Team Alice joined the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) for Innovate Celebrate — an engaging, three-day event in Boston amplifying corporate innovation and entrepreneurship.

https://twitter.com/StartupofYear

Innovate Celebrate is all about supporting the tech community — from early-stage startups building disruptive technologies to established tech giants who have carved their niche across industries. A big part of bridging that gap is the Startup of the Year (STOY) Competition, which discovers and supports the most promising and innovative startups from around the world. From pathogen identification to portable bike helmets, the semi-finalists and finalists are undoubtedly on track to change the world.

The Competition

The STOY competition takes place over a one-year period and supports founders through a global network comprised of investors, influencers, and an international startup ecosystem. Through STOY, 100 semi-finalists competed for a chance to be named one of the top five finalists and advance to the final round, live pitch competition held at this week’s convening. With participants from around the world, the competition was fierce!

Of clear importance to STOY is a point that we immensely value at Alice: inclusivity. Of STOY’s 100 semi-finalists, 46% were led by female founders and co-founders, 50% were led by minority founders and co-founders, and 8% were led by veterans. Additionally, finalists hailed from 25 states and six countries. Team Alice is thrilled to support competitions like STOY which recognize and exhibit the power of diversity. Next year, we hope to help achieve an even greater mark by ensuring that more founders are made aware of and equipped with the right tools to succeed at this competition and beyond. Thanks to STOY’s commitment, we’re proud to continuously support and amplify diverse founders including previous winners such as Oska Wellness (2017) and ShearShare (2016), just to name a few.

The Judges

• Alda Leu Dennis, General Partner, of Initialized Capital
• Arlan Hamilton, Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital
• Carmichael Roberts, Founder and Managing Partner of Material Impact
• Chris Keller, Managing Partner of NextGen Venture Partners
• Erica Duignan, Founding Partner of Reign Ventures and 1000 Angels
• Gary Shapiro, President and CEO of CTA

Top 5 Finalists & Winner

Huge congrats to the winner, Dr. Crystal Icenhour — CEO of Aperiomics! Aperiomics is on a mission is to change how we test for infections. Its one-of-a-kind technology can identify every known pathogen in a single test, helping to address the 75% failure rate of existing identification of infection-causing pathogens.

Photo cred: https://twitter.com/CTATech

In second place, securing a free exhibitor booth at CES 2019 (CTA’s premier event showcasing nearly 4,000 companies alongside attendees from 150 countries), was Demetrius Gray, CEO of WeatherCheck. All about actionable weather data, WeatherCheck notifies property managers and owners about damaging weather before it hits, allowing them to take action to mitigate damage before it occurs. We were lucky enough to snag some time with Demetrius for a #RoleBreakers interview. Check out his story below about how he came to start WeatherCheck. And, if you’re interested in joining him, apply to pitch at CES’ Eureka Park!

The other impressive startups named Top 5 Finalists included:

• Park & Diamond, an ultra-portable (and foldable) helmet designed to fit into a custom water bottle-sized case and easily store in a backpack or handbag. Since 92% of bike share riders do not wear a helmet, we were excitd to learn how Park & Diamond has created a solution! Check out their Indiegogo campaign which has raised nearly 18x the original goal.
• Tivic Health’s medical device is designed to eliminate/reduce sinus pain using waves and a tiny electrical pulse. As the first of its kind, Tivic Health’s treatment is designed to relieve pain from chronic sinusitis, allergies, and sinus infections. CEO & Co-Founder, Jennifer Ernst is a two-time entrepreneur who brought her last company to $480M market cap in 5 yrs!
• Ario takes augmented reality to a new level by making complicated jobs, simpler. Ario is an innovative productivity platform that increases safety and efficiency by allowing teams to create and share real-time spatial information, leveraging real-world data in the real world. We’re excited to see this company grow!

Photo cred: CTA

Honorable mentions also go to the “Fan Fav” winner, HiberSense and People’s Choice winner, Fade.

Huge Congrats to all the finalists and thanks to our partners at CTA for inviting Team Alice to join!

Feeling a bit of FOMO? Check out some of the action on Twitter: #InnovateCelebrate

Keep an eye out for #RoleBreakers with CTA video coming out soon!

