Pod Insights Equity Podcast CES, Circle-ing back to IPOs and why we're over the moon about Overmoon About this episode Today, Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo dig through the key stories from the week. Then, Kirsten Korosec and Haje Jan Kamps are aboard to bring us the latest from CES!
Deals of the Week: Shimmer raised $2.2 million to bring one-on-one ADHD care at a lower price point; Alex chose this one because mental health care startups that try to expand access are cool. Overmoon's recent fundraising and business progress were Mary Ann's choice for the week, showing that proptech is not dead yet!
Circle is going public: Yep, the company behind the USDC stablecoin is once again heading for the public markets. The company's confidential IPO filing follows an aborted SPAC attempt in the past. Alex is bullish on the deal, though we'll need to wait for the full details before we can actually make some predictions.
And speaking of IPOs, we're really far behind on how many exits are needed to clear the venture capital decks.
CES: We went over a ton of cool stuff this year, including this Bane-style mask, ChatGPT in cars, eVTOLs and more!
Equity will be back next Tuesday due to a U. S. holiday on Monday. See you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:10 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines. Today is January 12th, 2024. My name is Alex and I'm joined, as always, by my dear friend and work bestie. It's Mary Ann Azevedo. Mary Ann, hi.
0:27 Speaker 01 Hi, Alex. How's it going?
0:29 Speaker 00 I'm doing good, although I just realized when I was reading our little intro that it's the 12th of January, which means effectively that we're halfway through the first month. This year is already going too fast.
0:39 Speaker 01 I know, I know. It's insane. Before you know it, it's going to be February and then June and then December. Oh, my gosh.
0:46 Speaker 00 Then I'm going to be older. And then if you're like under 30, listening to this, time does get faster as you, as you get older.
0:54 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
0:55 Speaker 00 Something to look forward to. Other things to look forward to on the pod today include two very excellent deals of the week. One from Shimmer, one from Overmoon. And then we're going to talk about the IPO window and how critical it is that it does reopen this year. Have some cool data from PitchBook there about necessary exits in the realms of SaaS, fintech and AI. And then we're going to bring in two of our best friends, Hyah and Kirsten, who are live from CES in Las Vegas, to tell us all about the startup trends they are seeing there. But Mary Ann, deals of the week to begin with, and I want to start with Shimmer, which is a platform for one-on-one personalized ADHD coaching. And I love this for a number of reasons. One, I wasn't familiar with the idea behind ADHD coaching,
1:40 Speaker 00 but I'm a big fan of therapy in general and just getting help with things. Two, I didn't realize how expensive it was to get ADHD coaching.
1:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, same. When I first saw the headline, I thought that the technology or the platform was aimed at younger people. I just kind of automatically assumed that. So I was pleasantly surprised to see this is actually a platform for adults. And I think that's important because, you know, people with ADHD, it's, it's, they range from, you know, small children to probably elderly people still with the problem. So what they, what Shimmer does is they use personalized one-on-one video coaching, productivity tools, what they call science-backed learning modules to help people with ADHD and then like match them with a coach. And so I thought it was really interesting. And like you said, I was shocked to hear that the co-founder, she said that she had looked into some kind of coaching options before she started
2:33 Speaker 01 the company and they were like $300 an hour, which is absolutely insane. I mean, who can afford that? So she wanted to to develop something that was more affordable and that's that's what shimmer is.
2:45 Speaker 00 Yeah. And the reason why it's a deal of the week is because the company just raised 2.2 million dollars into seed round that was led by Work Life Ventures and Seed2B. And now the company has raised 3.5 million, which begs the question, if the idea is to reduce the cost of ADHD coaching, how is that a business? Well, the company has a couple of different plans. If you want a 30 minute coaching session each week, it's 230 a month. Or if you want 45 minutes, it's 345. So it scales up based on how much time you actually use. And the company says that it has held over 15,000 coaching sessions, which implies market demand and a bit of product market fit. So I'm not shocked that it raised more money. The thing that I worry about, Mary Ann, is the the contrast between patient progress
3:30 Speaker 00 and the profit motive. Now, we're both glad they're trying to expand access to a needed service. Absolutely. But when you have a for profit company in healthcare, especially mental healthcare, I always get a little scared. So I'm hoping that this company has good internal guardrail set up to ensure that it doesn't lose its way as it seeks growth. Not that it will, but just in healthcare, I always want to double click on that.
3:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, and I agree because, you know, you want the incentives to not just be too focused on the financial returns for sure. And because you don't want that to compromise the quality of care or the mission of the company. They did say that they're planning to use some of that capital to work with provider, payer, employee partners to help reduce the out of pocket cost for the members. So that's encouraging. So I guess it's another one of those startups we'll have to try to check in with and time and see how they're doing.
4:21 Speaker 00 The other thing I want to bring up is that if you scroll back the clock to March of 2023, Mike Butcher for TechCrunch wrote a story entitled ADHD Startups Are Exploding, and now there's even a dedicated browser. Now, the browser element I don't want to bring up, but a couple of other companies of note in this space include London-based HelloSef, Inflow, which is based in New York, there's Numo, which is Ukrainian of origin, and then there's Helios, which I think is actually in the UK. So there's a number of companies that are trying to use technology products and services to help people with ADHD. Good to see a lot of companies working on that very key area. And Mary Ann, with enough about that, talk to us about Overmoon and why you are over the moon.
5:03 Speaker 01 Yes, so Overmoon is an interesting company with a model that I had not yet seen in the prop tech space. So they're a vacation rental startup. What's different about this company is they're kind of a combination of what, or they're trying to be a combination of the best of both worlds of Airbnb's and hotels. So one of the things, what they actually do is they buy vacation rental properties and rent them out directly. So they're bypassing a middleman. They're not a marketplace like Airbnb. They're buying the homes and renting them out on their platform, which they claim does a number of things like, number one, they're able to offer more affordable pricing. They have more control over the management and maintenance of the properties.
5:45 Speaker 01 I saw a thread on X earlier this week where someone detailed a horrible experience she had with a property on Airbnb. She posted videos of roaches crawling, droppings from rats, leakage, all sorts of just horrific things, and also shared screenshots of how she could not even get a partial refund from Airbnb. And so, you know, this is one of the reasons why this company was started, according to the founder. It wants to be able to have more control to offer reliable, consistent experiences for its guests. So that sounded like a commercial, didn't mean it to, but that's how the CEO worded it. Another thing they're doing, which is also very interesting, is they're giving people
6:26 Speaker 01 who own vacation rentals a way to say, okay, I'm tired of dealing with the management and maintenance of this. So they have a new product where you can like exchange, kind of just it's called an exchange. You can put your property into this program and you get like shares for it. It's, I know it sounds like a timeshare and maybe it sort of is in a weird way, but I don't want to go there.
6:48 Speaker 00 It's a shared time system, not a timeshare system. It's a big difference.
6:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm not going to get into the details of that. But, but anyway, so it's like, okay, I'm turning over my property into this exchange. So they don't have to pay capital gains like on this sale of their property because it's going into this fund. And then they become shareholders in other properties. So not just the one they own. And then they no longer have to worry about maintaining or managing the property that they put into the fund. So that's something new that Overmoon is doing as well, which it thinks will be a new revenue generator. And then also it offers concierge services to the people it rents its properties out to. So that's where it's kind of like a hotel, but it does charge for those services. So that's another way it makes money. So it's just, it's just a unique model. I haven't seen anything quite like it. They raised $10 million back in
7:35 Speaker 01 2021 from investors like NFX, Coastal Ventures, Camber Creek. The past year, they raised 30 million in financing from real estate investors who, who have stakes in these properties as well, and then 40 million in real estate debt. They claim to be growing quite a lot. So I just thought this was really interesting.
7:55 Speaker 00 Okay. So there's a number of different models out there. There's Airbnb, right? Which is you can rent out down to a room or a couch somewhere. There's Verbo or VRBO, which is kind of like Airbnb, but for renting out whole properties, which you can also do in Airbnb. Then there's Overmoon, which is owned properties by the centralized company, but you are by yourself and you're not in a hotel. There's some hotel like services. Then there are hotels, right? And then there are boutique fancy hotels.
8:25 Speaker 00 I really think we've disaggregated the where to sleep when not at home market to the nth degree by this point. I guess my question is like, who was not sufficiently served by existing market offerings that we need over moon, but given their growth, venture interest and success thus far, I guess I'm wrong, but it does seem like we're slicing this pie particularly fine.
