Blyott’s Medical Asset Tracking Business

Transcript

• Steve Statler 00:00

  Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. It's wonderful to have you here. And we are going to be sharing an interview with an alumni of Mr. Beacon, as in someone that bought the beacon technologies, Hitchhiker's Guide to the ecosystem book, which is really the reason I started doing this show, I finished doing the research, which consisted of dozens and dozens of interviews with solution providers, and I couldn't bear to stop that process. And so I continued, and so we have the CEO of Blyott, who's going to be joining us Gery Pollet, and he is a seasoned entrepreneur is a great businessman. He's also a super nice guy. And we'll be talking about health care, which is the market that he's focused on. And we I think, do a pretty thorough job of getting him to explain his business model even goes into the pricing, the use cases that he's focused on his partnership approach. So we try and use this show as a way of sharing patterns that are helpful to entrepreneurs and solution designers. Whether you're a business person or a technical person, it's always good to understand solutions and how solutions are designed. And from Gery, you'll get a real masterclass in, in his approach to breaking into this market. So hope you enjoy. The Mr. Beacon podcast is sponsored by Wiliot intelligence for everyday things, powered by IoT pixels. Gery, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

  Gery Pollet 01:55

  Hello, Steve, happy to be here.

  Steve Statler 01:57

  Well, I am really looking forward to hearing a bit about Bylott. So let's start off and just give us the elevator pitch of what your the company that you founded that you lead does.

  Gery Pollet 02:15

  We really focus on asset tracking, to put it very simple in healthcare environments. And when we talk about healthcare environments, the focus has been so far hospitals. But we see now more and more traction coming from pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, and also human elderly care companies. Very important, what we always tell our clients is that asset tracking is only a first step, the main question, and also the main value is what can you do with the data. And so we see ourselves more as a big data analytics company than as a as an MPLS, or asset tracking company. And I think that's very important to buy to pitch. That's the pitch we make to our clients. The asset tracking is the first step. The real value sits in the data analytics, and how can we help you to optimize processes? Find bottlenecks in the organization's things like that?

  Steve Statler 03:16

  So your typical customers say a hospital why? Why did they come to buy it? What's the problem that they're trying to solve?

  Gery Pollet 03:25

  There are in fact, four main problems. So let's take a typical hospital have say, let's say 500 deaths, on average, they have them what we call moving or floating assets per bets. This can be a pump a bet, an oxygen cylinder, you name it. So typically five minute bets multiplied by 10, which means 5000 Floating assets. With an average value, we have seen what we have learned so far, have about $4,000 per asset. So you have a pool of money floating around around $20 million for a typical hospital of 500. That's where the challenge is, first of all, nurses losing a lot of time, by by finding equipment for the first problem they would like to address. The second problem is a lot of equipment is either stolen or getting lost, I think more lost than done stolen and lost by accident. A patient is moved to another hospital. They take the pump with him and the person never comes back. The third thing and this is really something we try to differentiate it's helping hospitals to calculate the utilization ratio of their assets. Because tomorrow, the head of nurses say, Okay, we have 800 pumps, we need to add an extra because we have a shortage, but there is no way to show that so that's what we're trying to help to help with. And on the fourth one is really process optimization. And then one of the things that's currently Allah has a lot of attention. It's what they call patient flows. How long has the patient been in the surgery room in the recovery room at the physician, things like that. So these are really the challenges that we are trying to fix by using Bluetooth technology. This being sets, there is another very big challenge. And that's regarding consignment of products in hospitals. A lot of pharmaceutical companies, a lot of medical device companies, they put products and consignment in hospitals. And they can only be invoiced the moment they have been used. And as you can imagine, many of these big big companies, pharmaceutical companies, they visit the hospital every few days or weeks just to see what's in stock, and what they can invoice and how they what they have to put new, new, new items in the stock. So and this is also something we tried to help.

  Steve Statler 06:00

  That's, that's an interesting one, I think the first set of use cases are real and very significant. And I think global problems. This consignment one you don't hear about so often. I've definitely heard about it, and I really believe in it. So who is the customer with the consignment use case?

