[00:00:28] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Steven Webster. He is the CEO and founder of aasensei. They make human movement something a machine can understand.
like I said, I don't usually ask people what it is, but I love that you told me such a tight description.
[00:00:45] Steven: Awesome.
[00:00:45] Jay: How are you buddy?
[00:00:47] Steven: Very well, thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:48] Jay: Yeah, man. what, in like practical terms, does that mean? Like, what do you guys do? What does the aasensei do? you know, what's the nuts and bolts of it?
[00:00:56] Steven: Yeah, so making human movement something a machine can understand. So what, so that means that, listen, if you've ever tried to learn a sport or learn a dance for your wedding, or go home and do physical therapy and try and follow a video on YouTube is really hard to do physical exercise and trying to learn it or remember it or recall it from a book or from a video.
If you don't have someone in the room that's an expert that is kind of seeing what you're doing with a deep understanding of how you should be doing it, and that they're able to interject, with the right coaching at the right time. Now that might be like, tomorrow when we do this again, I know what I'm gonna teach you.
Or that might be in the moment I.
feedback. we are an ingredient technology that allows anyone that makes a digital sport, fitness, physical therapy, product. We can put eyes on the athlete, and if you have a body, you're an athlete. So we can put eyes on the athlete, we can recognize what they're doing, how well they're doing it, and go all the way to a cloned voice of a celebrity coach or athlete, or trainer is in your ear.
you know, my venture pitch used to be I wanna see my kid out in the yard shooting threes, and he is got the voice of Steph Curry in his ear, telling him, good, but drop your elbow in a little bit. That was the, that,
[00:02:07] Jay: that.
[00:02:09] Steven: and that's.
[00:02:09] Jay: I like that. I like that a lot. so where'd you grow up, man? And did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur?
[00:02:16] Steven: Did it have impact on being an entrepreneur? I don't know about that, maybe, but I grew up in Scotland. I moved to California in 2009, with Adobe. I sold my first company to Adobe. but yeah, I grew up in Scotland, you know, like a lot of kids. Spent my entire time outdoors. You know, we'd get up in the morning and we'd be in the woods or on the football field, or in the swimming pool or, you know, I played a lot of sport.
you know, it wasn't something I was made to do. It was something I loved to do. and so, yeah, but disproportionately, I enjoyed martial arts, kind of jujitsu, judo, karate. so I spent a lot of time rolling around on the mats,doing that. My dad was an electrical engineer. I was the first kid in town with a computer.
so tech always ran through the family, and somehow I've always intertwined those two worlds, you know, kinda tech and,you know, tech and sport. But, Like I said, I had a company that I sold to Adobe. I sort of accidentally fell into that company. I just got laid off far too many times and before you know it, I'm like, I might as well just consult and consulting became, you know, I need someone else to come and work with me.
And, you know, long story short, we built a company that we sold, to Adobe. So that's where the entrepreneurial kinda spark came from, I guess.
[00:03:23] Jay: make that, let's make that short story long. So, tell me about kind of jumping out into consulting. What were you consulting for? what did you do before that? And, you know, it can be a CliffNotes version obviously, but like, how did you get to the point where, you know, you stepped out and started consulting?
[00:03:38] Steven: Yeah, so at that time, I was a software engineer. I started my career as a chip designer in hardware, but then in like 2000. 2001, the internet was happening.com was happening, and I was like, I wanna be a part of that. And so I joined a software consultancy based out of London, who were putting the first banks online.
So I, you know, I've got my fingerprints on some of the first banks that went online, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland, and HSBC. And we were building online banks, but building them in a browser. And anyone that remembers trying to use an, you know, use a browser to transact. I remember my pitch deck.
I used to say it was like reading a book through a straw. You know, you would click and wait on the next page, load and click and wait on the next page load. So, I had this kind of like itch that I think software is never gonna go back to something you install off a CD rom, or run in a browser, but it needs to be as interactive and responsive as you know, the software that we would install, anyone listening to this podcast that was born from 2000
[00:04:36] Jay: Oh, they have no idea what you're talking about. They don't even,
yeah, they, yeah.
