• Keep it chill. Don't mention the fact that you have an invention already. "I'm an inventor..." (more here)

• My main goal today is to learn from your experiences and perspective. I'm not trying to sell you anything; your honest feedback is what's most valuable to me to make sure I'm building something genuinely useful

• "What have you done about it?" Measures hair-on-fire-ness somewhat, although can dig into learned helplessness too.

• Stop saying yep?

• Don't suggest LCD, talk about problem space still

• Wait for your questions until the end of possible, so they have the maximum opportunity to get their thoughts out?

• Honest feedback scripts (particularly on prototype)

  • Depersonalizing: "If this was a product made by [Big Company X], what would be your first impressions or concerns?"
  • "<the idea / prototype> is not 'me.' So, as we discuss its failings ('out there', gesturing away from us), you're helping the idea get better, not criticizing me personally. In fact, that is the most helpful / caring thing you can do for me, as it allows me to focus on the things that matter! What you don't like, what seems confusing, or what would stop you from using something like this. For example...a common complaint is that it's ugly"

Goal:

• Determine if "eyeclipse" glasses are a desirable option for glare reduction. Specifically:
  • Price ($100-$200)
  • Form factor (although people are searching and buying, 1000/mo at least night driving glasses already). How many want clip ons vs sunglasses.
  • Will they buy? (implying market size)

Who is searching for night driving glasses? Is it to try to improve dark vision (headlights aren't a problem), or glare (headlights are a problem). A good pre-call survey question.

Big 3 scary questions:

• Is it a hair on fire problem? What have they tried to do about it?
• Will people actually want it? Pay up to $100 for it?
• Are glasses / clip on sunglasses form factor sufficient for now? (as opposed to other form factors)
• Is this the "right" / optimal solution?
  • Good question for optometrist, or ChatGPT actually.

Don't reveal product or ask "what if" questions.

• You want to ask, "what are my customers' top problems?". Find evidence of monetizable pain.
• Smoke test / landing page doesn't work for the simple reason of, with only 1 hit per 100 clicks, how do you know what to optimize on your page? Is 2 2 responses per 100 clicks statistically significant? How do you know you will get a desirable outcome in the end? "It's a multivariate optimization problem and a recipe for going around in circles"
• Surveys don't work, as you don't always know the right questions to ask!

• Dr. Citek from Pacific: https://www.pacificu.edu/about/directory/people/karl-citek-ms-od-phd-faao
• Dr. Eakland from Pacific: https://www.pacificu.edu/about/directory/people/kenneth-eakland-od
• John Carmack: https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1879555254141993406
• Australian guy's wife

Lab manager for electronics prototyping lab at Portland State.

Has pain with driving at night with others' headlights. Tried to work on the idea off and on.

Visited her teams' practice at Specs 20/20. Suffers from occasional migraines. She looks to be in Monday, Thursday and Friday.

Dynamic light reactiveness would be a huge thing. Alternating dark and light when driving in sun and shade. Didn't mention headlights. Maybe can get away with simpler solution?

They are able to sell Avulux lenses, but the lenses are fairly new. Only one paper supports the findings, need more information to come out about it.

I talked with a Pacific student, Peter, he was open to any questions too.

Recommended talking with Dr. Aaron Salzano at Pacific for more performance eyewear and research questions. Dr. Karl Citek is hard to reach.

Would definitely be a great place to ask follow up questions

For bright headlights, what consequences do people have? I kind of know that though. --That would be awesome --Everybody tells me that the headlights are a problem. But we can't do anything

She came up with the need for eye tracking right away. I am still not sure if needed, will test more

Nike has colored contacts lenses but people wore them when driving, which was perceived as a liability for Nike and discontinued.

There were also color changing lenses (transitions) to work around this, but they were not very dark.

• People with a lower pigment iris will have more light sensitivity than someone with higher tint.
• People with migraines will spend thousands on medication, so why not try avulux lenses for $300?
• Epilepsy, one trigger can be flashing lights, like police lights flashing. Seizure. Maybe they already have something?