About the co-producers of Innovate Celebrate:

Consumer Technology Association (CTA) is the trade association representing the $377 billion U.S. consumer technology industry, which supports more than 15 million U.S. jobs. More than 2,200 companies — 80 percent are small businesses and startups; others are among the world’s best-known brands — enjoy the benefits of CTA membership including policy advocacy, market research, technical education, industry promotion, standards development and the fostering of business and strategic relationships. CTA also owns and produces CES ® — the world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies.

Established is focused on helping organizations with their innovation, startup, and communication strategies. Created by the talent responsible for building the Tech.Co brand (acquired by an international publishing company), we’re leveraging decades of experience to help our collaborators best further (or create) their brand & accomplish their most important goals.

Building the future of training and maintenance

The Ario Augmented Reality platform being used on the bridge of the USS Midway (CV 41).

Cooperative Research and Development Agreement

Ario and Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific’s (SSC Pacific) Battle Space Exploitation of Mixed Reality (BEMR Lab) recently formed a unique relationship under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). Within the agreement, Ario and BEMR Lab will work together to conduct research on leveraging augmented reality for training and maintenance.

What is Ario?

Ario is a productivity software that increases safety and efficiency in industrial environments. Using augmented reality, teams can create, share and view real-time spatial information.

The Case for Training and Maintenance

A recent study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows that the amount of time required to meet the demand of complex procedures has shortened.

GAO’s prior work shows that the Navy has increased deployment lengths, shortened training periods, and reduced or deferred maintenance to meet high operational demands, which has resulted in declining ship conditions and a worsening trend in overall readiness.

— U.S. Government Accountability Office

Performing maintenance on equipment is critical to keeping military assets operational. The military has very carefully prepared procedures for performing maintenance, but sometimes documentation is out of date, unreadable, or confusing. Additionally, in order to perform particular tasks, the training time required to qualify personnel can be long. In many situations tasks are marked as completed, but it can be difficult to know if the work was done correctly, or if any steps were skipped.

The Ario platform addresses these concerns by simplifying the process to create and update procedures; it makes it easy to share procedures with organization members. Instead of following descriptions and diagrams in paper manuals, information is delivered to users with spatial relevance; when and where it is needed most. Using spatially-relevant guides such as navigational tools, 3D animations, videos, and tasks that are broken down into steps; these features can help streamline workflows in a significant way. This leads to significantly-reduced error rates and also allows relatively inexperienced users to safely perform work. The Ario platform also logs analytics for each task step, which can include images or video captured of the work being performed for logging, audits and training.

We’re excited to continue our work with SSC Pacific & BEMR Lab and are looking forward to providing you with updates as we have them.

More on BEMR Lab

BEMR Lab demonstrates how cutting edge, low-cost commercial of the shelf (COTS) mixed reality technology — virtual and augmented reality — is applied to training, operations, prototyping, and maintenance applications within the Navy and Marine Corps in the near future. (Click Here to View PDF Fact Sheet)

Learn more about the Ario platform.

>>Click Here<< to Gain More Insights How the Ario Platform Can Help Your Organization.

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Ario and BEMR Lab Unite to Investigate Navy’s Use of Augmented Reality was originally published in Ario Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Departure

I left Norfolk, Virginia on March 31, 2018 with our Prius packed to the brim. The rest of our team at Ario would remain in Norfolk and I would be working remotely once I made it to Silicon Valley.

With my wife’s “I’ll go, but remember the dogs and the birds are going too” echoing in my mind and an anxious Pomeranian barking in my ear, we headed to the Washington D.C. metro area, where we said our goodbyes to my in-laws.

We then made our way through southwestern Virginia to see my folks and on to Nashville, Memphis, Ft. Smith (Arkansas), Oklahoma City, Amarillo (Texas), Flagstaff (Arizona) and Los Angeles (visiting family) and finally arriving in Los Gatos, California where we would stay for the duration of the the program at Plug and Play Tech Center where Ario was selected for Internet of Things Batch #8.

A few snaps from the road:

Departing our humble office in Norfolk, VA (left — it’s tidy now :-). My clean car before I spilled America on it (right).

