Startups in the Medical Technology industry face a lot of unique challenges when looking to raise capital to grow their company – not the least of which is just explaining what their technology is, how it works to help people, and how that translates into profits for investors.
In this conversation I’ll be speaking with Luke Steuber, Director of Clinical Research and Development for a company called Cognixion that is doing amazing work to help people with conditions like ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) better communicate and engage with their environment.
Please join us as we look at the startup scene through the eyes of a MedTech company and learn about the amazing ways their technology can help all of us.
More info: https://cognixion.com
What follows is a computer-generated transcription of our entire conversation. Please excuse any typos!
Frank Felker 00:23
Yes indeed I am Frank Felker. Welcome back to Radio Free Enterprise. My guest today is Luke Steuber. Luke is Director of Clinical Research and Development at a medical technology company called cognition, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. Luke Steuber, welcome to the program.
Luke Steuber 00:45
Thanks so much for having me, I’m excited to be here.
Frank Felker 00:47
I’m excited as well, we’ve got some crazy stuff, some, shall you say, some mind-blowing stuff to talk about. This is literally, what we’re going to talk about today is both literally and figuratively, mind altering. So we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. And I want to start by introducing a device that you guys had cognition have developed. And in order to be sure that I’m describing it correctly, I’m going to read here, we’re going to talk about the cognition one, a hands-free augmented reality device that the user controls with their brain via seven noninvasive electrodes placed on their head. Now, I’m going to show everybody a picture of that in just a minute. But let’s start off with you telling us a little bit about why was this device created? What problem was it designed to solve?
Luke Steuber 01:41
Sure, absolutely. So. So just by means of minor background, I’m a speech language pathologist, by training, which most people if they even know that phrase is sort of associated with, with stuttering, or with you know, kids, they can’t say they are sound or whatever. But there is a whole other subfield called augmentative. and alternative communication, which is kind of a hilariously long term for a field that ostensibly is supposed to help people communicate better. But then eventually, the sort of Cardinal example, people think about as Stephen Hawking who spoke using a computer, but there’s actually a large number of people in the world that could benefit from that technology. And only a small fraction of them something like 7% in the United States, and much less worldwide, actually really have access to it. So but we’re talking about several, several New York Cities of folks that, you know, that are either nonverbal or don’t have the motor ability to, you know, to vocalize basically, but might still be cognitively totally intact. And the idea behind this device, so typically, what’s been made in our field are either touchscreen, sort of communication devices, or I gaze communication devices. So folks that can, you know, look around and fixate on an object This is designed for, I mean, this can be used certainly by by anybody who needs to communicate. But the critical thing here is that it’s the first time that a mixed reality display augmented reality display has been paired with a brain computer interface. So what that what that unlocks is a whole new population of folks that maybe are completely locked in or paralyzed, you don’t even have eye movement, who now are suddenly able to, you know, communicate, control their house using Alexa, whatever it might be.
Frank Felker 03:42
Great. And now, if I could just synopsize. And the only reason you stated very clearly, but there was a lot in there. Yeah, I want to make sure that we just read capitulating. So first off, the device connects to our head via seven electrodes that do not go into our brain, but instead sit on top. And then using this device, a person let’s say like a Stephen Hawking, who we may remember, he would like look at back and forth at a screen. And somehow it would track his eye movements, and he could spell words. But instead of that, a person maybe who couldn’t even do that would be able to communicate with others. Is that correct?
Luke Steuber 04:27
Yep, you’ve got it. Exactly. So this is it’s this is the first portable noninvasive brain computer interface. And I’ll describe how that works in a second. But first, I have to say, ha ha, we beat Elon Musk to market he’s been our competition. So
Frank Felker 04:45
I’m glad to hear that I look forward to seeing you guys battling it out in the marketplace.
Luke Steuber 04:50
Boy, that’ll be great. But um, but so yeah, so the way this works is something called evoked potentials and so say for example, you’re walking down The street in your arm is swinging and it’s doing its normal arm thing. And then somebody runs up and pinches you? Well, you’re going to have an evoked potential in your brain wave that is indicating that sort of pain that you’ve experienced on your arm. Now, we decided that pinching people is not a good solution for building a communication device. So what we’re using actually is, they’re called steady state or code modulated visual evoked potentials. So we break that down, because I know we’re getting really jargony. Now. So if you’re, if you think of this display, that’s kind of an overlay on the world, there could be folders full of phrases, there could be a keyboard, there can be different interactive elements. And all of them are, are basically fluctuating at a specific frequency. So five hertz, eight hertz, 12 hertz, 15 hertz. And based on what you’re fixated on, we use the five electrodes in your occipital lobe, the back of your head, which is where, you know, all the sort of visual processing happens to look through all that noise and find that I guess I would call it a sine wave, right? Like, what frequency is? Are we seeing is it that five hertz or is it that’s all words, and very rapidly, we can actually discern intentionality. Even if someone can’t move their eyes to physically look at something, they can still we would call attend to it, you can sort of look at something in your peripheral vision, and that’ll activate it.
