Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI TECH SCROLL: Grokipedia Launch, Ghost Posts on Threads, AI Minister “Pregnancy” + Female Founder Interview

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MINI TECH SCROLL: Grokipedia Launch, Ghost Posts on Threads, AI Minister “Pregnancy” + Female Founder Interview · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  This episode of Mini Tech Scroll is brought to you by Blackbird,
• 0:03
  a venture capital firm investing in Aussie and Kiwi startups.
• 0:07
  From the very beginning, Blackbird has supported all
• 0:09
  kinds of technology and founders, including Friesha
• 0:13
  Gall, who Lauren chats with at the end of today's episode.
• 0:16
  So if you have a big idea but need to raise investment to turn
• 0:19
  it into reality, learn more and connect with the Blackbird team
• 0:23
  through the link in our show notes.
• 0:24
  Hey everyone, and welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily instant
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  culture podcast bring you the biggest stories from social
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  media, the creator economy, and the digital space every Monday
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  through Thursday and sometimes Fridays.
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  My name is Annabelle and I'm your Wednesday Mini Tech Scroll
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  host and also the Deputy editor of the youth digital media brand
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  Centennial World. Welcome back to Mini Tech Scroll
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  for another week, and this episode is a little bit of a
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  special one because it is my last time filming in this
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  office. As Lauren has been telling you
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  guys for a couple of weeks now, we are moving offices in our
• 1:01
  coworking space. So we are going to a bigger
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  office and it has natural lighting which is really
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  exciting. So I am looking forward to the
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  new office. Even though this set is iconic,
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  I will say a lot has happened in this room.
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  And also before we get into this week's content, I do just want
• 1:20
  to say I am not matching the mini tech scroll mic on purpose
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  with this cardigan. I just apparently live and
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  breathe mini text crawl. But yes, I am sorry if me
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  matching the mic is a little bit distracting.
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  Other than that, Please remember to rate review and subscribe and
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  star rate US on Spotify. We also have a buy me a coffee
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  link in our description if you are so inclined.
• 1:44
  The first thing I think we need to talk about is the launch of
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  Grokopedia. There is always a lot going on
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  with Elon Musk, Grok and X, and I do try to avoid covering it
• 1:57
  every week because I literally could cover it every week
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  because I like to have, you know, different things to talk
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  about. But I did feel that we did need
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  to cover the launch of Grokopedia this week.
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  For context, Grok is a generative AI chatbot that's
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  being developed by Elon Musk company XAI.
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  As you have probably guessed, if you aren't familiar with this,
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  this is the AI tool slash chatbot that is attached to X,
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  which is obviously formally Twitter.
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  Croc has made the news a couple of times this year.
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  Not necessarily for positive things, it's mostly been for
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  generating very controversial responses in which it has
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  started spewing racist and anti-Semitic content along with
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  various conspiracy theories. So where Grok is a generative AI
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  tool, you can probably already gather what Grokopedia is.
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  It is Grok's version of an online encyclopedia.
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  Elon Musk announced that Grokopedia was in the works
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  earlier this year in September, but a beta version has just been
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  released. He took to X yesterday to share
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  that quote. Grokopedia.com version 0.1 is
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  now live. Version 1.0 will be 10 times
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  better, but even at 0.1 it's better than Wikipedia in my
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  opinion. When you go into the website, it
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  does look very similar to the way that a generative AI chat
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  bot would look where you can type in a text bar a certain
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  topic. Once you do that, different
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  results pop up and you can then click on one from there.
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  It has a similar format to Wikipedia, and it has actually
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  been reported from Engadget that quote.
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  Some articles are nearly identical to their entries on
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  Wikipedia. Though Wikipedia doesn't contain
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  inline links to sources in the same format, such entries do
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  have a small disclaimer that the content is adapted from
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  Wikipedia. So you may be asking, if
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  Gruckopedia is so similar to Wikipedia, why did Elon Musk
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  choose to launch this product? And part of that reason is that
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  Elon Musk and others in his circles have been claiming that
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  Wikipedia is quote UN quote bias and woke.
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  Elon Musk has even repeatedly called the online encyclopedia
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  Wikipedia, where he ultimately popularized that I guess,
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  nickname or term for the encyclopedia.
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  Here. I do think it is worth noting
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  how information is delivered on Wikipedia.
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  The ultimate goal is neutrality, and the editors and writers have
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  a straightforward and direct approach to information sharing.
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  There are thousands of volunteers who edit, who write,
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  and who Fact Check the site to try and sure that the website
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  always maintains A neutral point of view.
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  Of course, this doesn't always succeed.
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  Think about how many articles are on Wikipedia, how many
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  people are working on it. And so Wikipedia isn't immune to
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  that information or political warfare.
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  But at the very least it is very transparent, making it an
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  important tool online in this day and age.
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  Over the past year, there's been a lot of articles circulating
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  examining how Wikipedia is operating in the current
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  political zeitgeist, specifically in the United
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  States, and I wanted to read you a paragraph from one by The New
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  Yorker Quote. If Wikipedia is Trump isms
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  opposite, or as a lot of people like to say, only half
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  facetiously, the only good place left on the Internet is because
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  of its principles and procedures.
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  You may not find everything you want to know about a given
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  subject, but Wikipedia articles, especially those on big and
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  contentious subjects, are remarkably forthcoming about why
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  they include or omit what they do.
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  When it comes to Elon Musk's opinion on Wikipedia
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  specifically, many have claimed that there seems to be some kind
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  of personal vendetta against the encyclopedia.
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  Elon Musk has attacked Wikipedia a number of times throughout his
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  career. He's also called for people to
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  stop donating to Wikipedia multiple times.
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  For example, in January this year, he quote tweeted a post
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  about political extremism on Wikipedia and wrote Defund
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  Wikipedia until balance is restored.
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  But I should add here that many sleuths and researchers have
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  also noted that he at one point had a very favorable view of
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  Wikipedia, but that clearly has changed based on his recent
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  comments and endeavors. And while there may be a
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  personal element here, I don't know if that's quite the full
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  story because it isn't just Elon Musk who was pushing this
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  narrative that Wikipedia is biased and woke and unreliable.
