CRUSH the Memory is AWESOME – an AI voice recorder to remember everything & TAKE ACTION. You can watch the full interview now – and it is definitely must-see!
Do you which you could revolutionise your memory with one click of a button?
Crush the Memory is the latest creation from Erik Kaiser, whose LinkedIn Page is here, too – and the full interview is now available to watch below. too. You can see the Kickstarter campaign here.
You can also watch via my show page on demand here where you’ll also find all previous episodes.
Crush – which is short for “Creative Rush”, is a single Button, AI Voice Recorder, with AI-Enhanced Transcriptions, Haptic Feedback, WiFi Sync, with iOS, Android, Web Apps and more!
In my estimation, this is the FIRST true killer AI hardware and software solution out there, and the first true killer AI app since ChatGPT itself. The full video interview is below, as well as a full transcript, so please watch, and read on!
It starts at the 1 minute and 25 second mark, station promos precede the show.
The interview with Eric starts at point 6 below, the first five points are a wrap of some of this week’s AI news. Here we go:
Thank you for joining me for another edition of Talking Tech with Alex Zaharov-Reutt. We’re here on today’s News Talk TNT, where tech’s incredible wonders never cease amazing, while also causing concern that technology may well be the end of the human race. Although, obviously, I don’t want that to happen.
Now, some AI news before we go to our special guest.
1. OpenAI has created a new search engine called SearchGPT, which shows that AI chatbots want to become search engines, as much as search engines want to become AI chatbots.
It’s just a prototype thus far to be rolled out to select testers, and instead of giving you 10 blue links as Google once did, it will naturally attempt to give you a direct answer, which you can interact with in the chat GPT style, while also being able to see the sources of that information, a bit like Perplexity.ai and Microsoft Copilot has been doing for quite some time. Now, you can go to openai.com in your browser, and you can see it right there. So it’s right on the front page that the SearchGPT announcement is there, but apparently it will never be a separate search engine as such, but will be merged with the ChatGPT experience itself, which does make sense.
2. Now speaking of ChatGPT, the GPT 3.5 engine is dead.
The free version of ChatGPT via the website is now offering GPT-4 Omni Mini free as standard with no limits on usage. So this is good news, especially for anyone that doesn’t need the paid experience. But of course, if you do pay, you’ll get the memory, you’ll get access to the custom GPTs, and you’ll also get access to the full 4 Omni experience, which is the most advanced version of which this is a smaller version, cheaper to run than 3.5 before it, if you are somebody that uses the API to have your AI experience in various apps.
3. Next is Reddit, which was the source of Google’s AI overlays, which were telling you to make cheese stick to pizza, has blocked Microsoft’s Bing search engine and others from being able to access its database of information.
Now, Google is not blocked because it paid $60 million US for the privilege of partnering with Reddit. So if you’re using other search engines like Bing or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo or Ecosia or others and you can’t find links from Reddit, that’s the reason why.
4. Then there’s also the news that Apple has joined other tech giants in committing to the voluntary AI protections proposed by the Biden administration, according to the White House on Friday.
These safeguards are aimed at developing artificial intelligence responsibly and protecting consumers with open AI, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta, the former Facebook, also agreeing to the AI protections. This comes as last October, which is nearly a year ago, almost, maybe not quite, President Biden signed an executive order requiring companies to undertake various AI-related tasks, such as sharing safety test results with the US government and protecting Americans from AI-enabled fraud.
5. And before we go to our special guest, here is the latest Samsung Flip 6.
So this is the 6th edition of the folding flip phone that Samsung has made. And the little crease inside is the flattest it has ever been. Now it’s still there. I can still feel it just a little bit as I’m swiping up and down. So they haven’t got it completely flat yet, apparently something that Apple is trying to do before they launch a folding tablet, iPhone tablet style. So the rumours say, you know, that sometime in 2025 or 2026, we’ll see this folding iPhone.
Anyway, if I go into the settings, you can see there that it says, if I just hold it up, it says Galaxy AI. I don’t know if you can see it.
If I tap on Galaxy AI, it’s got call assist, chat assist, interpreter, note assist, transcript assist. Browsing Assist, Photo Assist, Drawing Assist, and Photo Ambient Wallpaper. And it also has a thing called Process Data only on-device, so that you don’t use an online AI service if you don’t want to.
And we’re going to see more of this on-device AI coming in the future. And of course, Apple’s iOS 18, Apple Intelligence will come towards the end of this year. And some of those features won’t actually arrive until next year. So we’re in this time period where we do have the beginnings of on-device AI with Windows Copilot Plus PC systems and the onboard neural processing units. And we do have them in Android devices and coming into Apple devices.
And soon we’ll be living in a world where AI is just everywhere.
6. But one of the things we’re going to talk about today is an incredible new AI device. So it’s time to introduce my special guest, Erik Kaiser.
He’s a remarkable man that I encountered on Xbox. who solves problems through 30 years of self-funded start-ups. Now, his latest venture and adventure is the creation of Crush the Memory, a necklace-worn device to record, organise and always remember, or said another way, never forget any idea because you always have it with you.
And it’s more convenient than using your phone. Erik is a CEO, entrepreneur, start-up founder, hardware designer, author, husband and dad. He loves to debunk business tweets as well. Erik, welcome to the program!
Erik Kaiser:
Alex, it is really my pleasure. Thank you for that awesome opening as well. I wish I believed it all.