[00:04:40] Steven: but that, became a category, that Macromedia and then Adobe called Rich Internet Applications. And my consultancy was like, we were the world leading consultancy in building rich internet applications. And so we were acquired by Adobe, to become the nucleus of Adobe Consulting, and I helped build the Adobe Consulting Organization.
[00:04:57] Jay: Wow. Love that. what's the technology climate in Scotland, and I know you're not there today, but just, what is the climate there today? Is it a space? Or a lot of tech companies live, or is it, you know, I don't know much about the ecosystem over there.
[00:05:12] Steven: It is funny, when I grew up, it, you know, it was kind of known as the screwdriver economy. You know, there was a lot of companies like Hewlett Packard and Apricot, you know, they would be doing assembly in Scotland. So we were, rich on assembly. but then it became wafer fabrication. And so like, you know, assembly became light electronics and electronics.
And so there a. you know, Elliott, you know, GC Marconi, Brit Aerospace, Hughes, aerospace, you know, so there was a real kind of, technology thread running through, and there still is to this day. It's,you know, we invented the television. We,
[00:05:43] Jay: There you go.
[00:05:44] Steven: the steam engine,
[00:05:45] Jay: For better or for worse, we have the television,
[00:05:47] Steven: And today it's a big part of the space economy just given like longitude latitude.
It's a great place for launching rockets. And so a lot of that kind of like exciting work that's happening in like spaces becoming kind of private enterprise, Scottish enterprise do a lot of work now, around encouraging space companies to locate in Scotland. So yeah,we're small but mighty.
[00:06:05] Jay: I love that. so, you sold your company to Adobe. I know you, I think you worked there for a while. where did you spin out this new business? I mean, you've been doing it for like a decade, right? I mean, asensei is not new. and I'm assuming it's gone over lots of iterations, but where, talk to me about going from Adobe to aasensei.
[00:06:20] Steven: Yeah. So when I was at Adobe, I was definitely having the itch to do something else. I mean, I loved Adobe, I loved the company, I love the people, but you know, you're a recovering entrepreneur. I kind of had the itch to do something else. and broadly, I kind of had my sugared water moment, you know, the, do you wanna sell sugared water for the rest of your life?
I was kind of getting into ad tech. I'm like, ah, this is not what I envisioned myself doing. And so I wanted to get into kinda like health and wellness. That was like, I didn't know what, but I wanted to do something that was in health and wellness. so while I was figuring it out, I did a stint at Microsoft and I got to know teams at Microsoft, like the Xbox Connect team, Xbox Fitness really well.
And long story short, after a few. Kind of boozy conversations with some of my students about, 'cause I was like, sorry, I was a karate instructor for over a decade as well, and I, you know, coached hundreds if not thousands of people karate. and then I just kind of realized a couple of things from a personal fulfillment perspective that was like really rewarding for me, the opportunity to be a coach and to.
You know, if you let people see their athletic potential, you unlock a little bit of their human potential. And so I was like, you know, coaching and teaching physical exercise that's challenging and, helping people accomplish it. that's a worthy thing to do. and then just as a nerd, you know, as somebody that was like sitting inside Aladdin's Cave at Microsoft and seeing Xbox and computer vision and wearables and smart sensors and intelligent ai, and, you know, this was in like 2012, you know, I was privileged to get a little bit of a glimpse of the future.
but the thing about being inside a company like Microsoft is. You've got access to all of this stuff, but the ability to move quickly and, if it's not a billion dollar business this year, it's probably not happening. and so I quit. I had a moment on the top of, Snowmass Mountain in Aspen. I had a moment of like, I'm quitting, I'm doing this.
I'm starting a company. And here we are.
[00:08:11] Jay: Love that. And yeah, I mean the Xbox Connect, I always felt like it was too soon for that. There's been a few like gaming technology things that were just too soon. Like the Dreamcast was, I don't know if you remember the Dreamcast or not, but it had like the first like digital. Like interface with a controller at the same time.
And there was just, it was just too early for that. that was like back when they were trying to, you were trying to play internet games via dial up still, I still very much remember like plugging a phone cord in the back of a Dreamcast. Like, it was just too early and it felt the same way about the connect.
