Learn more about Conserv: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Recorded in March 2024
Transcript
Derek
Hello, everyone. My name is Derek Jackson, and I'd like to welcome you back to the Innovator Interview Series, brought to you by SEACOMP. Most people in the electronics hardware tech ecosystem can agree that what we get to do on a daily basis, improving and furthering the world through technology, is pretty special. And equally as special and rewarding, from my point of view, is who we get to work with to inspire this positive change.
Derek
And that's a great segue into our guest for today, Dave Mason, who is a world class leader in our tech ecosystem and is also just an exceptional human being through and through. So, Dave, thank you for joining.
Dave
Thanks Derek, thanks for the kind words. Glad to be here.
Derek
Awesome. So while we start off and just have you, tell our viewers a little bit about yourself, your progression of roles at Conserv, and just a little bit on the company.
Dave
Sure. I'm Dave Mason. I'm currently the CEO of Conserv. I joined first as an advisor and then as Chief Product Officer. And I've been in the CEO seat for about six months at this point. I'm originally from the UK and I've been over in the US for about ten years.
And I've been with Conserv for about two years. And Conserv as an environmental monitoring platform for collections. You can think of a collection as any institution that has some collection of objects around cultural heritage. So that could be anything from a state archive, a museum, an art gallery, or any of the ecosystem partners that may have those objects in transit or in storage.
And so we provide a solution to monitor the environment that those collections are in and that's things like temperature, humidity, light, shock, anything that can affect those objects in the collection, from the environment. And, we provide both some sensors to measure those things and also some analytics software. So you can look at trends, set alerts if things go out of a threshold that you set, and that sort of thing.
Derek
Awesome. Thank you for that overview. Really appreciate it. I think in our space we see a lot of environmental control type devices. But what's really unique about yours is that community of the archives in the museums and the end customer base that you're serving. So, to me, that's a very specific niche. How did Conserv find its way into that niche?
Like what prompted the business to start and identify this need within this community of institutions?
Dave
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So, one of our founders, Nathan, his mom actually worked in a museum and was using the technology that sort of predated Conserv, that is used for this job. And so, she would have what she would describe as a data logger day, and she would go around the museum and she would download this data from these data loggers manually with a USB pen drive every month or so.
And then she would go and she would upload the data and she would smash it together. And then she could look at some trends and see how the environment had changed over time over the course of that month. And that did the job reasonably well. But there were a couple of problems with that approach.
One is, it took her a whole day to go around and download all that data. And the second is, you know, a lot of that data is now a month old. And so, if there had been an issue in one of her spaces, maybe the HVAC unit had gone offline or there was a water leak or something, there was nothing telling her in real time, “Hey, there's a problem. You should go and take action on it.”
And so that's the kind of the opportunity that we saw, to sort of fundamentally change how this particular group of folks think about the job that they're doing and moving it from something that's retrospective to something that is proactive. And we're sort of bringing some technology that's used in lots of other industries, but we're bringing it to this specific market.
And they have lots of other specific needs that they're really dialed into for accuracy. So it's really important that the device is very accurate. They're really busy, so we try to minimize the amount of maintenance that they have to do with their devices. And then just like they have lots of specific ways that they think about their data.
So like the metrics that they use and calculate from, the raw inputs, from the environmental sensors. We kind of structure that in a way that they're familiar with as well.
Derek
And in a lot of these cases, it's folks who might be donating their items to a museum for a period of time. Is that accurate? Is that a use case?
Dave
Yeah. So lots of institutions loan their collections to other institutions. Might be for an exhibit for say six months or a year or something like that. And that's right. So one of the use cases is if you're loaning something to me, you're probably going to want to understand the space that I'm going to put your object in and make sure that it's safe for the object that you're going to loan to me.
And so our devices are also capturing the kind of data that you can use to then provide that evidence to somebody who is loaning you an object and that makes that process a lot more streamlined and efficient as well.
Derek
Absolutely. Especially if both of the institutions are on the same Conserv platform because they're operating from a common standard when it comes to the sensors, the data collection, and they know what to expect. So you're not just hoping that what they're doing is up to par within this space, and they truly are taking care of your items, but you could potentially be using the same hardware and receiving identical data just in two different areas, which I think is really cool.
Dave
Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Derek
Awesome. Cool. I think there is also a story about the Museum of Modern Art. Is that right, too? Like, that was one of the earliest institutions engaged in. Do you mind sharing what their feedback was?
Dave
Yeah. So we have a lot of institutions that most people have heard of that are using our platform.
MoMA are one of our earliest customers. And they've been using us for a while. Smithsonian, is another example. We have a couple of the Smithsonian institutions as part of our list of customers, and lots of others. Some of which are on our website, some of which we can't talk about.
The common theme with a lot of these early customers is that they were looking for something, again, that kind of just would reduce the amount of manual effort that folks have to do this job with. A common way that this had been handled in the past is the intern army of just a bunch of people going and downloading this data.
And one of the things we like to talk about, I'm originally from more of a healthcare technology background. And so in that industry, there's the idea of helping doctors practice at the top of their license, which means taking away all of the grunt work that they have to do and allowing them to focus on what they've trained for.
And we try and do the same thing with our customers. We want them to be looking at the data and taking action on it and not spending a lot of time having to collate the data and bring it into the right format and all that sort of thing. So, MoMA is just one of many examples where they saw the value in that kind of system, in a wireless system, something that's talking to the cloud automatically. And, they've been with us for multiple years at this point.