Avulux employees tell her that at the first sign of a migraine, they put it on and it helps not have a migraine. "But they don't have data" --> There is no study that proves its efficacy.

• Echoes what I heard at Edwards Lifesciences about doctor hesitancy. They are busy and want a silver bullet to some extent. Maybe a silver bullet doesn't exist!

There are likely other eyecare people / doctors that will know more details than Dr. Kwiecen.

How does she deal with migraines? "Oh, I just take medicine". Maybe it's expensive, but it's likely covered under insurance. Her work environment is ideal for avoiding triggering conditions, but other situations might not be.

Karl Citek and James Kundart would be fun to talk with about it.

• Citek is helping with Altius vision, with contact lenses similar to avulux.

Had lasik. On thread.

Car headlights at night are the big one

i'd say more discomfort than pain

i also had an issue with them to a lesser degree before lasik

i know it's not legal to drive around with brights on if any other traffic can see them. like 2 or 3 points on your license illegal, but it is completely unenforced

TODO:

Jumperless creator

They might have a way to do the darkness tracing better. Fit it in the frame.

Just ask them

SLS Nylon is good for this. JLCPCB. Pulls sweat out of

Meta did one. Just do Wayfarers, look fine on everybody.

It's hard

Instagram ads have the best ad targeting in the world

Make a cool Apple-style video, then you're done if YouTube picks it up.

They have a trusted brand.

Hunting and fishing are really gadgeted out places, and mostly useless. And it can look bad too.

After lasik surgery, her eyes became even more sensitive. However, she wants bright light at home, so it's not that. She mentioned cloudy days (presumably with sun shining through) that were especially annoying.

Currently puts on granny glasses over her existing glasses for different situations. However the granny glasses are too dark for reading phone, so she needs to take them off.

She also drive a motorcycle, which has its own constraints on form factor (helmet foam pushing in on side)

In certain parts of the year near sunset, driving up bald peak road is blinding. In a stick shift car, you don't have hands to use for blocking sun.

Interestingly she didn't mention night time headlight traffic as an issue, despite driving to the countryside frequently. Although she did mention driving back from Seattle can be annoying headlight wise.

Would be willing to be a prototype person! Wants to encourage me to continue development. Was fine with the sunglasses form factor.

Driving into sun during sunset is annoying. He just avoids it and waits.

Rearranged his evening activities ~8 years ago to avoid driving at night. Feels a bit trapped in wintertime, as not many hours with light. If he is out at mom's house in the countryside, he just stays overnight. It is much harder for him to drive at night than when he was younger.

I think he is starting to get cataracts, but his optometrist recommends not getting surgery yet?! He says the effect is different and worse than an unclean windshield.

Before, would create a fog-like glare.

After, reduced the fog glare, but changes to "firework glare" or more star glare because of plastic lens.

Only a problem in peripheral vision. (as it is higher frequency sensitivity than head-on). Strobe effect is annoying, causes nausea after 20 minutes.

• Sort of like for me, trying to read in car. Happens after 40 seconds or so.

When she was a lighting saleswoman, customers would frequently come in looking for solutions to their CFL bulbs blinking. And the ballast was dead. LEDs are better, but some are bad still.

Was not a problem for her when she was younger. She can't even walk into a showroom today, with all the lights as LEDs. Drives her crazy.

She drives in left lane to avoid having badly blinking headlights in her side view mirror (also annoying in rear view mirror). Mostly the cheap aftermarket headlights do this for some reason. She didn't mention christmas lights.

• My badge (50 hz or something) is not annoying when it is still. She expects it, even when her head moves slightly. But when I start moving it (causing short bright pulses at different spots in visual field), it's a problem.
• She will block the light with her hand if necessary. Annoying to do while driving!

Distraction and disturbance. But not painful.

It's difficult because she wants to have multiple tints for a scattered cloudy day. So, she uses multiple magnetic sunglasses with different tints and tries to switch them while driving.

It is a daylight driving issue. Coming out of dark tunnel on west side of portland, needs to transition to visor down, sunglasses on by the top of the zoo. While handling turns, and not slowing down traffic behind her. It's habit now, but annoying and potentially dangerous if something else were to happen that she needs to brake.

