Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Your Car Will Run Your Errands. AI Will Coach Your Store Associates. Welcome to What's Next.

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Your Car Will Run Your Errands. AI Will Coach Your Store Associates. Welcome to What's Next. · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Shop Talk is one of the largest commerce conferences in the world, bringing together thousands of founders, operators and retail leaders who are actively building what comes next.
• 0:13
  Today's episode comes to you from the floor of Shop Talk Spring 2026 in Las Vegas, where I caught up with some of the sharpest operators and founders in retail.
• 0:25
  Let's get into it.
• 0:31
  All right, Dave Goulis back here at Shop Talk.
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  And I'm here with Evan Smith, the founder and the CEO of Ethosphere.
• 0:37
  Welcome, Evan.
• 0:38
  Thanks.
• 0:38
  Great to see you, Dave.
• 0:39
  Yeah, great to see you.
• 0:40
  So, Evan, tell us what Ethosphere is.
• 0:44
  Yeah.
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  We are a voice, AI for retail solutions.
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  So what does this mean?
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  We are using microphone technology in the brick and mortar retail footprint to capture conversations between your in store teams and guests.
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  And then our technology does three things.
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  Firstly, it gives really deep personalized coaching and feedback to the associate.
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  Where do they shine?
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  Opportunities for growth.
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  Secondly, insights to your managers, who are your all stars, who do you need to celebrate and elevate, and who can you give some targeted coaching to in which areas to move them from good to great more quickly.
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  And then finally, at the brand level, what's actually happening in your stores?
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  You know, retail's a funny thing.
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  You put product in stores, you hire a team to sell that product and sales happen.
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  And oftentimes you don't know why those sales happened in that store in that way on that day.
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  And this is a much deeper level of understanding that quite frankly, at a place like Shop Talk, people say the E comm folks are like, well, we get that all day, all the time in the E comm world,
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  but has never been available in the brick and mortar in person environment, which by the way, still account for 80% of retail sales.
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  Wow.
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  Wow.
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  Okay, So I mean, this tech sounds like a game changer from the standpoint of like, you think about all the conversations that are going on in all the stores across the whole, you know, country even, Right.
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  Like there's so much.
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  And now you're utilizing AI to basically aggregate these recordings and all of this data and basically what do we need to train on?
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  How can we sell better, what are we not doing right, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:13
  Sure, yeah.
• 2:15
  It's funny, I do think that at some point you come to conferences like Shop Talk and AI becomes more of a buzzword.
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  So we use a ton of AI, but AI is not the point.
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  Right?
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  The point is exactly what you're talking about, which is this is game changing for the way you think about helping your Folks mature into great sellers and help your store teams.
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  But some of the ways in which we are using AI are firstly you mentioned, right, it's the aggregation principle.
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  This is not something that people could have done as recently as 2021 because the data just would have been too voluminous.
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  You could not have queried it.
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  You could have not used LLMs in the same way to understand what's actually happening in your stores.
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  We also, I didn't mention it, but we have privacy first technology.
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  So our microphones leveraging AI do something really interesting which is they record the associate's voice and only the associate's voice.
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  So we're actually not listening to what the customer says.
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  And so from a privacy standpoint, we are very deliberately privacy first trying to make sure to guard your customer's privacy.
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  And the AI can do that to isolate voices in that way.
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  And there's a number of other ways we're using AI.
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  But again, AI is not the point.
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  The point is how do we bring to life the best selling experience in your stores?
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  Well, and I can only imagine too, right.
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  Because in a previous life I used to train salespeople.
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  I would record calls.
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  People when they know they're being recorded, always put their best game on.
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  So especially.
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  Right.
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  I'm sure the associates know that now in the stores that are using this non stop, everything they say is right.
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  Substitute at some level.
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  And I'm going to blank on.
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  There's a scientific principle about that which is once you start measuring things, it will automatically impact the way that things happen in that scientific experiment.
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  I want to say it's the Sherman effect, but I'm blanking on the proper term.
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  And to a certain degree you're correct.
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  But what we find more broadly is we have really built this from a human first, a people first standpoint.
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  This is to empower your people to be the best in store expression of your brand with actual humans that are in front of them.
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  In doing that, we have to build a product that feels truly human, that is not just respectful of but truly supportive of and empowering to the associates.
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  And so there is some element of like, yeah, I'm being recorded.
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  But the value that they get is immediately manifest when they're able to get the, you know, hey, Dave, you were exceptional at greeting customers this week.
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  On Monday you said, happy Monday, welcome in.
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  And on Wednesday you said, those are great shoes.
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  Where'd you get them?
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  You are just, you know, you're amazing up front.
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  There were a few moments when you asked some questions that weren't actually open ended and you had an opportunity at Wednesday instead of saying, hey, are you looking for a shirt you could have gone with?
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  Is there anything you're looking for specifically today I can help you with?
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  So it's things like that which are not, dave, you got to get better, we're going to fire you.
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  But actually 90% of the time you're doing a great job and your manager's not seeing it.
