Estimote's CEO Jakub Krzych

Transcript

• Narration 00:06

  You're listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacosystem with Steve Statler.

  Jakub Krzych 00:23

  I've seen everything in my beacon career. I've seen, you know, beacons attached to chickens and quadcopters precise landing and beacons. We want to be the company to actually show how the beacon will look like right. So you will be able to beat unify your fridge your car. There are customers now buying in deploying 100,000 beacons and deploying them, you know, across the entire country. Experience is the only product.

  Steve Statler 01:08

  Welcome to the latest edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacoystem interviews in partnership with Proxbook. My name is Steve Statler of Statler Consulting. And this is a Northern European, Central European edition of our guide. We're using Estonian technology for the connection, we're using Skype to talk to the CEO of Estimote, who seems to shuttle between all sorts of different countries but America and his native Poland where a lot of his colleagues are based. So I'm really excited to be interviewing Jakub Krzych, who's the CEO and co founder of Estimote. And the first question Jakub is how should I really have pronounced your name if I was Polish?

  Jakub Krzych 01:58

  Yeah. That my pleasure to join the interview thank you for inviting me. And you know, the you did a great job. This is how my American friends call me. And the real Polish version is really hard. So I'll try to I'll try. It's Jakub Krzych, very complex, Polish name. So you know, it's always funny to watch you know, how my friends are trying, you know, to do the job. But yeah, Jakub Krzych is something I'm used to.

  Steve Statler 02:27

  Very good. Well, I appreciate your tolerance. And for anyone who wants some light entertainment, go on YouTube and watch really educated professors Stanford, try and pronounce Jakub's last name, and you'll have a lot of fun. It's a great leveler. So okay, um, you know, Estimote I just huge, huge in the the the beacosystem, or the the Bluetooth beacon ecosystem, proximity market. But for people that that don't know, you, maybe you can just kick this session off and give us a brief introduction into what you do.

  Jakub Krzych 03:01

  Absolutely. So Estimote is a company that we founded in 2012. And, you know, we always had that vision that there's, there's some change going on into the, you know, how people build software, how they develop mobile apps, how they combine offline and online. So Estimote is basically a technology company that is trying to enable developers, especially mobile developers, to build this new type of magical experiences in the physical environment. So we help them providing, you know, everything they need, which is, you know, beacon technology in the location algorithm, SDKs there's also a vibrant community, we're building around. And, you know, our objective is very, very simple. We just want to we want to push things forward, we want to enable most, you know, different experiences all verticals, on top of, you know, location and sensors and other technologies.

  Steve Statler 03:58

  Very good. So it's more than just about beacons.

  Jakub Krzych 04:02

  Oh, yeah, it's definitely you know, it's we would say, it's, it's about changing the way developers and designers build and test and deploy this new type of experiences. So we had this very strong vision that the future of software is not all, it's not about designing apps for the for the phones, or watches or tablets, the future of software is is how to build apps and install them on top of physical world on top of, you know, one retail store, and then distributing the same app, the same experience into many retail stores, or maybe one airport and running that app that experience on many airports. So it's a kind of something we call an operating system for the physical worlds which is which consists of many layers, and it's a hardware layer. There's like a software layer standards. There is an entire you know, security layer and management And, you know, different different components. So, so he's way beyond, you know, beacons.

  Steve Statler 05:06

  Very good. And I really like that reference. I've heard you make it before to the fact that you're providing an operating system, because I think that's right on and people really need to look at their approach developers, venues need to think about Yeah, when choosing an operating system, it's like the old days when you had say, What am I going to go for Windows or OS two, or whatever the choices were? And it's a commitment.

  Jakub Krzych 05:33

  Definitely. And also, you know, at the end of the day, all these amazing pioneers and innovative people, they they just want to build their domain specific applications and solve their domain specific problems. They just don't want to play with every society. So you know, and you know, x&y position, the same way, developers, they don't care about, you know, garbage collector, or memory management, they just want to have an abstract layers API's, and they just want to build their apps, right? So this is how we think about that. And we're trying to solve many difficult problems from developers. So it's easier and faster to build these new type of, you know, proximity based apps.

  Steve Statler 06:19

  Well, I think it's really interesting to look at your company over the years. And to me, it's, it's a very clear presence in the market, you have a very distinctive design aesthetic that goes not just from your hardware, but through to the website. And I think that you have benefited a lot from from that, and we'll come back to that in a minute. And you really seem to have a focus on developers. And there's also kind of a kind of detect an underlying philosophy about the hardware that this is we're in transition, and this hardware is essentially disposable. So I don't know whether I've, how any of those three points the design aesthetic, the market driven by developers and disposable beacons gonna react to those, let me know, whether I'm off base or on base?