It was very cool and it was like, it was neat, but it didn't feel like it had a bunch of real application, at the time. Right. The tech, it just, there was nothing fun or super fun. It felt very kiddy compared to like.
[00:08:54] Steven: I think that, and it was, I mean, it was amazing. I mean, you know, worst state of the art for us is can we track two people at once with a camera? And like, you know, over a decade ago they were tracking six people. You know, I mean, it was just incredible technology. I think the bigger challenge was like, you know, product market fit.
the Xbox, you know, we used to talk internally at Microsoft about how do we get Xbox out of the bedroom and into the living room. You know, it was in the kids' bedroom that was playing games. they did not have an unmet need that they wanted to use their body as a controller and do yoga. And like that wasn't, and that wasn't the core customer.
and so yeah, there was one famous E three where they launched the Xbox One with the Connect, and it was almost a revolt that like, this isn't a games console anymore. You're trying to sell this to my mom, not to me. and we were, we wanted it in the living room as the heart of the digital home.
so yeah, it was interesting.
I think it was just like phenomenal technology, but pointing at the wrong customer.
[00:09:47] Jay: Yeah. And it was, it just, it didn't, I was one of those people that was in the Xbox going like, what the hell do I want this thing that I can, like pop bubbles that come across my screen or whatever. that's the big connect example I remember was there was some bubble thing that you could, like, I.
[00:10:02] Steven: Halo and bubbles.
[00:10:04] Jay: Right. I'm like, what is this thing? So, anyway, all right. So asensei,you had this moment, you're like, I'm gonna go build this thing. Like what was the first step? What did you go do to try to build this company of your own?
[00:10:15] Steven: It was like Oceans 11. I was like, you know, I've got this idea to rob a casino, but I need a safe cracker. I need a, so it was, put the team together. And so the first call I. Was my now CTO Bill. I had known Bill, I've now known Bill for probably close to 30 years, if not over 30 years. Bill had built a speech recognition company and taken that public in London.
but he was also, he is one of the highest ranked martial artists in the UK. I knew him through martial arts coaching and so I knew he would get it and I knew he would be like, excited to try and solve it. So while I was at Microsoft, Bill was like, look, I'm kind of, he'd sold it, he'd taken this company public.
He'd basically, you know, semi-retired. and then, he was just contracting as a programmer for fun. It was like, you know, I'll get paid to do jigsaws all day. So he was like, I'll take a break from contracting. I'll spend a month on this and see if it's even possible. and at that time we weren't using computer vision.
We were, you know, the original notion was could we put sensors in clothing, that would track your skeleton? Like, like movie motion capture. So I'm at Seattle Airport, flying back to San Francisco, from Microsoft, and I get a video in my inbox from Bill. He is like, take a look. And it's a massive video and the gate's boarding and I'm like, Ugh.
And I watched this video and it was unmistakably Bill made out of about 10 color cubes. we still call it the Michelin Man video. but I see these cubes throwing a roundhouse kick, and I've been on the wrong end of that roundhouse kick many times in my life. I'm like, that's Bill. Like we've literally motion captured Bill.
And, I got on that plane knowing I was gonna have to quit my job and.
[00:11:53] Jay: I love that. When,you kind of started to build the tech out. How did you prove out that the product market fit was there?
[00:12:01] Steven: Yeah, I mean to the title of your podcast, first Customer, right? Our first customer was us. you know, at Microsoft there's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot of dog fooding. You know, you've gotta eat your own dog food. Sometimes it sip your own champagne, but, you know, eat your own dog food. And so we knew that with this core capability of movement recognition.
That allowed us to think like coaches. And you know, I've coached, like I said, for like over a decade. I've coached for most of my life now. but as a coach, once you can watch somebody and observe them, there's lots of things you could do. I could be like, Jay, you've never done karate before. Let me teach you some new exercises you've never done before.
Are you walking to me as a black belt? And I could kind of coach you, as a. Maybe I could just referee sparring sessions and I can just be an adjudicator. But all of those different experiences, if you like, rely on my ability to watch you understand what you're doing and how well you're doing it. So we decided before we become an ingredient technology and other people's products, we should go direct to customer first.