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  It has become increasingly popular among right wing
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  commentators, pundits, and influences in the United States.
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  Actually, I've seen so many articles noting that this is a
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  symptom of a media landscape that is increasingly dominated
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  by conservative voices and a conservative agenda where
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  Wikipedia is actually one of the hardest platforms to control and
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  push out a narrative in that way.
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  So I think all of this context definitely informs the launch of
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  Wikipedia, where many social media users and journalists see
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  this platform as a way for Elon Musk and others who share his
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  political views to push a Sun agenda.
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  A piece for the Washington Post outlined an example of some of
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  the differences that are already coming up in terms of the
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  entries between Wikipedia and Wikipedia, and how a Sun
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  political agenda might be pushed.
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  As the journalist Will Armas writes, quote Grokopedia's entry
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  on gender, for instance, begins with the sentence gender refers
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  to the binary classification of humans as male or female based
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  on biological sex. Wikipedia starts with gender is
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  the range of social, psychological, cultural, and
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  behavioral aspects of being a man or boy, woman or girl, or
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  third gender. So just from that example, I
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  guess you can see how certain topics might be phrased in
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  different ways, especially as Grokopedia develops and
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  potentially pulls less and less from Wikipedia.
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  I've actually even seen people on Reddit compare Grokapedia to
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  Conservapedia. I had no idea what that was, but
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  apparently it's an online encyclopedia written from a
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  self-described American conservative and fundamentalist
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  Christian point of view. I feel like I also should note
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  that there have been statistics that indicate that Wikipedia
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  does have a slight Democratic leaning or progressive leaning
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  in the way that it presents information.
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  I've seen a couple of stats floating around.
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  One of them I think was in an Atlantic article.
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  But like I said earlier, this bias or leaning isn't
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  necessarily a bad thing. I think the transparency is what
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  really differentiates Wikipedia here, because you can look into
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  why things are included and why things are excluded or why
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  things are framed in a certain way.
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  So I just think it is important to reiterate that point.
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  But back to Wikipedia. Obviously a bias without
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  transparency is definitely concerning, but there are also
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  worries about relying on an AI model to generate encyclopedia
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  entries, given that there are still issues with accuracy and
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  hallucinating information. All in all, I think I do have my
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  doubts about whether Wikipedia will ever be as culturally
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  influential as something like Wikipedia, even if Wikipedia is
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  facing its own problems with the rise of AI, which is something I
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  reported on last week. Wikipedia is really getting a
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  lot of airtime. But at the end of the day, I do
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  think this story and the launch of Gracopedia goes to show how
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  it's constantly getting increasingly difficult, I guess,
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  to find neutral or unbiased or transparent information online.
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  Granted, I do understand that neutrality is a complicated and
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  debatable subject, like CAN information ever be neutral or
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  can storytelling and information sharing even be neutral?
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  But I guess it just comes down to transparency in this regard.
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  But yes, definitely let me know your thoughts on Gruckopedia,
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  where you think the platform will be going, and if people
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  will even use it. Anyway, that brings us to our
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  next story, which is an update about threads, and that is that
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  Meta has introduced ghost posts, which is kind of hard for me to
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  say for some reason, but these posts essentially allow users to
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  share posts that will disappear after 24 hours.
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  I think it's kind of like stories for text posts or like
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  Snapchat for text posts, if that's how you want to imagine
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  it. Meta announced the new feature
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  on October 27th in a blog post and they are marketing this
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  update as a way for users to share their quote UN quote
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  unfiltered thoughts, which I think is interesting but also
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  more on that later. How it works is that these posts
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  will automatically archive after 24 hours, where replies to ghost
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  posts are sent to your inbox and only the poster can see who
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  liked and replied to the post. Sarah Perez, in a piece for
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  TechCrunch, noted that Mehta told the publication that the
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  feature was ultimately designed to quote encourage more low
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  stakes sharing within the feed. She also noted that this
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  actually isn't the first time that a text first platform has
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  introduced A disappearing feature like this, as she
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  continues quote before it was X Twitter experimented with this
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  form of sharing back in 2020 with Fleets, which appeared as
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  disappearing stories. However, the company pulled the
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  feature the following year, citing a lack of adoption.
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  Now I don't really use threads to be fair, but I did scroll
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  through my feed and found quite a few people using ghost posts
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  already. But I do think it's hard to know
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  whether this feature will actually catch on or not because
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  it is still early days. I do feel like when a new
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  feature on a social platform drops, a lot of us just like try
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  it once and then never again. Like I mentioned, I do think
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  it's particularly interesting that Meta would introduce a
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  feature that allows users to share quote UN quote unfiltered
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  thoughts in the same year that they have completely scaled back
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  their moderation policies. If you guys don't remember
• 11:58
  actually in my first ever mini text scroll episode, please
• 12:01
  don't go back and watch it. I feel like I was probably
• 12:04
  awkward, but I reported on how Mark Zuckerberg took to social
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  media to share some of the updates on Metas moderation
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  policies. This included replacing fact
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  checkers with community notes, removing restrictions on various
• 12:18
  topics like immigration and gender, and also moving the
• 12:20
  trust and safety and content moderation teams out of
• 12:23
  California to Texas. This was allegedly because there
• 12:27
  was a growing concern that biased employees were overly
• 12:31
  censoring content. This got a lot of backlash at
• 12:33
  the time, mostly because people felt like it would allow for
• 12:37
  more hate speech to circulate on metas platforms, but also
• 12:41
  because it felt like Mehta was feeding into the political
• 12:45
  zeitgeist and appeasing Trump and aligning with his political
• 12:49
  agenda. But of course, freedom of speech
• 12:51
  and expression is definitely important on social media, so a
• 12:54
  lot of people also argued that the scaling back of moderation
• 12:58
  could be a good thing. But that kind of brings us to
• 13:01
  this ongoing battle between platforms and users about where
• 13:04
  to draw the line when it comes to this freedom, like freedom of
• 13:08
  expression and speech and protecting hate speech and
• 13:11
  discriminatory rhetoric. With this context and the back
• 13:15
  and forth, the introduction of ghost posts could be interpreted
• 13:19
  as a kind of dog whistle, like an invitation for users to post
• 13:23
  more controversial or even problematic opinions without the
• 13:27
  fear of moderation or backlash or being held accountable
• 13:31
  because the post does disappear. That said though, threads are
• 13:34
  still far less political than somewhere like X, so it's
• 13:38
  possible that the culture on the app just doesn't lend itself to
• 13:41
  that kind of discourse. But I definitely think the
• 13:44
  timing here is interesting, with Meta kind of reframing what free
• 13:49
  expression could look like on the platforms, especially as
• 13:52
  they continue stepping back from more active moderation online.
