This Week in Startups - E1118: Emergency Pod! Two former Apple executives are building the iPhone killer – breaking down the leaks, patents & scoops regarding Humane’s product

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

Check out Humane: https://hu.ma.ne FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis Referenced in this episode: Fast Company Article: https://www.fastcompany.com/90555755/humane-imran-chaudhri-bethany-bongiorno-funding Imran Chaudhri's website: http://imranchaudhri.com 9to5Mac Article: https://9to5mac.com/2020/03/12/humane-apple-poaching

Attention, everybody. This is an emergency podcast. Two Apple engineers with thousands of patents have left Apple to create an iPhone killer, and we know what it is. Humane today on the emergency podcast. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by I Quit, a new show on Discovery Go that tells the stories of 11 amazing entrepreneurs who followed their passion while being mentored by some of the world's best in business. New episodes air on Saturdays at 11 p.m. This show is brought to you by Shopify, the leading e-commerce platform. Hey, everybody. Yes, it's an emergency podcast. It is an emergency podcast. We saw some incredible news in the last couple of days. On September 25th, Fast Company published an article to X Apple Rockstars have raised 30 million to build the next iPhone. And so we got digging into what is this stealth startup. It's name. humane, and the website is hu.m.m.n. And we know what it is. Or at least we think we do. We got leaks.

We got patents. We're going to get into it today. You can follow their Twitter handle, H-U-M-A-N-E. And they raised 30 million by our friend Sam Altman, former former CEO of Y Combinator, Sequoia Scout. He did an app called Loop, and I think now he's doing open AI and investing in startups. And Locky Groom, um, with participation from Mark Beniof, PlexoCAP, Capital, I think I saw O'Mallic. A bunch of people have backed the startup raising $30 million before launching a product is a huge series A and something to take note of. The two founders are husband and wife team, Imram Chaudry and Bethany Bonjourno.

They're two former Apple executives. Now, I'm going to get into their backgrounds. I'm going to get into the patents, and then I'm going to share with you the leaks we got. So they spent over 20 years at Apple creating some of the world's most beloved customer products from what we understand, the Macintosh, iPod, iPad, Apple Watch, and iPhone. And Imran is best known for inventing the user interface and interactions on the iPhone. His personal website, I-M-R-A-N-C-H-A-U-D-R-I-D-R-I-com is a huge flex with a scroll of thousands of personally Fahill patents from 1995 to 2017 before he.

started humane. So if you go to that website, you can see all of these patents. And it's a pretty interesting flex for sure. Bethany is a former Apple director of software engineering. She was responsible for all software project management for iOS and macOS according to what we've researched. And she played a key role in the launch of the original iPad. Now, of course, we don't have complete information. I asked them to come on the podcast. They didn't respond. But we thought this is really fascinating. And we have all this information available. So we should start speculating and handicapping what humane is. So from the article, the Fast Company article, while founders Imran and Bethany refused to reveal what they're working on, we will reveal it

today. Its co-founders seem to believe it will have the same kind of impact as the iPhone. Their goal is to create the next big computing paradigm. And we think actually, knowing what we know, if what we've been told is true, I think they have a shot at doing something very interesting. They have been poaching Apple executives recently, according to what we've researched again. Ruben Caballero was recently hired by Humane in March after 15 years at Apple. Caballero led the early iPhone team with Imran and was most recently a VP of Engineering. So let's break down the clues here, shall we? Humane LLC filed a patent on May 10th, 2018.

That seemed to be an early version of the product. The patent was published six months later on November 15th, 2018, and the patent title is wearable multimedia device and cloud computing platform with application ecosystem. Okay, so it's a wearable multimedia device. Great. That means it's not in your hand. It means it's on your body, wearable. It's got a cloud component. Okay, who cares? Everybody has a cloud component. But it's got an app ecosystem, which is a clue that they want other people to use this device to do interesting things. And in terms of the excerpts from the patent, there are some interesting clues. The device is lightweight, small form factor, battery powered, and can attach to a user's clothing

or an object using a tension, clasp, interlocking pinback, magnet, or any other attachment mechanism. Okay, so now we're starting to think like a lapel or something you would put like a name badge, maybe, something like that. Maybe the Star Trek communicator comes to mind. The wearable, again, back to the patent, the wearable multimedia device includes a digital image capturing device, e.g. 180 field of view with optical image stabilizer. that allows the user spontaneously capture multimedia data. In other words, there have been other devices that you put on your lapel.

