Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to examining a technology focused podcast that dives deep.
I'm eric christiansen.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: And I'm chris hans.
You recording?
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And welcome to another episode of Examining the Technology Focused Podcast that Dives Deep. This is a special episode. We're going to be interviewing Sasha Ivanov of Maple Scan. So welcome, Sasha. Thanks for coming to the podcast.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me. This is really cool. This is awesome. I'm excited to kind of talk about this project.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Yeah, no, for sure.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: I think Chris is going to kick it off. Right.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, since I recall meeting you, Sasha, a long time ago, like when you were working at the Apple Store, I think I was buying an iPhone or, I don't know, maybe a MacBook or something. And then we just started chatting. And at that time you were an undergrad, and then later on you went on to doing your master's and so on. But maybe let's just start off. Just tell us a little bit about your background.
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, yeah, it kind of. I guess it does kind of start from the Apple Store. Hey, it's. Yeah, that was kind of nuts. I mean, I was working there. Yeah. During my undergrad, and from there I kind of got into making apps. And so I actually met a vocal coach who helps professional artists, like, train their voices. And she said, hey, I want to make an app to help people do that. And so I. I quit my job at the Apple Store and I just said, okay, well, I've never done this before, but let's try it together. And. And I went off and did it. And kind of from there, as I went into my master's, I. I actually started teaching app development. So I was the professor at the University of Calgary for the iOS development course. And I really love that course. That class basically supported students and, you know, they could basically come up with their own app idea or they could partner with any startup in Calgary if they wanted to, like, support them in their app during the semester. And, yeah, they kind of get that experience there. So.
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess after that I kind of went off and started dabbling in startups, kind of working on little projects here and there, trying to launch them.
Many different attempts. I mean, I've always been very interested in kind of creativity tools and ways that we can interact with, I guess, these AI systems.
It's funny, my master's thesis back in the day, this was like 2018, was actually working with generative AI images. And at the time, no one was talking about this.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: Like, everyone, I was like, I was making these Interfaces for, you know, how you could basically generate images. So for example, one of the projects we were working on, basically there'd be two pictures of a chair and this, this app that we made, basically you could take two chairs and breed them together and they'd have like a baby chair.
So it'd be like, kind of like, like Both take the DNAs of both chairs and like breed them together kind of. And this is a. Using a technique called evolutionary computation, genetic algorithms.
But yeah, so. So I, I mean, I've been working kind of in the space for a while and, you know, took some time to try out big tech that was interesting just to kind of work in the research labs there and, and then kind of from there, though, I kind of decided I want to get back into the startup world a little bit. So.
So yeah. Yeah, here we are. And last year was kind of nuts with Maple Scan. Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: No, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, that course was. I came to a couple of your sessions too. I don't know if they still offer it, but that was awesome. Seeing the students actually build in Swift and come up with their own apps. It was pretty amazing experience for them.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's totally still available. Yeah. And yeah, CPSC575 for any students listening and, and actually now they do stuff with, with the Vision Pro as well, which I love. I love to see those kind of like immersive. Awesome as well. Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Well, that's probably a good segue to talk more in detail about Maple Scan. So can you like walk us through, you know, what Maple Span for the people who don't know what Maple Scan actually does. So when someone opens, you know, the app in a store aisle, what's happening and what problem do you think is it solving for them and how does it, how does it function?
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, a year ago, you know, when the tariffs were kind of announced and all these things.
Yeah, really, I made Maple Scan over the course of a weekend, kind of the mvp. And really, here's how it works. So basically you. Yeah, you walk in the grocery store, you take a photo of a product, and what you'll get is an information sheet about that product's Canadian ties. So if it's made in Canada, it's Canadian owned company, for example, the history of the company, and it will also give you Canadian alternatives to those products if, let's say it's maybe not a Canadian product. Right. Or if you just want to explore other Canadian alternatives as well. So that was really the, the Kind of the, the goal was really to help people understand where their food is coming from and help them kind of support the companies they want to support. Right. And so really cool project. I due to the timing and everything happening in the world this past year, the app got quite viral very quickly. So one of the Calgary based news organizations picked it up and then basically for the next two months after that I was on the news every single day talking to the news about the app and the tariffs and that whole thing. So it got kind of nuts last year.
Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the app and you know, we've been working at it ever since.