• 13:57
  My last story for today is a little bit of a quick one and
• 14:00
  maybe a little bit of a silly one, but I have another update
• 14:03
  on the AI minister Diala from Albania.
• 14:06
  I reported on this story previously, obviously, and
• 14:08
  firstly, love to hear that we have Albanian listeners and
• 14:12
  please, if there are any more of you, share your opinion on this
• 14:15
  whole thing. But in case you missed it, the
• 14:17
  Albanian Prime Minister, Eddie Rama became the first leader
• 14:21
  making Albania the first country in the world to appoint a
• 14:23
  cabinet minister powered by AI. Like I mentioned, the minister's
• 14:27
  name is Diyela, which reportedly means sunshine or sun in
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  Albanian. And she does have an avatar
• 14:34
  where she shows up as a woman. And her portfolio slash role is
• 14:38
  essentially to tackle corruption and promote transparency in
• 14:41
  government. And this is especially around
• 14:43
  public procurement, which is the purchase of goods, wax or
• 14:47
  services by the government. That is the rundown, in case you
• 14:50
  missed it. But there are now reports
• 14:52
  circulating that according to the Prime Minister, Diella is,
• 14:55
  quote UN quote, pregnant with 83 children.
• 14:59
  Eddie Rama made this statement during the Berlin Global
• 15:02
  Dialogue. And essentially these 83
• 15:05
  children are going to be AI buy assistance to each MP in
• 15:10
  Parliament. Diana is pregnant and she's
• 15:13
  expecting 83 kids, each kid for one member of our Parliament
• 15:21
  that will serve the MPs as an assistant, that will participate
• 15:27
  in the parliamentary sessions, that will keep record of
• 15:32
  everything that is happening, that will inform and will
• 15:36
  suggest to the MPs how to react. That will have all the
• 15:40
  knowledge. These kids will have all the
• 15:42
  knowledge of their mom. So the reason I wanted to talk
• 15:46
  about this story today is not necessarily to give you an
• 15:49
  update, but it's because I find the use of language here quite
• 15:52
  interesting. Like why is the leader of a
• 15:55
  country choosing to anthropomorphize AI in this way?
• 15:59
  Like why frame it as Diella is quote UN quote pregnant and
• 16:04
  giving birth to other AIS? I mean, I guess this
• 16:07
  personification isn't necessarily new when it comes to
• 16:11
  AI. We're seeing so many more people
• 16:13
  turn to chat bots like ChatGPT for emotional support, even
• 16:17
  mental health advice. In fact, another story that
• 16:20
  broke this week was that recent data shows that around 0.07 of
• 16:26
  ChatGPT uses in a given week show signs of mental health
• 16:29
  emergency like mania, psychosis or suicidal thoughts.
• 16:33
  And they do turn to the chat bot, all these conversations.
• 16:37
  And of course, we're also seeing the rise of AI boyfriends,
• 16:40
  girlfriends, and other companions or partners.
• 16:43
  So people are already projecting humanity onto these chat bots
• 16:48
  and AI models. But to see a government to it is
• 16:52
  quite interesting. And I think it says a lot about
• 16:56
  how we treat AI not just necessarily as a tool, but also
• 16:59
  as a person or like a social actor, I guess, that we can talk
• 17:04
  to and even trust. We're definitely pros and cons
• 17:07
  to this. The risk, of course, is that we,
• 17:10
  I guess, start to believe that these systems have some sort of
• 17:12
  free will or that they can even make moral judgement when in
• 17:16
  reality they are pulling from existing information, predicting
• 17:19
  patterns based on data, not acting out of morality or
• 17:23
  conscience. And ultimately, when we use
• 17:25
  human language in this way, I guess we really start to see
• 17:28
  that line blur. It's rhetoric that ultimately I
• 17:32
  think reshapes or recalculates how we think about a the eye and
• 17:36
  technology itself. I don't really have too much
• 17:39
  more to say there about that story.
• 17:40
  I'd definitely be intrigued to hear what you guys think about
• 17:43
  it. But I just thought it was really
• 17:45
  interesting and also kind of funny to be our last story of
• 17:50
  this week before we get into a Lauren's interview.
• 17:53
  Speaking of Lauren's interview, thanks to Blackbird, we are
• 17:57
  chatting with Friesha Gaul in today's episode, who is the
• 18:00
  founder of On Game. So let's just cut to that now.
• 18:03
  Welcome, Friesha. Hello, thanks for the welcome.
• 18:07
  I'm so excited to chat with you today.
• 18:09
  I feel like what you're building is super unique and the space
• 18:12
  that you're building in it is also unique and also super
• 18:15
  relevant to our mini tech audience.
• 18:18
  So with that being said, can you tell us about On Zero and what
• 18:22
  you're building? Yeah.
• 18:23
  So On Zero is essentially a way to touch virtual virtual reality
• 18:27
  or any game that you're in, whether that's a simulation or
• 18:30
  you're mapping it over to a robot so you have a hand or
• 18:32
  something like that, and you want to feel it from halfway
• 18:34
  across the globe. That's essentially what we're
• 18:36
  working on. So I started it wanting to be a
• 18:38
  keyboard glove and I realized that a really cheap tracking
• 18:41
  solution was in a dorm room and decided hey, I can make a really
• 18:43
  cheap and affordable haptic glove, whether that's for VR or
• 18:46
  for simulations. OK, take it back.
• 18:49
  Tell me, how did you get interested in this?
• 18:53
  How are you building this? I need to know more.
• 18:56
  OK, so essentially I got really into modding electronics as a
• 19:00
  kid. So I lived in the middle of
• 19:01
  nowhere and there weren't that many interesting things to do.
• 19:04
  So it's always sort of breaking into backyards.