She can't control the light levels that are used for transitions. Also doesn't transition fast enough for her.

When she changes frames (not sure what prompts this), it's a big headache. She has to go buy the ones that have magnetic clip ons. And find ones that has shades she is comfortable with. Not too dark, not too light, not too green, not too brown. So only one of the 5 that are compatible with her final glasses frame fits her preferences. And she would still like one that is lighter / custom tint.

Also needs to have multiple levels of them and manually switch them.

She didn't like the spring clip ons because the grip eventually wears off and scratches the lens. Also, she has to take off her glasses in order to put them on, can't see close up so can't switch them quickly.

Magnetic is one hand, boom. Also, conforms to glasses better so light can't leak in between two lenses and reflect.

But of course, you don't have to switch shades if it changes tint automatically!

So short term it's ok to try out, assuming you can't 3D print a magnetic design (I think I can!)

Nightmare because the machine had flipped settings, but her brain had adjusted for it already.

Weight is very important for her, to not have glasses slip off of face. Glasses strap won't work for her as a woman with ponytail.

Is it actually a problem? She avoids it, has John do errands. But if she can't get out of it (driving us to airport early in morning), then it feels like driving almost drunk. It's theoretically ok, but still scary at times.

She has disability glare from "stars" emanating from bright headlights, but surprisingly not discomfort glare.

Doesn't like driving in grandma mode. Enjoys taking curvy roads fast.

It's like it's raining, but no one else has the rain! So annoying.

My note: And for people with cataracts, it's sort of like driving with a windshield that is not defrosted yet

Not bad, a little blue. (in off state). Not sure about on state yet.

Still don't quite understand it

Seems to be that the reflection blocking properties of polarized glasses that cut out bright reflections is an especially added benefit for cataract sufferers (less point light sources the better)? If I had a dynamic display, I could help even more, as the light doesn't need to be polarized to be dimmed by the display.

Polarization, for her, is more important than the shade level of the sunglasses. Makes sense.

She doesn't like blue light filter coating as it changes her color perception. Of minimal benefit for her anyways.

Color perception is important to her. She does art stuff. And is annoyed when she takes off her glasses and the color is different than without glasses.

• Can instruct her to give it 60 seconds and her brain/eyes will adjust to the level.

She likes having intuitive accessible control of settings, but only if it doesn't do what she expects/wants. Otherwise she is fine.

Don't want settings buried 6 menus deep.

Couldn't quite tack down why she didn't like it. Color isn't great, maybe there's some flickering that is annoying. Not sure.

Doesn't like camera motion in videos when a character is also moving. Or lower frequency video (fps).

Can't handle looking out of a car to the side for very long. Need to look forward like she is driving.

All these things were fine when she was younger. Only became an issue with age.

Some things are worse after the cataract surgery. Like reflection sensitivity.

More cautious about new technology. There's the difficulty of change, but also unintended consequences.

She can no longer opt out of technology (especially medical stuff)

Suffered from visual migraines, happened every few weeks. Went away with a better fitting prescription (eye strain).

She considers wraparound old person sunglasses better for her than more stylish flat glasses. As they protect the periphery, which can have annoying light too. Although I think clip-on is even more preferred for her.

She would have to try them to really know, to evaluate.

Clip on is best when it fits the curvature of the glasses (less distortion and clarity reduction), blocks external light from getting into the gap between the clip on and glasses and bouncing around causing additional glare.

Fog. Maybe polarization will help enough such that you don't need to further darken the display. Might need to put a polarizing filter in front of the lens to simulate this effect.

Cloudy day. Supposedly for her polarizing filter helps here too, and wouldn't want to over-darken.

She doesn't think she would wear them all the time. There might be long-term issues with electronics causing harm to skin, brain, etc.

Different use cases: everyday / all the time, and just when driving (temporary). Sales is easier for the latter.

Consumers are less fickle than designers think. There's a lot of brand loyalty.