Part of the family zoo.

Ft. Smith, Arkansas (left). McLean, Texas (right).

Kingman, Arizona

The Arrival

After arriving in Los Gatos, California on April 7, 2018 it was time to get settled and be ready for our first week at Plug and Play Tech Center. Plug and Play describes itself as

…the ultimate innovation platform, bringing together the best startups and the world’s largest corporations. — Plug and Play Tech Center

Wait..let’s back up a bit.

The Backstory

So how’d I end up here representing our team at Ario?

It was quite a process. Flashback to January, 2018: we exhibited at CES 2018 in Las Vegas earlier in the year and a representative of the Plug and Play venture team opened discussions with us. They encouraged us to apply as a startup, we had a few screening calls and ended up being down-selected from their list of 500–1000 startups that might be a good fit. Then we received the news that we were invited to “Selection Day” in March. As a team we agreed it would be best that we all flew to Plug and Play’s Selection Day to get a good feeling for whether or not we wanted to commit fully to the process. This also meant that I would have to pitch for over 500 attendees made up of corporate partners of Plug and Play, VCs and other attendees; they’d be voting on whether or not we’d be admitted (no pressure, right?).

Plug and Play Tech Center’s reputation is well known and as a quick recap here are some top level stats:

• 2,000+ startups accelerated
• 426 startups accelerated in 2017
• 217 investments made by Plug and Play Tech Center in 2017
• $7bn raised by Plug and Play Tech Center portfolio companies
• 750+ portfolio companies
• 220 corporate partners
• 300+ VC partners

So, it was clear, we couldn’t be half-measure with our time at Plug and Play. Not only did we pitch on selection day, but we also were given the opportunity to meet with a few their corporate partners. Our team all agreed, if we were admitted we’d go all-in.

Giving our pitch at Plug and Play’s selection day for Internet of Things Batch #8.

Our from left to right: Tomasz Foster, Joe Weaver, Jacob Galito, Andrew Gotow. Someone had to hold the camera, so there I am with some of the team in the photo on the right.

Jacob Galito (Art Director), Joe Weaver (CEO), Andrew Gotow (Mobile Lead) on selection day at Plug & Play.

We made it. From the 25(ish) that presented at selection day to the 15 they took into the batch. I was moving to California two weeks later (this got very real, very quickly).

Plug and Play doesn’t take equity from startups that participate and promises to provide office space, funding opportunities, corporate introductions and mentorship.

The Process

Within the first week of arriving at Plug and Play I attended 8 “deal flows,” 2 investment meetings and 1 mentor session. A deal flow is a meeting that is curated by Plug and Play to align corporate partners’ interests with startups’ offerings. The format is simple; you are given 30 minutes to present your startup’s technology to a corporate partner and discuss the ways that you could work together. From this, you hopefully walk away with business cards, high interest in what you’re doing and a pathway to initiate a Proof of Concept, often referred to as a POC. It is from these POCs that your startup can derive carry-on business, identify important key metrics, learn more about your product-market fit, and further refine personas for your marketing efforts. In a perfect world you walk in and nail every single one of these deal flows and each company you talk to will leave salivating for your product. In reality, each company has different problems that your product might solve. This can be very tricky when your product has vast horizontal value. More on this a bit later.

Throughout the course of my stay at Plug and Play I attended a total of 44 deal flow sessions, 5 mentor sessions, 5 VC meetings, 8 events and numerous moments of “managed serendipity.” What I mean by managed serendipity is that because of the density of startups, corporate partners, events, workshops and mentor sessions you are bound to have conversations with individuals that have overlapping needs/interests similar to your own; and from that opportunity arises to collaborate, learn from one another or to help each other out by making introductions.

Mitsubishi Electric hosted an event about the future of mobility. It was fascinating and a wonderful networking opportunity.

About a month into my stay I was invited to present in front of VCs at a private event Plug & Play hosted. This was a wonderful opportunity to not only test our pitch, but also receive direct feedback that would help us dial in our focus and check the pulse of a combination of institutional investors and corporate investment groups to see what they thought of our approach.

