The following interview is a conversation we had with Johannes Peeters, Co-Founder & CEO of VoxelSensors, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Spatial Computing.
Johannes Peeters
Thanks for the invite, Brett. Lovely to be here.
Brett
Not a problem. I’m super excited for our conversation.
Brett
Let’s go ahead and just kick off.
Brett
With a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Johannes Peeters
All right, so thanks for the intro earlier. I’m Johannes. I’m the CEO of VoxelSensors, and VoxelSensors is building the cornerstones for spatial and empathic computing, which means or regular computing, let’s say, all the information we process, plus a real time understanding of the world in all its dimensions and the people inside that world. And so we’re in that space of consumer electronics and industrial applications where devices, and of course in consumer space that’s mostly smartphones and then the next generation platforms like augmented reality, mixed reality and even and the AI pin that humane announced not too long ago to be able those devices to really see and interact with the world. And my team and I, we have a history in this space.
Johannes Peeters
We had a company called Soft Kinetic back in 2010, which we successfully exited with trade sale to Sony in 2015. I stayed a bit longer, did a stint in the Bay Area. We did briefly about it earlier, Brett, which was lovely. I used to live in San Francisco for over a year in 2018.
Johannes Peeters
I was then helping an automotive company in the Bay Area, trying to integrate perception sensors in the vehicle and outside of the vehicle for interaction, for driver monitoring, and for autonomous driving, which was quite interesting because I was before on the supplier side when were soft clinic and Sony, and I was on the receiving end figuring out what best technology there was and how to negotiate with the different vendors and look at how were perceiving the sensors and the suppliers at that time, which was a very interesting learning experience. After I went back to Belgium, where we currently have focus on sensors, I did a little stint at a sensor company and at a smart glasses company before two of my original colleagues, let’s say, of soft kinetic, were co-founders of Soft Kinetic.
Johannes Peeters
We started VoxelSensors on the premise that we would solve the existing challenges in 3d perception and our eye tracking as well, that are preventing, actually the most adoption of those technologies.
Brett
Let’s talk a little bit about timing. So I see that you launched the company or founded the company in March 2020. If I remember right, there were some interesting things going on in the world that was right as COVID was starting. So tell us, what was that first month or first couple of months like for you?
Johannes Peeters
Oh, that was very interesting. I was at a notary actually signing the deeds to create a company when, just when I left, I started getting calls from friends and family that we needed to go to the grocery store to buy camp food and all the basics that we needed, because there was going to be a big. How do you call that? So people would buy everything in the shelves or in the stores, and the shelves would be empty. And so I was like, wait, what’s happening? And so that was just when they announced, or they were going to announce, the first lockdown in Belgium the next day. And so were there, literally founded a company, the three of us. No office, a bit of money, of course, that we put in the company at that time.
Johannes Peeters
But were unable to meet with people, were unable to hire people. We were unable to discuss with the investors. Although there was Zoom and there were, of course, all the digital tools, everybody was a bit in shock and trying to understand what the world would look like the next day. Initially, were like, oh, what’s happening? But then we realized, hey, this is actually pretty nice for us. We can have a quiet start, meaning we can really put the foundations of the company in place, find a couple of patents, look at or scout the world, look at what kind of investors we would be looking at, what kind of people we would hire, what kind of team we would like to build.
Johannes Peeters
And we really took that, I would say, the first six months or so to no longer establish the company, because that was done, but really to create the skeleton of what we wanted company to look like. And that was great. We had no pressure from investors. We had no external pressure, no customer pressure. We could really do that at our own pace, and we use that time quite efficiently and in a good way. Then, of course, the moment the lockdowns were reversed and we could meet again and see people, we had that foundation, and then we could go out, search for investments, really hire the team. And in a way, you could say that the real development started only at the end of that year. So, good. Eight months later.
Brett
And can you talk to us a.
Brett
Bit more about what the solution looks like and what customers are paying for? And any examples of customers that you can share?
Johannes Peeters
Sure. So we’re in the space of spatial computing and empathic computing. And so for that, we need to understand what the world looks like, not necessarily color. That’s what we use for video conversations, for example, when we want to see each other. But if we want machines, devices, being it smartphones, or being it industrial robots, if you want to have them interact with the world, they need to perceive the world in all its dimensions, and you need to have 3d sensors for that. If you want to understand people and what people do in this world, you need to see, look at our eyes, you need to look at our expressions, you need eye tracking and sensors for that.
