Lunch Academy 009 - The Future of Pokemon Go (Feat. Alex Chuang)

And action. I'm already too loud. Welcome everybody to lunch Academy episode 009. The offside banter to our everyday lives here at Launch Academy. My name is Sam and I'm the co host. And alongside me, across from me as always, the star of the show, Sharadeh.

Hello, everyone. Very good. Welcome to Episode nine.

Yes.

Happy to be here with our guest, Alex.

Hey, how's it going?

Alex is the co founder of Launch Academy.

Yay.

So none of this would be possible without him.

So one might say he's an og.

Og. Yeah, he's old, but he's not a gangster.

One of the OGs.

Fair enough.

Where are you going? To get Ray on the show. So that's a secret.

It's an industrial secret. We told you last. We told Kalina last time. We have a lineup of months and months and months. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Ray's like D list. We're going through our A list.

Okay, so you gotta go.

Ray is the CEO of Launch Academy, by the way. Yeah, but Alex is also the CEO of an exciting new venture called Shape Immersive.

Yes.

So we're definitely going to get time to talk about all that. But first, as always, what's the weather forecast?

Oh, the weather is so up and down lately.

Yeah.

So we're gonna have a cloudy blah kind of day scatter shower.

There's your forecast. Cloudy blow.

It's a blur. You have to say the G at the end.

Yeah. Getting into July.

And yeah, Saturday is also not going to be great. But Sunday, Monday looks okay. So.

Yeah.

And it's almost. It's almost Canada Day, right?

Yeah. So if you guys have any plans, Monday will look nice for Canada Day. That's all that matters, right?

So candidate is looking nice. So should I cancel my fireworks plans?

Wait, I think so.

Well, candidate is on Sunday, so she's actually. She's cheating. She's checking the weather forecast. Like I thought she knows this stuff.

Okay, this is really sad because this weekend is Jazz Fest and they're having like this outdoor jazz concert all day Saturday at. What's that part called? David Lamb. Thanks, producer lady David Lam. And it's gonna rain all Saturday, so.

Oh, no.

Damn it. Yeah. Anyways, Side, side, rant for the weather forecast.

Yeah, yeah. And I guess I should shout out. This show is being produced by Claire, AKA producer Lady Robinson. So shout out to her future Iron Woman. She's smiling in appreciation for the shout out. She's like, finally, you guys.

Yeah. Anyway, she said something as well.

Back. Back to Alex. So, I mean, it's been a while and finally we're. We got you here on the show. So he's been begging to come on.

Yeah, no, I've been begging to come on. This is a great show. Great show.

Lasted nine episodes and we haven't been closed down yet, so that's so Ellis on the waitlist.

We gotta do it big for our 10th episode.

10Th episode. It's gonna be huge. Yeah, I think.

Huge. It's gonna be huge.

Can't be too huge. We're pretty squished in here. But like, obviously, like we want to talk about today is, you know, six years ago when Launch Academy started, there were no lights, there's no cameras, no fancy hats, no T sh. Well, we did have T shirts, but they were terrible.

Yeah, the logos changed like three times.

The logos changed three times. So I mean, like, I mean, kind of walk us through, paint the picture. What was it like at the beginning? What was the point of Launch Academy and how did you get involved in. Yeah, let's.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So building Launch Academy was super difficult and challenging, right. Because we didn't really have a lot of resources. We're a grassroots initiative, a non profit organization. At the very beginning, it was myself, Mike, Ray, Roger and Jesse. I think the biggest reasons why we want to create this place is because we want to surround ourselves with like minded entrepreneurs, right? And that's what we did. But we didn't really anticipate that Launch Cam is going to grow into this new massive thing, right. And so the first thing we did was, you know, we got the space, 12,000 square feet, and the next thing we know, entrepreneurs start to come on board. But when people ask me, like, why, like how did Launch Economy first started and how, you know, how they grow so big, right? And you know, I tell them that it's really, you know, it's, we built Launch Economy one relationship at a time. And when I say one relationship at a time, it really means that we have like 30 meetings a week. We meet the entrepreneurs on one on one basis. We had probably what, 200, 300 events in the last couple of years. So it's that grassroots type of mentality. There's no magical formula here. You have to meet the entrepreneur on a one on one basis to build that genuine relationship. And at the end of that, you, you start to have a community of people who, you know, who are genuinely, who genuinely care about each other. And then you start to have a culture that pays it forward. Right. So super grateful to be one of the first people to kind of kick off this community.

So when you started, like let's be honest here, and we're on air, so you can't lie apparently. How long did you actually to be with Launch Academy? Maybe maybe both as an entrepreneur and as kind of like a co founder. Like what, what are, what were you thinking?

Like, well, I was in debt so sending you the job. But no, no, I think Launch Academy, you know, because we, we hit so many milestones right. In such a short amount of time and you know, Ray and I, we have a really great working relationship as well. So you know, I just graduated from school, I did my first startup called Weave Met Ray and it was really amazing to have a mentor like him to kind of walk you through how to actually run an organization like Launch Academy. So I was learning, definitely learning a lot alongside from him. And Ray's got way more operation experience than I have. Right. So that kept going. And also he also gave me the sort of autonomy to create programs to run with different campaigns, different models of business models that we brainstorm. So that was super interesting for me. But in terms of expectation, I was also looking for opportunities on the side because we're entrepreneurs at the end of the day, so I definitely have my side hustles and you know that I started a bunch of startups. One is a condom company. Yeah, yeah.