My first go at pitching to over 100 investors. It was structured in a way for them to provide direct feedback. The pitch had to be under 4 minutes and there was 3 minutes of Q&A. My pitch continually evolved throughout the duration of my stay at Plug and Play.

It’s important to note that while startups aren’t required to relocate to Plug and Play to participate, we decided someone from our team should. After all, we’re based in Virginia where the density of opportunity is a bit different than what exists in Silicon Valley.

The Outcome

So how does this story end?

Well, at the conclusion of the 3 months there was the Summer Summit. It’s a demo day where each startup has 3 minutes to pitch. This was our opportunity to lay out our case for the problems we solve and how we do it.

So what’s our pitch? In short, we’re on a mission to replace instruction manuals and documentation as you and I have come to know it. Traditionally, instruction manuals are 2D and paper-based, but we live in a spatial world. When I approach an object I want have contextual information on how to interact with it. Moreover, enterprise has an interest in understanding how you work with objects in your workplace (think manufacturing equipment maintenance, repair, facilities & maintenance teams, vehicle repair, interacting with large industrial equipment, and so on…). The value implications are vast.

To set the stage, here are a few photos from the Summer Summit 2018.

Sobhan Khani, VP of Plug and Play Tech Center introducing the IoT Batch (left). Attendees (right) Photo credit: Plug and Play Tech Center.

Attendees (left). Translation headsets provided to attendees from abroad (right). Photo credit: Plug and Play Tech Center.

During my presentation of Ario’s platform. Photo credit: Plug and Play Tech Center.

Here’s my pitch from the Summer Summit.

So what was the outcome?

Congratulations to LocateAI from the Real Estate program and @ario_tech from the Internet of Things program for winning the People's Choice Award! 🎉 #SummerSummit

 — @PlugandPlayTC

Me and LocateAI, winner of the Real Estate Tech batch (left). Plug and Play’s team with me and LocateAI (right). Photo credit: Plug and Play Tech Center.

We won the People’s Choice Award for Internet of Things Batch #8.

Wow. Didn’t expect that.

So what does this mean? Well, it helped us garner more attention from the investors and corporate partners in attendance and we have a solid list of companies that we’re discussing POCs with (mission accomplished for goal number #1). Additionally, we’re raising a seed round and are in discussions with groups to do that (goal #2.. in progress).

I learned a very important lesson from improv classes I’ve taken over the years. That is to say “Yes and…” to opportunities. What does this mean? In short, it means that if an opportunity exists that could be beneficial you should consider being open to it by saying “Yes” and also contributing value to the equation by saying “and…” and helping add value for others. This principle manifested itself by saying yes to every deal flow opportunity I was presented with and attending as many events as possible; and from these meetings not only was I able to further focus our approach, but also to help organizations learn how they might benefit from introducing a new technology.

So how does this story end? I imagine there’s going to be a part II to this post!

One thing is for certain. The 11,000 miles was well worth it, and so was the investment our company made to be sure we had someone on the ground and present for the duration of the trip. After all, the program is located in the most tech-centric landscape in the world. And while I was our remote worker in California our team was busy continuing to iterate on our product, working to on-board pilots (test-runs with companies), and taking home a victory for NATO’s 2018 Innovation Challenge.

Ario remotely presenting our platform to NATO.

Bonus Snaps

Here are some bonus shots from my visits to Facebook and Airbnb & the Computer History Museum.

(Left: Airbnb HQ. Right: The real Facebook Wall at FB HQ)

Full Circle plate installation inside Facebook HQ.

So, this story’s ending is actually just the beginning of the rest of our journey.

Want to know more?

>>Click Here<< to get more behind the scenes photos and the 3 biggest lessons I learned from Silicon Valley.

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If you liked this article, click the👏 below, and share it with others so they can enjoy it as well.

I Drove 11,000 Miles to Participate in a Silicon Valley Accelerator. Was it worth it? was originally published in Ario Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Photo: Johnson Wang.

After two years of startup life I have done a lot wrong and a few things right, here are my 5 tips

1. KISS your ideas and products

da Vinci was certainly on to something…

KISS is an acronym for “Keep it simple, stupid” as a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960. The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore simplicity should be a key goal in design and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. If your idea or product is too complicated, you will have a hard time selling it and making it. The value is making things simpler or more manageable for people, always look for ways to make things simpler.