Johannes Peeters
And so we’ve created a novel sensing architecture, which is extremely efficient in power consumption, which in these worlds, of course, in mobile devices and battery operated devices, that’s a crucial element. But also, with all the efforts for clean tech and decarbonization, etcetera, the less power we use to bring an experience, the better. And so the power consumption is a critical element of our technology. And also the latency. Latency is what is the delay between what’s happening in the world and the moment you can act upon that. A good example is in those wearables, the mixed reality or virtual reality variables related is essentially what makes you feel sick. If the world that you see, or that is rendered to your eyes moves at a different pace than reality, your brain really gets messed up.
Johannes Peeters
And so that latency, you really need to bring that down to the levels where it’s no longer noticeable by people, which is in the single digit milliseconds. If you compare that with a traditional image sensor, which runs at 25 or 30 frames per second, that consumes 33 milliseconds to create a frame of information. So you’re far beyond what’s tolerable as a user. And so we’ve developed technology that is ten to 100 times more efficient on the power usage and on the latency, while keeping other elements, like outdoor resilience, the accuracy of the technology, while improving that, or being par with existing technologies. As you can imagine, that is interesting in a lot of different applications.
Johannes Peeters
We see that in consumer electronics, if we ever want to get real, augmented reality experiences that are where actually the digital renderings are indistinguishable from the physical world, you need to control, or you need really good sensing modalities that understand the world and that can render or augment that world without noticeable delays, without a big battery pack tethered to the device. And for devices essentially that look like at the sunglasses, more or less, maybe a bit more bulky, because we need to integrate electronics, but it should look stylish, it should be comfortable, should be usable, et cetera. And all people in the augmented reality and even consumer electronics reality is very excited about what we do, because we can solve a big problem that they’re currently facing. Also on industrial side of things, the way our sensing modality works is power uses.
Johannes Peeters
It’s a bit less critical there. But typically the range that you can see, the distance that you can see, or the field of view, if you want to get to a wider field of views and want to see more, typically it requires more power. And at a certain moment, you can consume so much power that it’s no longer practical or no longer safe. We are using a laser light that travels the scene in front of us. And if you power too much light into a scene, it’s no longer isolated. You need also to get the power consumption levels down for industrial automotive applications. And there it’s about robotics, drones, industrial automation, even metrology, which is ultra fine measurements at a very high speed.
Johannes Peeters
Also there we have a number of customers that we’re currently working with, including one of the biggest contract manufacturers in the world called JBL, building the right sensing modalities and the right sensing technology for industrial applications. So we are both in the consumer electronics and in the industrial space.
Brett
Is that hard being in two different worlds, or are the customer needs pretty much the same, or. There’s a lot of overlap.
Johannes Peeters
There’s a lot of overlap that it’s not the hardest on the lower level of the technology. So think about a camera. In the camera, you have a sensor. On the sensor, you put a lens, your optics, and then the lens defines the field of view of what you can see. So those lower layers you can keep kind of universal for multiple industries and multiple applications. But then the higher you go in the technology stack, the system, and that includes in the lens, the PCB, the software, if you want to detect anti collision for a robot versus the augmentation of an object in AR, of course, those algorithms are very different. So the higher you go in the stack, the more specific things become, and then it becomes different programs, essentially, to do industrial versus consumer, that’s one thing.
Johannes Peeters
The other thing is that the customers are very different. Of course they’re different because it’s a different industry, but they’re also different in the way they operate in consumer electronics with the big tech companies, whether they’re american or asian, they’re used to try things out and have big budgets for that. So they can spend a few million to do a trial and see if that works. If it doesn’t work, okay, no problem. If it does what they need, they’ll bring it forward and push it all the way to production in the industrial space. Those budgets aren’t there. You see much more that people use what’s available on the shelf and they’ll try the best they can with that. And so you need to deal with those kind of different types of customers, different mindsets, different requirements, different budgets.
Johannes Peeters
Make a mix which is manageable as a startup company. With today we’re, let me think, 16 ftes. So you need to find a way that it’s manageable by the startup without being swung by your customer and ideally servicing more than one customer or more than that one industry. And I think after a few years we found a good balance.
Brett
How would you describe your marketing philosophy?
Johannes Peeters
We don’t do that much marketing, especially in the consumer space. It’s half a dozen, maybe ten, maybe a dozen max. Relevant or relevant, I shouldn’t say. But companies that are big enough, that can drive an integration program. And so there, of course, we had that previous venture. We have a splendid board, we have an advisory board, we have a number of contacts into that industry and we do that more or less on our own. We reach out to our customers and we have good relationships with them and that works fine. So I think for the first, I want to dig back in history. Until ces earlier this year, I don’t think we even had a website or the website was under construction and it worked.