Frank Felker 06:31
So I’ve just want to make sure, because obviously, we could spend not only all day but the rest of our lives talking about this. And I’m sure that’s what exactly you’ll be doing, Luke. Because this is a deep field. And, and I’m very, you know, God bless you for the work that you’re doing. I think it’s fantastic. But I would like to, because I want to talk about the company as well. But I want to make sure that it’s clear that the reason why this device was originally created, or the number one objective for it was to help people communicate who currently cannot. Is that kind of I mean, does that really in a very tight bundle? synopsize it?
Luke Steuber 07:13
Yep. That’s the most succinct way I would put it. I would add also that you know, we have Amazon’s have been very gracious with us. So we’re, we’re we have Alexa integrated. So there’s a control element. And, you know, I would like to also add, you know, at some point, YouTube videos and games and all those different things.
Frank Felker 07:31
I have a little podcast called the Radio Free Enterprise minute. that’s available as an Alexa flash briefing, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. So I do have a little bit of understanding about Alexa skills and that kind of thing. Very little. But could we go down that rabbit hole for a minute? What can I do with that thing on my head, and communicating with Alexa, or just some ideas of what I might be able to do in the future?
Luke Steuber 07:58
Well, the critical thing is, is I mean, any anything that you could do with an Alexa right, and part of why this is sort of exceptional is that you don’t even need to own an Alexa device, it actually is a hub itself, which is an exception that’s sort of rarely been made. So you can be, for example, the devices all have the ability to have cellular access, you can put a sim in it from Verizon or whatever, and be going down the street and say, where’s the closest Italian restaurant, and it’ll give you directions and the heads up display. You can turn on and off the lights in your house. There was a story recently in New York Times actually about a couple that was divorced, because a woman had ALS and the husband wouldn’t turn her fan on enough. When she asked for it, you get and I kept thinking I could have saved that marriage. Although I suspect there was more going on and just the fan. So you know, but these are folks that haven’t had a meaningful ability to impact their environment, you know, and then you think about, about kids too. You know, one of the conditions we work with is Rett syndrome, which is a paralysis that only affects women. And I, I work I there’s one student I know really well, she’s 17 years old, completely cognitively intact. And how often does a kid like that get to slam the door on her parents or leave her room messy or you know, these sorts of things. Like the only option these kids have is refusal. And then that gets interpreted in the education system. That’s like some adverse behavior and you know, that you put on a plan when really like, now we can give her the ability to drive a little drone through a bunch of bowling pins, play whatever you want to do as a 17 year old.
Frank Felker 09:42
That’s great. And you know, as frustrating as it is being 17 under any conditions to have that extra layer of frustration must be quite a challenge and right wonderful.
Frank Felker 09:53
Yeah. So, okay, now, this is fascinating stuff. And I really it even pains me To turn away from the functioning of the device, let me ask you one more thing, before we turn to the business. What other things might this device be able to do in the future, even for people who don’t have these types of communication challenges?
Luke Steuber 10:16
Well, that’s Yeah, that’s going to be an interesting, you know, thing to explore, like, I I’m jumping ahead a little bit to the business thing. But one mantra I’ve always tried to live by Is that a good business model is based on one new idea, surrounded by a bunch of old tested ones. Right. And, you know, we’ve the industry of augmentative communication has been around for a pretty fair amount of time now. And what we’re introducing to it that’s new is this brain computer interface and the AR. And, you know, to some extent, I’m just going to be so curious to see what the community creates. But there’s, there’s a ton, excuse me, there’s a ton of things I can think of that that would be useful for neurotypical adults, like, a good example of that is I are Alexa is in my kitchen. And my wife was cooking the other day, and I wanted to turn the lights off. And it couldn’t hear me because it was too much going on. And I was like, I need the visor. I can just do with my brain, you know. But I, you know, what we’re seeing right now is in the AR world, for example, augmented reality is mostly video games, and then industrial applications. And one thing that’s been said is that augmented reality is a wonderful technology that doesn’t have enough content yet. And so this is an extra piece of content, we’re bringing in terms of serving the disability community, but it could be used I mean, you know, without going into too much detail, there’s certainly a lot of interest from, you know, space exploration companies and the military. around these sort of applications,
Frank Felker 11:53
you know, you said something about what the community will develop, does that mean, there’s going to be like a software developer kit and API’s and that kind of thing that you’re going to let people to connect with the device and develop apps?
