Helping Businesses Reach Their Full Potential With Marty Beard of alwaysAI & Steven Longley of Longley Capital

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Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon SD Tecos with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have you here. On the Tacos and Tech podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview, and on Fridays, we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. I am thrilled to have Marty Beard on, co founder and CEO of Always AI. Welcome, Marty.

Thank you.

Special guest also and friend of the podcast, Steven Longley from Longley Capital, and also investor in Always AI. So, Stephen, welcome to the show as well.

Yeah, thanks, Neil.

It's great to have you on, both of you. Marty, you want to give us a quick overview of what Always AI is?

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on. So we're a software company that focuses on what's called computer vision, which basically means making cameras really, really smart by using artificial intelligence capabilities. So basically you've got cameras out in the world, all over the place, you know, in stores, on cars, on robots, what have you. And we have software that makes them really, really smart so they can help people make good Business decisions in the moment, like in real time. So that's so called computer vision. And we have a platform that makes that really, really easy and super affordable for companies to, to implement it.

Wow, fascinating. And so prevalent obviously as everything is becoming computer vision more and more now us as investors see so many computer vision deals where people are claiming it's almost like buzzword now like AI has been. So is computer vision as well too, to have a whole dev tool package. I would believe that's.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think, yeah, I was going to say I think computer vision is really, it's one of the most exciting and one of the most distinct segments of AI. It's actually happening. You know, you hear a lot of talk about AI and it almost gets kind of muddy, like what is it? But computer vision is very real, very distinct and like you said, it's impacting all industries. Right. Because everybody has need for vision.

Right.

Machine vision and trying to get more information about what's happening. Yeah. Super cool space.

Awesome. Well, we're going to do a deep dive into it but we first we got to get to know a little bit about you. How'd you come to be here? You always born raised to be in the tech industry or how did you end up in this craz?

No, I'm, I'm, I'm from the Bay Area and you know, born and raised in the Bay Area. So I spent a lot of time in, in Berkeley and San Francisco and kind of Silicon Valley as I was coming up through my career. I actually studied classics and have more of a kind of a literature background which for whatever reason turned out to be a really good fit for a strategy consultant which is kind of where I started. But make a long story short, I ended up in enterprise software at Oracle and that then led me into a big turnaround opportunity with a company called Sybase where I was heading up you corporate strategy and M and A and all kinds of functions there. Yeah. And then that kind of launched me into my actually running companies up there. So I ran a big mobile messaging company, I ran a cloud applications company and so forth. Long story short, family decided to move to San Diego and I had just come off a big turnaround with BlackBerry, you know, the mobile phone pioneer that was trying to turn that company around and become a cybersecurity software company. So it came out of that which was super, super interesting, very intense, learned a lot and just reconnected with my buddy who's my co founder, his name is Steve Grisette. And yeah we just got very focused on vision and thought that San Diego was just a fantastic place to launch a software company, which has turned out to be true. And the talent here is unblue. So that's just, you know, quick background.

Yeah, no, it's great background. Let's talk a little bit more about BlackBerry because, you know, even it's had a storied past for sure and continues on somehow, you know, to still, still kind of be around. And I think there was even some, maybe there was a San Diego or at least Southern California talent pool that I think BlackBerry had a little bit too. What was it like going from kind of, I mean most of your software was. It seemed like applied like that you went into. What was it like in the telecom space specifically?

Yeah, so, so BlackBerry, you know, BlackBerry, like you said, pioneer in, in the original smartphones and the famous keyboard and everybody of a certain age can remember, you know, using those devices. It had a hard time transition touchscreen phones when the iPhone came out and so forth. But it always had really deep security credentials. Like you would use a BlackBerry if you were. You'd really wanted something encrypted and super secure. So we were brought in, a gentleman named John Chen is the CEO. He's still there and we're brought in to really move it out of the hardware space and just full on go into, into cybersecurity software and really leverage that background. I was chief operating officer during that time and just said it was a great experience, very intense, you know, effort. As you can imagine, today it's 100% software company, 100% cybersecurity. We relaunched it on the New York Stock Exchange and you know, it's making its way now as a pure play in software.

