RealityBLU provides marketers with 3D interactive, media rich content to deliver their ideas into the crowded social media world. Co-founders MJ Anderson and Stefan Agustsson joined forces to develop enhanced reality tools made especially for marketers.
Stefan Agustsson & MJ Anderson
They join The Savvy Entrepreneur Show to share the story of how they met and started the company. They relate some of the challenges of finding funding, and scaling the company. They also share a peek or two at where and how the company will be expanding.
Their story is compelling. But just as riveting is their predictions for the future of media and marketing. RealityBLU’s founders are also visionaries, envisioning a future that is truly inspiring and a little terrifying.
For example, they are convinced the smartphone will be completely obsolete in less than 5 years, and we will all soon be using wearable devices to receive and interact with media. They see it as inevitable that we will move closer and closer to immersive experiences. The result will increasingly blur the lines between reality and enhanced or even altered reality. The possibilities for improving our lives are many, and also create potential scenarios that we as a society will soon need to grapple with. RealityBLU and companies like them will definitely be ones to watch!
A transcript of the fascinating interview of RealityBLU follows below. Or, click here if you prefer to listen to the podcast/radio show version.
Doris Nagel 0:41
Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur show. We’re broadcasting from the Greater Chicago Milwaukee area. If you are or want to be an entrepreneur or small businessperson, this show is for you.
I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour. I’m a serial entrepreneur myself. And I’ve also counseled lots of startups and small businesses over the past 30 years.
The show has two goals, to share helpful information and resources and to inspire you, hopefully making your journey as an entrepreneur faster and easier — and maybe just a little bit more fun. To help with that, I have guests every week on the show who are willing to share their stories and their advice.
This week, I have not one but two guests: Stefan Agustsson and MJ Anderson. They are the co-founders of a Wisconsin startup called RealityBLU. RealityBLU is the leading augmented reality platform for marketers. I’m not sure what that is, but I know we’re going to find out more as we chat with Stephen and MJ.
Stefan and MJ each have 30 plus years’ experience. Stefan’s background is in media and technology startups in augmented reality, 3d visualization, advertising and marketing, among other things. He currently operates as RealityBLU’s chief executive officer. And an interesting fact about him is that his family hails from Iceland. And he is a 3x startup meaning this is his third go around, in terms of in terms of establishing startups and successfully exiting. Now MJ’s background is in creative and strategic development, multi-channel marketing and relationship management. He is a 2x startup and a creative industry leader. And he currently acts as the chief experience officer of the company and is originally from Chicago. The two of them have known each other for 23 years, and they finally decided to partner up and form RealityBLU. Now with that introduction, Stefan and MJ, welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur show. Thanks for being here today.
Stefan Agustsson 3:24
Thanks for having us. We’re really looking forward to this conversation and sharing our experiences and how we got started the business and in helping people understand what augmented reality is all about.
Doris Nagel 3:38
What exactly does RealityBLU do? And what niche does it serve with your customers?
MJ Anderson 3:54
RealityBLU is essentially a SaaS — software as a service — platform. Our software is delivered via the Internet through a subscription. And it’s designed for Creative People and marketing people who are typically not going to be very technical savvy, or that won’t be their primary, you know, focus in life. So, we wanted to build a toolset that will allow creative individuals and individuals whose main role is marketing to be able to easily create, deploy, manage and measure augmented reality content, in relationship to all the other things that they might be doing in conjunction with a marketing effort.
Doris Nagel 4:47
What are some ways that marketing people use augmented reality or use your software?
MJ Anderson 5:00
Over the last five or six years, there’s been an enormous shift in the way that we as human beings deal with media. In 2013. We saw the teeter totter kind of tipped. I mean, we as a society transition from computer-based interaction with media, or even a television-based interaction with media to more of a handset or a mobile interaction with content. And it’s pretty obvious today. If I took your smartphone away from you for 20 minutes, you might begin to get nervous and shake.
Doris Nagel 5:50
You already have me pegged!
MJ Anderson 5:53
If you’re like most people, that’s true. In fact, most Americans today will look at their phone screen on average about 170 times a day.
That has created a demand for a content — both entertainment and marketing content — that’s designed to be delivered through that small screen. And augmented reality is a great tool, since it requires, you know, a connection to the internet and a screen and your phone to view it. It’s created a great way for marketers to deliver information to an audience base, it’s already predestined to receive it because they’re so engaged with the phone.
