SPEAKER_00: This Week in Startups is brought to you by Blue Apron. Check out this week's menu and get your first three meals free with free shipping by going to blueapron.com slash twist. And Squarespace. Start building your website today at squarespace.com. Enter offer code twist at checkout to get 10% off. And Ring. Ring Video Doorbell connects to your home Wi-Fi network and sends real-time notifications to your smartphone or tablet when someone is at your door. Visit ring.com. Our iTunes Review of the Week is from Daniel McGuire.

SPEAKER_03: Twist is a must-listen for new entrepreneurs. By listening to others that have been on the battlefield, you can learn from their mistakes. Jason, keep up the great work.

SPEAKER_05: Hey, everybody. Welcome to This Week in Startups. We're here at CES 2017.

SPEAKER_08: I'm here with my good friend, Gatcha Guy Dave Matthews. How are you, Dave?

SPEAKER_07: Hello, this is my mecca.

SPEAKER_08: You're a mecca. I mean, look at you. Yes, my spot. You are so happy. I haven't seen you that happy since Burning Man.

SPEAKER_09: I've got one of these 20-year badges, so that means that I've been coming that long. Do you believe that?

SPEAKER_08: What was it like 20 years ago? Tell me, Dave.

SPEAKER_09: Computers were the size of small refrigerators. Wow. There was no such thing as LCDs. It was CRT. Basically tube televisions. Tube televisions, yeah. We had wired.

SPEAKER_13: You had EVGA, VGA monitors.

SPEAKER_09: 56K modems were the big thing. Wow. Unbelievable. Dial-up, baby.

SPEAKER_14: Dial-up. And how big was it? How big was it back then? What was the footprint, and who were the big companies?

SPEAKER_09: Well, the biggest show at the time was not even CES. It was Comdex. It was a computer show. CES was just a nascent little show. Right. Because consumer electronics weren't a big thing. No, not a thing. Toaster ovens and blenders were all that were here 20 years ago. Maybe some cassette decks. We were just getting out of reel-to-reel and A-Track, so it was a big improvement.

SPEAKER_18: Well, it's been a big improvement, and let's kick it off right now. I asked Dave to come on, and we're going to have a bunch of interesting guests come on

SPEAKER_21: and show us their products and talk about technology in a rapid-fire way. I asked Dave to just tell me, hey, what were a couple of the highlights? And the first highlight you sent me was Mercedes. Tell me, I'm playing the Mercedes video right now. What exactly am I seeing here? What was so exciting about Mercedes?

SPEAKER_09: Yep, so this is a Mercedes version of what Elon Musk has been doing, and what I like about this is Mercedes is really committed to safety, and they had autonomous partial driving. They had lane assist that would keep you in the lane. They had cruise control that would keep you from getting too close. Adaptive. Adaptive, and then braking if something happened. But now Mercedes is, they're going full in, autonomous. They're doing level two. They're shipping it with the S-Class cars this summer. It's going to be a 2018 car that ships mid-2017.

SPEAKER_26: And how much of their recent urgency do you attribute to Elon's fantastic progress?

SPEAKER_09: I hope a lot of it. Mercedes built the first cars. They built cars in the 1800s that were electric-powered. So Mercedes was the Tesla ahead of its time. However, when you're in a large company like GM, you can't innovate, and then you worry about lawyers. And I think that Elon is disrupting the industry and saying, we're going to do this. We don't care what legislation or what states say. And Mercedes giving the checkbox of approval is huge for the global.

SPEAKER_26: So Elon was the first guy up the hill.

SPEAKER_21: And yeah, it took a couple of hours. People are saying like, hey, you're releasing this too early. But isn't the truth that if you're holding the steering wheel and you're paying attention and use level two, it's arguably, not arguably, it's definitively safer, isn't it?

SPEAKER_09: Well, yes, but even on Mercedes, there was a hack where you could tape a soda can to the steering wheel to provide a little bit of drag that would seem like a hand. Well, now they're eliminating that need. Now, they put these little touch controllers on. Remember the IBM ThinkPads had that little nub in the middle? Yeah, yeah. That mouse?

SPEAKER_10: Yeah, they called it all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_38: But it was the little red dot in the middle of the keypad. Track, what did they call it? Trackpad? Trackpad, trackpad, whatever.

SPEAKER_37: No, not trackpad. Trackpoint. Trackpoint, yeah. It was cool.

SPEAKER_09: So now the Mercedes steering wheel has those on each side of the wheel, one for the navigation screen and one for the heads-up display.

SPEAKER_40: So sort of like having a mouse or something, a little joystick.

SPEAKER_09: But every so often, you're going to have to rub that little nub in order to tell the car that you're alive and you're awake.

SPEAKER_21: I'm going to leave it at that because we could have all kinds of interesting innuendos here. But the basic point here is they're playing catch-up, and the whole industry is moving quickly. And if you want to do something stupid to kill yourself, like tape a beer can to your steering wheel, or if you want to, like, ghost-ride your car and ride on the top and use your foot as a steering, which people do on back roads, you can find inventive ways to kill yourself.

SPEAKER_41: Was there anything interesting with Mercedes other than that?

SPEAKER_21: It said they were doing some health and fitness stuff. What was that? Just marketing?

SPEAKER_37: I don't even know health and fitness stuff. So anyway, here we go.

SPEAKER_09: The next one is about Audi. Audi. And Audi has done the next generation of mobile communications to the car, and that's getting street-sensor data pushed into the car computer.

SPEAKER_21: Okay, explain what that means to get the street-sensor data. You're going to put something in the road?

SPEAKER_09: Yeah, exactly. Road sensors, stoplights, we'll be able to communicate with the car. And what we've been looking for is a communication protocol that can go from car to car. I don't know if you saw the Tesla video last week where the Tesla vehicle image saw a car crash two cars ahead. I did see that. Is this amazing?

SPEAKER_21: And the reason it saw that was because one of the cars was just a little bit to the right, and it saw just a sliver of it? Or do you think it saw it through the windshield and the back windshield?

SPEAKER_09: I think it saw it because of misaligned cars, right?

SPEAKER_50: One car was just a little bit off to the right, and it saw that sliver of a car ahead of it and slammed on the brakes.

SPEAKER_09: It's also tracking the car's speeds via the video, the camera system. Incredible. So the Tesla put on its brakes even before the car in front of it put on its brakes.

SPEAKER_52: Which is genius.

SPEAKER_09: Right? So think about if the cars had a network.

SPEAKER_52: No more pileups.

SPEAKER_09: If the cars had the way to communicate with one another with radio waves. Radio waves can be fast as the speed of light, which is vision, but much more precise. So Audi doing this with the city of Las Vegas, they're getting sensor data from the roads, stoplight data when it's turning red, when it's turning yellow, green, etc.

SPEAKER_21: So the car will know, hey, it's going to turn yellow in three seconds, which means it's going to turn red in five seconds or 4.5 or whatever it is. So don't run it.

SPEAKER_58: It will let you run it. Or maybe it will, right?

SPEAKER_41: Or maybe it will. Maybe it will accelerate to make the light. Anything's possible. That's right. But it's not realistic that we're going to rip up all the roads in the world, is it?

SPEAKER_09: Well, think about it. There's already sensors now that look for the magnetometers. They look for the mass of the vehicle. And if you ride a motorcycle, they're awful because when you're on a motorcycle over them, a lot of times the lights won't change for you because a motorcycle doesn't have enough metal mass for this electromagnet.

SPEAKER_52: How many stoplights have those, do you think?

SPEAKER_09: On major intersections, most do because they're doing it based upon timing for the lights so they can change the timing of someone seated in a lane to make a turn. Okay, but that's 1% of roadways. Probably, yeah, whatever that number is. But this is important because we're finally getting cars that have a new communication platform. Think about what our laptops and Wi-Fi did for us, right? And LTE and Bluetooth, right? So now the vehicles are going to have another communication path to talk to the environment.

SPEAKER_21: And there's a mandate here in the United States that cars will have peer-to-peer talking. But a lot of people seem to think computer vision will be enough.

SPEAKER_18: Will computer vision be enough and this will be lightly used?