  Gery Pollet 06:27

  That's something it's a very good question. And it's still something we are trying to investigate. We think at the end it will be the medical device company or the pharmaceutical company. And just to give you an example, I cannot mention them because with some of these big players, we have NDA signed, but there is one very big player and they are selling, they are selling devices which are being used during surgeries. And their global turnover is for a particular type of devices around $10 billion per year. Around 50% of that turnover is consignment turnover, which means it can only be invoiced the moment it has been been used at the hospital, believe it or not, between 10 to 50% on a yearly basis as the depreciated so it's considered as being lost because they don't know where this they cannot simply not invoice it. So we are talking about huge, huge losses, both for for these companies, but also for the hospitals because at the end, they are being charged more because if somebody loses something, they are being charged more.

  Steve Statler 07:40

  Oh, okay. Yeah, I was wondering about that. So you have a storage cupboard that's got a bunch of these products in and the idea is that the nurse is supposed to sign it out. And presumably sometimes he or she doesn't do that. And so it's it's lost, but the hospital ends up paying for it anyway, is that right?

  Gery Pollet 08:03

  Sometimes the hospital ends up for paying it. So what we have seen so far is a lot of discussions between these big players and smaller hospitals say because the hospital says okay, we have never used it. We never received it and and discussions. Yeah, but we received it, blah, blah, blah. And when we came to do the stock counting the inventory counting, it was not there. So discretions, and at the end sometimes the hospital has to pay other times medical device company in order to keep the relationship in fact safety, you know what we are going to pay. But on top of that, a lot of a lot of waste of time. I have another example of a company A company renting these special mattresses, for hospitals, they put them into storage rooms and only when they are taken out of the storage room and brought into a patient room they can invoice the rent the rent of such a mattress. And everyday this company goes to every storage room in every hospital just to do the stock counting to see what they can invoice. So this is of course for more than asset tracking for a hospital it is these are the other challenges I was I was talking about.

  Steve Statler 09:14

  Yeah, so here's an opportunity to save money that makes the whole medical system more more efficient. So where have you got to in your business? What How long has blyat been in existence?

  Gery Pollet 09:30

  So we started with the company really started in April 2090. And we launched the first products end of 2019. So we are little bit over two years in existence. We are now going towards 20 hospitals using our services. But we recently the plan now is really to expand internationally via partners. Ships. Yeah, so we recently close deals with, for instance, Aruba, who's now promoting our services, we have an upcoming deal, I can already disclose the name but with companies like Ingram micro and Vodafone. So this year is really the year that we want to expand internationally, we have proven we have proven the business model, and the technology in our home markets, which is Belgium and the Netherlands. But now it's time to expand wider.

  Steve Statler 10:30

  Now, congratulations on reaching that. So what would a telco what role would a telco have in your business?

  Gery Pollet 10:39

  What you see right now is that healthcare is for telecom operators, also very important because they deliver connectivity to hospitals, for instance. But of course, they want to sell extra things on top of that. So for them, IoT is very important. When you take when you talk about IoT, the first step is, of course, to know where something is. But yeah, what you will see coming in the coming years is that it's an extra sensors, you can not only track a patient, but you can also monitor his blood pressure, whatever. I want to see what the sell courses are, they build their own IoT ecosystems where they gather all this data is being visualized, taking care of integration with patient data, files, etc. So that's what they're trying to build added value on top of a very commodity product name, the bandwidth.

  Steve Statler 11:34

  Yeah. And what about on the Wi Fi side with Aruba? I'm really interested in these companies. We featured them a lot on the show with a whole series of interviews, and they have their own offerings. In this space, I think they're trying to sort of climb up the stack, but they also want to be an ecosystem player. So what's the nature of your partnership with Aruba?