  Jakub Krzych 07:09

  No, I think I think these are great comments. So, you know, when it comes to the design, we been really obsessed about the, you know, the physical world, and also the way people and human beings in general consume the physical world, and they consume it through their eyes, right. So they have like, you know, little antennas in their eyes that are like processing, you know, the wavelength of visible light, and then they are different apps installed in their brain, they react in what they see, and then they can move they can interact with the physical world. So basically, you cannot, you cannot be building physical operating system for the physical world, you cannot be changing the way people interact if you don't pay attention to the, to the design and, and the reason we are so much obsessed about it is that we also know that it will, if you are like a large organization, if you're like retailer, or an airport, you have a lot of talented team members representing different you know, competencies. And it's not only about the technology, that push that makes, you know, the innovation innovation happening in these organizations, because at the end of the day, your marketing people, your product managers, your designers, they also have to understand what that's all about. And when we show them, you know, green beacon, sending like a green message is very simple. It's something that resonate with them very well and they are afraid of, you know, PCB and wires and they just they want things to keep to keep them very simple. So I think that's, that's like one way of us trying to leverage great design to actually hack these organizations and their processes because you know, you cannot work with global retail and you know, companies or massive airports if you do not find a way to create this collaboration between mobile people and back end people and designers and store and omni channel and project managers logistics, even there's many many competencies. So that's like one side of it. And another side the reason beacons are colorful, and they like friendly, is because we want to be we want to be transparent and we also want to be very honest with the consumers because we just don't want to install another black box, you know, spying you and tracking you. You don't know what that is and what it does. And you know, we want to be very transparent when you enter Museum and when you see the famous estimate shape or color, you immediately know what that is because we You're very honest, we told you. So so. So this is how we think about about design. And we pay a lot of attention to all the aspects of our design, not only mobile and web, but also the PCB and other components. And, and also, you mentioned the community, which is another kind of acids of our project, we believe that single company, even with the smartest developers cannot, you know, change and cannot move forward at the velocity that will, you know, and that will result in a meaningful change, right. So our objective is to inspire as many people as we can, and also support them in their innovative ideas. And, you know, I've seen everything in my beacon career, I've seen, you know, beacons attached to chickens and quadcopters, precise landing and beacons and many different applications. And, and they are always an inspiration for us, what we should build next, what we should improve. And, and that's extremely important part of our, you know, strategy, when it comes to the battery life and beacons, you know, being disposed. So there are several reasons of our philosophy behind it. So, one, one very strong reason is that, if you think deeply about the physical world, you know, it's a complex place, right, it cost a lot to, to move from from A to B, and, and also, it requires a lot of efforts and energy. So when when we are talking to large retailers, the ones that have, for example, you know, 2000 locations in entire, you know, country, it's, it's just impossible for them to maintain these beacons over time and replacing batteries or actually manipulating because cost of that operation would be way higher, that actually cost of the initial installation, right. So that's why we've never designed we've never designed beacons where you can replace the battery, because we did the opposite way. You know, we have challenged and inspired our engineers to keep innovating with the power management and keep adding different sensors and keep saving energy. And because this is the this is the kind of this is the solution we believe in. And also, we all need to realize that wireless technologies, especially Bluetooth low energy, it does follow Moore's slow and every 18 months, there is an improvement by the factor of two. So Nordic, the company we work with, you know, few years ago, they have released their their first chip, the NRF 51. And 18 months later, they released another revision, which is, you know, the power efficiencies that is multiplied by two, which, which basically means the beacons that in the past could last three years. Now, the same beacon can last six years. And we expect that in 18 months, they're gonna do it again. So like now, beacon will last 910 years and 10 years is a timespan that you don't have to optimize for more than that. Because, you know, in 10 years, there will be completely different technology in our pocket. And you know, who knows what that's going to be? So there's no reason to optimize for more.

  Steve Statler 13:35

  There's a lot there and your answer, which is a great answer. So in terms of let's talk about, we'll come back to the battery life thing later. So let's, let's just talk about the design aesthetic there. And I mean, I think most people who have looked into the beacon ecosystem, have seen your beacons because you seem to have benefited from the fact that whenever a journalist wants to write about it, they look for something that looks sexy. And so hey, let's use beacons that are called lemon tart candy floss and sweet beetroot. I mean, these are just really attractive beacons. Where did in I mean, you? Are we're a startup, where did this design aesthetic come from? Was there a lot of debate about it? And who, who comes up with these design ideas?

