Post CES & NRF Analysis with the Iterate.ai Team

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another edition a a first post NRF edition of this Weekend Innovation. I'm your host, Jeff Roster with my podcast partner, Brian. Brian, how you doing today? I think it's the first time we've been well on the same spot, but the same virtual spot in a while. So what have you been up to?

[00:00:21] Yeah, Jeff.

[00:00:22] Brian Sathianathan: Yeah, Jeff doing great. And it's been, it's, it's been great to be back home. You know, uh, I think the, the first 15 days of January, I think I, I was at home, like, actually John and I, we were at home probably for like two or three days of the, the entire 15 days. So it's great to be back home and.

[00:00:38] Brian Sathianathan: Catch up. But at the same time, it was also quite fascinating to see everything that we saw at CES and where the world is going and then, you know, not lose momentum and just going to N R F and also the amazing, you know, the Wikis v i p award, which we became one of the finalists. And of course our partner Alta, you know, won, Michelle won that amazing award as well for [00:01:00] the long longstanding partnership.

[00:01:03] Jeff Roster: Fantastic night. Now, I think you've got a surprise for all of us, all the viewers and listeners. So should I bring on our surprise?

[00:01:11] Brian Sathianathan: Yes, absolutely. Let them, let, let, let's bring them on .

[00:01:15] Jeff Roster: Brian, you wanna introduce the crew here?

[00:01:18] Brian Sathianathan: Yeah, absolutely. So today I'm super fortunate to have my, you know, my, my, my group and my colleagues here, right?

[00:01:26] Brian Sathianathan: Typically, it's Jeff and I alone, and we, we bring in guests. Uh, so, um, you know, at the top you have John Normark, my partner and my, my co-founder at eade.ai. And as you know, John's a serial entrepreneur. Uh, he started and sold ebags.com, the prominent, you know, pure play handbag. Right, and then he's been an angel investor, you know, being active in the startup space.

[00:01:49] Brian Sathianathan: Done a lot of work there and welcome.

[00:01:53] Jon Nordmark: Welcome, Brian. Jeff, this is fun. . Great

[00:01:57] Jeff Roster: to have you, Jeff. Hang outta that. It might not be after I get done with [00:02:00] you after about 40 minutes, so we'll see. Hopefully you have that same

[00:02:02] Brian Sathianathan: attitude. , Jeff is gonna ask all kinds of tough questions

[00:02:07] Jeff Roster: today. I'm not as bad as a Wall Street analyst, but I am still an analyst, so we'll see.

[00:02:11] Jeff Roster: Yeah. .

[00:02:13] Brian Sathianathan: Yeah. So then, uh, to by bottom, uh, we have uh, Solomon Ray. I'm a senior director at Iterate who works with on our strategy side as well as on special projects. And, uh, Solomon has been doing a lot of work, uh, with us on various type of innovation initiatives and also the, from a product on AI side.

[00:02:31] Brian Sathianathan: Welcome Solomon.

[00:02:33] Solomon Ray: Thank you Brian. Good to see you, Jeff. Good to see. .

[00:02:37] Brian Sathianathan: And then we have Dave Jenkins. I'm a VP of, uh, marketing, uh, at Iterate, and Dave has been going there to, uh, ces. Specifically to look at, uh, metaverse. So he is gonna, it's the hot topic of today. So, you know, he can talk, uh, when he will, you know, when, when his turn comes, you know, and tell us all about Metaverse and his findings on companies.

[00:02:58] Brian Sathianathan: Right. So it's gonna be a [00:03:00] super exciting show and I'm, I'm very excited. So, It's gonna be a fun, uh, fun, I don't know, what do you call this? A fireside chat, a panel, whatever it is.

[00:03:08] Jeff Roster: Oh, yeah. There's a, there's a lot of horsepower. So, um, why don't we jump into it? What do you wanna start with? A, a, uh, you know, your thoughts around ces because most of us, most of us retailers, I've, Brian, that's never been a show I've covered.

[00:03:20] Jeff Roster: Um, be because it's so close to NRF and trying to get ready for nrf trying to get presentations, um, locked and loaded. The last thing I wanted to do was, even, even though it was only a. Our ride over the hill to get to Vegas was never shy, covered. So, uh, and probably same with a lot of retailers, although I'm understanding more and more retailers and tech and retail tech folks are going to ces.

[00:03:41] Jeff Roster: So, so what did, what did you see and, and, uh, what, you know, your thoughts, the whole team's thoughts?

[00:03:48] Brian Sathianathan: No, I think we should start with John, because John covered both, uh, both NRF and uh, c. John, uh, John, what's your feeling? Uh, what, what excited you and tell us about it? [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Jon Nordmark: Well, one of, one of the things that always interests me is just the, the miniature miniaturization of batteries and sensors.

[00:04:09] Jon Nordmark: And I remember a few years ago seeing a, you know, seeing a chip that could process ai, you know, in like, An echo device that is this, you know, you could get 50 of them or more than 50 of 'em on a penny. Uh, this year I was seeing batteries and other types of sensors that were. , you know, similar in size, just massive miniature miniaturization of these, um, items so that they could fit inside, um, the, the temple, uh, the temple piece of a, like glasses and wow.