Tell us more about that.

Yeah, so I think in 2014 I co founded this company called Safe and it's a condom delivery company.

Yeah, this is when Dollar Shave Club was, you know, that was the hot thing at the moment.

Yeah. So we wanted to do the Dollar Shave Club for condoms so you don't have to be super awkward. You're going to shoppers and you know, you have, you know, a 16 year old teenager judging you and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. So we deliver these, you know, the world's thinnest condoms to you. And these are Japanese condoms. They're 0.0038 millimeter thin. You don't sell it here. So.

So we saw this like specs.

Okay. Yeah, so, so I was. But you know, we did that for a few months and you know, almost turned Launch Cam into like a fulfillment center.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, yeah. I literally had like boxes of condoms. I stack up and I was like fulfilling, you know, these orders and you know, I just. And there was one day where I just felt like, you know, what the, what the heck am I doing with my life? Right.

But it was working. You guys did well.

No, no, we didn't like, I think we did everything up to a point.

Tell us more about this product market fit.

Yeah, yeah. So, so I think we, we built the, the basis, the baseline for, for the company. And, and, but we, we just, we didn't really, you know, we kind of lost our interest in the business model really quickly. And my co founder Vincent and I, we just, we, we, this is what we do. We built something and then we didn't stick to it and we quit. And then, so we just keep iterating to find something that we really enjoyed doing. Right. Because I realized that I didn't really enjoy the sort of logistics and the operations side of E commerce business.

You mean you didn't like mailing condoms out?

Yeah, just being more succinct about it. Yeah, there was merit to that idea.

But yeah, but back, back to Launch Academy, I mean like looking, looking forward, like 10, 20, 30 years from now, what's something that you'll take away from the experience of first, you know, being a part of creating this? And also, you know, you, you're in an interesting place because you've, you're both like a co founder. You're, you've been in my position and Shadi's position, but you're also been in, you know, what we would call our customer's position, which is like you're an entrepreneur in the system, right? So you've literally experienced, you know, every facet of Launch Academy from all angles. So what's like, what's something you'll take away from all of it and like, you know, 20 years from now, like what are you gonna remember? What are the lessons that you know? And it comes down to one or two. I mean like there's lots of little mini things like don't walk in Gastown at 7:30 at night. But like, that's not what you're gonna remember, right?

Right. So I think focus is probably one of the most important lessons I've learned along the way. Because when you're in the position as the program manager or the community manager, you interact with entrepreneurs on a day to day basis. And if you're doing office hours as well, you meet these entrepreneurs on a one on one basis and they'll tell you that hey, there's all these opportunities that's in front of them. You know, what should they do, right? Do they do this, do they do that? And as a startup you don't have a lot of resources. And your resources, your energy, your time and maybe a little bit of your money.

Right.

So you can't afford to work on everything. Right. You have to be very strategic. You have to have that discipline of focus. And if you don't have that focus, then it's very easy for you. You to waste resources on things that don't matter in a couple of months. If you're building a company and then you're thinking about doing R and D and you're thinking about investing a lot of resources into building the product, but you're not doing enough customer validation. So one of the biggest mistakes that startup founders make is that they end up building something that nobody wants. And I would say that's. And for launch kind of as well. I think focus is super important, for sure.

And, you know, knowing that you're, you're a UX designer, you like, and I don't mean to demean UX designers out there, but you like pretty things. I think we all do. You like things that look a certain way. Where is that balance between. I guess what you're describing is staying lean, staying building an mvp. That's bare bones. The balance between that and something that, you know, you can be proud of, be presentable and, you know, without leaning to the side of like you're being a perfectionist and you've overdone things. Like, how do you find that balance?

Well, I think expectations have gone up in the last couple of years. When you're building a startup, maybe in, you know, 22,009, 2010, maybe you can get away with, you know, a product that doesn't look as nice. Right. But right now, because it's so much easier to build products, there's a lot of plug and play type of modules that you can just, you know, it's kind of like legal. Right. There's, you know, marketplaces are out there now. You can literally download graphical assets, you know, stock photos. So there's really no excuse for your product to look crappy.

That's the issue now.

Right now.

Yeah, you gotta do it. Cause there's no, there's all the resources out there. Some of them are free, some of them are very cheap.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So there's absolutely no excuse if you, if your website still looks like something that's done 10 years ago.

And it's crazy how much judgment people put on that nowadays. Where I notice it too, if I land on a website and I'm like, what? This just looks sketchy?

And then get off the website credibility. That's huge.

Wix.com sites.

Yeah. So Squarespace actually solves a lot of those problems.

Right?

Because you can actually build a responsive website using Squarespace. So with all these tools, you really don't have an excuse to ship something that doesn't look nice.

I think that's an important pro tip for entrepreneurs out there today. They're starting today. I think they still have a mentality and I'm generalizing again, that you have to create everything kind of from scratch. Your code needs to be your own, your website needs to be your own, etc. Etc. But there's enough APIs out there for, you know, almost anything that you can, you can do zapier and, you know, if this, then that. Right, yeah. Other things like that. And then you got Squarespace and wix and Instapage and all those other guys that you should have a software stack that can build you a outside looking in a very respectable startup without actually, you know, diving into code long term. You still want your own code, you still want your own assets, but especially when you're at that customer validation point.

