Bruce Sharpe

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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: It's VanCoovers Podcast on the Canada's Podcast Network.
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[01:13] SPEAKER_01: Hello, this is Robert Smigel coming to today with a vancouverontaprenure.ca where we talk to the entrepreneurs who are making it happen here in British Columbia.
[01:21] SPEAKER_01: Bruce Sharp got his PhD in mathematics from UBC in 1984.
[01:26] SPEAKER_01: He started his first company while finishing his thesis and was soon acquired into another startup which was doing AI for business applications.
[01:35] SPEAKER_01: His most successful startup was Singular Software which created the product Plural Eyes for Video Production.
[01:42] SPEAKER_01: Bruce is currently in the early stages of a new startup that is looking at applications of deep learning to audio processing and to making a better hearing aid.
[01:53] SPEAKER_01: Well Bruce, welcome to the show, thanks for taking the time today to be here for all our listeners.
[01:58] SPEAKER_00: Great to be here.
[02:00] SPEAKER_01: Okay, tell us a little bit more about yourself or your from and give us the details on your current business.
[02:06] SPEAKER_00: Sure, so yeah, you mentioned my educational background is in mathematics and mathematical physics way back in the day.
[02:16] SPEAKER_00: And after I was finishing up my thesis at UBC in Quantum Field Theory, I kind of knew I didn't want to continue in academia.
[02:27] SPEAKER_00: I was happy with what I'd done there but that wasn't going to be the life for me.
[02:31] SPEAKER_00: Personal computers were coming around just around that time, I was in the mid 1980s and I bought one to help me typeset my thesis which was full of mathematical symbols and things.
[02:41] SPEAKER_00: And fell in love with the computer and with the software that I'd created to help me with the thesis and so on.
[02:50] SPEAKER_00: And that really seemed to be much more interesting than the other prospects at the time.
[02:54] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I mentioned in my bio that I started a company with some of my fellow students.
[03:03] SPEAKER_00: We created a product, it was kind of cool for its day but we had no idea how to take it to market and eventually we got absorbed into another company.
[03:11] SPEAKER_00: Another startup didn't last too long.
[03:13] SPEAKER_00: The next stage in my career was to go to MDA, McDonald, Etweiler, in Richmond, where I spent several years.
[03:22] SPEAKER_00: And I ended up heading up the research group there.
[03:25] SPEAKER_00: We were doing things like satellite image processing and radar processing and things like that.
[03:31] SPEAKER_00: And in both of those first couple of companies we were looking at applications of artificial intelligence to things like computer vision and extraction of information from satellite images and various other kinds of more business oriented problems as well.
[03:47] SPEAKER_00: But then back at that time none of those techniques actually worked very well.
[03:53] SPEAKER_00: And like many other people I kind of turned my back on them and abandoned all of the AI stuff for quite some years.
[04:00] SPEAKER_00: So I went off and did various jobs in the software realm.
[04:06] SPEAKER_00: Some small business software, some enterprise level software of various kinds.
[04:12] SPEAKER_00: I developed my business skills along with my technical skills.
[04:17] SPEAKER_00: But in more recent years was interested in, well I guess the way I described it as a hobby of mine which is doing audio and video production had a good idea there that became the product pluralized.
[04:31] SPEAKER_00: And that became a business.
[04:32] SPEAKER_00: And so I stopped having a day job ramped up this startup, brought this to market and eventually sold it off after really just a few years sold off the assets.
[04:46] SPEAKER_00: Now I'm in a stage where I'm both exploring starting a new company, but also getting back to my technical roots in the AI and what's now called data science machine learning those sort of areas.
[04:59] SPEAKER_00: And what's different now is that there's a bunch of new techniques and circumstances such as those algorithms are now working much better than they did in the past.
[05:09] SPEAKER_00: Now it's fun again instead of being kind of frustrating.
[05:13] SPEAKER_00: And one of the areas that's particularly interesting to me is the realm of audio processing and speech processing.