Johannes Peeters
We had fantastic seniors, we met the right people and so we didn’t need to do a lot of marketing to get our name known in that industry. Now towards investors, towards hires, towards secondary markets where were of course less known. And especially investors and people that you hire, look at your website and try to understand what you do, how mature things are, how credible things are for that purpose. At the beginning of the year, weren’t doing a lot of great things yet, so we needed to ramp up our marketing game. And so we started making press releases, announcements, being more visible on trade shows. I don’t know if you go to CV’s, but we always go and we have a suite in one of the hotels where we showcase everything. So we don’t go.
Johannes Peeters
Last year, I didn’t even manage to go to the convention center, and so we don’t have a public booth. People come to us to see what we do. But mid this year, went public. We went to one of the augmented reality trade shows. I think it was awe in Santa Clara, middle of the year with a public demo. And then, of course, you get all the people you haven’t spoken with, the people in your supply chain, the smaller people, the software developers, that also get an appetite in what we do. And from there on, I think once you start doing marketing, pr and communication, you need to keep doing it. And so that beginning of the year, we started, and we’re continuing that in the coming years.
Brett
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Brett
As you think ahead for 2024, what’s top of mind? Or maybe a better way to ask that? What’s keeping you up at night in terms of the business and everything you have planned?
Johannes Peeters
I think that a big challenge in a startup or in a business in general is we very much control what we do and what we’re good at and our supply chain and our timelines and our spend. Everything we control, we do really well. Quite predictable, which our investors appreciate. So the plans we make, we can execute those. We don’t control the market and we don’t control the consumer, especially in the consumer electronics products. And that, of course, is always a challenge. How do we cross the chasm of these early adopters that love what you do and then deploy that to the consumer or to the industrial customers, but the ones that are typically following or they’re looking at what others have been doing and want to implement the same? And so that’s going to be for us.
Johannes Peeters
The significant part of 24 will be about that, about getting those early engagements which we have now with our customers. Those are in pilot projects. We’re integrating technology, we’re validating that, confirming that into a customer product. It’s not keeping me up at night yet, but it’s definitely the objective for next year.
Brett
What do you think is the most important decision you’ve made so far as a company?
Johannes Peeters
I don’t know if there is one, but one which pops to mind now is that quite early in our journey we have refused a strategic investor who was coming from an industry that two years ago were assessing whether that was relevant to us, which we today still believe is relevant, but not short term. We have other opportunities that are more interesting, more lucrative and less complex. And I’m glad we didn’t take them on board, because even though they say we as a company are free to do and define our strategy and our objectives, you just know they’ll be there breathing down your neck trying to figure out if or trying to influence the strategy and the roadmap. And so while it was appealing to take them on board, I’m very glad we didn’t. I think that was, yeah, a startup needs money, right?
Johannes Peeters
And especially a hardware silicon startup. Theres a lot of capex that you require to do your developments and your tape outs, and you need to create all the hardware. And so the view on money was very attractive, but im glad we withstood it.
Brett
What was that decision like internally and how did you guys make that tough decision?
Johannes Peeters
It was around actually a funding round where we refused more than the strategic money. And we said we need, with our current cap table, with the founders and a few angel investors and an accelerator, we need to develop the company further more to a higher maturity level in order to be able to prioritize and choose our destiny. And so that was a tough call because we essentially refused a couple of million saying, no, we don’t like your conditions or you as an, of course were polite, but we don’t like you as an investor or not the conditions you’re putting forward.
Johannes Peeters
We will and we are sure that we can, with our current cap table and with some business angels who joined us instead of the bigger firms and the corporate VC’s, we will be successful in finding the money we need and it will allow us to further our developments and our roadmap and our strategy. And then we will do another round when we are ready with them. And that’s what we did. And so that culminated earlier this year when we closed our obscene round of 5 million plus dollars.
Brett
Based on everything you’ve learned so far, what’s the number one go to market lesson that you’ve learned?
Johannes Peeters
Would you say there’s a couple, but if I need to pick one, I would say be honest to where you are, what you are. Coincidentally, I had a chat this morning with a big american firm. They actually came to our office and they said, we know you’re a startup. We appreciate you’re a startup. We appreciate that we can be one of the early adopters of your technology, and we very much appreciate your honesty of where you are in your roadmap, where you are in your maturity. And if we depict something that you haven’t seen, that you’re willing to work with us, that both of us can understand it, I think that’s crucial that you need. I’m a big fan of the failing is a failing fast principle.