Automatic dimming level adjustment and reduction of spot glare, both during driving, would be a nice add-on product that she thinks she would be interested in (assuming they fit, etc).

She doesn't want a "smart" device that is frustrating, has doodads that aren't required, requires a subscription, etc. Neither do I! I doubt she would want to replace the lens herself though, maybe the eye doctor will.

• Different polarizer colors, adjustable darkness for a given polarizer. Maybe do fancy one with diff colors • Match darkening frequency to lighting to smooth it out a bit more • Custom-ish 3d printed magnetic sunglasses that fit your existing glasses. Or just do clip ons, not sure yet. • Driving in sun and hitting shady spots, that staccato of bright and dark.

Can I dim an LCD to match the flickering of the ambient light? Should be ~120Hz (double line rate of 60Hz), and supposedly within limit of LCD. Could test with lcd shutter today actually...But would the flickering of the display be annoying enough that it doesn't matter? Would make lighting more consistent in intensity.

• Why does this help vs. just dimming? If not all lights are bad, then you can dim just for pulse period and leave open for rest.

Problems started as cataracts started to develop

...

Hi Dr. Miller,

I am an inventor and engineer living in Hillsboro and I'm trying to assess if I have a relevant solution for people with photophobia and glare sensitivity. I had a delightful time talking with a patient of yours, Jennifer Raetz, about her research and ways of dealing with her eye issues, and she recommended you as a knowledgeable optometrist that is interested in new ideas.

While I have done some amount of research and prototyping, I would love to briefly explore the problem and solution space from your perspective, in-person if possible.

If it's relevant, I do have some functioning prototypes I can show too.

Thanks! Nolan

[1]

Market size: Questions:

As people Tinted glasses

Sunglasses beyond some situation-specific minimum tint level and polarization aren't helpful, as the pupils just dilate again, correct?

• Related: For people with light sensitivity, will making the glasses more shaded actually help or will their pupils just dilate again to a painful level? (do the parts of the brain talk to each other)

What does she think of "covering one eye" A/B test experiments to test the above? (respond back to stackexchange question with answer)

• Jennifer was very sensitive to this, messed with her eyes, even with yellow (low tint).

How does custom tinting work? Is it really custom? Tried to Google, can't find anything. They don't do it anymore? Can't do polarized and custom tint!?

About what percent of older patients have symptoms similar to Jennifer? (or other photophobia)? Google says 8-20%

What was their target end user? I think shorter people...but most people are ok with visors the way that they are, right?

First user interview trying to follow "Continuous Discovery Habits", great book!

• Lane keep assist is really nice to have.
• Start at dusk, becomes very dark very fast in the country.
• Sarah is sleepy too, busy.
• Headlights are very important for seeing farm animals. Critters can come out at any point around me.
• Headlights in your eyes and you're trying to stay in your lane! It's very difficult to see your lane. Have to look down at the lane, lots of things.
• Not sure how lane keep assist is going to work when it's snowy. Snow reflects more light so it's not as dark at night.
• If someone is in your lane, there is nowhere to go. Safety wise.
• Reflecting surfaces, giving you feedback of where you are in your lane. Super important. Rain doesn't help the situation either.
• "I'm ready for self-driving cars". On her car she sets "eyesight" adaptive cruise control, just need to steer.
  • She never relies on it totally.
  • Today she was a little too close to the car in front, got a rock chip from the trucks in front. Corn and onion semi trucks, the produce will fall off and hit you.
  • She needed a windshield replacement to fix the dime sized chip, and it would cost $1000 because of the optical system. Need to buy a $3000 tool to recalibrate the sensor?!
  • It does have the ability to be closer/further back, she just had it closer for some reason . There are 3 distances, sufficiently far back.
  • The distances on the van are different. Also 3.
• It's hard to stay focused for that long of a drive. It's even harder as you get older.
• Country driving, detecting things further out is super important. Left hand exit.
  • Slowing down in the shoulder to make a sorta blind 20mph curve. Very dangerous!
  • Farm equipment: Country songs about being behind them on the freeway.
• Her Subaru is a 2014 Outback. Headlights are not even. Choose not to do LEDs because they are too expensive and don't last. She believes LED lights would probably give her more visibility.
  • However her car is notorious for being very difficult to changing the headlight bulb. Currently it's pointed down too much and needs expertise to adjust more.
• Her neighborhood is really dark (no streetlights). She puts the brights on in order to see anything that might come up!
• Dense fog in her neighborhood too. Good lights don't help with that.
• People in the country get forgotten. They like living there because it is the country! Less busy. Less lighting in the neighborhood. More natural. Very quiet! No light pollution.