  Gery Pollet 12:00

  Well, we have a partnership with Aruba. But we have also partnerships with with other companies in the make a robot, I'd like to talk about a robot, because if you look at the healthcare markets, and then again, I don't know the healthcare market worldwide, but I'm talking for Belgium and the Netherlands. In healthcare, they are market leader, I think they have somewhere between 40 and 50% of market share. And what we discovered very, very early on is that in nine out of 10 cases, the hospitals that have a robot have Bluetooth built in, which means guys, the infrastructure is there to start asset tracking. And very often hospitals don't know that they have this Wi Fi access points with with built in Bluetooth. What you see in dt is that these, these providers of technology likely are robust, they try to sell their own asset tracking solution. But there are two disadvantages with it. And this has nothing to do with the quality of the product they're trying to sell. The first disadvantage is that what you see happening is hospitals, they form change. Now they form groups together. And it can be that one hospital works with a robot, another one will work with best another one with 40 units. And they want to keep track of assets throughout all these different environments have different types of access points. So that's the first challenge. And the second thing is these companies are really interested in selling their technology. And they are they have a less focus on really solving solving the problems and the problems like I told you, location is the first step. But then what do you do with this data? And that's not their cup of tea. That's not their business focus. But okay, that's fine, because that's where we can make a difference.

  Steve Statler 13:55

  Very good. And so it's complimentary. They have infrastructure, which can be the gateway to the cloud for for your devices. And then, from a go to market perspective, how do you work with them? Are they helping you to sell or how does that work?

  Gery Pollet 14:20

  Actually, yes, Aruba, for instance. They just launched the campaign in in Europe this month, where they invited every country their top rate resellers are and distributors. And this this year, it's about IoT, and they are presenting us as the edit the let's let's say inexpensive at the resolution for healthcare. So yes, we see a lot of traction now coming because of these companies.

  Steve Statler 14:52

  Excellent. Yeah, between Vodafone and ruber. I think they could keep you pretty busy. Let's talk a bit about the the The technology, the hardware, the software and so forth, can avoid that we're always interested, what's been your approach in terms of the tags and the and the readers of those tags? What's what's in your portfolio.

  Gery Pollet 15:18

  So when we started with the company in April 2019, I had, in fact, four requests towards the team. The first request was it has to be Bluetooth, because battery lifetime, the size, the cost of these things coming down all the time. The second thing is that I said everything has to be cloud based, I don't want to install specific software or hardware in the hospitals. So that was the second challenge. The third challenge was, let's try to use that possible, the existing infrastructure. So it should work with all players out there, a we mentioned Aruba, but we are supporting over almost a dozen dozen different plays right now. And the fortune or the for the demand was really, we should make everything accessible via web hooks and rest API's. Because I don't want that the nurse has to use to learn another application, like course, she has her application, we have just to make sure that the location of an assets can also be shown in the application, see if she is using. So these were the four demands. Coming back to your question. Or solution consists of four components, I always explain to my clients, you have the tax, we have our own tax, but I will come back on the tax in a moment because I think that's a very interesting story. See, the second thing is what we call the locator see the Wi Fi access points with a built in Bluetooth, if that's not available, we also developed our own small gateways with or without 4g. So the locators sent all the information of the text to the Cloud Platform, this is the fourth component. And then the third component. And and the fourth component is really the rest API's and web hooks to integrate with other applications. This being said, we also developed our own mobile and web applications. So four components tax located cloud platform, the Blackboard platform, and then the REST API is coming back to the tax. We developed very soon on around tag because we were looking for something very small for hospitals with a couple of features that they really require, like next to location, the possibility to do movement detection it to see if a bet starts moving temperature very important and hospital environments and also a push button that you can press a button, for instance, in the recycle bin in the surgery room is full, press a button and make sure somebody is notified to come and pick up the bin. And we also had to develop something that was very easy to clean. And that's how we came up with with a bio pack. But you have probably seen him I always say it's around the size of a two two euro coin. With a with a guaranteed battery lifetime of five years, probably we could bring it to 10 years if if we would like to. And so

  Steve Statler 18:30

  your business model you selling those or is it a SAS kind of structure? Or how do you challenge the SaaS

  Gery Pollet 18:40

  model, it's really a SaaS model where the customer pays a one time setup fee or activation fee per asset they want to track and this setup fee includes the tech hardware. And then it's a monthly fee per asset per per month. That's how it works The SAS model, but it's a very attractive business model. Just to give you some ballpark figures when we talk small quantities, let's say 100 tax, the activation fee will be $15 Approximately multiplied by 100. And then the monthly fee will be around one point $25 per assets multiplied by 100. So for us, like what are the dollar