Luke Steuber 12:07
Yes, absolutely. So there’s, there’s the device itself, there’s basically what we call the firmware right, which is the chip and the board on it, there is what we call the application layer, which is the holographic display. But then there’s two other applications, one of one of them is for caregivers. And it’s a, so they can make modifications to vocabulary, or check on the fitting of the brain computer, those sorts of things. And then there’s another suite. That’s for researchers and hobbyists, where they can sort of take it and, you know, get to get the raw output, tinker with it, build their own stuff. And that, in fact, that’s the market that we’re going into first, because the FDA has this funny thing about testing stuff and making sure it doesn’t hurt people. And so we have to, we have to, we have to wait a little bit for Medicaid clearance. And but we can definitely sell into the hobbyist sort of space into the academic space.
Frank Felker 13:07
Oh, I see. Okay, great. And I’m sure you’ll still learn a lot of things I want to say to you and also to people watching and listening that there is an interview I did with the founder of a software company called sniffly that’s on Radio Free Enterprise comm somewhere, but I bring it to your attention because he said something interesting. He said, we decided not to tell the community what sniffly was good for. We wanted them to tell us what it was good for. And one of the things that they found was people came up with all sorts of applications they’d never considered. And they even created a huge number of YouTube tutorials that explained how to use the software itself, and how to use it in these different applications. So you’re probably more aware of this type of thing than I was, but I see a direct correlation there.
Luke Steuber 13:55
Now, no, that’s great. I love that comparison. Yeah. And, you know, really, the origins of this entire industry are basically hobbyist nerds with ALS in the 70s that started to build their own stuff for themselves, you know, so there’s a very, there’s a very strong maker, eat those embedded. Go ahead, sorry.
Frank Felker 14:16
Well, I look forward to seeing where this all takes you and where it takes your community. Okay, so let’s get back to that nuts and bolts as far as the bid, okay, because you’re talking about which markets you’re going into first and that kind of thing. And as much good as you guys are looking to do here, it’s got to come back to trying to turn a profit. So foundational level, when was the company founded? And when did you first come on board?
Luke Steuber 14:44
So the company has actually been around for about five years. You in various forums. So it started out. Our CEOs. Mother was intubated with pneumonia and he realized he couldn’t even get a yes or no answer in that scenario. Which, by the way, we’ve seen some parallels in had done some work with Corona in that regard. But so he created a small plants that she could use to communicate. And then that became an application which we have on the market for iPad and iPhone called speak prose, which is, it’s really designed for touch communication, and then gradually on the iPad for eye gaze communication, and then ultimately into the wearables of those kind of the story of progression, right that if you get that new diagnosis that, you know, you, like, one of the one of the issues that we have, for example, is that you typically can only get funding for a medical device every five years. And I’ve seen it happen far too many times that somebody will fund a touch-based device in year two of their progression. And then your three they need eye gaze, and they’re out of luck, right? Because these are not inexpensive. So
Frank Felker 16:02
I need to know you there when you say get funding from home from the day
Luke Steuber 16:08
well, so immunity, no funding, so this would be for, for the individual with a diagnosis. So insurance funding will not mitigate and
Frank Felker 16:19
I apologize. Okay.
Luke Steuber 16:21
Right, right. Yep. So that’s and the Medicaid like for a traditional Aggies system. For example, the Medicaid cap, it’s 2510 is the code, and it’s about $16,700. is so it’s not exactly something you just write a check for. I mean, some people might, but well, you know, we’re we are equaling or exceeding that capacity at a lower price point. Okay, that’s exciting.
Frank Felker 16:53
All right. And I’m sorry, here’s what you were saying. When I hit rock Did you took your train of thought right off the track was, you were saying that because somebody can only get funding every or for a period of five years, or once every five years that this causes a problem for your product development? Is that where you were going with that?