8:43 Speaker 01 Well, we are because I think while Airbnb and VRBO can, you can have a great experience. Like I, like I mentioned, you can also have some pretty awful ones. So I think the idea of having a place where the owner is actually invested in, in it, it's different. Airbnb is not invested in its customers satisfaction in the way that I think a company that actually owns their properties would be. You know what I mean? So that's just my opinion.
9:13 Speaker 00 I, I've come around to being, I'm big on boring hotels. Like, give me a big hotel, right? With unlimited hot water that lasts for hours. I can take like the world's longest shower. Give me some medium bad wifi. I'll watch YouTube in bed and call it a night. It's all I want.
9:29 Speaker 01 Exactly. And so last year, I'll say this and then we can move on. Overmoon says it hosted 4,000 guests. It quadrupled the number of homes it owns from five to 22, which doesn't seem a lot, like a lot, but it's, wants to keep growing at that rate. And it says it also more than quadrupled the revenue it earned on those homes. One last point for now, it's focused on the southeast and sunbelt. I think over time they'll look to expand more geographically.
9:50 Speaker 00 Yeah. Points to Airbnb there because there's Airbnbs everywhere, whereas this is very much located to a couple of different places. I think it was mostly in Florida and Texas.
9:59 Speaker 01 Oklahoma, I think it was.
10:01 Speaker 00 Oklahoma.
10:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, Florida.
10:03 Speaker 00 The sunbelt? But those are the Midwest. Someone get a geography expert on the show. We're not sure. But Marion, the reason why I was really excited you brought this to the show is because we've talked about Protek struggling, shutting down, generally speaking, being a mess. And this to me was the opposite story, a very positive one, an encouraging one.
10:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. Earlier this week, I wrote about a company called Here shutting down its investment platform so that. You know, that's also was kind of a downer in the space. Last week wrote about front desk shutting down completely. So this is a little bit counter to this this narrative. And I said it was going to be the last thing, but I lied. Another thing that I thought was interesting that the CEO said was, because I asked him, like, I mean, interest rates are crazy high. Like, this is not the best time to be doing what you're doing. And he actually disagreed with me. He said he thinks it's opened up opportunity. There's fewer competitors that they can get below asking prices on their properties. And they feel like that, you know, you can always refinance your debt, but you can't go back and pay less later. And he claims
11:02 Speaker 01 that these companies that have shut down and they say it's because of interest rates have really shut down more just because of their inability to raise more capital. So I like that he was outspoken about it. I'm not saying I agree with him, but that was just his opinion.
11:14 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, we'll see. Airbnb is public. We can see the numbers. Do you know, this company is going to eventually have a trajectory that we can track? And here's hoping it goes well. The thing that I will say, my last thing, I promise this time, this is my last thing, is everyone wants to have a vacation house, right? But it's expensive and hard. So like, making that generally more accessible is cool. I may just be a little bit burned out on tech companies trying to do things inside of that particular niche because it feels like everyone's trying Panafield. Like, it's like 10 minute deliveries to me. Every couple of cycles, everyone tries this, and then it doesn't work. And the reason why no one can make private jet travel affordable, for example, is because it's not.
11:55 Speaker 01 It never will be.
11:57 Speaker 00 Right? So like, it's never quite what I want. Anyways, we're going to take a very, very short break. And when we come back, big news, USDC stablecoin issuer Circle has filed confidentially for an IPO. And also, we have notes on just how many IPOs are needed this year to clear the unicorn backlog.
12:18 Speaker 00 Mary Ann, it's Bitcoin ETF week, but I don't actually want to talk about Bitcoin ETFs because I feel like we have jawed about that to death. Instead, I want you to explain to our fine audience why stablecoins matter and why in particular Circle is the leading stablecoin provider in your heart.
12:36 Speaker 01 Well, that's, that's really funny because for me to explain why stablecoins matter, you know, really wouldn't be helping our listeners too much, but I can share that I was, I was actually surprised to see that the company had filed confidentially for an IPO this week. But then again, after I read yours and Jackie's story, I was less surprised because I didn't realize they had the second largest market cap on the market. They're worth about $25 billion.