Alex:
Well, look, I’ve had a chance to speak with you and been watching your videos on X. I mean, pretty incredible stuff, but look, thank you so much for taking the time. Now, you’ve got extensive experience in business and we’ll explore that fascinating story a bit later. But let’s dive straight into your new AI-powered product and let’s look at how it works. It’s in its funding period on Kickstarter, and it looks so good that I’ve backed two of them. But to give everyone a chance to sort of set the scene and understand in a couple of minutes, let’s watch the two-minute and eight-second video from Kickstarter that explains what we’re about to see:
Transcript of Erik Kaiser’s “Crush The Memory” Kickstarter promo video:
I want to be more reliable, more creative, more productive, and make better decisions all the while, while reducing my stress. That’s not an easy job. I run a company in four countries, I have a team of over 100 people, I’m responsible for the product development team, and I’m responsible as a father and a husband.
Erik’s colleague: Erik, don’t forget about this, and that, and this, and remember the call, and the flight.
Erik:
Thank you. This is just one example. People are busy and they need to remember. Hey, Daniela, what’s that on your desk?
Daniela, Erik’s assistant: This is everything I need to remember, but I can’t talk right now because I have so much to do.
Erik: I am so done with forgetting. I am so done with being unreliable, and I am so done with forgetting memorable. events that are important to me. So I developed this. It’s called Crush. It’s a purpose-built device to quickly capture any thought, idea, or conversation that you have.
Faster than looking for my phone, opening an app, faster than grabbing a pen and paper. What type of places can I use it? Everywhere. It’s so easy to use. I press the button once, speak whatever I’d like into it, and press it again. That’s it. That’s all you need to do.
That note will show up transcribed in the app or the web app. I have a note in my home folder to get the first Harry Potter book in the series. I don’t know the name of it, but using the AI feature, I just click a button. It tells me exactly the name of the book. I ask it for an Amazon link. Done. And another amazing benefit of supporting us is that we are the actual direct manufacturers, and this is exactly where we assemble the circuit boards for the Crush.
We have a really talented engineering team, and we make sure every layout that we do and all of our components are top-notch so you have perfect reliability.
Erik says into his Crush: “Folder, assistant, please make sure my flight to Hong Kong is later than 11pm.”
See, now that my assistant has converted to using Crush, everything is organized, searchable, and shareable.
Alex, speaking after the video ends:
Well, that looks pretty amazing. And I just want to acknowledge that I’m not getting any affiliate commissions or anything for this. I just I’ve seen this device. I’ve met Erik over the, you know, over the Internet. And it’s like, wow, I’m very impressed. So congratulations on creating this invention. Let’s see your Crush and show us how simple it is. And whilst you’re showing it to us, explain why you’ve made what is a single purpose device, which is obviously the opposite of the do-it-everything smartphones and tablets that we’re using today.
Erik:
Yeah. First up, this is the device. This is designed, the form factor is designed to be held in your hand. And it’s not designed to be lost. So what that means is everything, this is a very Kindle moment. And the way I’d like to explain that is the Kindle is a purpose built device for reading, where no trade offs have been made. In the same way, we have a purpose built device to capture thoughts using all of our technology, the understanding of form factor, dopamine response and reward systems. We really understand what it takes to capture a thought. And there is effectively the divide between people who need to capture thoughts and people who’ve never even thought about the requirement of needing to capture an idea. So the form factor is amazing. All the edges are soft, they’re round, so nothing gets caught being pulled out of a pocket. That’s a big consideration. There’s a haptic motor inside, so you know when you’re recording and when you’re not.
So it’s very powerful. It’s very simple to use. It’s a single button. You press it, you record into it, you press it again, and whatever you record shows up in an app, either a web app or mobile app. So just prior to us talking, I was actually recording our call because I wanted to show you the ability for this to just break out by speaker. And you can just record the call, and then using this, we have all of the amazing AI built in. We can go right to the summarisation.
This will summarise that conversation that was being had, give you key takeaways, and you can continue to chat with it, and there’s your summarization. So the product is designed to be able to get something out of your head, memorialized, and then take action upon it with as little friction as possible. So that’s basically the concept. It’s a purpose-built device to capture thoughts, ideas, and conversation in real time. and then be able to take action on it.
Alex:
And look, we’ve always been in the position, I mean, most people can, I’m sure, relate to this, but you think of an idea, you think, wow, what a great idea, you don’t write it down, you say to yourself, I’ll remember it later, and then later on, you’re trying to remember it, and you can’t, but in this way, you can actually capture that idea, just effortlessly, you can push the button, say what you’ve got to say, whether it’s for an hour or more or less, and it’s recorded for you in your app, ready for you to action.
Erik:
That’s correct. What we have learned as a result of using the device, and I can, of course, take you back through the genesis, but the end result is that, there is so little input needed, so little effort that needs to be expended to be able to use your mouth to quickly speak, which is faster than writing, faster than typing, faster than any action, and being able to create value. Out of low priority thoughts or ideas or tasks because they usually are high friction touch points.
If you want to remember, you need to bring home milk. Right. That’s not something you’re going to stop to do right this minute. It just hits your mind. But crush gives you the ability to stay in the flow of whatever you’re doing, get milk and move along. That will get memorialized in place. It’s low priority, but still, it gets done. And what we’ve learned is the combination of your high priority, major important ideas, plus being able to expend very little effort on collecting low priority and having a frictionless way to kind of take action upon it, gives you the ability to generate more using your brain because you no longer have the fear and energy and resources being spent trying to hold on to one idea. And that’s been really important because one idea. idea, trying to hold on to it, blocks all the secondary and tertiary ideas behind it. So think about how much more output your brain has when you have a device, a single, a purpose-built device in order to just capture thoughts. It’s very compelling.
