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TWiST E2349: The music festival gadget that does the opposite of your phone
The more people at the gig with Totems, the better they work
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Your phone fails at exactly the moment you need it most. When you’re in a big crowd, and you need to send a message to your friend, but you can’t even get a single text through.
On the latest TWiST, Alex sits down with Carter Fowler, the co-founder of Totem Labs. They’ve made a device built to solve precisely this problem. The Totem Compass is a screen-free pendant designed for festivals, stadiums, and crowded events. It helps direct you to your friends and family with easy-to-follow lights that get brighter as you get closer together.
No cell towers are required: the system runs on satellite positioning, plus an offline mesh network. And every Totem in the area acts as a relay, so the network gets stronger as the company sells more devices.
PLUS Lon joins Alex for a brand new “TWiST Flashback.” We’re jumping back to January 2017, when Jason met up with Ring founder Jamie Siminoff at CES. Hear the original Ring doorbell origin story, a quick rundown of all of Jamie’s failed startup ideas, and why in retrospect it would have been easier to fund the project by robbnig a bank.
Guests:
Carter Fowler on X: https://x.com/Carter_S_Fowler
Totem:
https://totemlabs.com
Jamie Siminoff on X: https://x.com/JamieSiminoff
Ring:
https://ring.com
Relevant Links:
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
Amazon officially closes its Ring acquisition in 2018 (TechCrunch)
Ring calls off its Flock Safety partnership after the Super Bowl ad backlash (Engadget)
Flock Safety plans to cut about 18% of its staff (Reuters via The Star)
Topics:
Totem, an offline compass for finding friends at festivals
Why phones fail in big crowds
How more devices make the mesh network stronger
Why Totem beats phone GPS in a crowd
Why Apple won’t build this into the iPhone
Bundles, pricing and 58% gross margins
Raising money for hardware in an AI world
Turning crowd movement into a predictive model
Rentals, kids and accessibility use cases
Mesh networks on the front lines in Ukraine
Flashback to Jason and Ring’s Jamie Siminoff at CES 2017
Why CES lost its place at the center of tech
Roasting Jamie’s earlier startups
How a doorbell in the garage became Ring
Why you should always bet on your friends
Why a strong mission is cheating
Selling to Amazon versus going public
License plate readers and the Flock backlash
Follow TWiST:
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups
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