SPEAKER_09: You know, this is more is more. More is more. Yeah, more data the better. So here, the mapping company that Nokia spun off, Intel invested in it, Mercedes invested in it. And with here, they're doing high-resolution maps. And another thing that Mercedes said is they have 80% of the roads on the Autobahn at high resolution. So what that means is the autonomous cars will be able to go faster. Right. More speed, more data.

SPEAKER_21: So if we do have this stuff on the road, not only will it have self-driving come quicker, but innovative things like the daisy-chaining of cars and making a caravan becomes viable and hitting speeds of 100 miles an hour, it becomes viable. That's right.

SPEAKER_09: Yep. Because it's the humans that freak out and cause the crashes to happen.

SPEAKER_21: Absolutely. They don't know how to work on them. Okay. Now, the big story seems to be Alexa is everywhere. Everywhere, right? Now, Alexa, Amazon must have put an actual marketing plan together about this because there was no indication that so many companies would put Alexa into it. But it seems like this is the end of Siri. Nobody has mentioned Siri. Siri is a terrible technology. It does not work. We both agree.

SPEAKER_34: HomeKit ties into Siri. It doesn't work very well at all.

SPEAKER_21: It doesn't work, and this is Apple being, what, three, four, five years ahead of?

SPEAKER_37: Yeah, well, when they bought SRI, that was 2009, right? It was really early.

SPEAKER_21: So they're eight years ahead of Amazon, six, seven, eight years ahead, and they completely blow it because they want to keep that proprietary technology for themselves. And now explain what happened here at CES that has literally the first word coming out of people's mouth is Alexa.

SPEAKER_09: Alexa, so Dish Network lets you tell the DVR to pull up programs. Dish already had a voice remote. They liked the Alexa technology because of the far-field mics. That's really where the innovation was.

SPEAKER_76: Far-field mics. Explain what that is.

SPEAKER_09: So the Alexa tower came out of Lab 126, which is Bezos' skunk works. Bezos? Bezos? Bezos' skunk works. Bezos, I believe. Yeah, okay. His skunk works, Lab, right?

SPEAKER_77: 128?

SPEAKER_09: Lab 126. What does it mean, 126?

SPEAKER_78: Is that like an address or a location or a highway?

SPEAKER_09: Question. Well, look it up. But on his offices all over Seattle, it says day one because he wants you to think like it's the first day of a startup. Ah. Day one. So he's really pushing this innovate, drive, push forward. Right. Probably a lot of things that Steve Jobs did, I'd guess. Yeah. And it's gone. And that's why I think Apple's having these growing pains right now because they're not thinking about it as day one.

SPEAKER_81: Hey, everybody. I want to tell you about a new product I've been using at my house and that I love. It's called Blue Apron. Yes, Blue Apron sends you a box with all the ingredients you need to make delicious food, to make a meal. It sounds a little weird at first. Like, oh, they're going to send you a box with dinner in it? It's not pre-cooked meals. No. This is portioned out recipes with a beautiful card with exactly the right amount. And what I love about this is when we were making General Tso's chicken, which I never knew how to make General Tso's chicken, but that's one of my favorite dishes. In fact, when I go for Chinese food, it's probably the number one dish I order. That and the walnuts with the, you know, the walnuts, shrimp. I love that. But anyway, back to General Tso's. It had all the different ingredients perfectly portioned out. So following the recipe was easy. Then we made Sicilian pizza. My daughter went crazy. She kept saying, Dad, you make the best pizza in the world. You're number one at making pizza. Again, the dough came pre-packaged. Everything came with the perfect portion sizes, so it's affordable. There's a ton of variety. It's super flexible. It's easy. And they have a freshness guarantee. If you have already problems, they just solve your problems. You know how these direct-to-consumer products work. They have to make it work for consumers or else consumers leave or consumers don't tell their friend. So all they do is optimize to make it perfect and amazing and to delight you. And Blue Apron has been delightful for us in my household. And, you know, they are very much into high-quality ingredients. That's what makes the difference. They have partnerships with 150 local farms, fisheries, and rancheries across the United States. Their seafood is all sourced sustainably. And those standards were developed with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. Beef, chicken, pork are from responsibly raised animals. The produce is sourced from farms practicing regenerative farming. It's so easy. I know Jackie made the catfish and potato latkes, which are one of my favorite. I think I'm pronouncing that correct. So here's your call to action. Go ahead and get your first three meals free. Your first three meals free with shipping. Go to blueapron.com slash twist. Blueapron.com slash twist. You are going to love it. It's just delicious. And it's easy. And I would say it takes two-thirds of the agony out of making dinner. So the only part that's left is that one-third of delightful time of assembling the meal, making it fresh for your family. It takes 10, 20 minutes, whatever it is. But you take out that arduous hour of preparing the proper sizes and measuring things and going to the store. It is easy and delicious. It tastes great. And I'm being sincere here. Listen, I'm using it now. And I use it for two or three meals a week. And it's wonderful. My daughter loves it. She helps us pick what we're going to order. And then you have this beautiful card that explains to you. Somebody's really working on the recipes. Who's ever doing the recipes at Blue Apron? Thumbs up. Two thumbs up. You really make it simple. That's what I love about it. It's so simple. So fresh, so easy. Go to blueapron.com slash twist.

SPEAKER_84: Okay. Let's get back to this amazing episode.

SPEAKER_26: Now, the thing I saw with Alexa was Lenovo launched a smart assistant that looks identical to it, right? To Alexa's. So that's what I was trying to...

SPEAKER_90: I'm calling it Echo, but I mean, why would I buy Amazon's if I could buy the Lenovo or vice versa?

SPEAKER_09: That's right. So that's going to be interesting. But Amazon Lab 126 figured out being able to talk to a microphone at a far range. The other company that did this with Microsoft with the Kinect, it did a far-field mic as well. But Amazon, I guess, now is giving the building blocks to companies like Lenovo to do this. So there's two stories, really, to this. It's new hardware that's using the far-field mic technology of Lenovo versus Alexa, even though they look the same. It wouldn't surprise me when these things are dissected, if it uses the same products inside.

SPEAKER_93: Ah, so the far-field mic from Lenovo is their hardware innovation.

SPEAKER_09: But it might be the same from Lab 126, right? It'll be interesting to take this stuff apart. But then it was Ford hooking into the Alexa APIs. So you can now get information from your vehicle.

SPEAKER_26: So I could be in my vehicle and say, reorder coffee, Alexa.

SPEAKER_10: And if you have Prime Now, if I'm driving home from work, the coffee might make it there before I do.

SPEAKER_09: Maybe. That could be. But I think what it really is, is maybe it's telling the car your destination that you want to go to from the house. Ah, without typing. Without typing, right? So the UX on vehicle telematic systems were terrible. And a lot of people were trying gestures. That was the big thing. Last year, Volkswagen had a system that you could conduct like my Nordic report.

SPEAKER_97: Yeah, and then I think BMW had that iDrive. The iDrive, the wheel. The wheel was terrible.

SPEAKER_70: And then there was touchscreen. Yeah. Touchscreens are always good.

SPEAKER_98: Well, it always took, what, like 20 minutes to figure out how to use these interfaces, which is literally 19 minutes and 50 seconds too long.

SPEAKER_09: Yep. And Voicebox Technologies was a company doing this. When I was the inventor of Radio Shack in 2003, I had a system that I could talk to my house. I wore a 900 megahertz mic, just like we wear for the show. And Voicebox Technologies, we were trying to do something for the home. It was way too early. That technology is now in Toyota and Lexus vehicles. So for Alexa to come out of nowhere and be integrating with so many people, the vehicles, et cetera, is really exciting.

SPEAKER_26: You're literally going to be able to walk up to your toaster, walk up to your electric tea kettle and say, tea water, 185 degrees, toast, two slices, medium toast.

SPEAKER_91: Maybe.

SPEAKER_101: But really, there's no, in my opinion, there's no killer app for voice yet.

SPEAKER_18: What are you talking about? I mean, I think that's completely wrong. When I just tell it to control music, do you realize how much time I'm saving?

SPEAKER_21: I listen to audio programming maybe four or five times a day. Let's call it five.

SPEAKER_102: I think right now, three out of five times, I'm using Alexa. Alexa to talk to you? Okay. And I was talking to nothing a year ago.

SPEAKER_09: But if you think about if Amazon reports what their most used services are, and it's weather and timers. Timers are number one. Timers, of course, number one.