13:02 Speaker 00 So just to contextualize a number, Mary Ann, you are factually correct, but by market cap here, we mean circulating supply. So Circle, the issuer of the stablecoin USDC, it's pegged to the dollar. There are 25 billion of them in circulation. So there's a $25 billion market cap of USDC. Essentially, it is a dollar on the blockchain. The other big one in the market is Tether that has about $95 billion of circulation. So USDC is the second largest, quite large. But Mary Ann, the reason why I think Circle is going to try to go public again after a couple of shots at the SPAC route is the thing we've talked about between us quite often. Rising interest rates has made holding cash more valuable. And
13:44 Speaker 00 because this is a stablecoin that is backed one to one with dollars and other assets, they're holding a lot of cash. So I presume as rates have gone up, their income has also risen. So I can kind of see why this makes sense. It doesn't shock me the way a crypto IPO normally would.
13:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, it doesn't. But I always have to ask this question when, when these sort of things come up, though, is they're doing well now for sure, but what about when interest rates come down? Hopefully, they have. Forecast or projected enough to to deal with that so that they don't just like crater if and when that might happen or if and when that happened because I think eventually they will come down.
14:18 Speaker 00 Well, given the inflation number we got on Thursday, maybe rates will stay higher longer. Yes, most certainly, sitting on cash does become more lucrative in a higher rate environment. But the other way that Circle could make more money would be to have a greater circulating supply. And if you go back to 2022, you can see that the overall circulating supply of USDC was above 50 billion and has come down by about half. So there's two factors that really generate income. I can't wait to read the S1, but Mary Ann, what we really need is a lot more IPOs. And you sent some research to me from PitchBook that I chewed on. And I gotta say, I knew the numbers were going to be rough, but I was actually a little bit shocked to see the numbers. So in the US, just amongst venture
15:01 Speaker 00 growth stage startups, which means Series E or later effectively, just those companies in the US in the SaaS, AI, ML and fintech sectors, there is $981.5 billion, which is damn close to a trillion dollars, and essentially a liquid startup equity that needs to find an exit, which is a number so large, I think it would take a decade of normal IPO activity to clear, and we're not even at that level. So, Mary Ann, impressions of that number and why did this research catch your eye?
15:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was, it is a bit daunting, right? Like you said, it's like, man, you know, that's, how on earth is that going to happen? I mean, how many IPOs did we see last year?
15:42 Speaker 00 Three.
15:43 Speaker 01 Just three, right?
15:44 Speaker 00 No, three that we counted, yes.
15:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it was sobering. But I felt like there was an optimistic tone to this report, did you not?
15:53 Speaker 00 Well, I believe industry reports that cater to financial professionals might occasionally take a tone that they would find to be salubrious and perhaps even calming. I don't think they're going to say, dear venture capital community, you have not exited a company in 18 months. You know, probably not.
16:11 Speaker 01 Well, I, the reason, obviously, this caught my attention the most, fintech was brought up. And, and I was surprised that, according to the research, that the median valuation per startup of a fintech was 485.4 million, and that was the highest among all the verticals. So that means fintech startups are much more mature and maybe, maybe more ready to go public than other verticals.
16:35 Speaker 00 Keep in mind that that number is these venture growth stage companies. So Series E or later, or have raised six rounds. But Mary Anne's point that companies that have executed those milestones are more highly valued in the fintech world is, is bullish, kind of, or it's terrifying. Because when's the last time we saw a new fintech unicorn?
16:57 Speaker 01 It's a fine line. And, and we had seen one not that long ago, but I just don't remember off the top of my head. But to quote PitchBook, they said, of course, all these startups will not go public in a year, and some may never go public at all. But even a modest percentage of these startups going public could mean a ton of value being recycled back into the venture ecosystem. So there's more bullishness.
17:16 Speaker 00 Yes. Yes. And that's the thing. Because venture capitalists have taken a lot of LP cash and turned it into paper gains and startups. You have to convert that into actual cash to return to your investors. And there has been so little liquidity in the last two years that I, people must be screaming behind closed doors. They put on a very brave face in public, but man, people eventually want their money back. So it's, it's going to be brutal, but there is some hope for the 2024 IPO market. You mentioned interest rates earlier. There's a lot of companies that are doing quite well. And, you know, with just in the SaaS world, $532.4 billion of frozen equity value amongst late-stage startups in the US alone, there's got to be enough standout companies to have some IPOs this year, right?