Alex:
Yeah. I mean, it has 10 days battery life, 15 hours of storage, and obviously you can get the information off the device and free up plenty of storage, but 15 hours is a long time. One of the things you were showing on your X page is that you can use it in the shower. I mean, it’s not waterproof itself. You put it into a little waterproof pouch, which you can buy from anywhere for your smartphones. And then, I mean, in the shower, often people have great ideas, and I mean, one of the commenters in the Live TNT.News Chat is called Lord Melbury.
He often comments on various shows of mine and others, and he’s saying, look, “there are other ways to capture thoughts. We’ve done it for millennia and have managed just fine. Who stores our thoughts, and is this just another part of the surveillance grid?”
And obviously… I mean, good luck trying to write your thoughts down on a piece of paper in the shower or onto your phone, even if the phone’s waterproof. The water on the screen isn’t so easy to pipe through, I know, I’ve tried, it doesn’t work too well. And the ability, as you say, to not have this brain power, sort of trying to remember this idea and then if you think about trying to remember it back again, is hugely important.
Now, we will get to the privacy and security, but did you have any, did you want to make any comments on that?
Erik:
Well, you know, Alex, the ideas people generate often shape who they are as a person in their value systems. And it’s important to remember ideas. It’s just critical. And sure, we’ve been able to record ideas for a very long time, there’s no question about that. But the efficiency and ability to do it. isn’t anything close to using something like this, right? You can carve into a rock. You can use a quill. You can type. There’s lots of ways to do it. But as we’ve come to also learn, you are struck with ideas.
Your brain works in two different states. One is called default network mode and another is called task mode. Task mode is when you’re executing. Default network mode is your daydreaming state. It’s when you get into the shower and all of a sudden you, have a bloom of ideas or you’re taking a walk without your phone and you’re on a trail and all of a sudden you’re relaxing and you’re thinking.
That’s a very valuable state. A lot happens in that state and it’s very fragile. Trying to remember an idea and hold on to it is very futile, quite honestly. And so having an ability to memorialize it satisfies people because they have valuable ideas. They’re thinking for a reason and that’s what’s valuable. And they say they have a great idea. They’re providing themselves their own self-served value.
And capturing those thoughts and ideas gives them the opportunity to go back and replay what they were thinking, expand upon it. Insights, you know, are very important for thoughts. They tell you a lot about who you are. And even our basic recording of some patterns, for instance, food, you know, people want to log their food. They just don’t because it’s too much friction, right? They have to take out a paper and report something. There’s nothing convenient to do that.
And so something like this where you just say, I had a burger and fries and Diet Coke, it timestamps it. You don’t have to expend any effort and you can collect a lot of information. So there are lots of different use cases. But the core answer is about the value that people place. and how they think and the thoughts that they have. And what’s important about that is that that shapes who they are and what they’re capable of doing.
Alex:
Look, personally, as soon as I saw this, I thought this was a killer product. Like the first true killer hardware, and software solution after ChatGPT itself.
I’ve got Lord Melbury talking about using a handheld, “a Tascam digital handheld audio recorder for his ideas.” He says, “those thoughts stay with me and not stored on the cloud.”
But don’t forget, Lord Melbury, that the Samsung device allows you to use onboard AI. You don’t have to have things going to the cloud, if you don’t want. Erik, we do have to take a quick break but we’ve got so much more to talk about. So I’ll come back to you in a moment.
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Alex:
Thanks for joining us again here on TNT.News. My special guest is Erik Kaiser from Crush the Memory, which you can find on Kickstarter. Erik, what was the pain point that made you realize that you needed this device? One which I personally could think could sell in the billions. You know, how did you come up with the idea?
Erik:
Great question.
I have struggled with trying to remember everything for decades, right? You know, like I build companies and I’m responsible for lots of people. And my ideas are what create value. That’s it.
That’s the end of the day. Like all the products that I have, you know, I just don’t sit down at desk and just design it and put it out and move along. This is a synthesis of lots of different dot connecting over decades. And I have sketchbooks, I’ve got emails I use to send myself.
I used to try texting myself ideas. I use the iOS notes app, which people think is like the holy grail. It’s a total disaster. There’s no ability to do anything with that. And so there isn’t one clear way for me to just get thoughts out of my head into one location. It just doesn’t exist easily, no question. And so I’ve tried everything. I literally have tried every single type of process. Everyone says, oh, the phone can do that. No, the phone can’t do it.
People say, like, just take a voice recording. Well, you then have to manage a voice recording. Like, everybody says the phone can do it. It cannot. Flat out, it can’t do it. It’s not true. And so I often get amazing ideas in the shower, and that’s not unique or exclusive to me. That’s a common phenomenon. There’s something called random shower thoughts, and people often say that. There’s a subset of individuals who say they get their best ideas in the shower. There’s a reason for that. But I said, okay, I’d like to go solve this problem for myself by going to purchase a commercially available solution, so I am able to at least capture the ideas in the shower. That was my pain point.