Doris Nagel 6:48
Would I even know if a marketing message has been augmented? What might a marketer do with your platform to be able to use it and augmented?
Stefan Agustsson 7:13
For example, I think a lot of people know what Pokemon GO was. That’s a form of augmented reality. But a more useful use of the technology is something like was first shown through an application from IKEA, which allows you to actually place a piece of virtual furniture in your living room and see what that couch or a table or a chair or a lamp.
More recently, there’s a number of different companies that are showing those kinds of technologies and showing those kinds of things inside their application for consumers. Our technology is the stuff that sits behind all that. It allows people to easily create 3D models and be able to place them inside their environment. And we do it both for mobile apps as well as through a web browser. So, there’s kind of two different ways to be able to have the consumer engaged with augmented reality. One of them is if you’re in a mobile app, and the other one is if you’re on a website.
So, it’s something as simple as clicking a button to see a room and then show you what the couch or the table or the lamp looks like in the room. And then you could move it around inside your space and see what that object looks like inside of your own room. That’s a really simple example.
But our same technology can be used in a number of different ways. Manufacturers may want to see what equipment looks like if their engineers are building a new piece of equipment. And they can take something right out of their CAD system where they’re designing things and be able to see what it looks like or show other people what it might look like in a specific space.
From a consumer side, it’s great to be able to see furniture and other products. Over this last year with COVID, we’ve seen a huge explosion because people haven’t been going to the stores. They’re ordering more and more things off the Amazon or other e-commerce sites. So, this technology allows you to actually see what that blender or coffeemaker or television or computer — or whatever the thing is that you’re buying — might look like in your home if you’re not able to go to the store to touch it and see it before you actually buy it.
So, the augmented object has really replaced the need to actually go to a retail space in person. It allows you to interact with it at home before you buy it. So, if anything good has come out of COVID for us, it’s been the bigger use and acceptance of QR codes and the online shopping experience with these kinds of virtual or augmented reality experiences for virtual product sales.
MJ Anderson 9:59
A lot of it has to do with giving a marketer the ability to deliver extremely rich media rich content through the phone. When I say media rich, Stefan mentioned 3D as one example. But we can also display video and audio. And we can do all of those things in context to the environment that the consumer is in. So, it’s like delivering 3D Media web content through the phone that relies on either the environment that they’re standing in, or maybe something that they’re holding in their hand that was delivered by the marketer,
Doris Nagel 10:43
I guess I recently used some augmented reality without realizing it. I recently moved, and I wanted to buy a wall TV. And the app helped me figure out what size TV was right for my wall size. In fact, the size I originally planned to buy wasn’t good for the proportions for the wall. So that led me to buy a different size TV. That’s exactly what we’re talking about, right?
MJ Anderson 11:12
Augmented reality has actually been around for quite some time. It’s just now kind of coming to the forefront of mass adoption and public acceptance. But if you’ve ever watched an NFL football game, every time you see that yellow stripe across the field that tells you as a viewer where the first down marker is, that’s a form of augmented reality. And that’s been in place since 1977. So, it’s a technology that’s been around. It’s just now coming into its full maturity because of our mobile lifestyle.
Doris Nagel 11:51
Who are most of your customers? Are they big company marketers? Are they small company marketers? Or a mix of the two?
Stefan Agustsson 12:03
We have actually a really wide range of customers — everything from Fortune 100 companies down to individual marketers are using the platform. And they have a lot of different kinds of uses for the technology.
The example we talked about before was very simple. We have some people doing some very complex work with being able to tie it into a lot of their different omni channel needs. So, trying to tie in augmented reality to all their other marketing tool sets. They may be able to point the camera at a manual or a catalog and be able to have those pages come to life, kind of like you in the Harry Potter movies, right?
We do things like that, that technology, we have the 3d models we place we’re doing quite a bit lately, with colleges, universities, with professional sports organizations with fan engagement, which just you know, basically taking that instead of it being a couch, we can take your mascot, make it come to life, so they can help you celebrate at home. As of maybe while you are used to go to the games, you’re celebrating at home with friends, or at the bar, no, we can bring those mascots to the end users, instead of having them potentially being at those locations. We’re seeing a huge potential in that area right now.
Our customers are everything from really large organizations down to very small groups of people. And our platform was built for that kind of wide range. It’s a really useful technology across the board. We haven’t really seen an industry that can’t be impacted by the use of augmented reality. Obviously, we have some very significant focuses, such as fan engagement, as well as people wanting to bring some of these manuals and other printed materials things to life.