Luke Steuber 17:15
Well, it causes a problem for product development. In general, I would say in the industry, like I’ve seen, you know, I’ve worked at other companies, I worked at this company called Tobii, Dynavox. For many years, I was the director of product, which is the kind of the big guy in our industry. And that’s where I would see this happen is that the people would buy or would end up, you know, insurance funding a durable touchscreen communication device, and then that wouldn’t meet their needs a year or two later. And, you know, they, they wouldn’t be able to get funding for something that did, what we’re trying to do is to sort of create a story where we have these really low cost essentially apps, right? If you have an iPad iPhone, get the app, you know that and that suits your needs. And then, you know, if and when you need to graduate to the wearable, then all of your language history and all everything, your configurations all kind of come with you.
Frank Felker 18:10
That’s really neat. And you know, I hate to invoke the name of Elon Musk, but is this similar to like over the air updates? In other words, you can sort of build these as you can afford them or as a patient, you can add more functionality over time.
Luke Steuber 18:27
Yep, yep. Yep. So I, I wouldn’t over the air is a good way of putting it, though. The caveat that I would add for anyone listening is that we are very privacy conscious, right? You know, not just because we should be but also because that’s required by HIPAA GDPR. And those things. So for example, like when I talk about storing utterance history or, you know, improving prediction over time based on someone’s language, we have no visibility on any of that. I mean, that that happens in a completely encrypted way. And even the Alexa integration is opt in. So you can run this device with no connection whatsoever. If you’d like you wouldn’t get the full benefit of it. But, but right, so there, we can, we can push firmware updates, we can push software updates, and that’s expected. I mean, that’s going to happen all the time. That’s great.
Frank Felker 19:28
Okay, now you guys are currently a privately held company. Is that correct? We are alright, and you’re raising, you know, we do have investors of all stripes who watch and listen to radio free enterprise. In fact, I’ve thought of someone I want to introduce you to. If, if that makes sense at some point, but I want to get a feel for the longtime watchers and listeners know, I’ve made a lot of investor presentations. I was the co-founder and CEO of a.com 20 some odd years ago, and that was a heck of a roller coaster ride. But I have made a lot of investor presentations. And I know, probably more than I know about Alexa skills, I know about raise money.
Luke Steuber 20:12
And I know myself teach me about raising VC funds, that would be great.
Frank Felker 20:20
No, that’s not what I would say. But it’s tough. And I actually do have quite a bit I would like to share with you about that. But in any event, let me try to help walk you through this here. Are you comfortable with saying how much money you guys have raised to date? It’s okay, if you’re not?
Luke Steuber 20:38
Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s available, you know, even on TechCrunch. And that sort of thing, you know, we’ve raised slightly over 5 million, for the work that’s been done so far, we would like to raise about the same amount, again, to, I mean, we, you know, there’s, as you know, of course, there’s various sort of charted out allocations of funds, right of what we would like to do with amount x and y, and, you know, that something in the 10 to 12 million range would, would enable us to sort of serve all the markets that we want to at the scale that we want to, you know, less than that is really just gives us more runway, it’s going to, you know, leave us a little bit longer in the academic community. But what we really want to do is get to this into the hands of, you know, the people that need it, so, so some of that allocation of funds is the regulatory process, obviously, but I, you know, there’s, there’s a lot to it.
Frank Felker 21:40
So, you use of funds use of proceeds, there would be depending on how much again, believe me, I understand that. Of course, there’s, you know, overhead and stuff like that, that has to be paid for. But you would also be looking to do some additional research and development and, and marketing research for that matter, to find and, and go into different markets with this product? Is it at that level of maturity, the product itself? Is it ready to go to market, let’s say non-medical, because I understand about the restrictions there?
Luke Steuber 22:18
Yeah. So we are on recalling, p two. So we’ve had an alpha prototype one prototype two, we were going to do two more iterations of the hardware over the course of the next about two and a half months. But none of it is about functionality. At this point, it’s all just about sort of fit and aesthetic. Just little things we’ve noticed when we’ve been out doing, you know, clinical trials. So we are I mean, the device is functional, we have a group of people that we call the brainiacs, that number almost 100 that are people that are actually impacted by relevant disorders, cerebral palsy, ALS, aphasia, whatever it might be, that are actively testing devices. And so that’s as the clinical guy, that’s kind of me my main role is to coordinate the testing. And as well as doing these things, that would be a whole other conversation, like building out the language systems, you know, trying to work on what we call rate enhancement, which is allowing people to say things as quickly as possible. But yes, it’d be great to have a big team for that.