• "That's a huge thing for me! I can't see!"
  • You can't tell where the oncoming bright car or the car behind it is, because it's so bright.
• The plastic on her 2007 Honda Pilot headlights aged and made her visibility much worse.
• She would prefer a windshield type device, $200 is too cheap. $400 - $500. It would need to have good reviews and be reliable.
• If it's helpful, she could get used to wearing them on eyes, she already wears sunglasses during the day!
  • As she gets older, her eyes are more sensitive to the bright sun and even cloudy days. However overcast days are fine.

Next interview:

• Focus on pain points of driving overall. Can be daytime or nighttime.

• People want to be in on new stuff, that's cool. Tell them you don't want to bias them towards the product you are developing, we'll talk about it at the end.
• It wasn't perfect! That's ok, you remembered to do it and got a decent interview still! :)

• Just need them for UV protection and a slight bit of light reduction

Happy chemistrie clips user. His eyes are just sensitive to light, and his sunglasses apparently completely solve that problem for him.

He mentioned night-time driving was a problem for him (glare), but he tries to avoid it. Forgot to ask how annoying that part is for him.

_At first I thought they would be great candidates because they drive a lot, but it turns out for a sample size of 1 blocking bright headlights / sun was the least of their day to day problems! Maybe because they are generally younger. Below are notes of actual pain points. _

Moving away from hip holsters, onto shoulders

Seat belt adjustment, getting it off in stress. Developed an extender, but now gets caught. But one less thing.

Training props for making things realistic.

Axon has VR training pretty well covered. Getting realistic scenarios in is important. But 10 ft box doesn't translate.

Breathable vest that you can put on underneath stuff. Keeps kevlar off of skin. Little things help a lot.

It's a pain to answer phone separate from radio. But there are different brands of radios, so harder to implement.

Despite being older, he doesn't have issues with headlights at night. Rather just the overall darkness level is unsafe. Despite living in the city.

Commutes in daily from outside of Banks. Mostly countryside driving.

Cars are coming at each other at 120 mph. More interruptions nowadays with a phone or watch buzz with no warning. People can easily turn into your lane slightly.

Conditions of roads are not all that great.

Has road rage occasionally. 10 minutes standup routine. Others often have road rage too to him, when he is going 63 in a 55.

Almost blinded while driving at night.

Lack of governance around aftermarket headlights. No enforcement from cops. No legislation right now.

The elderly and his wife have a painful time driving at night. She just avoids it. They saw an ad on tv about night driving glasses (yellow) but didn't look into it more. She just avoids it.

Making driving at night a bit nicer is worth it for a lot of people too.

Uber and Lyft drivers, policemen, pilots. Policemen especially drive a lot on all roads.

Insurance might be willing to discount if you have them. Or a tracker.

VC of sorts from Japan and founder of Kibidango, which is where Vixion glasses were started.

Apparently only 5-10% of sales came from initial roadshow. Much more were from word of mouth and youtube reviews.

He also didn't take to Chamelo marketing, and was kind of confused with their Wicue relationship.

Local musician / designer / hardware person with friend that is truck driver annoyed with headlights at night.

Companies buy you because you have a machine that makes money (that doesn't need you). Although some buy for acqui-hire, I'm sure.

I'm not sure I want to do glasses for the rest of my life. 10 years? Maybe

Pretotyping guru along with Alberto Savoia

I think I will enjoy seeing the prototype through still. I have some confidence that there is a decent market. However, the main reason for pretotyping is not only for market validation but also for user experience testing, getting their use cases and desires ala Continuous Discovery Habits.