Super interesting. So when did the always AI idea come to you and take us through? Because idea is one thing, taking it and actually starting it, ripping off the band and going all in is a whole nother thing, right?

Yeah, yeah. My, my partner in crime, my co founder Steve, he's a prototyper, he's a real like hobbyist t, you know, the type guy that builds robots in his house and so forth. And he had actually was getting really into computer vision for a mobile robot and we were literally just drinking some wine and looking at the robot and started talking about vision being major part of the tech stack in the future. In other words, we couldn't see any future where vision wasn't becoming a super important part of. Didn't matter if you were a restaurant or a driverless bus or Manufacturing site or a construction site wouldn't matter. You're going to need vision. But it was way too hard, way too difficult to do. So the whole thesis of the company was really, let's make it easier and make it accessible to the average enterprise developer. And that really was the beginning of always.

AI Got it. Steven. When did you guys actually connect? It sounds like you guys have a little bit of a background together, too.

Yeah.

So as it happens, I think we actually met during the pandemic. Marty. I think we got introduced through some mutual investors, and I think it was in the Q3. 2020. Yeah. Really got to know each other, you know, around the holidays, I think, of 2020. And it was really clear, you know, that we gelled straight away. I love the story in terms of. Of somebody who's moved, you know, back to San Diego for a market like New York or, you know, the Bay Area. And I loved his experience, but I equally just love the size of. Of the problem. There's billions of cameras out there, and we know that people want to do more with those cameras, but it's just challenging and it's hard. Right. And so I thought Steve and Marty were onto something in terms of just making it easy. Right. To take a business problem and then convert it into reality. Right. And so it became a pretty clear partnership that we wanted to establish. It was also pretty neat that Marty and Steve were really focused on the type of people that they wanted to have around the table. Right. And I think it was John Moloy, who was one of the original investors, who actually, I think, forced an interview on us and said, we're not just going to let you invest, but we're going to. We're going to make you earn it a little bit more. And that was great. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's when we got going. And then it was just clear that it was time to go to market and figure out a way to supercharge it and tell the story, which. Which is what we're really focused on doing. And Marty and I just gelled and they still let me come to all the board meetings now that I'm on the board. Snacks are impro, I would say. But, yeah, I think that's where it all started. And 18 months later, we're pretty stoked on where the company's going and what Marty and the guys, the team, are accomplishing.

That's awesome, Stephen. Just another, maybe a quick little bite around what Longley is doing, especially related to this. Right. You're seeing A lot of early stage companies I would imagine with quote unquote vision systems or something. So just take us through a little bit about just from the investors landscape of when you're doing assessments on companies are really complementary to this space.

Yeah, absolutely. So, so at Longley Capital and Fund 1 and our second fund we're focused on getting in early when the companies have traction, which, which always I did with some PoCs and some revenue. And then we'll typically follow on either, you know, leading an A or co leading and we're going to be announcing a pretty exciting financing shortly for Always AI. But what we're seeing, you know, what we have seen in the computer vision space are more vertically specific vertically oriented solutions. So we've seen stuff in the retail and real estate space, we've seen stuff in the robotics space, we've seen stuff focused on transportation. We've also seen more than anything internal teams or very expensive consulting groups get hired to do purpose built custom projects to solve the business problems. What drew us to Always AI was just the ubiquity of IT and the ease of making an application or a model work for the business challenge that the enterprise needed. So if you're in a quick serve restaurant or you are an autonomous bus vehicle or you are a construction company, you can purpose build what you need on the Always AI platform. And that just simply doesn't exist in the market today. Right. And I think what we're also seeing which really drew us to Always AI, which I think was the right approach is it's really built on that DNA of the, of the engineer and the developer. So, so Steve Grisette, you know, wanted to build a community of developers. So there's 30 plus thousand engineers and developers that are using the Always AI platform. And we saw a really successful company and Unity get built on the back of the game developer community. So we just haven't seen that with other companies.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's been apparent for a few years of just being me, being in the community, seeing your developer advocates who have been out there, who've been really strong and just building community physically, which I think super important. Something I want to ask you Marty. Around San Diego, you know, there's a lot of tech that is like the tech. We're kind of like the intel inside community. Right. There's a lot of this hardware or even software inside that are running a lot of things, whether it's spin outs from Qualcomm that are going into like automotive tech or logistics tech and trucking drones. What are you seeing around just, I mean, locally, the opportunity from both talent and even potential partners.