18:01 Speaker 01 Exactly. Exactly. I think that's the point that PitchBook was trying to make.
18:05 Speaker 00 Oh, so, okay, okay. I saw the headline numbers and I was like, holy crap, this is even worse than I thought. It was at least double the dollar amount that I expected we had to shift through the public markets.
18:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, I guess what they're trying to say is even if just a fraction of these, these companies go public, it's going to help. It has to help.
18:23 Speaker 00 It's like when you're trying to break a fever. Any reduction in temperature is good. So any reduction in pain here is going to be useful. But speaking about getting a fever and being in pain, we are now going to shift our focus over to Las Vegas, where we have a couple of dear friends going through all the latest and greatest gadgets, gizmos, and joy. Haya and Kirsten are at CES and we've asked them to come on the podcast today to give us a view from the ground. Now, we're going to talk about a couple of startups that you may have seen already on techbench.com, but we're going to dig into some highlights and then we're going to talk about startup related trends as they relate to what they have seen in and around the show floor at CES in 2024 in Vegas. Let's start with a Kirsten story because this is the one that I'm the maddest about, which is that apparently
19:07 Speaker 00 I will not be able to avoid ChatGPT when I'm in a car.
19:12 Kirsten Korosec? Yeah. So generative AI speak has been sort of the buzzword for the past, you know, certainly the past year, and now it's completely in the automotive world. Pretty much every automaker that's here either was talking about GenAI or like actually showing demos intending to put ChatGPT or some kind of generative AI, AI chatbot into their vehicles. So I tested one with Volkswagen and Sarin's, which is a software company. And yeah, generative AI is coming for your car, Alex.
19:45 Speaker 00 So I know that Mary Ann and I are both just boiling over with excitement about this, but is this like a voice system that I use? Or do I ask it to like write me a poem while I'm driving? I guess when I think about generative AI, I have a very particular use case and I'm struggling to meld that with driving.
20:04 Speaker 01 Same. I'm very curious about this.
20:06 Kirsten Korosec? So I think what you're asking is, why in the hell do you need a chat GPT in your vehicle? And what would you use it for? And it was difficult to get that answer. But the best answer I received, the best answer I received was this. The experience in most vehicles today, the voice assistant is incredibly limited, and it's usually a very frustrating experience in which True. oftentimes the answer after you ask a question is, I don't understand, or some other sort of graceful exit from the voice assistant. So the premise from a few automakers that I spoke with, executives from Mercedes and Volkswagen and some suppliers, the best answer was this.
20:48 Kirsten Korosec? The LLMs really allow us to have true natural language processing that is fairly unlimited. Many of them, what they do is they use a small proprietary LLM on one side to deal with all of the very important, accurate data that has to be provided to the owner. So they will create a data set with the manual of the vehicle, frequently asked questions, things like that. And then if the question goes beyond that, it then goes to a different model or service. So for instance, OpenAI's ChatGPT. So the idea is that the plan theoretically is so that you don't have those hallucinations.
21:32 Kirsten Korosec? But interestingly, when I did the Volkswagen Serance one, they did put limits on it. So the ones you might think of would be like, you can't talk about sex, or there's profanity, that you won't get an answer. But also some geopolitical topics. And then the other one was you couldn't ask a question about any other brand in a certain way. So here, I'll give you one example. If I were to ask, and this is what was the example. Give me 10 reasons why I should buy a Toyota while I'm sitting in a Volkswagen. It will not give you the answer.
22:11 Speaker 01 Well, that's funny.
22:12 Kirsten Korosec? But if you ask which automaker sold the most EVs in 2022, the answer will be Tesla and they will do that. So, so there are limits to it.
22:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, Mary Ann, having heard that pitch, how much do you want to have ChatGPT in your next Mercedes?
22:30 Speaker 01 That's funny. Um, yeah, I'm like you. I mean, when I first saw the headline, I was just struggling to understand like, why, why do we need this? Is this just another way to try to capitalize on the, the AI trend? So, you know, it seems like a very much nice to have. I cannot ever imagine it being something like I would feel like I have to have. And, um, and I'm curious as to like, is this going to make the price of the vehicles go up?
