[Making an Impact Series] From Guitar Hero & Oculus to the Age of AI | Jack McCauley

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Welcome to the Unfinished Business Podcast.
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I'm your host, Eric Malvin, and this is a show where we sit down with CEOs, visionaries, leaders, and creatives who are out changing the world through their business, through their leadership, through their creativity, or through their organization.
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Because it doesn't matter who you are or what you have accomplished.
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Even someone like Brandon Naribe still has something that he's trying to do in his life.
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And so we explore those stories here on Unfinished Business with Eric Molfin.
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This episode is brought to you by PacFiz Outsourcing.
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All right.
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Today I am very excited to introduce you to our next guest.
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He is an innovator in residence at Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at UC Berkeley, professor and builder of UC Berkeley, co-founder of Oculus, an American engineer, hardware designer, inventor, video game developer, and philanthropist.
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He's best known for designing the drums for the Guitar Hero video game series.
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And as a co-founder and former chief engineer at Oculus VR, now known as MetaQuest, at Oculus he designed and built the Oculus DK1, DK2, and DKHD virtual reality headsets.
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Oculus went on to be acquired by Facebook for$2 billion.
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And beyond Oculus, he's created also the scrolling feature for the computer mouse and has developed US V drivers, kernel mode drivers, arcade machines.
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He also designed the audio system for Terminator 2, the James Cameron feature film, which won an Oscar for film technology in 1993.
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He holds numerous US patents for invention in software, audio effects, virtual reality, motion control, computer peripherals, and video game hardware and controllers.
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He was awarded a full scholarship to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a BSD E C S in electrical engineering and computer science in 1986.
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He has authored numerous research papers in the field of artificial intelligence and mathematical modeling of AI-based systems and is currently pursuing new projects at his private RD facility and hardware incubator in California.
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Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome Jack McAuley.
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Thanks for the Eric.
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Thanks, Eric, for the introduction.
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And the accolades are very well deserved.
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So thank you for being on the show.
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Thanks a lot.
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All right.
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So uh yes, you were we were before the show, we were talking about relationships, and um we were both speaking at this event this past week uh for the eLiance's grand table here in Phoenix.
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And I know that was one of the things you had mentioned was these relationships that you've been able to build over your 40, what is it, 45-year career?
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Yeah.
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So tell me uh about that because I think that you were talking about how important those were to bring you to where you're at today.
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Sure.
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Thanks a lot.
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Uh my career uh in engineering started in 1980.
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Uh I worked for the US Navy um in the nuclear power program, and my job there was a programmer.
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I had no uh official education in programming, and it was kind of work-learn thing.
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So I got into that and I really liked it.
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Um programming computer is a very uh isolating thing, and that's kind of where my head is at.
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It blocks out the world, and all you have to deal with is a computer and your bits and bytes on the screen.
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Um, and this was on a TRS-80, an old, old uh work computer that that came out in the late 70s.
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Uh, and and because I was successful at it and good at it, um, I got a scholarship you, as you previously mentioned, to Berkeley and I went to school there.
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So fast forward a little bit.
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Um my career uh started in entertainment, even though I was working in nuclear power as a programmer, but I was always a programmer and hardware engineer.
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Uh started entertainment working on feature films.
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Uh, as you previously mentioned, uh James Cameron's Terminator 2.
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I worked on Dick Tracy, Edward Scissor Hands, and uh and video games a little bit.
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I was doing a little bit of that stuff.
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Um and uh and so here's an interesting story.
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I'm sitting, this is in LA.
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I'm in a room, it's not like I'm on set, you know, with with a megaphone or anything like that.
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It's not like that.
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And I don't even have access to the script or anything like that.
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No, it's it's kind of a closely guarded secret what's on the how the movie's playing out.
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The director and the knows it and some of the people around him, but you're it's like done in segments, pasted together with editing.
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So I'm talking to this guy, and he's working, also working on this stuff, and I go, hey man, uh, I like working here, but the pay sucks.
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It does, it's not it doesn't get pay well.
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Uh and then I go, what do they what's a video game?
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What's that pay?
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And he told me, I go, oh, that's where I want to be.
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And so I moved away from that field of work into video games starting oh early 90s, 90s, 92, 93, started working in video games.
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I and this is an important thing.
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I went I started going to these trade shows, the video game trade shows, and going to booths and talking to people.
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And uh I'm talking to this person and that person.
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In the meantime, I got hired by Logitech, uh, the mouse maker, uh, working working there on um beginnings of the USB specification.
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And and my claim, one of my claims is I'm the original author of the HID portion of the spec, and that's true.
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Me and another person at Microsoft wrote that.
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So this is the beginning of USB.
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But because I was working in the USB stuff, I ended up working on game controllers for post-Logitech.
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I worked there for four or five years and migrated away.
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By going to these trade shows and meeting folks, I meet video game companies, and uh these video game companies are looking for engineers to build stuff for controllers and so forth.
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And I sort of migrated into that.
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Initially, I was in arcade stuff.
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We built PC arcade uh systems, which is an arcade cabinet sitting against a wall in McDonald's.
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Actually, we built them for McDonald's, sitting against a wall, and it's got a coin opt in it or a happy meal ticket, and it reads the happy meal ticket, and the kid can go out and play the video game, a custom written game for the franchise, let's say.
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In that endeavor, uh I started meeting more and more people in that industry, and eventually I migrated away from that to consoles.
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A console is like the PlayStation 2, uh Nintendo's console, so forth like that.
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And my job there is not necessarily writing the game, which I really didn't do that much of that.
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It was doing the hardware and the layers of software underneath the game, and uh it's called kernel mode programming, just so you know.
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Throughout that, it's see the video game industry is very small.
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Uh, everyone kinds of knows knows each other.
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Um, I I I I got let's fast forward a little bit.
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Um, this is like 2005.
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I was working in video games and building controllers for various companies, Madcats in LA.
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I worked primarily in Los Angeles, even though I live in Northern California.
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Even though Electronic Arts is headquartered here, their studios are dispersed throughout the world.
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So their EA is here.
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I worked at EA, Microsoft, Activision, all those studios are a big company.
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Yeah, I did.
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So, but I got to know a lot of people, and everyone once in a while, someone from that video game company peels off and does their own thing.
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And they call me.
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They know me.
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They you know it's like you know someone who's skill skilled at a task.
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It's not like you you necessarily like the person, you know that they can get the job done, and then and that was sort of me.
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They could put me onto a task and they know it would get it done because of my prior history.
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But they didn't like you?
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No, they didn't like me.
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I mean it's just like a stressful environment.
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Being being in a startup company is very stressful, and and it stresses people out.
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And financially, I was insinuating before the you know, before we started the podcast here that I took money out of my bank account, my shared with my better half to to buy stock or buy part of the franchise or give money to the company, and it's we're watching the bank account shrink, shrink.
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Yeah, and so it's you know, you leverage your assets into it in it, and you've got to make it work, uh, or else.
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And I've had some failures, so get into those too much.
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But so throughout this uh building, the career building, I met some very interesting people.
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Uh uh uh Kelly Sumner, um let's talk about Guitar Hero briefly, and I'll talk about Kelly Sumner a little bit.
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Kelly was the founder of Grand Theft Auto, he's the guy that started the game, and he worked for Take Two, which is in New York.
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He's a Brit.
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Um, I get to know Kelly through another guy, League and Chart.
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See, the chain of custody of you know my stuff goes through other people who hired me to do stuff.
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So I get a call um from Kelly, and he goes, Come see this uh guitar game at CES.
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This is in 2005, January 2005.
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I take the bus from the airport, get off the bus, and he stands there and he goes, Scott, you gotta see this.
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And I go into this room and they had a PlayStation Dev Console uh and they had this demo game running that another company had written for these two guys who started Guitar Hero, Kai and Charles Juan.
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The lead in to the story about how that particular relationship blossomed to many things for me.
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He shows it to me, and I I looked a lot of video game stuff, and I go, so he wanted me to build the guitars for him because I do the the game console and hardware and stuff.
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And I thought I didn't think much of it.
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I go, who wants to do that?
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Yeah, who would want to do that?
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I didn't know.
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I mean, it's not my even it wasn't even my idea, it was their somebody else's idea.
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But I liked Kelly and I liked both the brothers, Charles and Kai.
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I said, I can do business with these guys.
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Um and and so they hired me as an employee to develop their software and hardware form for Guitar Hero.
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Now, it's a huge franchise.
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I can't make the claim that I did everything uh in the hardware department.
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I didn't.
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We had a company in China.
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We had an we had a an office in China with engineers over there doing some of the work on the controllers.
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I did primarily did the drums and some other stuff, the slide features of the guitar and so forth.
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So and and it's these two brothers, it's their money.
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They're the investors.
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Uh they had one outside angel um from Taiwan, but it's their it's their capital.
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Um and I was getting paid, I wasn't getting paid much.
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I mean, it was you know, for back 20 years ago, that was uh not much money even back then.
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But I got still coming out yet.
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They were like pre-revenue, right?
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Yeah, so burning through cash, probably.
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Well, fortunately, uh they found somebody with cash, that was Activision, to buy the company.
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So the company sells to Activision.
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I had nothing to do with the business negotiations involving that.
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So all of a sudden I'm working for Activision, and Guitar Ho exploded.
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Um, and here's an interesting story.
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Um, Dave Mustaine from Megadeth, he's a he's a metal guy.
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Um Dave Mustaine used to be part of Metallica, and they split up and he started his own thing.
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And Dave Mustaine started Megadeth, and Megadeth is a great band, he's a really, really good musician.
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He claims to have written all their hits, whatever.
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I don't know if that's whatever.
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But he looked at that.
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Of all the musicians, and people looked at that, said this is gonna be a huge smash hit.
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He knew he knew he's an interesting guy, he's very smart.
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Uh, he is, he's very talented and smart guy.
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And all a lot of musicians said, Yeah, who wants to do that?
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You know, that's what I said.
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I'm not a musician, but I said it's like how we are.
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How do you so you didn't have any music background at all?
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I was curious if there was something there.
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No, I do.
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I took music all through school, uh primary school and high school.
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I was in music, you know, art.
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I was music and art guy.
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The engineering side of it, I could do that too, but I was primarily involved with you know making paintings and stuff like this, what I like to do as a music guy.
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Tinkerer, I tinkered with things.
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Uh you know, uh somebody, I'm just gonna sidetrack a little bit and tell the story.
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I met someone in Saudi Arabia, this author, and she goes, How can I produce uh uh another Jack Macaulay?
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I said, Well, you probably don't want another one.
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But I said, I said, you know what, what's he like to do?
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What's he like to do?
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He likes to play Lego.
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I go, there you go.
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That's what I was doing, that kind of stuff.
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So yeah, I had a background in music, uh, and I and I can play uh very in instruments and stuff, but I'm not a professional.
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I'm not Dave Mustaine or Kirk Hammett or anything like that.
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It's interesting because of guitar, I met all those that field of people out there at the NAM show in in uh in Los Angeles, and also just through the the franchise, I met a lot of people like that.
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So uh the one takeaway I had from them was how hard working they were.
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You think the dudes out there, you know, drinking beer and smoking joints and all that, they're not really doing that.
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Those guys are working their butts off and touring and grueling lifestyle.
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Wouldn't wish I wouldn't, I couldn't do that.
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Um yeah, always on the road.
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It's hard to do all the business travel, I'm sure, but they're on tour for six months, eight months out of the year, ten months.
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And they're in the studio and they have to come up with new material all the time.
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The record company says, Hey man, your stuff's not selling, dude.
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You you know, get your ass in gear.
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The guy's gotta the guy's gotta make it work.
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So they're hardworking people.
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Uh I got interesting to meet them.
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You know what's interesting?
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I I know uh Kirk Hammett's brother-in-law, and I said, Hey, what you know, what's it like being around that guy?
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And he goes, he works constantly.
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He goes, uh Mouse McCoy's his name.
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He goes, Yeah, he when he goes with his skiing with his kids, he's got his guitar with him.
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He's in the room practicing while his kids are skiing.
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He practices, brings a practice amp and his guitar with him everywhere.
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That's what he said.
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I go, yeah, that makes sense.
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You know, that's why it's like us bringing a laptop and busting out emails on a vacation.
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Kind of like that.
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If you want to be successful, you have to work hard.
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That's just there's no other way around it.
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Yeah.
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And uh no matter what field you're in.
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Yeah.
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And and so my job there at Oculus is being an inventor, uh creative person like that.
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I was doing the patents and so forth for the franchise.
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I'm gonna lead into where I'm headed with relationship stuff here, it's important.
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And uh Kelly Sumner, I went into business with him.
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This is the guy who started Grand Theft Auto, and he's he's not a slouch.
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We went into business together post-guitar hero.
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It didn't work out.
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We was started, we had a startup company.
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Didn't work out.
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That's okay.
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At least I got to hang around with Kelly.
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Kelly turned out to be a great guy.
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Um, so post post-guitar hero, I'm kind of semi not really working that much.
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I'm fooling around with stuff in my lab here and working on inventions and so forth.
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And uh I get a call from Greg Deutsch at Activision.
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Now, Greg's in worked in the legal department, IP and so forth, and he goes, hey, this is the importance contacts and staying in touch with people.
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I haven't talked to Kelly in a while, but I always call people at least once a year.
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I try to call them, even if it I don't really like them sometimes.
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I'll call them anyways.
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Hey man, let's go to lunch.
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Uh what are you up to?
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I don't ask them about what their company they're working at.
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I never asked them.
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It's more personal than that.
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You know, well, I'm I got grandkids and a blah, blah, blah.
00:17:25.359 --> 00:17:26.799
More along those lines.
00:17:27.119 --> 00:17:33.519
Anyways, Greg calls me and goes, hey, uh, there's a dude who's got a VR headset.
00:17:33.599 --> 00:17:35.039
And I go, oh no.
00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:38.799
Because I used to work, I worked at Global VR, I did their hardware form.
00:17:39.039 --> 00:17:40.880
Global VR is a VR company.
00:17:41.200 --> 00:17:44.960
And I got early, early days of VR, I'm guessing that means it was.
00:17:45.039 --> 00:17:46.720
This was in the uh 90s.
00:17:46.799 --> 00:17:50.880
Uh I would say, uh let's think here for a second.
00:17:51.119 --> 00:17:53.279
A 98, 99 time frame like that.
00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:56.880
Global VR had so you're like, oh great, this thing again.
00:17:57.279 --> 00:17:58.559
I thought I'm done with this.
00:17:58.720 --> 00:17:59.279
Yeah.
00:17:59.680 --> 00:18:07.119
And Global VR had an arcade console that you put a VR headset and it was tethered to the game, and you could look around and play the video game.
00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:11.599
So but it was tethered, not wasn't a console based, it was an arcade box.
00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:13.920
Piece of hard piece of wood in the corner.
00:18:14.079 --> 00:18:15.440
And I used to see those everywhere.
00:18:15.599 --> 00:18:22.960
They I don't I think they did okay at uh what talking to those guys, and I sold it stuff to them, uh, hardware to them.
00:18:23.039 --> 00:18:27.279
So, anyways, I had a background, I had a background of failures, I thought.
00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:32.559
Um, and uh he goes, he's gonna bring by and show you something.
00:18:32.799 --> 00:18:37.920
And uh I called him and I said, Yeah, when you come by, he comes by and he's got this comes by to my shop.
00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:41.279
I had a this facility here, another in a different spot.
00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:50.319
He shows he's at the door, and I walk up to him and I I look at him and I look down, and I was like trying to get a vibe from him, like feeling out a little bit.
00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:52.799
He's got this thing in his hand, so he goes, You gotta see this.
00:18:53.440 --> 00:18:54.480
Oh, okay.
00:18:55.119 --> 00:19:00.240
And he's got a uh an Apple MacBook in his uh in his arm.
00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:01.920
He puts it on me, and it was pretty good.
00:19:02.079 --> 00:19:03.440
I said, Hey, that's not bad.
