Mobeus cofounder Richie Etwaru talks innovation, telepresence and building a technology from the ground up – NJ Tech Weekly

[ad_1]

A great deal of innovation happens in New Jersey, and while much of the innovation in our ecosystem comes from local universities and government-funded research, other times the process begins with one person having an idea and starting to build and discover , and then ends up securing a handful of patents on her own.

This is the case of Richie Etwaru, co-founder and chief creative officer of Mobeus. We spoke to Etwaru recently and he provided insight into his unique company. The Sparta-based startup sneakily emerged in 2022 with $24 million in funding and introduced its first product, Airglass, that same year. The co-founder of Etwarus is CEO Mike Sutcliff, former group CEO at Accenture Digital (Florham Park). Mobeus’ funding came from a few extremely high-net-worth individuals and Accenture Ventures, Etwaru said.

Airglass, the first product to market developed by Mobeus, is a video and audio communication tool intended to enhance virtual meetings by using transparent computing a user-centric processing scheme where hardware and software are separated in different places , to convert desktop software into a transparent glass-like layer, giving the user the impression that they are looking beyond the display screen.

Etwaru is a serial engineer from New Jersey. His former company, Hu-manity.co, was founded in Princeton in 2018. It was based on the idea that humans, rather than big companies or the government, should own their data. A blockchain company, he has raised $5.5 million from angel investors. But when the COVID pandemic started, the company was one of the casualties of the economic shift, Etwaru said.

While Hu-manity.co tackled the pandemic, Etwaru looked to the future. He realized that telepresence mattered and would become a growing market, and he saw flaws in current telepresence systems like Zoom. Plus, he said, it turns out you can’t really build anything good today without being tied to one of the big tech giants. You can’t build without relying on Microsoft or Apple or Google or something else.

This led to the idea of ​​building something fundamental, Etwaru said, something that could be a product, but also a platform. As a software engineer who had previously been granted patents, he wondered: How do you build this technology? Etwaru added, I was looking for how to make something that floats on the screen and has nothing to do with another app, so that the presence can always be on the screen.

Etwaru continued, If you want to build presence in PowerPoint, you need to build it in PowerPoint alone. And if you want to build presence in PDFs, you need to embed it in PDFs only, right? Same for Zoom or [Microsoft] Teams. But I realized very quickly that we’re going to use the computer for presence the way we use the phone, where it’s the thing you’re on all day. And so, I started thinking that we have to build a solution where I can work and meet at the same time, where the meeting can be there, behind the computer screen. I knew we had to do something completely different.

What Etwaru and his team figured out was how to turn the entire front of the computer into an interactive 3D presentation and turn the entire computer display into immersive glass. Users can interact with the computer with their hands and won’t have to wear headphones, so they experience the computer screen in a completely different way. For example, they can draw in the air in front of the computer to surround items of interest. Think of it as 3D without the glasses.

Recently, Mobeus issued a press release on the patent portfolio supporting the company. The international law firm Oblon, based in the United States in Alexandria, Virginia, has helped them with their complaints. Etwaru told us that Mobeus has filed for about 70 patents and that 12 have been issued and are being prosecuted internationally. These days, Etwaru isn’t alone in writing the patents, as the company has hired people to do the research behind this technology. Mobeus employs about 40 people, 10 of whom live in New Jersey, he said.

The company uses Airglass both as a commercial product and as a way to test the technology in the market. They have big plans for Airglass, taking telepresence places that have never been before. Etwaru believes the product will revolutionize the way people express their creativity. Transparent technology is the future of self-expression, the company said.

Etwaru emphasized that the user experience with Airglass is not as immersive as it is with virtual reality or augmented reality, but it does meet consumers right where they are right now.

They were [consumers] they are not ready to wear headphones. However, we will add some depth to our screen and some hand movement here and there. In other words, we don’t think this technology will replace headphones; headphones will still exist. But, when using this technology, the screen becomes 3D instead of 2D, introducing a new way to use the computer and a new way to communicate and collaborate.

NJTechWeekly.com asked Etwaru about entrepreneurship and how it feels to be someone who discovers new solutions to problems. He noted that he is from the Caribbean and that the first time he presented the Airglass product on stage was during a conference in that region. She wanted her audience to know that great innovation can come from anywhere, she said. It doesn’t have to come from Silicon Valley, I want entrepreneurship to be seen as something global.

At that Caribbean conference, he spoke in front of high school students and people who looked like him, and he showed them that here is a guy who looks exactly like you and is from exactly the same place as you, and he was able to find one or two great ideas in the world.

Sharing is the cure!

[ad_2]