Right.

You can fake a lot of stuff. Hell, this show is faked, you know. You know, like we, we, you know, we could have gone a long road of, you know, making sure we have a professional setup, making sure we have staff, a camera person, all that stuff. But we went a different route where say, okay, what's the lowest amount of actual, like, smart tech that we need to put in this to produce a show? So it's a bunch of cables, a bunch of, bunch of manual pressing buttons, and then away we go.

It's the shift between working hard to working smart. And I feel like now with tech and millennials, everybody just tries to work as smart as possible and then it may look like they don't work that hard, but really they're having everything else working for them.

Cool. But I guess on that note, tell us about your new company.

Yeah, for sure. SHAPR Immersive. We're building a decentralized marketplace for geospatial data. Yeah, I know, I know.

Geospatial data.

Geospatial data, yes.

Sounds pretty cool.

Yeah. And you know, it's a blockchain company as well. I'm probably going to lose a few people here, but the goal is to make this data universally accessible so anyone can create scalable and persistent AR experiences. And by ar, I mean augmented reality. Yep.

And like, there's a term that I've seen you throw around a lot called the ar. The Augmented Reality cloud.

Yes, yes.

Right. So correct me if I'm wrong. This is. You're trying to map literally the Whole world for ar. Is that the right way of describing it?

Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people think AR cloud as a real time spatial map of the world. Some people think of it as the world's digital twin. Personally, I like to think of it as a digital universe that perfectly overlays on top of our real world. So have you guys seen Stranger Things?

Yes.

Yes. Okay. No second season. Well, yeah. So you know, upside down, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like that, right? A parallel digital universe where everything in that universe has been digitized. And it's what's necessary for AR to hit the mainstream. It's because you need the spatial data for your cameras to re localize so you can actually view the experience, the virtual experience, interact with it from various angles. And then you also need the spatial map of the world so you can support things like occlusion, which is hiding virtual objects behind physical ones and, or collision. So like colliding virtual objects with physical objects so these virtual assets can really behave like physical world objects. They respond to the physics of the world.

Right, so your technology because from my understanding to get the cloud visualized, I'm expecting some kind of satellite on the moon or something like that, right? Like some sort of cameras or some sort of feedback or how's that?

So, so, so satellite can only get you so far. Okay, so what we're really interested is in is the near fields, right? So satellite, you know, you know, through satellite imagery you can probably get a general sense of what the world looks like from very, very far away. Yeah, right. If you have LiDAR scanners on the planes to scan for the city, then you get a general idea of what the city looks like with more accuracy. Right. But gps, at the end of the day, that's not super accurate. We're talking about spatial accuracy, that's down to the millimeter. So that's when the near field technology like our phones become more relevant. Right? Because then we can actually scan the space. It's also relevant is because that's where the most human activities occur as well. Right. So if so why is, you know, I guess the rainforest relevant and there's no one there to experience this virtual experience. Right. But you know, West Hastings or Water street in Gastown, that's super relevant.

Right?

Yeah, for general consumers, they want to have an experience, a location based AR game or whatever the case may be. They need to be able to, to interact with the virtual experience at the street level.

And so kind of just imagining things. It's like if I Want to move to, I don't know, Saudi Arabia. Yeah, right. You're talking about in the future. Your air cloud is not complete, but to a point where it's usable. I can actually visualize myself walking the streets of Saudi Arabia without having to before I decide whether I want to go there. Is that kind of. So that's.

That's more virtual reality.

Yeah.

So you can already do that with Google Street View, or you can just create a 3D model of Saudi Arabia. What augmented reality is more focused on is that you're stepping into the real world and you're interacting with virtual experiences in the real physical world.

So in the future, we'll be able to walk down the street and I'll be able to just look at a restaurant, and then Jurassic park will come out.

Yeah. I'll be able to, like, Velociraptor, which.

Is Yelp reviews out of the restaurant. Or I'll be able to have, like, arrows on the sidewalk telling me where to go for Google Maps.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. But this is like the first steps towards making that accessible to everyone.

Exactly. So what you brought up there is. So it's the biggest promise of ar, right? It's the ability to organize information at its origin, so you can go to, you know, historic site and be able to learn the history of that place.

Right.

Or you can navigate yourself in a foreign city without the need of a map or translator.

So you can have a virtual pet that follows you around everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. So that's super interesting.

A virtual pet that never needs to go to the bathroom.

Yeah, perfect.

Yeah.

So I mean, my probably tough question, but this is my favorite question would be, when do you think AI will be? Sorry, not ar. AR will be mainstream. When do you think we'll get there?

So something really exciting happened yesterday. Niantic, the company that built Pokemon Go, they announced their real world platform, and they're able to do something called Real Time Inclusion through computer vision technology as well as deep learning. So they're able to. They can make the camera see the world like humans do. So the camera will understand the different objects in the space, is able to map out the scene as well. So in their demo video, you see this AR Pikachu. Right. And it's able to actually go behind physical world objects in real time. Wow. So that's something that I haven't seen before, that Real time.

Like climbing up a billboard or something.

Yeah, yeah. So like jumping onto a bench and you see dynamic objects, like people walking, right?

Yeah.

These are People walking and then the sketch goes behind the person.

Yeah. Instead of through, which is what you get now.