Like, so we should pick a population, and just learn from them. So. Now we went away and built a little iOS app for indoor rowing. At the time, nobody even knew about indoor rowing. We picked it 'cause it was niche. and we built a little app that connected to the concept two rowing machine, and allowed us to deliver, you know, coaching through the phone while you were rowing.
Take all the telemetry off the rowing machine and just experiment with like, what were the experiences that really lit people up And, you know, and there was a couple that really, you know, carry through to this day. One is. It's a very popular phrase in UX design. Don't make me think, you know, don't have me sit down and give me 400 workouts and make me pick a workout and choose what equipment I was.
Like, just sit me down and say, this is your workout today. and then I'll tell you what your workout is tomorrow. Tomorrow. And that was like something we dialed in, really quickly. And then the other was the importance of challenges. Like, give me something to hit, give me a target, give me a number of reps, give me a split time.
give me something to hit. and so that combo of, you know, if you're watching people and you're giving them targets and you can show them progression, progression's, retention, and, you know, we still have that rowing app in the app store. It's been in there for like five or six years. It's done millions of dollars of revenue.
And it was an MVP for learning.
[00:14:20] Jay: So who was your first customer that wasn't you?
[00:14:24] Steven: you know, we, with rowing, we started working with like organizations like British Rowing and like concept two. So we spent a bit of time so you could argue that, you know, it was starting to build out that ecosystem and rowing. but in 2022, that was when we, 2021 really, that was when we said. Let's, you know, let's make our technology available as an SDK, let's make it available as an ingredient, that other people can build into their products.
you know, some of our earliest customers are no longer with us, so I'm, you know, I'm not gonna, celebrate their gravestones unfortunately. But, you know, I think one of the customers we worked with, the earliest, who have been with us the longest and have an awesome product, so I want you to go check it out, would be a company called Alter.
so alter me.com, connected fitness mirror. you, you swab your DNA, you wear a heart rate variability sensor, that knows how tired or strange you are. It watches you working out, you know, it dials up or dials down the workout according to your readiness and your technical capability. And it's just this, you know, the phrase we use in the industry now, it's a hyper personalized fitness experience.
and, you know, it's a great product. So, they were probably one of our earliest customers that we kinda looked each other in the eye and we're like, we're building our companies together right now, aren't we? And, it was that symbiotic relationship of, you know, they accepted that we were building stuff just before they needed it.
and, you know, and we supported them strongly with our product development.
[00:15:49] Jay: If you had to start over today or tomorrow with the things that you've learned so far, same business, same industry, same everything. What would be step one? Maybe it's the same step one, but what would be step one, today?
[00:16:00] Steven: I always find these questions hard 'cause I feel like they're cheating. Like if I knew everything I knew to, like, if I could back to the future and have the almanac, like I would know what stocks to pick. Right? But can, and so. Yeah. I even think back to like, you know, there's probably something we spent $50,000 on that we'll never see that $50,000 again, and it didn't really take us in.
but it's all learning, right? You know, it's very trite, but that acronym of fail is like first attempt in learning. And, you know, even some of the, directions we went in that we then course corrected from, there was learning that caused that course correction. So. You know, I could look back and say, I wish we hadn't done Connected Appar.
I wish we'd gone to straight to computer vision, but that would be disingenuous. Like with the information we had at the time, I think we made the right decisions and they forced us in a direction. That is the reason why we now have the best solution in the market bar none, because if we'd approached it as a computer vision problem, we'd have tried to solve it the same way as everyone else, and we would have the same problems as everyone else around performance and scalability.
So. Yeah, I try hard not to look back and say, I wish, you know, I wish is not like, useful. I'd rather just look back and say like, what did we learn and how did it make us kinda, better, positioned today.
[00:17:16] Jay: So long. No, it's okay. It's okay. I get that answer a lot. And I don't think that it's, I think that's the genuine answer. and, it does lead me to the next question though, which is, you know, we know who your first customer is. who's your customer today? And how has that changed? how different is it than when you first started and who you thought it was gonna be?
Who is it today?
