not going to happen. Superman is somewhere on the line. Yeah, that's clear. So keep that in mind. The idea that you can wear your mask, you start to call, and you can talk to your doctors bankers without sharing your life with your next next neighbors i mean that's the same thing

that's true so you could be in an open office setting and you'll be able to use this mask for that yeah at the time i was in 2018 i was at arabus i was a po4 for cabin interiors in asia and and we had this idea of putting a mask to people because we wanted to be able, at the time, to open calls on board. And it couldn't happen, but COVID make it happen. Why? Because, three things. We've been in our house for months at 30 dB.

So that means we are used to a very quiet place to work, and that's where we're used to a very high proficiency. Your brain is really picking up strong in very quiet environments to now i think in the u.s 92 million people are doing hybrid work you are in the office you're on the train you are in the metro taxi whatever in a restaurant you have to take calls on the go and the number of calls went from 4 to 30 so every week you have 30 calls and nobody's gonna to bother where you are. So you have to take it wherever you are.

That's why we developed this product. First with the app, but the voice is not going to go out, but the noise is not going to go in. So that means up to 100 dB in a very loud bar, you can still make a call. People might hear there is background music, but your voice is going to be crystal clear.

You know, I didn't really think about that, but yeah, you're right. More people working remotely and they're doing stuff like going into like WeWork, shared office spaces for local stuff. I know, you know, I've worked out of Starbucks before, you know, I'll just go in there to take my laptop in just to get out of the house. Sometimes when I go out to dinner, I'll take my laptop with me so I can kind of do work but kind of relax and have something to eat. Just get out of the studio.

You start getting cabin fever after a while around here. But yeah, I can't really make calls when I'm in those places or when I'm in a loud, noisy restaurant or something like that. But, you know, sometimes you've got to make a call, you know, and there's nothing more than a pain in the butt than having to go outside. But, yeah, people, you know, I know that Starbucks has a lot of people that are usually in there working. A lot of the WeWork spaces are open spaces. You can, like, I guess reserve a private conference room, but then it costs extra, and, you know, you've got to make sure you have the time.

But I can see how this can be facilitated in so many ways. You know, there's always some idiot wherever I go, especially if you go, like, the airport. Well, there's a lot of idiots everywhere I go. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Every work is everywhere. I mean, from the aircraft, from the launch,

sometimes you wish that you could put yourself in the sun bubble. There's always some guy talking at, you know, whatever. It's like, do you need everybody on the planet to hear your buddy on the call there? You know? Yeah, and you know what? It's also people can hear what you say. That's really something which can be an issue because when you make a phone call, unless you talk about family parties whatever but the rest is

this is under your responsibility to not share any information outside of your company and if somebody came and pry into your conversation this is pretty much something which might come to your to end your career so that's really something putting lots of pressure on people to make sure that you have to make the deal customer is calling you right now and you have to make sure that nobody's gonna is gonna pry into your conversation so that's something we really take care of how soon do you see you coming to do you guys have a product that is market now yeah we're going to launch it on Kickstarter because that's the best way to go after to the big B2C market.

So we start, you know, AirPods was launched in 2013 on Kickstarter. So that's why we're following the same pattern. You know, the Ariba business is something which is quite interesting. The name is called Skytel and it's on Kickstarter next week. We're going to start it live from CES and we are going to run the show for,

I mean, to run the campaign for 30 days. And after we're going to go on B2B. Our idea is to work with big conf-cold suppliers because we opened the mobility market. Imagine Teams, Zoom, Google Meet today, they have no market on trains. Tomorrow, we can be on aircraft, on trains, everywhere. People will need to have transportation and will be able to have a sound call.

So for them, it's a brand new market. So we're eager to make a special product for them, like hardware as a service. That's something we work on. I don't know if COVID is still running around. I just had like a friend, their whole family got it. And I was like, wow, okay. So I guess technically it might help a little bit at preventing COVID and spreading of, you know, we were, I think we were talking before the show or during the show that, that I had, I kept getting sick on plane flights when I would fly to events like CES. And we used to call it the CES SARS, where, you know, you go to CES, South South by NAB all these shows that we sit to around to

before COVID and and and everybody would be in you know the conventional space passing around whatever sort of sicknesses we had from China to Europe and and then we'd all get on a plane together and it was just like a tube of just the worst. And, you know, everyone would get home and they'd be sick. We called the CSRs. I don't think Gary ever called them. Yeah, well, it's maybe, but we don't make any claims on else. I mean, we could have a version in the future, but that's a completely different story with FDA agreements and so on.

So you have to make claims. You have to withstand them. Sound is sound. We have the sound acoustic and we work on that. At the first, we wanted to make a COVID mask to be pretty clear about it. But now the need for COVID is not so developed so far. So we're

not going to do it for a period of time. There you go. Well, until it comes to market, I'll continue what I use to keep people shut up. Duct tape. Well, until it comes to market, I'll continue what I use to keep people shut up. Duct tape. Well, you can do that. It's clearly something that's, well, it's pretty much how much pound you put to the guy next to you. And if you have, I don't know, 300 pounds, usually people will listen. Yeah, you can make their call.