And I went proudly and confidently onto, you know, Amazon and searched the net, and I was looking for whatever it is that had already been developed because clearly this is not exclusive to me. Lo and behold, I found that there was really nothing. There was something called Aquanotes, which is like this waterproof pad and kind of pencil that you put in the shower, which is really, you know, somebody was thinking, but it wasn’t effective.
And I started to talk to my engineer. I’m like, well, wait a second. We have this shaving mirror that we put in the shower. I’m like, why don’t we do something with that tech? Maybe we could add a button on there to, like, record. And this is how it started. This was this is part of the ignition of it.
There was another individual who was involved in a conversation. She’s a lifeguard at my pool. She writes and we were talking about how you remember. She’s like “I have to carry around a pad with me everywhere.” She keeps on the lifeguard stand. So this started the road to discovery.
And I started to look around and I search and search and search and couldn’t find anything that solved this problem and then began to realize I’m like, well, if we had something that I could use regularly and just have I could then record my thoughts wherever it’s not exclusive to the shower. And so that’s how it started. Then we went straight into this and started really digging it up and trying to figure out what could be done and how it could be done.
Alex:
Yeah, and just for Lord Melbury who seems to be on a bit of a tear today. He was saying “I no idea what Erik is on about.”
Well, that was about the pain point. What gave Erik the idea to create Crush The Memory? Now, the next question I want to know is, what’s the story behind the name, Crush the Memory?
Erik:
So, in the shower is when you often get creative rushes, right? So, I thought about that as a, direction for how to name the product. Like, what is it we’re trying to do here? And, CR from the creative and rush, you know, I put together, it’s a conjunction and creative rush, and that became the early name of it. And we just kind of stuck with it. And I never let go of it because in primal branding, there’s a tribal word, which is really important for branding.
And I really like the word crush, because you always want to crush your goals, you want to crush the ideas, you want to, you know, you want to win. And it turned out that the word had a conjunction of creative rush, but it also inspires people to want to, you know, do better. And, And we think that it worked out pretty well for us.
Alex:
Well, I mean, whenever I hear sort of a rush, I mean, I’m one quarter Chinese, three quarters Russian, although I’m, you know, born in Australia, I’m Australian. But I always like to say I’m not rushing around, “I am Russian!”, as I joke with some of my friends.
And so, as you were saying creative rush, I was thinking creative Russian, that’s me.
Now, I know the answer to this question, because I’ve seen the Kickstarter campaign, but which AI engines are you using in the back end to process the audio, offer the transcripts, summaries, insights, recommendations, and more?
And again, I mean, this is the enterprise versions of the AI engines, so this is not being used to train the AI, or at least that’s the promise, right?
Erik:
Right. We are using many LLMs, and we continue to investigate more for purposes which I’ll describe. So we’re using OpenAI, we’re using Google Gemini, we’re using also Google straight up search. And there are other… LLMS out there, which provide value, and we’re always going to be investigating what they provide, especially for our users, because. The, the value in my opinion, we’ll talk about this later is not the, it’s what you can do with the, how can it serve the purpose that a person has and.
OpenAI is very aggressive. They’ve got amazing models, but so does Google, it has a really great model too. And there are there are others as well. As some models improve and get less expensive, we will migrate in the back end to those without the user needing to be aware of it in order to improve the quality of the output and decrease the cost.
Ultimately, we want to continue to decrease our costs to the user. So it becomes more massive. But we find that there are some great models in the market, and we will continue to explore. Explore and exploit the models that work best for our users.
Alex:
And again, once the on-device transcription and actionability and all the rest is up to speed, you’ll be able to offer people the ability to use that too.
Erik:
That’s correct. All the onboarding of AI going to iOS, for instance, we’re hoping that that will become available through an API where we can directly use that and decrease the cost to the users.
Alex:
And for those who have existing recordings they’d like to have transcribed, like Lord Melbury with his digital recorder. I mean, I’ve got plenty of video interviews I’ve done in the past that I’d love to export to audio and then import. I mean, will it be possible to upload those existing recordings into the Crush app or website?
Erik:
Yes, it will, Alex. As a matter of fact, every note, we call them Crush, we crush a note. Whenever you get a note, which I can just show you real quickly, you can attach media to it. So, for instance, this is what a note looks like.
It’s just a single card, but inside there, you can attach media, you can attach, you know, Excel files, or you can attach a PDF or a photograph from your camera roll, and through there also will be able to create uploads for audio, so you can take existing audio that you have, create a note, upload the audio to it, get your transcripts, and then you can catalogue it and use it.
Alex:
So it’s going to be like a thousand bucks, right? I mean, or what does it cost? Not just to buy, but to use the AI on an ongoing basis? And of course, I do know the price, so I’m just joking with that initial comment, but what does it cost?
Erik:
So our retail cost for the device is US $129. And because AI is moving rapidly, and because costs are continuing to come down, we started, when we started implementing AI last year, the costs are now down 80% from when we first started. We’re expecting that trend to continue, and that means that every single time currently our, our access plan is $99 dollars a year or $9.99 a month.
We know that that by September, that is going to end up dropping. We already know this because you’ve alluded to GPT 4o mini.
We’re already looking at those solutions and how. How it works, the cost of it for us, does it do what our users need to do? So we’re, we’re bullish on the decreasing cost of the hardware. We are going to have multiple versions of the hardware, which, which perform differently for different types of people. So, we’re hovering around the $100 dollar range for the hardware and we’ll have something that’s going to be more and we’ll have some that’s going to be less as well.