SPEAKER_48: Because you're cooking, your hands are busy. And you can set multiple timers.

SPEAKER_09: But I don't think timer is a killer app for 200 bucks. And I think the Sonos integration, Alexa will be doing Sonos. I have it set up with Alexa. You have music with Pandora, but Sonos is not shipping yet. Sonos integration. And that's my problem. I have my whole house full of Sonos speakers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_41: You know what I have with Sonos now is, I'm sorry, I misspoke. I have Spotify connected to Sonos. Yep.

SPEAKER_105: Which is cool.

SPEAKER_41: Yep.

SPEAKER_21: And then I have an Amazon Dot. Yep. The Echo Dot, which is a small one without speakers. I plug that into an old jam box. And I'm thinking of having that output go into a Sonos receiver. So you can do it that way.

SPEAKER_26: And some of the Sonos have that. So you can jimmy rig it, as we would say, in the business.

SPEAKER_42: But asking for music to play back, I think when Sonos integration comes, then I'll get really excited. But I have it hooked up to my Philips Hue and my Nest. Or TV is going to be great too, right? Like being able to walk up and say, play The Walking Dead, and it just plays it.

SPEAKER_101: And that was what Dish Network debuted. And I really like that.

SPEAKER_21: That's what Dish Network debuted. Pretty amazing. What happens now? Let me just ask this to put a little punctuation mark on it. How effed is Apple with Siri? And what is Apple's response going to be? Is Apple finally going to realize that this closed architecture is going to kill the company?

SPEAKER_37: I don't think that's just not in their DNA. Their DNA has always been closed, closed, closed.

SPEAKER_09: Even when Apple allowed clone manufacturers for, what was that, two or three years? Yeah. They went and shut them all down. Right. And the clone manufacturers were actually going so far to ship the computer without the CPU and the socket so the user could install the CPU as a loophole in the contracts. Right. I mean, this is... Ridiculous. Yeah. Apple has been causing this.

SPEAKER_21: And Apple has given up on desktop, it seems. And people hate the MacBook. That's right. So if they're giving up on the desktop, this might be a time for them to actually consider giving three different OEMs, HP, Lenovo, whatever, Dell, and say, we're going to let you produce one unit each. You know, you'd have to do something very specific. You have to go through a test and they work two units each, and we're going to keep it in the stores. And you have to charge this amount. It has to have this margin. Would they do that?

SPEAKER_09: I just don't think their egos will allow that. And the Apple TV has a Siri remote. You have to hold it to your face, which is completely contradictory to where the technology is going. I'm kicking... I'm throwing my Apple TVs out.

SPEAKER_114: I'm literally unplugging them. You know why? Because it doesn't support Amazon, and it's not supporting Alexa. I'm going to go Alexa. I'm going full Alexa.

SPEAKER_09: You know, I just did the DirecTV Now, which is...

SPEAKER_115: I ordered it today. Which is DirecTV. $35.

SPEAKER_09: For 100 channels.

SPEAKER_115: It'll be 70 in two days. Yep. By the time you listen to it, you missed it.

SPEAKER_09: And if you buy a three-month package, you get the Apple TV for free. Or a Roku. If you buy a one-month package, you get the Amazon Fire Stick for free. And they might have a Roku plan now, too. So I like it. That was Fire Stick, yeah. I like the DirecTV Now, but what I don't like is you don't get as many programs on demand. And what I want to do is set favorites and have it like a season pass.

SPEAKER_117: Yeah. Okay, here. Let's talk about this. Mercedes did a vision van. What are we talking about here?

SPEAKER_09: Yeah, so this is... I always look for a Segway technology. What could have been really cool and is not. And I think drones are the Segway of 2017. Drones were fun to play with, fun to shoot video for. There's the selfie drones. There's all this cute stuff. And now? And now drones, nobody cares about them. DJI shipped some drones this year that are super small. You had drones from the crew at the Hero 5, the GoPro drones. They were going to redo it. They were all recalled. So Mercedes has this van. A van. That is a shipping van.

SPEAKER_122: Okay, like the Ford Transit, I guess.

SPEAKER_09: Exactly, yep. So it's just hideously ugly. Oh, wow. Look at that. And it has slot-loading merchandise.

SPEAKER_123: That's pretty cool. It looks like something out of Star Wars or something.

SPEAKER_09: Right. And not one, Jason, but two drones on the roof. That will take whatever's inside of the van, load it up into the drone. Oh, my God. And make a flyby instead of a drive-by delivery.

SPEAKER_21: So you don't have to get out of the car. You just zip it over. The delivery man.

SPEAKER_37: All this is automated. Isn't this amazing? Who would have thought this would have come from Mercedes as well?

SPEAKER_21: But now, the chances of this actually happening in the real world, this is just what, like a proof of concept or to make the CEO feel good about themselves?

SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I think so. And a year before, there was a sports car that would send a drone up to look at traffic ahead, so maybe look for police. Yeah. So this is definitely an inspirational piece.

SPEAKER_73: It literally looks like I'm watching AI. It looks like Spielberg did it. Yeah, exactly. Even the cinematography looks like the movie AI.

SPEAKER_09: Yeah, they did a really nice job with it. But the other thing that was really cool was the usurping of 7-Eleven, shipping 77 products when Amazon just sent one.

SPEAKER_41: Yeah, because they're shipping drones.

SPEAKER_21: So drone technology, we're out of the hype cycle. We're in the trow of despair and the grind it out. When will drones come out and be thrilling again? Because if you look at Bitcoin, we're talking about it on the program, whatever, five, four years ago, the hype cycle went crazy, went up to $1,200, crashed down, and now we have Bitcoin back up to $1,200. So they went through their three-year trow of slogging it out and trying to find a market for their coins. Who knows if it's going to work?

SPEAKER_41: So it seems like drones are in that.

SPEAKER_09: When did drones come out of it? I think drones are a utility now. And you had Alex from Sunflower on who has got the drone security system. And it uses a hybrid. That feels real. Yeah, it's amazing technology because he's looking at motion sensors throughout the yard. So the drone's not constantly flying around. The drone only comes out when it needs to. And that's this example of the Mercedes as well. Two years, three years from now, we'll start to see drones start to rise again. I think 2017 is the drone utility year.

SPEAKER_21: Really? I'd push it out a year or two. But okay. And then self-driving cars. We keep making these long bets.

SPEAKER_41: But when does it feel like we'll have fully autonomous now? Because it looks like things are starting to ramp up faster again.

SPEAKER_09: Yeah, 2020, I'm saying. You keep it 2020?

SPEAKER_41: I'm keeping it 2023.

SPEAKER_09: Legislation is going to screw this one up, though.

SPEAKER_114: Oh, is it really?

SPEAKER_09: Yeah, because look at Uber being shut down by the city of San Francisco, which I think was just a press move, by the way.

SPEAKER_42: By the city or by Uber? By Uber. By not paying for the, what was the permit, $135?

SPEAKER_37: Right. And they got how much press out of it?

SPEAKER_41: That's interesting. Interesting theory. That's my take. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_21: I don't have any inside information as a shareholder, obviously. But I do think what happened was, I think they want to have, my reading of it, again, I don't have any information, is it feels like a parity issue. If Teslas are doing the same thing, then it should be fair for everybody. And I think they don't want to classify them as self-driving because they're not self-driving. They're a human driving self-driving, if that makes any sense. And we're splitting hairs here. All right. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to reset. And we're going to start bringing in some founders of companies building interesting things. We'll ask them a couple of questions, and we'll keep moving from there. We're here at the Ring booth at CES. Thanks so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_116: We'll be right back after this quick message with the best of the CES floor. Stick with us.

SPEAKER_81: Let me take a moment to thank at Squarespace for, first of all, making amazing software. I was just working on one of the new projects I'm working on. You may have heard of a television show. And we had to make a website. And I, boom, I just went on to Google Domains. And I was buying a domain over at Google Domains. And, boom, you could just, when you're setting up your Gmail, fire up and launch Squarespace. I guess they're partners now.