Doris Nagel 13:49
How is virtual reality different from augmented reality? Or is that a blurred line?
MJ Anderson 13:58
There’s a continuum. Think of it as a linear line that goes from left to right, and the beginning or the left side of that line is our interaction with the real world — which is known as reality.
The other end of the spectrum is something called virtual reality. Everything in between that would be considered either mixed reality or augmented reality. The really the purpose of this continuum is to kind of help us understand that context.
The premise of virtual reality is to completely convince your mind that your body is not in the location that it actually is. Typically, virtual reality is defined by any electronic experience where you’re going to be wearing a completely immersive headset that makes your mind think that it’s in a completely different place. I always say that virtual reality is all about convincing your butt that you’re not sitting in the chair that you’re sitting in. So, it’s a fully immersive experience — meaning you wear a headset that blocks out the world around you, and you see this projection of an alternative universe or alternative reality.
In augmented reality, you’re viewing these experiences through a handset. Your eyes can still see the world around you, and you’re viewing content that’s been augmented through the screen on your phone. You are fully aware that your butt is in Beloit, and you are looking at something here in Beloit, but you’re looking at something that is augmented with digital content that you’re viewing through the phone.
Whereas my children might be playing a video game where they have a headset on and their butt might be at home, but they think they’re on another planet because they’ve got a completely immersive headset on.
Doris Nagel 16:38
I can see how things like movies and video games probably have some elements of both virtual reality and augmented reality, right?
MJ Johnson 16:54
Yes, that’s called mixed reality.
Doris Nagel 16:56
Talk about how the two of you got started. You mentioned that you’ve known each other for 23 years. What made the two of you finally come together to form this company?
MJ Anderson 17:16
I met Stefan right after I started my last company in like the mid early 90s. And we met because at that point, we were both very interested in this brand-new shiny thing called the World Wide Web. If you if you can go back to that point in history in like 1993 or 1994, there was no internet. So, we both started businesses at that point in time, and we were both located at that point in Rockford, Illinois. And we’d both travel in the same circles and meet up.
Eventually, Stefan had created his first company, which was a digital printing company. My company at that time was a digital agency, and we did a lot of work with him. We shared customers and went to market together and shared a solution. After Stefan sold that business, he created another company. I was still working at the company that I had founded, but I had started to work in 2009 or 2010 with this technology called augmented reality. I thought there was an opportunity for him to utilize AR as part of his solution set. But at the time, the technology just wasn’t there. And it didn’t fit his business model.
Then, he sold that business. At about that same time, he started to listen to some of the ideas that we had been talking about, and we decided there was a viable opportunity here. So, I sold the shares in my previous company to my business partner, and we started RealityBLU together. And we opened our doors in April 2017.
Doris Nagel 19:34
How did you come up with the name for the company? I get the reality part, but where does the blue come from?
MJ Anderson 19:40
Blue comes from wild blue yonder. We wanted to portray a picture of endless opportunity. And obviously because it’s augmented reality, we wanted to use the term reality because it seemed like the logical thing to do. So instead of Reality Wild Blue Yonder, we just shortened it to RealityBLU.
Doris Nagel 20:05
How did you get started with this idea? Did you do your own coding? Or did you find people to develop the software? And how did you get started to launch the company?
Stefan Agustsson 20:23
Between the two of us, we’ve probably built literally hundreds of different kinds of solutions for our customers, both for ourselves as well for ourselves was for our customers, both writing out ourselves as well as working with the coders on our team. This time around, we took a step back, looked at the industry as a whole, and tried to find other tools that were out there that might be able to help us achieve our vision for making this really easy to use platform for marketers to build to create augmented reality without having to know any code.
So, think of this as kind of like Canva. You don’t have to know how to use any design tools. But you can literally get started today and make something that’s seemingly very complex to the end consumer. But you can do it without having to know how to do any of the technology in the background.
We found a group of developers overseas that we partnered with very early on. They’re actually in Minsk, in Belarus. We also now have a team here in Beloit which we hired after we went through a round of funding last fall. So, we’re building an onshore team, as well as maintaining our offshore team. We have about 10 people that are part of the whole organization, who do everything from mobile app development through creating what the thing looks like.
And then there’s also an R & D effort in the background. Both MJ and I have technical backgrounds. We both led technical teams before, so we determine the course of where we’re going to go, which technologies we’re going to use and how we’re going to string some of these open-source tools together. And then we rely on a group of people. This is a project that couldn’t be done by two guys sitting at a kitchen table, which is where we first started.
