Kelvin Crosby: 0:06

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast. We're not waiting for change, we're investing in it. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating a more accessible world.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:33

Hey, hey, hey! So good to see you even though I can't see you. It's another beautiful day in the neighborhood and I'm so excited that you're here at Investing in Accessibility. And I tell you today I am excited about today's guest.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:50

This is the product that I use personally and I tell you, if you ever thought about trying to do quality control using pottery, but build friendship with people that want to help you be able to see your quality control with your pottery. Well, this is a software that I've been using just to do that. To make sure there's no cracks in my good pottery pieces that I've been making and doing all of that. So I'm excited to introduce you to him today. But before we do that, let me introduce you to my co-host, Chris Maher. How you doing, man?

Chris Maher: 1:20

Hey Kelvin, how are you buddy? Good to see you today.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:23

I'm doing good. So I'm excited about today's guest. I mean, truly, this is a product I personally use all the time and I'm excited to kind of dive into who our guest is.

Chris Maher: 1:33

Me too. But I'm really excited today because number one, Be My Eyes is a company that Samaritan has invested in, so I wanted to make sure that we let everyone know that, a little disclaimer. But also I'm really excited to hear you and the Be my Eyes CEO chat, because I know you're a user of the service, so let's jump into it. So, I want to welcome Mike Buckley, the CEO of Be my Eyes. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Buckley: 1:56

Thank you so much for having me here.

Chris Maher: 1:59

It's really great to have you here, and so let's dig into it right away. And, Mike, you and I have gotten to know each other over the last year plus. We started talking before Samaritan invested and then obviously have gotten to know each other pretty well since that investment. And so much going on with Be my Eyes right now. But let's start off with a little bit of background, because you're not the typical startup CEO. You're actually a very experienced entrepreneur and would love to hear a little bit about your background and really how you came to Be My Eyes.

Mike Buckley: 2:29

Sure, life takes you an interesting path sometimes and not the ones that you originally envisioned. So I was a corporate consultant for many years, a couple of decades, working with companies on large-scale M&A, sometimes with companies in crisis. I have a whole bunch of stories about being shipped down to Enron for four months and living in Houston, which is probably another podcast. But through that work, one of my clients, as a consultant, became a company that was then known as Facebook. And then I went into Facebook and worked as a VP under Sheryl Sandberg and Mark for three and a half years, learned more than I could have ever imagined, and these are the days where Facebook was kind of hiring 5,000 people a year and it was absolutely insane. Took some time after that and became an angel investor. So, chris, I did a little bit of what you're doing and I wrote a few checks to companies and this is not like humblebrag guys, like literally the first company I wrote a check in and my wife told me to write more because she did invest more, because she liked the product. That company was sold to Apple. And so it had like this crazy success and, by the way, I got introduced from a friend of a friend of my father-in-law. It was like there was no due diligence and it was no like, oh, I found the jewel that was hidden.

Mike Buckley: 3:57

It was fortuitous luck that I got introduced to this company. But that company was based in Denmark, so I got to know a lot of technical talent and people in Denmark and, of course, Be My Eyes was founded in Denmark.

Mike Buckley: 4:11

So I met the Be My Eyes guys and I loved the company and I loved the mission and Hans the founder is a beautiful, wonderful, brilliant man who's dented the universe. And so I wrote I wrote an investment check in Be my Eyes in 2018. And I joined the board of directors and I was a pretty shitty board member, to be honest. I wasn't really actively involved, but, like, I you know, I was probably one of those jerks who's like, oh, this is fun to talk about at a cocktail party, right? Oh, I invested in Be my Eyes. And in 2021 and 22, I got a little bit more serious and paid attention to the business and there were some struggles, very honestly, and the board approached me about becoming the chief and I took the job with Be my Eyes in December of 2022. And I've slept a lot less since, but it been, it's been fun.

Mike Buckley: 5:05

So that's how I got got you know, introduced to the company. Sort of a weird confluence of events and a lot events and a lot of it involving luck.

Kelvin Crosby: 5:13

So, as you were going through this and kind of getting into Be My Eyes, I mean, so you really like there was social aspect, and I think this is one of the things that Be My Eyes does really, really, really well is getting the social side of the world to see that you can be a part of a process and make change and make your day better by participating and helping a visually impaired person or something like that.

Kelvin Crosby: 5:44

And that was the initial growth. But as Be My Eyes continues to grow and I think what's fascinating, what you guys have been doing now, is really making it for the blind users or visually impaired users, an access point to really make a product that surrounds the visually impaired person's life, to give them access to everything they might need in the world. And to me it's an awesome kind of way you guys are going about it and I think it would be good for people to understand, like kind of give us the foundation of Be My Eyes and then kind of give us some of the fruit that Be My Eyes kind of has produced.