Frank Felker 23:27
Wonderful, it’s so exciting, that work that you guys are doing, it reminds me I came across something here that I want to throw in here, you personally have twice won the Best of Show award at CES, the commuter consumer electronics, whatever it is, show, I guess is what it is, in the category of technology for a better world, Best of Show in technology for a better world. So this is not your first rodeo in terms of bringing cool technology to the market isn’t.
Luke Steuber 23:57
Now this, this, this has been I mean, it’s been a real piece of passion for me for for a long time. And it’s you know, it’s funny how trajectories change, you know, I was originally a math and a computer science major. And, you know, my university had the audacity to, to force me to take classes that were outside of my core area. Yeah, something like that. And so I chose a course in linguistics and I think it was literally so that I could sleep in on Tuesdays and Thursdays and, and I just fell in love with it. You know, everything that I liked about math and then saying just watching this complexity sort of reduce itself into something just beautiful and simple and powerful and understandable and you know, the infinite general ability of language and so I I’ve just always, I’ve always been really interested in in language, I guess as a as a topic and then became even more interested in You know, when I started to meet people that maybe didn’t have access to language, but had absolutely, you know, full perception of their environment, the other thing, so, so yes, CES has been very kind to me over the years, we might we’ll see if we get number three with this guy. CES. They maybe they won’t do it this year.
Frank Felker 25:19
Yeah, right. Yeah. Virtual show. Okay, I, you know, as I say, because I’ve made a lot of presentations myself, I could imagine that your presentations present, you know, special challenges, in terms of trying to explain to the prospective investor, what you do in dollars and cents, what the market opportunity is, and that kind of thing, can you give me a road show horror story, or some particular presentation that you did that that just didn’t go so? Well?
Luke Steuber 25:52
Oh, my gosh, there’s so many to choose from. I mean, the, the biggest challenge, right is, is just simply how much there is to explain, because very often, you need to start just even explaining the concept of, you know, disability impacting speech, right, and what those populations are, you know, and then you get to explain why we’re doing the mixed reality thing, you know, and then you get to explain brain computer interface and how that functions, and you know, and then and then we start to get into market sizing. And, and people have a hard time believing, I mean, we’ve done I’ve spent two years I’ve 1227 citations on a document, sizing the market globally, very confident in my numbers. And it’s, it really is this kind of invisible minority, like, so many of these folks that could benefit are in care homes, or, you know, being taken care of by family, or whatever it might be an even if we remove Autism Spectrum Disorder from the equation, because that’s its own thing. You know, this is still it’s a globally it’s a multibillion-dollar potential market.
Frank Felker 27:10
It these prices, so, you know, it’s not much of your fees or the cost of your product, potentially, it could be paid by either the government, state or by an insurance company. And as a result, it’s less of a purchase decision issue for the patient and their family.
Luke Steuber 27:28
Right, right. It’s really the end all of the companies that do this, I mean, there’s, I would say, there’s maybe 1000 of us in the world that that specialize in this, like, talk about our nice profession, right. And I’m a little hyper specialized. And we all talk to each other, and we’re all friendly, because the only competition is awareness. The You know, when we’re talking about the best market only having 7%, penetration, you know, we’ve got a long way to grow. And so, so right, so, I mean, it’s, it’s on the one hand, that’s kind of depressing, right? Did we want our people to have access to this? But on the other hand, it’s a fun time to be, you know, can I say I’m young in my career at 40? Is that still young for my kids? I get to watch this for a while still. Okay, good.
Frank Felker 28:20
Well, let’s talk about this. Do you guys have a particular exit strategy in mind? Again, I’m speaking to prospective investors out there. Are you thinking that eventually your device or your company might be acquired by a large pharma company? Or technology company? Or are you thinking about doing an initial public offering? Or whatever spec comes calling? What have you guys thought that far down the road?
Luke Steuber 28:47
Yeah, absolutely. So um, how to answer that question, elegant way. So there’s a, you know, another one of these fun Medicaid requirements is that when you when you fund a device, through insurance or through the government, it has to be maintained and operational for five years, which I have seen the the death knell of many a startup that sort of drown themselves in technical debt, because maybe the new version of Windows or iOS doesn’t break something and you know, the programmer that worked there isn’t there anymore, or whatever it might be.
