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Demystifying the conversations we're already here at RRE and with our portfolio companies. In each episode, your hosts, Will Porteous, Raju Rishi, and Jason Black will dive deeply into topics that are shaping the future, from satellite technology to digital health, to venture investing, and much more.
Will: Well, you mentioned there were also some really cool things in the next-generation consumer appliance category.
Raju: Yeah. Yeah.
Will: Any favorites?
Raju: Yeah, there were, like, five or six.
Will: [laugh]. Oh boy.
Raju: Four of them—three of them were coffee-oriented.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Because I love coffee.
Will: Oh, boy. I wouldn’t have gotten past any of that.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: That sounds great.
Raju: I’ve got to be honest with you, these were cool. I’m probably going to buy all of them [laugh]. Actually, I’m not going to buy all of them. One of them is a little weird.
Will: I’m Will Porteous.
Raju: And I’m Raju Rishi.
Will: Welcome to RRE POV, the show in which we record the conversations we’re already having among ourselves, our entrepreneurs, and industry leaders for you to listen in on.
Will: Hello listeners. Welcome back to RRE POV. It’s time for our annual review of CES. And to take us through what he saw last week, we’re going to be talking with my partner, Raju Rishi. We sent Raju to the future, as it were, to see what there was to see at 2025’s Consumer Electronics Show. First off, Raju, how was it? You’re a CES veteran. Good to be back?
Raju: Oh, I always love going.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: You know, I love going for a handful of reasons. One, I always see five or six of my CEOs there, right, because CES is divided into four quadrants. You have automotive, you’ve got consumer electronics, you have media, and then you have a bunch of stuff around healthcare, which is a newish value proposition of CES. So inevitably, there’s four or five of my CEOs there. I get to sit down with that, I get to connect with a bunch of entrepreneurs and investors, and get to see cool tech, which all of us love in this industry.
Will: And maybe you get to go to some good parties?
Raju: Oh, yeah. The parties are fabulous [laugh]. I think I went to… what did I see this year? I saw…
Will: How many parties did you go to?
Raju: Three parties. Three parties.
Will: [laugh]. Are you sure? Only three?
Raju: Yeah. The best was Chainsmokers.
Will: Nice.
Raju: The Chainsmokers party. That was, like, fantastic. I love Chainsmokers.
Will: Wow.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Wow. That must have been good.
Raju: It was awesome.
Will: All right, well, maybe you’ll tell us about some of the cool stuff that you saw there. I know for those of us following along at home, the NVIDIA keynote and the announcement about DIGITS, an NVIDIA workstation for the desktop, sort of, was thought-provoking to think about where NVIDIA might go with that. Did that have any resonance for you?
Raju: Yeah. I mean, Jensen gave the keynote and it was kind of interesting. It felt like NVIDIA is moving from just sort of a hardware chip designer and developer, and trying to facilitate the migration of AI in a faster way.
Will: Interesting.
Raju: And so, Jensen talked about sort of three core changes to their business model, but just product, you know, strategy. He launched a personal AI supercomputer called Project DIGITS, really designed for AI developers, $3,000. And you and I have talked about this a little bit, but the Sparc workstation from yesteryear—
Will: [laugh]. Kind of takes those of us of a certain age back to when the really good cool developers had some serious iron on their desktop. Maybe DIGITS is going to be like that.
Raju: I loved my Sparc workstation. I loved it. Back in the day, I was at Bell Labs. I was the first guy to get one, at least in the wing where I was. And everybody came in to look at it, and just watch the screensaver [laugh] because it was so fluid. It was bees. The screensaver was bees on the Sparc.
Will: I remember. I remember. Good news for you. Apparently, DIGITS is going to just be running Linux, so you’ve got plenty of room on your desk right there, you know. [laugh].
Raju: Yeah. It’s going to be bees. I’m going to put my bees back because I love my bees. So, that was the first thing. And I thought that was kind of interesting is what’s limiting the deployment and utilization of AI? Jensen, obviously, NVIDIA is thinking about how do I get more hardware on people’s desks so they can develop for AI faster and more effectively and thereby create more demand for my chips?
Will: That’s a great insight.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Okay, you talked about the four major areas. You want to go through those?
Raju: Yeah, I’ll just finish up with NVIDIA. They actually launched two more things. One is the graphics chips for gamers. So, a next generation. I don’t think you’re a gamer. I’m definitely a gamer. The RTX 50 series came out, which is a new set of GPUs. And it’s RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti, and 5070. And basically leveraging DLSS for upscaling to boost graphics and frame rate. Pretty good and pretty profound, and I think it’s going to be helpful to a lot of game developers. You’re going to see a big demand out of there.
And then they also launched something called Cosmos, which was a foundation model for a [GenTech 00:05:33] AI. And basically what this does is it generates photorealistic video to help train robots and self-driving cars. So, I think those three announcements, if you think about it—personal AI computer, graphics chips for gamers, and Cosmos—is really designed around propelling the AI and the graphics industry forward so they will sell more hardware downstream. And very insightful, Very—you know, sort of, it’s a strategy all of us would do if we were running the company, but it was interesting to see Jensen announce those things at the keynote.