  Jakub Krzych 14:28

  Yeah, thank you. So we know we have an amazing design team located in Central Europe, and both industrial and brand designers and they did an amazing job, you know, trying to project our philosophy and the branding and can create a very coherent vision, how we should communicate our products. So so it wasn't it wasn't like that all the time. So our first design and you can actually if you if you search on TechCrunch, you can now actually see John John Biggs making some references to the bird because in the beginning, we thought that it's going to be cool to have a little bit more personalized, we always wanted to make it friendly. So in the beginning, it was like a little bird. But then we, when we tested that of users, they just freaked out because it was just too, it was just mimicking like a, you know, some, you know, some like, animal or like, you know, being that they just didn't want that. And we thought, okay, we need to make it very neutral, we need to make it friendly, but very neutral, something that mimics like a natural physical world. And in this is when we ended up with like, kind of stone stone, like the Gam shaped shape. And also the philosophy behind that design is actually way more complex. So there is this mathematical formula, it's called Voronoi tessellation. So it's like a mathematical formula, how you should divide the space, so that the center of each cell has this exactly same distance to the border of the cell. And if you pay attention to your skin, or too many objects in the physical environment, they follow exactly the same formula of dividing the physical space. And that Voronoi tessellation was the very first inspiration, how we should create our design. And basically what we did, we just created this tessellation in a three dimensional space, and we ended up with like a beautifully crafted stones that we thought would be a would be resin would be would be amazing for for our industrial design. And also, later on, when we started to deploy these beacons, we also understood that the beacons themselves they also divide the space, and they have range. And the way you locate different deep beacons in the in the location, you also create this kind of cell network that does mimic exactly saying, you know, nature behavior, so we thought is like a way that we return that concept has a capacity to, to build our brand on top of that. So um, so So yeah, so like, you know, this is about the shape and the branding. And when it comes to the funny names, you know, we always thought that, you know, the colors, they, they all they had an inspiration in the natural objects. So we just didn't want to create artificial colors. So, believe me or not, but you know, the girls have been behind designing the beacons, they've been testing different flavors of like, you know, beetroot and lemon tart and this and that just inventing these funny colors such as fine, this is cool. It's really cool. And you're right, it does resonate with media and journalists. And, and also, we, when Apple when Apple announced iBeacon, they just mentioned standard, and we've been thinking, you know, oh my god, you know, people have no idea how it's going to look like, but we want to be the company to actually show how the beacon will look like, right. So we thought, you know, it should be easy to install. So we should have adhesive layer, it should be very, very nice and soft to touch. Because these developers and these hackers in the beginning, they will spend a lot of time manipulating in trying so we wanted to design something that it will be nice to play with. So they are made of silicone, and also silicone from the, you know, environmental friendly perspective is really nice materials is a product that is, you know, created from just oxygen and, and, and sand. So basically, it's it's, it's been, you know, we spend a lot of time you know, designing it.

  Steve Statler 18:57

  So the the new beacons that have come out the location beacons versus the proximity beacons. They have they pretty much look very similar today to the original beacons, I know that there's you can have these general purpose input output connectors on them so that you can connect them to devices. But when I other than the different colors, would I see any difference? In the old ones, the new ones?

  Jakub Krzych 19:23

  Well from outside, there's not that much difference. So there are there are some form factor improvements. So you know, we have learned a lot when we launched our proximity beacons, you know, more than two years ago, we have we have learned a lot from the community. So we have improved the adhesive layer and now it's like a really, really strong tape and it's also the tape itself is very intelligent. So, you know, we've noticed that people before they deploy beacons into the final environment, they very often test different configuration different setup. So the tape we have invented is a You know, if you use it within the first 45 minutes, you can just remove it just replace and reposition freely. But after 45 minutes is going to be permanent, and it's going to stay there forever, right? So it's like we really spend a lot of time there. And also the form factor itself being a little bit optimize, you know, those hackers and pioneers who want to get inside is now much easier actually, to get inside, you get, you don't have to cut the silicone skin skin more, you can just open it, and you can get inside and just see our beautiful design, you know, PCB. And so from from the outside, and not that many differences, they're slightly bigger. But of course, inside there are like a completely new generation of the hardware and the software. So first of all, we have completely redesigned the firmer that the beacons are using. So in the past, it was only possible to advertise either iBeacon packet or, or Eddystone. With, for example, Physical Web. With the new beacons, you can simultaneously broadcast as many packages as you want. So, of course, there are some limitations to that. But you if you if you are building both Android and iOS experiences, you don't have to have you don't have to install multiple beacons, you just install location beacons. And you can keep advertising Physical Web one iBeacon, another iBeacon. And also, what's really cool about the new firmware is that you can change the range of these packets. So So one beacon can broadcast long range packet, and the short range packet. So if you're building some experiences that you want to trigger some message on the close proximity are very far away, you can do it with just one beacon. So like these packets that can have not only different types, but also different different range. So it's really, really cool. And of course, there's a lot of other innovations. So from the hardware perspective, they have ambient light sensor, so we are able to turn off the radio when it's dark, and like people are not there anyway, right? They have an magnetometer where very often when you install beacons is some people attach them to metal, you know, objects wall, so we just want to be clear. And we want to know how the metal environment will influence the antenna and the propagation signal. They also have, you know, they also have motion sensor, they have temp temperature sensor, so they're really sophisticated. And also from the hardware perspective, like you mentioned, there is this general input and output slot, that enable hackers to connect beacon to any device or any object. And this is fascinating, because in the beginning, it was you and your apps, you know, into you know, changing or like changing the UI or sending you messages whenever you approach different objects. But with the GPIO, you can be unify any any physical device. So if you connect your beacon to your fridge, or your line of laundry, or your washing machine, you can either influence that machine by approaching it. So for example, you can turn it on and turn it off, only when you stand in front of it. Or you can do the other way. So you can take some data from the machine, for example, from the washing machine, you can take the status of your laundry, and you can broadcast it so that your phone will be aware of of these data. So we believe that this is going to open another layer of innovation in the proximity industry where where we will see truly magical experiences where when doors will open just by you approaching them or, or, or some other, you know, fascinating concept.

