Transcript 0:00 [gentle music] You don't need a special hub. It's as basic as you can get in terms of connectivity and control. So- Everything is local... 0:11 basically you're saying big brother won't be listening, is what you just described. See, based on that- Well- I- that's what I just heard out of you. I- you didn't say that, but that's what I heard. 0:22 But that's something that our customers want. Exactly. They want privacy. That's what I'm hearing. 0:27 [upbeat music] Welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:45 My next guest worked as a software engineer specializing in testing for more than 25 years. 0:51 In 2018, he founded a smart home-oriented Facebook community, The Smarter Home Club, which is dedicated to helping people learn about smart home products and the possibilities. 1:02 Earlier this year, he joined Alturko Robotics, so please join me in welcoming Doug Roberson, CTO of Alturko Robotics US. Doug, welcome to the show. Thank you, Peggy. It's great to be here. 1:16 So Doug, now, first of all, you have to tell me what is your company and what it's all about. Well, Alturko Robotics is a manufacturer of home and building automation products with headquarters in Sofia, Bulgaria. 1:29 Our products are sold in more than 90 countries around the world, and since 2018, roughly 18 months ago, we've got more than a half million households using our Shelly devices every day. 1:41 There are more than a million and a half devices in use, and we have over one million connected to our cloud at any given time. So now I gotta tell you how this all started. 1:49 Now, how I even know about the Shelly product is, I... Now somebody listening is gonna go, "If that's all I gotta do to get on the radio, I'm gonna do it." So the folks at Shelly were extremely persistent. 2:00 They sent me the product. Yeah. They wanted me to test it, and I was like, "All right, what the heck is this little, itty bitty product, and what am I ever gonna do with it?" 'Cause people are always pitching me. 2:09 They want me to test the product. They want me to see what it's gonna do in the IoT. 2:13 And this little, itty bitty product, you know, that you can use it with just about anything MQTT, and you can use it relays, and start out a little smartwatch, and all these little cool things. 2:24 And I was like, "What am I gonna do with it?" And then they said, "Connect it to something in your home. You could do all these cool things," and that's it. 2:30 So from that point on, persistent person, they're like, "Did you do it?" And then COVID happened. I was like, "Oh, it's been on my desk." And they kept saying... 2:37 I said, "Oh, come on, we're gonna put someone on the radio to talk about it." So that's why you're here today, Doug. Persistence pays off. 2:43 So before I can say what I did with it, I want you to talk about how your company got involved in this whole IoT thing, 'cause this little, itty bitty product does a whole lot of things. 2:54 Our company was originally a software company. Uh, they produced apps for mobile banking, uh, and other various, uh, telecommunication products. 3:05 Our CEO is a home automation enthusiast, and really, he looked around and he saw that on the, on the market there weren't a lot of products that were really answering what consumers were asking for. 3:17 It seems like a lot of products are built by a committee, where a company says, "What's something we can put out on the market," rather than something that's solving a problem or making something more convenient. 3:32 Wh- when you say that, when you say making things convenient, so, like, do you think your approach to the market, like, for you as your company is, is it a different approach from, let's say, product development? 3:45 I mean, w- how, how do you see yourself fitting into that big mold in the space? The, the key to our products are their versatility. You can use our products in, in so many different applications. 3:58 For example, our basic relay, the Shelly 1, you can use it with single pole lights, three-way switches, garage door openers, pool pumps, pool lights, sprinklers. I've done all of this in my own home with it. 4:13 When you had this product, when you thought about it, did you ever think that you could be able to use it to do so many different things and connect so many things in a smart home? 4:23 No, but you'd be amazed at what our consumers come up with. Customers are very sneaky almost. [laughs] They come up with ideas that you never think of, applications that just don't cross your plane of thought. 4:37 Is that what makes it so exciting? Because now it's the creativity side of it, you know? I mean, do you think, do you have to be, like, an electrician to install these products, or can you just do it yourself? 4:47 I mean, what do... What kind of knowledge do you have? I mean, that's the key to this. It really depends on where you live. 4:53 If you're in an area that allows you to do DIY stuff, and you feel comfortable swapping out a light switch or an electrical outlet, then this is easy to install. 5:03 It's just a few simple wires, and if you already understand the basics, you got it. 5:08 Now, of course, if you don't, uh, you know, just like every other company, we've got plug-and-play products, your bulbs, your plugs, different things that, you know, you can run with batteries, sensors to pick up data about your environment. 5:20 You don't have to be an electrician to use it. If you don't feel comfortable, you can call an electrician. It's low cost, and it's an easy install. 5:27 So it doesn't take a lot of time or effort, and it doesn't take a lot of expense in hiring someone to put it in your home. So when we first started talking, you talked about this being a Bulgarian company. 5:39 I- if I'm listening right now, I'm somebody going, "Well, wait a minute. Is this company, their products are made with European electrical systems? 5:48 Now, I, I don't know if this is going to integrate with any other type of products," although, you know, everybody thinks everything comes from China anyway. Do they have to work? 5:56 Is it gonna integrate easily with things that are done here in the United States or North America? Do they gotta worry about that?Actually, they don't have to worry about it. 6:06 The products are manufactured in Europe, so the European electrical system is what they were originally developed for. But I've got a good friend who says, "Electrons don't care." 6:17 And it really, what it boils down to is a wire is a wire, an electron is an electron, and these devices are retrofit devices, meaning they install behind an existing light switch or electrical outlet, so you can use them fairly universally. 6:32 Now, we do have, uh, three products that are UL-certified that we targeted for the North American market, but you really didn't even need to use those. You could use the European versions and get the same result. 