Will: And a great framing on your part of them as enablers for the whole ecosystem. And once more, we see a market leader really forward-integrating to create the markets that it wants to exist. So, it’s a signal moment.
Raju: Yeah. I worked at AT&T long ago, and AT&T was like, okay, we have a network. We charge per minute for a phone call. What makes this bigger, and what makes us more money? It’s more phones. So, make the phones, get the phones into people’s head, make it easy to buy or lease or, you know, have one everywhere. The more phones you have, the more phone calls that are made. And that’s what Jensen’s doing.
Will: [laugh]. The power of the network. All right—
Raju: Exactly.
Will: So, how about another area? The TVs and the displays are always really cool at CES. Did you see anything that got your attention?
Raju: Yeah. It was kind of three or four things, Will. You know, number one—[laugh] oh my God, they have, like, 100-inch sets now from nearly every vendor, with Samsung debuting a 115-inch set.
Will: [laugh]. Did you get yourself a really big-ass TV?
Raju: I didn’t buy it, but I looked at it. And I was like sitting in front of the thing saying, “What room could I put this in?” [laugh]. You know, that is, like, traditional CES is, like, just up-level the size of the television. So, that definitely happened. Google introduced a TV that incorporated Gemini AI into it.
Will: Wow.
Raju: And there were a handful of AI-inclusive sets. Which at first I was thought, you know, like, come on, this is—what do we need AI into a television for? But the use cases were really interesting, Will. Like, one of them is enabling natural conversation with your television. And we all have remotes—
Will: Oh, thank goodness.
Raju: Yeah. We have remotes that we can speak into, but this is a little different. This is, like, not just saying, you know, “Tune to CBS,” or, “Tune to Channel 4.” This is saying, I want to watch that Friends episode where Joey is wearing all of Chandler’s clothing, you know, he keeps putting on more and more Chandler’s clothing. And the TV set kind of understands that figures out what episode number that is, figures out which of your various streaming services might have it, and then says, “Do you want to watch it?” Or, “It’s going to be on live television in, like, three days, I’ll record it.” It’s that level of sophistication that I thought was super interesting.
Will: Wow, that sounds really powerful. So, just cutting through all of the menus, all of the manual hunting and searching, all of the choice of, like, which streaming service you’re going to use, like, kind of an AI overlay that makes all of that kind of meaningless, it sounds like. Wow, I can’t wait.
Raju: Yeah, so I thought that was pretty cool. But the other use case that I thought was really interesting is, Gemini can create customized background artwork for you. So, your television is off, it’s sitting in sort of, you know, ambient mode, and you have basically an ambient background, which can include GenAI’d pictures of your family. So, you can actually give it photographs of your family, and they can use that to create generative artwork—
Will: My goodness.
Raju: Of your family. So, I thought that was cool. And then the third use case that they kind of talking about the booth was, you know, just controlling smart devices while the TV’s in ambient mode. So, just using the television as more of a hub. And I’m not sure that’s necessary because, you know, you can have other products, like, the Apple HomePod or, you know, the Google Home products. But those are the three things that—so I think it’s starting to get incorporated into the television.
Will: Boy, that’s a lot of credible innovation coming in an area where I think we’ve typically kind of had low expectations. That’s great.
Raju: It used to be just the TV’s got bigger. Now, they’re incorporating some intelligence in them.
Will: They’re going to make our lives easier.
Raju: Yeah. The other thing I saw was—[laugh] and I don’t know how applicable this one is, Will—Samsung had a stretchable micro LED display. And they had a demo of, like, a shark kind of swimming around, and as it approached the—you know, it was facing the screen, like, facing the audience—the actual screen would bubble out. [laugh].
Will: Ohh. [laugh]. Oh, wow.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Wearable TV next year.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: I mean, you’re going to see it.
Raju: Maybe. Maybe. I mean, I thought that was really cool, but I was thinking to myself, like, I remember when HD was launched from a television format, and how many years before we had enough content. And now 4K has been launched and 8K has been launched but, like, there isn’t a lot of 4K content out of there, and there’s certainly very little 8K content. I’m just wondering how many scenes like, need to be recorded where the screen’s going to bubble out, you know, and get three dimensional on you. But it was cool.
Will: [laugh]. Still cool to talk about.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: What about in the automotive area? Automotive’s been typically, like, an enormous area. Yeah, so we used to go and look at the cars when I was there. Anything cool in that area?
Raju: Yeah, I got to be honest with you. I was there last year and automotive was kind of sprawling. It was a crowded exhibit area. They were demoing a lot of self-driving… everything, frankly. Self-driving, you know, sort of home bots, self-driving commercial bots. John Deere had this massive display where they had earth-movers and they had automated, sort of, earth-flattening, giant—like, they were enormous. And this year it was kind of more of the same.