00:19:03.599 --> 00:19:07.599
You know, I don't get sick, I don't get motion sickness, so some people do.
00:19:07.920 --> 00:19:11.119
So it doesn't bother me that it makes people some people sick, but it does.
00:19:11.359 --> 00:19:16.240
Um and he goes, We're looking for an engineer to to help us, and we're just starting the company.
00:19:16.319 --> 00:19:20.720
He goes, We could like to co-found it with us, and and uh and I said, Okay.
00:19:22.400 --> 00:19:24.480
I you know what I like, I like the guy.
00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:25.200
I liked him.
00:19:25.279 --> 00:19:27.039
I I said I could work with him.
00:19:27.519 --> 00:19:34.880
And and and and it turns out, so I looked and started looking at his background, and I was like, I gotta find out who this guy is.
00:19:35.039 --> 00:19:39.920
So he sold his company to Autodesk when he was 30 for 30 million dollars.
00:19:40.079 --> 00:19:45.759
So he already had an exit, and I go, that's his experience, and I could tell he was a genius level salesman.
00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:50.319
He sold me, and I had people come by all the time showing me stuff.
00:19:50.799 --> 00:19:55.839
And uh he goes, We're gonna we're this is gonna be global, it's gonna be a huge monster hit.
00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:57.279
And I go, sure.
00:19:57.599 --> 00:19:58.720
In my head, I said that.
00:19:58.880 --> 00:19:59.920
I go, okay.
00:20:01.039 --> 00:20:06.079
So that's when the company got started, and a couple people, a couple of co-founders joined later.
00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:08.880
Uh, Nate Mitchell, Mike Antonoff was already kind of in there.
00:20:08.960 --> 00:20:14.880
Nate was working at Scaleform, which is the company that Brendan sold to Autodesk.
00:20:15.039 --> 00:20:20.480
So Nate came in later, and and so that was the beginning of the company, was this thing?
00:20:20.640 --> 00:20:25.519
It was built on a prototype uh that was built by uh one of the guys at the company.
00:20:25.759 --> 00:20:30.720
Uh, and that's what they were showing to people initially, to people like me to get them on board.
00:20:31.039 --> 00:20:32.079
What did I think of it?
00:20:32.240 --> 00:20:33.680
Well, I worked at Global VR.
00:20:33.759 --> 00:20:36.960
I kind of said mixed feelings on the success of it.
00:20:37.119 --> 00:20:39.920
So it went it went it went kaboom.
00:20:40.160 --> 00:20:43.119
Uh it was on Jimmy Kimmel, it was all over the place.
00:20:43.279 --> 00:20:48.559
There was they filmed a Kickstarter video at my facility because they didn't have a office.
00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:49.839
We had no office at the time.
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:51.279
So working out of your house, right?
00:20:51.440 --> 00:20:52.000
That's fine.
00:20:52.319 --> 00:20:52.640
Yeah.
00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:59.839
I had a place set up and it came in and and they decorated it with posters and made it look like a video game studio.
00:21:00.079 --> 00:21:02.319
And we shot the Kickstarter video there.
00:21:03.279 --> 00:21:10.960
That went out and it it just the vibe from it and and the m the media from it just went crazy.
00:21:11.519 --> 00:21:15.119
So they opened the office in Irvine.
00:21:16.079 --> 00:21:23.920
Incidentally, just to backtrack on my story, the Guitar Hero was sold for$120 million, the franchise.
00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:25.119
Can you believe that?
00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:26.240
To Activision.
00:21:26.559 --> 00:21:28.400
That seems like such low money now.
00:21:28.720 --> 00:21:34.319
Um now they'd get$10 billion or whatever, I don't know, huge numbers now.
00:21:35.359 --> 00:21:45.119
And that Charles and Kai were you know kind of middle class guys, uh Berkeley grads, just like me, um, took them into wealth.
00:21:45.359 --> 00:21:48.480
You know, that's twenty years ago, so that's a lot of money back then.
00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:51.440
Yeah, because how old were you guys all at the time?
00:21:51.839 --> 00:21:55.680
I was uh let me see, I was forty five, maybe so it's a long time ago.
00:21:56.319 --> 00:21:56.559
Yeah.
00:21:56.880 --> 00:21:57.119
Yeah.
00:21:57.200 --> 00:22:01.440
I mean, but uh hit that level of wealth and You're not retired yet.
00:22:01.599 --> 00:22:02.720
You still have a lot more life to live.
00:22:02.960 --> 00:22:04.000
Those guys are younger than me.
00:22:04.079 --> 00:22:04.960
They're 10 years younger.
00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:06.720
Those guys are in their uh 30s.
00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:08.000
Yeah, 30s, yeah.
00:22:09.359 --> 00:22:16.640
It takes a set of cojones to set up a company at 30 years old and leverage your your pocket and your bank account into it.
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:17.599
You know what they had?
00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:19.519
They had a video game rental business.
00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:24.640
They would get they'd buy DVDs and they would run them out and mail them to people.
00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:27.039
This was before that their people were doing it on the internet.
00:22:27.279 --> 00:22:28.720
That's what their business was.
00:22:29.119 --> 00:22:31.200
Sounds like early days of Netflix.
00:22:31.599 --> 00:22:32.799
It was kind of like that, yeah.
00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:34.480
But the video games.
00:22:34.720 --> 00:22:35.839
So that was their business.
00:22:36.079 --> 00:22:36.799
Was it doing okay?
00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:37.839
I don't know how it was doing.
00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:39.279
I never asked them for their finances.
00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:41.039
It's none of my business, anyway.
00:22:41.119 --> 00:22:43.119
So interesting story.
00:22:43.359 --> 00:22:45.359
Just on guitar for a second.
00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:53.279
The songs on Guitar Hero were recorded by the Wave group, Guitar Hero 1, because the original artist would not give us their masters.
00:22:53.519 --> 00:22:59.599
However, one person did Dave Mustaine from Megadeth gave us Symphony of Destruction, the Masters for that.
00:22:59.680 --> 00:23:01.599
That's the trap master track recording.
00:23:01.759 --> 00:23:02.640
Because he knew.
00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:05.279
I think he knew it was going to be a smash hit.
00:23:06.240 --> 00:23:08.480
Isn't that one of like the most challenging ones on there?
00:23:10.559 --> 00:23:15.119
What's the one there's one of the songs on there where people are like crazy challenging?
00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:18.880
It'll come to me in a minute, but uh I'd have to Google it now.
00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:19.759
It's been a long time.
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:20.640
Apologize.
00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:24.960
But uh so make long story short, and then and then that's how small we are.
00:23:25.039 --> 00:23:31.519
One of the guitar players for the Wave Group worked at at Red Octane, which is the guitar hook company for Charleston and Kai.
00:23:31.759 --> 00:23:37.839
I don't know what he did there, but he was a guitar player for the songs on the that's kind of how low budget it was.
00:23:38.079 --> 00:23:49.759
Well low budget, but I mean, this is just like um grabbing who you can and making it work with the finances you've got, and and that's that's how they pulled it through.
00:23:50.079 --> 00:23:51.920
So back to Oculus.
00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:53.599
I know I'm skipping around on you there.
00:23:53.759 --> 00:23:55.519
Um that's okay.
00:23:55.599 --> 00:23:56.640
I'm loving all these stories.
00:23:56.720 --> 00:23:58.000
So keep you can keep going on.
00:23:58.400 --> 00:23:59.920
Who knew the guitar however was gonna do that?
00:24:00.559 --> 00:24:05.279
Best-selling video game of all time and in 2010 ever.
00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:07.200
Uh nobody knew that.
00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:23.279
We were we had I think, don't quote me, 25 container ships full of plastic guitars on the water at one time to LA where they they they take uh you get the box and the guitar, but the intellectual property of the DVD is not in there.
00:24:23.359 --> 00:24:28.559
That has to be placed in at a place in LA who prints the DVDs and puts them in there.
00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:32.240
So they'd have to box open the box up for the DVD.
00:24:32.559 --> 00:24:37.920
And the landed costs, don't quote me on this exactly, is around eight dollars for the box and the guitar.
00:24:38.240 --> 00:24:40.880
So this is a that's a lot of cash floating on the water.
00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:43.440
Um and they're boom, gone, sold.
00:24:43.759 --> 00:24:45.599
Uh I saw it everywhere.
00:24:45.759 --> 00:24:52.720
Um so to relieve doubt on my mind, uh, this is the back in before Guitar Hill launched.
00:24:52.960 --> 00:24:57.680
We still had the demo unit uh and they set it up at Fry's Electronics.
00:24:57.839 --> 00:25:00.079
Used to be an electronic store uh chain.
00:25:00.319 --> 00:25:00.880
It's now a go.
00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:03.119
No, I remember we had them here in Phoenix.
00:25:03.680 --> 00:25:06.799
Now we got a micro center, so they go traded for that.
00:25:07.119 --> 00:25:14.799
Go go see what go see it set up uh playing, you know, set up over at on a demo on a in a you know on a stand out there at kiosk.
00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:15.599
Go check it out.
00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:18.720
I went over there and there was a line of people wanting to play it.
00:25:18.880 --> 00:25:22.559
I go, oh maybe there is something there, you know.
00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:26.960
I don't know uh what's gonna sell and what's not.
00:25:27.039 --> 00:25:28.079
I'd have no idea.
00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:34.000
Um my success in that area is due to other people's ideas, quite frankly.
00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:37.839
A lot of my stuff uh has done okay.
00:25:38.640 --> 00:25:40.079
Scrolling mouse and things like that.
00:25:40.160 --> 00:25:40.720
I had no idea.
00:25:40.799 --> 00:25:42.480
That was done in the late 80s.
00:25:42.720 --> 00:25:44.720
I had no idea where that was gonna go.
00:25:44.960 --> 00:25:49.839
I put it on there so I could move forward in CAD or in a video game.
00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:55.920
Like in instead of using a key, you know, you have to do the scroll bar or whatever, you could just scroll your mouse.
00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:56.960
That's what I was gonna do.
00:25:57.119 --> 00:25:58.799
And then it shows up at Logitech.
00:25:58.880 --> 00:26:02.559
Uh and I didn't patent anything back then, I just made it.
00:26:02.880 --> 00:26:04.640
Uh now I now I do.
00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:06.880
I learned what that happened.
00:26:07.119 --> 00:26:10.079
How long into your career before you realize you need to start patenting things?
00:26:10.319 --> 00:26:11.279
I didn't know about them.
00:26:11.440 --> 00:26:12.559
I I solved them.
00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:15.440
I mean, I kind of knew about them, but it's like I didn't bother with that.
00:26:15.519 --> 00:26:17.279
It's like, how much you want to file the patent?
00:26:17.440 --> 00:26:18.559
15 grand, forget it.
00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:19.599
I spent a 50.
00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:23.200
Then I started after that stuff early on.
00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:24.720
I started patenting everything.
00:26:24.880 --> 00:26:32.160
You know, it I would first pass the idea off, and I'll talk about an invention, a recent invention at the end of our talk.
00:26:32.480 --> 00:26:36.400
Pass the idea off to someone and see, is this patentable?
00:26:36.480 --> 00:26:36.799
Do you think?
00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:40.000
Like I have a patent attorney, same guy I worked with for 30 years.
00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:46.480
And he goes, uh, not the same guy, one of two guys I worked with, independent guys, you know.
00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:50.640
And I pass it off, or I ask my one of my buddies, I go, What do you think of this?
00:26:51.279 --> 00:26:55.039
They either say, that's a dumb idea, or they say, Hey, that sounds pretty cool.
00:26:55.119 --> 00:26:56.640
What you know, it sounds really good.
00:26:56.720 --> 00:26:57.599
That's a really good idea.
00:26:57.759 --> 00:27:00.720
And then I go, Okay, he thinks it's good, he thinks it's good.
00:27:01.039 --> 00:27:03.119
Maybe I have some something to it.
00:27:03.680 --> 00:27:06.799
So, so I started patenting things after that.
00:27:06.880 --> 00:27:12.880
And also when you work at a company like Activision and you're doing an electropop and inventing, you have to do that.
00:27:13.119 --> 00:27:17.119
And so in the process, I mentioned Greg Deutsch worked in the legal department.
00:27:17.200 --> 00:27:20.160
That's how I know him is the patents for guitar heroes and my stuff.
00:27:20.319 --> 00:27:21.359
A lot of them was my stuff.
00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:22.960
He handled all the patents then.
00:27:23.119 --> 00:27:38.960
He had an illegal, there was a they had an IP uh department, but he's my main interaction was with Greg, Greg Deutsch, who introduced me to Brendan, who Brendan introduced me to Brendan, who Brendan started Oculus, and up the chain it went like that.
00:27:39.440 --> 00:27:43.200
So back to Charles Wang of Guitar Hero, right?
00:27:43.359 --> 00:27:46.000
So Charles I struggled with him, quite frankly.
00:27:46.079 --> 00:27:48.480
I he's a really good guy.
00:27:48.799 --> 00:28:06.000
Um and in uh talking to uh people at Berkeley, he's Charles was the head of the trustees, he ran all the trustees um later on after Guitar Hero and his multiple successes, Blue Goji and so forth, other things he did.
00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:13.680
He told them, and I found this out that he really admired me um and thought highly of me, and I never knew that work.
00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:16.480
I don't know.
00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:17.359
Isn't that funny?
00:28:17.759 --> 00:28:29.920
There's a lesson there for people and their staff, uh because I think that that's rarely communicated, and people could that the employees could definitely use that motivation or even that message.
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:31.519
But don't burn your I hear that a lot.
00:28:31.759 --> 00:28:32.960
Don't burn your bridges, man.
00:28:33.279 --> 00:28:43.759
Uh if if the shit is not working, pardon my swear words, if it's not working out, uh uh be graciously shake their hand and say thank you for the employment.
00:28:43.920 --> 00:28:46.160
I love working here, even though you don't feel that way.
00:28:46.319 --> 00:28:47.440
You don't feel that way at the time.
00:28:47.519 --> 00:28:54.000
He hated it, maybe, but um interestingly enough, just I'm gonna back up a little bit.
00:28:54.160 --> 00:28:56.720
Somebody I know just got fired from her job.
00:28:56.880 --> 00:28:58.480
Um uh I don't know why.
00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:01.920
I've been she I've known her for about 15 years.
00:29:02.079 --> 00:29:11.759
Um, and what I said to her was this I said, you had a setback, you'll get into the job, and you go, why the hell heck was I working at that place where I got fired?
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:12.960
I hated it there.
00:29:13.119 --> 00:29:15.119
And you're you'll be happier, right?
00:29:15.519 --> 00:29:18.000
Kind of the attitude I I took with me.
00:29:18.079 --> 00:29:26.240
It's like, well, you know, sometimes it doesn't work out, and you know, something happens, you're not working there anymore, you go on to the next place, and you go, why did I work there?
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:31.519
But I have nothing but good good things to say about people I work with at Activision, it was great.
00:29:31.759 --> 00:29:35.119
EA worked on E at EA for three years.
00:29:35.200 --> 00:29:37.200
So Microsoft was great, all of it.
00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:39.200
I don't really have anything to complain about.
00:29:39.279 --> 00:29:43.039
Logitech, all the places I worked at were great places.
00:29:43.200 --> 00:29:55.599
And I don't I'm just saying in one of the invo what I say to people when that happens is, you know, move on, shake their hand, say thank you, and go to the next place, and you'll say, Why the heck was I working there?
00:29:55.839 --> 00:30:16.559
I think she's I mean I I I my last job I had, I was working at Yelp, and uh because they were going public, I I was a sales guy, but I was doing culture things, I was putting on talent shows, I was putting together sales contests, which does not translate to sales numbers for me, it helps everybody else.
00:30:17.039 --> 00:30:23.920
But uh yeah, I I was if it wasn't for being fired from Yelp, I probably wouldn't be here talking to you today.
