The Exchanges

Q Interesting. Okay, and so how do people pay you a dollar? Is it the, is it, you know, Target who has 20 cashiers per store a seat at their thing or what?

A Yeah, so we, we charge a per seat subscription recurring, uh, revenue fee. Um, we also charge for our devices, um, so these are 99 dollars each, um, and the service starts at about six dollars a month per user. Um, obviously we then, uh, charge for add-ons like, uh, real-time language translation, uh, Or, uh, voice workflows and other pieces. It's, uh, very much kind of the, the, the typical LAN and expand model. We show up, we provide something extremely valuable, transformative technology, uh, for our customers, um, and what they start out buying is just push to talk, but then they follow on and say, oh, we want, you know, to be able to speak in one language and have each other person in their language understand. We charge a little bit more for that per month, but base price is six dollars a month recurring.

AI assessment note: “we charge a per seat subscription recurring, uh, revenue fee.”

Q All right, so why leave? Orion must have been very sexy. Why leave?

A So my background is, um, I'm a firefighter EMT by training, and, um, as Chef began to grow, uh, I found that it was, uh, Sort of time and ready for me to leave it in good hands with the amazing team, uh, that's there. Um, as I said, I'm a firefighter EMT, and I wanted to kind of cash in the credibility that you get when you found something big and successful and do something much harder. And so, uh, I set out to build Orion based on, uh, my experiences using radio systems as a firefighter, uh, but believing that voice would become the new interface and wanting to apply what I learned Uh, over my years as an entrepreneur and a builder and infrastructure, uh, uh, builder, um, and give people something better, uh, in an, in an industry that isn't, uh, as, uh, as, as focused on by the traditional tech industry, which is the ten billion dollar plus, uh, push to talk and walkie talkie industry, uh, that runs most of the world and daily operations.

AI assessment note: “wanted to kind of cash in the credibility... and do something much harder.”

Q Have you lost any customers, any seats? I imagine you've lost at least a few. Why did, why have the ones you've lost? Why did you lose them? And what percent are you losing?

A Um, so the, the biggest challenges are, uh, we're, we're for our BYOD customers where, you know, we're, we're deploying out for like a group of security guards or a volunteer group. They might have a really different set of, uh, handsets. And our biggest issue has been making sure we're on top of all the different Android variants that we have to support and providing a great experience there. So, uh, customer churn for us, um, has come in, in, uh, in sort of two issues. The first is, uh, Um, uh, you know, the product either didn't meet the needs that they had because they didn't have enough users that have smartphones, um, which is, uh, again, we're talking about non-San Francisco Bay Area tech early adopters. Um, and then the other one was they had older Android phones in particular, um, uh, that, uh, that just didn't have the horsepower to run, uh, the, the, the software securely In a way that provided a great experience. So, uh, we spent a little bit of extra time rebuilding parts of our app in order to work across a wider variety of those phones, but, uh, that, that definitely was a source of customer churn, uh, when we, when we were beta testing.

AI assessment note: “customer churn for us, um, has come in, in, uh, in sort of two issues.”

Q Any bot or algorithm is only as smart as the inputs you give it. You obviously control the voice input, right, that is going across your system. Now, it's a tough decision to decide what you record, what you don't record, and how you power any recording to make the system smarter. How do you balance that, and are you recording calls?

A Oh, really great question. We use end-to-end encryption, um, and we're actually about to roll out, um, uh, uh, uh, network-wide Uh, full end to end encryption. That means that we're not able to intercept or listen or do anything else, but privacy, security, integrity of our platform, uh, is paramount. And the way that you need to do that in order for customers to trust you in the longterm is to, uh, is to provide them the security assurances that when they're using your device or product or service, uh, that they can trust that at the core. So with Orion, um, what we do is it's always very clear When you invite a bot in, um, that is able to interact with you, that can do, uh, real-time audio processing, streaming, etc. Um, you see that just like any other Orion client, so, uh, when you invite a bot in, uh, for instance, our translation bot, you see it, you talk to it, um, and so that way, uh, it's always clear, it's always disclosed, it's always obvious. Um, we partner with and use the services of Microsoft and Google, IBM, Amazon, uh, uh, and several others, um, uh, and the reason we do that for services like, uh, transcription is you might not want to run one service or another. You might need to run your own cloud environment if you have, like, HIPAA or other, uh, specific, uh, you know, privacy and integrity concerns. A thing that sets Orion apart is our early investment in…

AI assessment note: “That means that we're not able to intercept or listen or do anything else”

Q I'm just saying, why else would you take them as a strategic advisor? Why would you want to give them the information on your growth? They have all the information rights. Why would you do that? Yeah.

A Well, you know, so now, now you're getting awfully specific. Um, and, uh, the, the simple reality is, is that I think strategic investors in general invest in companies that they want to learn from and see the future in. And so for Orion, uh, by taking money from a great partner who's got amazing engineering resources and sort of all of these other capabilities, um, you know, we, we gain exposure to something that we value. And again, as I'm a firefighter by training, my life has depended on These amazingly well-designed products from Motorola. Um, but for the most part, like, I'm not in a situation that needs a heavy-duty public safety radio. I'm, you know, I and our customers are in an environment where they just want to use their smartphone apps and services.

AI assessment note: “by taking money from a great partner who's got amazing engineering resources”

Q So the, the risk in this interview is that my audience doesn't actually latch on to what You do, right? And they're going to miss all the lessons then. Can you tell me a story of a customer using you in a really simple way?

A Sure. So our typical customer, uh, is a small to medium sized business that has a group of people that need to, uh, be eyes up and hands free to do their work. They need to be connected in real time using the power of their voice. They're not sitting behind a computer or a desk. So think about healthcare, a doctor's office, a hospital, a Think about transportation delivery logistics. When, you know, a company comes to your door to deliver food, um, uh, they often have a radio or hopefully increasingly, uh, the, uh, Orion app and devices, uh, in order to remain connected in real time to the people, uh, that they need to be connected to, to do their jobs. So this is a massive market. When you, uh, when you think about like when you're at the airport or when you're at a conference or other event, You see walkie talkies and radios everywhere. They power, uh, the, uh, they're, they're the email and chat and slack of, uh, kind of the real time mobile heads up world. Um, unfortunately, uh, they, this is a product and category that hasn't really been reinvented, uh, for technology. It's very stagnant. It sort of stays the same. So Orion has built an app platform set of devices that let people communicate in real time, heads up, Using the power of their voice and now apps and third party integrations.

AI assessment note: “our typical customer, uh, is a small to medium sized business”