22:54 Speaker 00 Always.
22:56 Speaker 01 But it could also be something, you know, how like, like, you know, when GPS came out and we thought, now it's like in every car. So this could be a similar thing and it could, it could just kind of take over and just be like a part of everybody's driving experience. So who knows what I know?
23:11 Speaker 00 Or it could be like many things we've seen as CES in which they talk a lot about it and then we forget all about it forever. I recall one CES that was all about IOT and then IOT yielded us one company, though in public. And that was a lot of fun. Hyatt, you're also on site for CES. You look surprisingly healthy for someone who's been in Vegas as long as you have been.
23:28 Speaker 01 It really does.
23:32 Speaker 00 But the thing that I wanted to talk about with you is the, the Bain style mask, which apparently is all about muffling your speech.
23:40 Speaker 03 Yeah. So the founders of this company were also not fully able to tell me what it was for, which is kind of worrying for most companies. So basically what this thing is, it's a, it's a mask that you kind of put on your, on your face. It kind of looks like, it looks like a Bain style mask, basically. And it has lots of acoustic mufflers in it. So basically you can breathe normally and so the air actually gets exchanged as usual. But it stops sound from escaping the mask and has a microphone in there. And the idea is that you can talk and people sitting like. One chair next to you will be able to hear some muffled sounds. It'll be like and two, this one's my very good illustration of that. And then if you sit two chairs away, you basically can't hear anything because it's very like low volume. And what they were pitching
24:23 Speaker 03 was like, well, if you are talking on your phone on a plane, or if you have like a call center, or if you are like a commando in some sort of attack situation, you might want to be not want to be overheard. It looks kind of ludicrous. And I can't imagine a world where that makes more sense than, I don't know, not.
24:42 Speaker 01 The mask was just, it was just weird looking, to be honest with you. I thought, who's really going to want to wear this?
24:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, their idea was gamers and stuff like that. But I'm like, I don't, the Venn diagram of having to speak, not wanting to be overheard, and willing to wear a mask, I feel like that's a vanishingly small little dot in the middle there.
25:04 Speaker 01 A tiny segment of the population.
25:06 Speaker 00 It also looks like a muzzle. So if you were in a call center and you saw everyone wearing one of these, it would look like the humans have been enslaved by some sort of like dog overlord.
25:14 Speaker 03 Well, to be fair, if you're in a call center.
25:16 Speaker 00 You have been overtaken by a dog overlord. Yeah, that's, that's super valid. So I take it that your view of speech muffling headgear devices is not particularly bullish.
25:27 Speaker 03 I'm a fan of all technology, right? I would love to see any sort of kind of technology, and I want to try everything. It's amazing. But like, it also needs to have a business case. It needs to have a clear route to market and a use case and a potential customer and all that kind of stuff. And that part of the business seemed a little bit undercooked.
25:43 Speaker 00 Okay.
25:44 Speaker 01 Yeah. And so I have a quick question. Obviously, last year, AI was the hot topic. Everyone's talking about it, continuing into 2024. So far, has CES, would you say it's been dominated by AI? Or has it just been like kind of part of the conversation? I'm just curious, like, just how prevalent it was.
26:03 Speaker 03 So I've done a lot of walking around all the halls and stuff and there's a, there's a curious thing, right? You, you have the kind of products where AI is just kind of shoehorned in there. I'm like, okay, well, do we need that? I don't know. But then there's a number of products that are starting to show up where AI actually has a sensible use case. Um, one of them was like a dictation device that you can use to kind of uh get real time dictation where instead of trying to shoehorn some sort of a solution in there, it has on-device voice models for doing uh immediate transcription.
26:33 Speaker 00 Nice.
26:34 Speaker 03 There are use cases for that that makes sense, right? So there are some, some places where this makes sense. But remember that AI is largely software, right? And we're at CES, which is mostly about hardware. And so finding the overlap there, I think has been a little interesting.
26:47 Speaker 01 Hmm, that's a good point.
26:49 Speaker 00 On the hardware front, I want to talk about lightweight electric personal aircraft. What's going on with Pivotal?
