Jeri Ellsworth (Tilt Five) on Resiliency and the Path to Compelling AR Smartglasses (Part 2)
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The Guest
Jeri Ellsworth is the co-founder and CEO of Tilt Five, a company that has created AR glasses that bring tabletop games to life. The Tilt Five system enables you to see, hear, and interact with realistic 3D holograms that entertain and educate.
By the time this episode airs, they will have recently completed a Kickstarter campaign where Tilt Five raised more than $1.75 million for their initial product.
Prior to Tilt Five, Jeri was the founder of CastAR, which was also making an augmented reality hardware and software platform, and one that had raised $15 million in venture funding before shutting down in 2017.
Previously Jeri was at Valve as the first member of the hardware R&D team with a mandate to research novel user interactions and bring the entire family together in the living room. Through this, she contributed to the early development for Valve VR (which became the HTC VIVE), the Steam Box, and the Steam Controller.
The Conversation
In this, the second part of our conversation, Jeri shares some of the trials and tribulations of her experience at CastAR, including its ultimate demise.
From those ashes emerged Tilt Five. Jeri describes what’s different this time as well as some of the underlying technology and its tradeoffs, and the deep seated ethos and focus of the company.
Jeri goes on to talk about the pros and cons of running a Kickstarter campaign and how to do one well. She also describes the path to full AR smartglasses that can be used anywhere and would be used by everyone.
Links From The Episode
- Article: A Toy With a Story - a 2004 story by the New York Times
- Article: Always Building, From the Garage to Her Company - a 2019 interview by the New York Times
- Kickstarter: Tilt Five: Holographic Tabletop Gaming
- Video: Hands-On with Tilt Five Augmented Reality Tabletop Gaming! by Adam Savage’s Tested
- Video: Tilt Five YouTube channel with explainer videos
- Video: Jeri Ellsworth on YouTube
- Episode Transcript (Part 2)
Note: The photo of Jeri was taken by James Tensuan for the New York Times and was included in the article cited above from 2019.