Johannes Peeters
Go there without a product, get feedback as soon as you can, but also be honest about what that product is. If you sell it as a part, which has all the qualifications, which is production ready, and then your customer detects things that flaws, bugs, whatever it is that you haven’t seen, that doesn’t show well, but if you’re honest about it and you say, hey, this isn’t, in our case, this is all not an evaluation kit which does ABC, but it doesn’t do def. And you might detect things we haven’t seen yet because we are still in the process of doing that. Your customer will help you with it. Instead of thinking you’re trying to deceive them, they’re actually there. Hey, we found something that you might want to know because you’ll see it with other customers as well.
Johannes Peeters
And you create a very strong relationship in that case. And whenever now something is not working, they call us. And this morning they said, we appreciate it so much. A few hours after we sent an email, we got the answer. And that only works if there’s a good level of trust. And a good level of trust starts with a good basis. If you moment you try to or you oversell things and trust what the expression can build up slowly but goes away quite fast. Right, so be honest. That’s, I think, be honest where you are, what you lead, why you’re working with a certain customer. And if both you and your customer like it that way, then you’re set up for a good and a long relationship.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision that you’re building?
Johannes Peeters
So in three is going to be a bit short, but let’s take the five years mark. With this spatial and empathic computing technology that we’re building, we see a number of really great applications that will become available around that time. I’ll just take a few examples. One is that we’ll have the ability to get a sense of presence, which means that now you and I are chatting and we’re far away from each other. The most sociable experience is, of course, if you’re next to each other in a room. We chatted about it before the interview started. The next best thing is if you get that feeling of being next to each other, but digitally, but physically, we’re far away from each other. And that ability, and we’re not the only ones, of course, that are working on that, but that ability will be amazing.
Johannes Peeters
I think the second one that we’re enabling and which also going to be fantastic, is that we’ll create or make any place a marketplace. Any object can be an object that the ones that are interested at. And let me try to picture that a bit. Imagine you’re looking at a sky, and you say, hey, I see an elephant in the sky, in the clouds, and a friend is next to you, and he looks up and says, I don’t see the elephant. And you point with your finger, and you look at it and say, yeah, it’s right there. And your friend looks and says, no, I don’t see it. And then you tell, hey, stand behind me, look over my shoulder to what I’m pointing and try to see it. And that’s still very hard.
Johannes Peeters
And this element of pointing and looking, it’s one of the most natural ways of interacting. They have a two year old toddler, and he points and he says, oh, I want that. And that’s his way of telling us, hey, that’s something that interests me. Now, our technology, we will be able to understand what you’re looking at. We will be able to understand what you’re pointing at. Could even understand if your cognitive load allows another interaction or another experience. But that pointing and that looking, think about what something in your office now and look at it and point at it and say, hey, I want that. And recognizing exactly what you’re pointing at and then recognizing that object. And there’s tons of ways to do that. Allows actually any object that we see to be interactive or to be an object that someone can buy.
Johannes Peeters
And so this whole Amazon of the future, let’s say, I think that’s going to be a fantastic experience. I want to add one thing here, is people see these kinds of experience sometimes as a dystopian world, right? Oh, we’re going to be loaded with advertising continuously at all times. We’re going to see this in the wearables we’re going to be wearing? I don’t subscribe to that. I think I look at it as the use of sunglasses. You get somewhere the sun’s out, you put them on, the sun goes away, you put them back again. The same for me will be those kinds of experience.
Johannes Peeters
The moment you want to have this digital presence, or the sense of presence, or the moment you want to have superpowers, or the moment you want to shop or you see something that you like in the world, you put that on and say, oh, I’d like to get a copy of that. Once that experience is done, once those magic moments are over and you want to go back to the physical world, to the regular world, you fold them back in, you put them in your pocket, and it’s done. And so I think we can create these magical moments which are going to be amazing, but also when you choose them, when you select them, and not into some kind of a dystopian future where some people are afraid of amazing.
Brett
I love the vision. We are on time, so we’re going to have to wrap here. Before we do wrap, though, if there’s.
Brett
founders that are listening in, that want.
Brett
To follow along with your journey, where should they go?
Johannes Peeters
They can find me on LinkedIn, Johannes Peters or VoxelSensors and then search for CEO. Or you can write me@johannesoxelsensors.com I’ll be happy to provide insights, provide guidance where I can, or even learn from the discussions we will be having.
Brett
Amazing. Jonas, thank you so much for taking time to chat. This has been a lot of fun. Really enjoyed it.
Johannes Peeters
Thanks, Brett, and see you in San Francisco one of the days.
Brett
Sounds great. Look forward to it. Take care.
Johannes Peeters
Likewise. Thanks. Bye bye.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought.
Brett
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Johannes Peeters
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Brett
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Brett
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Johannes Peeters
On the next episode.
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