• 19:06
  My dad had a huge warehouse, and so as we kill these tree houses
• 19:09
  and then eventually realized electricity could do something.
• 19:12
  And so my first ever venture was making this huge like Super
• 19:16
  Mario Kart or Mario Kart. And essentially once I saw the
• 19:19
  motor move, I was like, this is sick.
• 19:21
  And so when I finally went to university for quantum
• 19:24
  engineering, which is electrical engineering with extra
• 19:26
  standards. I want to do theoretical
• 19:28
  physics, but I wasn't around essentially I got really bored.
• 19:32
  I wasn't allowed to accelerate. And I had been teaching with pH
• 19:35
  DS since I was like 15 or 16 in the quantum physics space.
• 19:38
  And so I asked to accelerate, but they're examined vigilators
• 19:41
  on around. So I started working on my own
• 19:43
  projects, one of which was born out of me being on this train.
• 19:47
  And I wanted to make a personal website because everyone needs
• 19:50
  to get into a big tech internship or something.
• 19:53
  And so I was making this thing and it was going to be like an
• 19:54
  interactive video game website, but my computer went flat.
• 19:58
  But I had this hobby of jailbreaking iPhones, and I
• 20:00
  figured it's a computer as well. So I tried to code on its
• 20:03
  terminal, but there's no shift or control button easily
• 20:05
  accessible. And I wished in that moment I
• 20:07
  could just type in there. So I went home and with my
• 20:10
  knowledge of electronics, I thought.
• 20:12
  Surely this is kind of possible, right?
• 20:14
  And this was back in January. So now we have like the the meta
• 20:17
  ECG wristbands now just coming out.
• 20:19
  But for me, I thought, you know, surely we can get the semicolons
• 20:22
  and stuff in there and pre train something like that.
• 20:25
  It's sort of worked, sort of didn't.
• 20:26
  I think it's also chalking it up to me like being new to embedded
• 20:30
  machine learning, but pretty impressive as a first project.
• 20:33
  And I put it on YouTube and I went to sleep and I was applying
• 20:36
  to like a 1K grant and I had to put it onto YouTube because I
• 20:40
  couldn't upload an MP4. I woke up the next day and there
• 20:42
  was like not like viral, but pretty good.
• 20:46
  Like 1500 people were like, this is insane.
• 20:48
  Yeah. Then there was a 0 subscriber
• 20:50
  YouTube account. So like all these people were
• 20:52
  like, make it, make it, make it. And eventually I made a discord
• 20:55
  and started going further and further into it.
• 20:57
  And I just asked them like, hey, do you what do you want this in
• 21:01
  like if I'm going to make it a quote UN quote product.
• 21:03
  And like I was born into a skiing company, so I knew a bit
• 21:06
  about how businesses worked. Not tag.
• 21:08
  What do you mean you were born into a ski company?
• 21:10
  What does? That mean OK OK OK so my parents
• 21:13
  hated their lives. My dad was working at Commbank
• 21:16
  as an investor and my mom was a consulted at BCG.
• 21:18
  So lots of money. Did not like it at all.
• 21:20
  OK so my mom used to be in the Canadian army.
• 21:24
  So the Navy called her up and said hey we need personnel on
• 21:26
  board won't hop in the ship and go around the world and crash
• 21:29
  out for a year. And she said yes.
• 21:30
  So she went to Australia and stopped off in for the Olympics,
• 21:33
  danced with my dad and my dad was like hey, you're Canadian
• 21:36
  and I was on the ski team. We should ask the Co founder of
• 21:40
  Rick Curl for one meal and run off to Canada.
• 21:43
  Oh OK. I was born that year.
• 21:45
  So my whole life I have these two absolutely insane parents
• 21:49
  who are running halfway across the globe every single half year
• 21:52
  because the winter is only around for six months.
• 21:55
  And so I went to like 13 different schools.
• 21:57
  They're running this company going to like Colorado to these
• 22:00
  pitch nights and shows and conferences.
• 22:02
  I'm sleeping underneath the table while these people are
• 22:04
  like pitching them and giving them these QR codes.
• 22:06
  I never really knew too much about startups, but I was I was
• 22:10
  an oak semi related one. They they managed to like run it
• 22:13
  and it was a skiing company. I helped out by making merch and
• 22:16
  being a waitress because I want to sort of run at some stage.
• 22:19
  Oh my God. But it all worked out pretty
• 22:22
  well. Then they managed to exit before
• 22:23
  COVID, which is great for ski tourism.
• 22:26
  And yeah, essentially for me, when I was seeing this product,
• 22:29
  I, I figured I'm, I'd prefer to work for myself.
• 22:32
  So it's a fun way to sort of learn how to do something.
• 22:35
  And I also realized when I was pulling it between like
• 22:39
  healthcare and gaming and all these other things, I put my VR
• 22:42
  headset down not of not loving it.
• 22:44
  So because I went to all of these 13 different schools
• 22:47
  growing up, how do you keep friends for more than six
• 22:50
  months, right? I always had this stand alone
• 22:53
  really cheap VR headset and I used it and I created my own
• 22:56
  virtual world that was my living room in Canada.
• 22:58
  And I played Dungeons and Dragons with my friends from it
• 23:02
  was absolutely sick. But progressively VR was
• 23:06
  completely bought out by Meta, at least the cheap space and for
• 23:10
  me it was my entire social life. So to see like a headset get
• 23:13
  defunct after like 3 years and then you have to get a Facebook
• 23:17
  account to continue using things and they double the price like
• 23:20
  consistently. It absolutely sucked.
• 23:22
  And now only recently are they trying to go cheap because they
• 23:24
  have finally competitors after the AR market coming in.
• 23:28
  And so I was really against this, right?
• 23:30
  Like the whole VR industry started with people like Palmer
• 23:33
  Luckey walking and like 19 year olds like me just sort of
• 23:36
  messing around in their rooms or garages making stuff.
• 23:39
  Yeah. And that's where all the
• 23:40
  innovation came in. So it was no surprise when
• 23:42
  there's a steep decline of people buying headsets and stuff
• 23:45
  because the developers now had to pay a ridiculous, well, like
• 23:48
  lose a ridiculous amount of money whenever they were
• 23:50
  publishing things. So when I had this this cheap
• 23:53
  tracking solution, I figured, I've been following haptic
• 23:56
  gloves forever and people are still selling tracking gloves
• 23:59
  for over $1000. I reckon I could make it better.
