L129 - Squint CEO Devin Bhushan Shares His Journey Creating an AR Platform for Manufacturers

The video features an insightful interview with Devin Bhushan, CEO and Founder of Squint. He shares his background studying computer science, working at Yahoo, Splunk, and ultimately being inspired to start Squint to leverage AR's potential to surface helpful information to users. After extensive research into manufacturing's challenges, Devin built Squint's initial product to address the industry's training inefficiencies. He describes Squint's AR ability to guide operators through procedures and leave contextual notes, reducing training time by 86%. Devin discusses Squint's fundraising, go-to-market strategy, being part of Sequoia's ARC accelerator, and most proudly hearing customers share how Squint enables them to accomplish goals more easily. He offers founders advice to stay laser-focused on users' needs. Overall, the video provides a fascinating overview of Devin's journey founding an AR startup and delivering immense value to enterprises. Here are timestamped chapter summaries 00:00 - Introductions 00:57 - Devin's background 03:41 - How Devin got interested in AR and started Squint 07:33 - Why Devin focused first on manufacturing 11:08 - Building the initial product and getting first customers 16:01 - Video demo of Squint AR training app in manufacturing 18:14 - Video demo of using Squint for airplane preflight checklist 21:07 - Discussion of spatial accuracy and performance of Squint AR 26:00 - Future roadmap - integrating external data sources and plugins 28:00 - Fundraising process 35:48 - Typical day - sales calls in morning, team walks in afternoon for bonding 38:03 - Go-to-market strategy - LinkedIn, content marketing, outbound 41:02 - Started with top-down sales approach, future bottoms-up potential 43:00 - Building founding team with people you know and trust 49:00 - Timeline for fundraising 50:00 - Pre-seed valuations - more about investor-founder match than formula 53:00 - Overview of Sequoia Arc program format 56:05 - Excited about new product features, scared about scaling company culture 58:00 - Proudest moment 59:00 - Contact details, advice for founders to stay close to users