Mike Buckley: 6:34

Yeah, that's a great question. So you know, our founder, Hans, started this out because he was frustrated, and I mean he was pissed off at having to call his friends and family for help with sighted support, right. And so he launched this app into the world where someone who's blind or has low vision can connect with a kind volunteer to help with anything. You know what's is this, the tomato soup? Help me to connect my router, whatever the thing is. And after it got some press attention and after a week there were 10,000 people who had signed up. And I've used this phrase a lot but like Hans figured out a way of merging technology with human kindness to solve a societal need. And over 90% of these calls are successful. And Kelvin to your point, the volunteers love the experience and the thing just works. It just works. And it's lovely. And now we do this in 150 countries, 1. 3 million calls a year.

Mike Buckley: 7:44

But we realized that we needed to work with the blind, and I say with, work with the blind and low vision community to expand our offerings, to think about technological developments, and so I think we were the first accessibility company to offer kind of artificial intelligence interpretation. Again, through some luck, right, I literally cold called OpenAI in January of 2023, and somebody picked up the phone right and, like you know, nine weeks later we launched with them on GPT-4, which is ridiculous, right. Like crazy. And so now the user has the option, their choice, their power, to call another human being to get sighted support or to use the artificial intelligence to kind of interpret the world and surroundings. And our big, very hard core belief is that these tools need to be free and accessible to the blind and low vision community, and we pay the bills, right, through charging enterprise relationships to improve their customer service, which you can also access in the app, right. A whole host of companies give you a visual support on their products and services.

Kelvin Crosby: 8:57

I just want to make sure we clarify this, because I think this is such a unique thing about Be My Eyes. And I hope you didn't miss what Mike said that we use corporations or other companies to fund Be My Eyes. This is why it can be free to the visually impaired. I think that's extremely important for you to understand.

Mike Buckley: 9:23

And Kelvin, I can give the listener a really specific example, right? So in 2017, when blind or low vision customers were calling the Microsoft Customer Service Center, right, those were audio only calls. You could only talk to the agent, and those calls took 20 minutes on average to resolve. What we did is we took the same technology we apply for the volunteer interaction and said hey, Microsoft, we're gonna put a button in our app for when the person presses Microsoft, they're gonna be connected to your customer service, but there's one big addition— your customer service agent is going to get a pop-up window to see, through the phone, the problem that the blind or low vision user is experiencing. What was that? It created magic. It lowered the call times to 10 minutes, so the problem got solved 50% faster, right. And, as you would expect, the customer satisfaction of the blind or low vision user went up a lot because the agent could see their problem, right. So it fixed the problem faster for the consumer, it took less time for Microsoft to address it and Be My Eyes got revenue. And so you created a true win, win, win, right. A win for the consumer, a win for Microsoft, a win for us.

Mike Buckley: 10:47

And now what we've done is we've put the AI at the front end of that customer experience as well, and nearly 70% of these customer interactions are being solved by the AI. But, Kelvin, here's the big thing. Like there's fear, right, there's, Oh, I don't want to talk to a bot, I don't want to, like, deal with the AI.

Mike Buckley: 11:08

The user still has a choice to talk to a human or use the AI, but we're seeing nearly 70% of consumers use the AI to solve their problem. Why? It works. And these problems are now being solved in an average of, wait for it, four minutes. So it was 20 minutes with the audio calls, 10 minutes with the video calls and now four minutes with the AI. So the consumer's like this is awesome, right, it's helping me figure out my Excel sheet or my PowerPoint or whatever the thing is, right. Better, faster, cheaper, right, and higher customer satisfaction. So I know that was probably a mouthful, but I think you're right that it's important for us to understand this model and how it works and how we can pay the bills and keep the stuff free for consumers.

Chris Maher: 11:56

And, Mike, talk a little bit more about how you've approached inclusive design to create greater accessibility for the community while also serving corporate clients in a variety of different ways.

Chris Maher: 12:10

You folks have put out a lot of news lately in terms of how you're taking the"wit Be my Eyes technology platform and integrating it into a lot of different areas on the enterprise side. So, if you can speak to again the inclusive design, creating greater accessibility but also creating value for the corporate customer, because that's a really hard thing to do..

Mike Buckley: 12:32

It's a huge thing, right. Like the first thing is philosophically, morally, our premise is "with, not for." As soon as somebody tells me they're building something for the blind community, I'm very wary. If you're not building with and bringing the community in, I think you have a problem in your approach, and so go back to the OpenAI example.