26:54 Kirsten Korosec? Uh, yeah, so Pivotal was called Opener. This is the startup, I guess you could call it, backed by Larry Page. They've been at it for about 12 years now. And um their first product was called Black Flyer. They did their first customer delivery in June. And what they showed off at CES is the next iteration, more stylish, more sophisticated, more capabilities. And that is called the Helix. I saw it actually first in October at a special event in Texas. But they showed it off and the, the big thing was, hey, we're opening up sales. But to be clear, very limited use case, right? You don't importantly need a pilot's license to fly this. They do require training.
27:37 Kirsten Korosec? It is because it's under the lightweight category under the FAA, which means that it's under 350 pounds. It has a fairly short flight time and it has to be at about 1500 feet. And because it falls under this ultra-light FAA certification, you, you can't be flying in congested areas like in, in downtown New York or something. But to me, this is for the very wealthy person who lives in, like, has a ranch or has a large property or lives on a suburban edge enclave and can just fly it around and go to other places. It's meant to replace how some wealthy people use helicopters.
28:22 Kirsten Korosec? But the interesting thing to me is you can learn within weeks like how to actually operate this thing. And I planned to and I hope to do go through the training, actually.
28:33 Speaker 00 Well, I love this. I'm disappointed that it only has a range of about 20 miles and it costs $200,000. But I'm hoping that in time, the range will go up and the price will come down and then we can all have them and we can jump around like proverbial bugs. It sounds like a lot of fun. Now, Hyatt, we have talked about generative AI inside of CES. We have talked about little airplanes. We've talked about Bane-style masks. You also wrote about something called Serenity, trying to help people avoid falls or at least detect them when they happen.
29:01 Speaker 03 Well, the AARP always has a big stand, right? And they highlight a lot of tech for even at older people. And, you know, as people are aging and the amount of nursing staff that exists, technology is part of the solution, I think. As far as Serenity goes, it's actually a radar system that you put in your house and then can look through walls to see it learns how you move around a building. It can keep track of two people. It keeps track of them separately. So somehow it knows who is who by how they move. It can actually do respiration rate and heart rate measuring via radar through walls. I mean, sounds borderline creepy to me, but at least it's less creepy than a camera, right? If you cover your house in cameras, then you lose all privacy. The interesting thing is, so this thing is out
29:46 Speaker 03 there. They have a partnership with Alarm.com and the CEO hinted that they're about to churn out half a million of them. So they're doing like, there's going to be a lot of them around. I also spoke to another startup based out of France who is doing the same stuff with basically smart sockets. So they use the existing Wi-Fi signal instead of radar and uses Wi-Fi as radar. So that becomes really interesting, right? So this device is 20 bucks a month as a subscription. You get a device for free. Two or three of them covers the whole house. And then you can actually track, do fall detection and all that kind of stuff without any additional real active radar technology in your house. So I think the whole idea basically is to make people more independent for longer. And I think that's
30:30 Speaker 03 a really beautiful use of technology.
30:32 Speaker 01 I'm really glad you wrote about this. As you, some of you already probably know, my mother is elderly. She's almost 90. She lives with us. So falling is a huge, huge issue. And unfortunately, she's fallen about three times in the past four and a half. Years since she lives with us, this sort of technology may not be as crucial. But for the elderly that do not have live with family or live alone, or even if they do live with family, just being able to have that kind of technology. Because what it, for example, she fell going to the restroom at night and I didn't know. You know, so anyway, I'm excited about this. I love that it doesn't feel like such an invasion of privacy. And like you said, it really, it really warms my heart when we see things that have very
31:14 Speaker 01 real world implications, really just to help, help people and not just like cool tech that doesn't necessarily like improve anyone's life in a meaningful way. Absolutely.
31:26 Speaker 00 Yeah. Before we let you guys go, I'm curious about the overall startup picture that's forming there. Where are these companies coming from? Is there any kind of unifying theme behind them, Kirsten?