  Steve Statler 24:13

  So just to clarify, because traditionally, with beacons, they're kind it's a one way thing it's lighthouse is broadcasting out, you've now got the beacon able to have this kind of dialogue with other hardware. But And traditionally, when beacons have been controlling like vending machines, the it's the app on the phone that goes through the cloud and it says all that's beacon one, that means it's vending machine number one, I'm going to talk to that. But now you're this paradigm, I'm actually establishing a connection with the beacon and and getting that to control the vending machine. Is that the way it works.

  Jakub Krzych 24:49

  Exactly. So beacon itself, it has several input outputs, you can it's purely software defined so you can decide whether it's an input or output and When and whenever you connect an object to that physical beacon, so you need to, you know, you need to connect it physically. And then you will be able over the Bluetooth and using the SDK to manipulate and influence the physical, the physical object. So there is a connection. And it's without WiFi in the cloud, it just basically like, you know, object like machine to machine connection. So it's really, really cool.

  Steve Statler 25:27

  So you could be underground. And you can still establish that connection between the phone and the beacon. And but sohow many devices can you talk to the GPIO connector? I haven't noticed a lot of them on the back of my fridge, but I've got an old fridge so

  Jakub Krzych 25:43

  Well, so the GPIO connector is something that is actually there to inspire hackers and you know, Arduino or Raspberry Pi community, because this is the way they used to connect different objects to these microcontrollers. So you can, you can actually connect your little, you know, like your lamp or your garage door to the GPIO. Very, very simple way. But of course, our development kids are there to inspire. And of course, if you want to build like a serious integration, you just need to, you can contact us and we'll give it the firmware will give you the software. So you will be able to be quantify your fridge, your car, or whatever you whatever you're building. So the GPIO is mostly for the prototyping. So something you can, you know, within a hackathon, within a few hours, you can very quickly put together a prototype, show it to your co workers or your customer. And then once they like it once like the experience, you know, you can move it to the next level, just integrating with the software and the chip and the trimmer.

  Steve Statler 26:47

  So this is an important thing. So really the the beacon, the colorful beacons, we're buying or the like the prototyping platform. But for a production beacon that's embedded in an appliance, then what you expect is whoever's making the appliance is going to license your software firmware embedded into that appliance, how many companies are actually doing that now?

  Jakub Krzych 27:13

  Well, so you right, when it comes to the developers, that our development kits are designed to inspire, and also to help them quickly put together something that they can pitch internally, right, and we don't envision this colorful beacons attached to your fridge or like, you know, garage door. But you're right, the objective for our company is to understand what are the applications, what are the use cases and how we can help to scale it with our, you know, fleet management software, the security components, and with API's, and so on, so on. And there are many companies already doing that. So we have, for example, one company, Norway, it's a it's a, they are, it's a furniture company, they design beautiful furnitures, chairs and sofas, and they are integrating our beacons and actually stickers with their objects during the manufacturing process. So when you're actually buying a chair from this company, it is already be quantified. And there's a companion app. And that companion app can sense how often you see it, you know, whether you move or not, it can it can push notification when there's like a new product available. So so this is fascinating on many different levels, because in a showroom environment, it is as simple as you approaching that chair, and taking a phone to just see the details about it and the price and the video. But when you take it home, you will you know, the manufacturer will have a new type of data of the usage of this object, you know, when it where it is located at your home, how often you use it, how many people would they do so? So we're really excited to see and there's more there are people integrating beacons with, you know, with suitcases and with cars, and and, you know, many different applications. You know, we've seen everything.

  Steve Statler 29:17

  Well, I'm gonna take a break from the easy questions. I'm gonna ask you a very, very difficult question now. So you're, you're going up to the International Space Station, you're going to be on there for a year. And there's only enough bandwidth to send three albums for you to listen to for that year. What are the three albums you're going to take on to the ISS?

  Jakub Krzych 29:39

  Well, first of all, you know, I would love to get there somehow. So you know, hopefully in the future it will be possible in the integrate stories that we've seen in our database, many orders coming from NASA, so probably deacons are already in the space anyway. Right? So, so yeah, when it comes to the music, too. Be honest with you, I'm more like a visual person. So my, my visual senses are way more sophisticated than mine or the way I listen to the music. So I'm not like a music, you know, I'm not a good, good person to talk about music at all. But when I watched the Martian movie, and I've seen, and I've seen how it is to be alone on another planet, I thought, well, it's a good idea actually, to listen to the music composed on there, just to kind of give you that, you know, atmosphere of air. So I don't know, I would go maybe with Queen, or maybe with, you know, Elvis Presley. I'm not a music guy.