[05:20] SPEAKER_00: So that people who are making recordings can have them come out to be better quality, but the more significant application would be to something like a hearing aid.
[05:32] SPEAKER_00: And there's some long standing problems in speech processing that have limited the ability of hearing aids to be really effective for people with hearing loss.
[05:41] SPEAKER_00: And those problems we seem to be making progress on those thanks to this new world of machine learning.
[05:46] SPEAKER_00: And I'm hoping to be able to move that along.
[05:49] SPEAKER_01: Okay, now your current venture. Did you need fine add things to start this company and how are you currently making money in the business now?
[05:56] SPEAKER_00: So we're at a very, very early stage. So it's self-funded right now.
[06:01] SPEAKER_00: My previous business, the one that did pluralize.
[06:05] SPEAKER_00: I was very fortunate to be able to bootstrap that it was a I could sort of dip into the retirement nest egg and pull out enough money to hire some people to kick it off the ground.
[06:15] SPEAKER_00: But very quickly it was able to generate revenue and that funded the further development and went forward from there.
[06:22] SPEAKER_00: The current company, it's really at a technology exploration stage.
[06:26] SPEAKER_00: I need to convince myself, I guess, first of all, that the technology is actually ready for commercialization with some effort.
[06:36] SPEAKER_00: And if so, then we should be able to put together a prototype that I can then use to raise funds and really kick it into high gear at that point.
[06:48] SPEAKER_01: Okay, what is the long-term vision and what will your company look like in the future? Do you see the company expanding into other areas and where beyond Vancouver, BC or even Canada?
[06:58] SPEAKER_00: Well, certainly the product that I have in mind here is one that would serve people around the world.
[07:05] SPEAKER_00: And so in terms of a market, it's absolutely goes beyond Vancouver.
[07:10] SPEAKER_00: In terms of how do we bring it to market and get it done?
[07:13] SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, I think there's a lot that we can do right here in Vancouver.
[07:19] SPEAKER_00: But I also see partnerships that would be required after all of we're talking about a hearing aid.
[07:25] SPEAKER_00: And I'm kind of using that as a shorthand, it may or may not be an actual medical device, but it may be at least a hearing assistant.
[07:34] SPEAKER_00: That would be something where we might need partners to help because it would be a little bit of hardware involved.
[07:41] SPEAKER_00: So I'm open-minded about that right now. The key problem is really a technical feasibility.
[07:47] SPEAKER_00: Once we get past that, then I can think about what's required to put the other pieces together to make a whole product.
[07:54] SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, you've been doing business in Vancouver for quite a few years.
[07:59] SPEAKER_01: So I want you to tell us about what the benefits are in the struggles.
[08:02] SPEAKER_01: What are the biggest benefits for you and being an entrepreneur here in Vancouver, BC?
[08:05] SPEAKER_01: I want you to give us some of the good points about starting a company here, but I also want you to give us some of the tough things or challenges for listeners so they can keep an eye out for them.
[08:14] SPEAKER_00: Well, the good things, I guess, are the people.
[08:18] SPEAKER_00: And there's a good talent pool here. We've got some excellent universities in the area because it's a great place to live.
[08:25] SPEAKER_00: It's fairly easy to attract people to come to live in the area as well.
[08:31] SPEAKER_00: Certainly back, for example, in my MDA days, we were really effective at going right across the country, recruiting people into MDA, hiring the best and the brightest of the new grads and so on.
[08:43] SPEAKER_00: And part of the draw was, in fact, it was such a great place to live.
[08:47] SPEAKER_00: The downside, I guess, is that it is super expensive to live here.
[08:53] SPEAKER_00: And the amount of money you make even in a high paying tech job is not quite commensurate with the cost of housing like great in Vancouver itself.
[09:03] SPEAKER_00: So that's, I think, a lot of companies are finding that to be a bit of a challenge.