[00:04:42] Jon Nordmark: And, you know, keep them charged or, or be able to process information inside a device, a product, a consumer product. Uh, one company I saw that did that is. Uh, it was either inject power, inject sense, it was something like that. But again, [00:05:00] these es are just micro and the sensors are micro. And, and so this is going to put the, you know, the smarts, uh, into products so the products can, can, uh, think and um, and memorize information, uh, like human beings and, and obviously iterate.

[00:05:17] Jon Nordmark: Our company we're, we're, we are ai. AI first type company, uh, where, where we're always trying to figure out ways to, to make products and, and solutions a lot smarter. And I think these types of inventions, these little devices are, are powering that. Um, another thing related to the sensors that I noticed is that, uh, phones seem to be getting a lot smarter.

[00:05:42] Jon Nordmark: They can, you know, they can read facial expressions to try to. Um, you know, uh, the beginning of a a, a stroke, a person who's gonna have a stroke before that stroke, uh, happens because, you know, uh, a person's face may not, may not, uh, react the way it [00:06:00]normally does. And, and these little micro changes in a way that a, a, a person, uh, talk, I mean, um, , um, the way they express themselves can be an indication of a, a stroke, a potential stroke victim.

[00:06:13] Jon Nordmark: So phones are able to measure that. And, you know, I saw another phone that's able to do, um, it's called Gut Note. I believe it, it'll, it'll read your abdomen, you know, by just placing the smartphone on your. Stomach, uh, you know, there are other digital health, um, capabilities that come off phones like, uh, that or that interact with phones.

[00:06:34] Jon Nordmark: But if you put sensors into, I saw that another company that had sensors and earbuds, these earbuds could tell if you're grinding your teeth at night and then be able to. Uh, uh, do something, I can't remember what it was, but do something to tell your body to relax its jaw. Wow. And then, and then the readouts, you know, on your phone.

[00:06:54] Jon Nordmark: So I think the, the miniaturization of sensors, the miniaturization of, [00:07:00] of batteries and power and, you know, unique power sources was really interesting. Uh, one last, uh, thing that was interesting around digital health. And wellness and, and sensors, um, is that there are a number of sensors that have come out that can, that can monitor your health from 30 feet away.

[00:07:19] Jon Nordmark: So let's say you're an older person, you know, this is kinda like age tech. Let's say you're an older person and, uh, you don't want to be wearing your, um, A wrist ran or your, you can just have a device sitting in your living room that can read your, that can tell how you're breathing, uh, read your heart rates and those kind of things from a distance.

[00:07:40] Jon Nordmark: So I think, you know, big advances on, on those fronts. Brian and Jeff.

[00:07:44] Jeff Roster: Wow. So it sounds like we're really, the, uh, the age of iot is, is, I mean, we've been talking about it, uh, in the world for years, but it sounds like it's, it's here now. It's here very, very officially, and, and very, very quickly.[00:08:00]

[00:08:01] Jon Nordmark: Brian.

[00:08:01] Jeff Roster: Yeah.

[00:08:02] Brian Sathianathan: And no, I said it's all coming together. Right. I think what's really interesting is earlier they were all like components and pieces. Now you're seeing ecosystems of everything connected together. Even like, even like people who are doing chips, they are actually demonstrating use cases. Right.

[00:08:17] Brian Sathianathan: Which was, I think I thought was really interesting in this. They have a lot of people,

[00:08:22] Jon Nordmark: the, the production of ecosystems, again, like, there's a company I saw called Matter, which is trying to tie together like all these disparate, uh, services that don't interact with each other today. So that all of a sudden your, your, um, digital ecosystem can operate through one, one common type hub.

[00:08:41] Jon Nordmark: And I, you know, I think we're seeing this happen in businesses, we'll see it happen at home. And, uh, so that's another, another really interesting. , uh, uh, progress point, especially as we head toward the metaverse. You know what? Whatever that is. Uh, all these things do need to work together. If we [00:09:00] have a true metaverse type environment,

[00:09:04] Brian Sathianathan: that's absolutely great.

[00:09:05] Brian Sathianathan: John. Um, you know, now let's go to Solomon. Solomon. I think you, you also, you, you look at, you are kind of a dual focus, right? You looked at some emerging tech companies, but you also looked at some of. Partner companies in there. Uh, tell us about what, what you saw and what, what excited you.

[00:09:23] Solomon Ray: Sure. Brian. I'll start off with the CES itself.

[00:09:27] Solomon Ray: Um, so I first attended CS with iterate back in January, 2020. And back then the c e s attendance was at 171,000. Wow. And in 2021, unfortunately because of Covid, c s became completely digital. So, because the, the barrier to entry became so much lower now to exhibit companies, what we saw on the digital platform was that there were a ton of different companies that were exhibiting a lot of, a lot of [00:10:00] products and promises, a lot of, which actually just turned out to be, you can, you can just, you can call it vaporware

[00:10:07] Solomon Ray: Um, looking at 2022 last year, it was a little bit of a hybrid model, so they, they, they did reopen c. And they did have their digital platform, but the actual attendance was 45,000. Now, this year, um, you know, a couple weeks ago, earlier this year in January, the final count for CS 2023 was 150, 115,000. So you can say there was

[00:10:35] Jeff Roster: an arrow one 15,000.

[00:10:38] Jeff Roster: So what, six 60% of what, what peak was okay?

[00:10:43] Jon Nordmark: Correct. Wow.

[00:10:45] Solomon Ray: So

[00:10:45] Jeff Roster: it seems crowd, so you can say it still seems like a lot of people, I mean, 54 thousands typically what we had at uhf. Right. That's a big open world. Yeah. 30, 35,000 at nrf and I thought it was, thought I was crowded. So still a huge number of folks.