Yeah, I think San Diego is really uniquely positioned from a couple perspectives. So I think we all agree that AI is like a major trend, right, that's playing out across all industries, if you think about it. And you map it to San Diego. So there's a, there's a big data component of it, right. And we're really strong down here like Illumina and a whole bunch of companies that are just dealing with tons of data. So big data is a strength of San Diego. You've got I.O. so called IOT Internet of Things, really just mobile devices that are out in the world. Well, you got Qualcomm and you got, you know, all of the mobility technology that came out of that ecosystem that's all over the place here, right. So you've got the, and then you, you've got the deep understanding of neuroscience, the brain. So you talk about neural networks, which are really the heart of AI, and you're really talking about how to, you know, sort of map the way the brain works out in a physical computer world. Well, that's San Diego. So if I took kind of big data plus mobile plus neuroscience, that equals AI, right? So a. So we're like ideally positioned to leverage this and really grow through this new trend. And I found that right away. So the people that I was able to hire are just fantastic talent. And then because San Diego is such a desirable place to live, you don't have as much, you don't tend to get as much turnover, you know, as you do up in the Bay Area, where you're just constantly competing with Goliaths, the Facebooks and so forth. It's just hard to compete with that every day if you're a mid size or smaller company. So anyway, so it's, it's a great, it's a great location. It maps really well to the mission of Always AI. And the talent that we've been able to get is really, I just feel really lucky to be able to work with, with that talent. You know, I think one of the.

Cool things too, I'm spending time, you know, with the Always AI team is that the engineers and the product specialists that are working and developing the capabilities are also pretty, pretty excited about the fact that they're working on the tech that they're actually seeing deployed and they're engaging with, you know, some of these Fortune 500 organizations, as opposed to just being deep in the bowels of an organization, coding and engineering. They're on the front lines with Marty and the team, which is pretty neat to see your work put right into production straight away.

Yeah, right, absolutely. And then to have also built a community, like you said, 30,000 users of it. What has been some of the iterations that have come from feedback from that user community of the product itself.

Huge. So that's awesome. Not only marketing, it's more important that people are actually just using it and banging away on the free version of the platform. And so what do you get? You get all this feedback about what's important. So we heard loud and clear, we would like more analytics. Like, we would like dashboards that kind of show us, you know, what's actually happening from that camera on the edge. Right. So imagine you're a retailer, you know, Westfield Mall, and you want to understand where are people going, and you'd like to visually see that. So we got a big request from the developer community, analytics. So, you know, boom, that. That gets into our roadmap. We work really hard on it, we test it out, and then we can release. We can release that. Another example is, you know, at the heart of AI is. Are so models, right? Computer vision models, AI models, which are really just. It's just data, it's images, and you need to train them. So training, you know, and being able to train more and more efficiently became a really big and important opportunity as well. So anyway, so yeah, we just get that real feedback. We get it live and I can just bring that right into my roadmap and release it.

Yeah.

What's the earliest stage of a startup that maybe come into the free model? And how do they grow alongside the product? Like, take us through kind of some.

You know, we, yeah, we started that way. So we started with, look, let's. Before we go out direct to enterprise or what have you, let's. Let's build up the community and get a lot of feedback.

Right.

So very early on, and to Steven's point, I mean, that's what we did. We just went out, we had had 100 users and then we had 600, and then all of a sudden we had 5,000 and then we had 10,000. And it really just organically grew. And we didn't worry too much in the beginning. And I'm really talking about the first year and a half or so where we just, let's let this go and learn from it. And what happened was some of those developers turned out to be really big companies, and so then they wanted to do more than what the freemium version would allow. And all of a sudden they're approaching us and then that kind of naturally led us into where we are now, which is, you know, we're selling directly now to, to the enterprise to, you know, the channel and so forth. So it was, it was a great way to do it. And so, and then we don't, haven't abandoned the developer community. We love them and so we just keep feeding that, like I said. But that's, that was the way that we went to market.