You've seen them on Kickstarter that just record a picture every 15 seconds. They called it lifecasting or people have attached a GoPro to their bodies and done lifecasting. Justin Khan famously did Justin TV where he would wear a camera on himself. So now we've got this in our minds, right? It's a lapel item. You press a button or it's automatically recording or maybe you use your voice. And back to the patent document transatlantic transit. transactions, financial transactions with minimal user interaction or device set up. Okay, that sounds like the Apple Watch.

Tap your Apple Watch pay. Okay, so they're obviously taking a nod from the Apple device. The content data includes point cloud data to provide 3D surface mapped objects that can be processed using, for example, augmented reality and virtual reality applications in the application ecosystem. Okay, so now this is getting really interesting. So imagine you've got this lapel like the Star Trek communicator when they double click on it. And there was actually somebody making one of those on Kickstarter to record audio. So this idea of a wearable device that records audio or video already exists in the world, but this one sounds like it's going to cost $1,000 made by Apple people and has a lot of killer features. Now, this is a killer feature already in smartphones.

So now we're thinking a smartphone attached to your chest. What would happen if you had a smartphone, all those components built into your, you know, blazer or your jacket? Well, that's what this is starting to sound like because it's going to make a 3D model of the world in front of you. So if it's making a 3D model of the world in front of you, it could live. literally make a virtual reality session of you walking through your office, etc. And this would be generated by a depth sensor, LiDAR, or time of flight. Okay, these are expensive components being put into this

product. So I think this thing's going to retail for, you know, six, seven, eight hundred, maybe $1,000. It sounds like it's got, you know, iPhone-like pricing as well, maybe half the price, I would guess, of the $1,200 one. So I think $600 to $1,000 is going to be the price range here. the cloud computing platform can be driven by contact space gestures, air gestures. Okay, this is critical because this is part of the leak. We're going to tell you about later. Air gestures means you put your hand up and there have been keyboards, right? Remember air keyboards or people would project a keyboard onto a desktop and you would be able to type.

So that's already existed. So this thing has components of startups we've already seen, whether it's the iPhone and smartphones or the lapel to record your life casting or a GoPro camera or, audio recording devices. And now we're starting to see, okay, you know, maybe this thing could do gestures. And so we'll get into the leak and the leak had some specific details about this. And the device will also include biometric sensors. So it could maybe be recording your heart rate. But it's not going to be touching your skin. It's going to be on your lapel. So I don't know how accurate that will be. It'll also include environmental sensors. I guess that would be temperature.

It's going to include a, according to some of the sources here, an accelerometer. So that's interesting, but not that big. And then there's a flow diagram in the patent that says receiving context data from wearable multimedia device. That flows into data processing pipeline with apps based on context data and user request preferences. So what this says to me, that is if it sees a painting and you're in the Louvre, it would

know you're in the Louvre. That's the museum in France for folks who are uncouth in this audience. Some of you maybe fall into that category. So the Louvre, if you were in the Louvre, you could, this device would know you're in the Louvre because it's got GPS and it would be passively looking at the paintings, which means maybe it would feed to your AirPods, which aren't in this device, but assuming it would pair with AirPods, maybe we would tell you about the Venus de Milo you're looking at because it knows it's the Venus de Milo because it knows your GPS and it sense where you are and it processed that

data on demand. Maybe if you were in the grocery store and you were looking at that. a can of soup, it would identify that can of soup and give you the ingredients, right? Or you'd put your hand out and would show you the ingredients or tell you the prices, right? Okay, so this is really interesting. If the way the Alex and Siri works is they're waiting for you to say, you know, hey, Siri, or whatever, this thing would be passively using visual and looking at people. Maybe it sees somebody does facial recognition and knows they're in your social graph where they were on your Instagram feed and they're a friend of yours and tells you in your ear their name. So that's super

interesting. Passive processing of data happening in the cloud. Processing conceptual data in data processing pipeline, whatever that means, sending output of data pipeline to wearable device and or other device to present the output. That is the AirPods, obviously. Or maybe they'll come with glasses. So this is starting to me sound like they will come with not only the lapel smartphone, right? So a smartphone on your chest, above your heart, a mini smartphone. And then maybe you have glasses that present stuff or you have the projection projecting onto your hand, the lasers showing you, gestures, et cetera. So you never have to look down. And if you look at the humane website, it's a bunch of people looking down with their

neck's, you know, tilted down, looking down at their iPhones, and then one person is standing up. So that's the idea behind the startup, according to what we're told, is no longer, are you going to have to look down at your phone? You could be present. So here is a look at their website. They show everybody with the bent next looking down. And then you see one person, this black shadow in the middle of this crowd.