[00:17:38] Steven: It is interesting if I go back and look at some of my ver very earliest venture decks where I was telling people who I'd be selling to. They're my customers today. Like, I love the phrase, never mistake a clear line of sight for a short distance. Like we had a very clear line of sight of like, if we succeed, these are the people that will buy from us.
And so, our beachhead market was, fitness. I think when I started the company, I thought it might be sport. I thought it might be more of a like, let's pick a sport and coach the sport. but connected fitness took off. In particular, like strength became, you know, strength has become a stronger modality than cardio in some regards.
People are really kind of dialing in that strength training is, important. So, you know, our first kind of 25 customers are predominantly organized around digital fitness, connected fitness, either apps or actual products, that have a screen on them and they're internet connected. And, you know, I think I would say.
You know, with a degree of humility, we're the leader in that category. Right now it's ours to lose, not ours to win. we've got the most customers in the market and even customers that. Tried to do this themselves. They're probably engaged with us right now to figure out what's the effort in like sinking the cost of what we invested in and migrating over to aasensei so we can keep up with the people coming up behind us.
so what that's allowed us to do is, you know, we've been pulled into other markets, so one is connected healthcare and we're spending a lot of our time now. in physical therapy, whether that's MSK injury, you know, I've got bad back shoulder rehab or even neurological rehab from for stroke patients.
And so we're really excited, about serving that customer. And then the other is brick and mortar. you know, when you've got all this equipment in your garage gym, your expectations elevate of what the experience should be like when you go to your Equinox or you go to your big box. and so we're spending a lot of time with, brick and mortar customers, about how do they elevate the member experience.
So it's a hybrid experience. The, you know, the Jay that worked out at home walks into the gym and the mirror on the wall, and the gym is like, this is Jay and he's got tight hamstrings from yesterday, and this is the warmup sequence we're gonna go through. And so, so yeah, our ideal customer profile has expanded quite significantly in the last, six months.
[00:19:56] Jay: Your technology's great because I do have sore hamstrings from yesterday, so I don't know how you knew that, but you're good to
go. all right. I have one more question for you. This is just for you, not, business related at all. just you personally. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be? There it is. See? When you have the instant answer, I know,it's either one, you've cheated and you've seen other episodes or two. It really is what you wanna do. So
[00:20:21] Steven: Oh God, I would love
[00:20:23] Jay: all
[00:20:23] Steven: to go to
[00:20:24] Jay: that's mine too. Somebody asked me
[00:20:25] Steven: Really? Really?
[00:20:27] Jay: yours? Yeah. I do astrophotography. I'm like a huge space nerd of a giant, like
Oh, we should. all over.
[00:20:32] Steven: my son got into photography and just bought a cam, well just bought a camera. He is got a digital SLR now, and one of our goals for this year is we're gonna photograph the Milky Way.
[00:20:42] Jay: Oh, dude, lemme tell you. do that and then also, photograph, Andromeda because even with the little DSLR, the little smudge you'll get of Andromeda is like one of the most exciting, Just to crack into like, wait a minute. Like I can see a whole other galaxy from this little camera. It's absolutely. So, yes. We'll, I'll share some stuff, with
[00:21:07] Steven: That's funny. That's funny. I follow when as my Twitter feed got more and more toxic. 'cause like I need to just start following things that inspire me. And so I follow a bunch of astrophotographer just
[00:21:17] Jay: There you go. There's probably some of 'em in my group, man. We have a big community of like 25, 2500 people for sure. Definitely. Well, I love the story. I love the product. if people wanna find out more about you or something they heard today to reach out directly, how do they do that? And then obviously, asensei.ai, it would be that the company.
But if they, somebody heard something today. Who wants to talk to Steven? How do they do that?
[00:21:37] Steven: LinkedIn, find us on LinkedIn. We're pretty prolific there. We try and, share a lot,and, you know, follow me more than the company. 'cause you know, people follow people now. So, myself and some of my team, just find us on LinkedIn. I think I'm Webster. I was there early.
[00:21:52] Jay: I think so. I mean, you were easy to find when I looked you up, so we're good to go. All right, Steven, you're awesome man. the best of luck. Let's stay in touch and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks buddy.