Lots of volunteers from across the country actually came to help and support the effort. So had development support from you know, coding to marketing to supporting just with like kind of SEO strategies and all that. And it was really like just an incredible experience. I felt this past year I felt the country coming together to support this cause and yeah, it was really amazing. Happened very quickly and yeah, very rewarding experience. Yeah.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: How many downloads did you get?
[00:06:29] Speaker C: Do you know? Yeah, yeah, so I think I haven't checked in a little bit, but last I checked was about 130,000 downloads. 100 maybe 35,000.
We still have like a, you know, quite like thousands of scans every month. Probably like over 10, 10 to 20k scans a month. So people are still scanning products like all the time. Right. Like I think, you know, we really want people are curious about what they're buying. Right. And I think that like for me over this past year myself, I like, I've just been very aware of like where brands are coming from and trying to kind of support companies that I feel like aligned with as well. Yeah.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: So then from like you mentioned volunteers, so how like what is the technical aspect of like where does this product data come from?
[00:07:18] Speaker C: Yeah, so, so this was the challenging thing. I mean this data is very hard to compile because it's in very disparate sources or potentially locked behind like very expensive data sets. And so really how the app works is you. So yeah, you take a photo of a product. So I don't know, let's say it's like, like a chocolate bar or something.
And what it does is it first thing it does is it uses computer vision to understand like what's actually on the label. So a lot of the times the front of the package will actually just say like, it'll say the brand of course and all these things. But a lot of companies are actually talking about like how it's Actually made in Canada, they'll have a little badge on the front or something like that. So the first thing it's doing is it's taking that information to understand kind of what is it actually seeing.
And then from there it searches for that product on the web and in our existing database of other scanned products and basically compiles that information altogether into this kind of information sheet that you see on the app. And so it's using a lot of AI technology to do so by basically taking all of these disparate sources of information and making a call based on previous scans and based on what it's found on the web of what that product is and how Canadian it is.
Very cool. And one interesting thing, of course with AI is that it is predictive and so sometimes it does get things wrong.
Part of the system that we built was a feedback loop, basically. So if there is an issue with a product or someone says, oh, this actually says something else on the back, basically they can report that and then it will update our database and it'll keep it smarter over time. So basically every scan is making it smarter.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Is it using primary open source repositories?
[00:09:13] Speaker C: A lot of. Yeah, definitely. I mean, most of the app was actually built just in Swift straight up.
You know, we're using like, like Supabase, Supabase, things like that for LLM. Like we're using like LLMs.
Like we initially were looking at, you know, open source LLMs and Canadian based LLMs, but unfortunately they were not like powerful enough or they didn't have the capabilities we needed to for this product to kind of work. So, yeah, we're currently, look, we're always evaluating like new, like kind of backend AI providers, but for now we're kind of using like the standard kind of ones that you can imagine. Yeah,
[00:09:52] Speaker A: very cool.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: And in terms of the technology, so how do you actually qualify something as being Canadian? Is it based on being manufactured here headquartered?
[00:10:06] Speaker C: Yeah, so this is another thing too. It's, you know, last year when this, you know, these apps were coming out, so, you know, there's Maple Scan, there's a couple other competitors out there in the market too.
Um, one of the things that we decided was like, we don't want this to be like a yes or no question. Right. So is it Canadian or not? Well, it's very nuanced, like you say. It's like, depends on many factors.
The system that we use is we look at like the official certifications of the products first and foremost. So, you know, if something is made in Canada. It has at least 51% Canadian content in it. Like. Like, it's just like, legally, they. They cannot say that without that. That there or if it's a product of Canada, it's at least 98% Canadian content. And then there's some other things that qualify it. So really what we're doing is we're surfacing those labels, and we're also surfacing the history of the company and how it's changed over time. So a lot of times, you know, a brand might have been initially Canadian owned, and then now it's owned by, like, a foreign company or something like that. Right. And so. But maybe they still employ people in Canada. Right. They have a big presence. Right. All of these things matter.
And so what we're trying to do is, like, surface that information so people can decide for themselves. You know, it's not a. It's not like this black or white kind of thing. Yeah.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Did you get called in for, like, you know, did you see that, the news about the fines for Loblaws and.
[00:11:41] Speaker C: I did hear about that, yeah. Yeah. Because they were mislabeling. A lot of.