  Steve Statler 30:40

  Okay, we got queen, we got Elvis Presley, and you've got room for one more, but what maybe we'll come back back to that later. Let's get back to business and just how, how is business and not expecting to talk about your financials? But how many beacons? Are people buying these days? How many beacons of your soul?

  Jakub Krzych 31:02

  That's a great question. So, you know, first of all, you know, the business is great. And we see, you know, a lot of adoption. And, you know, two years ago, we've seen lots of experimentation. So this was mostly Individual Development kids, and like three, six beacons being, you know, deployed, and just maybe a small pilot, but But over time, we see more and more large scale deployments. So there are customers now buying in deploying 100,000 beacons and deploying them, you know, across the entire country, you know, whether it's us, or it's Europe. And, of course, we all need to realize, and that's like, there's some confusion on the market, about the AI, about iBeacon and beacons in general. So, you know, when, when Apple announced iBeacon, and when they put this AI in front of this product, you know, everyone thought, Oh, my God is like, it's a finished product, you know, I just, I just deployed and I will have more customers, or I will have data, right? And that's, it doesn't work like this. And it's, you know, iBeacons, just a standard and an Apple initially, they actually they didn't, they didn't tell people, you know, what to build, and what are the use cases and how to scale it, how to secure it. So so so companies like Estimote, had to build it. Right. So it took us a while to build this entire stack, you know, the cloud and the management and the security and all these API's. So there's like one, one aspect, and also another aspect. And another confusion is that the value creation is actually through mobile experience, because this is how consumers interact with the physical space. They they all have mobile phones. And when they visit Guggenheim Museum in New York, or when they visit FC Barcelona stadium, so both are our customers, they can interact with the physical space in a new completely way. But they do it through the mobile app. And we all know that building mobile apps is hard. And it takes time. Yes, I in and there's still a lot of challenges, because you know, it's an Android are different versions, different screens, and Bluetooth is not enable and different different shades and different antennas. So that's why, you know, in the market sentiment in the market expectation was, Oh, my God is going to be beacons everywhere. And it's going to change everything. Well, no, I mean, it's a process. And that is why we're so much bullish on developers and we troubleshoot, we help them we inspire we spend a lot of time on hackathons, you know, answer questions on Stack Overflow and Twitter, because we know it's a process. And our job as a company is not only to inspire, what to build, and what are the great use cases, but also how to deploy at scale. And, and I'm telling you, you know, deploying 100,000 beacons in the entire country, is an operation itself. It's it's, it does require sophisticated software, to calibrate these beacons, to map them, to secure them, and to also manage the content behind them. So um, so yeah, you know, we are really excited. And there are like, you know, as a company, we are, you know, producing millions of these.

  Steve Statler 34:22

  So, you making millions of beacons, and what would you say the split is between developers and that product production? Because that, I think investors, I'm sure your investors and just everyone that's looking at the market is trying to figure out where is it in the Jeffrey Moore Crossing the Chasm thing? And certainly, it's been innovators and early adopters. And it sounds like there's a few folks that are now getting into production and deployment. But what's the ratio would you say between the number of developers who are just prototyping and the production usage?

  Jakub Krzych 34:56

  Yeah. So you know, it's a very standard funnel is So it's a funnel that people people are excited about. And there's like a lot of, you know, trials and proof of concept going on. But then then, of course, a little bit less people actually build something that is meaningful, and it delivers value, and then even less, they actually deploy and then even less, they're able to distribute, because that's another challenge. Because it's not, you know, it's not only about deploying beacons and building the app, how to make sure that consumers will actually have the app right how to distribute that application, whether you should do it with partners, or whether you should use some cool technologies from Google, they just announced that they're like, you know, helping to solve that problem. So it's a funnel, it's a funnel. And of course, our objective is to kind of make sure that more and more people go through that funnel, and we push them to the next stage to the next level, and just trying to figure out, what are the problems? And we will fixing these problems on the fly.

  Steve Statler 35:59

  Makes sense. So if we look at say, you know, the one of the first national deployments were was Apple, with the deployed the gimbal beacons, which, you know, it wasn't a fantastic user experience, I still see the beacons there. But it's like, You're hardly aware of them. And I didn't think they're really making a big difference. But that was a milestone. And then, of course, he had like, Shopkick, who are going and they did the national deployment with some brands, but they're still kind of segwaying from the audio to the physical beacon. Have you got a customer who has sounds like they bought 100,000 beacons? Have they actually deployed them? Do we have national deployments at a tier one retailer where they're not just one checking beacon at the door, but they've got a beacon in every department? Does that exist yet? In the market?

  Jakub Krzych 36:56

  Yeah, there are many there are many. And there are some we can talk about there. Some they're still, you know, work in progress. And it's such a, you know, transforming experience that, you know, they probably want to control their own story. But, you know, what we try to understand when it comes to the market is that what are the verticals that can benefit from from this technology? So, you know, one, of course, you mentioned in retail is like one vertical, but there are also others. So, there are airports, and there are museums, and there are sports arenas and smart workplaces. And, and, and I will surprise you, because if you ask them question, which vertical is actually running the fastest and which is deploying, you know.