Will: Wow.
Raju: I didn’t see, kind of, a layer of above and beyond. It was a lot of exhibits that looked a lot like last year, and people were walking around seeing it. And I think it may be because, you know, sort of the sort of high innovation rate around self-driving, I think the reality is, that’s taking longer than most people initially expected.
Will: Sure. Sure. And we’re well into perfecting self-driving, but that’s a massive, massive objective, a generational objective. So… yeah.
Raju: And so, I think we saw more with electric. I think we saw more with self-propelling, self-guided stuff, but I think that the rate of innovation kind of was just like, okay, it was incremental to last year.
Will: Interesting.
Raju: There was a pretty cool collaboration between Honda and Sony, which was an interesting, very, very streamlined-looking automobile. And I went and I talked to the show floor person, and a lot of it was about, like, every seat having its own entertainment mode.
Will: Oh, interesting. Wow.
Raju: Yeah. So like, the noise, you know, the sound would be directed toward an individual’s ear, and the two people in the back, and the one passenger side would have their own entertainment console, and could just kind of enjoy the ride. Less to the driver, of course.
Will: Sort of a richer and richer individual experience inside.
Raju: Exactly.
Will: Wow. That’s interesting.
Raju: That was pretty cool, but they had that last year, you know, as well. And as I said, it was sort of incremental to years prior. Years prior. Yeah.
Will: Got it. What about in healthcare and sort of wellness? I mean, that’s been a really fertile area for us as investors. There must have been some cool stuff.
Raju: Absolutely. I think the two areas where I think I saw the most innovative stuff was in the health and wellness space, and then in, sort of like, the next generation appliance space. And I’ll jump into the health and wellness side of things. There was a bunch. And I’ll just kind of go through a handful of them, but the area of sleep was really kind of pinpointed as an area of focus.
I saw a smart mattress, I think it was called OptimizeME, and it uses bio-AI algorithms to analyze your sleep habits and breathing patterns automatically and adjust the firmness and incline of the mattress automatically to reduce breathing issues like sleep apnea. I saw another smart mattress called ERA Smart Layer, which was combining sleep tracking and active spine alignment.
Will: Oh, my gosh. Wow.
Raju: Yeah, and an automated massage mode. And then I saw a smart pillow, which is called a motion pillow, which was an anti-snoring pillow, which basically listens and learns your breathing patterns, and it’s able to pinpoint the moment that you would start snoring. And at that moment, the pillow inflates, gently moves your head, opens up your airways, snoring stops.
Will: Wow.
Raju: Saves marriages. It’s all good.
Will: Amazing. Everyone’s friend. Everyone likes this. Wow. And there must have been a lot of ear buds related to sleep management, helping you fall asleep, helping you stay asleep, getting better sleep.
Raju: Yeah. Ozlo had Sleepbuds that were developed by former Bose engineers, and they’re designed to mask external noises such as snoring or sirens to facilitate better sleep. So, if you don’t want to buy the smart pillow that prevents you from snoring, you buy your spouse the Ozlo Sleepbuds so she can’t hear it [laugh]. So, I think that’s the way it was. And there was a bunch more in that health management section if you want me to jump in.
Will: Yeah, I mean, my sense is that there’s so much data being produced by so many sensors that the number of sensors for understanding health are just multiplying. Be curious if there were some of your other favorites, and if you see anybody really seizing the high ground in terms of integrating all of that data to give people a global view of either their health, or their household health, or their employees’ health because a lot of it seems to be siloed.
Raju: Really good question. Really good question. I did see they’re very siloed, and so Samsung is making a big push in this health management space. And they had a pretty cool demo. They had a Dexcom integration. It was like a future application, probably available, an application that’s available probably later this year, health management app. But you integrate your Dexcom with it, which by the way is now available off the shelf, no prescription required.
Will: That’s huge.
Raju: Yeah. And so, you basically get this glucose monitoring tool. With the application, you take photos of what you eat—
Will: Mm-hm. Oh, wow.
Raju: And it can see when your blood sugar spiking based upon AI recognizing what you’re eating. And it makes recommendations about how you should change your diet, including recipes for what you should eat. And then it goes into the home. It says, hey, you got a Samsung fridge. We’ve got some TVs inside that fridge, some monitors inside that fridge, and what we see is the recipes that we sent you. You have 80% of what you need, but there’s the 20% of the products that you need to go buy.
Will: [laugh]. Wow.
Raju: Yeah. So, like, Dexcom integration, you take photos of what you eat and it’s integrated to the fridge, and it tells you what you need to go buy.
Will: Wow. Wow.
Raju: Yeah. That was pretty sick. That was pretty sick.
Will: That’s unbelievable. And I got to say, I mean, as a computer vision junkie, like that’s an unbelievable application for personal health chain. Wow.
Raju: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Will: Amazing.