But that’s the general range of it, which is very affordable for this type of technology to be able to use Bluetooth and Wi Fi and you have a lot of onboarding and there’s haptic motors inside. It’s a really good piece of tech.
Alex:
And the one around your neck is blue. I mean, you’re going to have different colors, but can you just lift the one up there?
Erik:
This was the original color that I chose that I wanted to be for the entire brand. I was kind of voted off the island, but it’s my favorite, and I use it.
I’m in my factory. This is not a Zoom background, by the way. This is actually my factory office. So we’re offering white, black, pink, and a gray. And those are very standard, under-the-bell curve colors. I like the blue, so I have these. And the only way you can get one of these, this blue, is if you know me personally.
So this is the founder’s blue.
Alex:
Blue is my favorite color.
Erik:
Yeah, this one’s a very special blue. I worked hard to get this blue. This is basically if I keep it around my neck. People say, you know – I would never carry that around my neck. So don’t.
You know, they’ll carry it in their pocket until you realize when you’re done. You’re doing something and all of a sudden you’re driving and I’m thinking and I just go like this, literally just drop it.
There’s nothing I need to do. It’s so fast and so convenient and it matters. So I wear it around my neck because I’m collecting ideas all day long and it’s important to me to collect them.
Alex:
Yeah. Well, it’s changed your life clearly. I mean, you know, often people don’t see the utility or how something can benefit them until they try it. So, you know, and it’s normal to be skeptical of things. So I definitely understand people’s skepticism in that regard.
But, I mean, I saw it straight away and I backed it. Now, the campaign is on now with get.crushthememory.com or you can just search for it on Kickstarter. But when does the campaign end? When should backers get their deliveries and then when will the general public be able to visit crushthememory.com and buy one directly, even though, of course, the general public can buy one from Kickstarter right now and have it delivered relatively soon?
Erik:
The campaign ends on August 15th. Our backers… after that sometime around September 15th.
Alex:
And of course one of the benefits of backing on Kickstarter is that you get a discount from the advertised recommended retail price. So there’s a reason to go, I mean that’s part of the whole benefit of crowdfunding, you get a discount. So what else do we need to know about Crush the Memory before I start asking you about some of the other fascinating aspects of your life?
Erik:
Well, the way that I think it’s really nice to propose what Crush is, is it’s a very powerful, piece of software. We have it for mobile and we have it for web. It’s enterprise, it’s not like startup software, it’s enterprise built. And it’s fully encrypted in transit and at rest. It’s your data, we can’t mine it, we don’t do it, there’s nothing we can do with it, it’s yours. We understand the value of ideas and things like that.
And we don’t want ours either to be breached. So we store all of our data or all of the data on Amazon’s AWS server, US East. So it’s all housed in one place. And what’s important to understand is that the device itself is an accessory to the app. You could even just have the device in the web app. You would never even need the mobile app. Or you could just have the mobile app.
If you are not a person who needs to collect ideas using a device, it’s not something for you, but you still want to engage with collecting and you don’t have a high volume of ideas, you can use the app.
The app is absolutely amazing. You can record directly into the app. All the same features, everything. This just gets from here to here in light speed, faster than going from here to the phone. So this is a step. That is included in the thinking process, which takes away a whole bunch of friction.
So the app itself is really tremendous. And if people download it, you know, from Android, from the Google Play or the iOS app store, and they start using it, they’ll start to see what can be done with it. And it’s super powerful. It’s really amazing. And at some point, with hope, more people will adopt the purpose-built device for it. And that’s how you kind of have to think about the story of Crush, is that it’s a very powerful piece of software that does a lot, and it also has an accessory that gets you from here out to the world very, very quickly.
Alex:
And, of course, it’s Alan Kay who came up with the idea of the DynaBook, which is sort of an iPad in the 60s, as an idea long before the technology was available. And, in fact, he was even at the Steve Jobs launch of the iPad, where he proudly showed Alan Kay this iPad device, which was his DynaBook. Alan explained that if you want to do hardware, you need to do software – or maybe it was the other way around, but it was an amazing comment.
Erik:
I moved to China in 2010, January 1st, I lived here for seven years straight, met my wife here and came here to start up a company and ended up staying to do the manufacturing and continue to just build out the manufacturing as the company grew. We have two locations and everything you see here is done in-house.
I do the industrial design, we do the mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, firmware, Software and all the, all the assembly of this too. We even do the, the PCB circuit boards. We, we do all of that and we assemble the circuit boards here in this factory as well. So this is really a full stack development from all pieces of the hardware in house.
Alex:
Which really is just incredible. Look, Erik, we have to take another break, our second break of the show. So we’ll be back in a moment.
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Alex:
We’re here on Today’s News Talk with the Talking Tech with Alex Zaharov-Reuttt Show.
My special guest, Erik Kaiser from Crush the Memory. Now, Erik, you had some ads on X talking about the fact that you have been in China for like seven years, and you’ve got your own factories. And at first, I didn’t realize that the ads about Crush the Memory were from the same person. And then when I realized, wow, this man is quite incredible.
So you’ve got obviously vast business experience. You explained how you’ve lived in China for a number of years. I mean, you’ve moved back to New York, but you come to China on a regular basis. So tell us about the business aspect of your life, the sort of 30 years of self-funded startups, as I was saying in the introduction. What’s the story behind some of that?