00:30:24.319 --> 00:30:25.200
Just what I said, dude.
00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:25.920
Yep.
00:30:26.160 --> 00:30:27.359
They did you a favor.
00:30:27.839 --> 00:30:28.079
Right?
00:30:28.319 --> 00:30:28.880
Exactly.
00:30:30.319 --> 00:30:32.640
I was able to go start my first business because of that.
00:30:32.880 --> 00:30:34.000
So exactly.
00:30:34.240 --> 00:30:35.119
So you never know.
00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:47.440
Uh sometimes to cut your position because they're overstaffed or whatever, that's you know, sometimes so I I've never been fired, but I you know, I I could see the writing on the wall.
00:30:47.680 --> 00:30:50.480
So you know, bye.
00:30:51.519 --> 00:30:53.519
But fortunately, I worked on your own terms.
00:30:53.759 --> 00:31:04.240
Yeah, but fortunately, I I work I work with good people, and and even if in the case I mentioned it didn't go on as I expected when I worked there, later on it worked out.
00:31:04.400 --> 00:31:08.799
Charles got me the trustee position at Berkeley, Charles Wang did.
00:31:09.119 --> 00:31:14.559
And and then I get to know his wife, and she's lovely, and I get, you know, Charles, Charles, they got kids and stuff.
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:16.799
I get to know him, and he's just a great guy.
00:31:16.960 --> 00:31:20.319
He is, and it's like, well, you know, I had it kind of had it.
00:31:20.400 --> 00:31:22.000
I didn't think he wasn't a great guy back then.
00:31:22.079 --> 00:31:29.920
I'm just I just I misread that stuff and uh personalized it maybe a little bit and and don't do that next time, you know.
00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:31.279
That I don't.
00:31:31.680 --> 00:31:42.160
Uh so but but Brendan uh arrive uh at Oculus, it you know, you said two billion, it was more than that, but um would turn out to be a great guy, you know.
00:31:42.319 --> 00:31:45.359
I wonder what his how many people do you invite into your home?
00:31:45.440 --> 00:31:49.599
He invited me into his home and showed me it looked like a video game studio in there.
00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:51.359
You can tell he's a hardcore gamer.
00:31:51.519 --> 00:32:02.559
Yeah, it's got swords and stuff and all that uh lightsabers and stuff like that at his house and Ferraris and stuff, but um you know he's just a he's a really great guy.
00:32:02.720 --> 00:32:06.000
Uh um same with Charles, great people I work with.
00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:09.200
Uh Kai, his brother, Charles's brother's name is Kai.
00:32:09.440 --> 00:32:11.519
I see him very rarely, not so much.
00:32:11.599 --> 00:32:18.400
He's more uh conservative, kind of not conservative, but kind of keeps to himself a little bit, so his personality.
00:32:19.039 --> 00:32:26.640
And all of that parlayed into my career and staying in touch with people, very important.
00:32:27.200 --> 00:32:28.480
You mentioned e-liances.
00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:45.440
Eliances is an organization uh that gets people together, it's like a party a little bit, and you get to talk to people, and me people don't normally hang out with uh Jeff Hoffman, uh Pricelines, people like that, like executives, Patrick Sold, and so forth.
00:32:45.680 --> 00:32:49.519
Normally I wouldn't work with those guys, but I like that stuff.
00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:54.079
And uh and out of that, I got Patrick's contact information.
00:32:54.160 --> 00:32:57.680
I call Patrick, I got Eric's contact information, I call Eric.
00:32:57.920 --> 00:32:59.839
Out of that is how you get gigs.
00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:03.039
I I I I didn't have a resume, I never had one.
00:33:03.279 --> 00:33:05.680
They go HR asked for your resume, right?
00:33:06.160 --> 00:33:08.319
I don't have a resume, you know.
00:33:08.799 --> 00:33:11.359
Now they require it as part of their protocol, you know.
00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:15.599
I have to have a resume and stuff, but I never really had one, I just threw people I knew I got hired.
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:16.559
Kind of friends.
00:33:16.720 --> 00:33:18.720
I know you got ChatGPT to write it for you, right?
00:33:18.880 --> 00:33:19.519
Oh, is that right?
00:33:19.759 --> 00:33:20.079
Okay, yeah.
00:33:20.319 --> 00:33:20.720
I don't know.
00:33:20.799 --> 00:33:24.319
You could probably don't even have to feed it anything, it probably knows your whole resume already.
00:33:24.640 --> 00:33:28.079
I don't, I don't, I don't I I use Chat GPT, I I subscribe to it.
00:33:28.160 --> 00:33:29.359
I didn't know I could write a resume.
00:33:29.519 --> 00:33:31.440
You know, it's interesting, you should bring that up.
00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:41.599
Um it's a little technical here, but I was looking for power calculations on uh a delta connected network, which is a load connected network, right?
00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:43.279
Blah blah blah.
00:33:43.519 --> 00:33:47.039
I have a cell spreadsheet, I calculated everything, it was all wrong.
00:33:47.200 --> 00:33:49.440
And I go, what's what's going on with this, right?
00:33:49.519 --> 00:33:50.480
Uh what am I doing wrong?
00:33:50.559 --> 00:33:59.119
And I go on Gemini and I go, I described what I wanted, and they told me exactly what the power calculations were, the math behind it.
00:33:59.359 --> 00:34:01.599
And that didn't exist ten years ago.
00:34:01.839 --> 00:34:07.039
I would I'd be on my Excel spreadsheet or textbooks, I got all my old textbooks in another room.
00:34:07.279 --> 00:34:12.800
Uh so you'd pull out the old textbooks to reference things and to figure out you don't need to do that anymore.
00:34:12.960 --> 00:34:14.800
Um but you used Yeah, yeah.
00:34:14.880 --> 00:34:16.559
Oh yeah, I kept all kept everything.
00:34:16.719 --> 00:34:26.800
I've got all my textbooks from school and and and and I used to go, there used to be a technical bookstore in Santa Clara, California, and I would go in there and find books on powers.
00:34:27.360 --> 00:34:33.039
The famous one is uh uh uh power uh AC Power Systems by Kennedy.
00:34:33.599 --> 00:34:35.519
I used that when I taught at Berkeley there.
00:34:35.599 --> 00:34:36.800
I use that textbook.
00:34:36.960 --> 00:34:39.599
It's like the Bible, and I found errors in it.
00:34:41.760 --> 00:34:43.920
Did you write to them about their errors?
00:34:44.159 --> 00:34:44.400
No.
00:34:45.599 --> 00:34:49.119
I found problems with math in there, but uh just slight things.
00:34:49.199 --> 00:35:01.039
It's not I mean that's a textbook that's been uh distributed throughout most universities that people who do work in electrical engineering uh but now I can go to Gemini and ask Gemini how to do it, right?
00:35:01.119 --> 00:35:02.079
Isn't that cool?
00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:15.119
Also, an obscure register on a chip, computer chip, there's a thing called a register, and you write information into the register using software, and it the register does something on the chip, right?
00:35:15.599 --> 00:35:22.480
And I looked through Microchips uh all their data sheets to find what the register settings were.
00:35:22.559 --> 00:35:23.280
And what did I do?
00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:30.320
I went on Gemini and I asked them, and they told me this obscure register, how could they finally mine that data?
00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:32.639
Somehow they mined it and they could present it to me.
00:35:32.800 --> 00:35:34.159
What's this bit on that register?
00:35:34.639 --> 00:35:36.639
And it answers my question.
00:35:37.199 --> 00:35:45.360
So you people that work in in all in incidentally, uh, my my older son uh is not a software engineer, but he's a programmer.
00:35:45.440 --> 00:35:47.920
And I go, how can you be a programmer if not a software engineer?
00:35:48.079 --> 00:35:52.239
And he goes, I have I have AI write my software for me.
00:35:52.400 --> 00:35:53.440
I go, what do you mean?
00:35:53.599 --> 00:35:58.960
And he goes, I just describe what it's supposed to do, and it comes up with a code and I compile it and it runs.
00:35:59.199 --> 00:36:00.559
That blows my mind.
00:36:00.719 --> 00:36:06.159
Uh all those jobs, you know, those embedded systems, I'm an embedded guy.
00:36:06.239 --> 00:36:08.079
All those I'm so glad I don't do that anymore.
00:36:08.159 --> 00:36:09.360
I'd be out of monopoly.
00:36:09.679 --> 00:36:13.039
All those embedded jobs are are are at risk.
00:36:13.280 --> 00:36:16.480
White-collar jobs are being gonna be affected by AI.
00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:18.079
White-collar jobs.
00:36:18.239 --> 00:36:24.239
And it you and the blue-collar jobs, the guys hanging sheetrock or repairing your radiator on your Corolla.
00:36:24.719 --> 00:36:28.800
They got the AI can't do that right now.
00:36:29.119 --> 00:36:29.679
Yeah, you know.
00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:40.480
Yeah, I know some folks that own service comp like home service companies, like Plumbing Company, and like uh who's there's no bot that's gonna come in and take out your toilet.
00:36:40.639 --> 00:36:44.159
It's gonna be a long time before they build that use case and make it profitable.
00:36:44.239 --> 00:36:46.960
So uh market research jobs.
00:36:47.119 --> 00:36:52.719
I can simply go online and ask an AI, ask AI what the what the research is.
00:36:53.760 --> 00:36:59.119
Uh another person I know, um I know I'm taking a lot of time on this, Eric.
00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:15.760
Uh, works in and so when you go to work for a company and you're producing an electronic product, the engine the design engineer's job is to find the component for the board, but also find backups for it in stock that are in a warehouse.
00:37:15.920 --> 00:37:18.000
In case you run out, you still have to have stock.
00:37:18.079 --> 00:37:21.039
You're not gonna wait 18 weeks for a part.
00:37:21.360 --> 00:37:26.880
And sometimes on the board you'll make room for that other part, even though it's not physically on the board in case you run out.
00:37:27.039 --> 00:37:28.159
Okay, that's a job.
00:37:28.320 --> 00:37:28.480
Wow.
00:37:28.719 --> 00:37:32.079
Yeah, and the person who's doing the board layout, like me, would do that.
00:37:32.239 --> 00:37:33.840
You have to do that work, right?
00:37:34.159 --> 00:37:38.320
This guy, I know that's his job, but he doesn't do PCB layout or anything like that.
00:37:38.400 --> 00:37:39.679
He just sources components.
00:37:39.760 --> 00:37:51.039
And I go to my better half, I go, Well, you can just ask Gemini where those are, and they'll tell you what warehouse they're in and how many reels of that they have and what the temperature range is.
00:37:51.119 --> 00:38:02.159
And and how how are you gonna keep your job when I can, as a board layout guy or a brief PCB design engineer, can just simply ask his, you know, for Google for free.
00:38:02.320 --> 00:38:04.960
Not free, but you know, for a little money.
00:38:05.199 --> 00:38:08.880
So it's the it we're all seeing, we're seeing that transition now.
00:38:08.960 --> 00:38:09.920
It's starting to happen now.
00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:11.039
People are getting laid off.
00:38:11.119 --> 00:38:16.000
I think someone mentioned to me that um Larry Ellison's company, what's it called?
00:38:16.079 --> 00:38:19.599
Uh Oracle just laid off tons of people.
00:38:20.079 --> 00:38:21.199
Yet they're profitable.
00:38:21.360 --> 00:38:25.599
It's like the opposite, usually true, where you lay people off because you're not getting money coming into the business.
00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:27.119
So but the opposite is true.
00:38:27.199 --> 00:38:33.199
Those jobs are obsolete and can be one job can be handled by five jobs can be handled by one person.
00:38:33.440 --> 00:38:33.760
Yeah.
00:38:34.320 --> 00:38:38.320
So yeah, uh but our interesting time.
00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:52.320
I I do want to I I wanted to ask you about this uh with AI, because of all the things that you've done over the years, and it you know, it's taken like I don't know too many people that will pull out their old college textbooks to try to reference for things that they're working on.
00:38:53.039 --> 00:38:54.639
That's what it took before.
00:38:54.960 --> 00:39:01.920
What would you think like what would life be like if you were growing up now with your inventor mind and everything you're doing?
00:39:02.079 --> 00:39:05.440
Like what yeah, I don't even think if you've thought about that before.
00:39:05.679 --> 00:39:19.599
I I know this I'm glad I'm not working anymore because I probably have to struggle to find uh contract jobs or something like that because they can just you know get so get the AI to develop the software for them.
00:39:19.840 --> 00:39:20.719
My son did that.
00:39:20.880 --> 00:39:23.199
Uh and the guy down the street here is my neighbor.
00:39:23.360 --> 00:39:25.440
He's got two software engineering sons.
00:39:25.599 --> 00:39:26.719
He's a software engineer.
00:39:26.880 --> 00:39:28.639
Everyone in this neighborhood's in tech.
00:39:29.519 --> 00:39:31.679
Just about everyone, education or tech.
00:39:32.719 --> 00:39:38.880
He goes, I go, well, you don't have to worry about being unemployed, their kids being unemployed because of AI.
00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:42.719
And he goes, No, because all they do is describe high-level how the thing works.
00:39:42.880 --> 00:39:47.920
You still have to have the mental capacity to describe how it behaves.
00:39:48.159 --> 00:39:52.559
And then the the the nuts and bolts of how that gets sewn together is the AI part of it.
00:39:52.639 --> 00:39:56.480
So you don't and he's right, because that's just treasury.
00:39:57.039 --> 00:40:07.679
That stuff, debugging and you know, letting it run and testing it and stuff is all just treasury, and you you know, it's not that exciting, anyways, but you have to do it part of the job.
00:40:07.920 --> 00:40:16.320
So I I think uh I think that we're gonna see an acceleration in applications uh software that we haven't seen before.
00:40:16.559 --> 00:40:26.079
Um remember when uh you know, you're you're probably remember the dawn of the internet age and so forth like that, how profoundly it changed everything.
00:40:26.880 --> 00:40:30.559
Yeah, digital cameras, you know, the camera on this thing.
00:40:30.719 --> 00:40:37.519
And I said to someone at uh at at Elian's, right, I go, I wonder what's happening at Kodak, because you know, people aren't buying phone line.
00:40:37.840 --> 00:40:39.360
He says, Are they still in business?
00:40:39.599 --> 00:40:44.400
And they are, but I mean it this is the internet changed everything.
00:40:44.559 --> 00:40:50.159
Um they kept when I first started in that using the internet, I had a modem hooked to my phone line.
00:40:50.239 --> 00:40:57.599
You take your phone jack and you plug it in, had another phone line coming in, plug it into your modem, you get five kilobott or something like that.
00:40:58.159 --> 00:41:01.440
Five kb kilobits per second out of it.
00:41:01.599 --> 00:41:09.920
And and um, you know, I've on Starlink here because I'm out in the country and I I like 400 megabits per second, which is what you see here.
00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:13.920
It's pretty pretty good for a satellite connected network.
00:41:14.159 --> 00:41:28.800
Um, I also have uh 5G modem here as a backup, but see this is uh anyways, I'm just saying I got this is this AI thing is as profound as the dawn of the internet age, and it's unknown how it's gonna happen.
00:41:28.960 --> 00:41:30.719
No one knows what's gonna happen.
00:41:31.039 --> 00:41:32.719
You mentioned the AI stuff I did.
00:41:32.800 --> 00:41:34.079
I did research into this.
00:41:34.159 --> 00:41:39.039
Um I take courses through the extension uh periodically.
00:41:39.119 --> 00:41:42.960
Um the COVID hit and I stopped doing that a little bit, but I did it online.
00:41:43.360 --> 00:41:47.519
But I take like I go, this is 30 years, I go, what's AI?
00:41:47.599 --> 00:41:48.159
What does that mean?
00:41:48.320 --> 00:41:49.440
What's artificial intelligence?
00:41:49.519 --> 00:41:50.719
What's a neural network?
00:41:50.880 --> 00:41:53.280
And I said, I open the textbook, I go, I don't know.