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  And we want you to feel that.
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  And there's always opportunity to improve and this is an opportunity to learn where those areas are as well.
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  Okay.
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  And talk about how you brought this technology to life and put this whole company together over the last couple years.
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  Yeah, so I've been in retail for much of my career and most recently I was at Starbucks.
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  And what I know about retail retail is that the greatest predictor of a high performing retail store is that that store has a high performing store manager running it.
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  And so as I was working at Starbucks, I was doing tech strategy for the company.
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  And it really felt in the 22:23 time period that I was really looking into the future as we were looking at what LLMs and a lot of what AI could do.
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  And I found myself asking, well, if I could give anyone in retail superpowers, it would be the store manager.
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  And so I asked this question, which is, well, if I could give any superpowers to the store manager, what would it be?
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  And the most thing a store manager does is coach and develop their teams.
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  And oftentimes they'll tell you they don't have the time to do it.
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  And so this was an opportunity to say, okay, what can we do today that we could not have done just a year ago with emerging technology to solve this confounding conundrum in retail, which is that the most important
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  thing that the most important person in your ecosystem does is the first thing that falls off their to do list every day when they show up.
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  Okay, all right.
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  And so talk about where you're at today as far as adoption and usage and all that.
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  Yeah, we have an extraordinary amount of interest.
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  I'll say it has far surpassed my initial expectations.
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  Being a first time entrepreneur, we run our demos with major brands and we sort of see the eyes pop out of the head.
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  Now, we're still an early stage company.
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  We are not yet at scale with any brands, but we're active in a lot of pilots with a lot of major brands who we are currently under NDA with.
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  So can't fully give you names, but think of brands that look a lot like the North Face or Tiffany's, folks like that.
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  Okay, so, wow, this is coming soon to a retailer near you where they're going to basically use this technology to make the whole experience better so everyone can get better and sell more and.
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  Give greater confidence to our people.
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  I think this is the one thing that a lot of folks in the world right now are anxious about with AI is that AI is coming for their job.
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  And this is very much not something that has been designed to come for anyone's job.
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  It is something that has been designed to give people in the roles they have, superpowers that have not been available them before so they can perform at their highest, so they can have the greatest degree of confidence and
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  with that, you know, grow their career.
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  Love that.
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  Okay.
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  And Evan, if people want to find out more, how do they reach out to you?
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  Sure.
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  Very simply.
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  Ethosphere E T H O S P H E R E AI is our website and then you can follow us on LinkedIn and always happy to chat with anyone and run our mind blowing demo for folks that have
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  greater interest.
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  Awesome.
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  All right, Evan, thanks so much.
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  Yeah, thank you.
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  Appreciate the time.
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  All right, you got it.
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  All right, Dave Gulas back at Shop Talk and I'm with Patrick from Auto Lane.
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  Hey, Patrick.
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  Hey, how's everybody doing?
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  I'm Patrick with Auto Lane, here to answer any questions you might have.
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  Okay.
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  Yeah, well, I saw the booth and it intrigued me.
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  I was talking to your team and it sounds like some really, really neat stuff you guys have going on.
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  Talk about the company and what you guys do.
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  All right, so we are autonomous commerce company.
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  We are definitely working and looking forward to the fact that there will be no humans in the car.
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  So imagine in the future, you're going to own your own autonomous vehicle.
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  You're going to be able to download our app, just be able to order anything from food to produce to clothes.
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  Right.
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  You're going to use our app to order those things, tap into where you're getting that stuff from, and your car is going to leave your home, go to that place with the coordinates.
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  And of course, what we're here to show is that at some point, instead of a human putting your product in the car, more than likely it'll be the robot.
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  Right.
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  And we brought our robot here from CD Robotics.
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  His name is Next and he's actually been here showing people exactly what that may look like.
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  So he's been here taking a grocery bag from the cart and putting it inside of our Trunk.
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  And so that is.
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  That is the thing that we're doing, is we're getting ready for when there will be no humans inside of a car.
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  It's just to let you know how this all works.
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  I literally do a lot of autonomous deliveries in the Bay Area.
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  And speaking of driving autonomously, I literally drove here from the Bay Area here, but the car drove me.
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  So it's kind of weird to say I drove when I really didn't.
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  I just kind of was just observing the road.
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  Okay.
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  So loving that.
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  And I know I'm speaking to all the parents out here, particularly that have teenagers take me here, take me there.
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  Gotta be here, I gotta be there.
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  So you're saying in the future, right?
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  Exactly.
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  So think about this, right?
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  Some days you're like, oh, man, my son forgot his shorts and you're at home.
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  He doesn't have any shorts.
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  Well, guess what?
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  Depending on what store it is, it may be on our app.
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  Let's say sporting goods, for example.
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  Hey, you know what you're going to get on our app?
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  Click sporting goods.
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  I need these shorts.
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  Your car is going to leave from your house, go to that store, get the shorts, and come back.
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  And that makes life easy.
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  Basically, we're waiting for all of us to be a little lazy, but who doesn't like convenience, right?