We’ve since graduated to having a real office now. But what we’re trying to build took about a year and a half of building the product under cover of darkness. We did a couple of small projects for customers that first year. But we brought a product to market in about a year and a half that would typically take a team probably two or three years to build. We were able to do that because we’ve had some much experience and other careers that we knew how to build these things. We knew the building blocks; we knew all the things we needed to have in place to be able to have a successful product launch.
So, we actually built it relatively inexpensively with a small group of people, and in a very short period of time we actually had a viable product in the marketplace. So, I think a lot of that was just due to our experience. It’s not the first time we built one of these things, it’s not our first business. All that experience really helped us get our business off the ground much faster than would normally be the case.
Doris Nagel 23:26
The world is full of cool ideas that nobody actually wants to pay for. How did you know there was a market for your offering?
MJ Anderson 23:44
Between Stefan and I, we’ve got close to 60 years’ experience in our industry. In both of our careers, we’ve always had a solid grasp of the pulse of what was happening in our industry, or in the industries that are ancillary to ours. From our standpoint, we have both seen multiple technology waves come and go over our career. As I mentioned earlier, we were right there at the very dawn of the web.
And this one, for me personally, feels a lot like it did in the early 90s. And now after being immersed in AR, I believe that this technology wave will actually have a larger effect on us as human beings than even the web did. Because it ultimately will change the way that we interact with the world, as well as the way that we perceive and interact with content.
We’re still at the very early stages of adoption at the consumer level. As we build tools and as the marketplace matures, it’s going to change the way that we perceive nature, as well as the way that we perceive and consume content. I can’t say enough about how when you add the third axis. You know, an X and Y axis describes a flat surface. AR and virtual reality are like adding that third Z axis. The ramifications of doing that, for a communicator are massive.
Doris Nagel 25:28
That’s a pretty bold claim. I don’t doubt that you’re right, but help me and my listeners connect some of the dots on why you think that.
MJ Anderson 25:42
If I hand you a book, you intuitively know what to do with it. You know that you open up the first leave, you start reading from left to right. The book is a delivery method for information and using it is ingrained in our humanity — it’s been part of the way that we’ve communicated ever since we began putting cuneiform imprints in clay tablets. It’s the way that we’ve communicated, the way that we store information.
So, when I talk about an X, Y axis, I’m essentially talking about in modern terms a page. You have a start and an end point on a page, and you have a certain amount of content that you can put on that page. And for the most part, it’s a 2D interaction with you. You hold it in your hand, you look at it, you consume it. The same is actually true for a computer monitor. A web page is essentially just an electronic 2D version of a page.
But we live in and move through a 3D environment. We interact with things very organically. We touch. we smell, we see, we hear, we do all those things in a 3D space. And the thing that’s changing is that we will ultimately be moving away from a reliance on a 2D method for creation and delivery of information. Instead, we will be able to rely on a three dimensional organizational and viewing construct. Right now, we all carry these things around in our pockets called smartphones. But smartphone technology probably has only got another five years before it’s obsolete – and it might even be sooner.
Doris Nagel 27:40
No wonder Apple and Samsung keep putting new versions of their phones!
MJ Anderson 27:46
Yes. If you look at what Apple’s doing, what Samsung is doing, Microsoft — all the large players in the space are doing — they’ve invested billions and billions of dollars in new technologies that will eventually replace the handset.
Those technologies in the short-term will be wearables — things that you wear on your face, like a pair of glasses. Apple has already announced plans to release a set of products in 2022 or 2023, with the intended purpose of sunsetting the smartphone. You’ll wear the wear these glasses on your face. And you’ll be able to see the world in an augmented view just by looking through the lens. Okay. And glasses will be here for a very short period of time and then ultimately, the next step from that will create a very, very tight integration between us and technology. Next will be either contact lenses or implants of some sort that will give us the ability to see things in a completely different manner. That’s just the hardware fact. That’s the technology and where the hardware is going.
But if you think about what it takes, as human beings to kind of catch up with that technology, we have to figure out and grapple with how to communicate in a 3D space. How do we change the way that we present information? And that’s really kind of one of our core missions — to help people easily make that transition.
Doris Nagel 29:14
You can’t see me right now, but my jaw is positively on floor. I’m not sure how prepared we are for the future you’ve laid out.
But a question about that: social media already has taken a lot of flak lately — Twitter, Facebook and others — for the way that they can be used to manipulate people and heavily influence public opinion. There is concern already that social media already can be abused to create misperceptions and even incite violence.
