alexcaps

I would love to finally see some progress here. Worked on something similar 20+ years ago and got so burned out by the process and huge amount of capital needed.

https://www.inknowvation.com/sbir/companies/solgene-therapeu...

“ Solgene Therapeutics' patented drug-delivery technology enables the encapsulation, in a porous ceramic material, of living cells that secrete therapeutic compounds. After implantation, the material shields the encapsulated cells from the host's immune system while allowing passage of nutrients and therapeutic cell-secreted compounds. Implanted cells continue to function, thus mimicking natural processes. Solgene believes it can create competitive advantages in under-served biotech markets. It seeks revenues through alliances to commercialize hard-to-deliver, cell-secreted, large-molecule therapies. Solgene proved its concept by overcoming diabetes in diabetic mice. Target applications include delivery of livestock therapies, growth factors for bone healing, and a cell-secreted HIV therapy.”

But… where are all the ads???

I tried a number of simple Italian words and I kept thinking it was German and getting it wrong. I even tried "hola" and it couldn't get it.

Interesting. Thanks.

Echo Dot (2nd gen) -- currently $39.99 https://www.amazon.com/All-New-Echo-Dot-2nd-Generation/dp/B0...

Couldn't tell me who the CEO of Apple is... :(

This sounded cool until, "Now Goel is forming a business to bring the chatbot to the wider world of education.” // are all educators just trying to create companies these days?

Pretty sure that phone call was staged to make it look more live.

Good reminder

This makes me sick. Jeremy makes me sick. Despicable.

Look into OpenEars. It's pretty crummy but it's free :/

It's not low cost yet, but check out http://josh.ai. Starting high end but price will drop significantly.

Pretty bad except for keyword spotting.

It's a double-edged sword for privacy reasons.

1. A number of early customers we've spoken with don't like the idea of an always listening device. The perception is an invasion of privacy.

2. There's a fear that someone outside the home could simply yell a command like "unlock the doors" to gain access. There are a number of ways one could solve this, but it's a fear we've heard about.

So the extra friction of taking out your phone and pressing a button so far seems worth the added layer of privacy and security, but we're definitely thinking hard about this one.

Thanks! I am honestly amazed so many people were able to get to that page. We plan on going live with the website next week and right now it takes a fair bit of digging around to get there. That said, it is technically "public" facing so I'm fixing it up as soon as Stripe permits. Will probably disable the button in the meantime if you go back.

Gender: we have a variety of systems set up and we try to give them each a unique personality. My home, for example, is a male named Theodore with a British accent. The LA office is Scarlett and the Denver office is Samantha.

Website: we have a new website launching soon with a lot more information. You stumbled upon a page I hope to finish building today. Sorry for the confusion.

"Voice programming": We chose to focus on getting a product to market and proving customer demand before building out the entire developer portal. It's definitely the plan and we want to do it, it's just not where we see early revenue coming from and as a small team we have to pick our battles. I can't wait to open this stuff up when ready.

Good points! Thanks for the feedback :)

Thanks! Would love to chat, alex@jstar.ai

All good points. With Josh, we're targeting large homes with complex environments. Our goal is to make it super simple to set up, configure, and use Josh. While Echo + IFTTT + a Wink hub might not sound too complicated to someone on HN, it's far too hacky for a 10,000 sq ft home where the average home owner doesn't want to understand what's truly going on.

We're also focused as much on home monitoring and access when you're away from the home as we are on control from within. It might seem subtle, but the number of times you want eyes and ears and the ability to change the environment of your home when away is super important.

The longer term play which will take some time to realize is all about AI. We see Josh as an invisible companion that grows with you, understands natural language, and can interact with the connected devices around you.

We're very much an AI company, and that's the focus, but the product will roll out in stages. The foundation is built on a home-made NLP engine that's pretty flexible. That said, NNs are only used for speech recognition currently. With a relatively stable NLP engine we're focused now on device integration to control the majority of IoT products our customers might have. We're implementing some learning and pattern recognition models but it will take some time before those come close to resembling any true "intelligence".

Yep, price tag is $10k. There's quite a bit under the hood you're not seeing in this video, particularly considering large 10,000+ sq ft homes and managing full home automation. If you're familiar with Crestron or Control4, we're playing in that space for v1.

haha awesome!

Thanks! The NLP engine is a couple years in the making, but the app and product are just a few months in. Were initially building for large homes where voice control can be super helpful, but we're already working on developer tools to let others build Josh into their systems. Your hack sounds pretty awesome. If you don't already have one, think about getting a Sonos Play:1 and tinkering with the unofficial API. You can do some pretty fun things with it.

* just a note, we are working with an official private Sonos API, it's just hard to get access if you're starting out tinkering.

I wasn't going to respond... But after reading the whole article, the author really comes across as self-entitled. I fear no one is willing to tell her the truth. So here are some thoughts:

1. Fundraising is hard no matter who you are. Stop reading TechCrunch and comparing yourself to others. You never know what someone's journey is. From the story the press tells it looks like I've had an easy path raising capital but that's not true. We've gone 12+ months on a single $50k investment after a year of no funding. Startups are hard and you need to be willing to deal with the fact that most companies struggle to fundraise.

2. I am glad you have conviction, you'll need it, but the dating space is not as guaranteed as you think. Up until recently, the entire dating market combined didn't top a billion dollars in the U.S. Companies like Tinder are probably overvalued and yet they have millions and millions of users with crazy metrics. Do you have ANY indication you've built the next Tinder?

3. Investors invest in opportunities they understand. I look at your product and I ask "what's novel, defensible, unique here?". The design doesn't blow me away and the model sounds just like Three Day Rule which now has support and backing by Match.com (note: all founders of TDR are female). What sets you apart?

4. Please please please don't think you're hot shit because the press covered you. YC says to focus on traction because that is all that matters, and they're right. 60% growth doesn't mean anything. What are the numbers? Do you have 100k users on track to pass 250k in half that time and 1MM in a year? Look at Slack or Snapchat or Instagram growth to compare what investors get excited about it. Be really honest with yourself about whether you DO have numbers or not.

Look, I understand discrimination and believe you experience it far worse than a straight white guy, but it really doesn't come across as a compelling argument the way it's explained here. I'm sure I'll get a lot of hate for calling you out here, but I feel it would be dishonest not to reply and tell you what it looks like from the outside. I wish you the best of luck and hope you build that billion dollar company, but please remember the dating space is hard, saturated, historically hard to monetize, and filled with tombs of companies that got millions only to go nowhere.

Sorry if it wasn't more clear. This is a completely new product built from ground up, new backend, new servers, new user tables, entirely new front-end, new features and functionality. The only thing that remains is the brand and the ultimate goal to connect people offline. I figured "Show HN" made sense because it's something we just made and went live with for the first time less than 24 hours ago and I wanted to show it to the HN community.

That's why we limited introductions to one per day on At The Pool and quickly scaled to 100+ countries...

http://atthepool.com

It means a lot to see everyone's comments and thoughts. Thank you. - OP

My thoughts exactly.

Sounds like At The Pool -- http://atthepool.com

At The Pool | Los Angeles, CA | Full Time | Front-End Developer (but be a rockstar)