31:36 Kirsten Korosec? Well, of course, as you know, I spend most of my time in the transportation world. So it's very sort of narrow, even though it's still hundreds of companies. In the main halls of the convention center where I've spent a lot of time, where most of the sort of mid tier to very, very large companies. Interesting themes were this autonomous vehicle tech that was very whiz bang is now all about the companies that are highlighting it are in mining, in agriculture, industry. It feels more real application. So one of the largest boosts was John Deere or Hyundai HD. So we saw a big presence in terms of that less whiz bang, although in the whiz bang
32:17 Kirsten Korosec? category, we still did see some EV tolls, a lot of tech from China, a lot of tech from Korea, Hyundai had a pretty big show as well as its other company Kia. So I felt like in the transportation world, pretty much every geography was represented, but definitely a lot from Asia. On the startup front, it was a pretty fair mix. Still did encounter quite a few Chinese companies and there was the Bay Area startups there, but harder to find in the big halls. Did find them, but not as many. And that makes sense because these boosts are incredibly expensive.
33:00 Kirsten Korosec? But I'd be curious to hear what Hai has to say because he spent a lot of time in, I don't know if it's the dregs of the startup world, but a place called Eureka Park where there are thousands of startups.
33:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, Eureka Park is my favorite part of CES. It's where it's where dreams go to potentially die, but there's lots of hopes. There's lots of hopes. The Eureka Park is basically where all the startups are. There's a lot of international pavilions. So there was a huge Hong Kong and Taiwan and China and Poland and Ukraine and Holland and France and all these countries. Like the government hires out hires out this huge part of the show floor and then invites startups along as a way to kind of promote their startups internationally and that kind of thing. So it's kind of hard to get a fix on geographically what was going on. I did go looking to see if I could find a single Russian startup, but for obvious reasons, that wasn't happening.
33:52 Speaker 00 Not a huge shock there.
33:54 Speaker 03 Not a huge shock, but I was curious, right? Like it isn't impossible, but I couldn't find any. But yeah, I think the overall trend is like, like there's a big difference I feel between the US and Europe in a very important way, which is that climate change and sustainability is on everybody's breath all the time, nonstop. I think part of the reason for that is actually the conflict in the Ukraine because a lot of the oil and gas from Russia got shut off, right?
34:18 Speaker 00 Yes.
34:19 Speaker 03 And so what happens is that the electricity price and the gas price fluctuates extremely throughout the day. And as a result, people are much more conscious, like it touches your wallet day in, day out. And so a lot of the tech actually touched on that in various ways. It's like, how do you make sure your heaters are on hot when the electricity is a little bit cheaper? And so ways of optimizing that. And as a result, of course, you have a lot of conversations and a lot of tech that's coming out, AI or not, related to how to balance your fuel consumption and all that kind of stuff. And so I think it's much more at the forefront of the mind because it's there all the time.
34:55 Speaker 00 This is just making me so sad. I just wish I was there. I would love to walk around Eureka Park and just like talk to everybody. I I almost miss it.
35:02 Speaker 01 I can see how jealous you are, Alex. I can see it.
35:05 Speaker 00 Kirsten, hi, thank you so much for your time. Please don't get COVID, be safe, hydrate, buy a humidifier, and we will see you when you guys are back from CES.
35:12 Speaker 01 Thank you, guys. Have fun. Bye.
35:14 Speaker 00 Cheers. And that is a wrap, Mary Ann. I am so glad that you and I are at home and not in Vegas, because it means we can do lots more podcasting for our friends. And yes, we are back on Tuesday and Wednesday and Friday of next week due to an American holiday on Monday. But Mary Ann has a special treat coming for you this Saturday. Mary Ann, what is coming?
35:33 Speaker 01 Well, I had a wonderful conversation with pre-seed investor Jenny Fielding. And if I do say so myself, it was really engaging. She had a lot of interesting things to say. Definitely look out for it.
35:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, Jenny is brilliant. So look for that in your podcasting app of choice. And then Equity will be back on Tuesday with our kickoff Wednesday with our startup rundown. And then, of course, Friday with our roundtable on all things startup and venture capital news. In the meantime, we are Equity Pod on X and Threads, two sister shows found in Chain Reaction. Give them a listen. We'll talk to you later. Goodbye.
36:03 Speaker 01 Bye.
36:06 Speaker 00 Equity is hosted by myself, editor in chief of TechCrunch Plus, Alex Wilhelm, and TechCrunch senior reporter, Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Teresa Locan Solo with editing by Kel. Bryce Durbin is our illustrator. And a big thank you to the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch Audio Products. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
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