who is, and it says, how do you know it's time for a shift for a new kind of tech company, a new computing platform? It starts with imagining something better and knowing what it's going to take to get there. It takes intellectual leaps, pushing the limits of what it means to live with hardware and believe in software, pushing the limits of our thinking, letting go of everything we've ever done to bring about a better way. We believe humane is the future. and we believe it's for everyone,

but that's just what we think. We hope you enjoy what others have to blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's so pretentious and ridiculous. It's definitely from Apple executives. I mean, this is literally like a Silicon Valley hoolie parody of a Silicon Valley company because it's all about belief. It's almost like a religious cult.

I mean, you're just basically taking hardware that everybody else has done already and putting it together an interesting package. Pump the brakes. Okay, you're not Steve Jobs. and you're not Jesus or Gandhi as well. I mean, it's so ridiculous. But it is fun to go through this.

And if you look at the architecture for the wearable device in the patent figure number eight, it shows as a camera system and audio system, environmental sensors, biometric sensors, a depth sensor that would tell you how far you are away from the wall or the Mona Lisa in my example. And, you know, there's really not much else here that is super interesting.

a memory interface processors, operating instructions, sensor processing. This is all basic stuff. A touch controller and a touch surface and other input controllers is the interesting, you know, the I.O. subsystem in this patent. That's kind of the interesting part. And the touch controller could be anything. So they're really thinking about putting a computer on your lapel that you would, you know, attach to your jacket or shirt apparently, which is going to be weird.

And awkward, you're going to leave it in. it's going to get lost. But anyway, let's just say it's a, you know, we've seen it before with the Star Trek communicator. But a touch surface is a very interesting one. And I think that's part of the magic here is the input and the output. So without having to look at a screen, the input in the output will be occurring without you looking at a screen. That is the key innovation here. In terms of job postings, they're looking for a certain type of person for the company that raised the 30 million. A camera design engineer, a camera validation image quality engineer and a camera tuning engineer and a machine learning computer vision software engineer.

So this is heavily around computer vision. This all speak to itself. They're keeping everything very close to the vest, but they put all these job postings out there and the patent is out there if you know where to look for it. And so pretty obvious what's going on here. However, we have leaks from people who have either seen the product or are somehow have had other people tell them about it. And we're going to get to those.

where we get back after this break. Okay, I want to tell you about a new show I've been watching on the Discovery Channel. It's called I Quit. It's a story of 11 incredible founders who quit their 9 to 5 day jobs to go all in on their passion, project, startup with no safety net. They took the risk. Over the course of the year, they're guided and mentored by three successful business leaders, including Harley Finkelstein, the CEO of Shopify,

and Debbie Sterling, the CEO of the award-winning children's multimedia company, Goldie Blocks. You may have heard of that. And Trisha Clarkstone, the founder and CEO of the award-winning creative tech agency, WP. Narrative, give them all this great advice. So here is your call to action.

I Quit, premiered in August, and it airs on Saturdays at 11 p.m. In addition to watching the show on Discovery, viewers can stream. I quit by downloading the Discovery Go app. And they have a pretty good app. So viewers can join the conversation on social media by using the hashtag,

I quit. And following Shopify. on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest updates, and to share your entrepreneurial stories with them. Shopify also very big fans and supporters of startups. And Toby's been on the podcast back in the day when Shopify was a tiny little company. They've done amazing. Congratulations to the Shopify team as well.

The series is made possible by Shopify, which is the leading e-commerce platform for building and bringing your business online. Everybody knows that. Congratulations to the team over there. They have quite a run. All right. Let's get back to this amazing point. podcast. Okay, the billion or trillion or zero dollar question, depending on how the startups go.