So there's a lot of misconception around augmented reality. Like most people think that's superimposing computer generated image on top of the real world. I would say that's ar. Maybe zero point. Yeah, 1.0, whatever. Right. But I think augmented reality is more about enhancing your reality. Right. So it's not just visual. Right. It's olfactory, it's auditory as well. So all these experiences, we're starting with visual most of the time, but eventually when you ask when will AR hit mainstream? It's really when our devices like AR headsets or AR glasses are ubiquitous, so everyone's wearing them. It's able to support multiplayer interaction.

Right.

So you and I, we can look at the same virtual experience or virtual character at the same time in real time, interact with it. That's when AR is going to hit the mainstream. Because right now it kind of feels like surfing the web without friends. It's a very silo experience.

Like that's not true. When you said major Pokemon Go announcement, I thought you said. Because they announced they're making trades now.

Okay.

Going down that route.

No, no, no, that's.

Wait, so this is exciting. In the future, everybody's going to have to wear hipster glasses.

That's what's happening in theory.

Dude.

I spent a lot of money to not wear glasses just to have to.

Wear them in the future.

That does bring up a good point because I mean, like Google Glass, super famous products also, you could call it a super famous failure. You know, my question to you is, if Google can't, you know, make it mainstream, what was missing? Or in your opinion?

Oh, it was just because they're simply just too early, right? Yeah.

They're not ready for the adoption. Like people.

Yeah, yeah, take it on. Exactly. And privacy is such a huge issue right now. Right. Who wants people to have cameras on their face capturing every single moment of it? Right. Yeah. So we haven't really seen a killer AR app right now in the industry. And that's why it hasn't really hit the mainstream. They're more.

The closest thing is Pokemon Go.

Yeah, yeah, any Pokemon Go. With their acquisition of Azure Reality and another company, they're really diving into the AR space. They're investing heavily, heavily into the core technologies and potentially competing with ARKit too as well. It'll still take a while. I think people will have to get used to this idea because if mobile AR would come first. Right. So this experience still, it's not perfect because the field view is still limited, right?

Yeah.

You're kind of looking through a magical lens and then you see the experience, but there is this kind of middleware that's in front of you. Right. The ultimate experience is when you're wearing some sort of headsets or glasses and then you will be able to interact with the virtual. Yeah. And then your field view wouldn't be as limited. Right. And this is where Magic Leap is kind of heading towards with their headset and their light pack and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's. So you are, you have a very clear view of the world, but at the same time you have all these virtual experiences that's, you know, seamlessly integrated in that physical world.

That's really exciting. How have you found Vancouver as like a host for AR VR innovation so far?

I think Vancouver is great. You know, we're the, I mean the. So I'm also on the board of the VR AR association, the Vancouver chapter. And we are the currently the fastest growing chapter. Cool. And yeah, of the chapters, all the 50 chapters around the world, that's pretty cool. Yeah. So Dan Berger, our president, he just recently released infographic on the current landscape of VRLR in Vancouver and we're surpassing 200 companies right now in this hub. And a lot of it is attributed to our gaming and our film industries. Because it goes hand in hand. Yeah, because tackling VR and AR seems like the, the natural step. Right. For gaming and film to innovate.

And you guys got a cool kind of conference coming up as well. Yeah, we were talking about that the other day. Is this going to be the first VR AR kind of big event here in Vancouver?

So last year we have CBR and Archiac was the organizer of that. But now with the VR AR Global Summit, it's organized by the VR AR association, which is a global entity with I think over 5,000 members. So the type of poll is very different, the type of speakers that we're able to bring on board. So we have speakers from Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Intel. So all the big players are going to be here at this conference and it's on September 21st and 22nd and it's going to be the biggest VR AR conference that Vancouver has seen.

I'll be there.

Or Western Canada.

Really.

I'll be there as long as Dan gives me a free ticket if you're watching.

Wow, you're really hyping Dan.

Yeah, well, Dan. Dan wouldn't be the person to give you that Wouldn't that be you? No, it'd be Emery. And yes, I need an intro to secrets. Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, kind of could go back a little bit. Like, you went to a conference called awe. Aw.

It's more fun if you say awesome, right? Awesome.

Awesome.

Some awe.

Yeah.

But you guys demoed your tech with something called KittyCon. Yeah. What. What is Kitty Khan?

So Kitty Khan is actually the world's first multiplayer mixed reality experience that's powered by a mobile device like an iPad. And it's a demonstration that we did to show the potential of the AR cloud and to validate why spatial data matters. So what we did was we built a six foot tall replica of the Empire State Building. And this is a physical world object, right?

It's like made of wood or cardboard.

Yeah, it's made of wood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And then we programmed a virtual cat to interact with this building. And this cat is Kitty Khan. And so. So the cat is spatially aware, so it can actually understands the geometry of the building and is able to climb behind the building and disappear from, you know, the player's, you know, field of view, and then. Or it can climb up the building. Right. With sub centimeter level of spatial accuracy.

So this is like an example of, like, in the future, if you were to scan the real version of this building, you would be able to have a real Kitty Khan.

Yeah, Kitty Khan climbing up the real Empire State Building. Yes, exactly. Right. So if we have the, you know, the drill, reference point, clouds of the Empire State Building, then we can, you know, theoretically put a virtual object on that building, interact with it.

Right. So.

So if you think about, you know, Transformers, you know, think about Pacific Rim, Jurassic World. Right? The future of movie trailers could very well be that we step into it, right. Instead of consuming it from, you know, a screen. And we've been doing this for the last 68 years anyways, right?

