Martin Kallstrom, Memoto on a wearable camera that can record your life every 30 seconds

[00:00:13] Speaker A: The Memoto is a small wearable camera that you wear as a clip. So it takes one photo every 30 seconds, and the photos are stored in an app where they're made searchable. And there's a GPS on the camera as well, so you can search the photos by street name or city. For me, it's really about effortless documentation

[00:00:39] Speaker A: of my life. I really want to know what I did during the day and to not forget that in a couple of weeks or a couple of years. And it's not about capturing everything you do. That's not valuable. It's about being able to go back to any point in time and find out what did I do there, what happened there, and also get photos to share Yeah. About

[00:01:04] Speaker A: moments that you never knew was going to be important before. For example, it provides me with means to go back and see— just yesterday night I was at an event here in London, and I can go back and see who did I talk to and realize, oh, I need to— that was the guy I need to get back to about that thing. I also get a great

[00:01:30] Speaker A: way to share photos with my team back home for them to see what I did. do here in London. And it's also like a mirror of your life. You can see, what am I missing in these photos? If I see— maybe I realize that there's no photos of a friend I really like to hang out with, and then I can get more

[00:01:57] Speaker A: time with— spend more time with them. What is Memoto? I'm a software engineer from the start, and I wanted to look at ways to collect data about your life and then use data mining that you normally use for really big data, but to do analytics on your personal life. And at first I was looking at collecting every information that you read or publish yourself, but when

[00:02:22] Speaker A: I realized the trend of hardware startups and with Fitbit, Nike FuelBand, and so on, and I paired that Together with the trend of how photos are taking over the social web with Instagram and Facebook and such being more and more about photos. Pairing those 2 together became Memoto. I

[00:02:48] Speaker A: actually was running another startup before, Twingly.com, and I needed to find someone to replace myself there. But that was really great because I could develop the concept, I could bring together a great founder team for Memoto, and when we started in March last year, We had already the concept very clear for us. We had done some focus group testing and so on, so we could

[00:03:13] Speaker A: get to work immediately. So now, a year later, we are 18 people and we almost have the product out in the market. We had some seed financing from Passion Capital here in London, and we also did a Kickstarter campaign which was hugely successful. So it's largely thanks to all the Kickstarter backers that believed in us that we

[00:03:38] Speaker A: can build the company and build the product.

[00:03:40] Speaker B: What were you looking for? How much money were you looking for initially?

[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah, so we were looking for $50,000 because we wanted to make sure that there's at least some interest in our product. But it turned out that lots and lots more people were interested, so we raised half a million dollars. That's great.

[00:04:04] Speaker B: How many backers?

[00:04:04] Speaker A: So that's roughly 2,000 backers. We are going to start to ship before the end of the summer.

[00:04:12] Speaker B: Okay. And how— can you tell me a little bit more just about how your revenue model—

[00:04:18] Speaker A: how are you going to make money? Yeah, we really believe that the customer should be the customer and not the product. So we have a subscription model for storing the photos, and then of course you buy the camera upfront. So the camera is $279. You can buy it right now, preorder at memoto.com. And then the subscription will be $9

[00:04:44] Speaker A: a month, but the first year is included in the price of the hardware, so it's only after a year you start to pay a subscription for storage. The question of privacy was really on top of our list from the first moment we started working on this. For example, we built the camera so we made sure that people actually recognize it as a camera,

[00:05:09] Speaker A: but still not We didn't want it to be sort of staring at you, being very distracting for you. So we found a balance there where we know that people that look at this without being familiar, they can recognize that it's some kind of recording device, so they have the possibility to react to it if they want to.

[00:05:32] Speaker B: Great.

[00:05:33] Speaker A: And then we also made sure that people can be comfortable with it. It's very hard to say, is this Is it taking photos right now or not?

[00:05:46] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:05:47] Speaker A: And we don't want people to have to— having to ask that question. So that is why it's actually always on. The only way to switch it off is to take it off. You need to take it off and put it in your pocket in order for it to be switched off. Otherwise, it's always taking photos. And that is— the reason is that, for example, if I go into a dressing room and there's a small button where I can switch it

[00:06:12] Speaker A: off, people around me will still be very uncomfortable with me having a camera, and that's the exact situation we want to avoid. So therefore, yeah, exactly. So we force the user to take it off in order to switch it off.

[00:06:28] Speaker B: And do you have any way of knowing when that 30-second interval is happening as a wearer?

[00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah, you will be able to switch on a blinking light, but otherwise you don't know. So that's why we're also implementing a trigger, so you will be able to double-tap the camera And it takes a photo 1 second afterwards, so you can trigger a photo whenever you feel like it. So just as with any digital camera, we will not control what you take photos of. And

[00:07:01] Speaker A: above all, it's your photos. We will not look at them, and they're encrypted on our servers, so we can't look at them. And so only you have access to them. But we are very, very adamant about communicating the respect for other people's privacy and informing of about what the laws are in regulating the use of cameras. For

[00:07:26] Speaker A: example, if there's a sign nearby saying cameras prohibited, you certainly need to accommodate for that with Memoto as well. It is just a digital camera. You wear it as a clip instead of holding it, but otherwise it's the same regulations, same ethics that go into it.

[00:07:47] Speaker B: Respect for other people's space and privacy.

[00:07:49] Speaker A: Exactly, yeah. But then there's also situations Where you should utilize your right to take photos. If someone is stealing your bike or harassing you, by all means take their photo. It's your right as a person to take someone else's photo if you feel like it. That is also a part of freedom of speech, to be able to document your situation.

[00:08:14] Speaker B: Thanks.

[00:08:17] Speaker A: I think Memoto and Google Glass fit very well together. Lots of people are talking about Memoto and Google Glass in the same context. So we have actually seen Google Glass as bringing lots of attention to Memoto as well. So that's very good for us. And I think that right now Google Glass cannot support like a time-lapse of photos throughout the day because it has far too short battery life

[00:08:44] Speaker A: without taking photos even, around 3 or 4 hours. And Memoto has a couple of days of battery life in comparison. But sooner or later they will get there as well. And Memoto's software to organize photos will be applicable to Google Glass photos as well.

[00:09:02] Speaker B: So there might be some interesting opportunities for integration.

[00:09:04] Speaker A: Very much so, yeah.

[00:09:05] Speaker B: What next? You're talking about an API platform. Any other plans for the future, or we just watch the space?

[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah, so we are also going to develop lots of accessories for the Memoto camera, like a wide-angle a new lens, a waterproof case, and so on.

[00:09:25] Speaker B: Great stuff. And you can even put a sticker on it?

[00:09:28] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Whoever you support. Yeah, to personalize it.

[00:09:32] Speaker B: Excellent.