Hardware is hard. But it does seem like a fascinating device and I'm excited about it. I'll be totally honest. I will be the first to buy it. What are they making? Well, I got a lot of DMs and I got a lot of people, you know, sharing information with me. And so somebody said they're building a contextual recall memory device, an AI cloud wearable camera with an app store. They want to put a camera in every human and then reconstruct 3D environments or just fetch images and videos to you. It has a search engine where you could ask while walking on the street, what building is that? And they'll answer it. Okay, this is a very interesting.

So that must have been something they talked about in their demos, et cetera. And that's something I was just using with my Louvre example. But yes, you're walking by a house. You could say, is that house for sale or, you know, how many square feet is that house or looking at a building in a city? Hey, tell me about that building in front of me. says, oh, that's a flat iron building, it was built in this year, etc. These are the companies inside of it. They're first time founders with huge experience. Hope this helps. Big fan of the podcast.

Learn so much from you. Thanks, Jason. And then another insider told me, imagine a thin eye watch that you clip to your appell. So this is the accurate information, I believe. A thin, you know, maybe the size of a cookie, but, you know, square with curved edges. And it will serve as something between Snapchat, Spectacles, Google Glass, and an eyewatch. So that means they're probably going to build glasses. But it has a laser that can project a UI onto your hand for interactions like dialing a phone number. So this is, now we know what this is. You put this little square on your lapel, it clips on or it magnets on, and then you put your

hand out and you say, make a phone call and it projects the phone call. Or you say, call an Uber, and now it projects onto your hand. with its lasers, a UI that says, would you like Uber X, Uber or whatever, and you just press a button on your hand. Boom, boom, boom. No need to take out your phone. No need to look at your watch. No need to break your discussion with another person. And the thesis is they want to have people more immersed in the real world, which is what their website says. So that checks out. And the patent seems to explain that as well. They're basically former Apple execs who want to, former Apple execs who want to, former Apple execs who want to break phone addiction.

So that's going to be their marketing, I believe, is hey, phone addiction is bad. Use our addiction. Use our phone that doesn't require you a look at the black mirror. And then on Twitter, somebody posted a leak. And it's been deleted, but somebody sent us this image that was tweeted. So if you're watching us on YouTube or you're watching the video view of the show and the Apple's iPad, you'll see this. Or you can just go to our YouTube.com slash this weekend.

where you can type Humane, this weekend startups, and it should come up. You'll be able to find our video pretty quickly. And here's the League Prototype. So let me zoom in section by section. Cloud Connected Site enabled AI platform with server-side app ecosystem. And so here you go.

That looks like, that little square, looks just like an Apple watch. The hardware, according to this, is 180 field view camera with optical image stabilizer. Makes sense. Sounds like a GoPro. LTE and GPS. Of course, that makes sense.

an accelerometer, that makes sense. LIDAR and time of flight sensor, that's expensive and doesn't make sense. But okay, I guess they want to make that 3D version of the world. Photovoltaic surface to sustain battery, inductive charging, which means you could probably just snap it off on the magnet. It's going to be a magnet clip. That makes sense. And just drop it somewhere to charge it.

You're probably going to have to charge it a whole bunch. There is a word here, hydrophobic, tending to repel or fall. fail to mix with water or suffering from hydrophobia. So I guess it is going to be, that's a fancy way of saying waterproof. The mounts, tension clasp, interlocking pin back, or magnetic. And they show that here. So a clasp would be like a pen, right? Like that little clasp on the back of a pen.

The interlocking pin back would be like a lapel pin. And magnetic is obviously like when you get those really crummy name badges with the magnets and they fall off five minutes after you use them. Hopefully they use something stronger. In terms of what they say in the, this leak the camera captures moments you didn't think to capture, moments you want to recall. You can mark that by tapping record and those moments will be queued to be processed on the server. So you recall them in a different style.

This is just like William Gibson had like this little machine called God's machine or something that will record your whole life. Where this is basically live casting, which means these things are going to be banned in bars or you're going to get punched in the face like people with Google Glass. a bunch of dipshit, like, tech people went to bars with Google Glass and got in fights. And it's like, if you walk up to people with your Google Glass on, you're taunting people. It's like walking up to somebody like a paparazzi with a camera in their face. It's just obnoxious. So I predict these things will be banned. Humane will be banned from gyms, restaurants, clubs, and bars.