SPEAKER_146: And I was able to fire up a gorgeous website in literally minutes. And it looked like we spent $25,000 making it. It looks professional. It's intuitive and easy to use. No coding is required. And they use state-of-the-art tech. It's super secure. It's super stable. And it's trusted by millions, some of the most respected brands in the world. We, in fact, use it for all of our events and conferences. And you can start your free trial today. No credit card is required. And you'll get a free domain name if you sign up for a year. I'm an idiot. I did it wrong. I signed up at the wrong domain place. I didn't know that I would get a free domain. I've got to go back and do that next time. If you decide to sign up for Squarespace, if you do decide that you're going to sign up for Squarespace, which I'm sure you will, just use the promo code TWIST, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. It is an amazing, amazing product. It's super easy to use. And they keep adding features to it, which is one of the great things about the software-as-a-service movement. They keep getting more people loyal to the product. They keep being able to hire more product managers, developers, and researchers to figure out what to make next. And boom, they make amazing product.

SPEAKER_81: And they keep the price the same. So things are getting better and better over there at Squarespace.

SPEAKER_84: I love the product. Go ahead and follow at Squarespace.

SPEAKER_150: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to our coverage of CES. I'm Jason Calacanis here with Dave Matthews, the gadget guy, 20-year vet of CES.

SPEAKER_99: Our first guest today, Pasquale Romano, who is the CEO of a company I use and love, ChargePoint, which has a network of chargers across the United States. I don't know if you're outside the United States.

SPEAKER_154: Yeah, we're in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, soon to be in Europe.

SPEAKER_99: Great. How many stations do you have now?

SPEAKER_154: About 31,000.

SPEAKER_99: 31,000 makes you the largest network in the world. Yeah. And now these are for, what do they call it, J2?

SPEAKER_159: Is that the connector? J2 connectors?

SPEAKER_158: Yeah. In the U.S., it's a J1772 connector. 1772.

SPEAKER_162: Yeah, the auto industry wanted to make sure consumers got maximally confused. Right. But it's really people for slang called J2.

SPEAKER_152: Is that what people call it, John?

SPEAKER_165: Some people shorten it to that, yeah.

SPEAKER_152: Because I know, because I have a Tesla, that I have to have the little J2 adapter. Correct. And then I can use ChargePoint. Yeah.

SPEAKER_93: Now, what are you announcing here? Is that a dongle?

SPEAKER_166: Do you have a dongle? Do you have a dongle for your car?

SPEAKER_93: I have a dongle. It's not as bad. Dongle life. But what are you here announcing at CES?

SPEAKER_168: Why are you here? So what we're trying to do is solve every facet of charging for people. And we've taken care of workplace, home, apartments and condominiums, DC fast charging at sort of an intermediate level. But the last thing to be solved is getting people on a long trip to spend as little time as possible. Right.

SPEAKER_170: So get it as close to gasoline as possible for a long trip.

SPEAKER_172: But ChargePoint, sir, and the J2 technology is what? 60 miles an hour? 20 miles an hour?

SPEAKER_170: You can get on that particular technology, you can get about 20 to 25 miles an hour of range recovered for your car. But for fast chargers, there's kind of something that has that J2 in the middle and a couple of extra pins for super high speed energy into your car. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_174: How fast does that go?

SPEAKER_170: So at its peak rates for cars that aren't even on the market yet. Because they're not on the market yet. Yeah, they're almost there, but they're not quite. We're going to be able to put 250 miles of range in the car in 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_41: 250? Yeah. So right now I have the Tesla, I go to the supercharger network, I get about 150, 200 miles per hour. Correct.

SPEAKER_99: So right now, the ChargePoint technology in the existing cars, which I guess are Leafs, what do you see? Leafs and what else?

SPEAKER_168: You see a lot of stuff. I mean, you see all the Tesla stuff. You see Leafs, you see Volts, you see the Chevy Bolt now. Chevy Bolt or Volt? The Bolt. It's an all-battery electric car they just started shipping. That's like a, what, 100-mile range? No, it's 238 miles of range. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_163: Okay, so comparable to a Model S. Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: And that technology, all those cars were built with 20-mile-per-hour charging limits. So the car, even if you wanted to go faster at ChargePoint, you can't go faster as a car.

SPEAKER_184: Okay, not entirely.

SPEAKER_170: So if you look at the Chevy Bolt, that can take on, that can go up to about 80 kilowatts, so about two-thirds of what your Tesla can do.

SPEAKER_187: Oh, okay, so 100 miles.

SPEAKER_170: Yeah, in that range, in that range, right? And you've got other cars that can take, like a Nissan Leaf, you can put probably around 50, 60 miles range in an hour in a Nissan Leaf.

SPEAKER_26: When will these next-generation cars come out, and what do you call these new, not J17, 72s?

SPEAKER_170: Well, they're already out with the connector that makes you able to plug in and get really fast energy. That's been standardized for a long time.

SPEAKER_190: Right, but the cars that can accept it.

SPEAKER_170: Okay, there's many that are already on the road, but there are the ones that are really on the drawing board that are going to be amazing are things like what Nissan just announced with the 200-mile Leaf. That'll be able to take a faster charge. What you'll see is, obviously, Tesla moving up the ranks. Yeah. You'll see...

SPEAKER_152: Tesla's going to kind of match this, whatever, 250 in 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_170: Oh, I mean, they're a technology leader in the space. Right.

SPEAKER_168: They haven't announced anything, but I don't know any more than you do there, because they're obviously not going to pre-announce it, but they've done a great job to date. I fully expect them to be at the head of the pack.

SPEAKER_41: So people understand, you're not competitive with Tesla, because I'm a Tesla owner. I use your product. Right. Because the superchargers are only outside of cities.

SPEAKER_99: They're in between cities, the superchargers, generally speaking. Right. They're not meant for day-to-day. No. But when I go to Sequoia Capital's headquarters, they have a charge point.

SPEAKER_198: When I go to Tahoe, there's charge points. So you're complementary with Tesla.

SPEAKER_154: Yeah. So what we're trying to do is put the right charger in the right spot for the right application.

SPEAKER_170: If you're going to be parked for an hour, you don't want something that's going to fill your car in 10 minutes, because that's sort of a waste. You'd want to share the electrical capacity among more parking spaces,

SPEAKER_168: instead of concentrating it into one or two spaces and then having the car be full and tie it up.

SPEAKER_203: Speaking of full and tie it up, a lot of problems with the supercharging stations. People would go in, plug their car in, go in to have the barbecue or whatever, and then the car would be left there. And Elon Musk got a tweet complaint. Yep. From the week. And he said, I'm going to make a change to this, where we're going to charge you if you leave your car and it's full. I thought that was brilliant.

SPEAKER_205: We've been doing that for a long time. Okay, good. That's what I wanted to do. You make people leave the spot before you charge them a penalty?

SPEAKER_184: So just remember, we're like Airbnb. We don't own the chargers, but we connect it all.

SPEAKER_170: So the station owner sets the price using our cloud service. We're tying it all together for drivers. So we advise station owners and we have all the pricing features. Got it. Let's say you're a retailer. Look, a couple of hours of free charging in a shopping mall is great. But if you're sitting there for eight hours, you're probably someone who works there who shouldn't be tying up that asset. So variable pricing, mobile application technology like at work, we have the ability to get in line for a charger. And when it's your turn, you can take it. You get an SMS. Or you actually get a mobile app. Push. Or you get an SMS.

SPEAKER_154: You can hit the snooze button and give it to the next person in line. If you're in a meeting like this, you can't go down and move your car.

SPEAKER_164: So you actually sell to the facility, the unit. You don't operate your own.

SPEAKER_162: We do on some occasions when it makes sense.

SPEAKER_216: Is it like a franchise model?

SPEAKER_170: Well, it's much more like what Uber or Airbnb are in that Uber is the largest taxi company in the world and doesn't own a car.

SPEAKER_217: Technology provider. Yeah. So what do people buy them?

SPEAKER_40: What does it cost them to install one? Depends on what you buy. Okay. If I buy the state-of-the-art, I'm putting 10 spots in my hotel.

SPEAKER_170: If you buy the ones for overnight parking at a hotel, on a fully installed basis, it's probably going to cost you on average about $5,000 a port. Okay. Fully installed though.

SPEAKER_213: Oh no, per port. Per port. So if you put in 10, it would be $50,000 to install it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_225: Why don't more people do it then? The more you put in, the cheaper it gets, by the way, because the construction gets amortized.

SPEAKER_184: Right. Right? Why don't they are doing it pretty fast? Is it ramping up? Oh, phenomenally. Phenomenally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_185: Why are they charging? Like, shouldn't it be free?