So, we are absolutely prepared to move forward. You know, as an independent speech generating company, finish our series A and, you know, move towards a public offering at some point in we would also, however, be open to, you know, a larger organization acquiring us, provided that the mission sort of remained intact, right. We wouldn’t want to be sold just for the AR VR just for the BCI. We’d want to continue to serve this population instead. Because even these are commitments that have been made, these are major decisions, you know, when people decide to use our platform, it’d be like switching from an English keyboard to a French keyboard The next day, if you want it to use something different, so we want to make sure it survives. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
So, you know, and, you know, in full disclosure there, we’ve had those conversations, I mean, people are interested. But what’s funny, going back to your question about talking to investors is that it very few groups have the holistic ability to do the due diligence needed to understand the entire technological picture, you know, the clinical, the BCI, the AR, the, the battery, the heat, you know, all these different things. And so it ends up being that a lot of folks will sort of waiting for that one investor that does, you know, like, oh, okay, all right. They said, Yes, therefore. So I would say we have a good number of folks in the wings, but we need someone to really say, okay, we took a hard look at this. And
Frank Felker 31:03
that works. And that is not uncommon. I can see where it’s particularly apt in this situation, because of those due diligence challenges. But that also happens a lot. There’s a lot of, you know, people who climb on the game wagon, the bandwagon wants some big name, attaches their, their brand to it. Are you guys thinking about any other products? Or services? Or is this is the is the one, the one?
Luke Steuber 31:35
Well, that’s an interesting, so no, there will that this is absolutely what I conceptualize as v1, right. So I’m partially just because of its size, like, for example, we really weren’t, you know, we’re serving adult size heads here. You know, this is basically 12 to 14 years old and up. And there are people with needs that are younger than that there are people with needs that have macro or microcephaly, there’s, you know, some concerns about photosensitive epilepsy that we could address. So, you know, there will be more of this. And we will also continue to develop our tablet solutions, and the rest of the story is, I mean, there’s almost too many ideas, right? So, at this point, especially with this whole company, it’s like we’re keeping let’s really have a roadmap through the launch of this guy, and, you know, and then a big part of where we go next is going to be based on consumer feedback, you know, what we hear, but I’m confident that there will be a v2. But don’t know don’t wait, because this one took a good four years so sure.
Frank Felker 32:49
Well, if an investor or anybody else is interested in what you’ve had to say, here, is there a best way for them to learn more, or reach out and contact you or cognition, Luke?
Luke Steuber 33:03
Yeah, absolutely. So um, and I can send the email you can put it in the show notes or whatever the address but the, the best place to go is one, o n e dot cognition, co G and i x io n.com. If you go there, there’s a really detailed way out of the functionality and the technical specs, as well as a contact form. At the end. You’re also welcome to reach out to you to our CEO directly who’s Andreas @ cognition dot com, or, or myself and I’m Luke. I’m just Luke Steuber. So, LukeSteuber.com where you’ll see all kinds of silly pictures of me, although the other pictures have more hair. I don’t know. We’re
Frank Felker 33:54
Well, yeah, these things happen. We age over time, things change. Okay, you know, I always like to ask, and this may be a big mistake on my part, in your particular case, Luke and the topic area where we’ve been talking about, but we’re just about out of time. And on the way out the door. I always like to ask my guests if there is a question I have not asked you, or a thought that’s come to you, as we’ve been talking, that you wanted to be shared to be sure to share before we signed off?
Luke Steuber 34:27
Yeah, I love that question. That’s when I used to work in the schools, we, you know, there’s this thing called IEP meetings, right? If a student is in special education, and I would always at the end, I would always ask the parents, you know, what would you like to ask, what would you like to know that I didn’t talk about? And that would always, you know, open up a floodgate. And so, I mean, we covered this this stuff, I think pretty well, I think, I think if there’s a closing message I would have is that you know, for too long, I think that people with disabilities have gotten sort of the scraps of the consumer market. Right? You know, they haven’t really been first class citizens in technology. And I don’t like that. So, you know, for some people, technology makes things easier, right. But for other people, technology makes things possible. And I would just encourage everyone to sort of as they speak, and they go about their day, to think about not only the power of the words that they’re using and what they would do without them, but also to recognize that we’re all users of AI etc. Already, like I, I probably send more emails and text messages than I do talk the internet today. Right. And that’s, what’s the difference, really. So. Okay, I’ll stop the philosophizing, but very good question.
Frank Felker 35:50
Luke Steuber, thank you so much for joining me today.
Luke Steuber 35:54
Thank you for your time.
Frank Felker 35:56
Thanks again to Luke and thank you for joining us. Until next time, I’m Frank Felker saying I’ll see you on the radio.
Dude Walker 36:04
Forgiving your entrepreneurial sins with a gentle way Bobby’s microphone, here’s Frank Felker.