Raju: Samsung also had this smart mirror—not available yet, although I think people will buy this, I mean, guys and girls—scans your face, figures out what skin routine you should adopt. Based upon your wrinkles, pigmentation, pores, arrhythmia.
Will: Does it tell you that you’re good-looking?
Raju: It always tells you you’re good-looking. That’s, you know—
Will: Mirror, mirror on the wall.
Raju: Absolutely. Absolutely. But I thought that was kind of cool because, you know, frankly, I mean, you know, but you don’t know. And with a high enough resolution—
Will: Well, for men in particular, right? I mean, men are a growth market in skincare. And we know we’re supposed to do certain things to take better care of our skin, but we don’t really know what they are.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: That sounds cool.
Raju: Exactly. So, that was pretty cool. And then, Withings had a smart mirror that basically conducts a comprehensive body health scan, and it acts like a telehealth platform, connecting to healthcare professionals. That was concept-only. But there was a ton in this space of, like, how do you increase the number of sensors around healthcare?
So like, I’ll give you another example. Withings also came out—this came out last year, but it’s going to be available in this year—it’s basically a tool that just plops into your toilet and analyzes your urine.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Oh, wow.
Raju: Yeah. And it can tell you kind of like, what’s happening, you know, over time with another piece of data. So, Dexcom made a lot of money with using your blood to determine glucose spikes and has become a really popular product, which I think is going into the non-diabetic world pretty aggressively now, but urine is another source of data, and it can tell you kind of how things are progressing over time, based upon analysis of your urine.
Will: Wow. I mean, we are all going to be generating so much of our own data, and with so much more frequency than we go to the doctor than we have a professional look at it. I mean, the opportunity on the AI side, the analysis of all this data, the sense-making out of it so that you’re not searching on the web to understand what a certain number looks—what it means in your Samsung, your analysis result.
Raju: I think there’s a real opportunity here, Will, for a company to—maybe more than one actually—to own this aggregation. And you know, I’ve talked about this before in the AI podcast, which is, you know, the companies that make money are the ones who either can leverage pre-existing data in a proprietary way and create value either for the enterprise or for the consumer. And then there are a set of companies that create new data. And when you look at healthcare, there’s a ton of data gathering that’s happening, and we’re at the precipice of it. You know, this is Oura ring, there’s the Apple Smartwatch, you know, it was the Fitbit, and the Google watches before that.
We have these sleep monitors that are, you know, on our mattresses, we’re going to have this urine analysis, we’re going to have this Dexcom continuous glucose monitoring tool. We’re going to have this smart mirror that basically scans your face for wrinkles and pigmentation and oil. There’s a moment here that’s happening that I think it’s going to be a really massive swing. And I don’t think everybody’s going to take advantage of it in this world, but there are enough people that if you made it easy for them to get this data and this capability to say, “Hey, listen, I’m going to slap this thing on my wrist, I’m going to slap this thing on my tricep to get continuous glucose monitoring, I’m going to put something on my mattress, I’m going to have a mirror,” and all of a sudden a bunch of data is collected, and with very little difficulty, they’re giving you some feedback on what kind of micro changes that you can make in your life to be healthier or feel better or more energy or sleep better. I think that’s pretty profound.
Will: I couldn’t agree more. I also think it needs a unifying framework and it needs, frankly, a security framework that I bet a lot of these kinds of companies don’t really have in place. I mean, I’ve actually—I could have had a sensor on your tricep for months now without you looking back there.
Raju: [laugh]. That’s funny.
Will: But I’m only saying that half in jest. A physical sensor is one thing, but all of this data is accumulating in silos and in these private companies. It needs to be integrated. And as you said, you know, the company that can leverage this preexisting data in a proprietary way can own a very powerful relationship with a customer.
Raju: Yeah. Because if you do develop that relationship with a customer, they’re happy to give you the data if you’re giving them value back in return.
Will: Yeah. Yeah.
Raju: And all of a sudden, that company becomes at the forefront of everything.
Will: Well, you mentioned there were also some really cool things in the next-generation consumer appliance category.
Raju: Yeah. Yeah.
Will: Any favorites?
Raju: Yeah, there were, like, five or six.
Will: [laugh]. Oh boy.
Raju: Four of them—three of them were coffee-oriented.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Because I love coffee.
Will: Oh, boy. I wouldn’t have gotten past any of that.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: That sounds great.
Raju: I’ve got to be honest with you, these were cool. I’m probably going to buy all of them [laugh]. Actually, I’m not going to buy all of them. One of them is a little weird. So, one was this smart espresso machine. It leverages robots.
Will: Uh-huh. Oh, good. It’s time for the robots. I’ve been waiting for the robots to show up.
Raju: Robots are showing up, all in this appliance section.
Will: We have robots as often as we can on this show, and there must have been a lot of robots at CES.
Raju: There was tons of robots.
Will: Coffee robot is already one of my favorites. Tell me more.