SPEAKER_170: It's mostly free. 65% of our sessions are free. Really? Yes. And many of them have exactly what you said. They're free for some period of time, and then they escalate the price to basically encourage you to not squat.

SPEAKER_229: Okay.

SPEAKER_203: So the big question that I have is around what we're seeing with the Galaxy Note 7. The fast charger circuit is what caused the fires to happen on that device. Yeah. Are we going to run into time bombs in our parking garages with this quick charging on vehicles?

SPEAKER_37: And what's going to save the day, which the Samsung engineers couldn't figure out?

SPEAKER_170: So it's unlikely because, first of all, these battery packs are tested. The automotive industry moves at slightly slower cycles. And I'm slightly, as I'm kind of somewhat being facetious. I mean, it's glacially slower than the cell phone industry. So the amount of testing that's done, the amount of crash testing that's done, the amount of fire containment testing that's done is amazing. I'm on the board of an EV bus company called Proterra, and I have a front row seat to what they're doing in battery pack development. No stones left unturned.

SPEAKER_233: Completely safer than gas, correct?

SPEAKER_170: Totally.

SPEAKER_41: So how much safer are battery-powered cars versus cars with 20 gallons of gasoline in them? It's hard to say.

SPEAKER_234: In terms of exploding in fires.

SPEAKER_154: It's hard for me to say I'm not a gas car expert, and I don't want to be. Yeah. You realize your gas tank's more dangerous when it's less than full.

SPEAKER_170: Yeah, because of vapors. So I think the answer to that question isn't a number. It's probably depending on how full your tank is. But at the end of the day, lithium-ion batteries are quite safe.

SPEAKER_238: They haven't had a...

SPEAKER_99: The Tesla chargers, since they're so much more powerful right now, we would have seen a fire at a Tesla charger. To date, there hasn't been a fire at a supercharger, has there? No, there hasn't.

SPEAKER_203: But you've seen the Tesla Model S crashes where the battery packs get torn away. Yeah, sure. These things act like fireworks. And I did see when Tesla was first making the battery packs on the initial sports car, they used liquid tubing to go through the batteries to cool them and warm them. So it keeps the lithium at the right temperature, which is what creates the volatility of lithium as being off either too hot or too cold.

SPEAKER_243: All right, let me ask you the candid, tough question. I have the Roadster, number 16.

SPEAKER_152: Yeah, you got one of the early ones. I got 16 of the Roadster. I got number one of the Model S signature. So I have signature 16, 6 or 1. I bricked my battery accidentally. Somebody who was supposed to plug it in, plugged it in but didn't push the little dongle. And it doesn't tell you, so $30,000 mistake. I reinstalled the battery with the new one. 340 mile range now or something to that effect.

SPEAKER_246: I can drive from L.A. to San Francisco. I don't need a charger anymore. When these things hit 400, 500 miles, which they're going to, what happens to charge point? What will happen to the charging networks? Because nobody drives more than 300 miles in a sitting 400 miles.

SPEAKER_170: Okay, so now let's look at where it's only the number, the range of cars is, the mileage range is escalating because consumers are pattern matching on their gas car. But if you look at the biggest cost driver that's going into that car, it's the battery. And I would contend that with good charging infrastructure, with really rapid charging infrastructure, carrying around more than about 200 to 250 real miles of range in your car is a waste of money. I'd rather give you a better car, a better stereo system, better seats.

SPEAKER_253: Ah, this is a very astute point. I like your answer.

SPEAKER_170: The other thing is, the utilities that are bringing renewables to market at a furious clip don't necessarily want you charging overnight at home, depending on how much solar is in their portfolio or what have you. So, while I agree with you, there is going to be changes as battery range goes up. What we're seeing with Model S drivers is they all actually use charging outside the home if it's available to them. They do it, they take on more energy, but because their batteries are bigger, they may not charge every day, they may skip a day, they may skip two days. Yeah, that's our pattern, we'll skip a day or two. Right, so the number of sessions that a big battery driver executes in a year is a little bit lower,

SPEAKER_225: but they take on more energy because I think they use their car, it's not a second car, it's their primary vehicle and they're actually driving around.

SPEAKER_99: Also, I find when you first get them, you're like, I have to keep it topped off. Yeah. And then you lose the range anxiety. Right. So having three of them for six years, I have zero range anxiety. I mean, I've run the thing down to 10, 20 miles many times. Me too. And it's, I don't get scared anymore because I'm like, there's always somewhere, I know all the charge points, I know all the other ones, it's like, it's not going to happen. And only one time did I ever have to get towed for charging.

SPEAKER_152: I was, it was just a total human error. I was driving back from the city, I thought I had charged, I didn't, and I looked down and I was like, oh my God, I have seven miles left. Oh my God, I pulled it over and I was going to go back and get it.

SPEAKER_197: And then I had roadside assistance, I called Tesla, they just came with a charging pack, they took it, they charged it, whatever. Whatever, free.

SPEAKER_170: Yeah, I mean, I think you're going to see the equivalent of tow trucks with battery and charging.

SPEAKER_152: What about inductive charging? I keep getting pitched to put one of these Tesla plates, I know Elon's worked on it a bit, I've heard.

SPEAKER_99: He's got that little snake that's going to plug in eventually. And then people are talking about roadways.

SPEAKER_261: Is it even necessary to have inductive charging or is it just like a fancy waste of time? Because you're going to lose 15, 20%, right? More than that.

SPEAKER_170: Yeah, so inductive chargings, the car can't carry around the equivalent of a DC fast charger, so you're not going to be able to use it for highway charging, for really fast 10-minute charging. So inductive charging will not work for the 200-mile-an-hour. It's good for home. It's great for home. If you've got a tight garage and with things like Summon on your Tesla and Autopark, there's a place for it. I don't think it's because if you get out of your car in front of your house and tell it to go park itself, right, it's easy if it just –

SPEAKER_272: Because if you had to plug it in, you would have to go walk it and plug it in, and then you might as well have driven it in.

SPEAKER_170: Yeah, so if it drives itself in –

SPEAKER_272: God, we're so goddamn lazy.

SPEAKER_170: We are, but what's getting, I think, super convenient is these partial autonomy features that are doing really useful things like go park yourself.

SPEAKER_276: Yeah, parallel parking.

SPEAKER_170: Yeah, and if it's going to sit there in your home overnight, let it charge wirelessly, that's fine. I mean, it doesn't really matter how fast that rate is.

SPEAKER_279: What kind of – was that alignment? It has to be perfect.

SPEAKER_281: If those coils are off, then you could lose 30%, 40%, 50%.

SPEAKER_279: So that those coils have to be lined up.

SPEAKER_219: Yeah, but when the car's parking itself, it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy for it to get it right.

SPEAKER_162: So are you going to have an inductive? Yeah, we're working on that.

SPEAKER_170: I mean, the thing that keeps us from coming to market with inductive is there have to be enough cars because we're only going to sell the home side of it. We're not going to sell the car side of it. So there has to be a market for us to sell it.

SPEAKER_98: That's why you're a solution for home, like homeowners? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why would they do that when they just plug into a 220? Is it cheaper or just fancier? What's the point?

SPEAKER_158: It is a 240-volt system, and it does plug into the socket we recommend you having your electrician installed.

SPEAKER_152: Which is the 220-something, like with the RV level, 50 ampers.

SPEAKER_170: Yeah, it's the same – the easiest way to describe it is it's exactly what your electric range is plugged into if you have an electric stove. Yeah, or dryer. Yeah, or dryer. Well, dryer's slightly different, but yeah, close. Slightly less, yeah. Yeah, close. So the reason you want one of our home chargers, for example, is it'll ask you – well, it knows where you live because of the GPS in your phone, and you set it up with Bluetooth low energy from your phone, so it's just from your mobile app. And then it says, oh, which rate plan are you on from your utility? Because we happen to know where you live. And the minute you tell it that, it'll ask you, hey, do you want me to optimize your charging costs for your utility rate plan? Do you want me to set a reminder when your car hasn't been plugged in by 9 p.m.? And there's a whole bunch of it. We're in the Works with Nest program. It totally integrates all your cost analysis and your session analysis with your charging at work and charging on the highway. So it's just, like, everything that you're seeing here is connected.