  Steve Statler 19:26

  dollar 25 and assets just

  Gery Pollet 19:29

  per month, multiplied by 100. That's $125. And then of course based upon contract durations and volumes, these these costs come down. But it's a very attractive and simple model to start with. Because one of the things we learned also, when I was doing this research before we started blyat is up at the LS has been existing already for 10 years, but it was never widespread because of the very high costs. have added tax and the software around it. And I said, Okay, we have to bring down the price, because at the end the hospital that they wants to track to track and track all the assets. And not only the pumps, because there is no budget left to do to do the rest of the things.

  Steve Statler 20:20

  Very good. And you mentioned temperature tracking, what what are the temperature related use cases.

  Gery Pollet 20:27

  It's mainly refrigerators in the hospital pharmacies. Yeah. But what we now see coming also is to track and trace medicines. And an example is, for instance, blood backs. The blood back is normally the Red Cross striking everything to the hospital right temperature, what we discovered that happens very often is that the blue bag is taken out of a refrigerator in the hospital, and going with the boot back to, for instance, a patient through but then the patient does not need it, the brood back stays there for maybe 1015 minutes, and then goes back in the refrigerator. And this is something that's never supposed to happen. So there they want to start tracking and tracing also this smaller assets, and then of course, you cannot use these taxes because they are too big. Which brings us down to exactly new technology.

  Steve Statler 21:24

  And so self promotion, but how does that fit in? Pretend that I'm not the Head of Marketing for Wiliot? What's what's what's the strengths and limitations that you see that technology?

  Gery Pollet 21:42

  Yeah. So as I said, In the beginning, is typically a hospital 500 deaths 5000 moving assets, what I say to my clients is put a tag on it with a battery, because you want to be sure that for instance, the pump can be found, even if a nurse has hidden it in a cabinet, because she was afraid that she would run out of pump. So please don't use video, thanks for that. But now it becomes interesting, the moment you start to look at all the consumables, the medicines, but also all these other products that these medical device companies bring in and these pharmaceutical companies, you know, you'll no longer talk about 10 assets per bet, but probably around 1000 assets per bed per year. And therefore you need other technology, you need a technology that's inexpensive, but it's also very small, because you have to put it on a very small package or have things like that. So the potential is enormous, and healthcare for these kind of technologies.

  Steve Statler 22:51

  And how does this all get viewed by the staff? You? You mentioned the RESTful API's? Do you provide an app and a dashboard? Or do you integrate into the hospitals systems? Was the arrangement there?

  Gery Pollet 23:10

  Yeah, so we do provide a dashboard and an app. But if I'm very honest, honest, I think that 80% of our clients, they use the rest API's to integrate directly within their applications. And then the most well known, of course, is well, now, name, of course, is SAP. But if you look at the healthcare space, in Europe, so I don't know if these names make sense in the States, but market leaders when it comes to asset management is for instance, ultimo, TOPdesk, platinum, these are tools that hospitals are using logistics are using them, nurses are using them. And yeah, they want to know not only now the status of when does this equipment, its maintenance, but also where is his equipment right now.

  Steve Statler 23:58

  Interesting. And this is, this is a market, you've chosen a market, which seems like it's very ripe for growth, but it is, it's competitive as well. I mean, you've got a good idea and lots of other people are having the good idea. You have the Stanley Healthcare's there's a whole raft of companies, how do you compete in this in this very competitive marketplace?

  Gery Pollet 24:30

  We have, what I sell to our investors is that we have four competitive advantages. I think the first advantage it's really coming back to the easy integration if the existing infrastructure is already there. We can typically bring a hospital live in a couple of days if they have the infrastructure in place. So that's that's the first big advantage. The second one is the openness of the platform. Really do have the possibility to integrate with any other application, the hospital's already using, using very easy rest API's and read books. So that's the second advantage. The turtle is the pricing, I think we have a very attractive transparent pricing. If you look at that, you mentioned David Scott, I think the pricing book is like 100 pages, or pricing as one sheet. And then the fourth advantage, and this is really something that has to the customer curates in the early stages, but it's the it's the big data analytics. And for this one, we closed the partnership last year with SAS sas.com, which is a market leader when it comes to big data analytics. And with them, we are building fantastic dashboards to give organizations insights and bottlenecks, how they can optimize the distribution of assets throughout the hospital, all these kinds of things,

  Steve Statler 25:59

  are they well established ease of use.