Raju: Okay. So, it’s called Meticulous, and what it does is, it generates heat and pressure using digital actuators, sensors, and software. So, part of the challenge of making good espresso is compacting down the coffee grinds and tamping them down.
Will: Right. The thing that the barista is always doing, like, pounding on the thing. Yeah.
Raju: Pounding, pounding, pounding. And that’s got to be done properly. You don’t want to pound too hard, but you don’t want to pound too soft. So, you want to compress it properly. It uses actuator sensors and software to do that.
And then the flow of water is very, very important in making a high quality cup of espresso. And so, there’s flow sensors to determine exactly how much water is going through the coffee and creates the correct brew ratio. And lastly, there’s six sensors that are designed to keep the water at a consistent temperature. And so, this could be the perfect espresso, which I think is quite interesting.
The second one I saw was something called Midea Barista Brew, and it uses AI to learn your taste preferences. So, every cup of coffee is in the same. I think if you kind of combined Meticulous and Madea, that would be kind of interesting, to say, I know that you’re pushing more water through than the, sort of, sommelier for coffee says, but I kind of want you to push a little bit more water through because I’d like mine to be a little bit less… bitter, or something.
Will: Yeah. I mean, there’s that potential to really just fine-tune the most perfect espresso to the individual.
Raju: Yes, exactly.
Will: Oh, amazing. Wow.
Raju: Yeah. And the last one I saw was Kara Pod, which is a coffee machine that never needs water.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Yeah. It uses condensed water, condensed air from your home.
Will: So, it’s pulling moisture out of the air?
Raju: Pulling moisture out of the air. Which I absolutely don’t want ever to happen in my household [laugh]. I know it’s going to be, like, I know they’re going to clean it and filter it and all that kind of stuff. I don’t know, man. Like, I don’t know if there’s mold in my house. I’d rather go get pure water [laugh].
Will: You know, you live in South Florida and it gets a little—the air can get a little funky.
Raju: Yeah, it can get a little funky. It can get a little funky. So, I’m not sure I love that one, but it was kind of a cool sort of tool. So, you never need water. It has the filters in there. And—
Will: And I give them high marks for a technical achievement, if only [laugh].
Raju: Yeah. It is a technical achievement. And so, the other products I’m going to talk about are non-coffee-oriented, but I spent a lot of time at the coffee section because I love coffee. I love coffee.
Will: [laugh]. I would have been right there with you, as you know. But what lay beyond the coffee pavillion?
Raju: Okay. So, the next one was awesome, and I’m probably going to get it because I live in South Florida. It’s an Anker product. And Anker created an electric cooler that is coupled with a solar-powered beach umbrella.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Genius. Genius.
Will: So, you put up the umbrella; the solar panels charge the cooler—
Raju: Yes.
Will: —right, and there’s enough battery in the cooler that when, you know, clouds come over, you take the umbrella down, your beer stays cold.
Raju: Okay. So, first of all, the cooler, on its own, lasts 52 hours without the umbrella. Without the umbrella.
Will: [laugh]. Okay.
Raju: Well, and it comes on wheels. I mean, this thing is heavy. It’s like, you know, basically, like, concrete blocks, three or four concrete blocks being—but it got wheels. So, you know, you pull this thing, and then the solar umbrella kind of plugs into it. It uses perovskite solar cells. Will, I don’t know if you know much about solar, but perovskite is a new crystalline—it’s a new material that can be used in solar cells that has a 30% better efficiency.
Will: I got it. Wow.
Raju: Most solar cells are made with crystalline silicon, and this is 30% better. And I think you can effectively, with this, open and enough sunlight, power this electric cooler forever. And if you take it camping or if you’re, like, you know, basically doing a protest on the beach for, like, six weeks, but you need your ice cream, you’re good. You’re good.
Will: Yeah, well, I mean, this is off-grid cooling. I mean, packaged in other ways, you could take perishables with you in the back country with good solar coverage and those kind of cells. And that’s very cool, man. That’s really cool.
Raju: So, that was it. And then vacuums had a day. Robotic vacuums had a day. I saw three that were interesting. I’m not sure which ones I’d buy, if any. There was one called Roborock… Z70. I don’t know. I mean, Z60 wasn’t that good, but Z70 is great. And it has a mechanical pincer arm to pick up socks and underwear.
Will: Ah, yes. Yes. I’ve heard the chatter about this. No more picking up socks. With this guy, he’s going to have mapped my entire house. He’s going to know that I leave socks all over the place. He’ll be right behind me.
Raju: Yeah. So, it doesn’t suck them up. It’s just basically I’m going to vacuum, but if I see a sock, I throw it in my bin up here. So, [laugh] interesting. SwitchBot was the most interesting. It’s modular. So, rather than just being a vacuum, you can add an air purifier, you can add a security camera, you can add a tray for sandwich delivery. So, you know, you got options with that one.