I’m envisioning immersive experiences as being even more susceptible, maybe vastly more susceptible, to manipulating people. It seems to me there are some pretty significant ethical issues to think about here.
MJ Anderson 30:56
Yes. Take a historical perspective. For example, I had in my previous business a partner who had a great set of slides. They were essentially commenting about various major technology shifts where we’ve gone through this exact same kind of thing. So, think about moving from movable type to a better way to produce a book, to writing coursework on a slate or chalkboard, to then moving to paper from paper to pen and ink, and then to a ballpoint pen and pencil, and so forth. And every one of these transitions been disruptive, right?
This one, though, is going to be completely disruptive, because it is going to open up so many more opportunities. I’ve got a granddaughter, and she’s going to live in a world where she might not even know what an email address is. In her world, it’ll be a completely immersive content experience.
Doris Nagel 32:12
I’m thinking that COVID may have accelerated some of the acceptance of this. But I was envisioning, as you were talking, that in the near future, you wouldn’t even need to have actual face to face meetings. In your immersive world, you’re in a conference room. And as far as you know, the other participants are in the same room as you, right?
Stefan Agustsson 32:36
Correct. There are some things that are happening with the way to capture you as a person, or entity or your likeness, and be able to transport your likeness to a different location, to be able to interact with other people through these virtual meetings.
Everybody’s used to being on zoom calls now, or whatever the other technologies you might use for video conferences. But if you think about, like what MJ was talking about earlier, with the wearable devices, and where we’re going with that, it’ll allow us to not have our heads down looking at a device. So, if you think about it, how often are you sitting there with your head, you know, your neck down looking at your phone, or your tablet, versus if you could actually just have your head up and be able to look at the world and be able to actually have some of those same interactions with other things, through a pair of glasses or contacts or whatever is coming after that. You know, it allows us to be able to transport not only other likenesses, but all their information, you may be wanting to interact with them.
Obviously, you can think about some of the negative impacts, like we’ve seen with some of the social media interactions lately. I think that’s really just a matter of more about how industry and people are manipulating and using data and information. And I think a lot of those problems will rectify themselves.
But all of those things also have opportunities bill to expand your information and access and be able to have interactions with physical objects, and be able to you know, learn more about the world around you without having to look it up on your phone and have your head down looking at this tiny little screen that’s in front of you, with your head to actually OPT and go to actually see overlays of information about things at a museum or when you go to visit a certain location or even you know, simple things like driving directions with other information. It’s about things that are around you.
Doris Nagel 34:23
I did a test drive of a BMW when I was looking for a car a couple of years ago. I didn’t buy it, but I thought it was fun to take a test drive. They had this holographic display where you wave your hand in front of you and see different things. It was an overlay on the windshield in front of me. I think that’s the kind of thing you’re referring to, right?
Stefan Agustsson 34:48
That’s correct. There’s actually a company from Germany who’s been working with BMW, Volkswagen, Porsche and others, to actually make it so that your whole windshield become a screen. There are digital overlays for you to be able to have a heads-up display. And what you as a driver sees may be different than what the passenger sees. You may be able to see how fast you’re going, and driving directions, and other information that you need to have without having to look down. Whereas others in the car may see entertainment information.
For sure there’s a lot of interesting ways to use this thing we call augmented reality. There are literally 1000’s of different ways to utilize the information that’s available to us. Here at RealityBLU, we’re focusing on how marketers can help build content, enhance people’s lives and product experiences, and be able to help them have higher conversions — the kinds of things that marketers think about.
But you know, every time we have this initial conversation and I show somebody these technologies, you can see their minds start racing about all the different ways you can actually use this stuff. And we usually have to rein them back into, “Okay, this is what we’ll be doing today.” But this is the vision of what this is going to be in the future. And the opportunities are literally limitless right now.
Doris Nagel 36:04
It’s jaw dropping. So, that’s kind of the theoretical underpinnings of what you’re doing and where the business is going. To turn back to the nuts and bolts of your company today, you mentioned that you’ve gotten a new round of funding. Did you start out looking for funding, or was this a bootstrapped operation?
Stefan Agustsson 36:33
We actually bootstrapped the business for the first two years. Then we saw the need to really expand the business quicker and have access to more capital to be able to bring on more people, as well as accelerate our development and our go to market strategy.