Mike Buckley: 13:00

to the OpenAI example, where we were literally one of the first to launch GPT-4 with them, we brought thousands of beta testers to effort and booking, you know what happened do you than working with? community and them in, they gave us and OpenAI unbelievably valuable feedback. What's broken, what works, what doesn't work, oh my God. It doesn't know what a guide dog is right. Chris It doesn't is, what white cane is. Of course it does now right. But like all this stuff companies, like it, and voice and actions products, the they and bringing in community made that product better, not just for the blind community but for everybody right community, and so we. the And same thing when we talk to enterprises.

Mike Buckley: 13:49

Hilton is a customer of ours who now has like one of the most accessible hotel experiences because you can use the AI or get to a Hilton human to help with booking, room needs, service, layout, navigation, you name it ,but like again working with beta testers from the blind and low vision community to make that experience beautiful, delightful, wonderful. So it's absolutely a fundamental design principle and the reality is, Chris, to the second part of your question, when you're trying to get business with an enterprise, the problem that I see right now is too many accessibility companies which are well-intentioned and, by the way, some who have very good products, they sell this as this is the right thing to do, this is a nice thing to do, it's the moral thing to do.

Mike Buckley: 14:42

Are those arguments true? Of course, but do they resonate with the CFO? Do they resonate with the head of the contact center? No, tell me the ROI of your product. Companies have shareholders. Companies are in the business to, yes, provide a service, but they're in the business to make money. Help them understand the return on the investment that they're going to make in you, and it may be multiple, right. It may be saving time, it may be saving money, it may be brand, it may be marketing, it may be bringing more people to your hotel, or your product or service. But, like, make a credible argument financially to these companies if you want to get traction. And, by the way, I'm not saying we've solved this, we're doing pretty well, we're growing, but like, we have more work to do here, just like everybody else.

Chris Maher: 15:35

I think, Mike, with that last part about you've got to have an impact on the bottom line. That's how you get leadership's attention. I believe and we had this conversation on the last on a previous podcast where I think the commitment to accessibility and inclusion at a corporate level it starts, I believe it starts with leadership. And for that leadership to really change their behavior, I think you have to do exactly what you said, is you have to show them how it's going to impact their bottom line and that's when it will cascade down and you will get change across the whole organization.

Mike Buckley: 16:09

Here's the thing, some companies do it for the moral reason, of course, but there's a reason. there's not a billion dollar accessibility company, right. And that's because, yeah, you'll get a swath of corporations that sign up because it's the right thing. But if you want to have scale, if you want to have global impact, if you want to have a great investor return and if you want to build something that's massively valuable societally and financially, you've got to address both sides of that argument.

Chris Maher: 16:41

Agreed. Calvin?

Kelvin Crosby: 16:46

I am enjoying our conversation because, at the end of the day, what we're doing at Investing in Accessibility is bringing awareness to this issue that we can help you bottom line, we're 60% of the population. And, at the end of the day, by investing in Be My Eyes, know that's going to help your, your employees, be more efficient so that your bottom line gets better. Also, if you have visually impaired people at your hotels or you have your visually impaired people at your, on your website, and they're calling your regular customer service and you're going to find that that's taking up more time and more money. Why don't we streamline these opportunities so it's more efficient? And I think, with Be My Eyes, you've got the volunteer side, you've got the corporation side, you've got the AI side. We're finding that visually impaired people are becoming more efficient so that way we can use more products and more things are out there and more services. And I think that alone is huge, because that then gives more equal access for all and gives each one of us the opportunity to have that ability.

Chris Maher: 18:13

Yeah, so Mike, at the risk of kind of getting, let's not get too technical on it but, something that's a really big topic of conversation, and I saw you speak at CES on a panel about about this, for the disability community, is AI. And I think there's great apprehension about embracing it for a large part of the community and I think part of that is it's unknown, part of that is is in a lot of the AI models that are out there now there's some inherent bias, you know, against the disability community. And how would you answer that question when people say, "hey, AI is not great for the community and we shouldn't embrace it at this point?

Mike Buckley: 18:53

Get over it. Honestly, guys, it's where the world is going, and either you're on the train or you're left behind. Think about it this way. Think about the advent of the internet and websites. There was this crazy gold rush. Right, to build, to capture this new phenomenon online, right. And what happened in that gold rush? Every website that was built, every experience that was built, was inaccessible. And to this day, over 90% of freaking websites have inaccessible elements. We're like 30 years later, right, and so like, we have to get in the game. The entire disability community has to get in the game to help bend these tools to their needs. So that's one thing, and I don't I don't mean get over it in a flippant way, I mean it's just like well, I don't have a choice.