• 24:02
  Like I could probably just slap on the same motors you have in
• 24:04
  your phone when you're typing or in your PlayStation controller
• 24:07
  when a dragon like runs through when it rambles onto your
• 24:10
  fingertips and onto your palms. And like, it would only be like
• 24:13
  70 or 60 bucks in pure materials.
• 24:16
  Of course, you have to charge a bit because you have to pay
• 24:18
  people human wages. And so, like, what we're going
• 24:23
  for is probably like 250. So like, for us, we have a very
• 24:26
  open source mentality in terms of like, we want to share what
• 24:29
  we're working on, but we want to be the locus of the community.
• 24:31
  So I'm also very against, like, hiding things and like, try to
• 24:35
  patent it, but don't, like, crush small guys, encourage
• 24:39
  innovation, creating things for the sake of it.
• 24:41
  Yeah. I was just working on this cheap
• 24:42
  tracking solution. I was running out of money.
• 24:44
  So it's like 60 bucks. And it was like my food
• 24:47
  allowance every week that my mom would send it was like 100
• 24:50
  bucks. And I was spending it mostly on
• 24:52
  rice, and I mean, partially on rice and mostly Aliexpress
• 24:55
  sensors. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:57
  And so like people are following along as I'm doing this, but I'm
• 25:00
  kind of dying physically. So my sister was doom scrolling
• 25:03
  on LinkedIn and saw this one K Grant from a place called
• 25:06
  Blackbird. Now, I had no clue that startup
• 25:09
  space, but essentially like I got involved with Blackbird far,
• 25:13
  but before I knew that they were like OG can't vote investors or
• 25:16
  whatever. I was probably like two or three
• 25:17
  months in and then it finally like clicked.
• 25:21
  Wow, that's. Like holy cow, I just thought
• 25:23
  they wanted money. So like I'd already done the
• 25:27
  YouTube thing and everything else and it was like sort of
• 25:30
  startupy, but like I didn't know who they were.
• 25:32
  Like I didn't really care as long as I had some.
• 25:34
  Yeah, fair enough. And.
• 25:36
  So I was developing it out and I got more and more in love with
• 25:38
  the idea because like, most of my life has been really, really
• 25:42
  fueled by one, like creative ambition and doing things, but
• 25:45
  also spite. Like I love operating in spaces
• 25:48
  that are just. I love how you said that so
• 25:50
  casually. Like but also spite.
• 25:52
  OK. OK, OK.
• 25:54
  Look, the people who say that they're just doing something for
• 25:56
  the betterment of the world are just dying.
• 25:58
  Like, like it's nice that they're doing that, but there's,
• 26:01
  there's always like a secondary shadow about every person.
• 26:04
  Yeah, yeah. Like, I love helping people, but
• 26:07
  I also love proving people wrong.
• 26:08
  There's. Also self-interest there always,
• 26:10
  of course. Feels good to prove.
• 26:12
  Someone. Yes.
• 26:13
  Yes. Yes.
• 26:13
  But yeah, the whole glove idea was really just this passion
• 26:15
  project to make some sort of free and open source thing,
• 26:19
  maybe show it off to, I don't know, employers, if they even
• 26:22
  cared. But then I realized, like, I
• 26:24
  only existed because of the VR space.
• 26:25
  And it's been really depressingly not dead for a
• 26:28
  while. But like, like, there's always a
• 26:31
  cult that follows it, like the social VR people in VR chat who
• 26:34
  are just anime girls because it can be.
• 26:35
  But like, for the most part, after the big buyout, Medica
• 26:39
  keep it going for a while. But like, things like the
• 26:42
  metaverse didn't always land. Like, there were two PG.
• 26:45
  Yeah, yeah. And so people just didn't want
• 26:47
  to be on it. And also publishing is a studio
• 26:50
  or even just an individual became harder and harder.
• 26:53
  And so it was sort of like, why not just make something for the
• 26:55
  PC where there's more people? And I fully agreed with that.
• 26:58
  But like more and more, I'm so excited about the future of VR.
• 27:01
  And I think only now some people are thinking about it like I was
• 27:04
  interested in this like January and February.
• 27:06
  But like with AR and everything else, and especially the
• 27:11
  evolution of like AI generated stuff.
• 27:13
  And I want to say I'm an AI person.
• 27:16
  Not really, but it's mostly their ability to render things
• 27:19
  in 3D is so magical. Like for me, I really want to
• 27:23
  make a play in the space, not just like that area, but in
• 27:26
  terms of just making VR feel more real.
• 27:29
  And one of the biggest bottlenecks for VR has been it's
• 27:31
  so hard to create. And for me as a kid, I was
• 27:34
  making all these things. And there's a reason I could end
• 27:36
  up doing quantum engineering right after because making video
• 27:39
  games, it's kind of hard. Like you have to know a lot.
• 27:42
  But with the ability to like generate all of these 3D things
• 27:45
  that are interactable and stuff like that, the space looks
• 27:47
  really, really cool. And now Samsung and Apple are
• 27:50
  starting to make a bit of a play for it, which is awesome.
• 27:53
  Like, I love competition so much.
• 27:55
  Like, please, I don't OK, like, I sort of do care who's on the
• 27:59
  top because like, it will really decide the creative, you know,
• 28:03
  future of this. And I think it should be open.
• 28:06
  But like, the fact that people are competing in the 1st place
• 28:08
  is so, so good. But yeah, I'm, I'm basically
• 28:11
  making VR touchable, but my, my aim is really to make VR kind of
• 28:17
  more cheap and human again, because it's been a lot more
• 28:19
  hard to develop as an indie dev. And for me, I've been waiting
• 28:23
  for touch for forever, like 10 years or something like that.
• 28:26
  So now that I have like a bit of an electronics background, screw
• 28:30
  it. Yeah, you're just going for it.
• 28:32
  Basically. Oh, I love that.