Got it. And how about some actual use cases that you were surprised to see it being used in that way? Any applications that have been kind of cool to call out?

Yeah, yeah. So I think we, you know, there's an industry called qsr, Quick Service Restaurants. We all know them and love them. We're talking about Starbucks and McDonald and Burger King and so forth. But, and so it's not surprising to me that they have cameras and they want to get more information. But what they want is they want to understand things like the average speed of service for a specific person.

Right.

They want to understand literally how long is that taking, how can we improve that service. The pandemic had us all in our cars going through drive thru, right. And so all of a sudden drive thru and trying to make that a more efficient, you know, if you've ever sat in your car for 45 minutes for an in and out burger, you know, you can just be more efficient. So that's an interesting use case where computer vision really helps. We're working on now today, robots in large warehouses that are basically there for safety to make sure that things aren't getting hit, run over, their things aren't dangerously set up, people aren't wearing ppe, the right gear, you know, what have you. Things like that are interesting. And then one, one really quick last one is kind of autonomous driving, autonomous buses, things that really are, you know, vehicles that are being used in very controlled environments like a campus or a hospital, but really need to understand what is going on. Right. Somebody's in a wheelchair, so the, the bus needs to stop and lower the platform, et cetera, on and on and on. These are, those are just a few examples. I'm sure Stephen's got all kinds of.

I mean, I'm surprised. I thought you were going to lead with the one that you pitched the Northern Ireland Smart City play of keeping kids out of cemeteries and drinking beer.

Right, okay.

It's kind of like that's an application, but I guess it falls into the smart city, you know, denigrating the, you know, denigrating a cemetery is definitely what we've solved for. Right, right. But you know, I just think it goes the word that comes back again. Ubiquitous capabilities. Right. Where there's no constraints. And the team has looked at, you know, underwater robotics, you know, fish farm. It's really endless. I mean point of sale, autonomous checkout, construction tech. We're working on an interesting project right here in San Diego.

That's great. Especially to. To your point, all the applications that we can see from other. From local as well. Too great to have partners to work on locally. Same thing with talent as you mentioned. And you know, talent's gotta eat. And now we're not just having tacos by the drive thru, we're having them in person. Do you guys have favorite taco spots? Cause we gotta know Marty, you have one already locally.

I don't. Well, you know, we're in Cardiff. Right. So Los Alas is really close to us. Which is just like iconic. Fantastic place. And then, and then I can look at the waves to see if it's worth, you know, going out and surfing from while I'm having a margarita.

Right.

So I like, I like that place.

Not go wrong there.

Yeah.

How about you, Stephen?

Oh man, the taco spots have been growing up here. I'll be back here, you know, for a few years now. It's such a thing. But I matched my taco spot probably with my, you know, the time of day. So there's the late night spots obviously with some folks. The old staple in La Jolla is low. It's got a mixed bag. But one of the best places and, and they do it so well is El Pescador and Loya which is a local spot. And those guys are just. The pesky boys are top tier great spots.

You can't go wrong there for sure. And I think all have been mentioned before for. So they're in our taco database but we'll double check that in case there's any new additions there here on the tacos and tech podcast recently though, someone said it needs to be tacos, tech and tequila because there's enough people wanting to do both at the same time. So that may be a future addition to the pod. Yeah. Well guys, it's great to be able to tell the story of always AI to see, you know, this convergence of tech and talent coming together, especially in San Diego. We'll make sure we have links to the developer community here in the show notes as well too. And thanks for being on the pod. And Marty, it's great to have you here in town and building another great company, so thank you.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshfoodtech.com as well as on Twitter at tacos and techpod. Also follow Fresh on all of your social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcast.

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Thanks again.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party Startups get the party started.

You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it hey.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party Startups get the party, party started. Startups get the party Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it hey.