  Steve Statler 37:43

  That's good.

  Jakub Krzych 37:43

  Yeah I was suprised because I had no clue. You know, two years ago, or three years ago, I thought that museums was such a conservative places will be the last to actually enter the game. But what happened is actually their first to come there first to deploy these and build these amazing experiences. So you know, next time you're in New York, I encourage you to visit Guggenheim Museum, they did an amazing job. Incredible, both Android and iOS app. So whenever you approach different objects and sculptures or paintings in the museum, you will immediately see brilliant content contextual telling you the story from from the outer of the sculpture, showing, you know, playing the playing the playing an interview, and it's really responsive. It's really consistent experience. Well done, well done. I you know, I really encourage people to visit the Guggenheim Museum and also Brooklyn's Museum in New York. They also did an amazing job reinventing the way museum can engage with the visitors. So what did they they deployed beacons in the exhibition hall. And also they set up a small team of you know, real people, like, you know, historians, and like, curators, and that team is actually sitting you know, backstage, and they know where you are in the museum. And because of the app, you can ask them anything about the particular sculpture or particular painting. And it's not you know, it's not AI. It's not a bot, you know, people I hate talking to bots, it's a human being. And you have new way of interacting with the museum, you can ask a question, they will guide you because they know where you are. They it's a really fascinating experience, and they did an amazing job. And it does work you can go there download the app, and you can you can you can really engage with a real human being and also learn more about the products in place and the history. And it's fascinating. So we see we see more museums, you know, there's so many museums there is a in Finland museum around like some, you know, like, tall, you know, toys and kids there are Angry Birds store and there is a London National Museum of Science.

  Steve Statler 40:16

  San Diego Museum of Art has got your beacons, but they've hidden them. It's like your art museum, we've hidden this thing, I do, you know, props to them for actually doing it. And I think the experience is good.

  Jakub Krzych 40:29

  Yeah, but but but we believe that the entire retail and another industry, they shouldn't be actually inspired what museums are doing. And we've been thinking, you know, why? Why museums are so progressive these days. And then we ended up with one conclusion that in the museum experience is the only product, right? Yes. And beacons are awesome to improve that experience. And we believe that retailers and brands they shouldn't be really inspired what museums did, because they're great at delivering fascinating experiences in the physical world.

  Steve Statler 41:06

  I think, sorry to interrupt. But I think that extends to like the sports stadia, we've seen a lot of usage there, because you're competing with TV. That's a tough competition, the TV and the sofa. So you got to bring the physical to life. And so we've seen that. What about other verticals? Are you, I think airports is obviously another one, which has got a lot of press.

  Jakub Krzych 41:28

  Yeah, so we work with number of airports. And definitely there's a lot of going on trying to reinvent the passenger experience. And there's a there's massive potential there. So we're working with a Qatar, Qatar airlines, we've been working with Easyjet and Virgin and in Manchester Airport, and many, many, many airlines. And and definitely they are exploring both the indoor location, they are exploring digital signage, you know, in personalizing the content on based on who you are, they are trying, they also trying to solve real problems, because that's that's the kind of the hardest part of beacons because sometimes people think, oh, you know, I'm gonna send coupon like a really is that kind of is that solving anything? Yeah. So like, so you know, there's one European airline, and they, they approached us and they said, Listen, we have a very specific problem, you know, this percentage of passengers, they end up on the wrong terminal in the wrong gate, they very often miss the flight. Our flights are delayed, we need to call them it's the it's it cost a lot. So let's just solve it. Right? So we said, yeah, it's very simple. Just put beacons each gate each terminal. And people have already, you know, British Airways, Lufthansa and Virgin America apps in their pockets anyway. So whenever you arrive the wrong gate, wrong terminal, they're going to tell you Hey Jakub, you know, this is actually wrong gate, you know, go to this gate. And by the way, you know, there's a duty free shopping. So So yeah, it does solve the problem. And and we strongly encourage our customers to build these type of experiences. Because, you know, one thing is like PR and being the first to, you know, build something, but another is actually to optimize and create this amazing experience.

  Steve Statler 43:12

  That is a great application. And what about enterprise applications? You know, kind of helping your workforce be more efficient? Are you seeing anything that?