00:41:53.360 --> 00:41:55.920
I started taking courses in it.
00:41:56.159 --> 00:41:59.920
And then I started writing technical papers on it because I understood the math.
00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:02.960
It's linear algebra, uh kind of.
00:42:03.360 --> 00:42:08.880
It's linear algebra, and I started taking courses on it and writing, doing little papers and stuff on it.
00:42:09.119 --> 00:42:23.519
Um but in and then incidentally, this didn't take off until the GPU was available in mass because it takes a number crunching computer to run the AI algorithms.
00:42:23.599 --> 00:42:26.960
It's a number cruncher doing the matrix multiplication.
00:42:27.039 --> 00:42:29.039
So it's just what computer graphics do.
00:42:29.119 --> 00:42:31.440
It's basically the same arithmetic.
00:42:31.519 --> 00:42:33.519
It's really arithmetic, not math.
00:42:33.840 --> 00:42:34.800
Takes an upper crunch.
00:42:35.360 --> 00:42:43.119
This is explains NVIDIA and other companies who are making TPUs, tensor processing units for for artificial intelligence, their success.
00:42:43.280 --> 00:42:47.679
They can't make them fast enough now, you know, can't produce it fast enough.
00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:54.239
And yeah, earn early in the days of Oculus, by the way, we we tuned our displays at NVIDIA.
00:42:54.480 --> 00:42:58.159
It's right down the street here, it's 10 minutes from here, my house.
00:42:58.480 --> 00:43:06.559
So on an LCD display, which was on a DK1, the pixel is actually a little chemical flap.
00:43:06.639 --> 00:43:08.800
It's a flap like a fish scale.
00:43:09.039 --> 00:43:13.840
And you allow the certain amount of light in by opening and closing the flap.
00:43:14.239 --> 00:43:21.039
So it opens to a certain degree to let a little light in, so you can change the color density on an individual pixel, right?
00:43:21.199 --> 00:43:30.239
So but you have to tune the display, it has to be tuned, and there's a chip inside there with all the settings for every single open and close time on the flap, right?
00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:32.400
So we took for every tiny little pixel.
00:43:32.559 --> 00:43:35.039
Yeah, not on an LED, but on a L C D display.
00:43:35.199 --> 00:43:40.000
LED is different, but I think there's some tuning that needs to be done on those because of process issues.
00:43:40.239 --> 00:43:42.000
So we didn't have one at Oculus, right?
00:43:42.159 --> 00:43:43.440
That's a big expensive machine.
00:43:43.519 --> 00:43:46.559
So we went over to Nvidia and did the tuning there, right?
00:43:46.719 --> 00:43:51.119
I walk in there and it's like the boss sitting in the corner.
00:43:51.280 --> 00:43:53.119
So it's like a building, it's not very big.
00:43:53.280 --> 00:43:54.719
They weren't like huge back then.
00:43:54.800 --> 00:43:59.840
They're a fabulous semiconductor company, which means they don't have a fabrication line that's just intellectual property.
00:44:00.079 --> 00:44:00.880
Property, right?
00:44:01.440 --> 00:44:01.679
Yeah.
00:44:01.920 --> 00:44:05.360
And like there's the boss, Jensen, there's this guy, there's this guy.
00:44:05.519 --> 00:44:06.719
And I go, where is everybody?
00:44:06.880 --> 00:44:07.679
Well, this is it.
00:44:08.400 --> 00:44:14.400
No, it's not quite that bad, but it's a three-level building, but on the corner on Central Avenue over there in Santa Clara.
00:44:14.559 --> 00:44:18.480
Now it's a campus, it's a gigantic, huge campus.
00:44:18.719 --> 00:44:26.320
Um that shows you what's happening um, not with video games, but with AI, is that that's what's generating the revenue.
00:44:26.559 --> 00:44:32.480
Um back in the day in '93 and '94, there weren't processing chips powerful enough to do it.
00:44:32.559 --> 00:44:35.760
It was known how it works from the four 1940s.
00:44:35.920 --> 00:44:43.199
It just didn't have the technology, the processing power to get it in the mainstream, and now it is, and it's everywhere.
00:44:43.440 --> 00:44:47.280
Like overnight within the last couple two years.
00:44:47.519 --> 00:44:48.559
It's mind-blowing.
00:44:48.639 --> 00:44:50.239
It's generating itself.
00:44:50.800 --> 00:44:52.880
It's producing its own self.
00:44:53.840 --> 00:45:07.440
Uh no, I've been reading about some of the uh the open AI hugging face uh breaches and what they're starting to release now about what some of the AI leaving notes behind for itself uh to find later.
00:45:07.519 --> 00:45:09.599
So it's uh Yeah, it's almost interesting.
00:45:09.840 --> 00:45:14.800
It's like having an advisor who does all your research for you and it costs nothing.
00:45:15.039 --> 00:45:20.960
You know, you ask it a question, hey John, can you go in in the library over here and find out this particular thing?
00:45:21.039 --> 00:45:23.840
And he sits over there for five hours looking through all the text.
00:45:24.239 --> 00:45:26.400
Yeah, it's like having a free advisor.
00:45:26.639 --> 00:45:32.400
And how that's gonna impact the the employment in the Silicon Valley is unknown right now.
00:45:32.559 --> 00:45:35.920
I think it's gonna be pretty profound upheaval.
00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:50.559
And all of those white-collar jobs, as we mentioned, that the non-sheet bock hanging jobs and the painting jobs, uh, they're gonna there's gonna go some there's gonna be some parsing that uh that occurs to until this settles out.
00:45:50.639 --> 00:45:54.480
Um there's a lot of regulatory stuff being done on AI right now.
00:45:55.199 --> 00:45:57.440
They don't want to build data centers, they don't want to do that.
00:45:58.159 --> 00:46:00.800
And I I think that's short-sighted.
00:46:00.880 --> 00:46:07.599
Uh other countries aren't doing that, maybe Europe a little bit, but um we have to build those things as quickly as we can.
00:46:07.679 --> 00:46:10.719
Uh, we're gonna get beaten up if we don't.
00:46:10.880 --> 00:46:13.199
Uh you can't change, you can't change it.
00:46:13.280 --> 00:46:17.199
The the genie is out of the uh out of you know, out of the box.
00:46:17.360 --> 00:46:18.320
You can't change that now.
00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:20.719
It's not not you can't change it at this point.
00:46:21.440 --> 00:46:33.679
Well, it's becoming like a uh an arms race to say, uh with you know different countries even kind of going in behind backing some of these, you know, some of the different private companies.
00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:36.400
So like and I I'm seeing it too.
00:46:36.480 --> 00:46:39.840
Well with our company, we've been developing some software as well.
00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:46.719
Uh because we we handle millions of calls a year in our call center, and it's a lot of manpower to listen to calls to do QA.
00:46:46.880 --> 00:46:49.280
So we built some software to do that.
00:46:49.360 --> 00:46:53.599
But now as we're trying to get it out to the market, it's like a state-by-state thing.
00:46:53.679 --> 00:47:07.280
We're starting to see, well, there's this huge regulation in Colorado, for example, where you can't use the AI's tool to do so many things, managing employees, and it there's a lot of restrictions.
00:47:07.840 --> 00:47:20.159
So it's interesting to see since there is no federal regulation, there's no global regulation, that states are now coming out with things that are making uh that I don't know, you have to comply with.
00:47:20.719 --> 00:47:23.199
I want this state here in California to fix the potholes.
00:47:23.280 --> 00:47:28.800
I don't want them to tell me what I can do with my my AI engine that I'm paying for.
00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:30.159
I don't I don't think it's their place.
00:47:30.320 --> 00:47:35.119
But I'm gonna get out of the politics here, but uh I don't I think it's a mistake to do that.
00:47:35.199 --> 00:47:38.159
The genie's uh out, you can't do anything about it now.
00:47:38.239 --> 00:47:40.239
You should just start building out for it.
00:47:40.559 --> 00:47:46.639
A lot of states uh this state included California, do not have the power capacity.
00:47:47.119 --> 00:47:51.679
Uh on the on the grid to power AI, it has to be done in a place.
00:47:51.920 --> 00:47:52.960
Let me think of one.
00:47:53.119 --> 00:47:55.920
Nevada that has usually has Lake Mead, right?
00:47:56.000 --> 00:48:00.400
You've got uh Pelton wheel generators and so forth supplying power.
00:48:00.639 --> 00:48:02.960
Has to be in a place that has ample power.
00:48:03.119 --> 00:48:06.079
We just simply don't have it here at this point.
00:48:07.360 --> 00:48:08.719
Yeah, there's a lot of catch-up.
00:48:08.880 --> 00:48:09.360
Uh yeah.
00:48:09.519 --> 00:48:13.119
Well without like we could go down a lot of politics to get there, I know.
00:48:13.440 --> 00:48:15.840
But uh but I I am curious.
00:48:16.159 --> 00:48:24.559
Uh as I I know you're you're uh parent here, you're a father, and uh I know your kids are a bit older, but I got young kids at home.
00:48:24.719 --> 00:48:29.440
I got a six-year-old and well, seven-year-old and a ten-year-old.
00:48:29.920 --> 00:48:41.280
And uh as someone who's got young kids that are growing up into this world, and I I think you and I both know like there's gonna be a the world's gonna look a lot different the next five years than it does today.
00:48:41.599 --> 00:48:46.400
What would you say to someone who's a parent trying to raise their kids to be ready for the future?
00:48:46.480 --> 00:48:51.360
Because the future, how do we know what the future looks like when it's nobody knows?
00:48:51.679 --> 00:48:52.239
Yeah.
00:48:53.119 --> 00:49:04.320
Well, uh if you're asking me from uh sort of jobs and career standpoint, um I'll just say that my parents uh get bought me Lego.
00:49:05.599 --> 00:49:14.719
Uh my parents provided me with the sketch pad and paint, and they provided me with the musical instruments and things I enjoyed doing.
00:49:14.960 --> 00:49:23.440
Um of course we didn't really have the internet back then, and computing power was basically in a warehouse someplace or a data center.
00:49:23.840 --> 00:49:25.280
Very different world.
00:49:25.519 --> 00:49:32.159
Um if you want to prepare them for the future, uh there's a you know, there's a lot of negativity on the web.
00:49:32.320 --> 00:49:44.719
And in I'm not gonna name uh companies, but I I look at that and and I I spend time on it, but it's mostly in infusing me with negative vibes.
00:49:45.199 --> 00:49:55.840
And I want to re if I had kids, I would want to remove them from the ability to do that and do give them a creative outlet, um, such as my pet my family did for me, my my parents.
00:49:56.000 --> 00:49:58.400
Plus, I had older siblings who were already kind of doing that stuff.
00:49:58.480 --> 00:50:00.000
I just kind of copied them.
00:50:00.239 --> 00:50:01.840
Uh, my brother in particular.
00:50:02.000 --> 00:50:06.400
So I have a an older brother, not much older, he's 10 months older.
00:50:06.559 --> 00:50:10.159
Uh so we were like playmates, kind of like thing, and he was doing stuff.
00:50:10.239 --> 00:50:11.920
He's more advanced than I was because he's older.
00:50:12.079 --> 00:50:14.559
A year older makes a big difference in kids, so he's doing this stuff.
00:50:14.639 --> 00:50:16.079
I'm kind of looking at him going, what are you doing?
00:50:16.159 --> 00:50:18.320
I'll try that and I'll do it, whatever.
00:50:18.559 --> 00:50:24.239
Uh the art part of it was kind of me, but um how to prepare them for the new world.
00:50:24.480 --> 00:50:28.000
I I would say uh the new world is the old world.
00:50:28.079 --> 00:50:35.679
You can still give them a pen and paper, and I don't, or an iPad and have them do art on it, so forth like that.
00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:40.159
Um, you can also create art in chat GPT, you know.
00:50:40.960 --> 00:50:41.840
That's not the thing.
00:50:42.639 --> 00:50:44.079
Listen, this is interesting.
00:50:44.239 --> 00:50:50.400
I I I uh I know a woman who has a startup that's doing feature films, right?
00:50:50.960 --> 00:51:01.039
Um and she goes, I made this clip, check it out, and she sends it to me via email, and I I can't play it for you, but and it's Robert Downey Jr.
00:51:01.280 --> 00:51:05.679
sitting in a coffee shop talking to another actor, and you can't tell.
00:51:06.079 --> 00:51:07.039
You can't tell.
00:51:07.679 --> 00:51:10.239
That industry that industry, and she did it on her own.
00:51:10.320 --> 00:51:11.519
I don't know what tools she used.
00:51:11.599 --> 00:51:14.239
There's probably common tools that that are available.
00:51:16.400 --> 00:51:18.239
But the fact that it's possible to do today.
00:51:18.559 --> 00:51:20.079
What's that gonna do the entertainment industry?
00:51:20.159 --> 00:51:21.920
You can have virtual stars.
00:51:22.239 --> 00:51:32.000
A physical star that you see on the screen that doesn't exist, and he wins an Academy Award, comes out on a monitor or whatever.
00:51:32.239 --> 00:51:35.119
You know, that in the wheel out the the server.
00:51:35.280 --> 00:51:36.639
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:51:36.719 --> 00:51:38.880
They bring the server server out there.
00:51:40.079 --> 00:51:45.599
I would like to thank uh Navita, yeah, AWS for their contribution.
00:51:46.079 --> 00:51:46.480
Yeah.
00:51:46.719 --> 00:51:50.480
The the entertainment industry is gonna change profoundly.
00:51:50.639 --> 00:51:52.639
You don't need a studio anymore.
00:51:52.880 --> 00:51:55.760
I I was watching, I'm a car car nut, right?
00:51:55.840 --> 00:52:02.719
So I'm watching car videos online and car crashes and stuff, and then pretty soon it occurred to me that looks a little off.
00:52:02.880 --> 00:52:04.000
And it's AI.
00:52:04.800 --> 00:52:05.840
Car accident, right?
00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:08.480
And the physics, everything was perfect.
00:52:08.719 --> 00:52:10.719
But you know, you can kind of tell a little bit on that.
00:52:10.880 --> 00:52:15.440
But this other video, and sometime I will get a chance to show it to you, you cannot tell.
00:52:15.760 --> 00:52:19.760
And it's a whole it's a whole it's a whole story that she did.
00:52:19.840 --> 00:52:23.280
It's about 15 minutes long with famous actors.
00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:28.800
And when I went to show this at uh uh uh a trade show, I put it in my PowerPoint.
00:52:29.039 --> 00:52:30.320
Hey, watch this, right?
00:52:30.880 --> 00:52:39.679
Uh a variety, I shouldn't say that, variety magazine came up to me because you can't be showing actors with you know without their license to what I didn't know that.
00:52:39.840 --> 00:52:46.639
You know, you're supposed to have a license, oops, and after that's gone, I probably shouldn't show that video anymore.
00:52:47.519 --> 00:52:53.519
It's gat it's gas worthy, it's really profound, and that uh the industry is gonna be affected greatly.
00:52:53.679 --> 00:53:02.960
You don't have to be in in Los Angeles at Paramount Studios, you can be in it so in your you know, in your office, in your home making a movie.
00:53:03.280 --> 00:53:07.360
So that's well, I I for me uh that's one of my passions.
00:53:07.440 --> 00:53:08.800
I think I was mentioning earlier.
00:53:08.880 --> 00:53:11.360
Uh I want to make movies and documentaries one day.
00:53:11.519 --> 00:53:21.119
I've made short films in in college, I made a little short films with my kids, and uh I really believe like now more than ever I've got a chance.
00:53:21.280 --> 00:53:25.599
I I don't need a thousand people film crew to make something.
00:53:25.840 --> 00:53:27.599
Uh now it's I'm still gonna need people.
00:53:27.679 --> 00:53:41.360
It's not like I'm gonna do one person, but I think I'll be able to pull off the the visions that I have in my head and put it into uh uh actual production way easier, just like with the call center.