So that's going to be a non-starter. And I had a friend Addeo from my friend of Deo from the Founders Institute. Many of you know him. He's been on the pod, friend of the pod, friend of mine for a long time. And he showed up with one of these stupid life casting things. And I'm talking to him. And I said, is that a camera? He's like, yeah.

He's like, don't worry about it. I'm like, what the fuck? I'm sorry, what the beep? Are you doing? Beep that out, please. What the beep are you doing? Like, we're sitting here having a conversation. Like, and you're recording me?

He's like, oh, it's just recording like low of it. I don't care what it's recording. Take that stupid thing off. And I just left the table. I was just so mortified for a day off for doing something so stupid. Like wearing that stupid camera to a dinner. And it's just uncutely. So I do believe Humane will be banned in workplaces.

It'll be banned in conference rooms. It'll be, so if you wear it, be prepared to get in fights, is what I'm saying. So this could be a non-starter for this device, I do believe. Just like people when you go to concerts or parties now, they put a sticker over your front and back phone. And if you take your phone out, you know, have the sticker on, they throw you out. I don't know if you've been to parties like that, but I think it's kind of cool. I love the idea of collecting phones before you go into a party and making everybody more present. Images and videos could be authored in various styles of filmmaking, documentary lifestyle, candid photojournalism, whatever street.

Yeah, okay, who cares? Nobody cares. AI assisted image processing done at the server. That's kind of nice. Yeah, like Google photos does and then ship it back down to you with some advice. But again, I find it creepy and just appalling that people would be wearing these things. I'll be totally honest. In, you know, most situations, like a conference, it's going to be, if this thing becomes the standard, I mean, whoof, I do think it's like the end of privacy. you can always turn the camera off manual, the cameras off when not being worn. Okay, that makes sense, but there's got to be some cue.

So I think when the camera comes on, it should be red. There should be a red light on it. So I will demand, and the chairman of the internet, that's me, has spoken. If you wear a humane device and it's recording,

the red light should be on. Period. End of story. If they don't put a red light on and they don't alert to people that it's recording, then I think people should boycott this thing, and I think the government should get involved

in maybe saying, hey, if recording, red light should be on. it's just a basic concept. I mean, I don't even know if you have to have the government involved. I think the fact that, you know, just like in Star Wars

that most icily, they don't let the droids in. We don't serve your kind. Like we don't have droids in here killing the party. I think bars are going to be like, we don't want your kind in here. Like don't bring in your recording device.

Videos could be able to capture point cloud data via LIDAR input into allow 3D surface maps objects to further compression, obviously. Data is encrypted in private. Only you can recall the data and live the moment.

That's total BS because it's only private. because it's only private until you hit publish and make it public. So that's stupid. Relive the moment on connected scenes, phone, TV, computer, or laser or via laser projection likely in the version two. So that's interesting. You could record something and then just like the hologram of Princess Leia to Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope.

Obi-Wan, you serve my father in the Clone Wars, you know, you get the whole idea. You put your hand down and all of a sudden it projects, you know, what just happened in 3D space. very cool. The platform, going beyond, and this is from the leaked slide, I guess, that people were sharing on Twitter, that was then deleted. So I guess somebody deleted it. Who knows if this is real or not? So, again, for this whole podcast, take it for what it's worth.

This is just stuff collected on the internet. Who knows what's true or not? And again, we invited them to come on the pod. They declined. Going beyond communication, fitness, activity, and digital assistance, the CRM will take over micro-transactions. Now, I don't know what CRM stands for in this regard. But we'll see if we can figure that out.

We'll take over microtransactions. It once required a smartphone and now even simpler, faster, and more fluid with the aid of site-assistic context awareness. Which way, what is, when is? So that's interesting. Which way is Starbucks? What is that building? When is the movie starting?

Hybrid crammer and LIDAR time of flight data streams allow for accurate natural gestures to achieve quick responses to question. What kind of car is that? What is the building? Will this fit my wife? How much day today? How much is this on Amazon? Put this on my wish list.

So again, that classic example of knowing the calorie count of the food you're eating, or estimating it, or you're shopping and you want to know if this, you know, Contigo Cup is available on Amazon and what price is it so that you don't get ripped off when you're shopping in person. Personal live broadcasting, Instagram Live and Snapchat, senior monitoring. How's my mom doing today? Has she had her medicine? So you put this on your mom and you spy on grandma.

and make sure she's okay. I'm being slightly facetious here. But I do think the privacy issues now that I'm walking through this are just ridiculous. I mean, this is going to be a privacy nightmare for this company. I think this could be banned in most places. Like people are just going to revolt against this thing. Show me my daughter's goal from last week so you can do memory recall. Meditation.