Erik:
(Erik speaking into his Crush): Note to my wife, Alex thinks I’m amazing.
I just wanted to keep that thought. She thinks I’m nuts.
I am a startup professional. I don’t even know if that’s a real term, but I start up companies. That’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve only had a job once working on Wall Street for two summers, clerking, when I realized I couldn’t ever work for anyone else. I’m likely going to be the most unemployable, unemployable person ever. I’m going to be the most unemployable person ever. I better start my own and so I’ve been starting companies since I’m a teenager for real. Tnat’s not anexaggeration.
I found myself in real estate finance and then during the crash of 2009 I ended up moving to China to start up a product company. I know that’s like a big leap – it’s just – just have faith in the conversation. So I ended up coming to China and learning manufacturing.
Now I came from a background of doing construction you know I used to do mid-rise residential mixed-use construction which is very heavy project management there’s a lot of trade organization you have to know details upon details upon details it’s really a manufacturing business it’s a it’s a very serious manufacturing business manufacturing homes or building, So when I came to China to start to understand product development, it was not difficult for me.
And the reason why it wasn’t difficult is because I had a massive amount of skill sets with project management already, which were fully translatable. And I also understood, you know, construction and I’m hands on and, you know, I can tinker. I’ve been like that since I was a kid.
So getting involved with manufacturing was really just learning about manufacturing techniques. And when you visit some of these Chinese factories, you’re like, wow, that’s really not that complicated to do. What you end up needing to really know about manufacturing is design.
And so I am a good designer. And I started creating solutions for this idea that I had for this problem that existed in the market. And I started I basically moved here and I moved here in 2010 and left. China in 2010. In 2017, for New York, when my wife was pregnant and she just basically said, hey, brother, we’re out of here. I’m like, you know, what do you mean? We’re leaving. She’s like, yeah, pack up your stuff. We make 1 trip. We’re going to New York.
She’s like, we’re not raising a baby in China. We’re not putting them into school here. We’re having a job. So let’s go. So I literally did. I, we just got up and left 1 day, not, not left, like, abandoned, but just, we just moved to New York and we would travel back and forth. And we ended up having kids, they’re 6 and 7 now, and they are New Yorkers and they’re here this summer, of course, in China with us. So I learned early on in the startup that I had about manufacturing and what I learned was interesting. It was from the Shark Tank (tv show).
I remember this is probably 2005 or something like this, where I was watching shark tank and a girl was on shark tank. Talking and complaining about how they’re delivering. And I remember when I started this company, I was like, you know, I’m not going to leave this to chance. I’m going to stay there. I was single at the time as well. And I’m going to literally make sure this gets done the way I want the quality matters in a startup because if you don’t have good quality, then you’re dead on arrival.
So I ended up doing that and learning also like customers were starting to ask us questions. Can you do this to the product? Can you do that to the product? And I was like, well, sure. I’m like, I’m here in China. I can go make this part. And it turned into like, well, let’s just let’s just control the quality by assembling this ourselves first in this room. And then that just continued to compound and compound and compound. And because the business continued to grow and I learned there was no better place to operate the business. business in China, 70% of our business was in Eastern Europe and Europe, 30% was only in the United States, and I could do everything out of China, super cheap, and I was living for super cheap, and I’m like, this is really good, and I just continued to build it out.
I mean, this place we built out, we built out everything. And so that was, this is going now 14 years, so I’m not new to China any longer, I have an established business here, and it’s a great place. I’ve incorporated every process that we do, almost, and we keep everything under one roof, we have a product development team, we’ve got marketing, we have everything, we’re scattering, we have offices in four countries now, but China’s still a major asset for us, it’s a huge operation.
Alex:
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s just an incredible experience, I mean, most crowdfunding creators, inventors don’t have their own factory in China and all their own resources, and this obviously dovetails back into that.
Erik:
Well, Kickstarter is something of which I’ve been aware since it started because it’s cool. And I’ve launched so many products over the past 10 years or more that I never considered going to Kickstarter for some reason. I don’t know why. Alex:, there’s just some questions in my mind, like, why have I never done a Kickstarter campaign? I have so many amazing products that I’ve already launched, which are globally successful. I’m like, what an amazing opportunity would have been to put maybe some of them on Kickstarter.
So as I was thinking about Crush and thinking about how we’re going to put Crush into the market, I realized, I’m like, you know what, let me take this product and the time and put resources into it. is into learning Kickstarter. Let me just see what happens. Because typically, when we develop a product, we already have a new customer base. We have a customer base that exists. We can put it into the portfolio, it will get sold.
We do trade shows, there’s just stuff you could do. For us, it’s kind of easy at this point. But I was like, let me learn Kickstarter. And so I was encouraged. And what I learned was, it’s an entire ecosystem unto itself. It’s not just as simple as people think it is, where you just go on and you back a campaign. You know, people go on to these campaigns and they get burned. And people who are trying to get money for projects and never bring them to fruition, and burn people.
Like, it’s not necessarily intentional. It’s just that this is a platform for crowdfunding, where you’re backing a project that needs money in order to evolve. Because they can’t raise it privately, they don’t have their own money. Capital of whatever the story is. And so I spent a lot of time studying what makes a good Kickstarter project and what makes a Kickstarter project fail. And what I learned is that if you want to have a successful Kickstarter campaign, you really need to develop out your product.