Will: So, I can throw out my sandwich robot. Like, this guy, will—
Raju: You don’t need all three. Everybody has an air purifier robot. Everyone has a security camera robot, and who doesn’t have the sandwich tray guy, you know?
Will: So, SwitchBots now, like, made all of those individual robots obsolete.
Raju: Obsolete.
Will: He’s got a whole toolbox.
Raju: Whole toolbox.
Will: Impressive. Wow.
Raju: However you need. [clicking noises] click it in. It’s like transformers. It’s fantastic. And then there was one called Dreame X50, which is able to climb stairs.
Will: Really? Ah.
Raju: Yeah. Yeah yeah. Yeah, it’s a vacuum to climbs stairs. So, that was interesting. I mean, that was sort of the most appliances. And then there was a couple of really cool gimmicky things I saw, if you want me to jump into those, these aren’t really appliances.
Will: Yeah, yeah. This is the ‘other’ category, I think, now we’re into.
Raju: Jump into ‘other.’ By the way, I did get into a hyperloop while I was there.
Will: You did?
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Oh, right.
Raju: Vegas has a hyperloop.
Will: How far did you go? [laugh].
Raju: I think it was like 25 feet [laugh]. No—
Will: Cool. But fast.
Raju: No, it wasn’t. No, it was moving from one side of the convention center to the other, and they had a fleet of Tesla with, like, you know, you were chauffeured. I got to be honest, it was a little claustrophobic. Really, really tiny tunnel.
Will: Being shot through a tube would be a bit claustrophobic.
Raju: And it wasn’t automated. None of this was automated. It wasn’t a platform. You didn’t, like, park your car and have it shot. You actually drove the Tesla. And there was no, sort of, grid lines. The driver could actually crash. So, yeah. So, I’m thinking to myself, man, like, somebody goes into this tube. There’s no grid lines. You crash. You’re in this, like, tiny little tunnel. It got me a little nervous. The driver was pretty good. So, you know, I was like, he hasn’t crashed yet.
Will: Maybe they can get some guys in there to paint some lines or at least maybe some tracks would help?
Raju: Yeah, I think the tracks would be useful. I think some kind of automation around that where you don’t drive anymore. But it wasn’t self-driving, and it was really, really tight. But I now have been in a hyperloop. Now, I’ve been in a hyperloop. So, that was pretty cool.
But the cool thing—and I think this is the coolest thing I saw at CES—was Samsung Ballie. It’s B-A-L-L-I-E. It’s this a yellow roboball, right, and it makes, like, 15 to 20 different noises, and basically you throw it to your dog. Your dog picks it up, and when he drops the ball, the ball can make a noise. And it tries different noises to see which one your dog likes best, and whichever one it likes best, that’s the second learning tool. And then it drops the ball again, and this time, the ball runs away.
Will: [gasp].
Raju: And then makes the noise.
Will: [giggling] whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo.
Raju: Yeah. So, if you don’t want, you never need to play with your dog again.
Will: Aww.
Raju: Aww, but I want to play with my dog.
Will: No—
Raju: But you know what?
Will: —we both do—
Raju: The dog gets bored.
Will: But we’re not around enough. We go to work. We travel. Yeah. Yeah.
Raju: I love playing with the dog, but think about that. Like, this ball basically figures out how to best engage with your puppy and your dog—
Will: I love it. I love it.
Raju: Here’s—it’s got two more modes. The second mode is eyeballs. So, it’s got a camera. And if it hears a noise, it’ll roll to the room, and tell you kind of what’s—show you what’s going on in that room.
Will: Oh, so it’s also a—
Raju: Security mode.
Will: A bit of a security camera.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Love it. Yeah. That unsuspecting dog toy in the corner is actually watching you.
Raju: Exactly.
Will: Yes.
Raju: It’s a guard ball. Guard ball. And then—
Will: Genius.
Raju: I know. And the third mode is if it hears somebody coming down the stairs that is not an intruder, hopefully, it can create lights so that you don’t bump into stuff. Like, it creates stars on the ceilings and stuff.
Will: Wow.
Raju: Yeah. So, that was really, really cool. And then I saw something that was bizarre. It was called Blackbee's Bebird EarSight Flow. So, it’s a pair of headphones—
Will: Goodness.
Raju: So, you listen to headphones, but then your headphones can shoot water into your ear canal to clean your ears.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Kid you not. I kid you not.
Will: Oh boy.
Raju: And they have cameras in it so you can see what’s being cleaned out.
Will: Oh, this is—this gets right to the human fascination with, like, what’s in my ears.
Raju: You know what’s going to come out is, like, oh, look at that penny that I had in there from years ago. And also I can hear better. But you know, I mean, like, you know, it’s like, you always think about, like, what can I combine with what else to make it—like, oh yeah. So, let me do headphones and ear cleaning in one.
Will: Amazing.
Raju: It was—
Will: You saw some incredible stuff.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Wow.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Unbelievable.