Chris Maher: 19:49

But listen, Mike, I think you're right. It's like it's here and it's not going away. So either embrace it and be a part of that process and the evolution of it, or it's going to be done for you,

Mike Buckley: 20:00

Bend the technology to your needs and get loud about it. And what we've seen is we're doing almost three and a half million AI sessions a month. Up from nothing 15 months ago. So there's something here that's providing value, right. There's some product market fit and we just need to continue honing that experience and continuing to find the avenues of value for people. But I'm with you, Chris and Kelvin, I think we should have some trepidation. We can't just give 100% trust to these tools.

Mike Buckley: 20:42

There was this New York Times story or was it the Journal, I don't remember. There was a story about how someone used one of these AI agents to shop for them and it bought something super inexpensive for $31, and it bought 10 more of them than he wanted. We've got to test this stuff and be careful, but it gets better really, really fast. I do think that, ultimately, all of us, all of us on this podcast, anybody listening, whether in the disability community or outside, we will have what is being called agents working for us. Where you'll speak into your device, or your wearable, and say, "hey, I need strawberries and eggs, can you have them delivered between four and six" and it'll be done.

Chris Maher: 21:31

And, Mike, is there a, and Kelvin for you as well, kind of a favorite example, Mike, for you for a consumer using Be my Eyes or Kelvin for yourself? I know, Mike, you're super excited about the partnership with Meta with their smart glasses that can really create, for the first time, hands-free accessibility for someone that's blind or low vision. But is there an example that really stands out for you about a customer using Be my Eyes?

Mike Buckley: 21:58

Kelvin? You got one?

Kelvin Crosby: 22:00

I got a bunch of them. It's just a matter of who's going to go first.

Chris Maher: 22:05

Kelvin, you go, why don't you go first?

Kelvin Crosby: 22:07

Okay, I think the revolutionary thing for me was I wanted, and this is a little bit of a selfish thing, but it was the best, I sold so many pottery pieces this way. But I would call Be My Eyes and I would have the person help me with my cracks, because one of the biggest things with a blind person those hairline cracks in your pottery pieces you can't find. They're really hard to feel. And so I would always call. And the cool thing is that these people want to help. And I would set up the tripod and then put the mug handle right next to the camera and they would say there's a little bit of something here and I would work on that, get it nice. And we would have a conversation. And I said do you still have more time to help me? Because I didn't want to waste our time.

Kelvin Crosby: 23:00

And next thing, you know I'm building this relationship with whoever this person is and I'm getting through all these pieces. And next thing they're going to my website. They're buying pieces. There's one lady, she bought like 10 pieces while we were there making, doing quality control on the pieces I was working on. And it was great. I was like I didn't realize that's going to Be My Eyes would be a marketing strategy.

Mike Buckley: 23:25

That's awesome.

Kelvin Crosby: 23:29

That to me is like, and the thing is, obviously there's some rules around Be My Eyes and so forth, but at the same time, what it is and like I've talked to other Be My Eyes like volunteers when they're not on and they're like, you know, It just warms my heart that I hear that, that it's not my phone, it's that sound. I gotta go help a blind person. I'm gonna go do that right now and I'm gonna go do that and I'm gonna be excited about it, and they're like hello? They're not sure what they're getting themselves into, but normally they're coming away like I'm feeling good and to me that's awesome.

Mike Buckley: 24:17

I'll do two short ones. The one that happened recently was I talked to a guy who had told me that he had never traveled on a plane before without the assistive services from the airport. Right, and he had his Ray-Ban Metas, and he called a volunteer and he did an experiment and he got through the airport on his own, with the volunteer's help. He didn't call the service from the airline and he was kind of emotional when he talked about it and talked about it as power and independence. And that made me fired up, man. And I think about those words, those two words a lot—p ower and independence. Working with the community, to like to like explode those. And so I and you know his point was, look, if I've got my dog and a roller bag, how the hell am I gonna use my phone?

Kelvin Crosby: 25:10

Yeah.

Mike Buckley: 25:11

Right, so the wearable was a big deal. The other one that I love, just because it was like bizarre. I talked to a couple and they lost their parakeet in their house and they used Be My AI to find it . And it was like up in the corner of a living room, like on a plant and they're like this was

Kelvin Crosby: 25:31

This is awesome.