Yeah.

Beats 4D. I hate 4D. Sorry, guys. You guys know what 4D is?

Yeah.

Like, you know when you go to Disney World or Universal Studios, and. And they. Because 3D apparently isn't enough, so they go 40, and it's usually some mixture of, like, people blowing crap in my face.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, I've had that before. Usually shakes.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I don't like that.

Yeah.

Air.

Also 3D makes me dizzy. Yeah, I kind of want to puke.

Yeah. So.

So that. That sounds way cooler.

Way.

What do you think of Facebook announcing they're gonna launch Oculus tv?

It's cool.

It's Cool. Confirmed.

I saw that today, and I was like, damn it, I cannot wait to be able to put that on on the plane and just be able to zone out. Like, that would be probably my main use for this Oculus headset would be, like, traveling. Then you'd be able to. I mean, I don't know if I'd use it in my living room, because.

Yeah. But I. I guess my biggest question is that, is that experience substantially better than just watching something on tv?

I don't think it's substantially better. I think it's more portable.

Right.

That's, like, the only issue they're really.

Solving, the portability you have.

You know, your phone's yours, but nobody wants to do this.

I do have arm problems doing this.

Yeah.

I mean, it's. I don't know.

It's not revolutionary. Right. It's just kind of like a solving.

Yeah. I mean, I have. I have my. I guess my personal opinion on this, but I think it's really exciting what Oculus is doing. They're making VR headsets a lot more accessible.

Right.

$200. You have this very amazing piece of device that, you know, that's accessible to the general public, but right now, just the technology in terms of, like, resolution, you know, you can see that's. It's not quite there yet.

It's not there.

And so that's why I like watching, you know, Netflix or watching a movie on my, you know, 48 inch TV. That's still a substantially better experience.

Of course.

It's a 4K TV, right?

Yeah.

Versus putting on headsets, and then you're still looking at the screen. Just virtual environment. It's not like you turn around and there's something there. Right. So in VR, what's the most compelling use case in VR is storied living. Right. Because it's immersed, not the flat. Yeah. It's not. Yeah. So, like, there's no. Absolutely no point to watch TV in an immersive environment.

Yeah.

Right. But there's a lot of merit to immersing yourselves in a story where you can discover different things.

Right.

And everyone's experience would be slightly different because you. It's kind of like your choose your own adventure type of deal. Yeah. So that's. That's my. But I haven't really looked into it yet, so.

Yeah, that's.

I'm imagining, like, movies in the future where you can just walk through the scenes.

Yeah. And that. That's. I think the first step that AR is looking at is. Is vision. And I Think you spent a lot of time talking about vision. Just imagine for a second smell.

Mm.

Right? Like, I don't know, I'm not scientist, I don't know how it works at all. But just, you know, we're playing make believe. Like, imagine you can walk, walk through the scene, but you can also smell the streets of Brooklyn. You can also, like, you know, all that stuff. You can do this. You can smell the bagels. You can smell like the grime of New York. And that is your movie experience. Right? Like, oh, yeah, that's crazy.

That'll happen.

Yeah.

Eventually.

Eventually. Yeah. That's where the world's, you know, heading.

But speaking speaking of crazy, so I'm excited this week to announce a brand new segment that we're doing inspired by our lovely folks here at Launch Academy. So a couple of weeks ago, we had talked about our mystery of forks. And you, you've been here for six years. You know, we've had a fork problem. And the fork problem is literally that is that we, as Launch Academy, we keep buying forks. And every two weeks I go up to Shoddy and go shoddy, there's no forks.

And I just shrug. I just. I don't know. I don't know where they go.

And then we look in the dishwasher. We look, we look everywhere.

I put it a million times in our newsletter. I verbally harassed people to be like.

Is that our fork?

And.

And the stupid part is, you know, when, and especially for people that don't live with parents that actually had to buy, you know, forks and knives, they always, they generally come like, unless you're an office like us, they generally come in sets.

Right.

So you get forks, knives and spoons. And the result of that is we have like literally thousands of knives in our office.

I found an Amazon provider that sells them separately, but it's so expensive. I think we have a really big yearly budget on spoons and forks, and nobody takes knives home. There's discrimination against forks because they're not useful.

Yeah.

But anyway, that kind of inspired us to do this segment and I'm calling it what the Fork. Yeah, and what the fork is, is, you know, the weirdest, wackiest and mysterious stories of tech that, that we can find. So this week's what the Fork Goes to the consumers of Vancouver. So according to CTV News, and this is, this is. You can go Google it or whatever, last weekend there was a man named Douglas Bevins, and he boiled about 100 organic beef hot dogs. Okay. And he put one in each. Each One in a bottle of water that he sold at an annual car free event. So then to promote this, he wore a hot dog onesie at the event. Called himself the CEO of hot dog water. So Bevins told people that water creates quicker sodium uptake for good health because hot dog water and perspiration resemble each other. So when you drink hot dog water, it bypasses the lymphatic system, whereas other waters have to go through your filtering system. So really, hot dog water has three times as much uptake as coconut water. Okay. His product was professionally packaged and looked like something out of a legitimate company, except for one thing. They had freaking hot dogs in their water. And so obviously you and I were all laughing. Many people other laugh too, but there were others that were impressed by the health benefits that it experienced with this unique product. This is real.