Raju: Yeah, it was fun. I actually—it was fun.
Will: I would buy that robo-ball tomorrow.
Raju: Me too.
Will: —for our household. I want that.
Raju: I want that.
Will: There’s a lot of other stuff here I want, too.
Raju: Yeah, I want that. Now, I mean, look, I don’t want to poo-poo the, you know, the cleaning of the ear canals. I actually could use an ear canal cleaner. I’m not sure I want it as a headphone, but I would like a product that kind of cleans my ears. I mean, why not? My wife’s constantly telling me that I need my ears cleaned out. So.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: [laugh].
Will: I’m going to leave that alone.
Raju: Yeah.
Will: Well, you’ve given us a fabulous view of the future as you saw it in Las Vegas last week. You know, I think we’re getting to that part of the program, that proprietary Raju Rishi Gatling gun part of the program. So, I don’t know how you want to run this, but—
Raju: I’ll run it. I’ll run it.
Will: Okay.
Raju: I have a few questions. I have a few questions. And we’ll make this one short because, you know, kind of bantered on about my CES learnings. I always love going to that show though. I really do. Even though I found this year to be sort of less of a step function than last year, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.
So, Gatling gun. So, I’ll ask a few questions. I have answers, my own answers, but would love your view into this as well, Will. So, in your home, for you, what is the most useful tech product that you have?
Will: Hmmm, probably… probably our Sonos, in the sense that we—the combination of our Sonos and Spotify, and the way we move music around the house. I was doing this, this weekend. I was doing some work in the basement and I had music on. I had to go up to my son’s room and I switched the music up there. So, I’d say on a kind of a unified household basis, probably that.
I really love the AI interface for the TVs that you’re talking about because those of us who don’t watch a lot of TV are like, oh, wait a minute, like, what’s going on? And like, the idea that you can abstract away the layers, I think will be really in demand. But what about you?
Raju: I got to be honest, mine is an iPad. And it’s portable, lightweight, long battery life. It allows me to be in any room with my family, even if I have a little bit of stuff to do. And oddly, like, I know that sounds so, like, oh man, that’s, like, ten years old, but it is the most useful tech product in my house. I use it all the time.
Will: What I love about that is that I remember when Steve Jobs demoed the iPad for the first time at the [D conference 00:38:05]. I was in the audience at the time, and people were like, “Yeah, but what is it? Is it an e-reader?” Like, “It’s not a PC. It’s not a phone. You know, I can’t do laptop stuff on it. What am I going to do with it?” And yet for you today, it’s the most useful item in your home, and I can understand why.
Raju: Yeah. For my wife, it’s Find My. She’s constantly using her watch to find her phone, and it’s typically, like, one-and-a-half feet from her. Like, you know, just, like, disguised. It’s like—I feel like these phones, like, basically camouflage themselves. Chameleons. I’m like, “Honey, it’s right there. Like, you put it down, like, 30 seconds ago.” It’s like, dee-dee-dee-dee. It’s right there. It’s right there.
Will: [laugh]. That’s great.
Raju: What’s your most useful tech product at work?
Will: It’s my laptop. I mean, I live and breathe on my laptop, to the point where if I had a full desktop set up, I wouldn’t use it, you know? My laptop is an extension of my brain. How about you?
Raju: This Samsung 49-inch display.
Will: Yeah. You do love that big display.
Raju: Curved. Three screens can fit on it. It screams badass. People come in there and they’re like—
Will: I got to tell you,I think your 49-inch display is feeling a little threatened after it heard you talk about that 115-inch display you saw in Las Vegas.
Raju: I know. I know. There’s going to be a wrap around in my office shortly. It’s going to be, like, whooo [laugh]. No, but I love this curved display. If I could fit another one, I could fit literally, like, three full size screens on it. Four? Even better. Even better.
Will: [laugh]. Soon you’ll have one for each portfolio.
Raju: I know. I know. I know. I know. It’d be fantastic. All right. Most useless tech product you’ve ever bought? You bought it and you either barely used it or you never used it.
Will: You know, the robot toys that were supposed to just roll around your house and do cool things. I can’t remember the name of them, but they didn’t roll, they didn’t do cool things, they just cost money and sort of sat there. I remember giving one to my kids when they were little and be like, this is going to be so cool. And it just kind of—like a Magic 8 Ball would have been a better present that this, like, dumb, rolling robot.
Raju: Or maybe a deck of cards [laugh].
Will: Yes, definitely a deck of cards. Yes.
Raju: All right. Mine is, last year I went to CES, and I saw this product called Clicks. And I don’t want to disparage the company because I’m sure people like it, you know, but Clicks basically is this phone case for your iPhone with a keyboard at the bottom. So, it turns it into a Blackberry. And I was like—you know how much I loved my Blackberry. You know how much you loved your Black—all of us loved our Blackberry. So, I bought this thing—
Will: Yeah, we could go back in time and be the Blackberry guys we once were.
