It’s been a few weeks since CES and things have calmed down…
Vlad, our CEO on Australian TV
I went with our CEO and PR Manager for only 3 days with but we had a blast. The mission was simple, go there to meet potential business partners and press connections. We were situated to be in two different suites, a Netgear suite and a Refinery 29 suite. Turns out we would be spending most of our time with Netgear. Little did I realize that we would get to closely spend time with the CEO, CTO and COO of Netgear, a company whose router I grew up with in my house. This wasn’t my first time in Vegas so I wasn’t so into sightseeing but I sure was and am always into meeting cool and new people. When I spoke to the CTO of Netgear, Mark Merrill, I was amazed by the passion he displayed for our product and technology as a whole. It was really insightful to rub shoulders with the C-Level executives of a billion dollar company with a household name router that owns 50% of the market. We realized we are in good hands after meeting the Netgear executives. It’s also worth noting that Netgear is now a major stakeholder in our company per our Series A funding round. We even managed to get onto Australian TV while at the suite (as seen in the image on the left).
Another thing that really excited me is that we managed to secure a partnership with MGM International, the company that owns the Bellagio, Aria, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand and many other resorts in Vegas and around the country that you’ve probably heard of. It was inspiring and truly an honor to meet with them and take next steps forward, you will see us in stores across their properties soon. I still remember even 1 year ago, no one knew who we were and now billion dollar companies are partnering with us left and right. There are many reasons for this that I will definitely break down in other posts in my blog.
You may have seen this fountain before in famous movies like The Hangover.
After all the networking and deal making I thought it would make sense to at least check out the show floor. After hearing about Sophia (the humanoid robot citizen) glitching out and the power going out I was beginning to wonder if the show was cursed, it turns out it was just raining way more than anyone could have anticipated. In the dry deserts of Las Vegas, this much rain was not normal and not even CES was ready for it…
The good news is there was cool stuff and the show was, in fact, not cursed. I saw lots of robots as I searched for Sophia. During my journey to find the bigger than life humanoid, I bumped into a weird box with what looked like floating and naked human bodies…
I was then greeted by creepy people in all white that just kept talking about a “tour” to show us their technology that can supposedly allow immortality. That definitely grabbed my attention because I believe in singularity and posthumanism. As I followed the creepy “reps” wearing all white they led me into white box booth with what seemed to be a person’s body inside of a plastic bag, I thought I was next lol…
I was excited but skeptical because I’ve been waiting for this kind of technology for a long time so you can probably imagine how pissed I was when I got to the back of the booth and saw Netflix in giant letters on the wall. It turns out it was genius marketing for a Netflix show, the only problem is I think it was illegal because they claimed they had technology that can allow humans to transfer their consciousness into another surrogate body so you can be immortal and instead they have a trailer for a show that may or may not even be good…
Robot Baby?
It’s no big deal because all these robots kept me entertained even though I never did get to meet Sophia, I know I will one day.
Aside from that everything else that happened is the same you would expect from any good trade show.There were networking events, parties, free drinks (always nice to have) and most importantly great people with whom we could form great partnerships with. So when I look back at my time at CES, I can definitely say it was a great show for us.
If you’re reading this and went to CES 2018, comment below with your experiences, I’d love to hear them. Also, let me know if you are going to CES next year!
This robot seems to be defeating his human opponent…
Goodbye ’till next time