This is not real.

Including body spray and hot dog water breath freshener, the price for hot dog water was 38.99 a bottle. But, you know, because Bevans is a nice dude, because of a special discount during this car event, it was $75 for two bottles. Nice guy, right? So, so Bevins, his real job is he's a. He operates as both a tour operator and a performance artist. So he came up with the idea because he questioned, you know, whether the ridiculous marketing and health claims behind some products. And he's like, I bet I could sell hot dog water. So he knew, it's not a thing, it's a joke. He's looking this up. His aim was to get consumers to bypass slick marketing and think about what they're buying, especially in the age of social media clicks and likes, right? So he thought this could be like a cool project for an art performance to create awareness about critical thinking. So here, here's the kicker. With hot dog water body spray, with their lip balm, with their breath freshener, and of course, you know, the awesome hot dog water water bottles itself. He sold about 60 liters of product over the weekend. 60 liters. So while obviously it's hilarious, it's also extremely, extremely sad. In our chase for supposed health, did we just forget our brains at the starting line for Eddie's, Every cynic that tells you like marketing doesn't work, this guy's just proved otherwise.

The bottles actually looks nice. Nice.

The bottles look nice. That's what I'm telling you. So consumers of Vancouver. What the fork, man. That is this week's segment of what the fork. And. And it's so unbelievable. Everybody in the room right now is just googling whether I just lied to them or not.

Fake news.

This is real. I mean, it's a fake product, but this is real.

Yeah.

Unbelievable, guys. So what we want to do is if you guys have interesting, weird, wacky stories that you think could be on what the fork, we want to encourage you to send them to shoddyaunchacademy Ca. Samchacademy Ca. Give us a tweet at launchacademyhq, whatever way you can find us, and we'll see if it's up to the par.

I want to meet this guy.

Get this guy on the show.

Yeah.

Douglas Bevins, if you're listening, Come on our show. We'll bring you in, we'll cut you in line. We'll cut out racism. So before we move on, we do. We do have a game for you, Alex. And I know you didn't want to play a game.

Yeah.

Too bad. So shoddy. I'm gonna let you take it away.

Oh, right. Okay.

I'm doing this.

I don't have the notes.

I'd rather do karaoke.

Do I have the notes?

Deviant karaoke.

So. So the game we're gonna play is called Rapid Fire, and we've played this before with a couple of our guests. So we just want to quickly learn a lot, lot about you in a small space of time. So the point is for you to not think, just answer. So sh has. Sh has the questions ahead of her. And don't worry, we have food at the end of this. Maybe this.

All right, let's do this. You ready?

No.

Suzy before.

Yeah. If there's, like, no filter, then I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know if this is loud.

This won't be the. Like, the fastest. Rapid Fire. Because I'm also very slow. Slow reader.

Read faster.

Here we go.

Okay. What's your favorite day of the week?

Too slow. Too slow. I don't have a particular. Oh, come on.

Seven days a week, everybody has a favorite day of the week. What's your favorite day of the week?

I don't know. Saturday.

Good. Okay, what's your life motto?

Carpe dien.

If you have to give a one line advice to someone trying to make his or her startup successful, what would it be?

Focus.

Kanye west or Kanye East?

East.

If you could own one tech company, which one would it be?

What? Sorry?

If you could own one tech company, which one would it be?

Shape. Immersive.

Nice one. Who do you admire the most?

Kanye East.

That's Grey's nickname.

What color is your toothbrush?

Black.

What would be the name of your first child?

Did I. Did I say. Is it Fanny or Laurel? Laurel. Yeah. Yanny or Laura? Yeah, it's Laurel.

Favorite Launch Academy staff member.

Oh, this is hard.

Oh, dude, it's gotta be focused.

Least favorite Launch Academy staff member. Oh, you can't think too much.

I can't think too much.

Yeah, he. He has a name in his mind, but he's not saying it.

I'm thinking about the mice. I'm not thinking about anyone on a team. I'm thinking about, like.

It's like thinking about Cinderella.

Yeah. Our extended team.

If you could follow in the footsteps of one famous CEO, who would it be?

Tiny East.

Which startup do you wish you invested in?

Shape.

Immersive. But you already invested in it.

Oh, yeah. With my. My time.

What would you do? What would you do with 15 minutes of fame?

15 minutes of me. Oh, so what. What's it. What's like the.

If you had 15 minutes where the world had their eyes on you and you would be famous.

I don't like fame, though.

You'd sing a whole new world.

Yeah, I would say go do some good.

Nice.

Solid.

Very convincing.

Name five tech startups in 10 seconds.

Startups you already lost. I know.

Eight.

Yeah.

Seven.

Thinkific. Later. Predictable revenue. You got two. Yeah.

Launch Academy is not a startup. Sorry, guys.

Yeah.

If you could talk to Justin Trudeau, what would you say? Damn. Damn.

Daniel. Yeah.

What are those?

The pipeline thing is pretty upsetting.

Yeah, that's a good one. What? House supply is running out right now.

House supplies, not condoms.

Use one word to describe your technology ability.

What did you write?

Use one word to describe your technology ability. Technology.

Technology ability. I have none.

Incomplete.

Incomplete. Yeah.

If you went back to school, it would be for.

For h. I want to say programming.

I want to say midwifery.

Seems useful.