Chris Maher: 25:35

S o, Mike, as we start to wrap up here, if you're able to share, what's on the horizon with Be My Eyes? If you can share some of the most recent partnerships and/ or ones that are coming down the pike. And then just more broadly, in terms of just accessibility in general, and the opportunity you see there.

Mike Buckley: 26:08

On the technological side we are most excited about wearables. Hands-free generally, right, as well as voice activation. The ability to interact with any computer or Be My Eyes or even our app, using your voice, should change the game. I think about this, like, imagine someone who speaks Hindi in rural India, opens our app for the first time and has never used technology before. What if that person could get the assistance that Be My Eyes offers just by talking to it and asking it, "hey, can you help me read a document?" or whatever the thing is? That's truly exciting. So, wearables and voice, and then a little bit longer down the road, because I think we need to be careful as to having your own personal assistant or personal agent.

Kelvin Crosby: 26:47

I would take that right now. I don't care how personal, how careful we gotta be. I'll take that right now. Because, at the end of the day, it's a big deal, it's huge.

Kelvin Crosby: 26:59

I mean the fact that I could literally get an email and then be like, all right, just tell them this. And then make it nice and pretty. Or it will tell me "oh Kelvin, we got 10, 15 orders and we need you to process. Then I say, all right, go get it, send it to the shipping company and have them package it, make it all ready to go and move. You know, like, that to me is a game changer from a business standpoint, and more efficient, and the more I can be solo, you know I love being a solo entrepreneur.

Chris Maher: 27:41

Yeah, your independence and autonomy right?

Kelvin Crosby: 27:48

Yep,

Mike Buckley: 27:51

It 's huge thing. The other one that I spend a great deal of, and we spend a great deal of time thinking about, is, and Kelvin, I'd love to interview you separately just to to hear your views of this. But, like, we spend a lot of time thinking about what are the the broader pain points for this community? Right, of course, visual interpretation is the basis one, but, like, think about beyond that. Navigation? Nightmare, right. There are some decent navigation apps out there now, but, like, very few of them are good at solving the last 20 feet. Yeah, you can tell me what the Starbucks is, but what the hell is the door? And so we try to think about life holistically, of what are the other pain points that we might be able to solve through the application and through technology. So I'm spending a lot of time on that.

Mike Buckley: 28:41

And then the other one is ,Kelvin and Chris you know the stats better than me about blind and low vision employment. The one I trust the most says 75% is either unemployed or underemployed. And so we are going to launch a Be My Eyes for work product. And if we design it the way I think we are going to design it, and it should launch, hopefully, next quarter, it should act as kind of like a meta layer of software that makes the other software and other things in the organization more accessible. So we launched a Be my Eyes for Windows application last year and, like, surprisingly, it still gets like 2,500 downloads a month. So we know that there's an enterprise need and a kind of work productivity need and our belief is that if we can work with the community to make the workplace more accessible, we may be able to beneficially impact employment and we may be able to help the blind or low vision employee be even more productive in the workplace. Because the little known thing at many employers is -- you know who knows how to solve problems and figure out a bunch of shit and get through a lot of barriers? Blind people! You want those people. What's the line from A Few Good Men? You want me on that wall, right, but you want these people solving problems for you because they solve problems every freaking day . And we just need to provide better tool to make the workplace less of a nightmare for a smart and resilient and super creative group of human beings.

Mike Buckley: 30:18

So, I tell you, this has been an awesome conversation. Chris, are there any last things you want to plug in here before we wrap up?

Chris Maher: 30:32

. So Mike, as we get ready to sign off, how can people learn more about Be my Eyes, where can they go?

Mike Buckley: 30:35

So the first thing to do, easiest thing to do, is download the app. Whether you're sighted and you want to be a volunteer, or you're blind or low vision and you want to check out the interpretation tools. It's free, it's easy, it's seamless and you can provide feedback. That's the first thing. If you're a company and you're interested in better connecting and better serving a growing consumer base. Blindness may double by 2050, if you believe the World Health Organization for various reasons. These are your consumers. Talk to us about our enterprise solutions. We can make your customer service and your workplace better, faster, cheaper. And it's incumbent on us to build that revenue so we can continue to provide great, innovative, free products and services for the community and create this flywheel. Those are my two big plugs.

Kelvin Crosby: 31:27

Well, that wraps up Investing in Accessibility. Mike, thank you so much for being on the podcast and, like I always say, go live beyond your challenges and we'll see you in two weeks.

Kelvin Crosby: 31:47

Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow us, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn at @Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email Chris at chris@samaritanp artners. com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www. samaritanpartners. com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know, so we can spread the word, so that we can give access to all by Investing in Accessibility.