00:53:41.599 --> 00:54:03.920
I I hear stories like uh out of the Alliances, you know, some of the uh one of the people I was talking to, they were talking about the phone uh their their call center that they had set up, their phone room in the early 90s, and the amount of equipment and infrastructure and the millions of dollars of investment that was required then that now I just pay a software license.
00:54:04.079 --> 00:54:09.760
There's hard maybe there's a headset for hardware, but it's a laptop so much different.
00:54:09.920 --> 00:54:10.400
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:10.639 --> 00:54:11.280
Laptop.
00:54:11.440 --> 00:54:11.760
Yeah.
00:54:12.639 --> 00:54:21.360
So and to your point, we segue away from the personal stuff a little bit, but to your point, we we don't know uh what effect this is gonna have.
00:54:21.440 --> 00:54:24.079
And I don't understand why people are gonna try to control it.
00:54:24.159 --> 00:54:25.039
It can't.
00:54:25.280 --> 00:54:26.559
You're gonna be able to control that.
00:54:26.800 --> 00:54:31.199
You can do it can't do it in let's say Idaho, but you can do it in Oregon next door.
00:54:31.360 --> 00:54:34.000
Well, I'll just do it in Oregon from my laptop.
00:54:34.320 --> 00:54:38.079
You know, so the gene oh yeah, that the genie is that kind of control.
00:54:38.320 --> 00:54:41.119
The genie is out of the bottle um at this point.
00:54:41.760 --> 00:54:45.360
And I'm glad I'm retired, even though I'm I'm somewhat not retired.
00:54:45.519 --> 00:54:48.559
I'm glad I'm not doing startups and stuff like that anymore.
00:54:48.800 --> 00:54:55.760
Uh I burned, I you know, I'm I've done well for myself, uh, but I burned through how much money I don't even know.
00:54:55.920 --> 00:54:57.840
Uh doing ideas.
00:54:58.079 --> 00:55:02.079
Not not not all my ideas, but working with people and trying to get stuff off the gun.
00:55:02.320 --> 00:55:04.079
Two camera companies that failed.
00:55:04.400 --> 00:55:06.320
Uh two camera companies.
00:55:06.559 --> 00:55:06.960
You did?
00:55:07.119 --> 00:55:07.360
Yeah.
00:55:07.440 --> 00:55:07.920
Oh, I didn't know.
00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:09.599
No, you had two camera companies, right?
00:55:09.760 --> 00:55:10.159
Yeah, I did.
00:55:10.320 --> 00:55:11.119
I had two of them.
00:55:11.280 --> 00:55:13.440
One of them was a really, really good product.
00:55:13.679 --> 00:55:14.960
And you know what killed it?
00:55:15.039 --> 00:55:15.840
This thing.
00:55:16.159 --> 00:55:17.360
We saw we saw, yeah.
00:55:17.519 --> 00:55:18.000
We saw that.
00:55:18.079 --> 00:55:19.760
We went, I don't know.
00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:21.679
It's just such a great idea.
00:55:21.920 --> 00:55:33.119
Uh we had we had a serial camera company and another one, which was uh GoPro accessory camera company, um, and the amount of capital I burned, tooling and molds and all that.
00:55:33.280 --> 00:55:39.360
Uh, the relationship, good thing I have a friend in China, a very close friend of mine uh who has a factory.
00:55:39.599 --> 00:55:42.639
She did a large bulk of the Guitar Hero stuff.
00:55:42.800 --> 00:55:46.079
It's not a small factory, this is a gigantic facility.
00:55:46.320 --> 00:55:56.800
Covers city city blocks with dorms and production and uh uh injection molding facilities and PCB fab, everything, all the equipment.
00:55:57.440 --> 00:56:02.559
Uh she takes on these projects I bring in there because she's my friend.
00:56:02.960 --> 00:56:04.559
Quite simply, Elaine Chan.
00:56:04.800 --> 00:56:06.159
She's my friend, she'll take it on.
00:56:06.400 --> 00:56:07.440
Shout out to Elaine.
00:56:07.679 --> 00:56:08.159
Yeah, yeah.
00:56:08.239 --> 00:56:09.360
And uh she took it on.
00:56:09.519 --> 00:56:12.000
We don't know what's gonna happen, but she'll take a risk.
00:56:12.239 --> 00:56:16.239
She's a you know, she doesn't gamble, but she's kind of a gambler.
00:56:16.480 --> 00:56:19.679
She gambled on Guitar How and she gambled on.
00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:24.079
I had a uh uh project at Electronic Arts, big company.
00:56:24.239 --> 00:56:28.159
Uh we were in Burnaby, Canada, the studio was at EA Sports.
00:56:28.320 --> 00:56:33.599
Um, she took it on, and I pitched that to about five different contract manufacturers.
00:56:33.679 --> 00:56:35.119
They all gave it thumbs down.
00:56:35.280 --> 00:56:40.239
This is the importance of staying in touch with people, and she's a good friend.
00:56:40.320 --> 00:56:41.760
Her son stays with me.
00:56:41.840 --> 00:56:45.679
Uh, when he comes to California, he stays out with me, my house.
00:56:45.920 --> 00:56:48.639
And uh, you know, I just I build that stuff.
00:56:48.800 --> 00:56:51.920
Um do I call them?
00:56:52.159 --> 00:56:59.519
I do call people, but some people don't want to be bothered, and I kind of get that vibe, and I just say, well, you know, send it, text them, say, hey man, how you doing?
00:56:59.760 --> 00:57:03.360
Or if it's not a man, hey, how you doing, so-and-so, you know?
00:57:03.440 --> 00:57:07.280
Yeah, uh, that's how I uh how that's that's what I did.
00:57:07.440 --> 00:57:08.880
Um plus I can do the work.
00:57:09.119 --> 00:57:13.119
But you can't you can't be doing that with everybody you meet, right?
00:57:13.199 --> 00:57:18.400
Like, how do you determine who are the people that are the ones that are the important relationships to keep going?
00:57:18.719 --> 00:57:23.440
You know, uh just like with you, I'll just pick up, put the headphones on to talk to you.
00:57:23.599 --> 00:57:24.559
That's all.
00:57:24.880 --> 00:57:36.559
Um Patrick Sullivan, I don't know him, but I'm gonna reach out to him and say, hey, I sat next to you at Elices and uh I was talking about his last name, and I go, you know, Sullivan, that's pretty Irish.
00:57:37.039 --> 00:57:38.400
Patrick Michael Sullivan.
00:57:38.480 --> 00:57:40.079
Okay, that's about as Irish.
00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:51.039
So I mean I just I just do that, and and those folks at uh Elian's uh, for instance, where we were both at, I just stayed in touch with a guy.
00:57:51.199 --> 00:57:52.880
Um and I like him.
00:57:53.519 --> 00:58:03.280
If I if I don't, I don't doesn't mean I won't work with you, but if I don't care for someone or I detect dishonesty, uh subversive things, I won't work with them.
00:58:03.519 --> 00:58:06.880
If I just get a hint of that, I know that's not gonna work out well.
00:58:07.440 --> 00:58:17.519
Um that's just an instinctual thing that I have and can knowing what I'm dealing with in the you know, like to my story about a woman that got fired.
00:58:17.599 --> 00:58:20.880
I you know, she calls me and it's like, what am I gonna say to her?
00:58:21.119 --> 00:58:25.760
Well I told her the truth, and the truth is you're gonna like where you're going next better.
00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:27.039
You're gonna be happier.
00:58:27.280 --> 00:58:28.400
You didn't like working there anyway.
00:58:28.480 --> 00:58:31.920
He said, your boss was a he is, actually.
00:58:32.320 --> 00:58:34.800
And uh and I and I and I said you're gonna be happier.
00:58:34.880 --> 00:58:36.800
It looks like a setback, but it's not.
00:58:36.960 --> 00:58:39.039
It's your it's in the plan for you.
00:58:39.280 --> 00:58:42.000
And uh it's a plan that you didn't don't control.
00:58:42.719 --> 00:58:44.639
And uh you're where you're supposed to be.
00:58:44.719 --> 00:58:45.599
That's what I say to him.
00:58:45.920 --> 00:58:46.719
Don't worry about it.
00:58:46.880 --> 00:58:49.280
As long as they're not stealing, and well, people do that stuff.
00:58:49.440 --> 00:59:02.320
You know, you know, it's like this is coming from a place for you where you've been to a lot of you've had startups, you know that okay, there's something on the other side that it it's all gonna turn out okay at the end.
00:59:02.639 --> 00:59:03.199
Yeah, exactly.
00:59:03.440 --> 00:59:04.559
I know I'll be fine.
00:59:04.800 --> 00:59:10.400
Um you know I I have a uh gigantic home and I have all that stuff.
00:59:10.639 --> 00:59:12.559
I go in two rooms.
00:59:12.800 --> 00:59:13.920
I'm in two rooms.
00:59:14.159 --> 00:59:18.559
I go into my kitchen, I go into the family room, watch TV, and I'm I'm on my phone.
00:59:18.719 --> 00:59:22.159
I don't need all that other if I was just those two things, I'd be fine.
00:59:22.400 --> 00:59:23.360
I know I can get that.
00:59:23.519 --> 00:59:30.960
A trailer, maybe that's not gonna happen, but I just know I'll be okay and not to worry about financial stuff and don't sweat it.
00:59:31.119 --> 00:59:40.960
Um, because I don't need much anyways, because I'm just uh a middle class guy, uh middle class upbringing, didn't grow up in wealth or anything like that, so I'm perfectly fine.
00:59:41.280 --> 00:59:43.360
I still shop at Dollar Tree.
00:59:45.360 --> 00:59:46.000
I do.
00:59:46.159 --> 00:59:47.199
There's a bargains.
00:59:47.360 --> 00:59:50.400
I got these at Dollar Tree, these glasses I did at$1.50.
00:59:50.719 --> 00:59:51.280
There you go.
00:59:51.360 --> 00:59:52.400
You don't need to spend much.
00:59:54.559 --> 01:00:03.679
Well, one of my favorite things to do is go to Goodwill and uh I go to the used games, pick up a bunch of I'll find these random board games that I would not find shopping at the market.
01:00:04.159 --> 01:00:04.719
I love that place.
01:00:04.800 --> 01:00:06.880
There's one about two two miles from here.
01:00:07.039 --> 01:00:07.679
Yeah, I like that.
01:00:07.840 --> 01:00:08.400
I like that stuff.
01:00:08.559 --> 01:00:09.679
You feel good when you buy it.
01:00:09.760 --> 01:00:12.559
Like you go to Costco and you got I got a deal on that shirt.
01:00:12.800 --> 01:00:14.400
Seven dollars shirt.
01:00:15.679 --> 01:00:17.599
There you yeah, yeah, like feel good enough.
01:00:17.920 --> 01:00:18.480
Funny how that works.
01:00:18.559 --> 01:00:20.079
Yeah, I don't buy extravagant things.
01:00:20.320 --> 01:00:20.800
I do though.
01:00:20.880 --> 01:00:23.199
I mean I but not like clothing and stuff like that.
01:00:23.280 --> 01:00:24.559
I'm just not into it.
01:00:24.800 --> 01:00:29.920
Uh and then you get a you get a coupon on my my credit card for a meal.
01:00:30.079 --> 01:00:31.760
Like, oh I'm gonna go get it.
01:00:31.840 --> 01:00:34.880
May not be the best meal, but I'm five bucks off.
01:00:37.360 --> 01:00:39.599
Well, switch of gears a little bit.
01:00:39.679 --> 01:00:49.039
I don't know how I could segue back to uh your your time at Oculus, but I I asked my daughter, my 10-year-old daughter, uh, what's a question I could ask Jack?
01:00:49.119 --> 01:00:52.159
You know, and I was explaining all this stuff that you've done.
01:00:52.320 --> 01:00:56.000
And um She's grown up, seen me for her entire life.
01:00:56.079 --> 01:00:58.320
I started my business before she was born.
01:00:58.400 --> 01:01:00.880
So all she's known is me being a business owner.
01:01:01.119 --> 01:01:06.480
And so I was like, Yeah, he sold his the company you co-founded to Facebook or to Meta.
01:01:07.440 --> 01:01:11.760
And so her question was let me actually I typed it out and I don't want to get it wrong.
01:01:12.320 --> 01:01:14.880
Was it a hard choice to sell your company?
01:01:15.519 --> 01:01:17.039
Well, I'll tell you the story.
01:01:17.119 --> 01:01:19.519
Um, I wasn't involved in that.
01:01:19.760 --> 01:01:22.320
Um, I worked in the engineering side.
01:01:22.559 --> 01:01:36.239
My job consisted of making sure the parts were arriving, making sure that this Simon was programming and this person was doing their stuff and this just doing their stuff, and overdoing the overall architecture of that and other stuff.
01:01:36.400 --> 01:01:37.440
That was my job.
01:01:37.599 --> 01:01:40.719
I wasn't asked to evaluate the business part of it.
01:01:40.880 --> 01:01:44.320
If I well had to be honest with you, I didn't think what was a business there.
01:01:44.559 --> 01:01:46.800
I worked in that, worked in that line of work.
01:01:47.039 --> 01:01:47.679
I know.
01:01:48.239 --> 01:01:56.400
Uh there it's a very, very tough product to sell, and it turns out I was right because they've kind of pushed the quest down.
01:01:56.559 --> 01:01:59.039
Remember, they renamed their company Metaverse?
01:01:59.360 --> 01:01:59.679
Yep.
01:02:00.000 --> 01:02:03.360
Didn't that uh that was a big uh expensive uh lesson?
01:02:03.599 --> 01:02:04.079
Yeah.
01:02:04.400 --> 01:02:10.960
So I I kind of knew by looking at it, it you know, I know that business, I know what people buy just by what I've sold in the past.
01:02:11.119 --> 01:02:12.320
I just kind of know.
01:02:13.039 --> 01:02:15.920
Um so I to be honest with you, I didn't know.
01:02:16.159 --> 01:02:26.400
As far as the sales goes, I heard um, even though I'm a principal at the company, um, I redacted myself from the conversations because I don't know what to think of them, honestly.
01:02:26.480 --> 01:02:40.079
Like who's so-and-so from Andreessen Horowitz is being taken out to a concert, and uh Nate and Brendan are taken to a concert, and they're gonna be partying him up and you know, making buddies with him, right?
01:02:40.159 --> 01:02:40.480
And they did.
01:02:40.559 --> 01:02:44.960
It's kind of make a buddy, get a buddy, and no one wants to work with a prick.
01:02:45.199 --> 01:02:47.599
And and I'm one of those people that doesn't like that.
01:02:47.760 --> 01:02:51.840
So you gotta schmooze and you know make friends with him.
01:02:52.159 --> 01:03:01.760
This was all engineered so they could get their foot in the door with Mark Zuckerberg, because this guy was one of the people that gave money to start Facebook, right?
01:03:01.920 --> 01:03:03.760
So they targeted this dude.
01:03:04.320 --> 01:03:05.360
Very smart.
01:03:06.239 --> 01:03:08.719
And I wouldn't say targeted is the right word.
01:03:08.880 --> 01:03:17.599
They use their productive thought processes to find the right person to talk to, gets it in to show Mark Zuckerberg, and he thinks the world of it.
01:03:18.159 --> 01:03:20.639
I think it's profound invention, right?
01:03:21.760 --> 01:03:24.639
So I don't work on that end of it either.
01:03:24.719 --> 01:03:29.280
I I got a call um when I was in China actually from Brennan and said we sold the business.
01:03:29.519 --> 01:03:33.360
I knew that it was happening, but I didn't really know the exact terms.
01:03:33.679 --> 01:03:36.400
And he goes, This is the amount we sold it for.
01:03:36.559 --> 01:03:37.679
Congratulations.
01:03:38.000 --> 01:03:41.679
And I said, Okay, it's three, it was three o'clock in the morning, I got him going back to sleep.
