The Germ-Zapping Tech of Tomorrow | Larryi Ding at Able Life

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Larryi Ding 0:00
Just couldn’t be an answer, at least for most of businesses that you can actually try to reinvent yourself or you know, extend beyond what you feel comfortable doing. And see how you can be make yourself relevant in getting a solution against COVID-19.

Alexander Ferguson 0:22
The world is deep in the throes of global pandemic, the likes of which has not been seen in 100 years. But even in normal times, the spread of diseases is a massive problem. harmful pathogens are everywhere in the plumbing and the air and on the things we touch. And as bacteria gradually evolves resistance to antibiotics, we face a vital need to find new solutions. Our guests on this week’s UpTech Report may have one, Larryi Ding is the CEO of Able life, a healthcare technology startup that’s developed a compound that kills harmful pathogens on contact, the applications are immense, and right now sorely needed. Larryi, I’m excited to be with you and to be able to talk about this very relevant topic at the moment of positioning in an environment like COVID. And how does an existing business and product how do you take that and apply it to whatever environment you’re in? Can you start off share kind of your your history of where you got to where you were came from where you are to now. And then those three examples, we were talking about how you were advising companies right now, and how can apply and maybe provide some insight to others they can learn from,

Larryi Ding 1:27
I have been working in the stock world for the past three months or so to give a little bit history of myself. Before this, I was with at&t, right running, you know, a run bunch of different roles, ranging from consumer mobility strategy to IoT and mobile feature service and my last role for the past two years with actual running our partnership with key cloud partners, global strategy, as well as a new business incubation.

Alexander Ferguson 2:00
So tell me what are like, give me a couple examples of what you’ve seen.

Larryi Ding 2:04
So when I first I have to say that to when I decided to leave the Big Gay, a corporate mothership, and they came to the wild wild west of startup, it could not be happened in a worst timing is think about end of January, write the word look very rosy. A lot of investors you know, we’re talking to, you know, customers say popping up verse audit, guess what, think about a couple of weeks, everything started to shut down. And you’re here to hear bad news every day. Right? And to a point where we’re talking to one of the commentators and for under the network. And, and she was saying, hey, you know, what, Mary’s I see so many people coming to me who running a lot of mid cap Ma, mid market cap companies saying we are dried up, we’re not so going to survive. Right. And, and my answer back then was I said, you know, you think about any crisis, right? But every crisis, you see also could also come into opportunities, right? You got to think about how to adapt, right? So when I look at COVID-19, I think two things that really popped to my mind. One is that to a lot of aspects, things are going to change forever, for instance, working from home, are going to be a norm, and also online shopping, and the delivery will only be accelerated. So it will in the traditional sort of business, whether it’s for hospitality or entertainment, you got to think about how to do things more in a digital way. Same time COVID-19 yourself in the creative, very some interest of Condi, you know, in arena of healthcare and disinfection, right, so I just thought I personal experienced a lot of so a

lot of use cases, and with quite a few companies I’ve been working with, right, either as advisor or board member or executive role to see how can you see yourself into, you know, and really embrace the new new reality, right, sometimes some, some of them are different, you know, once sort of once a lifetime opportunity, some of them are just like that you had to just change your focus, right. So the first thing came to mind about once a lifetime opportunity is that I’ve been involved in a land based IoT software company who had been working on a pretty innovative way to on IoT connectivity and trackers, so the company is actually developed had developed a new technology to really deliver a center based IoT solution with much less power and more accurate location based service. Right So in COVID-19, and we just see start to see a lot of need for social distancing in workplaces, right, especially here in United States, where we are to see a lot of manufacturers came to us And also our partners and asking for solutions, you can actually detect how close workers are in the workplace, right? Are they willing? Is it John and Jean within social, you know, within six feet, if they are, right, we let me let them know that they’re getting too close. And also, we’re getting close contact, I want to just stay up mix made the system aware so that if one of them gets sick, later on, the company won’t immediately know, you know, who to call and who to who to put under quarantine, right. So it sounds easy. But when you think about the current techniques, and our their Wi Fi, Bluetooth GPS, none of them is perfect. So this really drove us to looking to our basic technology or platform, as well as a lot of patents we had. And we found a very interesting combination of different technology. And that allows us to develop a solution that’s so easy, when two devices, two trackers get too close, within six feet, just send out an alert. And, and also, you know, put something to the cloud as a messenger, just say, you know, so and so it’s getting too close within six feet, right. So just stay easy to implement. So this is actually, so we’re in the middle of doing a prototype right now. And it also is about execution, the web speak, right? So I’ll go is actually bring the prototype to the market over a few weeks, you know, and reached out to them and do some custom demonstration, we know that demands you but you need to execute, right? So literally overnight, the company has very much expand our focus from doing the traditional tracking and IoT into something that is more COVID-19. Problem Solving. So this is one

Alexander Ferguson 6:49
example. Now taking into market, that’s the next phase to figure out who will buy it and going from there. But it’s like you won’t know what will work unless you try it and be able to

Larryi Ding 6:59
love risk taking as well simply because say this, the one of the cons, right for being too and to be the first to market. So you need to be nimble enough to take a lot of risk and really dedicate your resource and and get a product out to the market along with finding the right channel to get you in front of the right customers.