SPEAKER_150: What's the ultimate future for your company? Because it does seem like there's going to be massive competition from Tesla.

SPEAKER_227: No, no, no. I don't consider Tesla a competitor at all. We charge Teslas all day long. Yeah, no, I'm just wondering –

SPEAKER_293: Most Tesla charging sessions aren't on superchargers. Right.

SPEAKER_296: I guess that's true. So what's the end game then? I mean –

SPEAKER_170: So let's zoom back and look at the long term of charging. Okay? Every drone needs charging. Every autonomous vehicle needs charging. You're going to have the equivalent of charging data centers. We're already charging buses. Heavy vehicles. Everything that flies, floats, rolls, that has a lithium-ion battery is going to need charging. And is going to need some form of charging service behind that. So there's a whole lot of –

SPEAKER_152: I know this sounds silly and facetious, but did you ever consider putting smartphone adapters on the back of the thing and letting people charge their phones on your devices, on your stations?

SPEAKER_170: It must have been requested. It hasn't because most people don't stand by their car and they wouldn't want to leave their phone in a parking lot kind of unattended.

SPEAKER_302: If you go to the airport, you have that where you can, like, put your phone in.

SPEAKER_225: Yeah, but, you know, they have those little locker things, right? That's what I was thinking about. Locker on the back of the transport.

SPEAKER_168: I mean, you know, we've got plenty of energy and plenty of USB in the product, so it's easy enough for us to do.

SPEAKER_305: All right, well, listen, I appreciate the service. It's fantastic. I use it all the time.

SPEAKER_152: Thanks. And continue success with it.

SPEAKER_41: I think it's going to be an interesting future. Is there anything you saw here at the show that, you know, outside of charging that you thought was particularly interesting?

SPEAKER_170: Well, I mean, for us, what we're always looking for is trends in transportation that influence how we could either get disrupted in the future or things we could take advantage of. And, you know, I really think that a lot of the partial autonomy features that we've already talked about that are going to happen before Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy are going to change, are going to have probably the biggest impact on people because it's that last 100-yard self-parking, right? It's all those sorts of things. When you add that with renewables and what utilities of the future are going to try to do with battery technology now.

SPEAKER_311: The utilities like you guys?

SPEAKER_310: Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_170: I mean, we're basically, look, the problem with energy, the dirty little secret, is that all the conservation efforts are working. Energy consumption from an electricity perspective is flat to down in most of the developed world. So what's interesting is cars represent the only way. The growth. The growth because you're transferring all the energy that's being dispensed by liquid fuel, which is an awful lot of energy. You're giving them all that load back. And that's going to be the only place that they're going to be able to use to get any volume in their business.

SPEAKER_282: Interesting.

SPEAKER_41: And solar, are you guys involved in that at all? Are people starting to think about the Powerwall, SolarCity kind of solution for ChargePoint? Yeah. Maybe you can partner with SolarCity and put solar up and then connect it to yours and put batteries in yours?

SPEAKER_170: So think about this, right? The problem with doing fast charging and things like that in the home is there's not enough electrical capacity coming into your home. I mean, you're not a Costco. Right. You don't have that much energy coming into your home. I know.

SPEAKER_318: I was afraid you did two homes.

SPEAKER_170: But what you're seeing, Tesla's leaning in charge with this. You've got the combination of renewables and storage is going to do some pretty awesome things to disrupt that industry. Well, there's no reason that you can't couple that storage to the charger for the car. Right. Right? And now you're somewhat decoupled by the electrical capacity in the house so you can fast charge it a little bit when you need it. There's lots of things you can do.

SPEAKER_31: So you'll put battery packs eventually in the charge port.

SPEAKER_170: I think what we'll do is we'll wind up integrating with battery packs that are already in your house. Because I don't think you want a separate one for your car.

SPEAKER_321: Every house is going to have a battery pack in your mind?

SPEAKER_170: I think a lot of them are going to move in that direction. And I think, you know, one of the problems with the U.S. is every state's different from a regulatory perspective. Right.

SPEAKER_154: Right? I mean, we live in basically—

SPEAKER_40: They're trying to stop people from putting battery packs in or multiple battery packs.

SPEAKER_99: How is that even possible? What right does the government have to tell you how many battery packs you can put in your goddamn house?

SPEAKER_217: Yeah, it's—you know, things are all slow. It's going to change. It's going to change.

SPEAKER_99: No, they're upset because there's too much energy going into the system, right?

SPEAKER_324: In terms of being sold back? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_99: There were moments where they went negative, I believe. It's crazy. All right, listen. Pasquale. Pasquale. Yeah. Pasquale.

SPEAKER_325: Done.

SPEAKER_99: What's the proper way? I'm curious. Pasquale. Pasquale. It's Italian, so you say Pasquale. Yeah. Spanish, you say Pasquale. Pasquale.

SPEAKER_327: Yeah, and it depends on what part of Italy you're from. There's all kinds of other ways to say it, too. Oh, I see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_152: All right. Well, listen, continue your success with it. I'm a huge fan. Thank you for spending all this time, you know, saving the world and the planet. Thank you so much. I mean, you know, so many people we talk to hate the planet, and it's just nice to meet somebody who actually enjoys the planet.

SPEAKER_329: All these car executives. That's right. Great to see you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_152: Okay, we'll be right back with more. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to This Week in Startups. I'm Jason Calacanis. This is Dave Matthews, the gadget guy. We're looking at some of the interesting technology occurring here, and our theme for the day seems to be transportation. Lots of innovation there. Our next guest is Greg Duconger.

SPEAKER_213: Good afternoon.

SPEAKER_331: Greg Duconger, yes.

SPEAKER_213: Duconger. Très bien. You were at VULOG, V-U-L-O-G.

SPEAKER_333: That's correct.

SPEAKER_213: Now, you had emailed us while we were talking. Tell us what VULOG is.

SPEAKER_336: Yes, so VULOG is a technology provider for car sharing services. Okay, what does it mean? Let's say it in English. What does it mean?

SPEAKER_339: I buy your software, I do what?

SPEAKER_340: Who buys your software to do car sharing?

SPEAKER_339: So our customers are basically mobility operators.

SPEAKER_341: Mobility operators. Yes, so I will give you a very, very brief example. We have one customer in Vancouver in Canada who is operating a large fleet of cars in car sharing.

SPEAKER_345: Actually, a fleet of 1,000 cars, and they use our technology. So they have 1,000 cars. They own 1,000 cars. Like what?

SPEAKER_341: Like a car rental company? It's not a car rental company. But you could consider that it's pretty similar because they operate a fleet of 1,000 cars. 1,000 cars are being in the streets of Vancouver. They're parked on the streets.

SPEAKER_350: So this is like drive now or reach now or car to go? Get around? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_336: Is get around in that car? No, it's not get around. Get around is peer-to-peer.

SPEAKER_345: So it means that it's your own car that you will rent to someone.

SPEAKER_305: So somebody owns a fleet of cars. They're parked on the street. And then you provide the hardware and software for them as an enterprise software, I guess.

SPEAKER_99: Absolutely. For them to then let customers, and you white label, go on their phone, find a car, rent it.

SPEAKER_152: And then what is the hardware piece? How does that work?

SPEAKER_339: So you're absolutely right. There is hardware that is being put in the car.

SPEAKER_341: Okay. So this hardware is enabling the car to be connected to the network and to our platform. This hardware is communicated with our smart mobility platform. We are providing as well a back office for the operator to be able to operate its fleet properly.

SPEAKER_355: And we are also providing white label application so that the end user at the end of the day is able to use the service.

SPEAKER_99: So they have to go out and do the marketing. They have to tell people about the service. They have to bill the customers. They have to bill the fleet. But you just provide all that back-end service.

SPEAKER_354: Absolutely.

SPEAKER_345: We provide all the technology stack. So our customers just focus on operations and marketing.

SPEAKER_99: What does it cost somebody to build a fleet like this? So if I had 100 cars, and the other question I have is before that, are people coming to you who already have ride-sharing and then work cars, or are they building a business based on your technology being available? In other words, like starting a franchise. Like, oh, they found your technology, and then they buy 50 cars to go do this.

SPEAKER_360: Most of the time, they start their business from scratch.

SPEAKER_40: Ah, so you are actually creating a franchise or business model for people to start a local business. Absolutely. What does it cost if I had 100 cars?