  Jakub Krzych 43:24

  Yeah, so so we see a very strong trend in something we call Smart Workplace. So you know, especially these days, different companies are trying to reinvent and reimagine how actually people collaborate in the physical, you know, office, you know, and there's a lot of going on with like Slack and another enterprise software. And we seen amazing innovations there. So some are as simple as replacing badges and NFC with beacons and apps. So basically, as as soon as you have your corporate app, the doors are open, right? So there's no need for badge and like, you know, swiping card, just to enter the building. So like, a lot of there. So basically, access control. We also see a lot of optimization around conference room experience. And you know, you know, that inside every large organization, conference rooms, like people constantly fighting, who has booked what and where is available and where they are. And so we've seen many companies trying to solve that problem with beacons and software. So we've seen amazing companies, they, they detect it when you enter the conference room, it's immediately booked for you when you left. It's available. Right? We also seen companies innovating you know, pushing agenda when you enter the meeting, the agenda is being pushed are some rules. Maybe it's maybe there's some rules behind the meeting. Or where were you when you finish the meeting. They will remind you about follow up They will also report who has who has met different, you know, who has met which team. So, so these are like some applications and of course, onboarding, right. So it's it's something that often at office, you do very often you have constantly new team members, and you want to tell them, you know, where is tea? Where's kitchen? You know, how to use the printer? And where is different team located who they are. So we see a lot of applications around that space as well. And also very simple apps like, you know, assets tracking, you know, where is this projector? Or where is my coworker in which floor? They are today? So, so yeah, we are extremely bullish on the workplace. And and we also believe that, if you think deeply with Microsoft did initially with PC and Windows, it was actually Office applications that that took off initially with the word processing and Excel. So we also expect that office might be a good directory for, you know, initial use cases of beacons.

  Steve Statler 46:02

  Yeah, I think if you can make workers more efficient, then you got a huge, huge market. Yeah, just go back to access control. Because that's just that is a magical experience if doors can start to open. But historically, when people have tried to use beacons in that space, the bit all sorts of challenges with multi pathing. And you know, not the door doesn't open or the door opens for the wrong person. Is that a solved problem? Now? Is that where you're kind of new beacons come in? Is that something that your use case that you would apply for the new beacons where you can have the different signals or different strengths?

  Jakub Krzych 46:41

  Yeah, so that's, that's a very good question. So you know, we all need to realize one fact that, that the physical world, and the radio ways are just really hard and really complex, right? So that's why there's so many companies optimizing antenna design and radio wave propagation, because you arrived, you know, Bluetooth signal, 2.4 gigahertz is being absorbed by human body. There's like multipath, there's some interference. So there are these challenges. And from the user experience, experience, like people expect very consistent experience, right? Because if if I entered the, you know, if I'm in the London Underground, and I swipe my card, I just expect within like 10 milliseconds, the doors to be open. So I can go through and I'm frustrated, even happens, like, you know, 10 milliseconds later, right. So so you're right, there are many challenges. And we are trying to solve some of these with the new beacons. And also we see more and more sophisticated setup that is actually making sure that that that it works properly. But But yeah, you're right is going to be is going to take some time to figure it out the perfect antenna layout or the installation scheme.

  Steve Statler 47:59

  Good expectation setting. So I got just a couple more questions, and we should wrap up. So, you know, one is last one, about the verticals. What about healthcare, I mean, talk about place where money is spent any use cases that you're seeing in healthcare that should inspire people?

  Jakub Krzych 48:19

  Yeah, so you know, how healthcare has so much potential and we see many great companies innovating. So there are companies, they leverage location technologies and beacons to to, to locate you know, staff and doctors in the space. And we also see companies especially here in the US, where they are trying to very precisely measure the usage of different machines like you know, you ultrasonographic commodity machines, because of the issuance costs. They are some companies also healthcare or like they're trying to build some geofences can be notified whenever a patient is actually moving outside resides. There are some use cases where there are defenses freezing in conference rooms and doctors, they can access particular information on a specific time when they leave their room this information will be so fascinating applications don't show up to help. You know, it takes time to like, like retailers they are still trying to figure it out their technology consequences, they are building textile and they are investing into mobility. And in the same as in the healthcare because historically they don't have that column. To kind of bring agencies and stuff it's easy to take time. And also in addition, healthcare is a more regulators and more restrictions on interference with modern devices. So, so amazing potential, but it just takes time. And, and there's some, you know, challenges, you know these companies. Yeah. And then leaving, you know, blown away by the program that we will make it as a company in terms of like beacons. And so, if you want, I can just take the common what we have learned here today. So, there are like two amazing features that are coming for every beacon innovator. So, the first feature is that, in order to deliver amazing experience for the consumer, that's consumer has to download. Right. So, if you are a target customer, you have to found a target of those a target. And then you're armed with benefits of no dependency. But if you don't have a target, you know, nothing can be achieved, no targets and no collect data. And you cannot also experiences medicine. So Google's trying to solve it with nearby API. So basically, it will be possible for the for the for the phone, to receive notifications from beacons, even if you don't have an app installed. And they do it by integrating beacons with the Google Play app that you know, is being distributed no more than building users. So when you, for example, enter Guggenheim Museum in New York, and you don't have the app, Google Play app will serve as the information and you will be actually able to just push one button and and download data. So that's like, that's one amazing kind of innovation that is really will help the beacons and all these proximity experiences to spread out. And another is something they call instant, you know, instant app, downloads or experiences. So basically, Google has changed a little bit the architecture of Android. So now, you don't have to download the app, in order to experience in order to experience it. So it sounds like magic, but it does work. So basically, let's just imagine that I want to send you a link to the Yelp restaurant, you know, review. So basically, if I do it through messenger, in the past, you had to download the app, open the open, the app navigated that place. So now when you hit the link, I send you the Yelp app will open. And that particular experience, native experience will be delivered to you, despite the fact that you don't have the Yelp app. So I don't know how they do it, whether they download some elements of the app in the background. But it's amazing. So it's basically blending this in a web and native, in a way in a completely new way. So if you if we combine it with physical web, this is another initiative by Google, where beacons can actually broadcast URLs, then we'll end up in a completely new world where you enter museum or enter the park meter and approach the park meter, or enter an airport gate. And you will be able to experience a micro experience that might consist of transaction might consist of content without the need of downloading an application. So it's like it's a groundbreaking innovation by Google and they did a great job.