• 28:34
  OK, so it sounds like obviously your company started from, you
• 28:38
  know, a need a gap that you saw yourself, but then it was really
• 28:42
  the foundation was built through community and now you also have
• 28:47
  a community side to your business that you're doing as
• 28:50
  well. Yeah.
• 28:51
  Can you tell me about that? Yeah, so this started before on
• 28:54
  0. So there's this thing called
• 28:55
  ACES, Australian Creative Electronics Society, and what it
• 28:58
  is is me and this guy named Joseph.
• 29:02
  We're having a bit of a problem with the Australian one, Startup
• 29:04
  space, but mostly just like builder space, full stop.
• 29:08
  Because it felt like there was a lot of like advisors and a lot
• 29:11
  of coaches and a lot of whatever stuff, but there weren't really
• 29:14
  people who were just like openly and publicly being stupid.
• 29:17
  And that's really nice. Like for me, I was in university
• 29:21
  and I moved to the city after always living in small towns.
• 29:23
  Like I lived in a small town in Canada where my parents were
• 29:26
  running a ski company. But it got really big in the
• 29:28
  winter, of course, because it's a skiing place.
• 29:30
  But it was always like, you know, 1000 people towns.
• 29:33
  So I went to the city. I was expecting like, what the
• 29:36
  pitch conferences had these really, really passionate people
• 29:38
  who will not shut up about skiing.
• 29:40
  And I was thinking maybe engineers are like that too,
• 29:42
  right? Because I was all, I had been in
• 29:44
  San Francisco, in Colorado and, you know, the Las Vegas of the
• 29:48
  world, right. And so when I finally got here,
• 29:50
  I was so underwhelmed. I was like, you know, where's
• 29:53
  your passion? I was like, I know you want to
• 29:54
  be a software engineer at Atlassian, but like, Atlassian
• 29:57
  started somewhere. Yeah.
• 29:59
  You know, all these places started somewhere and the fact
• 30:01
  that you don't think that you can do it is crazy.
• 30:03
  Like every single founder isn't a genius to just someone who is
• 30:07
  so so stubborn but they're just going to will it into.
• 30:10
  Yeah, yeah. And like, there's a lot of
• 30:13
  people around me who just think thought that they just could not
• 30:15
  do things. And eventually that sort of
• 30:17
  pushes you to be quiet and start to hide things as well.
• 30:19
  And so essentially aces was my attempt at like, I couldn't
• 30:23
  accelerate my grades. I couldn't find people who are
• 30:25
  interested in things. I didn't even care if you're
• 30:26
  doing a degree. Like don't be scared of me
• 30:28
  because I go to unis WI want to go to MIT.
• 30:30
  Yeah, yeah. Like it for me, it's like if you
• 30:33
  are a dropout, you're equal to me.
• 30:35
  Like it does not matter. But like what really matters is
• 30:37
  your passion. And so we started this monthly
• 30:40
  meet up where essentially anyone can come in and just show off
• 30:44
  what they're working on. So we've had the head of
• 30:45
  engineering at Rd. show off the little transceivers and the
• 30:48
  mics. And we've also had like year
• 30:50
  five students using like Raspberry Pi's to ping up to
• 30:53
  airplanes overhead and figure out how fast they're going and
• 30:56
  like what make and model they are.
• 30:57
  And it's like, what the hell, This guy's a genius.
• 31:00
  Yeah. And so we started in February
• 31:02
  with no one and now we're over 1000 people and we're start,
• 31:05
  we're looking at starting to give up grants.
• 31:07
  OK. So tell me then about how your
• 31:09
  business is structured. So you said you have a Co
• 31:11
  founder, Yeah, yeah. So do you guys work on this full
• 31:13
  time? Yeah, so essentially we were at
• 31:16
  UNSW and we met each other through a group project that was
• 31:19
  absolute hell. I ended up not sleeping for five
• 31:21
  days at the end because No 1 ended up doing anything.
• 31:23
  And that's how I realized I could rely on him because he's
• 31:25
  the only person in my group who was like, I'm not going to play
• 31:28
  League of Legends, I'm going to help you.
• 31:30
  And so that was really, really brilliant.
• 31:33
  But essentially, as we're doing this, I actually said, you know,
• 31:38
  screw it. I'm going to Kickstarter this or
• 31:40
  nothing. I'm going to figure out a way to
• 31:41
  bootstrap this if I don't get investment.
• 31:43
  And I thought I wouldn't get investment because it's VR,
• 31:46
  which is, you know, everyone hears about it.
• 31:48
  It's like, it's kind of like a dead industry, right?
• 31:51
  For me, I really, really do believe in it and think that
• 31:54
  there's just so much that's going to come out and like, mark
• 31:57
  my words, if you're listening to this, like if I had money other
• 32:01
  than in my company, I would be betting a lot of money.
• 32:05
  But essentially, we actually pitched it.
• 32:08
  And within this time, some crazy stuff happened that I wouldn't
• 32:11
  even think I can say. But basically I was flying
• 32:13
  around and I just got the best mom, Laura ever.
• 32:16
  But over that weekend, I then came back, I'm walking around
• 32:20
  you in Southwest and I get called back.
• 32:23
  I can't say like, who's this from and stuff like that.
• 32:25
  Like I'm involved in start man and stuff like that.
• 32:28
  And they're like, yeah, yeah. And I was like, yeah, it's like,
• 32:31
  yeah, we'll progress this here's the paperwork, blah, blah, blah.
• 32:33
  And I'm just standing there like I'm 19 and you're saying you're
• 32:36
  gonna give me like 600K? Holy shit.
• 32:41
  Like The thing is, like, I was so hyped, right?
• 32:43
  Yeah, of course. Like I, I had like ran into
• 32:46
  Shawn's room and fucking full tackled that guy was like, let's
• 32:49
  go. Because I would have done it
• 32:51
  anyways. But like, it's so much easier
• 32:53
  when you can feed yourself. Yeah, of course.
• 32:55
  But yeah, essentially, like that's what happened.
• 32:58
  I was just in total awe and so excited about it.
• 33:02
  I realized like some crazy things about startups within
• 33:05
  that time. And I'm like how fast you can
• 33:08
  burn through money and how little you originally like I
• 33:11
  really started wanting a really little amount of money.
• 33:14
  And thank God other founders were like, yeah, yeah.
