Oasis Devices launches smart ring for private voice dictation and computer navigation

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We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. Crowd Strike secures AI and stops breaches. Our next guest is Ricky Rosa from Oasis Devices. Ricky, how you doing? Welcome to the show. How you doing?

Can you hear us? Introduce yourself.

I can Can you hear me?

Yeah. All good.

Can you hear us over the drumming and the air horn? It's a very chaotic entrance. You get hot dropped in here. You're trying to drink your coffee in peace and all of a sudden it's welcome to the Ultradome. But welcome to the Ultradome. Introduce yourself.

Awesome. Thank you guys. So, I'm Ricky Rosa. I'm the founder and CEO of Oasis devices

and we're we make smart ring to try to replace the keyboard. Uh what we're interested in is the next platform of computing.

Are are smartphones the final form? I don't know. I mean, I don't think anybody knows. But once you take that as your baseline,

I'm I'm praying every day.

I want to throw it in the ocean.

Yeah. Yeah. You and me, brother. So, so once you take that as your baseline, you can start to explore.

Yeah.

But what we noticed is that you can only ask people to take one step from current.

Mh.

And it it's very easy to get, you know, tangled in in, you know, crazy new platforms and and devices and and and that sort of thing. But you you can only you can only ask people to change things so much. You cannot ask them to change the entire workflow overnight.

We've spent years in the idea maze trying to figure out, you know, what would be a good use cases for for smart rings and and and and different things.

And what we landed is private dictation because what rings are really useful for is uh bringing them very close to your mouth and whispering. And it just so happens that we also have a track binary ring that allows you to edit. Uh we spent a lot of time uh making sure that it has it had the resolution for navigation for smart glasses, but smart glasses are, you know, a little bit slower to take off. So we we channeled all of that development into editing what you see on screen. And so we made it work with Whisper Flow. Um the founder tonight is an angel uh investor in our company. And so, um, that's what we're launching today.

Amazing.

Very cool.

What What does good look like in terms of churn and retention for a new device? Because I imagine that the product looks great. I imagine it will work and I imagine people will keep it on for a long time and use it. But, uh, the baseline is so low. I mean, we had an Apple Vision Pro in the studio this morning and the team was trying it out and like laughing and enjoying the demo. Uh, but that product has to have like 99% churn and same thing with most VR headsets, a lot of hardware companies, like if you can just find that smiling curve of, you know, the conversion rate of a few people that come on. Do how are you thinking about actually getting people over that uh that go that honeymoon period where they try something?

Well, I'll tell you I'll tell you why. Why like I I like this approach is you one utilizing a device that is already a daily product in the workspace

utilizing like audio transcription which like whisper flow. I was at dinner with a buddy last night and he's showing us like his whole whisper flow setup. He's like obsessed

obsessed with it. And then you're utilizing the ring which is also a form factor that people are used to by now. The aura ring is proven. Yeah. And so you'd like take that combination of like people want to be transcribing more. They're using their computers all day long. You deliver it in a form factor that is like, you know, nor you know, understood already that people are comfortable with. And I think that's a recipe

for potentially a hit. But again, yes, the the sort of median new consumer electronic device has like 0% retention, so it's still very hard.

Well, I will say I use the Vision Pro every night. I don't know if that helps or hurts my

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I love I love new hardware, but but I I I you know, I admit that there's uh that that it's always hard to get people on. But yes, uh is it is is it important that this is both effectively a peripheral for a daily driven device and then also a fashion accessory? Is that important that it's both?

Yes. Uh so the way that we think about retention is and this is why we struggled so much in years past is we really needed to find a use case that was a mustave not a nice to have. Yeah.

Right.

And so with Whisperflow you know you can speak loudly to your computer

but it just so happens that in you know uh crowded offices um coffee coffee shops those sort of public environments you can't speak out loud. And so it really helps to have to have a a peripheral that you can speak quietly to.

Once we move to other platforms like iOS and and glasses eventually, then the fashion accessory or the fashion uh point starts to become more important.

Yeah.

It also feels like I don't know um because you can wear AirPods and you can talk to them. Can you not whisper to AirPods? Because even if you can, even if it's the same functional device, it's way different aesthetics talking into a ring and having earbuds in that feel like, okay, this person's like out in their own world. Um, but I imagine with the microphone a lot closer, the ring allows you to speak at even a lower level and produce a higher fidelity transcript. Is that correct?

Correct. Yes. Yes.

Okay, that's cool. So, so, so the ring outperforms AirPods, but also it has the modality of touch.

Yeah. Which is

which allows you to do more. Yeah. It allows you to do to edit the things that you see on screen. It allows you to navigate. It allows you to completely interact with AI and your computer and your workflows without ever touching the keyboard. Yeah. And and this this point is important because what we think is that if we can it's a big if but if we can get people to interact with laptops without touching them then the output piece of it

becomes a little bit more fluid.

Yeah.

Now it's it's a smaller ask to ask people to put the display in glasses or display in in another device.

Right.

So but but you really need to to solve the input part first and that's kind of what we're going after at the moment. The demo is someone using basically a word document. Is that intentional? Why not a code editor? Why not an LLM interaction back and forth? Why why why text specifically?

Well, we we had we do have a demo of uh the person using uh JBT and you know code and that sort of thing in the launch video. Yeah.

But for the B-roll, it's just like more aesthetic to have the text.

Okay. Okay. Okay. I was just wondering if there was a hint at like where you see the first killer feature uh with with writers or with someone who's doing more like word documentbased knowledge work as opposed to something who more of a programmer but I I I don't know maybe I'm reading into it too

remember whisperflow is like yeah like a platform agnostic tool so they see retention across emails word documents you know um coding tools and and the rest and so we are an extension of that So, we kind of sit in the same plane as you know what I mean.

Mhm. Um, what's the what's the status of the company? How big is the company? Have you raised money? Where do you see all this going?

So, we're pretty small. We're like a five person team. We're scattered across the globe. We have, you know, people in in Australia, Abu Dhabi, uh, China. We're we're an eclectic bunch. Um, uh, we've raised a few angel rounds and we shipped our beta, uh, this January.

That's great. Uh, when do you want to go into public release? Where can people sign up to learn more? Where can people pre-order?

We launched our our pre-order campaign for the microphone and trackpad version today.

And that's going to be shipping in small batches from two weeks from now till Christmas. So, we're going to roll it out. Yeah,

that's great. a testament to the modern supply chain. I love it.

We'll we'll order one, Tyler, if you can order one and then and then try to put us uh you know, I don't should I ask to be put at the at the front of the list or near the front of the list? It'd be it'd be nice to get in the next uh in the next month would be awesome.

Be great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Congratulations on the progress. Very cool device. I love it.

Thank you. I appreciate it, guys. Thank you for having me on.

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