Your Reflection, but High-Tech – Building an AI-Powered Smart Mirror

For this episode of Art of the Kickstart, we caught up with Edward Zhong, the creator of Ayi, the AI-powered smart mirror. Tune in to learn more about how Zhong created a smart mirror that is not only compatible with thousands of apps, like Uber, but also is able to custom-fit every user by combining artificial intelligence (AI) with an everyday-use product. Topics Discussed and Key Crowdfunding Takeaways How to find useful, day-to-day integrations with AI Hardware and software challenges Ayi faced with their product as a growing startup Their best advice and tips for someone developing a product with AI Things to take into consideration when directing and shooting a crowdfunding campaign video How to manage crowdfunding feedback when over 60% of your backers are first-time crowdfunders Links Ayi on Indiegogo InDemand Kickstarter Forum Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOKK16 for 20% off! Transcript View this episode's transcript Roy Morejon: Welcome to Art of the Kickstart, your source for crowdfunding campaign success. I’m your host, Roy Morejon, President of Inventus Partners, the top, full-service turnkey product development and crowdfunding marketing agency in the world. We have helped startups raise over $100 million for our clients since 2010. Each week, I’ll interview a crowdfunding success story, an inspirational entrepreneur, or a business expert in order to help you take your startup to the next level with crowdfunding. Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by BackerKit and The Gadget Flow. BackerKit makes software that crowdfunding project creators use to survey backers, organize data, and manage orders for fulfillment by automating your operations and helping you print and ship faster. The Gadget Flow is a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. It is the ultimate buyer’s guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Now, let’s get on with the show. Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today I am talking with Edward Zhong, the creator of Ayi, the AI-powered smart mirror for your home. Edward, thanks so much for joining us today on Art of the Kickstart. Edward Zhong: Thanks for having us, Roy. Roy Morejon: So this technology is really cool. I mean, basically it’s meet your new personal assistant inside your home, this amazing, visually stunning AI-powered smart mirror. Many times, if you’ve stayed at these luxurious hotels and things like that, you’ve had the opportunity to play with it or mess with it, and now, you can bring this to the comfort of your own home. This device launched a few days ago. It’s already over $80,000 in funding and hundreds of backers have already supported it. So Edward, I’m really excited to hear about where this all starts and what inspired you to create this smart mirror. Edward Zhong: Yeah, sure. We really love our product, and we really hope that our customers will love it as well. This whole company started behind the vision of changing how the smart home industry fundamentally is really. Most of the members on our team are either former product designers or software engineers for smart home based companies like Nest or Google. Through our experience in this industry, it’s just seeing that, although there are really cool products being made every year, it seemed like the smart home industry was rather dull and a little bit boring. We really wanted to change the status quo of the smart home industry in general in bringing better design, more functionality, and kind of a more futuristic feel really and take that risk that other big companies were hesitating to take for some reason.