[09:08] SPEAKER_00: But the good talent here is certainly the best thing.
[09:11] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess you have the real estate market cost living.
[09:14] SPEAKER_01: I've heard a lot of companies have problems hiring people.
[09:16] SPEAKER_01: Are you having any issues like that trying to lure people to the city to work on projects?
[09:22] SPEAKER_00: So far so good.
[09:24] SPEAKER_00: And I've been able to find, you know, I'm in a pretty small scale now.
[09:28] SPEAKER_00: And my last company was sort of peaked to about 10 people or so.
[09:31] SPEAKER_00: So we're not talking about massive numbers of people.
[09:33] SPEAKER_00: I had no trouble finding the people that I needed locally for that.
[09:37] SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, when you're doing software of the type that I'm doing, I can also tap into basically an international labor pool for certain specific things.
[09:47] SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily have to have the people right there in the city.
[09:50] SPEAKER_00: And my last company, even though everyone was pretty much local, it was a virtual company.
[09:55] SPEAKER_00: We didn't have an office. Everyone worked out of their homes.
[09:57] SPEAKER_00: And given that model, that opens up the possibilities for what kind of people can bring into the company.
[10:03] SPEAKER_01: Okay, we do some of our best work outside the office.
[10:06] SPEAKER_01: Is there a place in the lower mainland close to where you live or work?
[10:09] SPEAKER_01: Were you like to go recharge or just get inspired or just think about your business?
[10:13] SPEAKER_01: And does it change with the season considering all the rain we get here?
[10:18] SPEAKER_00: Well, I work out of my home mostly.
[10:20] SPEAKER_00: So that's pretty great.
[10:22] SPEAKER_00: And I'm fortunate I live in like North Surrey and I back under this sort of undeveloped parkland.
[10:27] SPEAKER_00: And so it's quite peaceful and quiet here and that's an excellent environment for the sort of thing that I do.
[10:34] SPEAKER_00: But if I need to get away from it all, I'm close to a nice park with running trails.
[10:38] SPEAKER_00: I can go for a run.
[10:41] SPEAKER_00: And if I just want to get out of the house and not be too stagnant here, I'll hit up a coffee shop and put on my earbuds and tap away at the keyboard and the coffee shop for a few hours.
[10:52] SPEAKER_00: Running is probably my most consistent physical activity, I guess.
[10:58] SPEAKER_00: But I am a little bit of a fair weather runner.
[11:01] SPEAKER_00: The rain will put me off that for sure in that case I might get on a liptical trainer machine or something instead.
[11:08] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[11:09] SPEAKER_01: Now we have a lot of international listeners.
[11:11] SPEAKER_01: So this next question I want you to speak to them.
[11:14] SPEAKER_01: If you were to start all over again and you just moved here to Vancouver, BC, but this time you don't know anyone, what would you do?
[11:21] SPEAKER_01: And how would you go about starting all over again as a not to peneur?
[11:26] SPEAKER_00: Well, it's all about building your network.
[11:28] SPEAKER_00: And we're blessed in Vancouver with a wide variety of meetups through the meetup.com website is a great place to go.
[11:38] SPEAKER_00: And there's other similar sites, but that one seems to draw the most people.
[11:41] SPEAKER_00: And I run a couple of meetups here in town related to data science machine learning and one for electric vehicles as well.
[11:49] SPEAKER_00: We get all kinds of people who are new to the city, who will show up at those and lots of people with similar interests.
[11:59] SPEAKER_00: I mean, if that's the technology area you're interested in, that's a great way to meet people.
[12:05] SPEAKER_00: The other thing is, and again, maybe more for the technically inclined people is there's Slack teams using the Slack chat application where people kind of hang out online.
[12:18] SPEAKER_00: And it's specific to Vancouver.
[12:20] SPEAKER_00: Lots of people will show up there and they can share ideas.
[12:24] SPEAKER_00: There's specific channels for jobs, for example, and other things like that.