01:03:41.840 --> 01:03:43.039
Thank you for calling me.
01:03:43.280 --> 01:03:45.519
Not exactly what I said, something like that.
01:03:45.840 --> 01:03:48.480
Uh I didn't know.
01:03:48.639 --> 01:04:01.760
And it's the same with the negotiations with Red Octane and Guitar Hero wasn't involved in that engineer guy, the guy with the you know pencil, you know, with the pencil in his ear, you know, walking around doing the other stuff.
01:04:02.000 --> 01:04:04.320
The job, the company was segregated that way.
01:04:04.480 --> 01:04:09.760
Now I will say that I think Brennan uh and is a talented sales guy.
01:04:09.920 --> 01:04:12.000
He's he sold me on the business.
01:04:12.159 --> 01:04:13.840
They didn't have anybody to help him.
01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:22.559
And here I am kind of retired, you know, 50, I don't know, what was I, 54, 53 years old, and not really working anymore.
01:04:22.880 --> 01:04:30.719
And uh and he he enthusiastic got me my enthusiasm going on it, and I thought it was cool, like the people.
01:04:30.880 --> 01:04:32.639
I thought I can work with these folks.
01:04:32.960 --> 01:04:34.960
Uh, do I know how it's going to work out?
01:04:35.039 --> 01:04:35.840
I don't know.
01:04:36.159 --> 01:04:37.920
I don't know how it's gonna work out.
01:04:38.239 --> 01:04:40.960
Uh, but I'm gonna try to help them anyways because I like them.
01:04:41.280 --> 01:04:42.960
And they they filmed a Kickstarter video.
01:04:43.119 --> 01:04:49.199
Kickstarter is a platform to display your product and tell the story of your product.
01:04:49.280 --> 01:04:51.760
It's it's online, Kickstarter.com.
01:04:52.079 --> 01:04:57.199
Uh they shot the Kickstarter video, and and I didn't know what to think of that.
01:04:57.280 --> 01:05:03.920
I don't I work at a corporation, like we don't do Kickstarter videos at Microsoft, we just don't do that or wherever you don't do that.
01:05:04.159 --> 01:05:04.800
That's for startups.
01:05:05.039 --> 01:05:06.079
Yeah, that's for startups.
01:05:06.880 --> 01:05:15.440
And um and it just rocketed, uh, just like guitar hero rocketed, but guitar talk guitar hill rocketed because there was a market for it.
01:05:15.760 --> 01:05:24.079
Interestingly enough, uh, one of the uh rock star dudes, this was at Naam, he goes, You'll never sell that thing.
01:05:24.239 --> 01:05:27.280
He goes, Why don't you teach him how to play a real guitar?
01:05:27.840 --> 01:05:29.760
And I don't play the guitar, my son does.
01:05:29.840 --> 01:05:31.679
I go, You ever try to play guitar?
01:05:31.760 --> 01:05:33.280
It's not an easy instrument to learn.
01:05:33.360 --> 01:05:34.639
It's not easy.
01:05:34.880 --> 01:05:35.679
Yeah, yeah.
01:05:35.920 --> 01:05:37.760
Um, and you're gonna write a video game.
01:05:37.840 --> 01:05:39.360
People last about two minutes doing that.
01:05:39.519 --> 01:05:41.119
They're gonna say, This I this sucks.
01:05:41.199 --> 01:05:42.880
You know, that's what my view was.
01:05:43.119 --> 01:05:45.039
He goes, Why don't you teach him how to play a real guitar?
01:05:45.119 --> 01:05:46.000
No one wants to do that.
01:05:46.159 --> 01:05:47.119
That's what one guy said to me.
01:05:47.199 --> 01:05:50.239
I don't can say who it was, that he was wrong.
01:05:50.559 --> 01:05:59.840
Uh I kinda kind of was in that camp a little bit, like, I don't know, you know, you know, it's not you're not blowing stuff up and you're not shooting at stuff and not cracking.
01:06:00.079 --> 01:06:02.800
Crashing cars and it's like that's kind of where I'm most from.
01:06:04.079 --> 01:06:04.159
Yeah.
01:06:04.400 --> 01:06:09.199
Kind of like brand new to me the the uh you know the the concept of it.
01:06:09.440 --> 01:06:13.199
Although there was private well it created a whole new genre in the video game, right?
01:06:13.360 --> 01:06:14.559
Like before that, you're right.
01:06:14.639 --> 01:06:20.800
It was like shooting and yeah, you know, RPG games and it was nothing like that out there at all.
01:06:21.199 --> 01:06:22.000
No, there wasn't.
01:06:22.159 --> 01:06:31.360
And and then the high cost, it's$90 was don't quote me on the 70 or between 70 and 90 it like to buy it.
01:06:31.440 --> 01:06:34.239
That's a lot of bread to show up for your kid.
01:06:34.480 --> 01:06:37.599
Uh especially in the nineties or when is it two thousands?
01:06:38.320 --> 01:06:38.400
Yeah.
01:06:38.639 --> 01:06:39.599
Yeah, yeah, 2006.
01:06:40.079 --> 01:06:40.639
That's a lot of money.
01:06:40.960 --> 01:06:42.639
That's still yeah, it's like that's still a lot of money.
01:06:42.880 --> 01:06:44.079
Game still costs today.
01:06:45.280 --> 01:06:48.079
With inflation way ahead of the inflation costs.
01:06:49.360 --> 01:06:50.079
But you had hardware.
01:06:50.239 --> 01:06:52.719
You had all the the the hardware to ship out with it.
01:06:53.039 --> 01:06:57.360
And and then like I'm running the numbers in my head, like how's Activision gonna make money off this?
01:06:57.440 --> 01:07:05.039
You got eight bucks landed costs, and then you gotta put the DVD, you got the licensing, you gotta pay Sony, you gotta pay this, these royalties and all that.
01:07:05.119 --> 01:07:06.719
How they gonna well, it's I don't know.
01:07:06.800 --> 01:07:07.760
They made it work.
01:07:08.000 --> 01:07:14.880
That's that's the I guess once you start selling tens of I don't know how many millions of copies it ended up selling, right?
01:07:15.440 --> 01:07:16.639
64 million, yeah.
01:07:17.039 --> 01:07:17.840
64 million.
01:07:18.400 --> 01:07:19.039
Wow, I know.
01:07:19.199 --> 01:07:19.440
Yeah.
01:07:19.920 --> 01:07:30.159
Well and now like uh I I know my wife's a huge like both for both of us in college, like that that was like the time when it was like at its peak.
01:07:30.400 --> 01:07:33.039
So it was so much nights in college playing.
01:07:33.119 --> 01:07:37.760
Like I know she to has stories about playing till like four in the morning every night in the dorm rooms.
01:07:38.960 --> 01:07:42.239
Dragon uh Dragons Dragons on Fire was that song you mentioned.
01:07:42.320 --> 01:07:43.840
I I think it was Dragons on Fire.
01:07:44.000 --> 01:07:46.239
Yeah, the the hardest one there that I forget the name of it.
01:07:46.320 --> 01:07:47.119
It's a long time ago.
01:07:47.519 --> 01:07:47.760
Yeah.
01:07:48.000 --> 01:07:49.119
Uh yeah, you're right.
01:07:49.280 --> 01:07:51.840
Um is it something that I played?
01:07:52.000 --> 01:07:54.960
No, because I worked there, it's like work to me, to honest people.
01:07:55.119 --> 01:07:55.840
But yeah, you're right.
01:07:55.920 --> 01:07:56.719
People loved it.
01:07:56.880 --> 01:07:58.800
Um there was a predicate game.
01:07:58.880 --> 01:08:02.480
There was another guitar game out um before Guitar Hero.
01:08:02.639 --> 01:08:06.239
It was called Guitar Guitar Freaks, is Jap J Pop music.
01:08:06.400 --> 01:08:08.639
And no one like J Pop, what's that?
01:08:08.880 --> 01:08:10.480
Japanese pop stars, you know.
01:08:10.639 --> 01:08:11.920
Who wants to do that?
01:08:12.159 --> 01:08:21.439
The the the game that I was shown at CES, which is a consumer electronic show in 2005, was using the guitars from Guitar Freaks.
01:08:21.600 --> 01:08:24.079
That's what it was had plastic guitars.
01:08:25.840 --> 01:08:30.640
From Guitar Freaks were being the game was built around that just to get the demo running to show it to people.
01:08:30.880 --> 01:08:33.359
But Kelly Sumner knew it was a smash hit.
01:08:33.439 --> 01:08:35.840
He knew it was okay, but I didn't know.
01:08:36.319 --> 01:08:37.199
I don't know.
01:08:39.279 --> 01:08:39.680
Cool.
01:08:39.840 --> 01:08:43.840
Well, thanks for sharing that, and I appreciate I'll share that with uh my daughter there.
01:08:44.159 --> 01:08:51.119
But um I know there's a lot of stuff you worked on, uh, and uh some of the research I was doing.
01:08:51.279 --> 01:08:58.560
Well, I mean you talked a bit about well from childhood Legos, I I saw that you won some Tinker Toy competition growing up.
01:08:58.880 --> 01:09:06.800
Uh I know I saw I was looking into some of the uh work that you've done with uh building your own cars, which is crazy.
01:09:07.279 --> 01:09:13.760
Not surprising after everything we've talked about that you would go and do something like that and uh 3D print parts and stuff.
01:09:13.840 --> 01:09:24.319
But out of everything you worked on, what's been the most uh favorite project that you've been involved with, whether it's a big commercial success or maybe something just personal that no one else has seen?
01:09:24.560 --> 01:09:30.399
Um I'd say you've bought the car up that my Lola T70 uh from THX 1138.
01:09:30.560 --> 01:09:34.560
THX 1138 was a sci-fi movie that came out in the 70s.
01:09:34.720 --> 01:09:45.680
George Lucas uh it was George Lucas, yeah, produced and directed the movie, and it was with uh Robert Robert Duval, I believe so.
01:09:45.840 --> 01:09:46.640
And it's a long time ago.
01:09:46.720 --> 01:09:49.039
I haven't seen it in 50 years or something.
01:09:49.279 --> 01:10:02.479
Uh there's a car uh chase scene in there where um the uh hero, I think, of the story who refuses to take the medication and stuff, he stops taking everyone's on meds, so everyone's kind of like that.
01:10:02.560 --> 01:10:08.880
So he stops taking them and he steals uh a Lola T70, which is what it was.
01:10:09.279 --> 01:10:11.359
They called it another name back then.
01:10:11.520 --> 01:10:18.319
He steals the Lola T70 and drives it through the Caldecott tunnel over here and smashes into cones and stuff like that.
01:10:18.399 --> 01:10:20.800
And I when I saw that as a kid, I said, I gotta have one of those.
01:10:20.880 --> 01:10:22.159
That's the coolest looking thing.
01:10:22.319 --> 01:10:23.520
So I built one.
01:10:23.840 --> 01:10:27.760
Uh, not an exact copy of it, but very, very similar to that.
01:10:27.920 --> 01:10:33.439
And that took five years of my time, including all the parts machined parts.
01:10:33.520 --> 01:10:34.880
Uh I bought the engine.
01:10:35.039 --> 01:10:37.520
I didn't build an engine, I didn't need to do that.
01:10:37.760 --> 01:10:44.239
Uh, but the um the art part of it and the paint work and the colors and so forth, I did all that for it.
01:10:44.399 --> 01:10:46.960
And it's absolutely mind-blowing.
01:10:47.119 --> 01:10:50.319
Uh custom machine parts, a wireless steering wheel.
01:10:50.399 --> 01:10:55.439
So you drive the car and it's connected wirelessly to the car instead of it's a game controller.
01:10:55.520 --> 01:10:57.520
It's a game controller, is what it looks like.
01:10:57.840 --> 01:11:01.439
Connected to the car and you control all the features of the car through the steering wheel.
01:11:01.600 --> 01:11:03.840
This is this is 10 years ago.
01:11:04.000 --> 01:11:07.039
I finished actually I finished it in 2019.
01:11:07.279 --> 01:11:09.359
So you asked me what that was.
01:11:09.439 --> 01:11:10.000
That's intended.
01:11:10.319 --> 01:11:12.479
And I did another car which I really enjoyed doing.
01:11:12.640 --> 01:11:19.600
I finished that in 2002, and that's another uh inspired car.
01:11:19.760 --> 01:11:25.680
Uh that's a uh um a GT, it's a GTR, not the other one.
01:11:25.840 --> 01:11:27.520
Um, it's made by a company in England.
01:11:27.600 --> 01:11:29.199
It was a kit I built.
01:11:29.680 --> 01:11:38.960
And um I had a Fiat 500 that I built recently, finished in 2023, which has a 210 horsepower motorcycle engine in it.
01:11:39.119 --> 01:11:43.439
A Fiat 500 is a city car, it's called a K car.
01:11:43.600 --> 01:11:44.640
It's a very, very small car.
01:11:44.720 --> 01:11:47.520
It seats four people, believe it or not, comfortably.
01:11:47.760 --> 01:11:50.720
Uh, it was one of the best-selling vehicles ever built.
01:11:50.800 --> 01:11:53.439
Um, I they've had factories globally making it.
01:11:53.600 --> 01:12:01.520
So I but I couldn't drive it on the highway, so I put a motorcycle engine in it, completely overpowered, like a race car.
01:12:01.920 --> 01:12:04.079
Uh, and I finished that in 2023.
01:12:04.159 --> 01:12:11.680
I did all the engineering on it, um, uh suspension, vehicle dynamics, everything I did on that on paper, Excel spreadsheet.
01:12:11.840 --> 01:12:14.720
Should have used ChatGPT, but we didn't have it back then.
01:12:15.199 --> 01:12:16.079
It was it out, yeah.
01:12:16.159 --> 01:12:17.279
It only came out a couple years ago.
01:12:18.479 --> 01:12:20.000
I built weapons and stuff like that.
01:12:20.079 --> 01:12:23.039
Uh also that and just these are things I don't get paid for that.
01:12:23.119 --> 01:12:24.960
It's just stuff that I enjoy doing.
01:12:25.600 --> 01:12:31.600
So and and uh yeah, that's that's if I had a like a way to show it to you.
01:12:31.680 --> 01:12:33.279
I don't have one here, but I would show it to you.
01:12:33.359 --> 01:12:34.640
I can send you an image of it.
01:12:34.720 --> 01:12:35.520
Why don't I do that one?
01:12:35.920 --> 01:12:39.359
Yeah, we'll we'll put it up on the short film on it.
01:12:39.520 --> 01:12:40.479
Um it's on YouTube.
01:12:40.720 --> 01:12:41.359
I have to find it.
01:12:41.439 --> 01:12:42.880
I'll send you a link to that.
01:12:43.119 --> 01:12:47.840
Um I their filmmaker made a movie about it and then uh a short.
01:12:48.000 --> 01:12:49.840
Uh uh, so that's the stuff.
01:12:50.000 --> 01:12:51.199
Commercial stuff.
01:12:51.439 --> 01:12:57.600
I can't I I'd have to think back um to what commercial uh there you go.
01:12:57.760 --> 01:13:00.159
Uh the sound system for Terminator 2.
01:13:00.720 --> 01:13:03.199
I was gonna say the movie stuff is pretty interesting.
01:13:03.279 --> 01:13:09.279
That I mean it seems like a whole other career, another person, but that's still part of like something that you did.
01:13:09.600 --> 01:13:13.520
The guy that I did that with was named Steve Pope, a PhD Berkeley guy.
01:13:13.680 --> 01:13:15.680
Of course, all Berkeley people worked on it.
01:13:15.920 --> 01:13:21.680
Um, we built the full digital sound system for Terminator 2 and a bunch of other films too.
01:13:22.000 --> 01:13:27.920
Was not a commercial success, even though it came out in the movie due to processing issues that Kodak got in the film.
01:13:28.239 --> 01:13:35.520
Uh, but it was a complete uh six-channel, 12-bit digital sound system, including surround sound, stuff like that.