I mean, this is not a big deal. Now, it's very interesting. We call that a science which is called psychoacoustic, which is psychology of the sound, how a sound might really impact some people around you. That's pretty much, you know, the science behind it is when somebody talks

on the phone, you are trying to understand what's going to be the other part of the discussion. Because when two people talk on a train, you don't care because you have the whole discussion, so it's quite light. The problem problem that when you pry into a conversation you just get the people in front of you and you try to imagine what is a conversation on the phone and that's really what start to really stop your cpu because that's taking a lot of energy to get into this conversation and try to and still continue to have it this is what you get nuts

that's why people get nuts when you talk on the phone on trains or on Metro compared to two people talking to each other. That's why. There is science behind it. Yeah. You start to lose your mind, too, because you're listening to the in-name conversation they're having. That's really not that interesting, buddy.

Or you've got some guy on the phone talking about, how did my syphilis test turn out? We've all been there. Can you rattle off the link to the Kickstarter off the top of your head? It'll be on the Chris Voss show for people that want it. Yeah, it's going to be a SkyTED on Kickstarter. Okay, so go to skyted.io. We created SkyTED.

The name is very simple. It's how to make a TED Talk in the sky. That. Yes. We created Sky. The name is very simple. It's how to make a TED Talk in the sky. That's why we thought. I could be able to do this speech in the airplanes without having 26 people around me. Can you stop it now? That's great. We're going to have people start calling in for planes on the podcast. That'll work out.

Yeah, you're going to have that. Connectivity is here. I mean, we have little satellites. We are now creating a wonderful product for IBDworks. Gamers is coming on that. Office is going to come next.

Armies, that's another tough cookie. So we want to be the world leader in sound and code, which is a complete new market for Teams, Google, and for Zoom. So that's definitely something we are really cracking up the nuts.

And we are really working on the AI too. We have lots of solutions. So you're going to see us every year at CES, definitively this brand new product. I can see so many applications for this. So I think you've hit upon a grand idea. And I mean, definitely just everything for being quiet and with remote working is going away. People aren't going back to offices, at least not here in America.

And so there's all sorts of ways we remote work. People go out to do stuff, whether it's an office or even if you're just a busy, noisy, small office can really be annoying. I've had a few of those. Yeah, it can be. One more time, it's not going to stop completely your voice. So people cannot scream.

It's not made for singers, opera singers. Ask me about it. I say no. But we have medical sections. When we work for kids, we cannot write correctly. So they're going to be able to stay in the room and dictate the their the class you know the class books and so on and take their own notes verbally and do the test with their friends so they're not going to be severed that we work on on csr and that we're paying some doctors to help kids to go back on

school because they will be able to talk to somebody without impacting the the the pupils next to them that's something which is definitely coming. We have so many applications about sound calls. I can talk to you right now, but I'm not bothering anybody around. And that's going to create new services. We work now with trains, with trains, airlines, and of course, we are backed by Airbus Dev.

But it's going to be a major change in the way we communicate, in the way we get information. And that's going to protect people. And that's really quiet. Also, the atmosphere in trains or everywhere when you heard somebody yelling on the phone, that's a real issue. In Europe, you know, you guys are all trains. Same thing with China. So, yeah, that's probably big. So, you're going to be at Eureka Park down in the basement there of the Venetian at CES show 2024.

Going to love it. I like saying that for some reason. I don't know why. I missed CES 2020 with COVID. Or, no, we did. CES 2020 went off. And then 21 was the year that it didn't go off. And then we helped make sure it went off in 2022.

And then we did 2023, and here we are. We've come full circle. So it's so good. And the ironic thing is I probably won't be there this year. We're doing everything virtually for our interviews. So it was wonderful to meet you again and hang out with you, man. And I'm glad this is really rocking. As an entrepreneur,

seeing you guys succeed and seeing you guys develop these products is definitely wonderful. Give us your final pitch out to people for the Kickstarter and where to go

on the.io. We're going to start on January the 8th, a completely new campaign for this wonderful product here. So it's going to be, it's going to come in different colors and different options from very the wire, simple versions to the most complicated encrypted.

So that's allow anybody to make a silent, secure, and confidential calls everywhere. Campaign will run for 30 days, Kickstarter. And we really take the wave of CES to launch it. Usually you don't do that, but we really believe we have such a tremendous request from the industry last year that we want to launch it at CES. This is the best place to be.

And we are going to deliver at the end of the summer 2024, and we're going to be able to work on trains one more time. This is very for the hybrid work for trains, aircraft in Europe, it's working in Asia, and it's going to work for everywhere for the hybrid work when you need travel. So same thing for gamers. We have a product which is as good for gamers and travelers. So if you are 40 years old and you still like to games or 50 years old, you're going to be able to use it. That's something we have developed.

And one more time, we're going to come with more product every year. We want to be the world leaders in sound calls. And we go for a very great show. So if you come to see us, come and see us at Zurich Airport, you will see we're going to have a big OLED part background. So it's going to be great. There you go. Thanks again, Stéphane, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, man. Thank you very much.

Bye-bye. There you go. Thanks really appreciate it, man. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. There you go. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss, the big LinkedIn newsletter, and the 130,000 LinkedIn group over there as well. Chris Foss YouTube and Chris Foss tickety-tockety, Chris Foss 1 on the TikTok. Watch for our continuing coverage of CES 2020-24. Is it 2024?

Did I do that right? 2024, right? Why am I thinking there's a 1 in there? Man, I don't know. I'm like 100 years off, see? It's the first one. Give me a break, people. I'm just starting out. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys

next time.