2. Learn how others make money

Don’t reinvent the wheel, make it better. The wheel is great, it rolls, and I know you wish you invented it but someone else beat you to the punch that doesn’t mean you can’t add to it or make the wheel better. Learn what adds value and how others make money. If you begin a startup without a clear understanding of how you will make money, you won’t last long.

3. Teamwork

The heart of your product is your team. You can’t do everything, and truthfully there is no such thing as a startup of one, build a team and get the right people. Listen to your team, and learn from others all the time. Build an environment where anyone can question anything, having constructive conversations helps build a better product

4. Keep focus

Make your ideas, keep focus. Everyone has a great idea, the ones that turn it into realities are the ones making money. Make your app, produce your product, build your idea, make make make make.

5. Hang in there

Hang in there, it takes time to make money and hard work. Some of the most successful people have failed more times then I have ever tried. Starting a business is never easy, and you will be stressed all the time, but you are the master of your future. Wake up early, take out the trash every morning, be the first to open the doors and build!

What the road to success really looks like……….

My 5 Favorite Tips For Startups was originally published in Ario Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m an art director for an augmented reality(AR) and virtual reality(VR) company. During our sales pitch, in order for us to move further with our conversation about our product and services, I find myself educating our clients in an effort to have a shared understanding.

Ken Pyle, president/managing editor at Viodi, LLC and owner, interviews Nate Fender, VP, product at Ario, at Consumer Electronics Tradeshow (CES) January 9, 2018 in the Sands Expo, Las Vegas. (photo by Jacob D. Galito)

I get that there’s a learning curve. I’m certain that it’s even more so realized, for those that aren’t digital natives; which, naturally, our main audience is.

We’ve developed pilots and demos for companies such as: Daqri, Emerson, Dominion Energy, Ferguson, and W.M. Jordan, etc., and recently we had a booth at CES 2018. In order for our clients to have a firm understanding of what we do and what we can offer, we have found that these tips can improve your sales pitch:

• Read your audience — Gauge their understanding of AR and VR. In that way, you aren’t wasting their time because you won’t be starting from square one. Basically, you are catering to your audience, which adds more of a personalized interaction.
• Enhancement — Highlighting key features of your product can bring them to a better understanding of AR and VR technology without it being confusing. Think of parallels of your product or service with currently existing platforms or ideas to find that common understanding for your audience.
• Focus —Have a definite target audience in mind (narrow or broad) because, in all likelihood, they might not have anything in mind. A lot of companies that we’ve worked with, or spoke with, struggle to see what AR and VR can do for their business; just because they understand the technology, doesn’t mean they have a solid plan for what they will be using it for.
• Don’t oversell or promise anything that you can’t fulfill — If there are any questions that come up that seem to be out of scope for your team, or honestly not possible, let them know that. You aren’t doing your business or your audience any good to promise something that you have no intention, or way, of meeting.

At the end of the day, both AR and VR are a tool and we are the problem solvers and evangelists of our industry.

• Let your work speak for itself —If you are showing a live demo or a video that showcases your product or service, don’t state the obvious because that could feel like you’re beating a dead horse.
• Pauses are good —If there’s any silent moments in your pitch, great. This will allow your audience to think and it’ll provide them the opportunity to ask questions.
• Leave on a good note —If you feel that you have said everything that needs to be said, go ahead and thank them for the opportunity and end the meeting; This will save you, and them, from you inadvertently repeating yourself.
• Follow up —If you pitch it, they will come. Let your leads and potential clients take some time to digest your meeting. But, be sure to email them a formal thank you for their time and consideration.

In order for our clients to have a firm understanding of what we do and what we can offer, we have found that these tips can improve your pitch…

At the end of the day, both AR and VR are a tool and we are the problem solvers and evangelists of our industry. If you find that using the term AR and VR is causing your audience’s eyes to glaze over, don’t keep using them. They are industry terms. Rather, craft your pitch to your audience. If you know that they’ll struggle with keeping up with technical terms, stick to what they understand. Because, nobody wants to feel talked down to.

8 Tips for Your Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality Sales Pitch was originally published in Ario Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.