01:13:35.760 --> 01:13:37.760
That for that for that movie.
01:13:38.000 --> 01:13:43.039
Um and uh got an Academy Award uh for the sound.
01:13:43.279 --> 01:13:48.159
Uh that would be the the commercial thing that I built that I like, even though it didn't go anywhere.
01:13:48.399 --> 01:13:49.039
It was fun.
01:13:49.279 --> 01:13:50.880
So did you do you get an award?
01:13:50.960 --> 01:13:52.960
Do you get to say that you're an Academy Award winner?
01:13:53.600 --> 01:13:54.239
I was named in the group.
01:13:56.479 --> 01:13:59.279
It's like the the film production part of an academy.
01:13:59.520 --> 01:14:02.399
I don't know what that would call that, but that would be the group of people that got it.
01:14:02.479 --> 01:14:03.520
So yeah, yeah.
01:14:03.680 --> 01:14:04.640
I finished.
01:14:04.880 --> 01:14:11.119
That was uh a brutal uh I worked nonstop basically 80 hours a week for a year on it.
01:14:11.199 --> 01:14:12.880
I never stopped working on it.
01:14:13.359 --> 01:14:17.840
And uh and because it was a film, you know, James Cameron, right?
01:14:18.079 --> 01:14:19.920
Who wouldn't want to work on that, right?
01:14:20.399 --> 01:14:22.640
Well, and that was early James Cameron career.
01:14:22.720 --> 01:14:26.479
I mean, I know he'd already accomplished a lot, but like after that he did so much more.
01:14:26.720 --> 01:14:29.680
That guy I he's an artist, is what he is.
01:14:29.760 --> 01:14:34.000
He's he is an imaging artist, Titanic.
01:14:34.319 --> 01:14:38.880
Uh um, and he does he didn't choose the sound system.
01:14:39.039 --> 01:14:41.920
He did, but uh because it was good.
01:14:42.000 --> 01:14:46.960
Uh but um you look at his breadth of work and you go, how does he do it?
01:14:47.119 --> 01:14:52.079
Well, he hires good people, he works with the same people probably most of the time.
01:14:52.239 --> 01:14:55.520
He knows them, he knows what their skills and capabilities are.
01:14:55.920 --> 01:14:57.039
But that that was it.
01:14:57.279 --> 01:15:03.520
And video games, uh okay, so that's the cars and then the video game, probably Guitar Hero.
01:15:03.680 --> 01:15:08.399
That would be even though it's simple stuff in a lot of ways.
01:15:08.479 --> 01:15:11.600
I did I just think who it who would have thought that?
01:15:11.760 --> 01:15:14.640
I didn't I didn't know that was gonna work out that way, you know.
01:15:14.800 --> 01:15:18.159
So that's that's the the stuff I liked the best.
01:15:18.239 --> 01:15:25.119
And then plus all the weapons and stuff I built, not guns, but I built uh L Rad long-range acoustic devices.
01:15:25.199 --> 01:15:27.039
I don't know where it is, it's around here somewhere.
01:15:27.199 --> 01:15:31.760
Uh lights for stopping riots, and I showed them to the military.
01:15:32.000 --> 01:15:34.319
I go, hey, you want to see this stuff?
01:15:34.960 --> 01:15:42.079
And then uh the CTO for the Air Force came by with a with a her group of people to take a look at this stuff and they weren't interested.
01:15:42.319 --> 01:15:45.840
They said, We can't harm people, but you know, you can blow them up.
01:15:46.079 --> 01:15:47.680
You can't, I don't know, whatever.
01:15:48.319 --> 01:15:50.560
No, they're not supposed to, you're not supposed to, when there's a right.
01:15:50.800 --> 01:15:52.239
This is why they don't use water cannons here.
01:15:52.319 --> 01:15:53.920
You're not supposed to injure people.
01:15:54.239 --> 01:16:04.479
And and so you, you know, even though pepper spray arguably is can cause injury, uh, it's not permanent, but you can't damage their hearing or their eyes.
01:16:04.720 --> 01:16:08.960
So my two inventions weren't marketable as that.
01:16:09.039 --> 01:16:15.439
I I called uh uh what's his name from Axon, uh the body cam people talked to him about yeah, they're based here in Scotts.
01:16:15.680 --> 01:16:17.279
Yeah, not too far from me.
01:16:17.439 --> 01:16:18.000
I called them.
01:16:18.399 --> 01:16:20.079
Talk to them, they're not interested.
01:16:20.239 --> 01:16:22.239
So you know what Axon makes their money on?
01:16:22.319 --> 01:16:23.840
This is what he told Rick Smith, right?
01:16:24.000 --> 01:16:33.359
He told me uh that Axon makes their money not from the cameras but and the tasers, but from the media storage.
01:16:33.600 --> 01:16:36.399
The charge they charge the cops to put the stuff in the cloud.
01:16:36.479 --> 01:16:37.760
That genius.
01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:38.239
That's it.
01:16:38.560 --> 01:16:39.520
Genius level stuff.
01:16:39.920 --> 01:16:40.239
Crazy.
01:16:40.399 --> 01:16:40.720
Yeah.
01:16:41.039 --> 01:16:42.800
The tasers are a liability.
01:16:42.880 --> 01:16:44.159
They get you know they get sued.
01:16:44.319 --> 01:16:47.680
They keep the lawyers that you know people get zapped.
01:16:47.840 --> 01:16:51.840
Yeah, you can use a taser on people, but you can't use a water cannon, whatever.
01:16:52.079 --> 01:16:53.359
Uh, they get zapped.
01:16:53.439 --> 01:16:56.880
I see like on on IG, I see people getting zapped by those things.
01:16:56.960 --> 01:17:00.000
It does not look like well, yeah.
01:17:00.079 --> 01:17:05.119
My cousin was in the military and uh in the Marines, and I remember was it no, it was a pepper spray.
01:17:05.199 --> 01:17:14.800
It wasn't a taser, but I I I think it was someone in law enforcement, and I can't remember exactly who it was, but that as part of the training, they had to get tasered, so they know what it feels like.
01:17:15.359 --> 01:17:24.960
Yeah, uh my my brother who's a cop, the guy that I I mentioned earlier, uh he might he turned into a policeman.
01:17:25.039 --> 01:17:32.000
Later on, he was in internet security stuff, but um yeah, he says that they love the body cams.
01:17:32.319 --> 01:17:35.039
And I don't think they had them when he was in force.
01:17:35.119 --> 01:17:36.640
He's an old guy now.
01:17:36.960 --> 01:17:39.680
They love him because it documents everything.
01:17:39.840 --> 01:17:44.880
And if they get accused of hitting someone or something like that, they'd say, Well, that's on the camera, we didn't hit him.
01:17:45.359 --> 01:17:46.720
The cops actually like him.
01:17:46.960 --> 01:17:50.000
It covers their butts because they get accused of all kinds of stuff.
01:17:50.239 --> 01:17:51.119
I mean, I don't know.
01:17:51.279 --> 01:17:51.600
Yeah.
01:17:52.399 --> 01:17:54.720
You would think, yeah, it should be uh accepted.
01:17:54.800 --> 01:17:56.560
Uh yeah, everything's there.
01:17:57.119 --> 01:18:01.760
Um one uh we're wrapping up here, and I appreciate your time.
01:18:02.159 --> 01:18:05.279
Uh we're getting to the end of the show.
01:18:05.680 --> 01:18:09.119
Um I'm curious what are some things that you're working on now?
01:18:09.199 --> 01:18:19.039
Because you have an active RD facility, and uh I know you're you're still I don't think just like an entrepreneur can't stop making businesses.
01:18:19.199 --> 01:18:25.439
We're talking about some of the people we met, you know, in their late 70s still starting a new business, starting a new software startup.
01:18:25.920 --> 01:18:30.159
But I I'm sure an inventor like you probably can't stop inventing.
01:18:30.239 --> 01:18:33.199
You're probably gonna keep doing it until the day you die.
01:18:33.520 --> 01:18:37.279
So what are you working on now that that uh you could share?
01:18:37.760 --> 01:18:39.039
Sure, I can share it with you.
01:18:39.600 --> 01:18:44.800
Uh if you s look can look behind me on the bench back there, there's like a silver tube sticking up.
01:18:44.960 --> 01:18:45.600
Can you see it?
01:18:46.000 --> 01:18:46.319
All right.
01:18:46.479 --> 01:18:46.720
Yeah.
01:18:46.960 --> 01:18:48.720
That's a water purifier.
01:18:48.960 --> 01:18:56.960
And um the genesis of that was uh getting sick on a business trip by drinking water.
01:18:57.199 --> 01:18:58.640
I think I brushed my teeth with it.
01:18:58.720 --> 01:18:59.760
I didn't even drink it.
01:19:00.479 --> 01:19:03.760
Um and then so I got sick, right?
01:19:03.840 --> 01:19:07.600
And then I took some water and I said, Well, what's in water that's making people sick?
01:19:07.840 --> 01:19:12.239
So I cultured tap water, and there's bacteria in it, uh, E.
01:19:12.399 --> 01:19:13.520
coli, all kinds of stuff.
01:19:13.680 --> 01:19:14.319
It's nasty.
01:19:14.479 --> 01:19:27.520
Even there's a water purification system called reverse osmosis, which consists of canisters, and the water's pushed under pressure through these canisters, and a very fine filter filters out minerals and so forth.
01:19:27.760 --> 01:19:32.000
But even that, there's bacteria coming out of the water because it's inside the carbs, right?
01:19:32.079 --> 01:19:34.079
So that doesn't fix the bacteria problem.
01:19:34.640 --> 01:19:43.039
So I invented a system here that removes all bacteria and all chemical contaminants, and it's just pure water on the order of one part per million.
01:19:43.279 --> 01:19:48.560
So it's within the range of the sensitivity of the instrument, and it's for drinking water.
01:19:48.800 --> 01:19:51.600
And so here's the catch, the inventive part.
01:19:51.760 --> 01:19:56.479
Okay, that's not all that unique, but what's unique about it are there's two components.
01:19:56.640 --> 01:19:58.720
One is it uses very low energy.
01:19:59.039 --> 01:20:07.439
So if you're in a developing country like Mexico, where you're limited to 40 amperes, that comes that's all that comes into your house.
01:20:07.600 --> 01:20:11.920
Uh by the way, you don't have a you don't have an electric stove, and you don't have an electric range.
01:20:12.000 --> 01:20:14.159
You have a gas range and a gas stove.
01:20:14.239 --> 01:20:17.439
They have LPG, liquid gas, they pump it into a tank.
01:20:17.760 --> 01:20:20.319
Oh, same in the Philippines, where my call center is based.
01:20:21.279 --> 01:20:26.079
They don't have they also don't have the the infrastructure networking for high power demand.
01:20:26.399 --> 01:20:27.920
So exactly.
01:20:28.239 --> 01:20:31.279
So um how to solve both problems?
01:20:31.359 --> 01:20:34.960
And it turns out that simply boiling water is very power consumptive.
01:20:35.279 --> 01:20:37.600
It's very, very useful a lot of energy.
01:20:37.840 --> 01:20:44.079
Um, so if you have uh a wall outlet or something like that, you want to boil water, it uses a lot of power.
01:20:44.159 --> 01:20:50.800
It uses one-tenth, excuse me, 20 25% of your total budget, household budget, just to boil the water.
01:20:50.960 --> 01:20:52.800
That's all you get in abdoaka country.
01:20:52.880 --> 01:20:53.520
You didn't know that, yeah.
01:20:53.600 --> 01:20:54.319
I didn't know that either.
01:20:54.880 --> 01:20:57.920
So the hot water heaters that you have in your house.
01:20:58.159 --> 01:20:59.199
Well, that's a different technology.
01:20:59.439 --> 01:21:00.720
Well, no, it's different.
01:21:00.880 --> 01:21:05.760
Um, you have to boil water to 100 degrees C to get rid of all the bacteria.
01:21:06.000 --> 01:21:08.319
Hot water in your house does not go that high.
01:21:08.479 --> 01:21:09.600
It just heats the water up.
01:21:09.680 --> 01:21:13.039
So their energy consumption on that with electric water heaters is not very high.
01:21:13.199 --> 01:21:14.319
It's reasonable.
01:21:14.640 --> 01:21:25.279
To boil water and to get it into a gas form as steam, when you go from boiling at 100 degrees C to steam, it takes 10 times more energy because of molecular bonding in the steam.
01:21:25.439 --> 01:21:27.359
That's the problem I fixed.
01:21:27.600 --> 01:21:29.840
So I was able to solve that problem.
01:21:30.239 --> 01:21:32.640
And I did it by energy recovery.
01:21:32.800 --> 01:21:35.359
I taught energy stuff at Berkeley.
01:21:35.920 --> 01:21:46.000
So I built a miniature steam turbine that and not finished with it entirely yet, that takes the steam, and what you're after is the water, right?
01:21:46.159 --> 01:21:47.359
You're not interested in.
01:21:47.840 --> 01:21:58.319
And so in a normal water distiller, you put it on your cabinet, your countertop, and you run it, and all of the heat generated from the water goes up as heating the room up.
01:21:58.479 --> 01:21:59.760
It heats the room up.
01:22:00.000 --> 01:22:01.359
This doesn't work that way.
01:22:01.520 --> 01:22:05.520
I take that steam energy and convert it back into electrical energy and reheat the water.
01:22:05.680 --> 01:22:07.520
So I recover the energy in the water.
01:22:08.000 --> 01:22:08.560
That's awesome.
01:22:08.800 --> 01:22:09.279
That's incredible.
01:22:09.600 --> 01:22:10.159
Energy recovery.
01:22:10.319 --> 01:22:24.239
So I go from a budget of 750 watts, I'll say a kilowatt, to make uh three liters of water into drinkable water to around 300 watts by recovering the energy in the steam.
01:22:24.319 --> 01:22:25.680
So it's got a steam turbine on it.
01:22:25.840 --> 01:22:36.159
I I wish I could get it for you, I'd show it to a little steam turbine, old tech and a little uh motor generator thing, and it goes to heating element, reheats the steam.
01:22:36.319 --> 01:22:40.880
But there's a computer on board and it monitors temperatures and pressures and so forth.
01:22:41.439 --> 01:22:48.239
So it removes the all the bacteria and all the contaminants, and all you have is pure water left over at low energy consumption.
01:22:48.319 --> 01:22:50.239
So this is there's a market for this.
01:22:50.640 --> 01:22:59.840
Um you could have a um, this is a household of plants in your garage or what have you, um, at very low power consumption, providing pure water, drinking water.
01:23:00.159 --> 01:23:16.479
So the majority of the world, you mentioned the Philippines has dirty water, though you know they the I'm familiar with that sort of setup, they to get water from their roof, from their gutters in a barrel, and then they take the water and they heat it up, and then they drink that.
01:23:16.560 --> 01:23:16.880
That's fine.
01:23:17.199 --> 01:23:18.319
It's okay to do that.
01:23:18.560 --> 01:23:24.000
That's their system, but still the energy part of it is is consumptive energy is high.
01:23:24.079 --> 01:23:27.600
It's you know, either you can do it on an outdoor fire or you could do it on gas.
01:23:27.840 --> 01:23:29.920
A lot of them have gas have gas, like you mentioned.
01:23:30.000 --> 01:23:31.039
Yeah, gas.
01:23:31.359 --> 01:23:31.840
Yeah.
01:23:32.079 --> 01:23:38.960
Well, yeah, even like right now, I know one of the challenges facing the Philippines, it it goes back to power.
01:23:39.119 --> 01:23:47.680
I don't I don't know if it's connected to the data centers, but they're having rolling blackouts across multiple islands because they're and it's been going on for months.
01:23:47.840 --> 01:23:48.079
Yeah.
01:23:48.560 --> 01:23:54.960
So the problem of electricity, which is it's not unique to the Philippines, we're facing it here in the US with the data centers.