[00:10:58] Jeff Roster: And, um, [00:11:00] what's, what's, what's the analysis do you think, do you think folks was,

[00:11:05] Solomon Ray: and I agree with you. I agree with your take, John. Um, there was definitely an era of optimism this year about. Because many organizers, exhibitors, and attendees are looking forward to rebound. Sure enough, uh, as you can see, a lot of media and even attending there, you see a lot of the attention grabbing airlines, mostly about metaverse and electric vehicles.

[00:11:29] Solomon Ray: Since our work at Iterate is mostly focused on ai, it was really interesting to note that many AI innovation. Tended to be, to take a backseat to their applications. So what I mean is, let's say computer vision, computer vision itself is not gonna draw attention. You're not gonna see a company that's just showcasing computer vision itself and kind of showing their models.

[00:11:51] Solomon Ray: What, what these, what a lot of exhibits are doing is they are showing the, the how, computer vision. Is [00:12:00] different with different industrial applications. And then they're showcasing those, uh, those applications specifically in the Korea startup section, there was a startup called. Tech tracker and they actually won a CS 2022 innovation award.

[00:12:15] Solomon Ray: And they specialize in inventory, inventory automation. So, uh, a lot of, a lot of their clients are SOS retailers, et cetera. So their booth actually had a setup with a camera device they call, it's called Spider Go, and the device that's connected to a metal track on, on the ceiling, and then they have wires that actually descend the.

[00:12:39] Solomon Ray: uh, along this metal track. So what that camera actually does is it's using computer vision to scan products vertically. So imagine if you're in a convenience store, any type of store with, with, with store shelves. This thing runs, this camera runs along a track, and then it descends the keep track of the inventory in the, in the store.

[00:12:57] Solomon Ray: So this camera reads R F I [00:13:00] D, barcodes and uses computer vision as well as lidar to detect spatial. And what was really interesting, my conversation with them is that this is more cost effective solution than some of these store inventory detection systems that we've, we've explored in at eight eight Amazon go, uh, it's millions of dollars of cameras to install.

[00:13:21] Solomon Ray: So we we're sending these different innovations and applications using these technologies, but they're not focusing on the technology itself. The focus is on the.

[00:13:33] Brian Sathianathan: That's super awesome. That's very good. Solomon. I think, um, I, I, I agree with you as well because I think this time, what was really interesting, you know, to my previous comment on John's, uh, statement as well, is that you saw a lot more applications, right? They bought a lot of core technologies. They bought chips, they bought iot, but they also showed examples.

[00:13:53] Brian Sathianathan: I think in 2020 we didn't see that, I think, which is amazing. Which is, which is really great for the industry, right? The more you [00:14:00] technology vendors are focusing on applications and use cases, I think it becomes powerful because that's something you can take and apply in your business today, right? So now that's awesome.

[00:14:10] Brian Sathianathan: Thanks Allon And Dave, uh, you, uh, when this time, and essentially you did, you went to both N R F. And ces. And I think in and CES you do, you did have a startup focus, right? And Metaverse focus. So tell us about both. It'll be interesting to hear. Yeah.

[00:14:28] Dave Jenkins: Uh, I did, I was, I had specific assignments to go look at Metaverse, uh, how it was playing out CES and N R F and to build on what, uh, interesting.

[00:14:38] Dave Jenkins: Both been saying is that I would agree. innovation is occurring across the entire supply chain from the parts, you know, the batteries, the sensors, the, you know, the, the wiring harnesses all the way up through complex products and platforms like these huge electric cars. And, you know, the, the Sony, the Sony deal with Honda and you know, the Sony is launching its own electric [00:15:00] car now and it's got sensors all over it.

[00:15:02] Dave Jenkins: Uh, and to build on what Solomon was saying, uh, I agree the AI is the leverage. That these platforms are differentiating themselves, but it's not just the computer vision. It's not just the AI to have the ai, it has to have a real world use case. And we were seeing a lot of that. Uh, and uh, the two main themes I was, I personally was concentrating on was the digital health.

[00:15:28] Dave Jenkins: And John had mentioned some of that, but then also there's a lot of sensors around environmental controls, water sensors, air sensors, I mean, sustainability. Is a huge theme. And I think if we've seen some of the news coming out of the AP and kind of the mass market reports on the reports for c e s, sustainability was a major theme.

[00:15:49] Dave Jenkins: Uh, and I would agree. And I, OT and AI is certainly differentiating some companies on sustainability and environmentalism as well as the [00:16:00] digital health. Oh, so, so that's one thing. Metaverse. Uh, there was a lot of metaverse type organizations and startups there, but most of them were concentrating around VR glasses and they were using VR glasses for kind of presenting how they're doing something inside the metaverse.

[00:16:19] Dave Jenkins: Uh, I didn't really look at those as much because to me, VR is, per my own personal opinion, VR is gonna be very challenged on getting out beyond kind of gaming, because again, it's immersive. It's not the real. , you know, that's never gonna become a part of real commerce, or I think ar let me say it the other way.