A lot of their products are kind of being very vague. Yeah, I didn't get called in for that, but hopefully.
Right. But.
But yeah, it's very. It is very strict. Right. Like these. These are the laws. You know, you can't say some things Canadian when it's not.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:00] Speaker C: And.
But it's funny, so many brands try to get around this stuff. Like one of the soup brands I was looking at, it said designed in Canada.
And that actually doesn't mean anything. That basically means that maybe they have, like, I don't know, like, one person in an office here. Right. Like, maybe they designed the labeling. There's nothing to. It's really lightly Canadian. Right. Like, it's. It's not really. So. So yeah, it's interesting. I think a lot of brands this year change their labeling and. Right. To kind of just be a. A little bit more accurate, because I think everyone was looking at it. But B, to also support, like, promote their Canadian ties even more.
For example, like lay's chips, you know, in Tabor, Alberta, there's a huge.
I, you know, I believe they actually make a lot of those chips there. And same within Ontario. They have places where they make these. These kind of chips and things.
But, you know, on the label, on the packaging themselves initially, like, it just wasn't said. Right, right. And these companies weren't really being very explicit about, you know, their ties and now I've seen their packages have been updated. It just says, like, big. Like, this is like a. Made with Canadian potatoes or, you know, whatever it is there. So, yeah, so it's good. I think it's good to see these brands adapt as well, I guess. Yeah.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Have you had any of the brands reach out to you, Sasha, like, just based on the popularity of the app?
Or hasn't anyone from one of those companies told you? Like, actually, that app, Surface things that made us. Forced us to put a label on it. I guess that's where I'm going with it. Like, have you. Have you heard from them or have. Or they maybe even reached out to you, like, just for questions. I'm just curious if you've. If the brands responded to you.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Yeah, very much so.
There were, you know, especially at the. At the launch, because it was going. It was very much so in the news. Like, everyone was using this. Just tons of scans, you know, for reference. Like, I think we're approaching now close to 700,000 scans since launch. So it's like, people, you know, so a lot of brands reached out and basically initially said, hey, like, love what you're doing.
Here's by the way, like, our official.
Like, they would send me, like, a CSV of, like, all of their. Like, to improve the data.
Yeah. With the data. And they say, like, look, here's the data we have. We want to make sure it's as accurate as possible. And. And so this is great. Right. And so we actually got initially, like, quite a bit of, like, data databases and things to work with, which was great.
The other thing that brands reached out with were, of course, they want to promote themselves in the app. Right. So they wanted to say, hey, like, can I, like, advertise and stuff?
We were very kind of careful with how we did that because we wanted this to be a very trustworthy, reliable source. Right. And so we didn't want to necessarily ever significantly promote one brand over another.
In the end, we didn't really end up making any of those deals at the time, but it's still something. We're open to promoting certain brands and things like that.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Just from a commercial, like, from a venture standpoint, then, like, how do you sustain yourselves? Like.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: Yeah, so this is the thing we.
I mean, basically, like, our. We are still working at it, honestly. And the challenge of Maple Scan is it hasn't been, like, profitable yet. Right. So there were definitely ways we thought about doing this, but again, we wanted to stay very true to, like, the mission of the company. So, for example, we thought about, oh, we could just add, like, ads in Maple Scan. Right. And it would probably generate us, like, some revenue just to, like, you know, help cover the costs of, like, you know, cloud stuff and all that.
But the problem was is that these ads were often for non.
They'd show non Canadian companies. Right. And so it really went against, like, the mission of, like, you know, encouraging people to buy Canadian products. And then every time they use it, they see non Canadian products. Like, it just. It felt very kind of wrong.
We were looking at, yeah. Like, kind of offering, like, like. So, you know, I kind of explained the app as it. As it initially was. One of the things that we're focused on now is actually promoting helping people save money while they're buying Canadian brands. So right now it is almost like a luxury to buy Canadian because it's often more expensive. Right. And so one of the things we've added in now are Canadian deals in the app. So we're watching basically a thousand Canadian brands, and whenever they have, like, a sale or a discount on, like, let's say, clothing items even, or other things, you know, we'll surface that in the app. And we're basically currently looking at, like, partnerships to, like, promote certain brands in that aspect, basically. To promote their deals and sales and things like that. Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: And that seems like a more.