• 33:17
  Like for me like 600 K is still like I could raise more and
• 33:21
  especially with start my demo day and things before then.
• 33:24
  I have been offered by angels by BC funds a lot of people, I
• 33:27
  can't say but like people who are more globally known and
• 33:31
  really like for me, I'm in this weird situation because I see
• 33:34
  like the AI bubble and the raises and stuff like that and
• 33:37
  look 19 year old quantum engineering teaching with PhDs.
• 33:41
  I could do the crazy route. But for me like the VR space is
• 33:44
  very personality driven and also like I'm thinking about the
• 33:48
  company that I would actually want to support even if I wasn't
• 33:51
  buying from them. Like who would I actually love?
• 33:53
  Because for me, I gave up on VR for a reason.
• 33:56
  And one of the big ones was because it became too
• 33:58
  corporatized and there wasn't really a large vision for it in
• 34:01
  the future. And I found that it was really
• 34:03
  like, you know, all these companies are sort of like run.
• 34:07
  And I hate to say it like as companies, but when you get to a
• 34:10
  certain stage, like the board of directors is going to say to say
• 34:13
  this, the consultants are going to say this.
• 34:16
  And you don't really have one person saying, like, this is the
• 34:20
  ultimate vision, let's go. And like, if you have one person
• 34:22
  who's pushing that, they can push for it.
• 34:24
  And maybe they're wrong, but at least they have something there.
• 34:27
  And so for me, equity was such a huge thing, like if I was going
• 34:31
  to lose a certain amount of my company and I sent this to them,
• 34:34
  if I lose a certain amount of my company, I'm not doing this
• 34:37
  anymore. Like I don't want to lose 50% to
• 34:39
  Series A. And so essentially for me it was
• 34:42
  like, OK, how am I going to do this?
• 34:44
  And I realized like I'm deferred from university.
• 34:47
  I can only defer for so long. And so I took the 600K, which is
• 34:52
  pretty awesome because it's for a lower equity amount and
• 34:54
  everything else. But essentially I'm dual raising
• 34:57
  it with a Kickstarter. So I'm going to CES, which is
• 34:59
  the world's largest Electronics Show and stuff like that.
• 35:01
  We're also getting involved with B to B.
• 35:02
  So like the military and robotics companies think it's
• 35:05
  pretty sick because it's way cheaper than what they currently
• 35:08
  have. I can't really talk about that
• 35:10
  area, but like can say the industries.
• 35:12
  Yeah. And so that's a great way to get
• 35:14
  like a lot of money early in batch units.
• 35:17
  And gamers are probably, I love them so much because I comfort
• 35:21
  them, but I also they are like the most nitpicky evil people
• 35:25
  you'll ever be. Like I love them.
• 35:27
  But they will talk about latency like it is Satan's work and in
• 35:32
  most other areas. And I mean like even in like
• 35:34
  defense, they might care less. But like in that area, user
• 35:37
  experience, blah, blah, blah. Everything else should be
• 35:39
  perfect. There's a reason why GPU's were
• 35:41
  selling and gaming before like AI.
• 35:43
  Oh my gosh, Like it's such, you have such complex technology for
• 35:48
  this like luxury, the industry. Like I probably wouldn't want to
• 35:52
  operate in any other industry unless it was like robotics.
• 35:56
  But like, yeah, it's you're making for a really hard
• 35:59
  customer. And so like, I love it because,
• 36:01
  you know, if you're not playing at a hard mode, it's not fun.
• 36:04
  Yeah, yeah. But like, it means that you sort
• 36:06
  of have to strategize how you're going to do things, which is
• 36:08
  kind of interesting. But yeah, it's sort of what's
• 36:11
  happening here at on 0. That's really cool.
• 36:13
  I love that. OK, So what is your future
• 36:18
  vision then? Like where do you see the future
• 36:20
  of the company? Obviously, you guys are still
• 36:21
  quite green and in that startup phase.
• 36:24
  What are your future plans? I want to, you know, ask to be
• 36:28
  an astronaut on the moon. And I want to reach down.
• 36:30
  I want to feel the sand fall beneath my hands.
• 36:33
  I want to hear the beach there as real as possible as I can.
• 36:39
  Funny enough, I'd never watched Ready Player 1 before any of
• 36:43
  this. My Co founder was like, you have
• 36:45
  to watch this thing. But really it's like I've always
• 36:49
  loved like animes like Sword Art Online and stuff like that.
• 36:51
  And I was always waiting for it to get more and more immersive.
• 36:54
  And so for me, I really want to play in the immersive tech area
• 36:56
  and the hardware area, but also just like enable more people to
• 37:00
  make things because what VR was really about was like anyone
• 37:04
  could make anything and it was super cheap.
• 37:06
  You could get on your computer and you could do it.
• 37:07
  Like 10 year old me was told about Unity and like tinker Cat
• 37:13
  and stuff like that terrible cat thing.
• 37:14
  It's just surprising, but it teaches you stuff.
• 37:17
  And I've been learning about this and like, it was really
• 37:20
  tough, but it was one of the most liberating things ever.
• 37:23
  And I think like I don't care necessarily about doing
• 37:25
  engineering. What I've always loved was the
• 37:28
  ability to just bring anything into existence and I find that a
• 37:31
  lot of people are very financially restricted.
• 37:33
  Like I was like I like the day before I got the 600 Ki went
• 37:40
  into the mirror, I cut my hair dyed in ombre red and I was like
• 37:43
  fuck it, I'll kick started this I.
• 37:44
  Like it too much? Because really it's, it's more
• 37:47
  like representing, like anyone should have the ability to
• 37:50
  create. And for me, like if you can
• 37:52
  incentivize people and pay people proper wages for doing
• 37:56
  what they love, that's so huge. Cuz like for me, if I wasn't
• 37:59
  doing theoretical physics or engineering or stuff like that,
• 38:02
  I always wanted to do film and painting and stuff like that,
• 38:06
  but it just wouldn't pay. Yeah, yeah.
• 38:07
  And so it's really like, how can you enable more people to
• 38:10
  create? And so start with cheap
• 38:12
  hardware, but go more and more into the accessibility space.