6:44 Why did you decide to have a few products that were specifically targeted to the North American market? Was that to kind of appease some customers, or just it happened that way? Both. 6:54 We had customers who were asking, and it's something that we did. We decided that it, it, it made sense from a marketing perspective, it made sense from growing our brand. 7:04 That's actually why we opened up our North American subsidiary, you know, basically just to expand in the US market. We had really viral growth in the European market. 7:13 As a matter of fact, I mentioned earlier that we started this product line roughly 18 months ago. We spent no money on advertising. It was absolutely viral growth. 7:24 When you think about continuing, do you think that you're, you've gotta compete with all the other types of products that are out there, that when you think about a smart home, there's a lot of, you think about Amazon and what they're doing, and you, you think about Google and, and their connected home products. 7:40 Do you feel like you have to compete in that arena? Or do you think, hey, no, you know, uh, w- you know, the d- do-it-yourselfers go, "I can play with this. This is fun. I can connect whatever I want. 7:50 I don't wanna have to be committed to any one platform." This is somebody who likes to just connect things just for fun. I actually have a, a slightly different take on it. 7:59 For one thing, for in terms of quality and support, our products are just as good as the big name companies, but at the same time, we're growing so much that i- it's, it's not a, a fair comparison. 8:11 We're looking at 21 new products by the end of this year, and, uh, I mean, we're still on track for that even with COVID-19 and the shakeup to logistics. 8:20 But the nice thing about these products is they're, they're really the most compatible in the world. You really are not tied down to one group. You're not tied to Amazon, you're not tied to Google, 8:30 uh, you're not tied to Apple HomeKit. We even have a firmware that you can install for our products for HomeKit, but you don't need any of it. 8:37 If you want to have everything just local control, we have a, you know, we have the ability for you to just unplug your, uh, cable modem and still control everything, [laughs] you know, from the same Wi-Fi network that everything is connected on. 8:51 You don't need a special hub. It's, uh, uh, I mean, it's as basic as you can get in terms of connectivity and control. So- Everything is local... 9:01 basically you're saying Big Brother won't be listening, is what you just described. See, based on that- Well-... uh, I, that's what I just heard out of you. I, you didn't say that, but that's what I heard. 9:12 But that's something that our customers want. Exactly. They want privacy. That's what I'm hearing. [laughs] They, here's the thing. They don't want that. 9:20 Uh, we actually have a free cloud service that you can use, but we're even developing the ability for you to do a, a self-hosted version of that cloud. 9:29 So anything that can't be, you know, handled locally, directly on the devices, and they're very powerful. They all have a built-in web server. 9:37 They have timers, schedulers, different options on how you configure a switch, what to do when the power, uh, is lost and turns back on. 9:46 All of these things are built in and local, but then you have scenes and, and groups that you can handle with our cloud service, but we're gonna make a version available that you can host locally. 9:56 Doug, Keysight failed because all of those folks in Canada did not like the Big Brother concept over there. 10:02 So listen, you might be onto something, that everybody says they wanna disconnect from Big Brother listening every time a Google Ad pops up, or Amazon Alexa says, "What, uh?" 10:13 And you didn't even ask her to pop up and she's listening. You guys might be onto something. I'm just saying. Maybe you're now people listening going, "Hey, Peggy, you put them on. 10:21 They don't have to, we don't have to have anyone else listening." I think you might be selling a heck of a lot more after this radio show. I don't know, but that's just what I'm saying. So [laughs] that's pretty cool. 10:30 I think that's a great idea. I love it. So if you had to tell them what's the future gonna look like, then, where do you see the future of this? 10:38 Give me your pre- you know, if you crystal ball it, where do you see it all going? Well, a- again, I've got maybe an unpopular take on this, but I think that- Oh, no. You don't... 10:47 big companies- [laughs] I don't think it's unpopular... um, uh, I think that big companies don't get it. 10:53 I think they spend too much time in committee and not enough time actually making new products and getting things to consumers. 10:59 I think that consumers are going to tell us what they want, and they're gonna do it with their pocketbooks. It's, it's that simple. They don't, they don't want Big Brother. 11:08 They don't wanna be told what's good for their smart home. They wanna do it themselves, or they want to have someone that they trust come in and set it up for them, tailored to what they need. 11:18 So looking at this now, you're saying it'll be their lights. What kind of things can they connect? Just really quickly, we've got about 30 seconds left. Well, tell me all the things you, that they can connect. 11:29 Ceiling fans, garage door openers, pool pumps, sprinklers, lights, anything that runs off of electricity. I have to tell you, Doug, I love it. Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today. 11:41 I think it's exciting. I think you've just opened up some new opportunities for people who might not have been listening. 11:45 A lot of my IoT, IoT folks get it, but for those who might not have been thinking about it, I think you just made them think a little differently. Thank you so much again for spending time with me today. 11:56 Thanks for having me. Doug Roberson, CTO of Al terico Robotics, where can our listeners go to be able to get more of this? 12:03 Well, um, in Europe, go to www.shelly.cloud, or in the United States, North America, go to shellyusa.com. Okay, listeners. We are out of time for this show. Remember, we are broadcast every Tuesday at 12:00 PM Central. 12:18 What I want you to do is check out our website at connectedworld.com, or our show website at thepeggysmedley show.com. And as always, the most important thing what I want you to do is tweet at me at connectedwmag. 12:29 Share your thoughts with me. I want you to send them to me, again, at connectedwmag. Every time we share a tweet or two, that's when we can exchange a dialogue. Or go off to LinkedIn and put a post up there for me. 12:39 All right. This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Have an awesome week. [outro music]