Gold Coast Australia

Reduce glare.

His wife has thyroid eye disease. Makes her eyes super sensitive to glare. Frustrating to watch tv at night because sunglasses don't work.

It's ok to "burn" some early adopters with a fake product listing. Be ok with fake door. Society will thank you.

Rapidly.

Does anyone have pain enough to care about the problem?

Compare them, normal sunglasses and eyeclipse.

I have to do the marketing testing anyways when I have the prototype done, might as well do it now and adjust the prototype to fit the desires of the "true believers" / early adopters that do show up.

• The A/B/C/D/E testing of marketing (do people who click prefer techy details or are overwhelmed by them) can be frustrating for this niche product. But it's great practice and learning. Just has to look realistic enough.
• You do want a professional looking page, it takes some time. But make it simple too.
• Customers are only trying to answer "does this solve my problem". They don't care about your progress, how hard it is, don't want to fill out a survey etc. Try not to mention price initially either, as that's another variable you don't want to bring in.
• Want a realistic call to action: "Coming soon, sign up for the waiting list". While you will follow up with them later, you're just measuring "do people care enough to put down their email" right now.

It'll be a 10-year thing.

Moat:

• It's not AR, really. It's pretty low-tech
• Price/cost

• Does he remember the spec for lux level and eye damage? (chemical or thermal). Can find with more googling / reading of eyeVR too.

Contacted him over linkedin.

Glasses, the buyer is frequent drivers and inconvenience/safety. Visor the buyer is car companies

The market, form factor They looked at a lot of different form factors, started with visor, ended with visor.

Primarily because Bosch is an automotive company. There were established customers.

Didn't like glasses:

• Some existing intellectual property (patents)
• Existing company dyneye
• Failure mode, person is blinded (assuming negative mode for VA). ISO 26262 covers these failure cases.
• If not for a driving accessory, then it's fine.

Driver specific market studies

• Showed proportional interest to how much you are on the road. Uber driver, commercial,
• Very strong interest from pretty wide section of demographics. Shorter individuals especially, visor doesn't help them

Meta's smart glasses:

• Form factor looks like a regular pair of glasses, they are successful because of that
• Light enough and power efficient enough

Market size:

• Can't map onto people happy with existing sunglasses, that would be an over estimate. What reason would they have to switch?

ISO 26262 standards:

• Severity * likelihood = factor.
• How easily can the user adapt to the situation?
• Runaway engine on vehicle, very severe. But user can overcome engine torque by stomping on the brakes.
• Work around for glasses, Take glasses off, press button, etc
• They evaluated PNLC, but found the most opaqie state was not enough. They set Visor default as opaque.
• failure states
• -- No power. Default to clear lens with uv protection is probably fine.
• -- Firmware bug. Is it possible to have the LCD be in an unsafe state? (All black while at daytime/nighttime) Need to prove/show.

Public prototype was passive LCD, but they also investigated vertically aligned LCD.

As soon as people had a prototype, people would instinctively stare at the sun (ooh cool solar eclipse!!!) and it'd be a problem since it wasn't dark enough to be safe. Needed it dark, so pursued VA instead.

A lot of people were interested in night-time use case. Were never able to get a solution for that. Tradeoff of transparency vs max darkness, with different demands for day and night.

Hot swappable polarizers could be an option.

Orientation and distance alignment of polarizer is important. Need to test more.

If you measure the optical transmittance, nits of brightness, will see nonlinear responses based on driver characteristics. Important to have configurability on how you drive it.

Hexagon pixels:

• When you have two dimensions (rectangular pixels) the amount of change to go diagonal looks more jarring. Hexagons give you more flexibility in dimensions, 3 instead of 2. But not strictly necessary, made graphics more difficult.
• Was good algorithm for non-straight-line edge
• Would go for smaller pixels much more than hexagonal pixels

Definitely not multiplexed:

• Direct drive to each pixel!!!
• Tradeoff between thickness of traces and how many traces you have and the space they take up

Decisions were centered around eye safety. As dark as possible.