  Gery Pollet 26:04

  They are very well established. But for other types of applications, like analyzing medical patient files, things like that. Well, of course, it's a very, it's a big company. People don't know that. But it's the largest private software company on the planet.

  Steve Statler 26:26

  It's amazing, amazing. cessful. We've had them on the show, and I've worked with them. And it's a great company. I think people love working there as well. It's done a great job.

  Gery Pollet 26:38

  Yeah, I was once invited to visit their headquarters. And I don't remember exactly where. And they have a fantastic company restaurant, and it was self service. And I was sitting next to the CEO. What was his name? Jim? Jim, whatever. And he was just sitting there next to me. I said, Hi, are you a visitor? And I say yes. And people say that the CEO you're talking to and the founder of the company. So a funny story.

  Steve Statler 27:07

  Very cool. Very cool. So where are we in? The kind of adoption cycle? Do you think we spent a lot of time talking to people about crossing the chasm is this is this solution area in the chasm? Have you crossed the chasm? Is it mature? Where is it?

  Gery Pollet 27:33

  It's the market is ready. The market is there, the demand is coming. So when my companies failed, it was because it was often too early because now we have really the the idea that the timing is right. People are really demanding for the solution, say like I explained a lot of hospitals, without even knowing if they have the right infrastructure in place. You're solving a real problem, and you're solving a real problem, you can prove it. So I think this this, this market is will see a tremendous growth in the coming years.

  Steve Statler 28:17

  Wonderful. Lastly, I think lastly, COVID. How has that impacted your business?

  Gery Pollet 28:29

  If I look back at our figures, because at the end as a company, that's that's what counts, of course, we made a forecast because of the four COVID. And we reached our goals. At the end, we didn't overshoot, but we also didn't undershoot The main advantage, I think, and sometimes people are angry when I say the main advantage of COVID Because of course, it's it's it's something it's not pleasant that this happened. But the main advantage is really that people are now willing to do remote working. And before when I had to visit the hospital, I could do maybe two one a day now we can easily do seven calls a day. So the the main event that COVID Brother, that's really an increase in efficiency for these kinds of meetings. So COVID It's not all it's not a completely bad story. It also changed some behavior, which in the end will make sure that organizations are more efficient.

  Steve Statler 29:29

  Yeah, it's it's an amazing situation. It's a tragedy, terrible thing, but it's also accelerated so much. And I imagine your value proposition around efficiency, staff efficiency that's got to really be heightened by an environment where there's intense staff shortages.

  Gery Pollet 29:48

  Exactly. So that's really playing in our advantages. And what we also will see the coming years is that there will be a lot more investments in healthcare because if you look at Belgium market with decreased over the last 1015 years from 100,000 hospital beds to 60,000 hospital beds. And then suddenly something tragedy happens like COVID. And and suddenly they start to realize, oh, we have not enough beds. So I don't say that you need more beds, but you have to make the whole healthcare ecosystem for more efficient. And we are only a small part in that way. But I see also that an enormous investments taking place in the healthcare industry the coming years.

  Steve Statler 30:35

  And really the last question, geographically, where are you at now in terms of the geographic markets that you're covering?

  Gery Pollet 30:44

  So another advice for startup companies, a first group, it's in your own home countries? So I think we are ready. I think by the end of the year, I think we could say that in the home countries, we will be a marketplace, which is good. But now we have projects going on everywhere. We have projects going on in South America, Australia, Africa. So everybody is asking for our solution. We were last week at one of the biggest medical fairs in the world, which is called Arab health. And I think we probably signed up 10 new partners in the region. well established players that wants to start marketing seller solution. International expansion.