Alexander Ferguson 7:21
You mentioned another one, that is they use drone imagery, but it’s imaging and analysis analyzing content. Can you tell me more about how your suggestion around their pivot there?

Larryi Ding 7:35
That’s also even more interesting, right? So if you think about how COVID-19 will impact a company that actually do a lot of imaging process for drone, and most people say on to some kind of trouble right now. Because say if you look at US drone data to Analytics, right, so a lot of your fan base are actually in a construction business. And I’m sure you actually you have interviewed beskar before right is a very talented and young entrepreneur. Right. And he’s been very successful. But in the middle of COVID-19, right, since I’m sitting on the board of tech via so bad. Can we just spec No, we just scratch your head and say, What a solution out there we can help. Right? So we’re just looking we did a very systematic way to looking at our existing offer. What a good at right, and well as what how can we apply our technology into you know, COVID-19 related and more like not about social distances? I think we can do that. Although I don’t think people love to be, you know, spied on, you know, how close they are with drilling all that right. But one thing very interests, we found that we have done a lot of work on thermal imaging, especially given our work in the solar panel, deployment business, right. So we actually know solar image very well we know, you know, the how to analyze the data and how to do a lot of adjustment. We know how sex work along with recognition technology, we actually know that they know where to apply, right? So even think about Unicode, in a post pandemic use case for a lot of nursing home and talk hospitals. You actually want to know when somebody a visit to come to your office, you want to know whether or not know they’re healthy. Right? So a lot of what do you do in most common cases, you want to know whether or not they have a fever. So you do have a fever? Likely they want to know Hey, do you have a cold? You know, do you need to further evaluate it before you go and touch the patient because especially nursing homes, it will be detrimental effect one

patient that is as always COVID-19 or influenza touch other patients you know you want to avoid any kind of communities community spread of any disease, right. But the Chatman socially with with some imaging is that as I shared with you earlier, the temperature around your face each part is different, right. So how do you actually use AI to understand We’re in the right spot to measure to the right temperature on this thermal energy, right, and also how to adjust the actual Marion based on the surrounding temperature and a lot of other factors because the solar image as good as it is, you have to understand a lot of background information, right? As well as your person to distance and lot of parameters to give the right measure. And I want to give you one One example is actually related to a company called Abel life, which I’m sitting you know, as the interim CEO, right. So April, I’ve been working on this disinfection technique for years. So we have invented a water treatment technology, this this instead of water, we can actually prove we are 99.99999, I want to give you the proper nine so that you seven, nine, log seven, right in terms of it to kill bacteria in in the water system, whether it’s hot water, or you know, drink water, drinkable water, right, so we can improve it detection will be working, we were ready to launch our water based product when this sourcing happened. Right? So the question becomes, then our customer came and just say, Hey, can you do you think you can kill COVID-19? Right? What about you can kill it also, it’s, it’s actually the tactics very interesting, it sounds simple, we have a lot of technology around, it’s actually a piece of foam, right? Looks like a sponge, but we we had embedded our core molecule into this into this foam so that a bacteria or bath of bugs and most of virus when it goes through this piece of foam, we kill it, we just zapped right? So the question becomes, hey, how does this working air how this can this can this work on virus is where COVID-19 So we are in the middle of a lot of tests right now to see what we can do it. But again, the early indication says that a you know with enough to wedding time, and you know, in the right concentration to the to the good chance that we can actually, you know, help to eliminate or kill in many use cases, you know, viruses, bacteria, for sure we have 10 years data prove that we are trying to like have more income fire and COVID-19 sort of revenue test know that. But again, this is a pretty big idea, I believe we can actually prove we can actually code out of most viruses including COVID-19 to become bit right. But again, this is another example of how to extend your current sort of scope of service or product and extrapolate into some new territory and see how they work so so we’re in the middle of doing that as well. So so that’s why inclusion I think, even with my limit exposure of different startup right in their in their combat against COVID-19 in grow the company, I believe if you put the right mindset right as well as, as well as be creative enough, I believe. This just could be an answer, at least for most of businesses that you can actually choose to reinvent yourself or you know, extend beyond what you feel comfortable doing. And see how you can be make yourself relevant in getting a solution against COVID-19.

Alexander Ferguson 13:15
That concludes the audio version of this episode. To see the original and more visit our UpTech Report YouTube channel. If you know a tech company, we should interview you can nominate them at UpTech report.com. Or if you just prefer to listen, make sure you’re subscribed to this series on Apple podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcasting app.