SPEAKER_99: Let's say I buy 100 used cars for, you know, $10,000 each Priuses that are, whatever, 10 years old. So now I spent a million dollars. Is that right? 1,000 cars? 10,000 each? No, 100 cars, 10,000 each, a million dollars. I spent a million dollars on Priuses. I put them on the road. What do I spend with you to put all of them into this ride-sharing software?

SPEAKER_341: What you would have to pay with V-Log is basically a monthly license fee per car. Okay. So you pay X dollar. How much? Let's say around 40 to 50 bucks. Okay, 40 to 50 bucks a month per car. And then you would also purchase the hardware that is being put in the car.

SPEAKER_355: It's 100 bucks, 200 bucks, 300 bucks? Yeah, it's roughly 400 bucks. 400 bucks.

SPEAKER_206: This is an expensive hardware, though, because think about it. You've got to have RFID system or a 3G LTE connection to unlock the car.

SPEAKER_203: You need sensors for the key to make sure the key gets left in the car. No one walks over the key. There's probably slots for credit cards where you can have fuel payment systems. So this is not inexpensive hardware. Right. No, it's pretty cheap. It's deep surgery, though, to install it in the car as well.

SPEAKER_341: Yes, you're absolutely right. And we try to put some very cool stuff as well in the car. It's not only hardware itself, a small computer. It's also, we have something, we have a speakerphone, which is able to bring some voice prompts into the car. So when you are entering, you are a customer, you get into the car, you have a welcome message into the car. And it's pretty nice because it can be customized.

SPEAKER_335: So it can be like, oh, welcome to Dave Matthews' car sharing. Absolutely. It's pretty neat. And people really like it.

SPEAKER_41: So somebody could set this up. And what do people typically rent a car for per hour per day in these ride sharing services

SPEAKER_341: or car sharing services? So in this kind of model, it's people are paying by the minute.

SPEAKER_345: So you need a car, you're in the street, you will pick up your smartphone, open the application. In one click, you would select a car.

SPEAKER_379: What do people charge typically? I haven't used it, but people use Zipcar. What's the one that people use?

SPEAKER_384: I use DriveNow, which is smart cars.

SPEAKER_203: I'm sorry, BMWs. Car2Go, which is smart cars. And it's equivalent to Uber pricing, but it's your car. You can go load it up with planes from the street. So what, 10 bucks an hour or something?

SPEAKER_341: No, it's, well, most of the time it's 30 cents per minute. Oh, 30 cents per minute. 30 cents per minute. So 18 bucks an hour. Yeah, but people are not using it for a complete hour. Most of the time they're using it for 15, 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_132: So they drive it from one place to another and just park it? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_341: This is a service which is extremely flexible. It's very convenient. So you need a car, you pick up a car, and then you park it anywhere in the city. This is what is really great. It's Uber without the driver.

SPEAKER_391: Yeah, without the driver. You are the driver. And it's pretty cheap as well.

SPEAKER_384: I literally use this to rent an SUV to go buy furniture and then pick up the furniture and take it home myself so I don't have to pay some schmuck in New York to deliver it to me.

SPEAKER_150: So if you were to take it, can they also set pricing by the hour of the day? Because $18 an hour can get pretty expensive.

SPEAKER_345: No, it's less than $18 an hour. Okay. So you have a pricing per minute, and then you have a pricing per hour and per day.

SPEAKER_41: This kills the Hertz's of the world, right? Nobody wants to go to Hertz and pick up a car and wait online. And then I used Hertz for the first time.

SPEAKER_152: I'm a gold member, right? So we go on this trip. There's no Ubers in this town. We're in like a podunk town. I can't get an Uber. So I go to get it.

SPEAKER_99: They're like, oh, yeah, it's $100 for two days. I was like, or whatever. And I was like, okay, $90, $100. That's not so bad. It would have been similar for an Uber, I guess. Then I go to something else. It's $300. I said, how is it $300? They said, oh, it's the gas and the insurance. I said, well, I have the insurance. Anyway, I got it down to like $200. Hertz was the most horrible experience. I will never use Hertz. It's a horrible company. They treat you terribly. Then I go in, and it's like $5 a gallon of gas. It takes forever. It is the worst user experience. So how are the Hertz's and the Avis's of the world reacting to the fact that you're creating something that absolutely destroys their companies?

SPEAKER_354: So today they are, let's say, in a kind of waiting mode. They are looking at Avis very carefully. But they will have to react because it will definitely take on their market.

SPEAKER_402: You're saying they're deers on the headlamp? They're just absolutely stunned the headlamp?

SPEAKER_401: Hertz had their own. Hertz on demand in New York.

SPEAKER_384: And they canceled it. They killed it.

SPEAKER_401: They killed it, yes.

SPEAKER_403: Why did they kill it? Because they're incompetent?

SPEAKER_384: Different direction.

SPEAKER_403: Honestly, I don't know. Greg, you know.

SPEAKER_335: Is Hertz incompetent?

SPEAKER_405: From what I understand, it has a change in business direction.

SPEAKER_354: Yeah, I think it's a question of strategy as well. I think they did not think it was the right timing to do that.

SPEAKER_341: But clearly today, what we see on the market is that there are so many companies interesting in this kind of business because clearly this is a strategic move today to move into this business. Because this business, millennials, for instance, they all want this kind of service.

SPEAKER_345: Millennials. Millennials. Why do they want that service? Well, they want this service because they do not want to spend money on a car that they would use less than 4% of the time.

SPEAKER_203: They don't want to own anything. They're going to the complete sharing economy, have nothing except the clothes on their back.

SPEAKER_410: They're incapable of actually doing any commitment, right?

SPEAKER_203: I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_93: I think that's what it is. Also, the idea of growing up kind of sucks. Like, signing a lease sucks.

SPEAKER_413: A J-O-B sucks.

SPEAKER_99: Jobs are terrible. Filling out your health insurance. Filling out your... I have, like, millennials.

SPEAKER_40: No offense to the millennials in the room, but they have a 401k. They don't even know how to fill it out. They just don't want to grow up. It's a rest of development. It's easier to just do this. But you know what?

SPEAKER_339: I do not fully agree with you. I would say that they are smart. They are smart because if you own a car, you would use it probably 4% to 5% of the time.

SPEAKER_419: It doesn't make sense. No problem. I agree with that. They're spread that way.

David Friedberg: And then you pay for insurance. You pay for parking. You pay for gas. No, no. Trust me.

SPEAKER_40: If I wasn't friends with Elon and I wasn't, like, a car collector, because I'm kind of a car collector, I would not have four.

SPEAKER_152: I'd have two. And I would almost go full Uber at some point if Uber's at Tesla's. Or full car sharing. Or full car sharing, yeah.

SPEAKER_99: No, I wouldn't do that. Honestly, for me, if I'm going to give up the car, I want to be driven. But that's different. But do you have people in these networks renting the cars and then using them for Uber? Because that seems to be something Hertz and Avis want to do.

SPEAKER_152: They're trying to get Lyft and Uber drivers to take them. Do you see that day coming? This is not our business model today. No. No. How long have you been doing this and how many cities are you in?

SPEAKER_335: So we are in more than 10 cities.

SPEAKER_339: 10 cities. 10 cities in the world. So we started, actually, in Europe. Uh-huh. The first project was in 2011 in Nice. I sense an accent.

SPEAKER_335: You might be from Europe. Yeah. You're from France. Companies in Paris? Companies in Nice, south of France. In Nice? Yeah.

SPEAKER_410: We may have to do a double special here. You'll maybe go to Saint-Remy and we can have a good time. Whenever we will.

SPEAKER_99: So wait a second. You're doing this in Nice. What's it like being an entrepreneur in France? I heard it's terrible. Do they hate entrepreneurs there? Do they hate, like, the fact that you're trying to be ambitious?

SPEAKER_373: No, I think actually it's great.

SPEAKER_335: Is it?

SPEAKER_341: It's great to be an entrepreneur in France.

SPEAKER_433: The regulation, everything is okay?

SPEAKER_341: Well, we always complain about regulation, but I think it's pretty easy to start a company in France. Oh, to sell it? Yeah. To start a company? To start a company, yes.