[12:29] SPEAKER_00: That would be the way that I would start.
[12:32] SPEAKER_00: And I know when I'm traveling and I have some time in another city and I just want to sort of connect those of the things I look for,
[12:39] SPEAKER_00: I'll start trolling all the meetups to see what looks interesting and just show up.
[12:43] SPEAKER_00: And maybe see if there's an interesting Slack channel going on.
[12:47] SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's talk about your routine.
[12:49] SPEAKER_01: What does the first hour look like for you when you get up in the morning?
[12:51] SPEAKER_01: Do you have a specific routine or a ritual that helps you get motivated to start your day?
[12:58] SPEAKER_00: The very first thing I do, even before I get out of bed, as I just grab my phone,
[13:02] SPEAKER_00: I just look to see if anything crazy has happened in the news overnight or if there's any sort of emergency in my inbox that I really need to take care of.
[13:13] SPEAKER_00: But I'm a little bit of a slow roller in the morning in the sense I guess I do things a little bit of housework,
[13:20] SPEAKER_00: empty the dishwasher, put her around the kitchen a little bit, just to kind of get going.
[13:25] SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't take me very long before I'm sitting down at the computer and probably working on whatever problem was I left the night before just before I went to bed and get things started right off of that.
[13:40] SPEAKER_01: Do you think entrepreneurs have to be weird or unique in a positive way or wired differently?
[13:48] SPEAKER_00: They do seem to be when I had a day job for many years and then I became an entrepreneur through various circumstances.
[13:56] SPEAKER_00: And I kind of thought, sure, like anybody can do this and everybody should do this.
[14:02] SPEAKER_00: It's so great. But as I tried to recruit people into my company, particularly people that were part of my network, I've been friends with them and business colleagues for some time, it became clear to me that this is not the life for everybody.
[14:19] SPEAKER_00: And that was even just to be part of a startup, let alone be the person who is initiating the startup.
[14:24] SPEAKER_00: It does seem to take a kind of a special personality. You have to be super persistent. You've got to have a lot of resilience.
[14:36] SPEAKER_00: But you've got to be excited about just doing something new and being a little bit untethered from that salary regular paycheck that maybe you've gotten used to or hoping to get used to.
[14:48] SPEAKER_00: You just got to be comfortable taking a little bit of risk that way.
[14:51] SPEAKER_01: Okay. What books are you reading now and why are even audiobooks and can you recommend any books for our listeners who are also aspiring entrepreneurs?
[15:01] SPEAKER_00: I do read a fair number of books. And you mentioned audiobooks. Yeah, it's been a very long time since I've read either a physical book or even an electronic book.
[15:15] SPEAKER_00: I just, I think the internet has ruined me. I find it hard to sit still and concentrate on written pages.
[15:23] SPEAKER_00: But listening to audiobooks is pretty effective. I mean, I live in Surrey, but I drive into Vancouver for meetings and things all the time.
[15:31] SPEAKER_00: So like a little bit of a commute there. It's a great way to catch up on your books is to listen while you're driving or running. That sort of thing.
[15:41] SPEAKER_00: I don't know if there's any specific books that I could pinpoint as being really key for entrepreneurs to read.
[15:50] SPEAKER_00: But well, there's a podcast on that which is Jason Callicanis's This Week in Startups. I find a lot of people who are trying to figure out this world of startups and entrepreneurialism find that super helpful.
[16:02] SPEAKER_00: And I certainly give those a listen every once in a while. There are many, many business books out there. They're all kind of good. I mean, I listen to zillions of them. And then, and well, over the course of my career, I have anyway.
[16:15] SPEAKER_00: And I figure if I can get even just one good idea out of a book, I'm happy. My threshold's pretty low for considering a book to be successful.
[16:23] SPEAKER_00: But everything from good to great to understanding people's psychology, I think is important. And I certainly enjoy behavior like an on the comments book thinking fast, thinking slow.