Don’t go to people and ask them for money and to back your idea if you’re really not cooked, because or baked up. Because if you do that, you run the risk of ruining your reputation if you would like to return to the platform and really angering a lot of people who are anxious and they’re early adopters. They’re putting money down on something that may or may not exist in the future. And so I realized I’m like, you know, we’re not going to do anything. We’re going to stay the course. I fund my own deals.
I said, I’m going to bring this to Kickstarter, and bring this at a time when. We know we can deliver when we’re not at risk of not delivering, because I want to build a reputation on Kickstarter for delivering and delivering unique and innovative products that solve problems, doing what I do in real life, but I’d like to build that profile on Kickstarter. So we’ve learned that this is not just you go on and build a page. There’s a lot of marketing that’s involved to get people to go to Kickstarter.
There’s a lot of different plugins to Kickstarter, newsletters. There’s so many different ways to be supported on Kickstarter. And it’s an amazing platform, because I am what would be called a creator on the platform. And that’s what I am in real life. And it’s so exciting to see projects take off on that platform. It’s just so cool. You get to see what people are thinking. People, I can guarantee, and we can use Crush as a proxy, but you look at some products and you would think like, oh, no.
No one’s ever gonna back that, and it’ll get a million dollars of backing. And it’s just an amazing place to validate your idea. There’s so much noise. People have a lot of noise, even in your feed right now about Crush. You know, they can’t stand that somebody would use this because it’s so against how they think they would use it, but there’s a place, and there’s a cohort, and there’s a value, and Kickstarter can help unlock that value, and help unlock the validation and give you the confidence to go forward. They were in Oura Ring. Oura Ring started on Kickstarter. They did like $160,000. That was their campaign, you know?
Alex:
Yeah.
Erik:
How many people thought that that was an amazing idea at the time? Not that many, quite honestly, right? But now they’re doing, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue there. Peloton started on Kickstarter. Brooklyn started on Kickstarter. There are many large names. It’s an amazing platform. It’s just really cool.
There’s a whole culture of individuals who are excited about supporting campaigns. It’s a great place to, you know, use your brain and think if you’re if you’re a creator, it gives you inspiration. Fantastic place. Really? It’s a, I’m so happy I did it. And it’s helped connect, you know, people like us and me to other people who are equally as excited.
Alex:
And look, there’s no question that when the creators don’t have the sort of foresight of getting everything ready that you do, that they can indeed run out of money, not able to fulfill the actual campaign.
And I have been burned by people, I’ve called Kickstarter “TrickSmarter”.
With Indiegogo, the other big crowdfunding platform, because you often have major delays in getting something, you know, they’ll say we’re going to deliver in December, then January, then you have the Chinese Lunar New Year, where everything shut down for two weeks. And then I mean, I’m already saying to these people, what are you going to deliver? In April 2024 or 2025?
I’m quick with questioning what’s going on, and I call the other one IndieGoSlow, but you’re the sort of creator that really gets Kickstarter, it’s a marketing tool.
You were going to make this product whether you had Kickstarter or not, it’s just such a great way. Logitech’s done it with one of their cameras, the Reach. Logitech is a multi-billion company that has no need of Kickstarter, but it’s just bringing that ground swell together.
Now look, we’ve only got five minutes to go, so there’s heaps more questions I wanted to ask you about, but unless there’s something else you want to specifically mention about Crush the Memory or Kickstarter, one of the questions I’d like to ask you is, can you please share a memory of your first personal computer, and was that the moment that hooked you on technology?
Erik:
In 1982, I was 11 years old during the summer. My birthday’s at the end of August, so I’m born in 70, but it was sometime in the very early spring. My father… And I would read the back of the New York Times magazine, which comes in the Sunday, New York Times, and in the back, they have all camps. So, if you ever knew this, but the New York Times had listings of all the different camps that were advertised for all different types of reasons, single purpose camps, dance, piano, whatever it is.
And I saw a, an advertisement for a computer ed camp, and my eyes lit up because I was like, computers, I was like, and I told my parents, I want to go here. And they were like, what? I’m like, yeah, I want to go to a computer camp. I was like, I want to go. I want to, I want to program a computer game. I was like, that would be amazing.
I ended up going to this camp, and I ended up going there every summer for like, I don’t know, maybe five years or something like that. They asked me to return to instruct as a matter of fact, and my earliest memory of that camp.
It was getting on this computer. I don’t remember the name of it, Alex, but I feel like it was a TRC. I forget what it was, but it had a cartridge where you would slide up the cartridge on the right of the keyboard into the base of the monitor. And it was. I could code for ever. And I did. I could still I could lose myself. I lost summers just in dark rooms as coding, coding. And my first languages were were Basic. Pascal, COBOL, Fortran, Assembly, ABC. I don’t even think A and B exist anymore.
There are some other experimental languages that were developed, I think, at Harvard that were used in some of the groups that I was in. And amazing, just amazing time. And so that gave me confidence for understanding how to code and understanding how to develop firmware and software and and the logic behind what happens when you need to develop a piece of hardware, which has.
Alex:
Yeah, always good to know how things work from within those who know how to program the AI are going to be the ones who will make sure that it doesn’t take over. But can you please share some of the best advice that you’ve received in life to help you get where you are today? We’ve only got a couple of minutes left, but keep going.