Raju: I know. So, you actually slide your iPhone into this thing and it has a little keyboard at the bottom. And what I found, insanely, even though I have such fond memories of, like, being able to type so quickly with my Blackberry is that I’ve gotten so comfortable not having a keyboard, I can really type quickly without it, and I don’t want anything that lengthens my phone any more. Because this adds, like, another two, three inches to the phone.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: And I just don’t use it.
Will: You don’t need that. Yeah.
Raju: I don’t need it.
Will: You don’t need that [crosstalk 00:41:36] at the bottom.
Raju: So, I tried it once, and then it was just too big. Okay—
Will: Well, you’re reminding me how clumsy I was when I was learning to type on an iPhone. And that was not an easy transition for a lot of us, and yet we can’t imagine going back to that keyboard anymore. Fascinating.
Raju: Yeah. All right. Next question. Largest TV you own?
Will: Ah, mine are all just, like, run-of-the-mill 60, 80-inch TVs. Like, you know, they’re downsized for certain rooms. There’s a big one in the living room.
Raju: Yeah. I have a 75-inch. Would you want a larger one?
Will: It’s not that meaningful to me. Until I can have a full wall, and when you can basically have customized surface area for a TV on an entire wall, I think that would change the viewing experience so dramatically that I would be into it. But yeah.
Raju: Okay. And then do you still use your Apple Vision Pro?
Will: Sadly, the things I could do with it, the list of things was short and I’ve done them. And I don’t really do them. I don’t watch movies on them. So, I’m glad you brought that up because it was a year ago that we were thinking intensely about what could happen there, and you know, I will never count Apple out on a platform bet. Like I think that as we’re having this conversation, you know, I thought about when the iPad was introduced, and remembering when Steve Jobs was way ahead of all of us in realizing we could handle that iPhone keypad. So, there may yet be a role for the Vision Pro in my life that Apple knows about that I just don’t know about yet.
Raju: Yeah. Yeah. I still use mine probably, like, once every two weeks.
Will: Yeah?
Raju: But it’s really in, like, TV mode.
Will: Yeah.
Raju: Yeah. To watch, like, a one-hour movie or something like that—or show—where I want, like, just to, sort of like, evaporate from society, including my household. Because you do. It’s immersive. Like, you are gone when that television’s on, and it does block out all light and all that kind of stuff. So, I still find it useful for that, but nothing else. And it’s not every day, and it’s not super useful. I know Steve—I mean, Tim Cook still uses his every day, but kind of, he has to [laugh].
Will: [laugh]. So, he’s way up there on the user chart.
Raju: Exactly. Exactly. All right. This is the last question. What product have you been waiting for all your life, and if you had it, you’d buy it?
Will: Wow, what product is that? You know, I really want a master organizer, and AI may bring it to me. Like I’m a file guy, I’m a syntax guy, and I’m looking around at all the paper I still have and I don’t have much. I’m pretty digitally-oriented. And I know it’s completely boring, but the idea to just easily be able to find things, we’re still a long way from that. So, I guess that’s the product I want. The file system, the total file system for my life, in perpetuity.
Raju: Yeah. Yeah. I kind of like that. I’ve been waiting for a listing device that takes notes and reminds me of things that I’ve promised to do, but really just does those things so I can go play Balatro or Slay the Spire or something [laugh].
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Listen, we all take notes, we all jot down, but that’s got to be, like, on the horizon. It’s got to be on the horizon where I could just clip something onto my wrist or, like, it’s a necklace or something like that, and it’s just listening. And I know it’s a privacy issue and everybody’s all concerned about that. And you know, it would have to be secure. It would have to be private. Like, that’s de facto.
But I would just love not to have to take notes and have this thing, like, listening, summarizing, and basically, using some level of AI, bringing to the forefront the action items from that conversation. And then, you know, if there was a way for me to click here for it to do some of those things, I mean, that’s even better. But, like, just that first part of recording, and just synopsizing, that has got to be somewhere close.
Will: I think you’re right. And it’s got to be close. And we’re both really saying the same thing. You’re only as good as the systems that you have that support you, and I want both of those systems tomorrow, right? Because the time I spend looking for things, the time I spend reviewing notes, summarizing notes—or not actually going back—it’s the time when things don’t get done.
And your point is a good one, which is you just need an AI agent to follow through on the action. So. Yeah.
Raju: Amazing.
Will: Well, this has been a great 50 minutes exploring the future with you. I want to go with you next year. I think I said that last year, but you know, there’s so much to see and so much inspiration for our business and what we do.
Raju: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, all right, we will wrap up. Well, thank you, listeners, for tolerating me and Will for, you know, 35, 40 minutes here. And this was a good view into sort of the tech stacks that we’re going to see in the coming year. I encourage you to share, like on any platform that you’re listening to us on, and we will see you next time.
Will: Thank you for listening to RRE POV. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast at @RRE on X or rre.com, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. We’ll see you next time.