Derek
That's great. They were just waiting for that technology to exist and to Conserv, where we are today. So great. That's wonderful. Well, again, thanks for that background, that context. I think that helps all the viewers understand where Conserv is coming from and the solutions that you provide.
Let's talk a little bit about the manufacturing and the product ramp and the manufacturing of your latest sensor device with SEACOMP. Do you mind giving an overview of what you hired SEACOMP to do for Conserv?
Dave
Yeah, absolutely. So when we started working with SEACOMP, we were sort of at the point of looking at the sensor design that we've used to date, which is something that we've sort of built ourselves. We would use some kind of third party consultants and so on to get the design right. But it was an early prototype that we then kind of adapted over time, and we were looking to move from that into something that was going to truly production ready, ready for mass production, and with the hope of our growth continuing to accelerate. And we wanted to make sure we were ready for that.
And so there were really kind of two things that we had looked at SEACOMP to help us solve. The first was making sure that the design we were about to bring into production was truly ready for manufacturing, and we wanted a partner, who wouldn't just kind of take what we had done and say, yes, okay, we'll do this, but would actually help think critically about that design, suggest improvements.
And then the second thing was, somebody who would kind of work with us, given that we were in that sort of transitory phase. And would help work us through the inevitable challenges and speed bumps that we would encounter along the way. Because when you're making that kind of transition, there's always going to be issues that arise.
So those are the kind of the two main things that I think we looked at SEACOMP and said like, okay, it seems like, they do a really good job with both of those components. They're not just a manufacturer, but they're a partner.
Derek
Yeah, I think that's very well said. And just, highlight one of the points that you made.
I think a lot of people view the product development process as very iterative to get to that hardware product that you're going to take to a manufacturer to be built at scale. But they don't realize that the early engagement on a hardware product, when you're ramping it with a manufacturer, is also a very iterative process to produce the best quality product at the lowest cost, with a reliable supply chain and the list goes on.
So certainly a good amount of that early on with Conserv to make sure we have, again, the sensor device that is detecting what it needs to at a very accurate, reliable rate, because that's ultimately the value that you bring to your customers communicating back that information. So you can't have two devices that would perform differently whatsoever. They need to be identical.
Dave
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
Derek
So, how has it been so far working with SEACOMP? If you were to highlight a few things that went really well, and I know you came in at, kind of a middle point as we were getting the NPI process underway, but what's gone really well from your perspective and then moving forward, where are some areas for improvement?
Dave
Yeah. So I think the great news was that those two main criteria, I think have held true to our experience. So, as I alluded to, we were in that transitory phase and we definitely found some speed bumps. We ended up having SEACOMP do a final run of our previous version of the sensor. And through that process, we were able to iron out a lot of process kinks and that sort of thing. But that was also not part of the original scope that we had contracted with SEACOMP. So they were very good at kind of pivoting with us as our needs changed. We had a little bit more demand coming into our pipeline than we had anticipated.
And then when we came to the new design, again, they helped us kind of figure out where there were issues that we hadn't considered, help dial in things like the enclosure for our sensor and making sure that that would be produced reliably over hundreds and thousands of units. And so that process of the support alongside, building out those processes, I think was really great.
And given all the speed bumps that we encountered, I felt like SEACOMP was also very good at being transparent around timelines and actually meeting those timelines despite the challenges that we had to work around. And giving the options about where we could flex on certain things to meet the timeline or where we shouldn't and we should push things back.
With the end result being that we met the timelines that we had and that the first product came off the line were great.
Derek
That's fantastic. Areas for improvement? I'm not going to let you off the hook.
Dave
One thing I'll say is that we are currently in the process of producing another batch of the sensors. And we've actually iterated on the design again. We're introducing a new, better UV sensing component. And we've also optimized a little bit around how we measure light and capture incident light.
We've continued this process of iterating on the design with SEACOMP alongside us. I think a lot of the areas for improvement have been on us as we've understood more about what we can do with the technology and how a manufacturing process works.
We're continuing to update things. At the end of the day, we sort of feel like we're an expert in our customers. We're not hardware experts, and we've been trying to surround ourselves with people who are experts, from that technical standpoint. We have SEACOMP, we have a hardware development firm that we work with, and that kind of ecosystem of partners is meant that we've been able to up our game, without putting all of that technical burden on ourselves. But I think there's probably still a lot more we can do to dial it in.
Derek
Awesome. Well, I got to give you some credit too, Dave. You got kind of thrown to the fire trying to learn hardware and manufacturing and pull all these resources together so that we have a clear path to where we want to go.
So I have to give some credit back to you, because I know your background is primarily in software, and then you have this hardware, all of this integral to your system. So, kudos to you. And, you're fantastic to work with through the process as well.
Dave
Well, thank you. Yeah, it's definitely been a learning experience, which it's just been fun.
Derek
Wonderful. All right, so where can our viewers learn more about Conserv and what you guys are doing?
Dave
Yeah. So you can find us at Conserv.io. And it's Conserv without that final ‘e’ so c-o-n–s-e-r-v dot i-o. That's the best place to find us. And, you can always reach out to us via email. My email’s Dave at Conserv dot io and we'd love to hear from you.
Derek
Wonderful. Well, Dave, thanks again. For those of you watching, please check out the Conserv website to learn more about the Conserv technology. And, thanks for joining us today. See you soon.