• 38:15
  So, you know, making development a lot easier and stuff like
• 38:18
  that. But it's really just like I'm
• 38:21
  making the kind of Christmas presents I would have killed for
• 38:24
  as a kid. That's so sweet.
• 38:26
  I love that. OK.
• 38:27
  So the last thing I would love to know is do you have a
• 38:31
  timeline of when your products will be available?
• 38:34
  Yeah. So CES, which is the world's
• 38:36
  largest Electronics Show is essentially like this big thing
• 38:39
  where a lot of people present, you can get into the media and
• 38:41
  stuff like that. For right now, we're starting to
• 38:43
  ramp up a bit more. So we're going to get our like
• 38:46
  growth interns and whatever else in because we are overworked as
• 38:49
  Hex. So there's a comparable brand to
• 38:51
  us who successfully kick started and they don't even have haptics
• 38:55
  and their team is 40 people. We've learned how to sew on our
• 38:57
  own. We have an in house picking
• 38:59
  place machine for PCBS like for like a 20 and 19 year old.
• 39:04
  We are carrying above our weight so much.
• 39:05
  So now we're finally like just like OK, we're going to be
• 39:09
  finally hiring some people on because the products got into
• 39:11
  the stage where it's like OK, we just need to figure out
• 39:13
  regulations and stuff. But like in terms of pre-orders
• 39:17
  from companies, we've been doing that in terms of from people.
• 39:21
  We're going to be opening up the Kickstarter in February, so
• 39:24
  we're sort of ramping up more and more social stuff now
• 39:26
  finally, because it's not so much wires and stuff.
• 39:29
  So we've just opened all of that stuff up.
• 39:30
  We have the no Discord now running with the Minecraft
• 39:33
  server. I think one of the most fun
• 39:35
  things is I've just started Twitch streaming and I can
• 39:38
  actually map over the gloves to my hands and so I can be like an
• 39:42
  anime character and move around, which is so fun because I can
• 39:45
  play video games with my community.
• 39:47
  We'll also make it making a video game peripheral startup,
• 39:50
  which is founder market Fit. But yeah, so we're just starting
• 39:56
  more and more on that and going through and we're going to get
• 39:59
  all the like Youtubers to look at our stuff and everything
• 40:01
  else. But it'll be around mid February
• 40:03
  where that starts launching. And then we'll be pushing that
• 40:06
  Kickstarter through and through and through.
• 40:07
  We have another product that we'd want to be releasing around
• 40:11
  like August next year, which would be.
• 40:15
  Insanely game changing, but I can't say that one yet.
• 40:18
  Fair enough. So what we're doing is
• 40:19
  essentially we're releasing our first product is like validation
• 40:23
  that we can make stuff. Because when you're some like
• 40:25
  teenagers or young 20 year olds messing around, you don't even
• 40:28
  have an engineering degree. Like you're just some tinkerer
• 40:30
  at there. So you need to have some sort of
• 40:32
  like proof that you can deliver. And so like we know that we can,
• 40:35
  but we have to prove that and do all of our regulations and
• 40:38
  stuff. So like we're doing the soft
• 40:39
  launch of the first product and it's really nice because it
• 40:43
  doesn't just operating in VR. So like, while we can do it for
• 40:46
  that, we can also do it in like, you know, just simulations for
• 40:49
  training companies where there's a lot more money.
• 40:50
  But also robotics. If you've seen the boxing
• 40:54
  matches in San Francisco and stuff like that with the robots,
• 40:57
  you can pilot them with VR. And for me, I was like, if you
• 41:00
  can properly curl your hands and feel the punch, holy crap, would
• 41:03
  be that. That'd be awesome in a broader
• 41:05
  zone because it means that you can get the initial capital and
• 41:08
  you can get the reputations and everything that you need when
• 41:11
  you're playing around with like less money.
• 41:13
  And it's it's weird because I know I could get more, but it's
• 41:15
  like it's just not worth it otherwise.
• 41:17
  Yeah, yeah, it's it's like you have to play this weird social
• 41:21
  game. If you look back at like again,
• 41:24
  like the examples of a lot of these VR kick started things,
• 41:27
  they have to do so many endorsements and stuff like that
• 41:29
  before because it's such mops psychology.
• 41:31
  Like at the end of the day, you're just giving someone a
• 41:33
  product that they can enjoy, but you have to like prove that.
• 41:36
  So like for me, we've gotten into Forbes, we've got the self
• 41:39
  way, SW tech and innovation, People's Choice and we've done
• 41:42
  all these things. Essentially it's and you have to
• 41:44
  play the strategic game before you even launch something
• 41:46
  because Kickstarter's and crowdfunding are decided before
• 41:49
  you even launch a link. So you need to have all the
• 41:51
  pre-orders and all of the things already in and then you need to
• 41:53
  give them special deals so that the momentum keeps on going
• 41:56
  because then the algorithm pushes you up.
• 41:58
  So really like you say that you're launching A Kickstarter,
• 42:01
  but you've been doing the Kickstarter for the last year,
• 42:03
  right? Interesting.
• 42:04
  So you know, what if it's? Going to succeed before you.
• 42:06
  Launch it, you're looking at the numbers and you're like, all
• 42:07
  right, cool. But like it's stuff like that
• 42:10
  where it's like, you know, the world is really open to you.
• 42:12
  Of course, don't be stupid, strategize, but like if you try
• 42:17
  and you reach out to enough people and really go for it,
• 42:19
  like it's open. Obviously I'm saying that with a
• 42:23
  bit of money to live off of. So if anyone is watching this,
• 42:26
  like if you are bootstrapping, make sure that you have a bit in
• 42:29
  the bank. Yeah, like everything is
• 42:31
  possible as long as you can feed yourself.
• 42:33
  Well, it sounds like you have so much amazing.
• 42:35
  Stuff on the horizon. I'm so excited to follow along.
• 42:38
  Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much.
• 42:41
  That is everything. From many tech scrolls today, I
• 42:44
  hope you guys enjoyed the stories and I also hope you guys
• 42:46
  enjoyed the interview. Lauren will speak to you guys
• 42:50
  tomorrow and I guess I'll see you next week from our new
• 42:54
  office. Thank you so much for listening.
• 42:56
  Bye.