[00:16:37] Dave Jenkins: AR and Mr. Mixed reality and augmented reality are going to get very far, very quickly. And I did see one startup called Ant Reality and they had some very cool AR glasses. The, the neck point for AR has always been, is it stylistically cool? What? I wear them just as a normal person walking down the street, not.[00:17:00]

[00:17:00] Dave Jenkins: Goggles, things like that. Uh, and this one company and reality, they had a very high deaf, wide field of vision and glasses that frankly looked like a pair of ray bands. They were very, very cool. Uh, that was one company. Another company or another group of companies that surprised me was aromas. Uh, the ability to virtually tune in a, a citrus.

[00:17:25] Dave Jenkins: Fresh orange juice or a summer's morning or a walk in the woods. There is now, there are now these augmentation companies, and what they do is they put little tiny sensors next to your nose and they're putting off. Kind of a combination of eight or nine different aromatics and they're able to essentially, virtually create Wow.

[00:17:42] Dave Jenkins: Afford

[00:17:43] Jeff Roster: or virtually

[00:17:44] Brian Sathianathan: create. Imagine Jeff. Imagine Jeff, you know, you get a smell while we, while we listen to this podcast, .

[00:17:51] Dave Jenkins: So, so there's definitely a lot of, there's a, there was definitely some very cool things around the metaverse and the aroma thing was surprising to me cuz I mean the, you know, the [00:18:00] VR goggles we've, we've seen.

[00:18:02] Dave Jenkins: And it's certainly moving ahead, but nothing was revolutionary. But this aroma thing that was, oh, wait a minute. I had never seen that before.

[00:18:09] Jon Nordmark: No, 2023 was supposed to be the year that, um, glasses came out from Facebook, apple. Amazon and Google's relaunch of the glasses that that is supposed to, it's been, it's been talked about for a while that this is the year of that.

[00:18:24] Jon Nordmark: And I think what Dave just brought up, the, you know, some of the attempts to, to make the glasses, um, interact with, with, you know, both virtual and. The real worlds, the augmented experience. Uh, it, it's still not quite there, but there's still great attempts being made. Uh, there's, there was one company that will put, uh, real time translation into your glasses so you can read.

[00:18:51] Jon Nordmark: You know, you can read the translation. If you're talking to someone who's, let's say from Japan, uh, and you speak English, you can read the translation in real time off the [00:19:00] glasses. So that's an attempt, uh, even though it's a, a minor one to bring that to life. Um, anyway, the, the startups, there are many startups trying to still work on the glasses.

[00:19:12] Jon Nordmark: Um, I'm still waiting to see what the big, you know, the big companies like Amazon are gonna do, and because they, they, Facebook actually announced it a couple years ago. This was the year. Uh, you know, I think we've seen some kind of cancellations or retractions on that recently, but I still think there will be, um, big gains made.

[00:19:31] Jon Nordmark: Maybe not this year, but, but they're coming. And again, that's, this gets back to the, the sensors, all the work being done on material. You know, so that you can, you can reflect, uh, information or display information inside things like glasses without having to have the big, like Dave said, those big goggles, uh, on your head.

[00:19:50] Jon Nordmark: Um, but anyway, it's, it's just more, you know, all this metaverse stuff that you were talking about, the aromatics, the, the glasses changing. All this stuff will [00:20:00] also need to merge in order for the metaverse to sort of come to life. So, and

[00:20:04] Jeff Roster: so, so Dave, you had, you had responsibility for Metaverse at nrf.

[00:20:09] Dave Jenkins: I did, uh, let me, let me touch on one thing about ces.

[00:20:12] Dave Jenkins: One other area that we saw was haptics, uh, the ability to feel. Yeah. Uh, there are, there are a lot, there were a lot of vendors with very cool haptic gloves and even haptic shirts and haptic suits. And it really is straight outta that movie, uh, ready player one where these are, they look like, uh, they look like bicycle racing shirts, but they've got electric pads all over.

[00:20:33] Dave Jenkins: and by, by by, uh, by running a short electric current across it, it actually feels like an impact. So you, you're getting punched and you actually feel it in the shirt. And then these gloves are, you know, these gloves, you can actually touch an object in the metaverse. So the haptics was, was progressing a long ways, uh, to nrf to answer to your question, yes, metaverse was there.

[00:20:55] Dave Jenkins: Uh, but it was mostly around, um, avatars for, I mean cuz NRF is [00:21:00] much more focused on actual commerce, you know, these are, you know, retail environments and what can go on. There was quite a few, excuse me, there was some very cool booths around, um, virtual avatars for customer supports or maybe kind of a, you know, there was one where it had Howie Mandel, I think it was Deep Mind ai and it had a full size Howie Mandel and a Kio.

[00:21:22] Dave Jenkins: and DeepMind was able to essentially have Howie read 300 sentences. Just 300 sentences, which would take about, what, 20 minutes maybe. And from that, it was a, it's now able to extrapolate and have Howie Mandel say anything that the AI would feed to us. So for example, if, uh, you put this Howie Mandel, or you know, frankly, your own company spokesperson right there in the store.

[00:21:46] Dave Jenkins: people could go up, ask it a natural language question, just like we asked, just like we asked Alexa a natural lang language question, and then the NLP engine on the back, or you know, kind of the chat G P T on the back end would be able to feed back the [00:22:00] response. But it's not just text on a screen. It would have.

[00:22:02] Dave Jenkins: Howie Mandel or, you know, uh, whatever the spokesperson is, is this full size avatar would be giving the answer in real time. That was, that was pretty

[00:22:11] Jeff Roster: cool. Yeah. And by the way, that example, cause I spent some time there, um, that is a real Howie Mandel, uh, deal, and he licenses that out. So if you want to have virtual Howie for a whole lot cheaper than having real Howie, he will actually license that out, which, uh, takes that out of the idea of Oh, that's kind of cool to now that's, that's real commerce.