We actually went through an accelerator program out of Milwaukee from a company called Gener8tor. We were one of six companies selected out of 1500 that applied for funding for the program. It was a great program. It helped us learn how to talk to investors, which is something neither of us had to do in our previous businesses, as well as raise money, which is a whole other subject, in and of itself.
But this accelerator program was great. We really learned how to present – how to create a presentation, all the materials that you need to have. They also give the participants access to investors. In June, and July, they introduced us to, and we personally talked to probably about 180 different investors through Zoom. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the opportunity to talk to a lot of these guys in person. But we just kept on with those conversations, and eventually we got through a round of funding with a smaller group of those people who decided to invest in our business. But just the process of actually raising money was ….
MJ Anderson 37:50
It took us a solid year to do that. Between the two of us we probably spent 80% of our time on that.
Stefan Agustsson 38:02
We were very fortunate to be able to go out and raise the money we did raise during COVID. I know a lot of businesses weren’t able to get the funding that they were looking for. Obviously, a lot of businesses folded during that timeframe. So, we consider ourselves very fortunate.
I think a lot of that has to do with COVID. It has opened up a lot of opportunities for technology to come to the forefront. As well, it’s obviously of interest for some of the larger companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and others that are literally — like MJ was saying earlier — are investing billions of dollars every year in augmented reality and the technology infrastructure in the background. That means all of the cameras, the phones, the baseline software that they’re using for both Android and iOS that we’re building our business and our technology stack on top of. It’s really like they’re building a whole other version of the worldwide web that’s becoming available to us as a 3D environment. And we’re basically building our business on top of that, taking advantage of all that infrastructure that these huge businesses are building for us.
Doris Nagel 39:09
Talk about some of the roadblocks that you’ve dealt with. Obviously, finding funding was challenging, but every company has to go through usually some tough times some things that are unexpected. Talk a bit about some of those.
Stefan Agustsson 39:34
For the first couple years of you know, obviously the funding was a huge thing overcome for us just to get us past having to be self-funded and try to find enough business to keep the business ongoing. So, the funding really helped us accelerate our business, as well bring out new people, like developers and salespeople for our marketing efforts, those kinds of things.
But before that, the biggest a stumbling block we had was getting people to understand that this technology was easily accessible and affordable, as well as just how to get it delivered. The first couple years we delivered everything we did for the company through mobile apps. And more recently, we’ve been able to take that same technology and everything we’ve built and ported over to make it happen through a web browser.
That’s been a huge boon for us. That was a big stumbling block for a lot of people. They just didn’t want to have to figure out how to build a mobile app. There’s a fairly decent-sized investment that’s required to build a mobile app. And we’ve seen a huge turn with people who previously said it wasn’t in their budget, that they weren’t really understanding how they were going to implement it in their business. Now, we’re literally getting phone calls from people we’ve talked to over the last two years. They’re calling us asking, “How do we get involved with this?”
It just seems now to be a lot easier to get people’s interest. We’ve really tried to simplify the offering that we brought to market. I think that’s been one of the biggest stumbling blocks before that I was talking about. There are literally 1000’s of different ways to use this technology. We’ve tried to focus on just a handful that makes sense for marketers and solve some very specific problems for them. And that makes it a lot easier for people take advantage of the technology right now.
Doris Nagel 41:19
Given what you’ve said about the future, I can imagine that deciding where to stay focused out of all the incredible number of things that could be done has to be challenging sometimes.
What are some of the new things you’re working on to the extent you can talk about them? Where you see the company heading?
MJ Anderson 41:51
Back in December, we just rolled out our web AR offering, as Stefan mentioned. Web AR is essentially a way for people to interact with AR content without having to download a mobile app. They just use the web browser that they have on their phone to access it. And that’s huge. Because we’ve we’re finding that because of where AR is at in the world today, there’s this perception that people don’t want to download mobile apps to do things.
So, from a marketing standpoint, we were able to eliminate that stumbling block, so that was big. Our technology then is essentially going to be a platform that we stand on to deliver other kinds of AR content experiences, or what we call scenes. One of these is a new thing that we’re going to be releasing, hopefully in the next month and a half or so-called AR portals.
An AR portal is a way to deliver that mixed reality experience we were just talking about. Imagine being able to place a doorway on the ground in front of you. And with your phone, you walk through that doorway — that you can see on your phone — it completely transports you to a new environment. And in that new environment, you can look with your phone and see it in 360 degrees full motion and action. So that’s something that we’re very excited about and coming soon.