Was at Bosch for a long time, 18 years. Contacted by recruiter at Meta. Had a history of AR things. Timing worked out just right, in between projects at Bosch. At a point in career where he didn't have more upward mobility at Bosch. His recruiter ended up leaving. Big delay before getting contacted again. 6 interviews over a period of a month, then technical test. Accepted, there are 6 different teams interested. So more interviews, took 6 months in

His team is centered in Burlingame in SF. Almost two years. Layoffs started 3-4 months after he joined. AR was deemed a growth area.

Would definitely choose Meta 9/10 times. Bosch is extremely stable, waterfall, requirements, but also:

• They were experimenting a lot with intrapreneurship. Innovation framework, entrepreneur boot camp. Really gravitated towards that. Before that he was really technical engineer.
• Entrepreneurship gives you a different way of viewing things. Like the matrix.
• I can help the customer!
• 99% of the time these intrapreneurship projects will get squashed / treated like a virus. Even if promising, you need money to grow and properly fund things, and the executive making budget decisions for the org is much more inclined to support existing people than to spend more of his budget on something unproven.
• Much much more capability in manufacturing, since they continue to supply a lot of parts.

Nothing is happening with Bosch's patents right now.

Meta is much more technically focused. Engineers are in the trenches and making implementation decisions too

Paid a lot of money at Meta. 400K vs 125K from what I can tell.

First season of "masters of scale", Reid Hoffman. One of the podcast series that he really enjoyed. Talks about the very early steps that they went through and their rules of thumb. Really related to the stories.

Zero to One, another good book.

Can bring on a cofounder, who is more familiar with the business side of things.

Could go into YCombinator. Might have better luck as a first company, because glasses are very much a fashion item.

Putting on VC hat:

• Not expensive to build prototype
• Things that need to happen to get sales:
  • If you're sharp on who your customer is and what value you are creating value for them.
  • Really zoom in and verify you have first customers, and then expand to other markets later
  • The more you sell, the fixed costs can be amortize more
• Uber driver could be less concerned about style and more about design. Customize the first ones for the target market.

Virtual Visor:

• Prototype LCDs were inexpensive
• Designed everything within their team
• Manufacturing, they were getting their hands dirty
• When it comes to manufacturing, they have costs

How much money to go to production?

• Do as realistic of a simulation as you possibly can of a kickstarter and costs. Where does time go,
• He hasn't been through it himself

Cap the downside risk with a high minimum number of orders.

Similar to me, had fun working on the prototype.

Raised friends and family money. NIH grants for SBIR. Potential concern might have been inexperience in forming the company.

DARPA contracts.

Air Force call for proposals, SBIR grants. Army paid $1.5 million. But contracts wanted really fast response times.

Got tired spending time and money preparing for nuclear war / military stuff.

Paid a networking group to get a talk with sunglasses companies.

Presented to Oakley in person in California. Also went to a vision/glasses show in Las Vegas. They were concerned about cost and difficulty to manufacture. Their solution was several laminated layers that were only adhered on the edges. Standard sunglasses are injection molded and vapor coated and cost 10 bucks, even if they sell for $300. Plus people are paying for the fashion statement really, not for fancy features (think Google Glass).

Can only have curvature in one dimension.

Has there been more progress in plastic LCDs. Fashion might have also come closer to cylindrical.

Never got in front of angel investors. Wrote into Shark Tank, never got a response.

There often is local entrepreneurship development folks that will help with advice, ideas, funding.

Prototypes never got to the actual selling to someone stage. They were glass LCDs. He was worried about liability.

Do a follow up email about LED strip controller. Have a generic multiple choice interview. Give me a hand by just answering 2-3 questions.

Kickstarter is a good way to test the more wide market and get marketing.

Hardware: Have to actually manufacture, ship, has to feel right. Lots of things that software doesn't have to do. Tech bubble companies were just a website in the end.

Took Mark Rober's course online. 3 prototypes in 4 weeks.