[16:37] SPEAKER_00: Those sorts of things.
[16:40] SPEAKER_00: There's a wide variety and they're all great terms of fiction. If I just want to unwind and not think about things, I'll listen to trashy detective novels mostly.
[16:52] SPEAKER_01: Any online or offline tools that you use on a daily basis?
[16:58] SPEAKER_00: Certainly podcasts. I'm a big fan of podcasts and listen to many of those. I mentioned the Jason Callicanis podcast. That's one of the A16z podcast coming from that VC firm down in the valley. They generally have very interesting discussions.
[17:17] SPEAKER_00: Those are those are great. I use feedleaf to manage all my RSS feeds. And that is one of the main sources of information I get is all these news sites that I subscribe to and they just comes in there and feedleaf organizes that nicely for me.
[17:38] SPEAKER_00: Reddit has a few interesting subreddits that are worth keeping track of. So, yeah, I mean, there's of course there's no lack of information out there. It's more a question of finding ways to filter it and organize it for yourself in a way that you can digest the good bits and ignore the bad.
[17:58] SPEAKER_01: Okay, now you just touched on a while ago Vancouver is a very beautiful place. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. How do you balance work and how do you relax and not even think about work and what are your favorite activities to do here in BC? Do you ski? Do you buy kayak golf hike or simply go for a drive?
[18:14] SPEAKER_00: I lead a very unbalanced life. I really enjoy what what people would call work, but I don't think of it as work because it's so much fun. So a lot of the natural beauty and splendor of BC is is lost on me. I have to say when I first move here, which is back in my grad student days, my wife and I, we would go on day hikes in the North Shore mountains basically every weekend.
[18:39] SPEAKER_00: We chew up most of the weekend just stomping around those mountains and that was fantastic. Don't do that so much anymore. I've done a little bit of skiing, a little bit of the kayaking and all that, but really mostly I don't.
[18:52] SPEAKER_00: Running is my main thing mostly because it's still it's convenient, but it's I do enjoy the fresh air and there's a bit of solitude and quiet. If you can find the right place to do that.
[19:06] SPEAKER_01: That's that's the main way I try to on one. If you are doing what you do now, what would you like to do for a profession?
[19:15] SPEAKER_00: I'm doing exactly what I want to do right now. It's fantastic to be in this position in my life where I don't have to work. So I've got some flexibility in what I do with my day.
[19:28] SPEAKER_00: And what I choose to do is to try, you know, I'm working in technology and trying to make a product that will make people's lives better. I can't imagine anything better than that.
[19:40] SPEAKER_00: It's fantastic. And, you know, before I was doing that, I had lots of day jobs where I was a felt I was working on things or at least helpful to the world in general.
[19:51] SPEAKER_00: I never had any qualms about the products I was working on and I feel very fortunate that I had the opportunity to not feel compelled to take a paycheck from something that didn't make me feel good about what they are up to.
[20:06] SPEAKER_00: But all of this is, you know, I'm 63 years old. So I've kind of been in the workforce for a long time and I've reached this stage where I'm really fortunate to be able to do exactly what I want.
[20:17] SPEAKER_01: What kind of a job would you not like to do? Couldn't do it.
[20:23] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, something that's very repetitive and where I couldn't see the value of it, where I felt it could be automated like it doesn't need a human being to do it like why am I doing this.
[20:38] SPEAKER_00: Having said that, I've had a wide variety of jobs in my life and I have found not so much that I chafed against the jobs that were boring and so on.
[20:49] SPEAKER_00: But I always found a way to make the job interesting no matter what it was. And this goes right back to high school days where I would just be doing odd jobs, cutting lawns and whatever.
[20:59] SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it was finding ways to automate the job so I didn't in fact have to do it or find other ways to improve it. This is a great way to drive innovation is to give some creative people some boring task that they probably wouldn't like and they'll find a way to make that task go away.