  Steve Statler 31:35

  That's exciting for you. As a follow on questions I wanted to ask, you said home markets, what what is home market? It's not just Belgium your you seem to be pre active in the Netherlands or is it? What is how do you define her market?

  Gery Pollet 31:51

  For me, the whole market is really Belgium and Netherlands because Belgium we have mainly been focused on Flanders, which is Dutch speaking and utterances also Dutch speaking. And like for me, that's that's one big country. People don't like that when I say that, because everybody is a bit chauvinistic. But our headquarters are based in Amsterdam. And I'm living in Belgium in the beautiful city of brooch. So I always say Belgium, Netherlands, but for me, it's it's one plant that has enabled us from the country. I know that everybody likes me saying that. I'd

  Steve Statler 32:31

  really love to go and visit Bruges after seeing that amazing movie that's in Bruges, then I want to go Yeah. And then these partners that you said that you were signing up at the the Arab health summit, what sort of companies are they? Who is it? That's, we talked about the the connectivity companies, but who are you signing up to represent you in these other geographies?

  Gery Pollet 32:57

  Yeah, one of the things we learned is that you need two types of partners you need, first of all, infrastructure companies, the people selling the robots, to the to the hospitals and doing the implementation. So really the integrators so that's, that's important. But second part is, are really the companies that are selling the medical devices, to companies that are selling the pumps, they're selling the bets. So the distributors, for instance, of GE, will know everybody at the hospital, they know the problems. So these are the two type of partners. We are looking after integrators capable of selling wireless infrastructure, but also the people are the companies selling the actual products that we did back on it at the end.

  Steve Statler 33:51

  Very good. Well, I think we've learned a lot from this conversation, Gery, and one of the things we've learned is, there's never a last question, because actually, this conversation is going to continue and I get to talk to you a bit about how you ended up founding this company, and a bit about your background, and of course, the music questions. But So Gery, how did you end up doing what you're doing? What's What's your story? It seems like you are the founder and leader of you've been a founder and leader of a whole series of companies, and I was spying on you on LinkedIn. And I couldn't see a time when you weren't your own boss, but presumably, there was a time when you

  Gery Pollet 34:34

  actually, I was never, I never worked for both. Wow. When I was very young, I was studying of course, high school or university. And at a certain moment, I was invited to do a high day job in California at the dawn of Silicon Valley, and when I was there, and I'm talking the early 90s. I saw something what we All know right now, which is the internet was really the beginning of the internet. So when I came back to Belgium, I thought my parents, I'm quitting school. And I'm going to start an internet service provider. And everybody thought I was crazy. And this happened to be then the first ISP or internet service provider in Belgium at the time. We're talking about the early 90s 9094 9095. And that was my first company.

  Steve Statler 35:30

  Amazing. So what happened to that

  Gery Pollet 35:34

  this company at a certain moment, has been acquired by a large telecom company was Cable and Wireless. I'm not sure if they are still in existence. After that, I joined the company specialized in speech technology, fantastic story, but also a very sad story, because the company at a certain moment, was the second most valuable company in software company in Europe, after s SF SAP. The company went bankrupt, unfortunately. But one of the things we developed at that time, and I'm not talking 1996, was the first internet telephony application. And we we developed that, together with a company in California, who was also out of business. Now the company was called quarterback. At a certain moment, it was acquired by Symantec, who everybody knows because of the anti viruses. And we developed the first internet telephony application called backtalk. And our competitor was an Israeli company called vocal tech, and we were competing against each other. And when we launched a product was really revolutionary, because we were doing speech over the internet, using dial up modems, a 14.4 kilobits per second. So I remember when I remember when we proposed that to telecom operators, they thought we were crazy. They they couldn't believe it. And we are talking about a time when calling the US constitutes more than $1 a minute. So. So then the there is this rubble. Yeah, was a bit went broke.

  Steve Statler 37:23

  Interesting. And so the lessons learned, I'm assuming from that you painful but educational.