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  Yeah.
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  So you're going to have your own autonomous vehicle to run errands, do curbside pickups for you.
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  Yes.
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  Drop people off.
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  Yes.
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  Go to Starbucks.
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  Hey, whatever it is, whatever it is, that's where we're preparing everybody for.
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  We like to say that we're the air traffic control for autonomous vehicles.
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  We're definitely trying to be in control of the last 50ft, making sure that this car is going to get where it needs to go.
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  Which leads me to the second part of our company, is that we have a hardware that stands as the destination point for autonomous vehicles.
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  This hardware right here picks up on what Autonomy's vehicle is pulling up.
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  And with our coordinates, we want to make sure every autonomous vehicle has somewhere safely to park and drop off their guests and pick up their guests right now in Palo Alto.
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  We do have Waymo, and we do have our hardware there.
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  And with our coordinates, Waymos have been able to pull up and communicate with our hardware and park safely and drop off their guests and pick up their gifts.
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  Okay, so, Patrick, realistically, how far away is this technology from actually being out?
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  You know what?
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  It's so crazy when you ask, when is it going to be fully autonomous?
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  You know, I don't think it's going to be very soon.
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  I think the least amount of time we may have to wait is about maybe two years or so.
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  Because I'm pretty sure, you know, with this being autonomous, they want to probably spread it out very, very wide.
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  But of course it's going to go really slow.
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  So if it goes really slow, we're only going to see a few cities pick it up.
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  And of course it's going to be one of those cities like San Francisco, where I am, because we do love tech as much as we love to say we don't.
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  We love tech.
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  And like some of my other co workers, they're in Texas.
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  Texas will pick up on it because of course, that's where Elon and the headquarters and all of those things are.
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  So.
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  And we're going to be moving into Atlanta and wherever autonomous vehicles will be heading, that's where we're heading next.
• 11:40
  Okay, Patrick, if people are seeing this, they want to reach out and learn more.
• 11:43
  How can they get in touch with you, man?
• 11:44
  Just you can get in touch with me through LinkedIn, but definitely follow my company, go auto lane on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on TikTok.
• 11:53
  Help us get some more followers, man.
• 11:54
  I love to chat with you guys about anything you may need to ask, but I'm also on social media doing a lot.
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  I'll be out in the public doing interviews, man.
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  We have a great cast of people working for us.
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  And trust me, we are not a boring company, even though we're a tech company.
• 12:07
  Okay, Patrick, thanks so much, man.
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  Thank you.
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  Thank you.
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  All right, back here at Shop Talk, Doc, this is with Renzo at WooCommerce.
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  Hey, Renzo.
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  Hi, everyone.
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  How's it going?
• 12:20
  Fantastic.
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  So we're here at Shop Talk just after lunch.
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  Vibe here is still buzzing.
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  And so, Renzo, why, from your perspective, why is it so important to be at a place like Shop Talk?
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  I think working in tech is pretty EAS to just think of tech as different logos, different companies.
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  But being at Shop Talk and being able to meet, you know, the people behind the company is, like, really important.
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  Being able to talk just to people that use the product or anyone that hasn't heard about it.
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  I think it's a huge benefit.
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  Yeah.
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  And you know, as we've talked about, AI is all the rage at this show.
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  There's AI everywhere.
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  Everyone's talking about their agents, what that's doing, the different problems they're solving.
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  I mean, how do you see, from your perspective, AI changing e commerce in the coming year?
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  Yeah, I think AI is going to really to E commerce, especially in the sense of agent commerce.
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  So just being able to have AI agents shop for you, being able to make your store accessible to AI agents so that it can be easier to pick up.
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  One of the things, I think, for example, is the power of AI overviews.
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  Before we were to go and use Google Search.
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  Right.
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  To find a product.
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  Now with AI, you can pull up your product detail through an AI overview and then make have an additional channel for your merchant to find you.
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  Love that.
• 13:34
  Yeah.
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  And so talk about too what WooCommerce is doing specifically being open source and why that should matter to E commerce companies.
• 13:42
  Yeah.
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  So WooCommerce, we're the largest open source E commerce platform powering over four and a half million stores.
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  One of the big things at Woo is that you own all your data.
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  You own customer data, sales data, whatever it is.
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  And that really comes into play with AI.
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  So because we have such the ownership of data, it's easier for AI to talk one between another.
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  And that way you're able to also impact what you do for AI overviews.
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  Right.
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  So you can, because you can customize your checkout, you can customize product detail pages, you can do it in a way where it's easier for AI to pick up what matters about your product and get it into the
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  hands of the customer that you want.
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  Love that.
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  All right.
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  And Renzo, people want to find out more about Woo specifically and how they could potentially be a fit.
• 14:24
  What's the best way people can reach you online?
• 14:26
  Best place to go is woocommerce.com there you'll be able to see what we do, some of our services and then case studies of some of our big clients like scrubdaddy or vangluid.
• 14:36
  Okay, thanks so much, Renta.
• 14:38
  Yeah, thank you, Ra.