Founder/CEO @Augmodo. Physical AI for the 80% of the workforce a screen can't reach. Prev: sold Escher Reality to Niantic. MIT robotics, CMU, Idaho llama farm.
Sunnyvale, CA
Joined June 2014
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A good summary of some of the talks I’ve given this past year @NianticLabs . “Augmented Reality: Should You Care?”. youtu.be/oBY1uh-juS8
Ross Finman retweeted
“As a new father at the time, number one pain point, feeding my kids.”
@Augmodo started with @rossfinman driving 100 miles in a minivan looking for baby formula during the 2022 shortage.
Stores said they had it in stock. They didn’t.
Ross had already sold his first startup to Niantic, where he spent years working on computer vision and mapping. Then it clicked: “Oh, okay, this is actually a computer vision mapping problem.”
Ross Finman retweeted
🥑 Gap rates are down 30%+ because Augmodo’s Smartbadge™ passively scans shelves while associates work 🥬🍅 @thepacker: thepacker.com/news/retail/ne…
A retail exec once told me: "My associates have twenty things to do. They can keep track of ten. Do not give them a twenty-first."
I talked to @adammendler about keeping the workplace human with physical AI. Every tool either subtracts load or adds to it.
adammendler.com/ai-in-the-wo…
Ross Finman retweeted
"We have 5,000 images of aisle four from 50 different people walking down that aisle. What are the best three..."
Run a hundred-billion-parameter model on all of them? "Way overkill."
@rossfinman on why physical AI is a context problem, not a model-size problem.
Ross Finman retweeted
We're hiring people to enable the physical workforce:
→ Head of Engineering - USA
→ Senior CV Engineer - USA
→ IT & Compliance Manager - USA
→ Infrastructure Eng - UK
Come join this 🚀 augmodo.com/careers #hiring
Honored to make @RETHINK_Retail's 2027 Top AI Leaders list. While the market focuses on the 20% of the global workforce doing knowledge work, we focus on enabling the 80% on the frontlines. We are building physical AI for the physical workforce.
Credit goes to the @Augmodo team!
Ross Finman retweeted
We asked associates what they wanted next, and they split into two camps: "Make it smaller" + "Make it do more."
We built both:
🦉Owl Mini: 1/3 the weight, 3x camera power, 3x battery life.
🦉Owl Pro: E-ink display, walkie-talkie capability, full-shift+ battery.
Physical AI for the physical workforce. Rolling out 2027.
Ross Finman retweeted
“I’m terrible at first ideas, but great at getting whacked by the market.”
Our favorite line from @rossfinman. @Augmodo’s hardware evolution proves it:
AR glasses. Then a camera in a hat. Finally, a customer asked, “Can you just make it a brick that bounces down the stairs?”
Ross Finman retweeted
A dozen stores said the baby formula was in stock. None of them had it.
A hundred miles of minivan driving later, our founder @rossfinman had the diagnosis: nobody actually knows what's on the shelf. That's a computer vision problem. That's how Augmodo started.
Ross Finman retweeted
Every founder wants product-market fit, but not many talk about the panic that comes when you get it.
You can’t keep up with customer demand.
You need more infrastructure.
Things start breaking.
Your team is saying things like, “Oh, crap. Stop with that.”
@Augmodo founder @rossfinman calls it the “3:00 AM moment.”
You spend years trying to find product-market fit. Then you find it, and you’re up at 3:00 AM trying to figure out how to handle it.
"Deep tech hardware in retail" was a contrarian viewpoint in 2023. We went from a consumer pain point, to a bad first idea, to the badge that serves the 80% of the workforce that isn't working behind a screen. Sat down with @TQVentures on how that happened:
Ross Finman grew up on a 1,200-acre llama farm in Idaho. Now he’s mapping the physical world with @Augmodo, starting with what’s actually happening inside stores: Is a product on the shelf? Is it in the right location? Is it at the right price?
There was a lot of experimenting in between, which makes sense for someone who describes his approach to building as being “terrible at first ideas, but great at getting whacked by the market.”
In the latest episode of The Study, we talk about the 100-mile search for baby formula that helped inspire Augmodo, what true product-market fit actually feels like, and the data problem behind physical AI.
Timestamps:
00:27 Growing up on a 1,200-acre llama farm
03:50 MIT PhD at 20 and never feeling like you’re doing enough
04:47 Building Escher Reality and surviving Apple’s ARKit launch
08:37 Mapping the world at Niantic
09:35 The 100-mile search for baby formula that led to Augmodo
12:55 AR glasses, a camera hat, and the road to “obvious”
17:03 How Augmodo maps the physical world
20:51 What product-market fit really feels like
23:43 Building an AI assistant for the physical workforce
27:32 The massive data problem behind physical AI
32:43 Taking Augmodo beyond retail
36:16 Building the Augmodo team
41:22 How small can the SmartBadge get?
42:55 Will AI replace physical workers?
44:29 How becoming a father changed Ross
Ross Finman retweeted
The 100-mile search for baby formula that became a startup.
The next Study.
Coming soon.
Ross Finman retweeted
A llama farm in Idaho. A robot built out of tuna cans and coat hangers. A $350M company solving a problem most people don't even know exists.
@rossfinman's origin story for @Augmodo is unlike anything we've filmed.
The Study, coming soon🎥
ALT TQ's San Francisco studio, filming a new episode of The Study with Ross Finman and Schuster Tanger
Ross Finman retweeted
Augmodo just hit a $350M valuation 🚀
AI transformed knowledge work. Augmodo’s Physical AI is transforming physical work.
Come join this rocket ship, we’re hiring: augmodo.com/augmodo-secures-…
Ross Finman retweeted
There is a vicious cycle of AR being hard, so it is expensive, so the impact needs to cover more use cases to justify the cost, which leads to more hard problems. The result is amazing technology, demoing many use cases, but is not good enough at one thing for consumers to buy
Ross Finman retweeted
Making progress with our partnership with @NianticLabs . Looking forward to the continued #xr collaboration, @johnhanke ! @Qualcomm