You have a bit more control over the brand of Maple Scan because you could make a section in the app for, like, Canadian deals or something like that. You'll know what's in there because you'll have worked directly with the company.
[00:17:22] Speaker C: Yeah, this is exactly it.
And the other challenge, too, is that I think especially this past year, a lot of people have been switching brands.
I always say, when was the last time you switched your ketchup brand?
Usually people don't, but this year people were. And this was something very like a unique kind of moment in time.
But, you know, for Maple Sense to sustain itself over time, we really need to look at, like, other use cases as well, like those saving deals. Because once you switch brands or once you know something's Canadian, you don't really need to scan it again. Right. There's a bit of a challenge with, like, recurring use there.
And so whereas something with Canadian deals or, you know, other ways to kind of promote Canadian, like, spending kind of in maybe your own community, we think that that's like, probably where we can get more value over time, even beyond, like, this kind of the initial kind of success of it.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah, this is kind of an aside but have you ever thought about. So let's say people are scanning brands and you know, they're building up kind of a mental repository of the Canadian brands. Okay. You know, I've read the, the overview sheet. It's Canadian, so they have these, these things in mind.
I haven't actually used the app recently, but is there a place or have you thought of putting a place in where people can like kind of save the brands to find out if they're acquired later on and they're no longer Canadian?
[00:18:42] Speaker C: That's a cool idea. Actually. I haven't heard, I haven't thought of that one yet. But I love kind of like a
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Google Alerts for Canadian brands.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Like a brand watch. Yeah.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: What's top of mind for me because you know, either things are getting acquired or things are going out of business.
Like of course we've had like the Bay has gone out of business now. Eddie Bauer has filed for bankruptcy, much to my chagrin. So all these things have been changing kind of in this economic landscape and I'm wondering if. Yeah, that. So like French's ketchup. I don't know if that's actually 100% Canadian. I think so. But like, or mostly but like they could get acquired. So because it changes, I'm wondering if that would be an option in the future.
[00:19:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's a great idea too. And it, it's true like a lot of the brands over this past year have changed ownership and you know, just even shifted a bit of production maybe, you know, whether that's for just their brands kind of like how they're seen or if it's just to save money. Right. With the tariffs and things anyways, it affects them too.
But yeah, I really like that idea a lot. And another thing too is, you know, we think about like again, we're thinking of this more as like value based shopping in general. Right. So like, you know, it's Canadian and I also want like a vegan option or things like that or. We've definitely been thinking about those things too. Although, you know, we also don't want to dilute the, we kind of didn't want to dilute our like the use case of the app too much. There's already, you know, other apps that support like finding vegan products and things like that. I think it's really more about like supporting Canadian businesses and products. And yeah, it's, I think because we've stayed true to that. Like we still have people kind of coming to us and talking to us about this all the time. Yeah.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: And so I guess that's a good segue to our kind of our final main question, which is kind of like, I mean, I asked one, but, like, what do you think is next for Maple Scan? And where can people kind of follow the trajectory of your company?
[00:20:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So I think coming up next, I'm looking to expand, like, the goal. The goal is really to expand a lot of the features in Maple Scan, like, both to the web, I think. Like, so we want to make it more accessible for people just online to find these kind of this information. But we're really leaning into helping people save money while they're buying Canadian products. And so literally, like every, like, few weeks or so, I'm going through and like, finding new Canadian brands and like, making sure we're watching them for their deals and things like that. And so really what we're looking for now is like, to work with businesses to promote their deals and brands to Canadian consumers. And so anyone who'd like to collaborate, like, would love to hear from you. You can reach out to me, Sasha. Maplescan, CA or directly, but for kind of keeping up to date, definitely on LinkedIn, Instagram.
You know, those are kind of the two platforms we're mostly using right now to promote our stuff. Yeah, pretty cool.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Well, Chris, it's time for our infamous rapid fire section. So did you want to take this on?
So at the end of every interview, Sasha, what we do is that we ask people these are really low stakes questions. And, and you're, you know, you're afraid to pass. But the idea is like one of the other. Yes, no.
And so we have this kind of fun round of Rapid Fire questions. Some of them are the same. We've customized them a little bit, but there, there's some continuity. And so it's like really short answers. And the goal is just to kind of bring out the, the, the personality of the person we're interviewing over time so it's consistent between interviewees.