There are some other things that we’re working on right now that are also very cool. And it’s really simple delivery of games through AR. And that’s a very new endeavor for us started playing with that just this week, and they’ve got some pretty cool results from that, though, that’s like the very, very short-term kind of stuff. You know, ultimately, our Technology Roadmap does extend out beyond those things.
But to Stefan’s point, we have to pick and choose our focus, because from our standpoint, one of our roadblocks during the first three years of this business was that it was just him and I and our overseas development team. So not having access to more brainpower, more manpower, more person power, really was a challenge for us.
Doris Nagel 44:14
Where would you like the company to be in three years?
MJ Anderson 44:34
In three years, we will have gone through another funding round. That’s probably going to start in as little as eight to 12 months from today. Which means we will have experienced some serious growth. The five-year plan is ultimately to either be acquired or to acquire and do whatever we can to blow the doors off of this one, to add value to our customers, but also to add significant value to our investment partners.
Doris Nagel 45:09
Stefan, anything to add to that?
Stefan Agustsson 45:11
MJ hit it right on. Our goal right now is to continue to grow the business, both from a technology standpoint as well as revenue. We have some fairly high goals on both fronts for this year. We’ve hit most of those targets so far. We’re looking to bring on some more people this year. We’re going to be growing the business as much in Wisconsin as we possibly can.
I think people underestimate the ability to grow a technology business, not only just in Wisconsin, but in the Midwest. But we’re seeing significant numbers of people that are leaving both east coast and west coast and seeing the value that you can get for your money.
Early on, we had a lot of people tell us that if you’re not in San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or Portland, or Seattle, this technology business that you’ve chosen really isn’t viable. You have to be in one of those places. But when you start looking at what it costs to run a business out there, we would have had to raise four times the amount of money we did to build to accomplish what we’ve done here. It just doesn’t make any sense.
So, we want to grow the business as much as possible here in Wisconsin and the Midwest, as much as much as we can.
Doris Nagel 46:26
That’s another area where I’m guessing COVID may have had some positive impact for places like the Midwest, and even communities that are outside of major metropolitan areas. Places where our quality of life is just really good, especially if you have wonderful jobs with companies like yours.
Stefan Agustsson 46:49
Our business is based in Beloit, Wisconsin, and we’ve been really impressed with the access to technology and technologists here. There’s a number of other pretty large technology-based businesses that are in the area that have shown us that it’s possible to build organizations of a few 100 people. Half or more of those people are engineers here in the area. Obviously with COVID in the last year, a lot of those engineers are working from home.
But at some point, we expect to see them back here in the office. So, it’s been a challenge, sometimes to find the right talent, but like you said, COVID has actually opened up a lot of doors. A lot of people are willing to work remotely right now. And some are possibly looking at re relocation and getting away from these major metropolitan areas. So that’s probably what we’re going to do to continue to grow the business — find the right people. Hopefully they’re in the area, but if they’re not, we’ll obviously work with them remotely, because as we’ve seen it’s often possible.
Doris Nagel 47:50
I think the challenge for serial entrepreneurs, like both of you, is figuring out what to do next. Do you think you’ll get tired of working on this business? Or, more likely, probably just get an offer you can’t refuse? And then what’s your what’s your next act?
MJ Anderson 48:16
Yes, we’re both serial entrepreneurs. I don’t think I will ever get tired of this — my businesses are like my children. I mean, you don’t get tired of your children! I don’t ever see myself getting tired of the company or the work.
I might get interested in doing something else at some point. But, you know, from our standpoint, at least from my standpoint, you know, I, my personal goals with this business, you know, to ultimately generate generational wealth, you know, for my family, and that’s one of my motivators.
Doris Nagel 48:53
What about you, Stefan?
Stefan Agustsson 48:55
I got interested in this space in particular originally because MJ has been harping on me for the better part of a decade now. But when you start looking at the technology, investments of companies like Apple and Facebook, and Google and Samsung are literally just pouring billions of dollars into this specific area.
You can see that they believe that augmented reality and virtual reality are the future of how they’re going to drive their technology businesses. So, there’s always going to be opportunities for companies like ours to piggyback on top of that infrastructure. They’re building available tools for the people on appeal. Again, that’s been done in the past. Think about a company as big as Salesforce. Salesforce wouldn’t exist without the internet – it wouldn’t exist without some of the tools that Microsoft and Apple and Google brought to the internet to use. Similarly, we’re hoping to build a business on this new infrastructure being built. I think there is a very, very large opportunity for us to build a very big business. Or to become part of a larger business, through acquisitions. Either make it or become part of.