[00:22:32] Jeff Roster: That's real. Yeah. Real money. Beginning to change hands. So, Dave just finished, Brian, lemme just, lemme just finish this point with Dave and then we'll get back to, um, because it, I've had a lot of conversations with, um, Not innovators, but influencers about, about the term metaverse at nrf. And quite a few of the folks that I've had private conversations with said, wow, we didn't see metaverse there.

[00:22:54] Jeff Roster: And what I think they did well, I know what they didn't see is the word metaverse, right? Um, I [00:23:00] didn't see the word metaverse at all up in the fourth floor. That's where the innovation lab was. I really didn't see it at all on the main, main floor. Um, But I saw plenty of evidences of individual adoptions.

[00:23:09] Jeff Roster: Um, I completely agree with you on augmented reality. I'm the biggest, I'm a pilot, so I'm the biggest fan of augmented reality. There is, um, far less so on virtual reality, so I agree. I a hundred percent agree on your point, but, but 3D objects and everything else, you, you know, as an analyst, um, I, I'm not looking to be the cutting edge.

[00:23:26] Jeff Roster: I'm just looking for adoption and I can find that. Right. So I don't know if. You know, you're the one guy that can compare and contrast ces, which sounds like they ran towards the word metaverse, where NRF almost ran away from the term. But gosh, what 80% of the innovation lab was was all, was all metaverse technology.

[00:23:46] Dave Jenkins: Yeah. And I would agree with that. And I think, um, CS is about the big show and future profile things that maybe are not so much based in immediate. , I mean, the pavilions [00:24:00] from, uh, Samsung and the other huge players had enormous curve screens and there were cars from, you know, there were, there were concept cars that are no way ever gonna make it to the street.

[00:24:09] Dave Jenkins: And, but it's, it's very, it's CES is there to reinforce brands as, look we are from the future. And so whether it's based in reality or not, they're gonna show the most fantastic thing, whereas NRF is about saying, You can put this in your store today. Let's go into the back and sign a deal. Well,

[00:24:28] Jeff Roster: I think that's, and let's, let's segue over to nrf cuz I, I know Brian, you've got a hard stop.

[00:24:34] Jeff Roster: And we'll come back. Cause I think that's a really important point and that's, that's a point everyone has, has to understand because the conversations I've had with a lot of folks is the, the thought was NRF was pretty, pretty real this year. I mean, there wasn't the term quote shiny objects, which I would very much argue with because I think that hologram that you and I saw, and Howie Mandel is pretty darn shiny.

[00:24:55] Jeff Roster: Um, and, and the whole innovation lab was filled with a lot of really interesting, shiny things. [00:25:00] But definitely on the main floor, I think there was a ver. much more of a serious attitude as, as to what's real and what's ready to be absorbed immediately. Yeah. So,

[00:25:07] Brian Sathianathan: so the other thing, Jeff, what happens though, that's an interesting observation because n R F has always been a show where the vendors are conditioned, right?

[00:25:17] Brian Sathianathan: Because if you show, uh, something that's not applicable in the retail industry, and it has to be very specific to retail, you know, you can't show what you did in the stadium and show it in a retail conference and get them to, um, Get 'em to do a deal with you. Right. So NR vendors are always very, very focused.

[00:25:36] Brian Sathianathan: I mean, if you look at it like numbers are just the usual, right? They do a lot of these sessions and they all come with like very good KPIs. You know, we increase engagement by 22%, a o v by 15%, right? All the, all the, all the they like in a had these numbers, right? Yeah. So it's a, it's a, it's very,

[00:25:52] Jeff Roster: I'm not sure those numbers have been audited.

[00:25:54] Jeff Roster: Just as an analyst, I'm not sure they were audited.

[00:25:57] Brian Sathianathan: That's a different story. Right? I mean, that was [00:26:00] funny. When, uh, when, uh, when, when the DJ for, um, Uh, for the v I P session, he had a really great comment about all the stuff that startups talk about. Like all the great bis and JavaScript. Every time they say to super JavaScript,

[00:26:14] Jeff Roster: I think you need a bodyguard to get out after he said that, cuz that was, but it was a hundred percent accurate.

[00:26:18] Jeff Roster: 100% accurate.

[00:26:19] Brian Sathianathan: It's true, it's true. Right. But I think, I think and like to Dave's point and John's point and Solomons, I think, I think NRF is a more of a condition to show in the sense a. Preset expectation you have to do X, Y, Z to get accepted there. Right. And

[00:26:32] Jeff Roster: I think that's changed though, right? In the old days.

[00:26:35] Jeff Roster: I mean, cuz I used to beat up my, my clients with it because the thing I always used to hear is imagining world. That imagining world, that, and, and I had to stop 'em probably about. 2002, 2003. Listen, I don't have time to imagine a world that I've gotta worry about writing reports that are, that impact the next two to three years.

[00:26:51] Jeff Roster: So you gotta tell me what's, what's gonna impact what I need to worry about in three years from now, and this is 2002 or three. So I think there, in the old days it used [00:27:00] to be kind of almost more of a CSE sort of vibe is Hey, here's where we're going and you know, in three years we're gonna be doing this.