[21:21] SPEAKER_01: In business, what is your favorite word, quote, or sentence that you like to use?
[21:28] SPEAKER_00: Well, the phrase that it keeps coming back to me is, and I don't know where this came from, but it basically boils down to if you do stuff, stuff happens.
[21:39] SPEAKER_00: I would say every good thing that's happened to me in my life was not particularly planned. It's just because I went out there and I did something and then something happened as a result of that.
[21:52] SPEAKER_00: And then I reacted to that and one thing led to another and then next thing, you know, all of a sudden I'm in a completely different career path, which is some great thing.
[22:02] SPEAKER_00: So that's a phrase that for me, it kind of sums up what I would tell anybody. Don't think that you can just sit around and think about things and pick the perfect root in your life or product to build or anything.
[22:19] SPEAKER_00: Just do what you can and get it out there into the world and see what happens and then be prepared to adjust at that point.
[22:27] SPEAKER_01: What is your least favorite word or sentence you do not like to hear?
[22:33] SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure I can boil it down to a sentence, but the attitude that really drives me crazy is people who think that if they are criticizing somebody who's creating something new, not even somebody who created something, an idea that's new, that somehow they're making a contribution, that there's a place in the world and it's important to be able to find the flaws in things and recognize the downside.
[22:56] SPEAKER_00: And so on, you know, you're kidding yourself, you're not making a contribution that way. Everybody knows that there's problems and it is really, really hard to invent something new that actually works and is helpful.
[23:11] SPEAKER_00: And in the early days, it's going to look flawed and terrible and like it's can't possibly work and it's a stupid idea.
[23:20] SPEAKER_00: And all of those things might be kind of true, but if you just keep pushing ahead with it, you adjust and you end up with something that actually is good and works.
[23:28] SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the history of whether it's technological innovation or social innovation or any of those things, you'll see in the early days things are very messy and maybe a little ugly and whatever.
[23:40] SPEAKER_00: It's not helpful to have people who aren't supportive of that.
[23:45] SPEAKER_00: And so I just, I dismiss those people, I'm not interested in what they have to say and I don't try to give them any oxygen for their ideas.
[23:57] SPEAKER_01: You tend to surround yourself with positive people?
[23:58] SPEAKER_00: For sure.
[24:00] SPEAKER_00: Yep. And you know, it's one of the things I love about running these startups is that we do, you know, we get together, we have our meeting, there's maybe a presentation, however it goes.
[24:09] SPEAKER_00: And then the best part, of course, is you go for beer and food afterwards and you know, these are people who are, they're getting out there, right, and exploring new things.
[24:19] SPEAKER_00: And they're always, always interesting. And I find that very stimulating to have those kind of people around to bounce ideas off of.
[24:27] SPEAKER_01: If you had to pick one or two words to describe yourself, what would it be and why?
[24:34] SPEAKER_00: Somebody wants to describe me as a lifelong learner, which I guess is a little bit of a cliche, but I'll take it.
[24:41] SPEAKER_00: I'm always interested in the new, new thing.
[24:45] SPEAKER_00: I'm maybe not the very first person to buy the new gadgets, but I'm maybe the second person.
[24:51] SPEAKER_00: You know, if you come to my house, you'll find a host that's got all these smart home gadgets all over the place.
[24:57] SPEAKER_00: And some of them are working some of them aren't because they weren't successful.
[25:02] SPEAKER_00: But I like exploring new technology. I'm a technology optimist. That's another phrase I would say fits quite well.
[25:11] SPEAKER_00: But I do get feeling stale and bored and unhappy if I'm not learning something new.
[25:19] SPEAKER_00: And even though in a way, as I mentioned, I've returned to my technical roots. It's looking very new and fresh.
[25:25] SPEAKER_00: And I'm pretty much self-taught in almost everything that I do. The amount of formal education I've had that is directly relevant to what I'm doing is pretty minimal.