  Steve Statler 54:16

  Very cool. I'm excited. And my dog Fairbanks is excited as well, you may have heard him in the background. So just we've got Scott Jensen from Google coming on in a couple of weeks to talk about latest on Physical Web. But I'd love to get your perspective on how quickly you think people are going to get used to browsing the Physical Web. It's a It's I believe in it. But I just worry about whether people are going to figure out that they can browse these URLs that coming from beacons?

  Jakub Krzych 54:46

  So Physical Web is another initiative from Google that being you know, well well designed and well thought so. So basically what they did initially they created this module, this kind of scan Enter does like scanning of these physical web beacons. And in the beginning, it was just a standalone app, there wasn't that much value. But what they did, they integrated that module with Chrome, which is another property that Google has with more than billion users, right. And also, that module is now being integrated not only with the, by the Chrome browser, but by the Opera browser in some other browsers. So we see, again, apps that are installed that are pre installed by default, such as you know, Chrome, that they are, again, able to pick up the signal from beacons, and also navigate you to either website in the app. And a really cool initiative is something that's called Web Bluetooth. And this is the browser that is capable of opening the website and through the JavaScript and through the HTML, actually talking to beacons. So this is amazing. So if you have GPIO beacons connected to your garage door, there is no need for an app and the more because there could be a little website that can just open when you approach it, you push a button, and through the JavaScript, it will trigger the garage door to be open. So yeah, so you know, we are extremely excited about the Physical Web. And of course, it's not a technology challenge. It's more like a user experience and UI challenge, you know, how people will find these messages and these notifications, and Google did a great job. So this is something that's called I think, like, lower priority message. So basically is not buzzing, is you just just swipe down to see what's possible. So when you approach a park meter, just swipe down and you see it's very, you can hit and pay. So so they did a really great job designing it from the user experience, perspective. And also, we need to remember that the Physical Web is not only the product is not only the scanner, but it's also centralized cloud based technology, which means all these URLs, before they will be presented in the crown, they actually need to be resolved by the Google Cloud or Google technology. And we know that was great at building relevant, you know, links and content. So hopefully, this is also prevent, you know, from spammers, you're spamming people with, you know, with non relevant content. So, um, so we are extremely excited. And we see, we are looking forward to seeing the sessions by Scott and another Google team members today. And it's sounds that, you know, this technology and beacons are you know, more and more available for consumers to interact with.

  Steve Statler 57:48

  Very good, well, Jakub, we're gonna have to wrap up, we could easily do another hour, but I'm just gonna thank you for doing a marvelous job, great insight into the background to your company that's done so much. Very cool work.

  Jakub Krzych 58:06

  I just want to say one last thing, because this is like a really new cool product that we're actually announcing, actually today. So what you can see I have on my on my body today, it's actually a t shirt with like a built in Physical Web beacon in it. So basically, today, during the Google I O, we are announcing that for the developers and in the community, there will be available an app that you can just download from the Google Play. And that app will enable you to, to configure what kind of URL you want to broadcast as a human body. So you can set up your GitHub account, you can set up your LinkedIn profile, and suddenly all the developers or all the people around you that have Chrome, they will be able to actually, you know, see who you are, and you know, they will be able to engage with your, your profile. So, you know, as you know, developers, they love T shirts, so now they will be able to actually to, to interact with with your physical web URLs. And you know, since we have running this interview, you know, anyone who's watching, you know, just just, you know, tweet us just just reach out to us on Twitter, and we'll just send you some.

  Steve Statler 59:23

  Wonderful. That's a great offer. So they should tweet Estimote.

  Jakub Krzych 59:29

  We have like limited batch, first first come first serve, but you know, anyone who will mention us, you know, we'll be more than happy to send you some so you can try you can set up your different whatever you want. That's fine, you know, just go be creative.

  Steve Statler 59:44

  Very good. Or Jakub. Thanks for that generous offer. Thanks for being a great guest and thanks everyone for tuning into this Co production with our friends at Proxbook, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beaccosystem. We're having a lot of fun here. Hopefully you're finding it interesting. Jakub, thanks again.

  Jakub Krzych 1:00:03

  Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care.