[00:27:06] Jeff Roster: And. I know the analyst community, me for sure. And a lot of people said, stop with the five year timeframes. We don't. I'm gonna be in, I'll, I'll be in two other jobs by then, so tell, help me what's real, what I need to worry about today. And I think, you know, and I, Dave, I, I agree with your observations and just the time up in, um, innovation have, man, there's enough, there's enough on the plate.

[00:27:25] Jeff Roster: Um, that's Ari ready to go today. You don't, you don't need, you don't need the imaginable. .

[00:27:32] Jon Nordmark: I think it's moving a lot faster though, today too. Yeah, I mean, just look at chat g p T and yeah. You know, uh, just look at how fast that like exploded. Where did that come from, ? Who, who was, where did the money come from?

[00:27:43] Jon Nordmark: The, the innovation is done in a lot of ways. So much at a, at a, such a lower cost than it used to be. It can be a couple guys in a garage, or woman and guy in a garage, or, you know, anywhere in the world too. It could come out of, um, you know, Ukraine even during the war and, and. [00:28:00] And it surprises everybody and, and so I do think that almost makes everything a little bit more near term.

[00:28:06] Jon Nordmark: No one even has a clue where it's gonna be three years from now, what's gonna, what's the world gonna look like? How's. How's it open API going? I mean, open AI gonna, um, affect the world three years from

[00:28:19] Jeff Roster: now. Well, I'll tell you, none of us, John, I'll tell you who's nervous about it. Analysts and reporters are very nervous about I'll personally, but, but

[00:28:26] Brian Sathianathan: what's interesting though, the chat g, PT, and open AI wasn't fully covered in CES or in RF this time.

[00:28:34] Brian Sathianathan: That's because it's still new there. That's true.

[00:28:39] Jon Nordmark: If you have to reserve your, if you have to reserve a booth like six months ahead of time, guess what? Chat PT came out, you know, two months ahead of Exactly took over the world. Well build on, to

[00:28:51] Dave Jenkins: build on what Solomon was saying earlier about AI cases in the very real world, I did see that at nrf especially cuz NRF has kind of broke on the main floor, is [00:29:00] the way eyesight was broken into two halves.

[00:29:01] Dave Jenkins: There was the hardware, half of the. and the software solution half of the floor, but even on the hardware half of the floor, you know, POS providers or backend warehouse management systems, things like that, they were using computer vision to see boxes on the conveyor belt and to track ergonomics of the workers and all that.

[00:29:20] Dave Jenkins: And so that's like real world AI coming into the hardcore logistics world of commerce. And that was, so AI is making its way into the commerce. You know, the commerce software stack. Uh, and it's gonna be the differentiation point between just warehouse management providers and smart Yeah. Warehouse management providers.

[00:29:44] Dave Jenkins: Yeah,

[00:29:44] Jeff Roster: good point. I

[00:29:45] Brian Sathianathan: agree. I think there's a lot of use cases. I think that's one of the things that Solomon and I were looking at in terms of the real applicability of ai, right? One of the things that we found was like a lot of people who were using ai, had a lot of ai, well-known, established [00:30:00] open source ai.

[00:30:01] Brian Sathianathan: without any optimization. So we went to one vendor booth and they were doing people detection and, and had accuracy, 54% . And I think, I think we talked about it, right? Uh, because in a, like using the same kit in interplay, we have optimized it so we could get 85% on the exact same detection, right? So there's a lot of, you know, so as a retailer, retail executive, you are looking at this thing and saying, okay, this is applicable to my, to my business.

[00:30:27] Brian Sathianathan: but unlike, you know, like a retail leader and a tech executive, have tools to evaluate, uh, JavaScript. You know, if, if you come to John or somebody and say, Hey, I have this conversion optimization, and John will ask you 10 questions, right? , how good is your conversion optimization? Right? But in the AI world, a lot of those questions are still being formed in the mind of the leaders.

[00:30:50] Brian Sathianathan: I mean, of course at iterate, we know because we live and breathe this, but a lot of retail leaders are thinking about, okay, like somebody comes and say, I have aji I to do blah, blah, blah. So how do you [00:31:00] evaluate? That's the right tech, right? There's a lot of things that said early, early, early in its, uh, inception.

[00:31:06] Brian Sathianathan: But I think as time goes, a lot of leaders have to kind of ask all the right questions because there's a lot of tech we saw where, you know, vendors just, you know, packaged open source and just showed up and they, and they put together demos and like, you know, when an AI person like me or Solomon or Dave walks in, we know, right?

[00:31:23] Brian Sathianathan: We look at the, with the, the recognition and we can tell at the box, and that is a Yolo v. and that has these problems. Right? So a lot of, lot of, lot of that stuff happened, but it's all good. Nevertheless, you know, that's how innovation starts. You gotta, you gotta start somewhere, right? It's also a great opportunity for leaders to learn, right?

[00:31:40] Jon Nordmark: I think Dave's, I think Dave's observation was really good on, you know, N R F is, you know, is all about. Let's go in the back room and, and get a deal done on something that exists today, whereas CS is giving us a glimpse into the future. Yeah. But even CS is, is behind the curve on certain things [00:32:00] because the emergence of new technologies are so, I mean, imagine NRF next year, how many, how many chat G p T things.