01:23:55.439 --> 01:23:55.760
California.
01:23:55.840 --> 01:23:56.000
Yeah.
01:23:56.079 --> 01:23:56.880
It's not data centers.
01:23:57.359 --> 01:24:03.840
Well, we share our nuclear power plant sending over most of the electricity it's generating to California.
01:24:04.000 --> 01:24:06.159
So yeah, we all work together.
01:24:06.560 --> 01:24:06.720
Yeah.
01:24:07.119 --> 01:24:08.960
Oh, you mean it's in Arizona, yeah.
01:24:09.039 --> 01:24:15.359
You sell power to the California, it's uh uh the the issue uh yes, interesting.
01:24:15.600 --> 01:24:24.720
I was working uh I was at the conference in Atlanta on energy and they're talking about the issues with producing good power to come into your house.
01:24:24.960 --> 01:24:27.359
It comes down to something that you didn't expect.
01:24:27.520 --> 01:24:32.399
People don't want to look at power lines, they don't want to have power towers near their house.
01:24:32.560 --> 01:24:35.680
They want the electricity, but they want the ugly thing sitting out there.
01:24:35.840 --> 01:24:40.319
Believe it or not, that's a big when you want to add up, build a new neighborhood, you have to bring power in, right?
01:24:40.399 --> 01:24:46.399
So you can trench it in on the in the ground or you can bring it on overheads, and they don't want to look at them.
01:24:46.560 --> 01:24:51.119
Um and believe it or not, that's that's one of the summing here.
01:24:51.600 --> 01:24:57.840
The California grew so rapidly they didn't up upgrade the energy infrastructure.
01:24:58.159 --> 01:25:08.079
And we if we lose one nuclear power plant like Diablo Canyon, which is in the Central Valley-ish uh located, lose one of those, uh we're we're screwed.
01:25:08.159 --> 01:25:09.520
We're gonna have rolling blackouts.
01:25:09.680 --> 01:25:11.520
So, and it's near the end of life.
01:25:11.760 --> 01:25:13.199
It's wearing out.
01:25:13.600 --> 01:25:16.640
Yeah, it's a bad situation with data centers.
01:25:16.720 --> 01:25:20.159
Um, you have to probably have to build why does it need to be next door here?
01:25:20.399 --> 01:25:23.439
You can put it in Nevada, it's just a fiber optic cable, right?
01:25:23.600 --> 01:25:25.279
Why put it somewhere else?
01:25:25.600 --> 01:25:34.960
Um yeah, that the energy demands of those is is high, but more you know, the issue with the Philippines is the infrastructure, the same issues that Mexico faces.
01:25:35.359 --> 01:25:43.760
Mexico uses the same power standards that the United States is 120 volts uh out of the wall socket, same plug and everything like that.
01:25:43.920 --> 01:25:46.720
But they limit you're limited to 40 amperes.
01:25:46.800 --> 01:25:51.680
So here in you know, a 50-year-old home here is 120, 150 amperes.
01:25:51.840 --> 01:25:53.920
That's your it's three times as much.
01:25:54.319 --> 01:26:01.119
So yeah, if you could make an appliance like that, um, and it that's the other thing, it has to be cheap.
01:26:01.680 --> 01:26:07.279
If you put reverse osmosis in someone's house, let's say you can put RO, we call it RO.
01:26:07.760 --> 01:26:10.800
You got the cartridge replacement, now they're$50 a piece.
01:26:10.960 --> 01:26:12.399
Can you afford that in Mexico?
01:26:12.640 --> 01:26:12.960
No.
01:26:13.520 --> 01:26:17.279
You boil the water, and actually, what they do is they buy their drinking water there.
01:26:17.359 --> 01:26:23.600
They they buy it at OXO or like it's like they're 7-Eleven, they'll buy it at 7-Eleven, and that's what they drink.
01:26:23.840 --> 01:26:29.119
They the stomach's the same, the same, every metabolism is everywhere's the same stuff.
01:26:29.359 --> 01:26:31.119
So they have to have drinking water there.
01:26:31.199 --> 01:26:35.119
So this appliance, if you had in someone's kitchen, would provide just pure water all the time.
01:26:35.279 --> 01:26:37.039
Anytime you wanted it, it's there.
01:26:37.359 --> 01:26:38.159
At low power.
01:26:38.560 --> 01:26:39.359
That's incredible.
01:26:39.520 --> 01:26:39.760
Yeah.
01:26:40.000 --> 01:26:40.720
We'll see.
01:26:41.119 --> 01:26:43.039
Uh see you're still working on stuff.
01:26:43.199 --> 01:26:43.359
Yeah.
01:26:43.600 --> 01:26:47.439
And that that's a good segue to the last question that I have.
01:26:47.600 --> 01:26:51.359
And uh the question that I ask every guest on the show and whole point of the show.
01:26:51.680 --> 01:26:53.920
So uh it's unfinished business.
01:26:54.159 --> 01:27:05.760
And with all the things you've done, and I don't know, like with all the technology that's out there now that you know, I I think maybe you feel I don't know if you feel like it, but you maybe feel more limitless now.
01:27:06.000 --> 01:27:10.880
There's more things at your fingertips that you can create and you don't have to hold back.
01:27:11.119 --> 01:27:15.760
So for you, what some what's a some unfinished business for you?
01:27:15.840 --> 01:27:19.600
What is something that you would still like to see uh done in your lifetime?
01:27:19.920 --> 01:27:22.720
Being that you're retired, I know that's gonna be an interesting answer.
01:27:23.199 --> 01:27:28.479
Uh you don't have to work, but um yeah, what do you think for yourself?
01:27:29.279 --> 01:27:41.840
Well, on a personal level, um uh staying in shape, which I'm not in bad shape now, uh keeping my weight down, uh keeping my health good and and eating right, that's basic stuff, right?
01:27:42.000 --> 01:27:43.439
Uh high priority.
01:27:43.680 --> 01:27:49.359
Uh was C sitting next to somebody at the conference who's 10 years older than me and he doesn't look it.
01:27:49.760 --> 01:27:52.239
He sat next down to me, I go, Man, you're really fit.
01:27:52.319 --> 01:27:54.800
And he goes, Yeah, I'm at the gym every day.
01:27:55.039 --> 01:27:57.760
Since I was 20, I always go to the gym, and he's in good shape.
01:27:57.920 --> 01:27:58.880
But he's an old guy, right?
01:27:58.960 --> 01:27:59.840
He's not like a bodybuilder.
01:28:00.560 --> 01:28:02.560
But he's he's very fit.
01:28:02.880 --> 01:28:05.840
And my takeaway from that was yeah, that's what I should be doing.
01:28:05.920 --> 01:28:07.119
And I went today.
01:28:07.279 --> 01:28:17.119
Uh I should I should be back in the swimming pool or the weights or whatever, what have you, cardio, eating, eating well, um, those kinds of things.
01:28:17.279 --> 01:28:23.760
That's that's it's not unfinished business, it's continued business and continuing to take care of better care of myself.
01:28:24.000 --> 01:28:26.720
There's no reason I can't live till 95, 100.
01:28:26.880 --> 01:28:30.479
I have a friend who's 95 and he still drives.
01:28:30.800 --> 01:28:37.840
And then I saw someone at an event uh a few days ago who's 88 and he looks 150.
01:28:38.079 --> 01:28:42.720
You know, I go I go, I didn't know how old he was.
01:28:42.880 --> 01:28:44.239
He's a f pretty famous guy.
01:28:44.319 --> 01:28:46.159
I go, I don't know how old that dude is.
01:28:46.239 --> 01:28:49.439
And I look, I Googled it, like, I have my phone down here.
01:28:49.760 --> 01:28:52.319
Oh, well, that's not what RY want to be.
01:28:52.479 --> 01:28:54.000
I think he's got other health issues.
01:28:54.079 --> 01:28:55.039
That's not fair.
01:28:55.279 --> 01:29:04.560
But uh later on even 88, that's a good that's still uh a long life to live, I feel like people are living into their 90s now.
01:29:04.720 --> 01:29:10.319
And my my my uh you know the uh well I I'm the uh war generation, right?
01:29:10.479 --> 01:29:11.600
A baby boomer.
01:29:11.760 --> 01:29:13.760
Those guys are living a lot longer now.
01:29:13.920 --> 01:29:29.680
And so the unfinished business take care of myself, um and be a better uh better be a good grandparent and good to my family, uh and uh those are kinds of things on a human human level, you know, personal level.
01:29:29.920 --> 01:29:33.279
Um I'd like to see this thing that I'm working on.
01:29:33.359 --> 01:29:36.640
Um it's evolving all the time, take off.
01:29:36.800 --> 01:29:39.920
Um it's not ready to be for prime time.
01:29:40.000 --> 01:29:46.079
I can't show this as it is right now unless I have it completely 100% as I claim it to be.
01:29:46.399 --> 01:29:48.479
It works in an Expelled Cell spreadsheet.
01:29:48.560 --> 01:29:50.000
We gotta work in here and it works.
01:29:50.159 --> 01:29:51.520
I mean most of it works.
01:29:51.840 --> 01:29:56.640
But to mass produce it versus uh your prototype, it's probably a few more steps.
01:29:58.880 --> 01:30:03.760
A water purifier, a distiller you can buy an appliance, is a hundred dollars on Amazon.
01:30:04.399 --> 01:30:06.399
It doesn't yield the same results.
01:30:06.800 --> 01:30:14.000
It's it for instance, it has the energy consumption issue, but more than that, it has all the pollutants in it, and the water end up back in your drink.
01:30:14.239 --> 01:30:21.119
So not the minerals, but the organic pollutants, the methyl alcohols, ethyl alcohol, pesticides, right?
01:30:21.199 --> 01:30:22.399
You end up drinking that stuff.
01:30:22.479 --> 01:30:24.159
This removes all of it.
01:30:24.720 --> 01:30:30.560
So uh, but that in volume, uh, you can buy that machine in China for twenty dollars.
01:30:30.800 --> 01:30:31.520
Twenty dollars.
01:30:31.680 --> 01:30:38.079
Now, for twenty bucks, that's that's in reach of people in Guatemala and southern Mexico.
01:30:38.239 --> 01:30:45.520
Uh that's that's a in the utility it provides with guaranteeing you won't be sick the next day from drinking it.
01:30:45.920 --> 01:30:48.479
Um and incidentally I never got sick in Mexico.
01:30:48.560 --> 01:30:49.760
I was pretty careful where I ate.
01:30:49.840 --> 01:30:57.439
I I had a house there, I lived there for a while, and never had any issues there, but I've had issues in Thailand uh in particular.
01:30:57.520 --> 01:30:58.880
I got really sick there.
01:30:59.119 --> 01:31:02.720
I went to I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia two weeks ago, got sick there.
01:31:02.960 --> 01:31:07.039
So I may be prone to it, but um, I don't think I'm the only one that's prone to it.
01:31:07.119 --> 01:31:08.880
Other people complain about their stomach too.
01:31:09.039 --> 01:31:10.079
Um Yeah.
01:31:10.960 --> 01:31:15.760
Oh yeah, you're traveling all over, the water's different, your body is hard to keep up.
01:31:16.079 --> 01:31:18.960
Yeah, the bacteria, it's mostly from bacteria, you know.
01:31:19.039 --> 01:31:26.640
Like you can acclimate yourself to it, certain bacteria and stuff, and if you're not acclimated, you drink the water and you don't feel well.
01:31:26.960 --> 01:31:32.640
Uh so but I would like uh as unfinished business to see this thing in into production.
01:31:32.800 --> 01:31:36.079
It may be that I don't produce it and I just license it.
01:31:36.479 --> 01:31:46.640
That's the more likely outcome for it, and try to get into which there's your business entrepreneur hat that you know you could put on because there's multiple ways to get it out to the world.
01:31:46.800 --> 01:31:48.960
You don't have to be the one to put it out there.
01:31:49.279 --> 01:31:50.319
No, I'm not gonna do that actually.
01:31:50.399 --> 01:31:51.279
I'm gonna like it.
01:31:51.600 --> 01:31:55.840
And and like I license the other stuff I do, just collect my check.
01:31:56.159 --> 01:32:00.000
Um it's not gonna be, you know, like earth-shaking money.
01:32:00.159 --> 01:32:05.199
It might be, but I think it's gonna be more like steady stuff, and maybe I did something good.
01:32:06.560 --> 01:32:08.560
Well, and the impact that could have.
01:32:08.720 --> 01:32:13.439
I mean, using less power or helping people not get sick, that's uh that's an awesome thing.
01:32:13.520 --> 01:32:16.800
So well, Jack, uh I want to thank you so much for your time.
01:32:16.960 --> 01:32:24.159
Uh it's been uh honor to be able to sit down and talk with you about your career and all the amazing things you've gotten to do.
01:32:24.399 --> 01:32:24.720
Thank you.
01:32:24.960 --> 01:32:28.000
And uh yeah, thanks for for taking the time to share that.
01:32:28.159 --> 01:32:42.640
And uh if someone were interested in I don't I don't know if you post anywhere, uh uh share updates, if maybe someone hears about this water filtration system and wants to keep keep uh up and when you are ready to release, how do they stay in touch?
01:32:42.960 --> 01:32:46.159
Well, uh the best way to get in touch with me, honestly, is on LinkedIn.
01:32:46.399 --> 01:32:51.840
Um I I get text messages, just like 10 of them in the last uh 20 minutes.
01:32:52.079 --> 01:32:54.640
I don't even know who they are, they're fan and stuff like that.
01:32:54.880 --> 01:32:56.880
And I can't respond to all those.
01:32:57.039 --> 01:33:03.279
And and I can respond to some of the emails, and I have a uh person who helps me with that.
01:33:03.439 --> 01:33:07.600
But on LinkedIn is the best place because that gets responded to.
01:33:08.159 --> 01:33:12.960
And um, and I don't have a like a webpage, we have a webpage for the company Verona.
01:33:13.199 --> 01:33:14.319
It's called Verona.
01:33:14.720 --> 01:33:19.680
We have a webpage for it, um, but it doesn't detail any of the workings of it.
01:33:19.760 --> 01:33:24.800
Um uh because I've kind of kept that close to my chest right now until it I'm ready to talk about it.
01:33:25.119 --> 01:33:30.239
The instant you have an idea and you start talking about it publicly, you'll get it shot down.
01:33:30.640 --> 01:33:34.880
There's some person sitting out there that says, hmm, he's saying stuff that doesn't make sense.
01:33:34.960 --> 01:33:38.479
And so I wait till it's all working and then start talking about it.
01:33:38.640 --> 01:33:40.079
So getting there.
01:33:40.239 --> 01:33:40.479
Cool.
01:33:40.560 --> 01:33:44.079
Well, thanks for for sharing a little bit uh with everyone here today.
01:33:44.640 --> 01:33:45.199
Thank you, Eric.
01:33:46.159 --> 01:33:48.079
Yeah, so thank you guys for watching.
01:33:48.239 --> 01:33:55.760
And if you guys loved interviews like this and want to hear more amazing entrepreneur stories, please make sure you subscribe.
01:33:55.920 --> 01:34:03.760
Uh you could follow us, look for anywhere that you listen to podcasts, Unfinished Business with Eric Malvin, and on social media at VizWithEric.
01:34:04.159 --> 01:34:06.880
And until next time, we'll catch you guys on the next episode.
01:34:07.039 --> 01:34:07.279
Thank you.
01:34:07.520 --> 01:34:08.239
See ya, everybody.
01:34:08.479 --> 01:34:08.720
Alright.
01:34:12.000 --> 01:34:13.359
Turned it into a taxi ride.
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Irma Street MBA lessons do can buy LSPs, lay the pack biz at new heights.
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Now I'm talking with leaders about the unfinished business tonight.
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The launch of high clothes, and you'll learn why.
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Set your goals and shape the way your future goes.
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Subscribe before this with every goal line.
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