[00:22:22] Speaker C: Let's do it. Here we go. Yeah.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: All right, so coffee or tea?
[00:22:26] Speaker C: Tea.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: Mac or PC?
[00:22:29] Speaker C: Mac for sure.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: So iPhone or Android?
[00:22:34] Speaker C: You know, I got that iPhone.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Standing or sitting? Desk.
[00:22:39] Speaker C: Ooh, I'm sitting on a couch. So I don't know. I'm in a coffee shop, so that's what I'm doing. Yeah, so I'll say sitting, I guess, because I'm moving around.
Yeah.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Star wars or Star Trek?
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Whoa.
Star Wars. Although I haven't really seen most, to be honest. Yeah, this is a. Something I'm working On
[00:23:01] Speaker B: what's your favorite car?
[00:23:03] Speaker C: Ooh.
Oh, that's a hard one. I'll just say a Lambo. I don't know, I mean I, I think at this point, like I'm actually kind of not really super impressed with cars these days in general. I think that they've been pretty. Haven't been evolving fast enough.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Have you seen Jonathan I've's contribution on the Ferrari?
[00:23:26] Speaker C: I did see that. Actually, you know what, that looks really interesting. Yeah. So maybe that car. Actually, now that you mention it, yeah.
Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Okay. Ebook or paper?
[00:23:36] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
I've been back and forth between this. I'll say ebook for now. Yeah, I like being able to go back and find all the highlights. Although something about the physical page that's like important.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: I don't know for sure.
Toronto or Calgary?
[00:23:55] Speaker C: I mean right now I'm currently in Toronto, but I still got to represent Calgary. You know, this is my hometown. It's where I grew up. It's the balance.
It's Calgary. Feels like, I don't know, there's something about the community there and it's like a, it's a. The big smallness, the small bigness of it.
Yeah. Yeah, I love that city. It's home, you know.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Awesome.
Favorite open source tech.
[00:24:22] Speaker C: Ah, open source, huh?
Ooh, open source tech. I'm thinking, I'm just like, my brain is going through GitHub repos as we're talking here.
I think one that I'm really interested in playing with soon is Comfy UI and all of these.
Basically it's open source interfaces for generating images and videos and all these kind of things. You can just like run it right on your computer. I gotta say. Olama. Like shout out to Ollama. Oh yeah, super easily on your computer.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: I, I use Ollama. I have a llama 3.1 running on my, on my Mac, so. That's awesome.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great, right? Just like, boom, run it and go. It's. Yeah.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: On that note, what's your favorite LLM like chat Claude Perplexity Deep Seeks.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: He's a programmer, so I'm gonna guess he's gonna say Claude. That's why my name is on it.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: But I'm using Plotty quite a bit. I'm using Claudi quite a bit these days. But I, I will say, you know, I'm really actually liking the OpenAI's has like an open source model they released. I think it was like oss. It's called like and I think it's like really powerful. Like, I'm pretty impressed with it. I've been using it for a couple, like, experiments, like just locally or kind of doing these things. It's very fast. One of the things. Oh, and what's the company that made lechat? It's like a French company.
Minstrel. Minstrel has insanely fast LLMs. And I think that is such a cool thing. Like, I think the speed of the LLMs outputting stuff changes the way we will interact with those LLMs. Right. So being able to just like, if you imagine like 20 years in the future, if you could have an LLM render a web page in real time as you're like clicking it. Right, that's a totally different interface. So I like people that are working on these challenges, like speed and you know, maybe over like performance even.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very cool.
Synchronous, asynchronous or hybrid learning?
Ooh,
[00:26:35] Speaker C: I think probably hybrid, I'd say. I love going in person to work on like group activities and things like that. I guess the way I like to learn is I love learning by doing, you know, and so actually going out like learning, you know, maybe a concept and then actually applying it through some project or entrepreneurial endeavor if possible, or to help someone. I think this is like a super underrated thing. But if you could learn something while helping someone in the process, best way to do it, you know.
You know, hey, want to build your first website?
Go ask someone who needs a website and build it for them. Right. Like it's like it kind of. You can. You can kind of two birds, one stone kind of with that.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: And yeah, so that's how I.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Absolutely.