[00:32:06] Jon Nordmark: Yeah. Or, or how many products are gonna include

[00:32:08] Brian Sathianathan: chat? And I think I, that'll be enough for generative ai. Justin? Just in, uh, Justin,

[00:32:14] Jeff Roster: John, there's gonna be chat. G d p analysts. I, there's, they're gonna be on an iterate robot walking around. What are you talking? Of course. I mean, yeah, I bet half, I bet half, I bet literally probably half the articles coming out of NRF 2024 will be, will be Chad g.

[00:32:29] Jeff Roster: I bet half of them. Yeah. And,

[00:32:31] Jon Nordmark: and you used to use the word Jeff, I remember intentional innovation. I remember you told, you know, I heard you say that. Yep. Um, many years ago, you know, probably eight years ago, I don't know, no longer that, unfortunately it is, that practice has to be deeply embedded in any large organization today because if, if it isn't and you don't have a way of embracing these things, you just don't know.

[00:32:58] Jon Nordmark: You know, it'll be hard to keep up. [00:33:00] And I think even back to the glasses, you know, like Dave was, Dave, like we were talking about where, you know, the day that, the day that someone hits that one watch how the world changes. You know, the day that the day that someone creates a glass, a, a glasses experience, eyeglasses experience, that can really bring, you know, augmented reality to life in a, in a non-obtrusive.

[00:33:25] Jon Nordmark: Everything is gonna change. Shopping will change like crazy because, you know, with the 5G networks feeding data and all of a sudden in your glasses you'll know if you've got the best price and within, you know, we gotta watch out for. .

[00:33:41] Dave Jenkins: And that's a good point. And you know, apple was not at CES for all I could tell.

[00:33:46] Dave Jenkins: Oh, interesting.

[00:33:47] Jeff Roster: Yeah. They never go

[00:33:48] Brian Sathianathan: to any ces. They have they for 20 years. They never, and

[00:33:53] Dave Jenkins: Apple has not, I mean, they hint, but they keep pulling their punch about when are the Apple glasses [00:34:00] coming. I don't know. Right. And as John mentioned, well supposedly this is the year for it. It's, it's coming any day now.

[00:34:05] Dave Jenkins: But John, I think you're. . Once there is a sexy pair of normal, you know these glasses that I'm wearing now, if they can have a tiny heads up display that is non-intrusive and I can just walk down the street, then AR will be everywhere. That will be the next iPhone to an eight H point.

[00:34:22] Brian Sathianathan: No, the other piece.

[00:34:23] Brian Sathianathan: Yeah. The other piece is it doesn't even have to be a glass. Right? I paid so much money to get rid of my. I'm, you know, I'm never gonna ever wear a glass. I mean, I went through two Lasix. Right. . Right. But, but the future could be an earpiece. Right. I could click on the earpiece, then it could create projection on midair.

[00:34:40] Brian Sathianathan: Right. For me. Right. But everybody has to wear an earpiece for phones today. Right. So it's like the, the form factors can be, um, can be very different. Right.

[00:34:49] Jon Nordmark: Yeah, that's a great point. And it's hard to predict what it's gonna be. Right. We don't, we don't know. But the thing is, soon, you know, we may be wearing, basically wearing [00:35:00] all the knowledge that can come through the phone today, right.

[00:35:02] Jon Nordmark: In our ear or on our face, and um, yeah, I agree. Yeah. And that's what CS is about. It's trying to show how close it is. and then you have the secret companies like Apple that might be a lot closer than we think. Think you know, who knows? We do know that Apple filed for a patent and got it, got a patent granite on bone conduction so that the glasses can speak to you or an earpiece without even, you know, no one else hears it.

[00:35:26] Jon Nordmark: You can speak back and forth through your thoughts. Should re,

[00:35:30] Jeff Roster: should retails be going to ces and are retailers going

[00:35:33] Brian Sathianathan: to ces? I think retailers, retailers should start going to ces, right? Not, not everyone in. , but at least few of the certain members, like innovation team members and so on should go, go. I think, uh, I think that's what I, that's what my original point was.

[00:35:47] Brian Sathianathan: You know, NRF is great, but NRF is a conditioned show, so everybody coming there is quite conditioned to show what, what will appeal to you. Right. Sometimes the world is not conditioned, you know, things come out of [00:36:00] left. So you want to, you want to cover both, right? And maybe different team members can

[00:36:04] Jeff Roster: do different pieces.

[00:36:05] Jeff Roster: So you're not telling me that I need to plan not just, uh, a week at nrf, but I need to start thinking about another week before that in Las Vegas.

[00:36:14] Brian Sathianathan: Oh, yeah. Actually, you should only be at. Home for two days, Jeff, in the first 15 days of January,

[00:36:19] Jeff Roster: you're, you're gonna have to bring some of that, some of that, uh, some of that Brian wine over in Sweet talk, Mrs.

[00:36:24] Jeff Roster: R If, if she, if she's gonna say, yeah, you're gonna be gone for a half a month in January, especially this year where it was raining almost every day. Yeah. I still have a few bottles left and well, we're supposed to crack one open.

[00:36:37] Brian Sathianathan: Wrapping, go ahead. Uh, I think Teleman had a question. Sorry. Okay. You got a

[00:36:41] Solomon Ray: question? Oh. Um, on, on your point about whether retailers should go to cf, Joe, Um, I wanted to kind of pose this to you.

[00:36:51] Solomon Ray: Um, did you know that Instart is actually moving into the grocery

[00:36:56] Jeff Roster: stores? I, I lost that word. It, it, uh, [00:37:00] it, uh, didn't, uh, that didn't come across. What is, what

[00:37:02] Solomon Ray: moved, did, did you know Instacart

[00:37:05] Jeff Roster: is moving into grocery store? They were actually, they were there. Well, you guys saw that they were there strong, I thought.

