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Home > The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast > #394 – Jeri Ellsworth and the demise of CastAR


	Podcast:		The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
	Episode:		#394 – Jeri Ellsworth and the demise of CastAR
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		01:59:39
	Publish Date:		2018-05-29 00:54:54
	Description:		TL;DR: Jeri Ellsworth is a hardware entrepreneur who has created homemade semiconductors on YouTube, is a self taught electronics guru and created AR technology at Valve. That technology was later spun out as CastAR, which shut down last year. In this episode (her 5th appearance on The Amp Hour), Jeri talks candidly about the experience. Welcome back, Jeri! Past shows here: 35 – The Ternary Tussle 52 – Carnassial Chip Chemicals 147 – Absorptive Augmented Actuality 173 – Intense Illusion Introduction Ham radio 0h 1m 10s License 0h 1m 34s Ham shed 0h 3m 33s Jeri background 0h 4m 32s CastAR 0h 6m 35s AR at Valve 0h 9m 49s CastAR based on retro from a headset 0h 10m 25s Kickstarter campaign 0h 12m 16s Move to Silicon Valley 0h 18m 45s Raised 15M from Playground.global 0h 18m 51s Tools at Playground 0h 19m 57s Giving the KS money back 0h 21m 12s Jason Cerundulo was a CastAR engineer who was on The Amp Hour in the past. 0h 21m 58s Out goes the startup CEO 0h 23m 19s Acquiring game studios 0h 25m 9s 20->90 people 0h 25m 16s 70 people were non engineering 0h 26m 45s Found some bugs in proto1 0h 27m 19s Proto2.5 0h 27m 48s Technical Illusions 0h 30m 4s Getting names 0h 32m 18s “Bumblebloggel” 0h 33m 5s Additional naming exercises 0h 35m 36s “Jillion” 0h 39m 55s 2nd from last rebranding 0h 41m 18s “VoyageAR” 0h 41m 52s “SiteCast” 0h 43m 3s Thomas Middleditch (CEO of Pied Piper on HBO’s “Silicon Valley”) stopped by 0h 44m 22s Randy Pitchford 0h 44m 31s Eggplant…is a color? 0h 45m 34s Scopely logo 0h 46m 4s EVT hardware 0h 47m 29s Face crusher 0h 47m 49s Shooting for $299 MSRP 0h 51m 6s Price of box 0h 52m 39s Never found a model 0h 53m 43s Mind snappers (12-18 year olds who use Snapchat and play Minecraft) 0h 54m 0s Fundraising 0h 55m 27s Series B 0h 55m 33s Fall 2016 0h 56m 13s Zone of insolvency 0h 57m 54s Down round 0h 58m 4s Jason going to China 1h 3m 6s Co-founder rapport 1h 9m 36s Don’t raise too much money 1h 9m 43s Would never do an incubator because of the “drive by opinions” 1h 10m 30s Lot of second guessing 1h 14m 4s Leadership was misaligned 1h 14m 46s Dave bid on the Dick Smith assets with a blind bid 1h 18m 12s All of CastAR was on a hard drive (the important stuff) 1h 22m 5s Plastic molds and tooling might exist in China 1h 24m 18s Getting assets/patents back 1h 25m 51s Castar.com was lost to squatters 1h 26m 50s CastAR’s final tweet 1h 28m 8s Rick (co-founder) ended up going to Unity 1h 29m 34s Jeri’s new company has the old assets and new investors 1h 29m 43s One is a strategic manufacturer 1h 30m 3s Angel investors 1h 32m 20s Jeri said, “Koombayah let’s do this” 1h 33m 13s Jeri tells a parable 1h 35m 18s Working on Rockets 1h 37m 12s alameda rocket company 1h 38m 37s Rocket startups 1h 39m 37s Project loon 1h 40m 4s One of the nightmares for a VC is that a company turns into a lifestyle company 1h 44m 56s two types of hardware startups 1.) GoPro (brand play, easy to develop) 2.) Technically focused 1h 47m 53s Touchstone Semiconductor (a now defunct chip startup) was on show 1h 49m 1s Ham radio 1h 52m 46s Jeri has been building a huge loop antenna 1h 53m 26s Tuning radio up the dial 1h 54m 29s 6000-10000V antennas 1h 54m 57s Stealth transceiver 1h 57m 2s Nerd cruise 1h 57m 16s Radiation King Euk Amplifier 1h 58m 19s Photo credit: Amy Herndon
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