Okay, this is the final and most important one. What do you like to eat at work?

I don't eat at work.

I was about to say Alex doesn't eat at work. I've been trying to convince him to go to Costco and buy a bunch of snacks and then just have it at the desk. Yeah, because this guy can focus. This number one tip is focus. But you can focus to the point where he doesn't eat for like a whole day. It's not good.

Where do you think we get it from?

You guys, thank you for.

Thank you for the slowest rapids. Fires.

I know, I know.

I'm terrible.

You know, I'M so the fact that I know too many language, I say.

Kanye east like three times.

Yes, Kanye East. For those that you don't know is. I mean, take it. Go Google this, guys. Go take a picture of Ray Walia. Just Google Ray Wallya and you're gonna find these, like, the weirdest smiles.

I feel like we should do something so that when people Google Kanye East, Ray shows up.

Oh, I could work on it.

Yeah, we can, we can. Yeah, Just hire SEO. I'll pay for it.

Yeah, sounds good.

Yeah. Shape Immersive was sponsored this campaign.

We can interact with it, right?

Yeah, Kanye eats in ar.

Sounds good.

Yeah. Location, location based game.

Fair enough. So before we kind of move on to the main event, which is the food, we do have some announcements to make. So first of all, if you're not following us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Why not? You've already lasted through like 45 minutes of the show. Just give us a follow, guys. Like, seriously do it. Launch Academy hq. It's very easy to spell, unless you spell Lunch Academy, in which case you've spilled it wrong, but we should probably get those handles too. So It's Launch Academy HQ. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. Just do it.

Is it gonna show up here?

Maybe. Maybe I'll pretend you're like, link down below. Link down below. Or just click here.

Right.

I'm waiting for your AR stuff to, like, just throw it. Yeah. But if you haven't subscribed, we are actually a podcast for those of you that only interact with us on Facebook. So make sure you, you know, give us. Subscribe. Give us that five stars. We will buy you lunch if you give us five stars.

Don't say that. We don't have the budget.

We have five stars running a startup here.

Okay. We've got lots of important announcements, lots.

Of events, so why don't you go ahead first?

Well, first of all, we wanted to tell everybody that Traction is around the corner. So just around the corner. If you want to participate or if you want to just attend, make sure you look up what we've got going on for Traction. I'm not even sure what we should give them in terms of a site to go to.

Tractionconf.IO.

Okay. It's not through our website.

T R A C T I O N C O N F IO I can check it out. Fake words.

Also, big announcement. Launch Academy has space. Tell your friends, tell your mom, your sister. Launch Academy is open to new members.

Yes, we have a brand new, exciting launchpad program that we're releasing for August 1st. We will have more information in the coming weeks, so make sure you're staying tuned to the next episode of Launch Academy. Or just make sure you're following our website. But if you're a startup, you're looking for product market fit, we're looking at you. We want to work with you, want to help you.

We want you.

We want you, Uncle Sam, right here. Yeah, we'd love to work with you, want to help you out. Just have a discussion. Check out our website.

Also, we've got a few cool events. This is a long shot because our next events are in July, but I figured I'd tell you guys in advance. Technically, yeah, it's almost July.

Yeah. Oh, one more day.

Speaking of July, happy early birthday to Alex. That's an important announcement.

When's his birthday?

Canada Day. Right.

That was July 2nd.

Yeah, July 2nd. Yeah. See, it's technically on Canada Day because it's July 2nd in Taiwan and because of time difference, it's actually July 1st.

Only he thinks like that.

Okay.

He wants to have the same day.

Are you going to be in the office?

No.

Oh, damn.

Yeah, because it's a long weekend, right?

Yeah, that's true. Don't come. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, exciting. Canada Day and Alice's birthday, we've got a few events coming up in July. On July 11th we've got a lunch and learn on how to create a high converting landing page. Important stuff.

Pretty important, yeah.

So we've got John Chan, CEO of 2X Conversion Design, coming and talking to us about all of that jazz. And then on July 7th, we've got a panel on. Oh, yeah, sorry, yeah, July 17th. Thanks for the correction. A guide to seed fundraising. And this is going to be awesome. Panel with all alumni from Launch Academy. So we've got Monique Morden from Lendified, we've got Sarah Goodman from Vital Signs, and Craig Slagle. I always mispronounce this last name from Run Go. Run Go is super cool. I use it all the time. Download Run Go.

And for those of you that like tv, both Sarah and Craig were on Dragon's Den.

Oh, yeah.

So I mean, come to the panel if you need money. If you don't need money, that's cool.

Yeah, don't come.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean we also looking forward up, up into September, there's also a hackathon for, for those of you coders or builders or things like that. Van Hacks dot com. Check out that website. It's a hackathon that's dedicated to Helping fulfill technical debt to a select group of non profit companies. So they're trying to help these non profit companies who you know, help create a lot of, lot of good work in the city of Vancouver. So they're, they're gathering, you know, hackers, coders, designers to build solutions for them. So vanhacks.com that's going to be in late September I think September 21st is the date. So you want to check out that website.

Cool.

Cool. Any announcements from us?

Any announcements from us? So as the presenting sponsor of the WRAR Global Summit, we have an exclusive opportunity to build a city scale multiplayer mixed reality experience. And we're looking for partners who have access to licensed ip. So these are well known media franchises and so you know, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Disney. I would love to speak to your contact player because this is going to be the world's first city scale AR experience.