[00:37:10] Jeff Roster: Um,

[00:37:12] Solomon Ray: yes, because they, they viewed connected stores and they showcase an AI. Caper Cart. So Caper AI was a startup that they acquired last year for 3 350. , and this is actually a story of that, that at we've researched for years because they had the computer vision for the shopping carts. So they had that at the display and then they had a giant screen that had like personalization on it where you can get your shopping list.

[00:37:40] Solomon Ray: So they were actually debuting, not just the the cart, but this the concept of a connected. . So to go from just delivery, but also to the grocery store. So now they're connecting their clients. Um, so they're using computer vision to identify things in the shopping cart. And now they're going to from delivering groceries and creating connected store to [00:38:00] sync with shopping lists to the card.

[00:38:02] Solomon Ray: And they also enable features such as scan and pay and out of stock notifications. So I think these, these are Cs will be a great thing for retailers.

[00:38:11] Jeff Roster: That's that's something that. That's something, um, the analysts community really needs to get in front of. Cuz I think we're way behind, uh, the curve on, I mean, we've known about scan go forever and I mean, I go back to the IBM shopping buggy buddy, which was, they wanted to put a $3,000 computer on every shopping cart, um, 20 years ago.

[00:38:28] Jeff Roster: And, um, . So we all sort of just tuned out, but now it's for sure. Hey Brian, in wrapping up, I understand, uh, you guys won some awards at N.

[00:38:38] Brian Sathianathan: Yeah, we did and we are super excited about it. And we were nominated for the long-standing partnership award. Right. We became a finalist there. That was really great. And, uh, uh, the v i p went, uh, sponsored by, by, by I mean organized by Wiki, Cantrell, and team was fan fantastic.

[00:38:55] Brian Sathianathan: It was a great event. I think it was a great time to meet a lot of, uh, [00:39:00] people in the industry as well as, you know, connect and talk about, uh, innovation. And the one that we are super excited was like at the, at the very end, Michelle, you know, Kinsey in our partner, uh, and you know, Our customer from, uh, vice President of Digital Innovation at Alta, she won the longstanding partnership, uh, award.

[00:39:19] Brian Sathianathan: This was the partnership with Iterate. And that was super exciting for us because, you know, uh, I mean we are always excited in about everything that Michelle and Alta team does, and I think we've been a big supporter of it and she's been a big supporter of us and, uh, that was great news for us. It was very fantastic for seven years.

[00:39:38] Jeff Roster: 17, seven years. Yeah. Congratulations to half the, uh, this Weekend Innovation podcast team for VI Victorious. The other half got smoked as the voice of retail, but that's okay. We'll, uh, we'll, we'll,

[00:39:55] Jeff Roster: So, so Brad's gonna have his trophy on what side of the, uh, what on your side? And then [00:40:00] I'll just have like a little empty shelf for where it's gonna be at some point. But, uh, no, it was all good. I agree. Uh, I thought, I thought Vicki's event was just fantastic. Um, set the tone for nf, without a doubt. Uh, high elegance, high, uh, high energy.

[00:40:12] Jeff Roster: A lot of people. And at that point we knew, you know, we knew NRF was gonna be solid, um, at the three events. Um, Quickly, uh, uh, retail orphan initial Super Saturday packed. Absolutely thank you to Avanade and, um, and Microsoft and, and other, a bunch of LER vendors that really came through. I think we raised $380,000.

[00:40:33] Jeff Roster: The last, uh, event, um, the LA third event on, on Sunday night was, uh, was Kathy Hokas retail Insiders Party also packed very, very strong. And then finally, Brian, I think you're already out of town, which next year you got a plan on being at was the Rethink Retail Influencer Bash. Which, which was phenomenal.

[00:40:54] Brian Sathianathan: And there is a virtual event coming as well, so I'm looking forward to it. Um, I think in the next month or something. [00:41:00] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:00] Jeff Roster: So, uh, so next year you, you gotta tell your wife, uh, you know, you're, you need to be at NRF probably at least through Tuesday. You can't, you can't bail out.

[00:41:08] Jeff Roster: Cause that party, that party, that party rock. That was fantastic.

[00:41:11] Brian Sathianathan: Yeah. That would, that would require a, a barrel of wine. Not a bottle of wine. . .

[00:41:17] Jeff Roster: Well, all, all good. Well, congratulations on the award. Congratulations to Alta Cosmetics, one of my, uh, favorite retailers. I think what, what Michelle's doing, um, is absolutely industry leading.

[00:41:27] Jeff Roster: I think she's an amazing innovation executive and, you know, congratulations for that award for. Um, guys, thanks for jumping on. Always love chopping up with you guys. I know we do it a lot privately and I'm glad we can start doing a little bit more on, on this weekend Innovation.

[00:41:41] Dave Jenkins: Thanks, Jeff. Awesome.

[00:41:46] Jeff Roster: Bye.

[00:41:47] Thanks for giving today's pod Listen and now a view. For more info, check out the show notes and please give us a five star rating, like and subscribe. As the kids say, it really helps [00:42:00]us grow. If you'd like to be a guest, send me a note. We're always looking for innovative thought leaders and startups, really doing interesting things, and make sure to come back for next week's episode.