• He tends to think in his head vs doing a prototype. So runs out of "making the thing" steam easily.

Investors are going to want to know the product market fit. Is this all "worth it" in the end. They don't know your technical hurdles, don't care about them really.

One-person shop in Rochester designed and made the PCB.

Liquid crystals are like pencils, they align with an electric field, but otherwise go back to a standard orientation / lay down. There are transparent electrodes that you can coat the glass with to get the electric field to each pixel.

• A passive display does a scanning (one pixel at a time). Suffers from cross talk.
• An active matrix display puts a few more layers on the glass, and builds a few transistors at each pixel. More complicated.

Calculator displays are passive. Don't have nearly the same contrast ratio. LCD screens

Super twisted nematics overcomes the problem in passive LCD (think the original game boy), lacks blocking ability.

Scattering mode:

• Doesn't have the voltage tightness of super twisted, so you have to make active displays.
• Also If you press on it, it can permanently stay in one mode (I think scattering). So it is quite fragile, and didn't end up working well for the army, who wanted it to be plastic and able to be accidentally stepped on.

With the army contract, he was able to hire a few people at Kent State and have access to their clean room, where they could make prototypes. Has since "gone to pot" and the tools and clean room environment aren't maintained well according to his former employee.

Don't assume you have to do everything yourself. There are companies out there that are willing to work with small timers (that could become big timers).

Best to have 3:1 voltage difference between dark and light pixels.

Why did they use ski goggles for dynamic mode / nighttime??! Did they know about scattering close up?

• They were looking into a cylindrical type display for the army, and it was a convenient housing for the lens and the 3 square inch PCB they needed.
• He appreciated my description of why a blocking medium really close to the eye would block too much of FOV.
• However, he didn't have a problem with sunglasses lens distance for nighttime driving.

• Prototype screen cost is exhorbitant
• They were looking for no significant gap in pixels with a bright light behind it. Even 10 microns will let a bright light source in. You need 4 lines to go down each row/column (power ground, data, what else?). Becomes expensive if you want high resolution feature sizes on litho. Don't need high res, but making a one-off TFT display is not cheap
• He agreed that the transistors added visual artifacts, at least at high resolutions.
• Great blocking ability though! Due to static driving, but I feel some other magic too. Although monitors are not like bright light sources.

They needed a way to drive the required voltage (>15V, my research) to each column/row with at least two bias levels. Can no longer drive using microcontroller. Thought they needed analog switches (I think he means demultiplexer?). I was trying to understand why they couldn't use mosfets, didn't quite get there in my own understanding or his.

• Used an off the shelf LCD driver from EM microelectronics. Probably segment. Maybe with 4 backplanes, not as big of an issue as I think. Ahh, but want to reduce the transmission, so static driving if possible.

They used two watch batteries and lasted "hundreds of hours". At 235 mAh for CR2032, that checks out to having the camera running most of the time.

What is transparency of OLED? 50% apparently from googling, not great, interesting.

Patent guy from HHH. [email protected], his phone is in your email.

He wanted an alternative way to turn off other than taking off of head. But can't take hands of of steering wheel...hmm...

"Look judge..."

Disclaim everything: This product will not do .... Scary thing

Don't hide risks

• You said (I think) that we can customize the contrast to optimize it for head-on? (and not 25 degree). Is that right?
• Great set of documentation and insights!

https://www.emmicroelectronic.com/product/flexible-plastic-lcd/flexible-plastic-lcd

Basically, is it able to be optically transparent?

Asked about this fancy tech they have that has 85% transmissibility. Turns out they can't do displays, but they will do the normal stuff custom! http://www.liquidcrystaltechnologies.com/Tech_Support/OAS_Cell.htm

Doesn't block light, but sends light to 10 to left or right.

Make domains and pyramids

TN or might need an STN (super twisted nematic). Can do pixelated shutter, chip on glass. The more you multiplex you give up contrast. 30mm x 30mm, 64 x 64. Comes with flex circuit and zif connector. Did 2" x 2" prototype for university. $5K-6K to tool up samples.

Bob Calenz [email protected]