So web browser of choice,
[00:27:29] Speaker C: such. I mean, you know, I'm such an Apple fan. I'm using Safari all the time for development too.
Usually for development, I'm hopping between, you know, I'll test it on Chrome too. Yeah, I say for sure. But just my day to day, I love Safari and how the gestures feel and how you can, you know, how like synced it is with like your iPhone and all that. Yeah. But ARC was pretty cool earlier, you know, but I don't like it makes me a little weird. It feels weird that I have to like log in to use arc. I don't know.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: So it's like brave probably because you can. It's a chain code to sync up things so you don't have to have a. An account.
[00:28:08] Speaker C: Oh, really?
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:10] Speaker C: Oh, I should try it. Yeah. I haven't tried braving for good Things.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: This is on Firefox, I think. Is that right?
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm on Firefox mainly. Yeah.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: Nice. Oh, sick. Yeah. Yeah, I should try Firefox again too. They have a.
I know they have like a HQ in Canada that's pretty big as well in Toronto here, so could support like those Canadian supporting brands.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Sorry, we got a few more video conferencing.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Oh, what am I using for video conferencing?
Whatever someone sends me, like I'll click on that link, whatever it is.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: But you don't, you don't have a favorite.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: I mean, you know, I tend to like the, the ease of use of like Google Meet. Like, I think just the idea of like sending a link and like, like, I like that Google Meets like super in the browser and I like that it's like very.
I don't know, I feel like I have the least issues with Google Meet.
Zoom is cool because everyone does have it installed, but it feels very pervasive in your os. Like, I'm honestly shocked it became like the, the dominant like video call platform or one of them just because of all the security issues they had pre2020. It was like significantly like pretty insane. It was like, like they basically like gave hackers access to your whole computer because you installed Zoom. Like it was pretty bad. So. Yeah, I don't really trust Zoom, but I do use it a lot because everyone uses it.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
VR ar.
[00:29:51] Speaker C: Ooh, AR all the way. Yeah, for sure. It's just like the context of like your real world surroundings. Augmenting those things feels very powerful and it doesn't feel as isolating as of an experience, at least for the, the short term. I'd say maybe in the future we'll have crazy VR.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: But cable or streaming?
[00:30:14] Speaker C: I mean, yeah, I'm conflicted. I used to love streaming, but I'm tired of all these streaming services now. Like I'm saying.
Yeah. Like I. But I mean, yeah, I do like the choice of actually choosing. I think with cable it's kind of just odd. I'd say like, ideally I, if I could. I just love to watch stuff at the theater if I can. Like it's super fun.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I know for sure. And here's the last question.
Who inspires you?
[00:30:47] Speaker C: Trying to think of who to pick.
I mean, I think for a long time I've been following like, I guess not even who. It's. It's more the.
Ah, I'm so conflicted. There's so many people inspire me. I mean, I think this year, you know, who inspires me? There's.
Maybe I won't mention anyone too specific, but. But there was many people who reached out, like mentors and. And people who are just have incredible, like, business and technical expertise who reached out this past year just to support, like, the maple scam movement. And, like, I think that was. That was just really inspiring to me, you know, seeing, like, working with them directly, seeing. Hearing about their path and like, I would meet with mentors every few days and they were basically, their goal was just to try to make this as successful as possible, prevent me from, like, falling into those same traps that, like, oftentimes entrepreneurs do their first few times around. Right.
I think it's the people who. The people who actually just reached out this year inspire me so much. It inspired me to keep going and, like, making this really, like, the best thing possible for the country.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: So.
[00:32:10] Speaker C: Yeah, that. That's definitely, like, the closest to my heart right now. Yeah. Although, of course, Johnny Ives and all of those people, but, you know, it's the people around you.
Yeah.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: Well, that's. That's an excellent answer.
Well, I know that you have a hard deadline because you have important things to attend to, which is understanding, but I want to thank you very much, Sasha, for taking the time to chat with us today.
[00:32:35] Speaker C: Yeah. Thank. This is incredible. Thank you for having me. This is. It's fun. Yeah.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And again, for. If anybody has more wants to check out Maple scan, it's MapleScan CA.
And if you want to see more about Sasha, it's madebysasha.com and it's s
[00:32:52] Speaker C: A S H A.
Yep, that's it.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, thanks again, Sasha.
[00:33:00] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, take care.