Did they mean meditation? AI enabled personal guided meditation example. you're in the office and it guides you to look out your window. All right. So they put a little calm, putting a little calm fairy dust on it. I get it. And the final thoughts on this leak prototype,

it kind of reinforces what we heard from those two insiders who gave us the anonymous information. And it syncs with the patent. So if you want to know what humane is, it's a wearable device that life casts and answers questions for you and it projects onto your hand with an interface and probably will be compatible with glasses

and be compatible with AirPods or any other. wireless. Yeah, and a lot of this is written in sort of like the Queens English. So we have color instead of color and stabilized instead of stabilized in this leaked document. And I think Chargerie has an English accent. I couldn't tell from the video, but I think that would check out that he maybe wrote this in English. So anyway, pretty standard. So I guess the questions that come up on this, number one, is it a cool device? Is it hot or not? It's super hot. It's a great idea. I love these wearables. I think it's awesome. I think they should. Now, the second issue is, will people adopt this? Of course, people will adopt any of these great technologies and play with

them. Will it get mass adoption? I think privacy is a non-starter for this device. Schools will ban them, offices will ban them, bars and clubs will ban them. And then that leaves people walking down the street or in their own homes, which is also super creepy walking around your own home and lifecasting yourself. And it creates a massive privacy issue. And if God forbid this thing got hacked and the Russians or Chinese got it, like they have the TikTok data, obviously, they could be spying on you know some kid could wear this and their parent is a senator or works for the president or is the president and all of a sudden this thing is leaking really important information so privacy is the main issue here I think what they might want to do is have the camera have

what you have some people put on their cameras on their desktops or their laptops that little cover that slides over that could be an elegant solution so thinking positively here about this privacy eliminating device if it actually let you slide over the camera then if you're in your office, sliding it over the camera could be the default. But this is super creepy. Obviously, people are recording people on their phones all the time. But if you see somebody holding your phone up, you assume they, based on the way they're pointing it or even if they have it out, that they could be recording. When I see people walking up to move their phone out, I assume they've already started the camera. I assume when people

have it in their pocket, they might have their recorder on. I assume I'm being recorded all the time. But having a perfectly balanced camera on your lapel, that would be like everybody, the equivalent of everybody walking around with a goddamn GoPro, mounted in the middle of their chest. And that is creepy and not a world any of us want to live in. So that's going to be the challenge of this startup. And the next thing is thinking about this as a business. Well, they're going to take on hardware, they're going to take on the app store and they're going to do this at the same time Apple's coming out with reportedly AR glasses. This thing, I think if you have this thing, I don't think you need AR glasses. If you have AR glasses, I don't think you need this because the

air glasses will work as well. And obviously Apple is going to work on this. And obviously, Apple is going to work on this. And obviously Apple is going to be vindictive because these people left to create a competitor to Apple. So there is going to be, just based on my experience in life, a massive vendetta from Tim Cook, Eddie Q, and the Apple team to destroy this company. So this is going to be the fight of a lifetime. Now, do I think it's a good bet? I probably would have invested in it if I saw it because I love a moonshot. But the chances of this succeeding, if most startups, the chances of them succeeding, which means being a large sustainable company is maybe 10%. they become a large sustainable company with millions of dollars or more in revenue.

That's 10% of startups. I think this has like got a 1% chance of actually becoming a sustainable startup because anything they do, Apple and Google and everybody else are going to be able to compete against. And so it's going to be a long, long odds. But I still, to be clear, would have made that bet if I had the opportunity to invest. I would have invest. You know, I'm assuming if they raised 30 million, they raised that 100 million post and the 30 million bought 30% of the company.

that's what I would guess. It could have been 120, it could have been 25% for 30 million. It could have been maybe they went even 90 million, 33% for 30 million. It's basically like raising a series A and a series B or a seed and a big series A at once. So you do see hardware companies do this sometimes because it's so hard. This will get them through probably, I don't know, 24 months and get them to the product being launched. So that's probably how Sam and other people who invested in it thought about it. but Apple will try and kill this company and then privacy will become a major issue.