[25:34] SPEAKER_00: It's mostly things I've taught myself. And I just feel so happy that I live in an age where so much information and novelty is available to me through obviously the Internet and various other things.
[25:51] SPEAKER_01: What keeps you up at night if anything?
[25:54] SPEAKER_00: The things that worry me about the world in general and society is what sees do you have a trend against science, against data, against evidence.
[26:06] SPEAKER_00: And in some quarters where it's almost a badge of honor to be ignorant.
[26:11] SPEAKER_00: And that in somehow people know better than those who have actually studied something in a somewhat dispassionate way.
[26:21] SPEAKER_00: That's pretty concerning. I think there's always been elements of that. But it's not good.
[26:27] SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, truth wins. The laws of physics win. And you can't deny those things.
[26:37] SPEAKER_00: I guess because I work in areas of software where you're always trying to optimize things. You're looking for optimal solutions for so on.
[26:45] SPEAKER_00: I think that applies to society as well. We should be looking for optimal ways of doing things. Very, very hard problems for sure.
[26:54] SPEAKER_00: And the problems of technology pale in comparison to the problems of society in various ways.
[27:00] SPEAKER_00: But I think that the more that we can have evidence-based policy making and a respect for truth and data and scientific method, the better off we're going to be.
[27:12] SPEAKER_01: Okay. I want you to give us the top three things on your inspired lifeless. This could be a bucket list of some sort, whether you want to do a TEDx talk, write books, travel some more for philanthropy, anything like that?
[27:23] SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd like to start three more companies for sure. My ambition is not to start a company and have it become giant and then stick with that until the end of my career.
[27:37] SPEAKER_00: I'd rather do three new companies. The thing I have in mind right now is this hearing aid project. I would really love to do a couple of things with that.
[27:49] SPEAKER_00: One is just make one that's more effective for people who currently we're hearing ares or maybe should, but don't.
[27:56] SPEAKER_00: But also think about making it more affordable for people around the world. Hearing aids are very expensive.
[28:02] SPEAKER_00: And therefore lots of people in countries not as rich as Canada can't afford them even though they would really benefit from them. And that to me is really important.
[28:14] SPEAKER_00: So there's that I have, I think I mentioned electric vehicles. I run a meet up for them. I will also present in the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association.
[28:23] SPEAKER_00: I hope that in my lifetime we're going to see the majority of vehicles on the road being electric.
[28:28] SPEAKER_00: I think the vision of a future where transportation is electrified and clean and quiet and the air is clean as a result is a really powerful view of the future that I hope to help make happen.
[28:43] SPEAKER_00: So those are some of the key things on my list.
[28:47] SPEAKER_01: Okay. Do you have any advice that you may have received that you can pass on to entrepreneurs throughout BC?
[28:56] SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that the thing is probably what I was saying earlier, you got to do stuff and get involved. There's lots of opportunities to get involved.
[29:10] SPEAKER_00: A specific thing I guess I could mention is the new Ventures BC competition.
[29:17] SPEAKER_00: My company that created pluralize, we put ourselves through that.
[29:22] SPEAKER_00: We were at a stage where it was time to really get through the business planning process.
[29:30] SPEAKER_00: I entered the company into the competition for that reason. As it turns out, you get lots of good mentoring there.
[29:37] SPEAKER_00: It was just very helpful in a whole lot of ways. That's a specific thing I would do if you were an entrepreneur.
[29:43] SPEAKER_00: You've maybe got something that's already a little bit underway.
[29:48] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, build your network, look for meetups and connect with people and just keep going at it.
[29:56] SPEAKER_00: I guess some of the best business advice I've ever got was from, I think it was my mother said this to me or somebody's mother said it to them, which was basically, go.
[30:06] SPEAKER_00: You should go. You might meet somebody.
[30:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Well, that's how we met. Start-up week, right?
[30:12] SPEAKER_01: Indeed it is. Exactly right there.