I want to see Spider man swinging through.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that would be super cool. Yeah.

Awesome. Sweet.

And then shout out to Dan Berger.

I guess Dan's getting a lot of airtime.

What about my mom? Dan is replacing my mom. Shout out to my mom.

Shout out to Shade's mom. What up? Haven't talked to you in a while.

I can't keep track anymore.

Shout out to Team Costa Rica too.

Yeah, thanks for participating. Yeah.

Also shout out to Team Panama soccer team. Thank you for getting 11 yellow cards. Any shout outs for you?

No, I think I'm good.

Ready for food. Sam has brought us something, hopefully delicious.

This has been my most stressful little week of, of food.

You can't have fried food by the way.

You can't have fried food?

No.

Why don't you tell me that before? I only bring fried food.

Yeah, okay.

Well regardless, so, so I had, first of all I knew Alex was coming so I wanted to, to bring him something that would be special to him.

Mushrooms.

Well, we contemplated, we contemplated that but then we, we still want you to come back on the show in the future. Okay.

So that sushi from Miku.

But, but here's the issue. So the original place which I'm not gonna name because I think we can use it in the the future. So, so I knew I wanted to bring something like hot, like not, not cold. So, so it had to be close to the airtime. I didn't want to bring it in like 11 this morning, have it sit for two, three hours and then like we're eating garbage. Doesn't matter where it's from.

Right.

So the problem was I needed to get it as close to airtime as possible. And when I went to go to the place that I was going to get the food at, it was like, like 12:15, 12:20. The lineup was like 45 minutes out the door. Literally out the door. And I was standing in line and I texted shot. I'm like, I'm in trouble. Literally those words. I'm like, I'm in trouble. Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. Luckily, I came up with a backup, so. So unfortunately, my first choice will have to wait till you come back on the air.

Oh, yeah.

But also, I didn't know that you're not eating fried food because, you know you're on a diet.

No, no, just. Yeah.

So. So maybe just trying to.

What is stay away from fried food.

Oh, well, you're not staying away this time. So unfortunately, we're gonna have to go with my. My second choice, which is honestly, you'd probably like more. But you. I'm also 87 sure that you've already had this. Okay. So that, that's why I didn't want to go this route that it in the first place. But at the same time, I'm 83.4% sure shade's never had it.

Oh, okay. So.

So for Jade and. And Claire has chicken in years, so.

Oh, it says chicken.

So it's chicken.

Oh, you just named it.

Okay, so why don't one of you guys open it up?

Yeah. So fried chicken, the food.

This is. Yeah. So Alex recognizes it. It's from N Penh. Yeah. I'll get some gorgeous chicken wings.

Yeah.

For the inside.

Oh, that's good.

Phnom Penh, a very well known Cambodian restaurant. A lot of people think it's a Vietnamese restaurant, but they actually serve Cambodian food. They all do have pho noodles, which are good as well. But they're most known for are their potent and addictive chicken wings.

Yeah.

And I'd say about five years ago, it was one of, like, the hidden gems of Vancouver, but now, like, everybody knows about it.

Yeah.

So, Shadi, have you had this before?

No, that looks.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

So. So the key to this is, as I take a picture live on air. Yeah. Is you also have to have the sauce that comes with it.

Yeah. The vinegar.

It can't just be the. The wings by itself. So it's garlic butter. It's very garlicky. Very garlicky. I generally don't like garlic because it gives, like, a bad vibe to my nut. Well, you know, the thing with me and vegetables.

But since it's so good.

Yeah, I mean, shot a. Do you want it. You want to give it first cracks before. And he's also allergic, apparently.

No, no, I'm just staying away from.

He's staying away from it. So you're gonna have to give us the review on this. Yeah, well, okay. Yeah, you have to get the sauce out first.

Yeah, okay.

Sorry you're not getting the full.

I already love it because it's so garlicky.

So wait, so it's like non pan sponsored as. Is that the non pen.

If you're listening, we will take a sponsorship, no problem.

Yeah, yeah, you're. You're, you know, I'm giving them free shout out product placement, live reaction.

Whoa, whoa. See, See, I'm. I'm good to you. You keep giving me this vegan crap. No offense to vegan.

She's good to you too. She's just thinking long term.

No, no, it's like, it's the worst kind of vegan food. It's unhealthy vegan food. It's like, it's like fried. Last week was like the sweetest pudding I've had in my life, really. And it was vegan. I'm like, this is going to give me diabetes.

Yeah, this is really shout out to.

Those guys, by the way. Oh, so we're just going to. We're just going to watch Shade as she's trying to avoid the mic and making these.

Is this where we usually lose our audience? No, this is where all the audience producer ladies give me the launch.

Just like cut it out.

Yeah, you're done, you're done.

All right, bye, everyone.

All right, so thank you, Alex, for coming on to our show. Thank you, non pen, for. For allowing me to pay you and give us food. And join us next time for episode 10, which Shade promises to be huge.

Yeah, it will be massive. Celebrating 10. 10 episodes.

Me out for the 10th one.

Huge.

So who's going to be on the 10th episode?

We don't know. We're going to have to wait and find out. Maybe it's just us and that'll be a massive let down.

No special guest.

Anyway, we're going to sign off now, so thank you everybody for listening and we'll see you next time.

It's going to be peace out. Yeah, see you.

Bye.

Bye.