SPEAKER_99: But is it hard when you have somebody who's an employee who's incompetent and you want to fire them? Impossible. I heard you have to go to a judge and beg the judge to let them go and it takes six months. Is that true?

SPEAKER_341: It's not that easy, for sure, to fire someone who's incompetent.

SPEAKER_437: In your company, you can't fire somebody.

SPEAKER_341: No, but in our company today, we have zero turnover and we don't have any issue like that.

SPEAKER_238: But you have to be very careful in hiring, don't you? Absolutely. Much harder.

SPEAKER_403: This is why we're extremely careful in hiring. It is interesting. In the United States, you can just take chances.

SPEAKER_99: I think that's why the companies in the United States go a little bit further. You have to be really sure you're going to hire somebody because you can't get rid of them. Or it's very hard? Arduous.

SPEAKER_341: No, it's hard, but it's getting easier and easier.

SPEAKER_99: It is? They're getting more pro. Is it true in France that a very capitalistic person might win the presidency?

SPEAKER_403: No. No? Like more pro-business person? Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_341: Yeah. Absolutely. Actually, he was here on the CES yesterday. Oh, he was here? Yeah. That's pretty capitalistic. Mr. Fillon.

SPEAKER_440: Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_203: And Avis, four years ago, bought Zipcar for $500 million all cash. They've kept it independent. It's still chugging away. So that's an example of them getting great visibility into this new market. It was eating their lunch.

SPEAKER_99: It feels like a great business that you've built. You have 10 cities. And how many cars on the average city? Is it 50 or 1,000?

SPEAKER_443: What's the average?

SPEAKER_428: On average, it's 500 cars. Amazing.

SPEAKER_341: And most of our new projects are electric vehicles. Project with electric vehicles. We started Madrid two weeks ago. 500 cars.

SPEAKER_98: Are any of these cities doing it?

SPEAKER_255: Would the city or a town do it to alleviate car ownership?

SPEAKER_341: No. They are looking for private companies to run the operations. And I think this is a smart way.

SPEAKER_99: It's such a great way to do it because you don't need to extract all the value. You just need to get your little piece. So if I have 1,000 cars and I'm paying you $50,000 a month, that's $600,000 a year for your platform. It's incredible for you. And it's almost all profit in year two. Absolutely. You could actually let people, you could actually install it in their cars for free or put them on a, include that in the monthly fee or something. How is the company funded?

SPEAKER_335: You have venture capitalists there in France? Yeah, we have venture capitalists. In France, you have venture capitalists. Absolutely. Or did you get venture capital from London? Where did it come from? Actually, we have one French and one English. One French and one English. Are they both on the board?

SPEAKER_339: Yep. What's that like? Well, actually, it's great. Is it? Well, yes. We have some great shareholders and very supportive.

SPEAKER_354: Well, they are very supportive because basically we are doing well and because they see that there is a huge opportunity in front of us.

SPEAKER_255: Greg, how many hours a week do you work on average, the number of hours?

SPEAKER_152: Well, you know, in France, we don't work that much. Well, I'm asking you specifically as a CEO because you have the most incentive. You have 70% of the company, 60% of the company. In equity, how many hours do you put in a week?

SPEAKER_336: Honestly. I don't know. I don't count, but yeah. You're a six-day-a-week guy? Probably more than 60 a week, yes.

SPEAKER_152: 60 a week. But your employees, on average, are they allowed to work more than 35 or 40 or do you have to get them to sign a waiver to work more?

SPEAKER_339: Well, we know we are very flexible. Very flexible. When there is a lot of work to be done, the team is here.

SPEAKER_341: When it's, let's say, more relaxed, they can go home and enjoy the beach, at least.

SPEAKER_335: Oh, very good. But now you're not allowed to do email after work, or they have the right to not do email, right? How is that going over in France?

SPEAKER_341: Well, this is a good point. But you know what? We are very lucky because this is only for big companies.

SPEAKER_152: Only for big companies? Yeah. So if you have under a certain number of people, they can answer their email. It's very interesting. I'm fascinated by France. It's one of my favorite countries, you understand.

SPEAKER_99: One of my favorite places to go.

SPEAKER_461: The chicken, I mean, macaroons. Fagat. Fagat. Fagat. Oh, my God.

SPEAKER_462: Anyway.

SPEAKER_461: Père au chocolat. Cuis-en-au-monde. Have you heard the cuis-en-au-monde? You guys cuis-en-au-monde? The, um, cuis-en-au-monde.

SPEAKER_403: It's like a croissant with, like, jelly in the middle. Cuis-en-au-monde. Ah, it's probably British, no? No, it's something that's all over San Francisco.

SPEAKER_99: They take, like, a croissant and they sort of make it into a puff pastry like this with a little bit of syrup on the inside. Amazing. Cuis-en-au-monde. It's not French. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_466: But is it truffel or magnifique?

SPEAKER_99: Croque madame. Listen, Gregory, it's a great idea for a business. I read it. I said, this is brilliant. I would totally invest in a company like this if it wasn't in France.

SPEAKER_90: I'm very worried about businesses in France. You should not. Actually, you should not. I shouldn't?

SPEAKER_339: Look at the number of French companies at CS. It's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_335: 275 companies, French companies, at CS. I'm waiting for a billion-dollar company to come out of France again. Vente Privé was one.

SPEAKER_474: Vente Privé? You have BlaBlaCar? BlaBlaCar. You know what BlaBlaCar is? You know BlaBlaCar? Well, I know BlaBlaCar. But nobody uses BlaBlaCar here.

SPEAKER_152: Not yet? No, BlaBlaCar, for people who don't know, is if I'm driving from Paris to Nice, what is that, about eight hours? Paris needs six, seven, eight? Yes, eight or nine hours. I did it in about six. You do that ride. I can say, I'm going to do this ride. I'm leaving on Sunday morning.

SPEAKER_335: $25 a seat, and I can sell the other three seats, right? Yeah, that's correct. It's popular. Have you done it? Yeah, I do it quite often, actually. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_480: I think it's really, really fun as a driver or a rider. Because you're not alone. It's really, really fun.

SPEAKER_481: I wonder if you're stuck with some asshole.

SPEAKER_354: It happened only once. Did it? Yeah, only once. What, he wouldn't stop talking? No. Smoking? The gang was not talking for five hours. Oh, dear.

SPEAKER_335: Long, long, long trip. But it's only for long trips, right? You wouldn't do it for a 10-minute ride.

SPEAKER_55: Short distance, you don't do it. So it has to be an hour or more, basically.

SPEAKER_99: And people do drive that in France often. All right, listen, Greg. I can sit here all day. Blah, blah car is very interesting. I heard they came to the United States, but people aren't using it yet. I don't know. People do this on Craigslist all the time. You know, for people who can't afford to fly, they say, I'm on Craigslist. I'm leaving L.A. to San Francisco. You know, 25 bucks, chip in for gas, boom. But you can make a little bit of profit, right?

SPEAKER_493: Yes.

SPEAKER_99: And in France, you know what?

SPEAKER_93: In terms of regulation, they're not cool with, like, the... They hate Uber. Well, they hate Uber and Lyft, right? Or they've gotten better with it.

SPEAKER_261: But they love Airbnb. Why is that? Why is there a difference between Airbnb and the Ubers and Lyfts in terms of how the French view it, or French regulators?

SPEAKER_403: That's a good question. I don't know. No, no, no. I don't know. I guess they believe with your house, you can do what you want. The government shouldn't invest it. But they were very protective of jobs.

SPEAKER_341: But, you know, they're getting tougher and tougher on Airbnb as well. Are they really? Yeah, because there are so many Airbnbs in Paris that it starts to be a real problem. More than hotels, yeah. All right, listen, Greg.

SPEAKER_99: Continued success. Vulog is the company. Yep. Vulog. Yes. V-U-L-O-G. If you want to start a business, buy 10, 25 cars and do this. I think this is a great business for people. This is what Americans should be doing, is starting companies enabled by technology like this. It's a brilliant, brilliant idea. I'm so glad you came by to tell us about it. Thank you very much. Have a great CES.

SPEAKER_503: Thank you. Awesome. Bye-bye. I really love this business. All right, we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_03: Our iTunes review of the week is from Daniel McGuire. Twist is a must-listen for new entrepreneurs. By listening to others that have been on the battlefield, you can learn from their mistakes. Jason, keep up the great work.