[30:15] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly right. And, you know, previous meetup like that, I went to and I ended up hiring the guy who was really pivotal in getting my last product off the ground.
[30:24] SPEAKER_00: And it just wouldn't have happened if I hadn't just gone out. And, you know what? I didn't want to go that night.
[30:30] SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to stay home and go through my subreddits and just have a quiet eat.
[30:35] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I made myself get out there and it was all worth it.
[30:38] SPEAKER_01: Great. Okay. Okay, Bruce, you ready to have some fun?
[30:41] SPEAKER_01: Sure.
[30:42] SPEAKER_01: Okay. Well, you know, entrepreneurs are very busy people. A lot on the go. You're always in meetings.
[30:48] SPEAKER_01: You're always texting on the phone. Checking things. Mail. You name it.
[30:52] SPEAKER_01: We're going to take you away from all that. There's a small tropical island just off of Fiji that only has one phone booth there.
[30:59] SPEAKER_01: And there is no internet. This place actually does exist.
[31:02] SPEAKER_01: We're going to drop you off there. You won't have a computer or a smartphone or tablet.
[31:06] SPEAKER_01: You can use the phone booth located there any time to call the boat. We'll come pick you up.
[31:10] SPEAKER_01: How long would you last before you made that call? And what would you do while you were there?
[31:15] SPEAKER_00: So, I would not last very long.
[31:17] SPEAKER_00: But, while I'm there, I would take advantage of the fact that, oh, look, I've been dropped into this unusual place and a place I've never been before.
[31:27] SPEAKER_00: So, I would at least take a little bit of time to explore what's going on there.
[31:31] SPEAKER_00: See if there's any interesting people there.
[31:34] SPEAKER_00: And it's the same thing I do if I take a job in a new company.
[31:38] SPEAKER_00: The first thing I do is start sniffing around trying to find the interesting people to kind of connect with.
[31:44] SPEAKER_00: However, I think I would not last very long. I'd probably be heading to that phone booth after a day or two and say, take me back.
[31:52] SPEAKER_00: After all, I guess the evidence in favor of that prediction is that if I really wanted to be in an island in Fiji, I could probably do that.
[32:01] SPEAKER_00: But I haven't made that choice. So, I'm pretty happy where I am right now and I think I'd probably want to get back to it.
[32:06] SPEAKER_01: Okay, great. Bruce, how can I listen to get a whole of you and is there anything you'd like to add before I leave us today?
[32:14] SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the thing I'd like to add is by all means, look up my meetups if any of you're at all interested in their areas of data science, machine learning, that kind of stuff.
[32:24] SPEAKER_00: There's some really interesting discussions that happen and you can find those under the kind of umbrella term of learn data science.
[32:32] SPEAKER_00: So, if you just go to the meetup.com and search that, you'll see several meetups underneath that.
[32:37] SPEAKER_00: And if people want to contact me directly, you can reach me at Bruce.sharp, that's sharp within e, so SHARP.
[32:46] SPEAKER_00: Bruce.sharp at gmail.com. That's the easiest one of several email addresses I can put out there.
[32:54] SPEAKER_01: Okay, great. Okay, Bruce, well, thank you for coming on the show. I've learned a lot about you and I'm sure our listeners have as well.
[33:00] SPEAKER_00: Great to talk to you. Thanks, Bruce. Cheers.
[33:04] SPEAKER_01: Hey there. Thanks for taking the time to listen to the Vancouver Entrepreneur.ca podcast.
[33:09] SPEAKER_01: We hope you enjoyed this show today. Make sure you sign up for our newsletters and write a review for us on iTunes.
[33:14] SPEAKER_01: And then connect with us on Twitter at Vansity Podcast and like us on Facebook.
[33:18] SPEAKER_01: And you'll get all the latest news including the BC Weekly Business Report, where you can find out more about what's going on in this fabulous podcast.
[33:25] SPEAKER_01: See you next time.
[33:31] Speaker UNKNOWN: See you again.