  Gery Pollet 37:34

  Yeah, so I always have been in the internet and telecom business for the last 25 years now. And I'm beginning of the 50s. But always in the corner of let's say, startup and combination startup and disruptive technologies. I started all sorts of one time, one of the first IP Centrex platforms to offer Voice over IP, telephony services to businesses. But not everything was successful. Steve, in totalize, founded or co founded, because it was not always Gery himself that was doing it very often, together with a team, I found or co founded over a dozen companies, and some of them are very successful. We had an IPO with one of them, but other ones, they went broke. And then yeah, you lost money. And you Yeah.

  Steve Statler 38:33

  So if you are giving advice to other entrepreneurs, what are the three things having been through all, you know, a dozen companies and seeing one go public and some not so successful? What are the three things? What's your kind of Bible in terms of looking for opportunities?

  Gery Pollet 38:52

  I have a Bible which consists of seven sentences, which I'm not going to explain now, because this will, I'm often asked to talk to entrepreneurs, and then I use that one. But I think that the the main lesson learned is is focus on your your market and try to get the first money not from investors, but from from your clients. And this is something that very often startup companies, they tend to forget they focus too much on the product. They try to make it better and better in the meantime, that they raise money from investors, instead of talking to clients trying to sell the product. So I think looking back when it failed, it was really because of that too much focused on the technology, not enough on what the market wanted, and not enough in the sales mode is trying to sell the product.

  Steve Statler 39:44

  Very good. So how did Bly happen? What's the founding story? For Bylott?

  Gery Pollet 39:52

  The following story was actually a sad story because the previous company, yeah, we had to liquidate it because it was That's it cessful looking backwards, you were just too early because the product now has been launched. And it's quite successful. But then a very difficult periods, I was asked by a local hospital to, to come and talk about IoT internet of medical things, these kinds of things. And at the end of the the presentation, the CEO of the of the hospital came to me and said, You know what, we are looking for a solution for tracking and tracing assets in the hospital, can you help us finding the right solution. And I did that. So what I did not have time, I looked at several technologies going from stupid barcodes, or RFID, Wi Fi, Bluetooth to the more exotic stuff like ultra wideband and lifeline. And we spoken total, I think, to over a dozen potential supplies for the hospital. And at the end, being a startup entrepreneur all my life, I went back to the hospital, and I said, You know what, I think there is time here for a disruptive offering. Because everything we see here is a very complex to setup. It's also very expensive. And I think we could make something together here. So I'm willing to launch in a startup, if you tell me if you would like to become our first client, please, please. And secondly, if you tell us exactly what you want, so that we don't start to develop things, which we as technology fix, like but at the end is never going to be used by by the nurses. Yeah. And this is this is the story of like, this is how we started. And the nice anecdote CVS at the time when I selected Bluetooths, because I said, Okay, that's the right technology, at least for the coming years. I knew nothing about it. So I bought a little book on Amazon, written by a guy called Steve Statler. And then I remember that I won't bother you with probably very stupid questions, because I absolutely knew nothing about Bluetooth. And that's how it started.

  Steve Statler 42:10

  That's amazing. I had completely forgotten about that. But so I wasn't there wasn't a self serving question. But I do. It's one of my favorite things when we have at least some influence on helping along those lines. That's great. So music do you listen to your music person? Or did you were you able to come up with three songs that are your have some meaning for you.

  Gery Pollet 42:37

  And the music person like Like, every time most people I assume. Because I'm raised. I born and raised in Belgium, I selected three songs. Some of them are famous. So the first one is navigated by Jacques Brel. This is French and the other two songs are also French, because I like to listen to French music. The second song is a lot on doors, which you probably know by another Belgian talent called stroll by. And then the last song is a song by an upcoming talent called rgl brecel. Japan except to make promotion for my country a bit tasty.

  Steve Statler 43:28

  Well do send us the URLs, we'll include it in the in the notes so that other people can listen to those. Wonderful, Gery. Well, thanks. Thanks very much for sharing a bit about your story and and the music very original.

  Gery Pollet 43:44

  With pleasure, Steve, thank you for being here.

  Steve Statler 43:48

  So that was Gery Pollet. I hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as I did. And I recommend you look into what Gery has been doing. marketing wise, he's got a great website. He has produced some great use case videos, and something to learn from there. If you have been thanks for listening, please tell your friends please provide comments, feedback and until we next meet, be safe