And when you look at these, the major hardware tech IPOs of the past decade have not done great. Hardware is hard. Fitbit IPOed and then got acquired by Google. The early investors obviously did great. The later investors maybe didn't do as well. Peloton has been amazing. So that's an entire ecosystem and that company is wildly overvalued right now.

But I am super bullish on Peloton. I think they'll have seven or eight hardware devices. and maybe two versions of each. So they'll definitely have a tonal competitor. They'll definitely have a rowing machine competitor. They'll have two versions of every device, a cheap one, an expensive one. And so Peloton is going to be, I think,

ultimately a standalone company for some time to come. And God bless GoPro, you know, the focus level of that founder and the focus level of that team, they've remained independent. And every time, you know, they're in a commodity business. but GoPro 8 and GoPro 9 are incredible.

And you keep seeing Casey and other leading video people buy them and talk about them and assess over them. So, you know, if you are like Peloton or GoPro, you can keep going it alone. Fitbit gave up and sold to Google. I thought that was lame. I wear Fitbit. I love Fitbit. Hopefully Google doesn't screw it up. But, you know, Google did an okay job.

I give them a B on the Nest cam, which they bought Drop cam. I still use Nest cams. I think they're okay. they could be so much better. So I think Google, you know, I give them a seven for their drop cam acquisition. They didn't shut it down, but really the product didn't get meaningfully better. And it's really slow and kind of embarrassing for Google that they can't keep up with Ring and Jamie Siminoff. And they just don't have the focus level.

So, I mean, Google did a great job with YouTube, obviously, in that acquisition. They did a great job with the acquisition of Android. But, man, they've done just a mediocre, at best job with their, drop cam nest acquisitions and Fitbit, I'm hoping Fitbit keeps releasing better and better products. And maybe it should be really the pixel. They should make the Fitbit pixel, which would match the Fitbit,

the Pixel 5 and the pixel earbuds or whatever, AirPod competitor, and Fitbit should all be one group, right? And they should really work on that ecosystem. And I don't know if they've done that yet if they're all separate. So I guess do you want to be recording your friends at all times? Do you want this device?

I'm interested in your feedback. And of course, to the founders, would love to have you on the pod. We'd love to have had you on the pod. But I understand you're probably going to make a big deal about this with a major announcement. So good luck with that. And I will be the first to buy your product. I do sincerely wish you guys and gal's great success over at Humane. It seems like a great company to go work for.

It's a moonshot. I love a great moonshot. maybe, you know, when I say I give it a 1% chance of being a large standalone business, I give it a 50% chance of having a positive outcome for the investors because I do think if they work on this for three years, they'll build up a bunch of patents, they'll build up a bunch of technology, they'll build a loyal, I do believe they'll build like a loyal following of Robert Scoble type, you know, gadget obsessed people. If they execute half as well as they did win inside of Apple, they'll get this early thing. And then Bezos or Microsoft will buy it.

So I think it's on an investment to put it in $30 million at $100 million, I think there's like if they just hire 50 or 100 great people, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook will all want to just buy this company for the team. So you do have some downside protection as an investor. If I haven't ruined my relationship by doing this podcast, I would love to invest in the company. So hit me up the team over there. I love to put a quick milly or two in.

I love the idea. I do think you've got to listen to me about privacy. sincerely, that is going to be the Achilles heel of this company, and you've got to get ahead of it. And the way to get ahead of it is to put a red light on it and to put a cover over the camera. And when you cover the camera, it says off, and there's no light on. It just says off. And you could do that with an always on display. It just says camera off, sound off.

So when you see it, it says camera off, sound off. When the camera's on and sounds on, it says camera on, sound on. But you probably won't do that because you will think it will creep people out. but I would get ahead of it. That's the way I would do it. And then actually what I would do is I let people geo-fense. So I could geo-fense my office and say no cameras. I could geo-fense my house and say no cameras.

So if I could prove I was the owner of this building or restaurant, I could actually geo-fense it and turn them off. But you're literally, you know, look it up, Nick, and put into the picture right here that no Google Glass signs. There were literally no Google Glass allowed signs that people started printing up. And that was pretty hilarious. Thanks for tuning in to another emergency podcast.

Yes, we'll be doing emergency podcasts when there are. Emergencies. Look forward to more of them. We'll see you soon. Bye, bye, everybody.