Erik:
Some of the best advice I’ve ever received came from my dad, surprisingly, who’s a doctor. And one of his most powerful statements to me has been change your, you need to change your pasture. I’ve written about this on X before. And it’s metaphoric and it’s figurative and literal. So let’s just say, but changing your pasture means moving to another location to refresh your brain to be able to think and see something in a new way.
And it’s also metaphoric where it’s migrating yourself to new ideas, meaning never being stuck in the same place, the same thinking pattern, the same bias and with hope never confirmation bias, but that has helped me and always reframe where I am and I feel like it’s a very powerful little piece of advice for me. For other people, maybe not as powerful, but I’ve had many different business dads, friends of my friends’ fathers, and I’ve been influenced by some really amazing people, but that little piece of advice sticks with me everywhere.
It’s never stale.
Alex:
Look, I don’t have time even to ask you for your final thoughts, but Erik, thank you so much for taking the time and for those watching live, the illustrious Lembert Opik is next live from London. This is TNT.news, and I’ll see you next week!
And that’s where the interview and the show ended. You can see the Kickstarter campaign here.
Below is an AI generated summary of the above:
1. Discussion on recent AI developments and the introduction of a new AI-powered product, Crush the Memory.
- Introduction and AI News
Alex introduces the show and discusses recent AI news, including OpenAI’s new search engine prototype, SearchGPT, and the transition from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4 Omni Mini for free users. - Reddit and Search Engine Access
Alex explains that Reddit has blocked Microsoft’s Bing and other search engines from accessing its database, while Google paid $60 million to maintain access. - AI Protections and Tech Giants
Alex mentions that Apple and other tech giants have committed to voluntary AI protections proposed by the Biden administration to develop AI responsibly and protect consumers. - Samsung Flip 6 and On-Device AI
Alex discusses the new Samsung Flip 6 phone and its features, including on-device AI capabilities. Mentions upcoming AI features in Apple’s iOS 18. - Introduction of Special Guest Erik Kaiser
Alex introduces Erik Kaiser, a CEO and entrepreneur, who has created a new AI-powered product called Crush the Memory, a device to record and organize thoughts and ideas. - Erik Kaiser’s Background and Product Overview
Erik Kaiser talks about his background and the development of Crush the Memory, explaining its purpose and functionality as a device to capture thoughts quickly and efficiently. - Demonstration of Crush the Memory
Erik demonstrates how Crush the Memory works, highlighting its ease of use, single-button operation, and the ability to transcribe and organize recorded thoughts in an app. - Benefits of Crush the Memory
Erik discusses the benefits of using Crush the Memory, including reducing stress, increasing productivity, and capturing both high and low priority thoughts effortlessly.
2. Innovative Device for Efficient Idea Capture
- Device Features
Discussion about the device’s battery life, storage capacity, and waterproof capabilities using a waterproof pouch. - Capturing Ideas
The importance of capturing ideas efficiently, especially in moments of inspiration like in the shower or while walking. - Privacy and Security
Concerns about privacy and security, and how the device ensures data is not stored on the cloud unless desired. - AI Integration
Use of various AI engines like OpenAI and Google for processing audio, offering transcripts, summaries, and insights. - User Experience
The convenience of using the device to capture thoughts quickly without interrupting the flow of ideas. - Product Development
The journey of developing the device, from identifying the pain point to creating a solution that captures ideas efficiently. - Product Naming
The story behind the name ‘Crush the Memory’ and its significance. - Pricing and Availability
Details about the pricing of the device and subscription plans, and the expected timeline for delivery and public availability. - Software Capabilities
The powerful software behind the device, its encryption, and the ability to attach media to notes. - Kickstarter Campaign
Information about the ongoing Kickstarter campaign, its end date, and the benefits of backing the project.
3. Erik Kaiser’s entrepreneurial journey and insights into manufacturing, startups, and crowdfunding.
- Erik Kaiser’s Background
Erik Kaiser discusses his move to China in 2010, his experience in manufacturing, and his journey from real estate finance to product development. - Business Operations in China
Erik explains the comprehensive nature of his company’s operations in China, including industrial design, mechanical and electrical engineering, firmware, software, and PCB circuit board assembly. - Startup Experience
Erik shares his extensive experience with self-funded startups, his background in construction, and how his project management skills translated to manufacturing. - Relocation to New York
Erik talks about moving back to New York in 2017 due to his wife’s pregnancy and their decision to raise their children in the U.S. while maintaining business operations in China. - Learning from Shark Tank
Erik mentions how watching Shark Tank influenced his approach to quality control and customer feedback in his startup. - Crowdfunding and Kickstarter
Erik discusses his decision to use Kickstarter for his product ‘Crush the Memory,’ the importance of being prepared before launching a campaign, and the benefits of the platform. - Challenges of Crowdfunding
Erik highlights the risks of crowdfunding, such as failing to deliver on promises, and emphasizes the need for thorough preparation to avoid damaging one’s reputation. - Kickstarter Ecosystem
Erik explains the complexities of running a successful Kickstarter campaign, including marketing, newsletters, and the importance of having a well-developed product. - Successful Kickstarter Projects
Erik cites examples of successful Kickstarter projects like Oura Ring, Peloton, and Brooklyn, illustrating the platform’s potential for validating and launching innovative products. - First Personal Computer
Erik shares a memory of his first personal computer experience at a computer camp in 1982, which sparked his interest in technology and programming. - Best Advice Received
Erik recounts advice from his father about ‘changing your pasture,’ which means refreshing one’s perspective by moving to new locations or ideas.