Doris Nagel 50:10
Looking back on both of your journeys as entrepreneurs, what advice would you give your younger self or to other people who maybe are just thinking about starting on their journey as an entrepreneur?
MJ Anderson 50:28
Hands down, if I could go back to my 25-year-old self, I would say, “Understand and learn this alternate business universe of investment capital out there.” I think most people starting companies don’t consider this an option. In a lot of cases, and I know my own personal opinion was that venture capital had a bad rap. But it was something I had no experience with. I had no idea the depth of information and the depth of the complexity of navigating those sorts of opportunities, or even realizing those sorts of opportunities. I think Stefan would probably agree with me there — we’ve learned so much in the last year and a half pitching and raising money.
Coupled with that, you want to win, you want to have goals, and you want to have dreams that are bigger than the ones that you can think of. If you can do those two things — understand how to grow something, especially if you have a good idea. I would tell myself to figure this VC funding and this capital market thing out sooner. I was 55 when we started that process, and I wish I that I had understood it when I was 25. Because it was jaw-dropping to me.
Stefan Agustsson 52:09
I 100% agree with MJ. It’s a world I didn’t understand. I thought I knew something about, but as we learned more about it, it was something I realized I really didn’t understand it at all.
I think the other thing that I’ve learned, just from doing businesses where I’ve done them by myself, or with one or two partners versus my last business had five business partners, is that it’s important to learn how to work with other people on your team. , let’s be something and how to actually bring in more people.
If I had anything to say to some of these guys that we’ve meet with through these programs that are in their 20s, or just getting started with a business, or the first time is: sometimes, going out and working in the real world or the world is useful. You know, learning how to manage people, and what infrastructure for a business actually looks like and how it operates, is knowledge that will serve you well as you grow a business. Just learning how a business actually operates early in your career is tremendously valuable.
A lot of times, I see some of these younger kids that are getting involved, and they’re asking us questions, and one of the first things I usually tell them is, “Go out and get a job in the business world and learn what you can from that world. Then go out and do the business that you want to do yourself.”
That experience has served me really well. Early on in my career, I worked for some very large companies. I saw the good and the bad. And then Otto’s lessons with me as we kind of move forward.
MJ Anderson 53:50
You know, when you’re when you’re young and you have an idea, you don’t necessarily think of asking for help. I know, I probably didn’t. Also, understanding there’s only a small segment of the population that is willing to take these kinds of risks to start a company.
So, if you’re one of those people that has an idea and wants to do something that chances are you’ve been given that idea for a reason. And it’s just a matter of taking the right steps. I think people are afraid of failing for some reason.
When I started my first business, my partners and I went to a traditional bank with a business plan to get a business loan. And within 20 minutes of the meeting with the bank, they said, “Sure, we’ll be happy to give you a loan.” And I said to the banker, “Well, that was really easy. How come more people don’t do this?” And the banker said, “Well, you know, 80% of the world wants to work for somebody, and only 20% of the world wants to be that somebody that people work for.”
So, I think that’s a really good indicator. If you have an idea, and you want to be the master of your own destiny, then you have to be able to put some things at risk to make those things happen. Even if you fail the first time you do it, or the second time you do it, if that idea is there, and the drive is there, there are plenty of tools and people out there that are willing to help you achieve those goals.
Doris Nagel 55:21
Great advice from both of you. Well, the time has absolutely flown by what an amazing topic and amazing company and two very amazing founders. I can’t thank both of you enough for your time today. I really enjoyed it.
MJ Anderson 55:39
Thank you very much.
Stefan Agustsson 55:41
Thank you very much, Doris.
Doris Nagel 55:43
Thanks, everybody for listening in today – I’m sure many of you were in awe, just like me.
And thanks especially to our guests, Stefan Agustsson and MJ Anderson, who are the co-founders of a very cool company called RealityBLU based in Beloit, Wisconsin. You can check them out at www.realityblu.com.
You can find more helpful information and resources on my website, globalocityservices.com. There’s a library there of free blogs, tools, podcasts and other resources for entrepreneurs.
I’d love to hear from you. My doors always open for comments, questions, or suggestions, or just to shoot the breeze. You can reach me at dnagel@lakesradio.org. I promise you’ll always get a response for me and I’d love to hear from you.
Be sure to join me again next Saturday at 11am Central/noon Eastern.
Until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
Leave a Reply